Eighteen

It was a lazy day at home, a plain-robed Iason had been observing his Riki for the longest time now, as the other drifted into his thoughts again, the Master knowing that this was no good, and that he'd have to commit to some drastic effort to get Riki to come back to him.

Yet he doubted.

What could he do to ease this straining burden from the other when he himself found it difficult with his own? More importantly, was all this his fault after all?

--

A glorious morning. Half-asleep, the Pet could feel the sun pore through somewhere even before he opened his eyes, feeling the warmth kiss his cheeks. Reluctantly, he awakened, his consciousness stubbornly detaching itself from slumber, to slowly sit up, cradling his head.

"Iason?"

Something fluttered somewhere, he could hear the sound, and felt the feathers falling even before he realized what they were. It stunned the Pet, but his Master had perched on the sill of an opened portion of their home, his midnight blue wings out and displayed under the light of day. The Blondie appeared to have slept as he sat there, though feeling he was no longer alone in wakefulness, turned with a manner of grace to Riki.

"Good morning," he smiled, but there was something off about it.

The Pet sat there dumbfounded for some time, before he shook himself off and moved to put on some covering, at least over the necessities. Iason had nothing but a pair of constricting pants on, something he had just today seen the Blondie don.

"Why are you…" the Pet didn't seem to know what he wanted to ask from his lover. Why was he awake so early? Why were his wings unfolded?

Without moving further, Iason extended his hand, "Come Riki...it's not good for you to be cooped up here…"

His Exclusive was still debating whether he was dressed properly for the impromptu invitation, when the Master simply and literally swept him off his feet, immediately taking to flight out from their quarters and then through the large open bays of their private aeroport, the sealed doors sliding to allow their exit.

"Wait! Where are we going?!"

The Blondie was not one to tell. But he tucked his Pet near, wings strong and certain as they flew to somewhere he did not know. Riki was blinded by sunshine for a moment before he felt the cool surface of glass beneath his feet. They had finally arrived, and they were on the topmost point of Jupiter's Tower, literally and figuratively, the highest point of the world.

From the height, all things seemed insignificantly smaller, but significantly bigger, the entire capital and the Ocean beyond it, the tenements and structures made by Normals, Midas and all its areas including Lhassa where they had first met and where he had offered his body as payment to the very Man who stood right next to him now. Even the deteriorated buildings of the Slums were visible, but as they had been made for him, seemingly out of reach still.

Ceres. A year seemed long enough since he was there, yet he had not stayed there at all while he was to begin with. He left his heart in Eos where Iason was, as with his body, the Blondie intended on keeping both.

"Our kingdom my prince," the Master stretched his hand and gestured, as if he could somehow contain the entire city in his hand. Ironically enough, he actually could.

"Why did you take me here?" the Pet asked, not quite understanding what reasons the Blondie had for showing him all this.

"Everything you now see...is yours to take. I have the power to give to you whatever it is that you ask."

Riki's brow creased. In some way, he was overwhelmed, but then he had his doubts whether or not this was what he wanted. But then what did he want? What did he not? He could not even properly define his reasons!

"Iason…"

"Does this not please you?" the Blondie asked impatiently. When the Pet looked up, he could see that eerie coldness in those sapphire eyes. The sort that pulled the fears from within him before. "Does this not please you!" again, the Blondie repeated, and Riki did tremble this time, turning away, scorned by the sudden rage in that voice.

Next thing he knew Iason had suddenly grabbed his arm and flung him off, impeccable strength displayed by the Android of a male, letting the Pet plummet and fall to earth in such tasteless fashion.

Riki had a split second to overcome his shock and spread his own wings, the dark feathers bursting and scattering, but he found himself unable to control them. He continued to plunge.

"Iason!"

The Blondie of course dived and in mere seconds, scaled the distance, pulling Riki into his embrace as his blue wings spread to cushion their fall. They hovered, before the Pet felt them lifting again, the strong beat of wings carrying them higher together. Only then was he able to open the eyes he had snapped shut.

