Deathworlders Should Not Be Allowed To Date! 32 (Patreon)

[Author's Note] Slightly NSFW, but I kept it tame.

Luna VI query: Set the source to the leaked files of the first reconnaissance operation of Irisa.

Done!

Luna VI query: What did Ryo give to Elysira?

***

With only a thin layer of nanofiber separating his back from Irisa's ground, Ryo lay inside his tent. There was not much going on in his head right now, and the only image filling his field of view was a floating window showing nothing but a picture of himself.

He usually had more important things to check. But, for the first time since the start of the mission, it somehow occurred to him that nineteen days had passed and he hadn't yet bothered to look into a mirror, or rather, he didn’t even have one.

The picture taken a few minutes earlier showed a person he didn't like. A shirtless man without a single scar on his body. A face with perfect teeth and flawless skin. A head full of jet-black hair that grew only until it reached eyebrows and not a centimeter longer.

The reason Ryo hated his own image was the same reason he disliked Yelara from the very first time he saw her acting human—both of them were fake.

Without the nanites running through every cell of his body, this current version of himself wouldn't exist. And, instead, a decrepit body, struggling to survive Irisa's gravity which was similar to Earth's would be all there was.

It was not the strength, the enhanced perception, or the practical perks of the tech that bothered him though. What he truly despised was this dissonance he would feel every time he saw himself without a single scar or imperfection, as if the broken mind inside that skull was not a good match for such a flawless body.

Ryo zoomed into his face and looked inside his eyes, wondering if others could get a glimpse of any emotion at all from the depths of his gaze.

Was there even anything left inside to escape through those windows?

Before this rare moment of self-reflection could have led him anywhere close to an answer, his train of thought was interrupted by something getting in between his calf and the ground.

He didn’t need to look to understand why that happened. He closed his eyes, turned to the side, and opened them again only to find a mess of paper sheets on the ground.

And the culprit, of course, was Elysira. "Realy?"

Ryo suspected she had that mess on purpose just because he had asked her to do her daily report before giving her the gift he had promised.

She was sitting on the opposite side of the tent; a hint of red still showing on her skin. "I've challenged Amara for a fight and it doesn't bother you. I hurt Yelara and it doesn't bother you. But when I let anything on the ground..."

"Just finish your report." Ryo had not changed his mind about the gift he would give her. It just happened that work always came first to him. And without being aware of it, this was also what he expected from others. "I was not lying when I said I have something nice for you."

The only reason this mess bothered him was that Ryo liked to be ready to leave at any given moment in case something happened. Being forced to abandon the tent just because there was paper on the ground preventing the auto folding would feel awful.

Still, just saying that he had something for her was not enough this time. Elysira threw the clipboard on her hands to the ground as her eyes sought his. "Why do you care? You don't even read my reports! I only see you glancing at them and putting them aside."

Ryo broke eye contact and surveyed the entity of her body in search of a hint of purple. When he found none, his thoughts went back to the first weak after he met her. At that time, a sudden glace from him was enough to cause a wave of purple to propagate through her body.

But now, here she was, throwing a tantrum as if she was sure he wouldn't do anything against her.

This evoked a strange feeling that he couldn't quite pinpoint what it was, but he somehow liked it.

"Don't worry, this was the last time I gave you pen and paper."

Now there was purple. "That's not true! I know I'm useful to your people!"

It was effortless for him to keep a straight face, which made Ryo enjoy a long silence that lasted until he noticed Elysira’s skin was truly being conquered by purple.

It was at this time that he stopped getting any amusement from her reaction and stood up to retrieve an item from his neatly organized backpack beside him.

"Take this." This was all he said before tossing a small vial in her direction. Elysira only reacted at the last moment but still managed to catch it. "Two drops on each eye will do the trick."

"Is this. No. It can't be." Yellow, green, and purple danced around her black spots.

"You risked so much just because you wanted to remove your translator, now is your chance." Ryo explanation left out a lot of important details.

She stared at the vial suspiciously while unscrewing the cap and inspecting the dropper. "But how can we communicate after I remove it?"

"This is the full package, you get to remove your translator and get a better one as a replacement."

