Moon 514 || Blaze and the White Griffon

38 || Slaughtering Toka

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Last revision: 5/31/2013

“Aria,” Toka airily breathed in a sarcastic tone that clearly betrayed his disappointment in her.  She was in for another beating.  She had practically felt it coming before she entered the room.  Part of her wanted to run.  She lived with new people now; this was her golden opportunity to escape her personalized prison; this was her chance to start anew.  But her only true refuge was the man aboard an alien ship, a place that he may never return from.  Somewhere deep in her heart, she expected him to come back.  She even yearned for him to come back.  But in dark moments of desperation like this one, it was difficult to make room in your heart for hope.  Now was a time of dejection, a time of despair.

“Yes, Toka,” Aria replied in the most innocent, yet sultry tone she could muster.  Silently, she began releasing small but repeated pulses of pheromones into the air towards her master.  Too small to easily detect but close enough together to hopefully dissuade Toka from unleashing the full measure of his fury, the scent pulses moved towards Toka to work their magic.

But it wouldn’t work.  Toka’s wrath was too intense to deny.  Today, he would test the very limits of Aria’s remarkable ability to heal.  Today, he would instill enough fear in her to prevent any future complications or any potential disloyalties.

“You administered the wrong virus,” he snapped, crossing his arms in front of him as if making the letter “x” and then thrusting them apart and perpendicular to his body until he resembled the letter “t”.  Aria knew what to expect.  One of Toka’s many genetic modifications included quills that he could release from his forearms.  Laced with a poison that nearly instantaneously attacked the central nervous system of the victim, the quills quickly paralyzed whomever they touched.  If a few stuck in the victim, a quick death would be all but certain.  Toka had thrown several at her all at once and while a few grazed her skin, leaving traces of the poison to be absorbed by her body, another couple found their target more solidly, leaving Aria feeling extensively groggy for the next several moments.

“Tell me pet,” Toka fumed, “what enhancements did you give to Blaze?  or did you give him nothing significant at all?”  Morphing in front of her eyes, the Master was pointing towards the cup Aria held in her hands.  As Toka removed his shirt and kicked aside his shoes, his beastly enhancements began to appear.  He menacingly bowed towards Aria and spread his curved arms as if preparing to pound his fists together.  Protective spikes slowly exited his body and pierced through his skin, protruding all over the backsides of his arms and the front side of his legs like some sort of bladed lobster claws.  More spikes appeared on his backside and others exited out the tips of his fingers.  Sharp canines appeared as he growled towards Aria and the color and texture of his skin began to change much like a chameleon hiding from a predator. 

All the while, Aria was struggling to maintain her balance and to remain standing.  Part of her felt very scared.  Part of her felt close to nothing at all.  Her body automatically responded in the way she wished it would not: she became numb, spiritually numb, mentally numb.  Conscious unawareness enveloped her.  What happened to her was of no consequence.  Her life was nothing more than fiction anyway.  She was a puppet and nothing more.  She had no intrinsic value; she carried no value to anyone.  No one liked her for who she was – they only liked her for who she pretended to be.  And the only person who had cared for her when she was weak, helpless, and crippled was Toka.  He was her only true love in the world.  He was her Master.  She knew all of these things were true.  She knew what she had to do and that was to perform whatever was required of her.  She would succumb and repent for her foolhardy disobedience earlier.  She would confess and accept her punishment.  She would do what she had done for years.