"Bastard! Why did you do that!?" he pounded his lover's chest. Not shockingly, Iason neither budged nor acknowledged it, instead, hid his emotions behind a practiced stern of an expression, something which Riki shuddered at. He had not seen the Blondie this way in a while. It was calling forth some not-too-fond memories.

"Just as I've suspected...you have lost it," was all that the Master uttered, before directing himself back towards the Palace with his confused Pet in his arms.

--

The feeling was most unusual, or was it that he had not been subjected to this for a while that it felt strange? The pleasure of it. Albeit this time it was even more brutal than his recollection had served him.

The Pet Ring was set to pleasure, Riki left bare, arms and legs opened as his wrists and ankles were chained to the posts somewhere on the floating platforms comprising the inner gardens of their splendid home. He was being 'fed upon' by the triplets, Katron, parting the globes of his buttocks as the Furniture's tongue reached and drove into the entrance, fingers earlier parting Riki's sweet hole to be attacked with much enthusiasm. Katrice and Kantre busied themselves up front, two tongues swirling and tasting, mouths sucking and pleasuring, hot insistent fingers prying him further open as they coaxed him nearer to orgasm more and more…

Riki, lost in pleasure, climaxed a third time this hour alone, spurting his bodily juices unhindered onto the marble, but the kneeling acolytes were not yet done with their worship, once more renewing the tortuous cycle at the other god's orders. Orders taken rather blankly. They had stared at Riki with hungry eyes, without acknowledgement, as if a trigger had been snapped and they all but became something else close to Sexaroids and far removed from the doting, mild-mannered servants.

"Why...hng..." Riki barely managed to cast his protests above the three ravenous Furniture rousing him below, working as complements to the vile Pet Ring to bring him once more to the same state of helplessness. "Why are you...ha-ha-haaa-feeding me to-uhn..hng...them?-aahh...!" and he arched, Katrice taking him deep into his throat in one engulfing sweep.

Iason merely smiled, "They are serving Furniture are they not? And you are the Pet of the House. Unless you want me to get another pet to serve that purpose, I suggest you enjoy this."

The statement cut deep in him. "Da-Damn you-ahhn!" but the Pet could do no more but pant and writhe, senses pushed to overloading as they continued.

Iason watched intently, sitting still with the unreadable face he wore years back when he oversaw his mongrel's education. Riki could not understand what had happened, and why the Blondie seemed to be reverting to the old being that he used to be, the cruel manhandler who took pleasure in his suffering, who aimed to break him bit by bit.

Already he was recalling some deeper pain. He remembered Daryl who used to be utilized for this insinuation. He remembered other horrid things. The Master moved.

He let the pleasuring continue, the two Furniture parting to give him some room below but not stopping, even as the Blondie had reached a hand to lift Riki's face up so that he may better look at all the lovely expressions he had begun to be inflected with.

"How does it feel? To be prepared for me in such a lewd manner? Had we not had this game before?"

Riki bit his lip. "E-Enough! Please!" he begged, crying out marvelously, somehow knowing it was amongst the things that pleased Iason. As expected, he would do anything to avoid this further embarrassment, a bruise to his mongrel's pride if there still was one left. Good. It was becoming more and more like how it was years ago.

"Are you angry?"

Iason snapped his fingers and the Furniture immediately ceased, heads bowed and moving away, standing up when they had been a distance off and instantly disappearing, leaving their Masters to their own.

Only then was Riki able to catch his breath, in large heaves, having drowned. But it wasn't long before the torment started again, this time, by the hands of the Man who had said he loved him instead.

"Ahh, no!" Riki screamed when it was the larger penis of his Master that he felt penetrating, somehow not appreciating the situation, more offended than anything that Iason was taking his pleasure by force when he could just have asked without the need for coercion.

"Iason what are you doing to me!?" the Pet moaned aloud, pained, not able to get his body to give in to the sensation as the Blondie proceeded to fuck him roughly, the Pet Ring changing its functions to hurt him now, this time acting as a stopper to his impending release, tightening around.

No. Not this!

It made Riki remember the days by which he was born to this fate, those endless nights in brutal seclusion, battered as he was now being battered, moved to the heights of pleasure and then thrown over repeatedly, feeling the utter disgust...these were days that he did not want to relive.