All yellow from her skin vanished. "It changes nothing. It just replaces the weird roots growing in my brain with something invisible growing in my brain."

"Civilians have the privilege of a law against unremovable nanotechnology, this will apply to you." Ryo inspected her skin as he spoke. "If you want to remove it, you just have to find your way through the menus say yes and then wait thirty seconds. Do it five times and the translator will remove itself."

"This easy?" Yellow found its place again on her around her neck.

He only nodded and watched the yellow intensify, leading her to rush to apply the drops just like he had instructed her.

It was only after a few seconds had already passed that Ryo remembered he was supposed to say something important. "Don't panic. It'll take a while before full integration can be achieved, in the meantime you won’t understand me."

Her eyes instantly widened and she stayed silent.

"Elysira?"

After hearing his untranslated voice again, purple took hold of her skin. "It's not working! Two drops were not enough. Or did something go wrong in my brain?" She stood up and grabbed his wrist with her tail and shook his arm as if she didn't have his full attention already. "Do something! I don't want to die!"

Ryo raised an eyebrow, finding her reaction exaggerated. Only when he remembered that a few Irisians had died trying to extract their translators surgically did her reaction make sense.

But what could he do to calm her down while they were unable to communicate?

Failing to come up with any clever solution, he could only remember his military training of what to do when someone was panicking.

"Everything is gonna be fine." He placed his hand on her shoulder and spoke slowly, showing that she had all his attention and hopefully conveying his calm state of mind across the interspecies barrier.

Elysira stopped panicking when their eyes met, but that still didn't make the purple go away nor did she release his arm despite her momentary calmness.

When he got comfortable and thought she had overcome the panic, her eyes widened out of nowhere and she jumped in startlement despite her tail still being connected to his arm.

Ryo felt a strong jolt on his wrist and was forced to take a step forward to avoid resisting too much, which could result in an injury.

"This... can't be happening! I swear there was something that shouldn't exist floating in front of your face, but now... it's gone." Elysira was taking shy peeks at him as if afraid of something.

"It means it worked." Seeing her like that caused Ryo to feel bad for not having explained what to expect from the tech before giving it to her. "Just think you want to see the notification again that it will capture your intention and bring it back."

Purple and yellow coexisted on her skin and Ryo witnessed her eyes moving from left to right. "Integration successful all modules available."

Noticing she was still not as happy as he thought she would be for finally getting what she wanted, Ryo became determined to make her forget his little mishap of leading her to believe she would die. "I'm giving you permission to control the tent, don't freak out when you see another notification."

"You now have access to Ryo's den." Again, she read it out loud. "Does this mean I can enter and leave whenever I want now?"

Ryo cringed at how he had named the tent, but he didn’t let it show, explaining things properly this time. "I gave you level 2 access, there is a lot you can do. Try opening a door if you want, you just have to think and it will happen."

She turned toward the entrance and Ryo witnessed as her eyes widened while the nanofiber folded, creating a circular door that was made according to her command.

The door closed, and then opened again, this pattern repeating itself many times as gradually all purple vanished from Elysira’s skin and only yellow remained.

"What?" Elysira noticed he was smiling, which led to a hint of white appearing among all the yellow. "Even Queen Khaala would be impressed by this, I swear I'm not a child."

Ryo was happy that she was back to her usual self from before the incident with Yelara and everything that occurred after, but the freezing air slipping from outside every time she opened the door was a little annoying. "There's other things you can control you know. You can even get a list with everything you have access to if you wish."

He took a seat against the fabric of the tent and crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to wear his jacket. He did that just because he didn’t want to feel inferior to Elysira, who was wearing nothing at all and seemed fine with the low temperature.

Not noticing his plight, Elysira took his advice. "Lighting, temperature control, security... what's this... why do you have cameras outside monitoring Earth's representative?"

Ryo had forgotten he had connected the surveillance equipment outside to the same security domain as the tent, which inadvertently gave Elysira access to things she was not supposed to have. He could never tell her that one of his goals was to get a sample of Nathan's blood.

