Neon Dream of Organic Toys
Chapter 1-5 (https://rentry.org/33k5y)
Chapter 6-X (YOU ARE HERE)
Chapter 6
Chloe silently watched the last of the putrid filth she had just sprayed off of the bathroom partitions circle down and disappear down the floor drain, as she had for the last few days. Her body ached with the weariness of labor, her paws were clammy and cold yet the spaces between her toes were uncomfortably warm and humid. She quickly looked around, jittery and hyperactive from the adrenaline steadily rushing through her blood. She wanted nothing more to fall over and die, yet her thundering heart readied her body for more work only to find nothing more. The last of the water gurgled before the tiles reappeared again.
Her right ear flicked as she heard the faint cacophony of workers outside but none anywhere near the bathroom exit.
She slowly raised the hose sprayer and gave the air above her head a few bursts, a little reward, a single moment of indulgence for a day of hard work. The icy mist settled on her face, droplets of water collecting on her fur before soaking through and chilling the skin of her face. The chlorine and various other harsh chemical purifiers mixed into the tap water burned her tongue and eyes, making her eyelids flutter as she blinked out tears. Despite all that she softly giggled in delirium, her vision unfocused and glazed, remembering the days not so long ago when she would have killed to drink water this unpolluted.
The tired, filthy fox shook her head and broke out of her trance, shivering a bit from both the water and the unease of such a familiar, yet utterly foreign place. The air was heavy and musty, the already unbearable humidity of the filthy public bathroom made even denser from her cleaning. Along with the moisture the acrid stink of the blue chemical cleaner that tickled her nose, covering up every other putrid scent. The formerly white and whole tiles that lined the floors and walls shimmered, still wet from their cleaning. An army of roaches skittered back into the hole in the wall which was their abode, escaping the headache-inducing flickering and incessantly buzzing fluorescent lights above which illuminated the most hurtful, racist, and sexually crude graffiti scrawled and carved onto every wall and mirror with each flash.
And yet, it was all fake. Each tile had been deliberately marked with fake cosmetic cracks and imperfections, just an hour ago she had been cleaning the floor when a team of detail artists entered to reink and restore all the graffiti that had been worn off during the day, and the fluorescent lights were nothing more than a digital screen behind a falsely dirty plastic shell. Not to mention that the toilets weren’t even toilets, just vaguely toilet shaped porcelain seats that you couldn’t even open.
Why?
The roaches, at least, were absolutely real. She had watched as yet another tired employee tipped the box of roaches into the release boxes hidden in the walls, not caring if a few spilled out. They would only add to the ambiance, after all.
The teenage vixen scrunched her eyebrows and confusingly peered through one of the waist-height holes through to the next stall. She poked at the inner edge of the plastic wall, remembering that it and everything underneath it was mysteriously crusty. It had obviously been cut open with a power tool but the edges had been sanded smooth, as if it was meant to come into close contact with a body part. All this effort, for what purpose? Was voyeurism such a popular pastime? Weren’t these toilets fake anyways?
She disconnected the hose from the wall, tossing the roll back onto her janitorial cart.
“Yo, Clo!” her walkie talkie buzzed.
Chloe cleared her throat and grabbed the radio clipped to the front of her overalls to respond, “Yeah, Penny?”
Penny’s gruff but friendly enough voice crackled through with her signature tired city drawl, “How ya doin? Me and the rest of the crew’r done down here. Ya finished cleanin’ the dollhouse gloryholes?”
The fox scratched the back of her neck, still trying to figure out what exactly a gloryhole was while squinting and looking around, trying to differentiate the actual dirt from the simulated dirt, “I… think so? I can’t really tell.”
“Yeeah, ah’ don’t blame ya. That shitroom’s always tripped me the hell up too. Ya at least sprayed it all down, right?”
“Yeah, I did that.”
“Nova, get down here for shits and showers cuz it’s gonna be playtime soon.”
“Gottit.”
Chloe clipped the walkie back onto her front. She slid her dark goggles back over her eyes and with a grunt and a firm kick, gave just enough momentum that her heavily loaded janitorial cart began to slowly roll back outside. If only there was an outside.
Above them the searing, skin-cooking violet grow lights that had blasted down artificial sunlight switched off with a firm, echoing clunk and began retracting back into the dark ceiling-sky, disorienting her for a moment.