"Please...haaa-stop this…I beg you…"

The first of many tears slipped through the Pet's tightly shut eyes, the rain of long-kept memories bringing with it a suppressed trauma at every thrust, every piston of the Blondie's hips. Especially when Iason called out to the lone, dazed Furniture left nearby, "The aphrodisiacs Katron."

The horror. So there were some being kept in the house. Riki stared, stunned, before the Master snatched at his hair and pulled at it tightly for him to see clearly the vials and bottles being laid before them on a table. Iason had stole a hand to fist around his plump erection, squeezing the head, where only the tiniest of cum escaped.

"Why...why?" the Pet asked. He wanted to know what brought this torment about. "Why have you suddenly changed? Why are you being such - an asshole!?"

Riki gritted his teeth, feeling his limbs weaken. He trembled and shuddered, seeing Katron chose a particular concoction he knew very well to be a strong dose Iason personally made for tormenting other pets during the Soirees. It was never used on him. Well, not until today perhaps.

He felt something ease down his spine. But the sensation just pooled and hurt between his legs. Not to mention at each hammer, Iason was hitting that spot inside him that further added to the predicament. He screamed again, air being drawn out of his lungs, wanting to get free but couldn't. It was becoming sore where he had been tied tightly, he might actually be bleeding there now.

"Do you hate me?" the Blondie's voice was an arctic kiss, cold and belying the heat by which he embraced the other as he whispered those words. "Tell me.

"Tell me!"

Why was he so persistent? Why did the Blondie ask to be loathed? Riki did not understand it one bit. And behind it all his heart was slowly shattering, torn with things he was being forced to remember and the things he had awakened to. There was a clear margin between the two, a space that was so great he couldn't see an end to it.

I love you…

Was that really what the Blondie had said? Then why could he feel Iason's fire ripping him to shreds now? He did not answer. He didn't like what all this was making him...feel.

"Let's test your mettle with this one," and Iason reached for the metallic container he was offered, purposely fisting harder, causing the Pet to yelp and flinch, now aching in various places.

This was ridiculous! Riki felt a different manner of heat rise up his entire being, thinking how Iason was becoming unfair, treating him terribly again when all had been better. It made him angry to the core, a long-forgotten animosity towards the structure of society in general reaching to the surface. He refused to be treated this way!

"Stop it!" Riki reacted. He struggled and fisted his hands, glaring up at the Blondie with such hate in his obsidian eyes, it was acid. "I said STOP!"

The System fluctuated, the entire of Tanagura erupting with the beat of his emotion, the sudden surge temporarily shorting out some places that darkness ensued for a few minutes before the lights came back on by the hum of the reserve grids. All the elites panicked, as their eyes trained upon Eos Tower Two, nervously wondering what was happening there now.

Raoul cussed noticing this suddenly, from Keeler frowning, "What the-"

Only then did Iason cease, feeling the anger coursing through the body he was buried in, letting Riki go and pulling out, dismissing Katron who left without words, still trapped to the function they may not recall after today, to be conveniently buried into their programming.

All while the Pet was gritting his teeth. "You bastard!" as he cursed him, damned him to oblivion, actually hated him for starting all this that he now felt imprisoned, imprisoned to a change he had hated. "You damned monster!"

Iason waited for him until he stopped pulling at his restraints, letting him spit out every possible insult he could muster, those obsidian eyes looking like those of a soul ready to kill the Blondie as he moved to stand before his constrained Exclusive.

Riki asked for an explanation, wanting to smash the other's brutally beautiful face to pieces, remembering the bitter qualities in the other that he found entirely unacceptable, inhumane. But Iason only said, "There you are…my mongrel…"

…my mongrel…

Riki stopped, time seemingly pausing enough that he could see the beads of sweat slowly drip from his face, connecting with the marble where he had earlier spent himself many times over. And just like that, the truth dawned on him suddenly like water pouring over, quenching the heat in his being.

Why has he not realized this?! For a moment he stared...

