SLOTH.LAND

On her back with her legs elevated like this, Emily can almost pretend she’s home again, really home, hanging off her spider’s crotch. She’s upside down, of course—normally it’s her sensitive underside resting in the fur of Ketta’s thigh. And there’s too much pressure, she’s too heavy for her body—her numb, insensitive body, which doesn’t feel anything like how it ought to. And she’s too inflexible. Not inflexible like when she’s hard, when her whole self becomes one beautiful, unitary rigidity. No, instead she’s got a million joints all reminding her of their limited range of motion. Useless little knuckles, elbows and knees that max out at 180 degrees, a spine that barely even bends backwards. At rest she should be able to flop and twist and curl. To be painlessly stretched out and wrapped around her spider’s finger. How can she really relax if she can’t be flaccid?

Rhazille continues forward to the truck's cab and knocks on the door. Hearing the noise, Shryrae pokes her head around the back of the truck just in time to see, getting out of the front of the machine, a human! Right there, closer to her than she's ever been to any human who wasn't already owned by a warren-mate.

She can't help squealing. "Is that my human?" she asks eagerly, stepping towards him.

"No!" says Rhazille, putting her arms between Shryrae and the human.

"Oh, sorry—is he yours? You shouldn't let him walk around like that. Someone might take him!"

The human—cute scared little thing—backs away slightly and says something to Rhazille. Rhazille talks back to him, and that seems to put him at ease. Shryrae wishes she could talk humanly like Rhazille can. It must make it so much easier to catch them.

"No," says Rhazille. "This one works with us. He's going to control the machine. Your human is in Midway, like I told you."

Shryrae nods rapidly, though her eyes are still locked on the human. "Yes yes, okay! Midway! Let's go!"

“Sid, try to calm down, okay?”

“Calm down? There’s like a thousand spiders out there, Skeila!”

“I know. I told you I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“What’s going on? Is that seriously the spider news? Are we on TV right now? That one with the microphones is staring right at me and it’s really freaking me out!”

“Can you take a deep breath? You sound like you’re gonna pass out.”

Sid makes a shallow fishlike gasp. “I’m pretty sure the whole entire city saw me—saw us—you know…”

She holds him tight against her body, buried ear-deep in her breasts and wrapped up in her arms, with only enough space to keep jacking her off. She's enjoying the intimate little handjob when suddenly new light breaks into the compartment, and Midway scrolls into view all around them as the clear elevator lowers itself into the city.

They are level for a moment with the giant steel beams, themselves tall as buildings, holding up the very ceiling of this titanic underground space. They form a uniform lattice that stretches far off into the cave fog, and from them hangs an equally invariant pattern of the huge halogen floodlights that provide Midway with its simulated daylight. (They're big, but Skeila never knew they were that big. Geez, what if one fell down?) Obstructing their view of the city, like tree trunks in a forest, are the towers that interrupt the girder grid to poke right out of the ceiling, stretching down all the way to their real first floor in Midway.

Sid, detecting the change in lighting, slows his stroking, extracts himself from deep in her breasts, registers his expansive surroundings—then squirms away in terror.

Sigh. She lets him wriggle free. "The hell's your problem?" already knowing it's some ridiculous human hangup.

"The—the whole city can see us!"

Skeila rolls her eyes. "Now the whole city can see me get blue balls instead. That's way better."

He jerks backwards like he just found out he was fucking a beehive, but only succeeds in pulling Slisdra back a little as mass from his body, hips, bellybutton, abdominal muscles, all flows into her and vanishes like leaves floating down a stream. He goes off-balance, standing on his tiptoes and then—as his legs shrink into his ass and he is no longer able to reach the ground at all—he falls forward, onto her chest and into her furry blue arms.

Terry struggles and the crowd cheers Slisdra on as she wrestles him into submission, face to face. She gets him under control by pinning his arms behind his back, the spikes on her bracelets digging into him. He stops resisting with his upper body, but his legs continue to kick ineffectually, wriggling little things joining two growing round masses on his backside.

"What are you doing to me?"

"Stealing from your friend was a dick move, so now you get to be one."

The night is deep and still, and in a strange white building on a side street off of some downtown avenue, fronted with a Greek colonnade and smoked windows, there is someone waiting. Weak street light flows in through the flat, dark panes, throwing a dim and crooked rectangle all the way to the back of the building's lobby, where it lands on a single long, furry leg. It is hard to see who the leg belongs to; there is no light but what's coming in from outside, save a few bright dots from elevator buttons, thermostats, sleeping computers. That's how she likes it. She sees better that way.