She regained her balance, blinking out the weird shapes left in her vision before pushing her cart down the concrete sidewalk which was bordered on both sides by an unnaturally green grass. The worn wheels rattled and squeaked as they were rolled through the small park in the center of a destroyed but otherwise entirely typical inner city, complete with run down buildings and streets more pothole than asphalt.
On que, there was a simultaneous sigh of relief as the remaining day shift workers unzipped and tossed off their sweaty protective equipment they had been wearing for many hours to shield them from the grow lights they toiled under. As quickly as they paused they resumed their work, rushing around the artificial outside to finish spreading prop debris all over the roads. Compared to the beginning of their shift their numbers were much reduced, in the morning there had been nearly a hundred, perhaps more, toiling away. Now barely two dozen or so remained as the day shift had technically ended an hour ago.
She didn’t even bother to swivel her ears around anymore to listen for gossip as Amelia had ordered of her. As she had learned in the last few weeks the minimum wage grunts had very little interest in the going-ons of the high corpo structure. So long as their bellies were full enough and paychecks were signed they had no complaints overall.
Chloe scrunched her little nose in disappointment and more than a little worry. The day of her first report was fast approaching and she had hoped for a little more information to deliver to Amelia. Though it might be dismissive, the truth was that the opinion of low level workers was worth as much as their rank. The fact that the grunts didn’t care was nothing new. She would have to gain access to the big players in order to gather useful information, a chance she hadn’t gotten yet.
The large gantry crane above their heads buzzed back to life then whirred with a shuddering rattle as the giant white orb that simulated the sun and moon rolled back to its original position on heavily worn rails so that it might repeated its daily sisyphean journey across the large, expansive room while witnessing all the debauchery that occurred.
It was lifeless and sterile, like the set to a movie rather than an actual place to go. Why they would go to such efforts for something so fake and frivolous, she still neither knew nor understood.
There was another firm clunk from the control room, shrouding Chloe and all other workers in complete darkness until someone turned on the moonlight.
“On me, Gonkfuckers! On me!”
The short, white furred cat’s voice screeched across the empty set as she commanded her gaggle of Toys out of the elevators hidden behind a wall covered with a brick facade. She waved her clipboard around, gathering everyone around her for the briefing before their play.
She put two fingers in her mouth and released the most soul-shuddering screech of a whistle Chloe had ever heard, “CLEAR THE FUCK OUT!”
On queue, every non-Toy scrambled to pack up their equipment and head for the exits.
Chloe paused for a moment to wait for the exits to clear up. The crowd of Toys were all wearing perfectly normal clothing, a rather unusual sight within the confines of the club building. Listening to her commanding presence was a healthy variety of ages, genders, and species.
“Listen the fuck up! Don’t you dare miss any deets!” she screeched, making the hairs on the back of Chloe’s neck rise. She raised her clipboard and read off of the paper, “Tonight’s scenario is Spoils of War, Zootopia Edition! The humans have invaded and conquered the city of Zootopia, you are all rich suburban families who have tried to escape to the ghettos but have been found and will be forced to participate in the mass victory orgy where your new masters will savor the sweet prizes they have conquered!” she looked up from her papers, “Understood?!”
The crowd nodded in unison, even the ones who appeared to be no older than twelve.
Chloe stared, eyes wide in horror until she was reminded of the fact that even the child Toys were likely older than herself after a fawn, made and kept artificially underaged, caught her looking, trading her open mouthed gawking with an annoyed scowl and a raised middle finger.
She took the hint and began rolling her cart into the still open elevators, still glancing towards the large group that would be ‘raped’ by the end of the night.
“Everyone prep themselves?!”
They all nodded. The cat went around, demanding their confirmation concerning enemas, hymen restoration surgery, lactation-inducing hormone pills, and so on. The only thing Chloe understood was the fact that all the information they had willingly given her would have been extremely embarrassing in any other situation but was nothing more than routine here.
“Nova! Now pair up! Nuclear family style, so no same-sex couples! Each family gets a mother, father, son, daughter! Same shit as always, every hole is open to get fucked! And make it convincing! If your spouse and child gets raped in front of you better start fucking crying!”
Without looking, Chloe hit the button that would take her back to 2-14.