What was it that Iason could not do back in the days, but shatter his indestructible will? The same will he'd lost ever since finding out that he'd been...changed by Jupiter? Was this all but a ploy? Was this play on their past together merely part of a plan?

Iason…

The other looked down upon him with those same cold eyes, lifting his hand to turn the pain up with the Master's Ring. Riki screamed, but this time, he would not be fazed.

"Cut the crap Blondie!" he threw back. "Would you really go this far to get me back!?"

The response stunned Iason and broke his well-played visage. The Pet saw through his disguise and finally understood how secretly Iason had been getting hurt too. Because he allowed himself to drown in his own miseries, Riki knew now that he had dragged his beloved down with him.

"I'd rather be a tyrant who provoked you needlessly," said the Man, aborting the rest of his intentions as he turned off the Ring, reaching to soothe his Pet's organ.

He took Riki in his hand and proceeded to stroke, pumping in a manner the other remembered better as the Blondie's more loving, more affectionate touch, making him buckle into the grip easier and lose his cool, though not entirely as the fire of his anger still persisted, merely mellowing beneath the surface. He still wanted to know.

"What do you want of me?" Riki demanded even as he thrashed into gratification, swallowing before his lips parted in the most rapturous of sighs. "We are...the same now, doesn't that please you? You have me, uhnng, forever - doesn't that please you?" He tossed his head back.

To his surprise Iason replied, "It doesn't…" tightening his grip as a few more strokes from him made the Pet cum finally, falling into his arms when he had released the chains, releasing Riki at the same time to finish off the rest of his climax with his body buried and holding on to the Blondie. He could feel Riki pulse, deliciously shuddering in his clutches.

"It doesn't," Iason whispered in a repeat, body sweating as Riki was and trembling as he was. "Because I don't want of you to lose your humanity."

Riki could not believe what he was hearing, but this was a confirmation to what he already knew to be true perhaps. He has indeed allowed himself to waste away the last few months since waking up in this new form and circumstance. What was he doing to himself? And more importantly, what was he doing to Iason? He had filled his beloved with fear on his behalf. Iason simply loved him too much to allow it to go on.

"..."

Riki lost his words.

The Blondie admitted defeat, "Perhaps it was wiser if I had not accepted Jupiter's proposition. It was selfish. I know now that I'd rather have lost you as you were than have you like this and watch you suffer silently every day."

It was a mirror of his own suffering, believing himself to be the culprit of Riki's pain. "Perhaps you'd been happier," said the Blondie. He did not like how it made him feel so terribly guilty...

With that, Iason let him go, certain that Riki would find his footing easily. He had survived worse than this from him in the past therefore it would be again easy to just turn his back without another glance and leave.

Rich golden hair fell pale as the dome's outer shell opened into the late afternoon. How long had they been at this they were both unsure, but one thing was clear, Iason did not want to go anywhere with his intentions any more than he already has.

"We're done here. Go to your room and I'll have Katron attend to you," again, that cold voice, but a tinge of sadness beneath the face of his words.

He did not know what to do next. He, the Blondie who could foresee and plan Tanagura's future so easily, organize the markets, play with trade, ironically, could not make a plan to work with his own...feelings. Since when had his attachment become so complicated? Was this what being heartbroken felt?

Truly, as Katze had suspected, he was a novice at this, and he had only known many things after acknowledging that he indeed loved Riki, beyond the pet stature, beyond life itself...Yet now perhaps, it was time to finally let it be.

"Leave," he ordered.

Yet even before the master could go any further, even before he would have thought to give up, Riki ran to him, surprising Iason when the Pet all but embraced him from behind, holding on tight, "Don't go" as he clung to him for dear life.

"I love you. Do you not love me?" Riki begged, trembling, not wanting the response to be a no. He would die!

Iason's hands fisted, wanting to reach for his beloved, to enfold him, to hear his voice and his heart beating. Yes. He still had his beating heart and shockingly enough, Jupiter had likewise given the Blondie one.

The Master gave in.

To a now crying Riki who feared to lose his love, he gave in, turning to face the Pet, lifting a hand to caress that beautiful face, trace the outline of his lips with his fingertips, to slowly ease away those straying tears. He felt the guilt again for his earlier actions, that overpowering sense of affliction just looking at how far he'd actually pushed it this time. Though it was a necessary evil.

