After a while, I came to in the same field I always do. Phasing has never come easy to me. Each rotation we do becomes an on-the-job training refresher course because I don't care to do any training on my off days the way Corporate gently but firmly requests. Fuck that. It's fine, though. No biggie. I would, however, like to find a way to keep my clothes on. They lay in a neat stack, folded no less, two point seven meters away, prompting curiosity from the vultures.
Oh. The vultures. Right. They're the reason I knew I'd been in the field a while. Motionless. Naked. I'm sure I looked like dinner to them. My eyes focused a little better, and I spotted four circling high above me. I heard dry grass cracking by my left ear and sat up quickly.
"Dude. I thought you were dead." Her wings flapped awkwardly as she hopped backward.
"All good," I said. "Could've been."
Vulture One upnodded to the two by my stack of clothes. Looking disappointed, they took a few hops before gaining flight. She then looked up at vultures Four through Seven and gave a single shake of her head. The all peeled off, each in a cardinal direction.
"Hope you get home OK," she said.
"I'll be fine. Thanks."
"See you next time, then." She jumped once and flew. A few strong wing beats, a gentle bank around some trees, and she was gone.
I put on my clothes that, though necessary to get home, made me sad. They were clean and pressed and folded and I'd have to trudge through this field and get them dirty and take them off again in the next thirty minutes. It's not like I could phase. I'd drained my account on this last mission, and to be perfectly honest, I'm lucky to be back. This particular rotation is always ugly.
Our team had been tasked with Seven Deadlies. We each would tag team or solo one of them until it was terminated. You see, the things we kill, they only stay dead for a little while, and then find purchase somewhere in humanity's cracks and thrive all over again. It's not just the Deadlies. They're simply a subset. Job fucking security, baby.
Anyway, Sam and I tag teamed Pride a month ago. Greed and Lust remained. Everyone else had done their quota or was in recovery. We flipped for Greed. Sam won, and she gave me a wink as she phased to the mission. Maybe eight rotations ago I had soloed Greed. The memory was muddy, but what I do remember is that it wasn't really that difficult. I'd never done Lust. But then Greed and Lust share that same-coin business, right? How bad could it be?
I tracked it to a broken club in a forgettable city in a depressed state in North America. Easy pickings for it. For me too, hopefully. I came in as a female for this session, pretty much my normal form but smaller, lighter, close to invisible. Reconaissance for just a bit longer. Real soon I saw it had taken a female form this time and feasted only on boys so I took a walk around the block to change and came back in as its new delicacy.
I had scanned it pretty well so we dispensed with the small talk, left the bar and headed back to its place. Probably the swankiest duplex the town had to offer. Full of the latest and greatest. Each room a temple to carnal excess. We quickly got to business. The scan told me she was a size queen so I had to use some extra credits to get my equipment to a suitable girth and length. We fucked in every imaginable way in every one of its seven rooms. Finally it passed out. As a professional, I have to admit it was one of the best I've come across. I had the antidote at its jugular when its eyes popped open. Shit.
Snatching the nearly full bottle of Jack Daniel's by the bed (we'd already gone through two), it spun and connected one zillion percent with my head.
My brain sang like a chainsaw hurricane, my account started to drain rapidly, and it started to run. Apparently, Lust is a coward. I'll have to do some research on that. At least Greed put up a fight. I flipped off the bed and grabbed my pants. The Altoids container in my pocket instantly transformed into a Desert Eagle Mark XIX. Seven rounds of .50 AE. The first shot from under the bed hit it in the ankle. Did it want this? Did it want to be corporally destroyed? I stood and the second round went through its ribcage. As it fell, I put another through its jaw, exploding out the top of its skull. Oh man. The cleanup. This is why we like to administer the antidote above all else. It's naturally better to kill only the pathogen, but thanks to this fuck up the host has to go, too. Oh well. It happens to everyone more often than we'd like. Jesus, the paperwork on this is going to suck.
Anyway, the Waste Management crews showed up shortly thereafter: one for removal, one for cleaning. They took down the details and found all the slugs. By that point, I had tired of all the phase alerts. I needed seven but only had six. I told the porters on the cleaning crew that I had to leave if I was going to finesse this re-entry. They geve me their blessing. "You'll make it," the foreman said. "You haven't missed yet."
And so here I am now, pulling on my panties and jeans and buttoning up my shirt to traverse this hidden field, cross a desolate country road, and enter our spacious compound. At least I have a few hours to do laundry and nap. Just a small load. Just the things I want to wear to the sex club tonight.
What. You thought after that shitfuck of a mission I'd want to take it easy? I am. You see, my people live at the club. My family. Not my coworkers, my biofam, or a leak from the cage of sins we deal with on the daily. No. My family at the club is the one we've built one person, one experience at a time. We just all happen to be happiest when we're mostly naked and cumming all over each other. Polar opposite from the previous account. Brightness to drown the dark. This is joy. A celebration of our honest, shared humanity.
Still, I wanna look cute. A nap and a clean outfit won't hurt.