The doors slid closed with a faint squeal and a rattle, interrupting the incomprehensible chatter as the crowd began to partner up into families and plan out their backstories.
The ride down was short and uneventful but for whatever reason she found the gentle rocking of the lift’s worn rails and rollers strangely comforting. The elevator stopped, much too early for the young fox’s confused liking, the little chime ringing to signify that she had reached her destination as the doors slid back open.
Chloe shook her head and yawned as she kicked her heavy cart back into motion and out into the dark hallway, illuminated by only half of the normal lights. 2-14, the central Janitorial and Maintenance level, was mostly empty, its regular day staff having already gone to bed after a hard workday. The only ones left were the final stragglers of the night shift, having already clocked in hours before she had finished and were just now spreading out to wherever they were needed. She pushed her cart back into its spot next to the few dozen others which had already been left here, finally done for the day.
They too cared not for company politics. If this kept up Chloe would have nothing to report.
“Yo. Took ya a while…” Penny stuck her head out of her office next to the cart depot and yawned, stretching her pointy jaw wide open as she slid her hand up her loose fitting shirt and idly scratched her round, soft belly that was covered in patches of rough white and black fur. Her beady, yet still very clearly cybernetic eyes took in the sight of the filthy teenager standing before her.
“Daymn, you look like sheeeit.”
Chloe suppressed a wince as even with only one ear intact she still heard the opossum’s tired muscles pop as she stretched them past their normal range of movement.
“Sorry, I got uh, I got lost during the day and fell behind.” Chloe squeaked, shrinking under her supervisor’s unfocused gaze.
“Neugh…” the slightly chubby opossum relaxed her limbs before shrugging with a soft grunt, mumbling as she lazily rolled her chair back to her desk as she continued to slouch in her seat, “Yer new and ain’t a tard, ‘m sure y’ll learn the place quick.”
“You weren’t waiting for me, were you?”
Penny chuckled as she pulled out and lit another cigarette, her already naturally husky voice made even raspier by filling her lungs with a lifetime of ash and tar.
“Ya tryin’ somethin’ on me, gurl?!” she guffawed, roughly grabbing a breast and her crotch through her clothes, giving them a few good squeezes to make sure Chloe saw, “I’m taken if ya didn’t ‘ready know!”
She fake moaned as sexually she could, laughing even harder as the vixen’s face began to burn crimson. Penny put her hands on her cheeks, mockingly mewling like a high pitched virgin schoolgirl acting in a bad porno, “Ooh! Mister Diesel~! I can’t wait for you to take me tonight, ooh-!”
Chloe hid her face behind her hands as Penny slumped back in her chair and wheezed, her lungs desperately trying to bring in some air past the cigarette smoke.
“Ooh, shit…!” she breathed, before sinking even deeper into her seat and finally calming down, the ends of her mouth still stretched into a wide, stupid grin, “I’ll loan ya the XBD someday. Preem fucking shit, it ends with him…” she licked her lips as she held up the little datachip of pink plastic and a sticker featuring a half-naked muscular black human male looking down at the camera, “...naw! No spoilers!”
“R-Right…” the vixen gulped, “Is there anything else you need from me, Ma’am?”
Penny rolled, then narrowed her eyes in a playful exasperation, resting her head on her shoulder as she stared at Chloe, “Cam’aaaan! ‘ready told you not to call me that! I’d take fish-cunt or fatty-flabby over ‘ma’am’.” she raised her hands to make air quotes while mockingly quoting her.
Chloe shrunk under Penny’s unrestricted roughness. She knew she didn’t mean to be rude, but it was still awkward to have a lesson her mother had beaten into her mind to not only be tossed away but outright mocked. Perhaps her lessons in politeness and respect would have been more applicable with a person slightly higher up than Penny.
Something to remember, she noted.
“Just call me Penny. And naw, I got nothin'.” she grunted as she stretched her limbs yet again, sadly nodding towards her terminal with the half-finished order form for more cleaning supplies still sitting on the screen, “For you, anyhow. 'still got some bullshit to take care of so go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Penny waved her away, spinning around in her chair to give her computer another scowl before her short, pointy fingers resumed dancing on her keyboard.
The fatigue returned as Chloe entered the utility elevator yet again, this time all the way to the underground employee quarters. The ache in her muscles, the damp clothing she wore, the filth she stank of, the short allowance of solitude and self-realization allowed her to realize her state.