Bottomline was that he wanted Riki to go on. There was no other way he could find save to remind the other of what he had started with.

"Quite much," came his reply, true and simple. "Too much that I can never imagine losing you again. Not to your own sadness."

But beyond that Iason feared to admit that if he lost Riki this time - to anything, even his own self - he himself would crumble. Who knew what would become of Neu-Jupiter, for there would be no pet or other fitting enough to take this beloved mongrel's place. Riki was the only one...

The Exclusive understood that now somehow, as this once cruel Man looked at him with eyes no longer the dead blue that pretty much made up what he was, what they were, as synthetic creatures that lacked the emotion he now so easily displayed.

Gods, he loved this Blondie, and similarly, Riki would throw himself into the fire to be by his side. Had he not already done this?

Yet he had apparently neglected him by the reckless and deteriorating habits by which he had filled his days. He lamented for the loss of himself, of what he had been before Dana, before his transformation. But what he has been neglecting all along is the fact Iason was still there.

Why had he been unable to see? How he does not only exist for himself now?

The Pet beseeched the Blondie with a kiss, realizing what he had been taking for granted. He swore never again. Never again would he allow himself to be drowned in his own self-contained destruction without considering what another would feel, especially when there was someone who would despair greater than he would in the process.

Now that he thought about it, he realized this was somehow similar to how he and Guy eventually ended up. He could not let that happen again...

' ...Iason... '

There was never any ill-will to begin with. The action made the Master glad, returning the kiss with a deeper sense of his own affections, sharing in the mutual understanding, as he could find no words to measure up to such sincerity...

--

They had just finished a round in the comforts of their bed yet Iason was once more gunning for another, rolling Riki's nipple as a restarting stimulus, loving the way his Pet ground himself up, an apparent hardness again beginning, as heady moans escaped his lips like prayers. His Exclusive's hand never stopped groping about, as if by that he could fully anatomize his lover. In a strange way, it did actually.

"You and your rampant desires," the mongrel panted, anticipating the satisfaction that would again culminate in just a bit.

Iason kissed his way about, like the blind using his mere touch to see. "Your body might have been altered by Jupiter, but the spirit and heart," he touched that part on Riki's chest. "...stayed the same. You are the same..."

The Pet smiled at him again, a genuine show of contentment this time. "Sorry. If I had been very difficult. I never thought you'd actually hurt because of me."

Iason answered that with more of the touching, running his hands lower to capture the erection throbbing between those legs, rubbing it together with his own under the sheets.

"I love you," said the Blondie.

Riki laughed. "I know…

"After that stunt earlier? Of course I know..." he said.

But there were things that still bothered him about his transformation - the wings and all, the lack of craving for cigarettes and alcohol, even the severed erection that was now a piece again. "You're right, it doesn't feel different, but…"

Iason looked up from where he was about to descend and devour his Pet. Somehow he had an idea what the latter would ask but sought to clarify it anyway. "But what?"

"Has it been that much? The change Jupiter made in me, I mean...Am I not myself anymore?" Iason was further surprised by his next request. "Can you help me know the extent by which Jupiter had repaired me?"

The Blondie paused for a while at those words. Then he sighed. It seemed this was likewise inevitable.He conceded, "All right.

"I'll arrange it with Raoul for you as apparently, we need to put those questions of yours to rest."

Riki felt relieved. "Thank you," and he reached to caress the Blondie's face, his fascinating hair, the other returning the gesture of a warm smile all his own.

It was this feeling...this undeniable feeling that had long ago changed all the sex between them into pure and heavenly love-making. It was the same thing that bridged the space between Master and Pet, a mongrel of the Slums and the highly-regarded Blondie of Tanagura. With it, the difference no longer mattered nor existed. They were just in love. Riki needed to take that all into account. The past might not really need to matter now, does it?

"I love you," it was Riki's turn to give his vows, without hesitation and with a willing heart, before crying out loudly and shamelessly as his only Master descended to take him...