"I wanted to see if that princess was not lying when she said they would spend the night together." He told a half-truth; he also wanted a chance to confirm his suspicion that Amara was trying to seduce Nathan for political reasons.

The mere mention of Amara was enough to cause all the yellow on Elysira’s skin to fade. "Did your cameras capture her entering his tent?"

Even though he had given her access to a live feed from the cameras, Elysira didn't have access to his stored files.

"Perhaps." Ryo had not yet checked the recordings from earlier.

"Is there a way I can see it?"

There were several ways he could share a video with her, and Ryo chose one that didn’t require him to give her any more permissions that could compromise the mission. "Come here."

"Do you want to join a shared augmented space? What do I do?" She was already standing by his side when she asked.

"Join, sit, and watch."

Elysira did as instructed, her tail wrapping around his wrist as soon as she took a seat by his side.

Ryo thought nothing of it and commanded the system to find the last time the princess was spotted, then he played the file.

A pop-up window showing Amara standing outside full of complex colors on her skin appeared in front of them. "Are you seeing this?"

"Yes."

He could see her eyes transfixed on the video even though that was just an illusion of perception they were now sharing.

From the POV of one of the plentiful hidden cameras he had placed around, they could see Amara's exterior suddenly transitioning from a mess of colors to just plain blue. And then, her claws pressed against Nathan's tent as she walked slowly towards the entrance.

Ryo was sure Elysira could infer much more than himself from seeing Amara like that, but even he could tell a few things. "That princess is up to no good. I bet an arm and a leg she got what she wanted from the fool and those two are fucking like animals now."

He expected Elysira would offer more insight into Amara's behavior, but he only got agreement. "You can read her so well..."

He raised an eyebrow, failing to understand why she had just agreed with him. Her perspective would have helped him with the mission, so he decided to try again. "We can see more of her if you want."

Ryo felt her grip tightening around his wrist, as purple tainted with a hint of yellow took over the space around her black spots. "I'm tired of watching her from afar."

Tired of watching her?

That made even less sense to him—the snippet he played was less than a minute long.

Still, before he could ask anything, something wet touched his earlobe, causing him to experience a weird mix of pain and enjoyment.

"What the heck?" His words made Elysira stop taking little bites on his ear, intensifying the purple's intensity.

"Did... you hate it?"

With his mouth slightly agape, Ryo struggled to catch a glimpse of her eyes that seemed to be hiding from his gaze. "No. But you must have. Don't you think I look ugly anymore?"

When confronted, she froze.

Even without the answers he needed, Ryo immediately discarded the possibility of her trying to seduce him to gain something. He had already given her what she wanted, and besides, she was so bad at it that he found this possibility impossible.

In his mind, this left him with only two possibilities—either it had been some sort of twisted expression of gratitude, or Elysira had done that because of some sense of rivalry with Amara.

The possibility of her truly liking him was something Ryo didn't dare to imagine.

"Not talking yet?" He tried again before giving up and rubbing the facts bluntly on her face. "Whatever that was, it has to stop. Everything I see and hear is recorded. And if you think of me as some kind of savior, I can assure you I'm not that."

Ryo then forcefully removed her tail from his wrist and went back to his side of the tent, not having a single doubt that he had done more than enough to dissuade her from attempting anything stupid again.

When he had moved as far away from her side of the tent as possible and was about to bend his legs to retrieve his pillow, Elysira broke his expectations by approaching him again and touching his bare chest with her claws.

"Your plain colors don't look pleasant to my eye." He noticed she was trying hard to conceal any purple from showing. "But that's not all you are.

"You make me feel safe. I like the touch of your skin. And you, Ryo, are the only one that ever gave me a choice about how to live my life..." With great effort, she found his eyes. "I beg you, if like you, I have any redeeming qualities that can ever make you look at me as mate tell me."

Her facade crumbled and purple took over again as she averted her eyes.

"I'm not playing your game. You know your qualities and flaws better than anyone." He intended to just push her away and leave it at that, but the sight of gray quickly manifesting everywhere on her body was too much for him to bear. "Okay, I'll just say one thing. I was lying all the times I said you look like a broken kaleidoscope; you're beautiful, you are beautiful when there's no purple or gray ruining the view."