She breathed hot, stale air out of her nose as she stared at the ceiling and shrugged, resting her elbows on the rusty railing which was only half-bolted to the sides of the elevator. It was the same as yesterday. The same as the day before. And it would be the same tomorrow. Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.
Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, un-
Inexplicably, tears began to well in Chloe’s eyes. She rubbed her thin upper arms with trembling hands in an effort to calm her shoulders as they shook harder than anything else as her throat began to constrict. Something clenched tightly at her young heart, the weakness that followed afterwards forcing her to slide down to her knees.
She looked around, blinking the tears out of her eyes. The young fox gasped as she experienced a single moment, or perhaps an eternity, of absolute clarity. She sat in a box of scratched steel and dull aluminum, illuminated by yellowed, flickering LEDs. Again, the maintenance-neglected lift shook her back and forth. The vixen coughed and dry heaved, only managing to drool a bit on the floor. There was nothing in her stomach to spew, she had been forced to skip lunch and it wasn’t like she actually felt nauseous.
A sudden wave of extreme fatigue but also a strange comforting warmth washed over Chloe in what could only be called a nostalgic deja vu as the elevator’s well worn rails and rollers made the lift gently rock back and forth with every floor it passed.
Chloe sniffled, clenched her jaw, and suppressed a sob.
She reached up and tightly gripped the scratched hand rails, just as she had grasped her mother’s hands as she sat on her lap as a child. Just like the lift, it was unsteady and unnerving to sit on, no matter how she adjusted herself she had never quite found the right place to settle into without the fear of sliding off. Yet ultimately she never did find another place so secure and comforting.
It had been barely a month and yet it felt like a lifetime. She sucked in musty air through the wide gaps of her missing teeth, wheezing through her rapidly drying throat as she squeezed her eyes and began to panic, trying to remember the rapidly-fading sight of her family’s faces.
Her mother… Her mother? She had… Brown. She had wide, dark brown eyes. Dark enough to be considered black in anything other than daylight. Her fur was the same, or at least she assumed so. Naturally, a light brown but permanently stained grey with ash and grit. Or was it grey with age and stress? Their life certainly was stressful.
Noelle, that was her name. Even now it felt weird to say or even think of her name. It was always Mother or some other honorific. Anything that could properly respect her position as head of the family. Always so thin… Except for some reason Chloe remembered her being rather plump for one so starving. Why would that be?
Her eyes widened a bit as she remembered that her mother had been pregnant. The vixen gripped the railing tighter as she calculated and recalculated the days which might have passed. Had she already given birth? Did she have a new brother or sister?
A short moment of horror stabbed at her heart as she remembered the very last memory of her mother was her trying to fight back, only to be easily swatted away.
Had there been any complications? Just because she got shot with a less-lethal round didn’t mean it didn’t cause damage, especially to a woman of such fragile health and in such a vulnerable state. Did she have a younger brother or sister now? Or, she corrected herself, an even younger sibling? Younger than-
Kita and Mace! The little hellions! Well, Kita was certainly the more adventurous of the two. Despite her mother’s protests, she was sure Kita would be an excellent gunslinger merc come adulthood. Mace was more reserved and cautious. A future netrunner, maybe? Chloe laughed in sheer delirious relief as she realized, from the new knowledge she had gained working here, that both of her little siblings would survive well enough in this hellhole of a city. Or, at least, she believed herself into thinking that.
And Zara! Her sister. Her older sister, the eldest of the children. Their second mother. Chloe breathed slowly, swallowing as she remembered her very first memory. She had been sitting down on a cushion stolen from a diner booth seat. A very bored Zara laid beside her, she couldn’t have been older than six, maybe seven and yet she had already accepted the responsibility of caring for her young sister. She rested her head on her hand and roughly stuffed the spoon of mush into Chloe’s mouth, causing her to cry.
She gasped and laughed, blinking out the last of her tears as the elevator finally squealed to a shuddering stop. The piercing light washed over her as the doors slid open. The vixen breathed in and out, in and out, refilling her lungs with stale, yet very much welcome cool underground air, expelling the uncomfortably hot and humid air that her lungs had been flooded with with each breath.