The shadowy figure is enormous, making the rolling chair she's laconically leaning back in seem child-sized. She has two hands clasped behind her head—and the other four folded on her stomach. Chocolate-brown rings encircle all of her elbows and knees, but she is lighter everywhere else, the color of the beach during heavy rain. Not technically naked, she is not really clothed either, wearing only a single garment that consists of an olive drab sash running diagonally across her chest, making a lengthy detour around her breasts, and connecting to a belt of the same material at her hip. Metallic bars pinned to the sash catch and reflect what light there is, as do the curved white fangs poking out of either side of the creature's mouth. Eight black eyes like wet onyx stones look to the left, blink in unison, and look to the right.

He slowly turns his head around to see who or what is holding him. It is some kind of obviously inhuman creature—at least not a human without a spider who's laid eggs one or two branches up the family tree. She is a woman, her curves make that much obvious, but her body is completely covered in fur in varying brown shades, from burnished mahogany on her arms and legs to brilliant sunset oranges on the tips of the hairs on her chest and back. She is very big, maybe seven feet tall, but it's hard to tell sitting down like this. She's got six arms in total, three on each side of her body, spaced out evenly so the bottommost pair sprouts a little above her waist. She leers down at him with eight lustrous gray eyes that shine like smoke, two large ones right where they should be and then six smaller ones arranged symmetrically. Her lipless mouth is an unemotional straight line from which two intimidating white fangs protrude.

"…what…what are you?"

"You've never met a spider?" Her expressionless mouth twists into a sly smile.

Ketta sighs. She really hates this part; it's so nerve-wracking, and exhausting, with all the goddamn hills up here. Jeez. You'd think those humans would have been smart enough to maybe flatten a few of them out before they stuck a city up here, but no, they just built all their houses on the hillsides instead. They're always so stubborn. The spider peers up over the edge of the embankment. Doesn't see anyone. Doesn't hear anything. Without a sound, she hops up and over, and takes off in a silent run.

Her coloration works to her advantage. Even though she's seven feet tall, she's nearly impossible to pick out in the darkness; the fine black hair covering her body camoflauges her in the shadows. Her eyes are pure black, too: two large ones, glossy and expressive, with the smaller six on top, all darting back and forth looking for anyone who might see her, but the only hint an observer might have are the two little white fangs poking out at the edges of her mouth…

Being Brittany Slide's partner was sometimes tough for Lawn Rotelli. It was the height thing. Walking the beat with her every night, it's hard for him to feel imposing next to the six-foot white tigress—it would be hard for anyone, let alone the three-foot ferret; her regular morning workout, 45 minutes of cardio and heavy lifting never missed once in the eight years she's been on the force, have paid off in a lean, muscular body more than capable of doing all of the door-kicking and suspect-roughening it takes to be a NACRE agent. So Lawn and Brittany have a good-cop bad-cop thing going, which suits the generally unthreatening ferret. He also liked to think of himself as the brains of the duo, although that creates the incorrect impression that Brittany is dumb. She's not, by any means, although it might be accurate to say that Lawn was the more observant of the pair, the one to point out "Well hey Britt, isn't this ink on this guy's hands?" during a routine questioning, and sure enough, he's the one with the printing press in the basement running off all those subversive pamphlets. Together, the two might be the most effective detectives in NACRE (Nova Archangel Citizens' Revolutionary Enforcement).

Leonard's colleague is a research fellow in Westmarsh's medical program, a ring-tailed lemur named Jackson Overview. They know each other through membership in a certain fraternal organization—nothing so vulgar as one of those Greek letter organizations, but rather a secretive club for young gentlemen-scientists with interests in the transformative arts named the Société des amis d'alchemie, which has roots stretching back to 18th century Bavaria, but these days has chapters at every college big enough to have a segment of students interested in illicit mad science.

Given Leonard's disposition, calling anyone his friend is a stretch, but they've collaborated several times and Leonard respects the lemur's skills with a scalpel. Jackson is a master of seduction who, over the years, has been steadily doing his part to gradually improve Westmarsh University's male/female ratio. He strikes up friendships with freshmen, just average guys who really have no idea how much they want to be girls, but then three or four months later there they are moping around campus in babydoll tees stretched by oversized tits and tight jeans with a decided lack of any bulging around the crotch, sniffling and running their mascara because Jackson's gone and found another future girlfriend. It's alright though—with racks like he gives them, they never have a problem finding a new guy.