Yellow appeared again, causing him to shamelessly enjoy the sight of her, forgetting for a moment he was supposed to push her away.

A mistake he would pay dearly.

Elysira didn't waste the opportunity and she jumped on him without any sort of warning. Her hands found resting on his shoulders, but her legs, each encircling his upper tights from a different side, locked themselves on his back, entrusting all her weight to him without fear.

Like in battle, a moment of indecision could cost a lot. And Ryo, who only meekly offered resistance, gave her the chance to restrain his legs even more using her tail, which wouldn’t have been a problem if she had not shifted her center of mass aggressively, making it so that he couldn’t prevent losing his balance.

Using his free hands, he was barely able to prevent their joined weight from hurting her feet as he fell backward with Elysira on top of him.

"Are you crazy?"

"You can handle this, can't you?" She was not giving him time to think; her legs stopped restraining him as her toes hooked into the pockets of his jeans with precision.

When Ryo noticed her trick, he was already wearing nothing but his underwear. And it was then that he gave up the physical struggle completely and attacked her with reason.

"My superiors will learn of what I see and hear on my next synchronization, this will look bad for both of us. Are you aware of this?"

"They won't see or hear anything and nor will you!" Ryo spotted a last glimpse of the yellow of her body before the lights turned off and everything turned dark, courtesy of her newfound permission to control the tent's environment.

He was amused by her clever thinking but also disappointed that it wouldn't work as she thought it would. "It's more complicated than you think, Ely."

She said nothing, taking advantage of the darkness to slowly repeat the same thing she had done with his pants, but this time with his underwear.

Ryo had many options here, countless ways of stopping her. Still, he could feel her hesitation building up; her every move getting slower than the last one.

More than lust or anything, a strong fascination for what she would do next kept him lying still, just waiting to see how far she was willing to go.

An atmosphere of silence embraced them, and there was only the mild prickling of hew claws against his bare chest and the contact of their legs as proof that she was still there.

Only when his thoughts were already on the lookout for why she lost her spirit did he feel the touch of her tail in his belly button, tracing a dangerous path downwards.

It was abrupt, unremarkable, and unexciting. But with the brief helping guide of her tail, their bodies connected, causing his unprepared heart tp nearly stop beating at her crazy action.

She had, as inconsequential as one could be, skipped all bases to go straight for the home run.

Ryo was beyond shocked as seconds stretched longer and longer with no signs of further movements or conversation.

It was painful being him at that moment.

Her whole body was feeling stiff and the levels of awkwardness were reaching unbearable heights even for his high tolerance standards.

"Do you regret it?"

This was the first time in a long time he felt his breathing becoming heavy in anticipation of a reply.

As Elysira's hands left his chest, a sense of dread crept over him. But immediately after, he felt the contact of her warm skin against his chest at the same time that a large number of loose strands fell over his eyes, nose, and mouth.

With her pointy ears pressing against the side of his face, she whispered to him. "No."

It was at that precise moment that something clicked on Ryo’s head. Despite all the progress she had made with his help, Elysira was still very far from becoming the bravest Irisian there was.

And there he was, playing with her resolve just to see how far she would go.

He decided on the spot.

Screw his superiors and whatever they would think of them after his next synchronization—as long as he was doing his best to complete the goals of the mission flawlessly, he and Elysira would at most get a slap on the wrist for a little mishap at night.

Not much thinking took place after that. He simply grabbed her back tightly and rolled over with her, claiming the top position only to grab her wrists and pin her against the ground firmly.

"Last chance to give up, if you don’t say no now I'll do whatever I want with you until morning." He was rude on purpose, just to make sure she knew what she had signed up for.

To his surprise, he felt her whole body relax at his command and her movements become fluid again; the tail he had forgotten to account for wrapped around his neck and she pulled their faces closer. "Do your worst."

With those words fulfilling his desire, Ryo smiled to himself, setting his mind on giving her a night she would never forget while there still was some reason left in him.

***

This was an account based on what Ryo gave to Elysira. The previous narrative is based on the events of the night of the nineteenth day of the exploratory mission of Irisa. According to your current settings, no queries will be suggested.