Despite everything, her family was still with her in spirit. Perhaps they were dead, maybe not. She hadn’t seen them be killed, anything was still possible. Despite everything, she hadn’t been killed herself. She raised a hand upwards and touched the stubby remains of her left ear. Wounded and scarred, perhaps. But not dead. Despite everything, she could still walk.
And walk she did, slowly stumbling forwards towards the showers.
The corridor was long and wide, her exhaustion making it seem even longer and wider than it usually was, and yet her short cry and reminiscing had given her a little boost of energy, just enough to continue onwards. She glanced upwards, wiping the tears from her tired eyes at the digital clock, itself half-dead, as it displayed flickering neon red numbers signifying that the current time could barely be called evening. The final stragglers yawned as they passed her in the opposite direction, having just missed the great migration from living quarters to their workplaces.
She slowly dragged herself towards the showers, trailing a cloud of mud and dust. In the bright lights of the underground she could now clearly see that her hazel fur was thoroughly soiled with the filth of the day’s work, splashed onto her during her shift and dried into crumbly chunks. Though now instead of the concrete and ash grey of her previous life it was now closer to a putrid mix of sewage brown and slimy green. Her boots squelched with each step, its waterproofness meaningless once it had filled up to her ankles with water. Everything ached, every movement she made was followed by a burning sensation in all her muscles and yet, just for now, everything seemed just a little bit easier to deal with.
A pair of light brown bunny girls walked past. One was short and round, her body soft and slightly pudgy with the youth and innocence of a child. The other was tall, her body curvy with the fertility and maturity of an experienced mother. Toys of Vanilla and Cream, Chloe recalled from somewhere in her mind. They wrinkled their noses as the stink coming off of Chloe finally reached their nostrils, giving the ground where the vixen stepped onto a wide berth as she passed, not wanting to get their freshly showered feet filthy before they had even serviced her first customer.
Chloe looked back at Vanilla for a long moment. Though her reaction had been nothing but disgust there was a certain part of her that yearned for a mother’s soft, unconditionally loving embrace, even if it wasn’t from her own.
She made a mental note to keep an eye on them. Rabbit Toys always had a universal appeal and as Main Characters she was sure some high-class cocks had been in them.
Toys in general were more concerned with keeping up with their appearances and personal connections than internal and external politics, though some definitely dipped their feet, paws, and other appendages deep into the hellscape filled with the landmines of drama and subterfuge that made up the silent corpo warfare. Main Characters especially enjoyed frequent visits by various important humans, and some, from the scant stories Chloe overheard, even had the personal ear and cock of Night City’s Mayor Mr. Lucius Rhyne himself. Finding these Toys would be an extremely high priority.
A thunderous roar erupted from the mess hall, echoing long through the tile hallways and ending with a soul-shattering bang. Now temporarily awake from the brief shot of adrenaline she nervously peered around the corner just in time to witness the minimum wage grunt carelessly slamming the heavy shutters of the hole-in-the-wall fast food joint as it ceased operations until the midnight lunch break.
“Uhg.”
Something poked her in the back.
She turned, only for the end of a well-worn baseball bat with its purple anodizing and decorative bedazzling covered with dried blood to roughly but not forcibly smush her in the face, shoving her off to the side and down onto her butt with a wet splat.
“How ‘bout you delta the fuck outta here, shitstain, eee-yuck!” a high-pitched valley girl accented voice ordered, fake gagging at Chloe’s stink as the slender, hot pink scaled snakegirl briskly slithered past.
“FYI,” another voice, this time a little lower but still as mean and condescending as the first, “the chow hall’s for squeaky fucks only.”
Chloe groaned and shook her head to clear her vision, hearing, then seeing a gaggle of about half a dozen anthros walk past. Some chuckled crude remarks at her, others didn’t even bother to look in her direction.
“Mimi!” she heard the first woman squeal in a sing-song voice as she raced into the rapidly emptying mess.
A very familiar voice yelped as he was cornered and buried under the mass of multiple girls. They grabbed and pulled, tormenting their unfortunate victim with kisses and the forcible burying of his face into their large, impressive breasts. He squeaked and squawked, now nothing more than a few blue feathers peeking out of his female prison.
“Aaaw, you got Din-Din for uusss!” the snake girl squealed annoyingly as she joined in, embracing the squawking Naomi in a rapidly constricting hug.
He swatted at them, annoyed but in the same playfully tolerated way a brother might tell a younger sister who had been pestering him to leave him alone. They rolled their eyes and stuck out their tongues, each giving him one last teasing pinch on the cheek before releasing him from their grasp and taking their seats around him. Naomi cleared his throat, smoothing out his thoroughly ruffled blue feathers.
They stared and rubbed their hands, drooling at the absolutely magnificent sight before them. A seemingly endless pile of EEZYBEEF Burgers, cans upon cans of soft drinks of every flavor imaginable, entire XXXL tubs of SCOP chili and jambalaya, takeout party boxes stuffed to bursting with dozens of Hawt Dawgz, sprinkled within were the usual prepackaged slop from the vending machines, and topping the mountain of food was a fancy-looking case of glass bottle of 100% Legit Pure Water.
By some silent, unseen signal they simultaneously descended onto the pile like locusts. Though by Chloe’s rough guesstimate the pile of food was more than enough to feed at least fifty, the six anthros plus Naomi had already put a sizable dent in their dinner meal. One put her deepthroating skills to good use, Hawt Dawg after Hawt Dawg disappearing down her maw without a single chew. No utensil ever touched the chili, its many devourers instead opting for thick straws if not tipping the whole tub straight into their mouths. The snake girl tossed an entire Ultrasized Bucket of Chik’n Strips into her mouth, followed by the world’s longest squirt of Honey’d Musturd from the bottle in one hand and Blastin’ Bar-Bee-Que from the other, again straight into her bottomless maw before swallowing it all in a single gulp.
Chloe could do nothing but stare in shock at the absolute spectacle of gluttony as they each consumed more food in ten minutes than she had ever eaten in an entire month. One didn’t even bother with unpacking her food, she bit down and swallowed, wrapper, cardboard, and all. Bits of shredded plastic and waxed paper slowly fell from above like the embers of a recently exploded firework and empty bottles and cans were launched out of the maelstrom like hot rocks from the raging mouth of a volcano. And yet, she noticed, not a single bit of food had been wasted.
Wrappers were first licked completely clean before they were balled up and tossed. Bottles were sliced open to recover every dab of their sauces. Greasy cardboard was squeezed for its residual flavor, if not outright eaten along with the other foods.
She could do nothing but continue to stare at the madness that unfolded before her. The mountain of food never seemed to shrink while the ring of trash around them grew ever larger.
“Ey.”
Chloe jumped as she finally felt Penny’s body heat radiating onto her exposed neck, only just managing to suppress a surprised yelp.
“What’cha lookin’ at?” Penny playfully chuckled as she rested the bottom of her chin onto the fox’s head and took one final drag of her cigarette before shooting it from her mouth with a soft pop. She guffawed, rolling her eyes at the gluttonous sight, “Oh, it’s those faggots again. Leave ‘em, if you don’t do it now you’ll be stuck here for the next hour. I don’t blame ya, they can be uh… uuh… hyp… hypnotic as fuck when they eat.”
Despite knowing better Penny too, accidentally stared for too long, her eyes glazed over and jaw relaxing as she too began to be entranced by the spectacle.
“Shit!” she hissed, shaking her head to break herself free, “Let’s go.”
She lightly smacked the top of Chloe’s head to break her own trance.
The vixen stumbled for a few steps, her brain still adjusting to processing something that was not watching Naomi’s girl group savagely brutalizing their dinner.
Penny laughed as she led her subordinate away from the mess hall, leaving behind the thundering mess behind them.
The showers were completely empty by the time they arrived, with even the very last of the residual water from its previous occupants having sufficient time to dry. Chloe stood and stared in awe for a moment, though she had seen the inside of the showers multiple times it was always when it was a foggy mess. Without it the shower room, of which there were at least a half dozen more, stretched for what seemed like eternity into the distance until it faded away into the darkness where the lights were not turned on.
“Chlo, start her up, will ‘ya?” the opossum ordered, her boss attitude returning for a moment as she tossed the young fox her jingling ring of maintenance keys.
Penny yawned and grunted, emptying out the contents of her pockets into her locker before struggling to squeeze out of her sweaty uniform off her body, depositing her stained, stretched-out clothing into the laundry tub for the morning crew to take away.
Chloe gulped and looked away, trying not to but finding it impossible to not look at her now very much naked boss who always stripped off her clothing much faster than anticipated by not wearing underwear. Faint scars and old chemical burns dotted her skin, her skin simply too disfigured for her fur to hide. While she was not outright obese, it was very clear from her build that Penny ate very well. Her limbs were thick and many parts of her jiggled as she walked. Despite all that and a seemingly permanent limp, her gait and movements were smooth and deliberate, the layers of fat just thick enough to hide the powerful muscles she had built up from years of slaving.
While it hadn’t been the first time she had seen her in the nude there had always been at least a dozen others to distract everyone else. Now it was just the two of them and nothing else to focus on.
Penny groaned, her distant swear quietly echoing as she returned to the closest showers once she realized that her favorite sitting spot was now under a broken spray head.
The old valves squeaked as the young fox turned them again and again until the shower sprinkler closest to them began to sputter.
“Gaah!” Chloe yelped as she was accidentally covered with ice-cold water.
Penny guffawed from the side as she watched it all unfold, joining the still clothed Chloe under the shower head which had finally begun to deliver warm water, filling the enormous shower room with a comfortably welcoming steam.
“Our tap water comes fucking cold from the city for some reason. Like so cold we had to insulate the utility tunnels or it sucks the heat from the entire building!” the opossum yelled from inside the cloud of steam as she wearily sat down on the cracked tiles before rolling onto her back with a rough grunt and deflating with an infinitely relieved sounding sigh.
Chloe leapt out of the rain, clothes now heavy with water. She nodded, quickly stripping herself bare, now awake and well motivated after being splashed. The sound of the water changed from a steady flow to a soft, bubbling sound as the automatic soap mixers began pumping bodywash into the shower. The teen steadied her steps, now cautious of slipping and falling.
Penny continued to lie on the floor, eyes closed as she let the warm water wash away the day’s filth. Chloe watched as the opossum’s short fur released all the dirt and grit it had accumulated before walking into the showers herself, evidence that even she, as their supervisor, was not free from hard physical labor and filth.
Suddenly, the opossum grabbed a breast and grinned lewdly at her again, “You still want some, don’t’cha?”
The fox jumped, not realizing that she had been watched.
“Sorry, I-” Chloe stopped, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
Penny laughed again, although this time from the heavy humidity her voice was now much smoother and more melodic, almost but not quite erasing a lifetime of puffing cigarettes. She closed her eyes, spitting her mouthful of water off to the side, dark with streaks of pollutants.
“Ya gotta ease up, girl. Can’t be pushed ‘round. Not here.”
Chloe nodded, looking away while slowly stripping off her own clothes. She blushed a little bit as she realized that the extremely lacy lingerie loaned from Charlie’s drawers was still the only underwear she had.
Making a mental note to buy more and thankful that Penny had not seen her wear Charlie’s underwear, the young fox stepped into the showers. The thick steam that had accumulated thankfully shrouded her nude form, allowing her to stand and enter more confidently. She looked down at the tiled floor, following the stream of dark, dirty water that came from her left, the only evidence that she was not alone in the showers.
Incoherent words came through the haze as Penny began to idly rub the grit from between her long toes. Today, however, it was Chloe who had gotten the worst of the daily dirt on her, and the chubby opossum began to scooch away from her own stinking puddle as it began to expand towards her.
“Ey watch the shitwater, choombatta!” Penny laughed, playfully whipping Chloe’s leg with her long, thin rat-like tail.
“Oh! Sorry!” the teenage vixen softly hissed, looking around to see if she could move away.
Penny guffawed as she scrubbed her arms, “Oh com’on, don’t be afraid to hit back ya gonk! I ain’t no bougie. Lil’ poop’s not gonna scare me!”
Chloe forced a small, awkward grin to her face as Penny’s uncontrolled howling boomed throughout the empty showers, the hard tiles reverberating her laughter right out the door and possibly all the way to the living quarters.
“So what district shat you out?”
“Pacifica.” Chloe finally answered after a long pause.
“Good ol’ asshole of NC.” Penny muttered as she scrubbed her round belly that wobbled slightly with each pass, “No wonder you ain’t scared of crawling through literal shit. We get most of our workers from Vista and Coronado. They’re… usually… good folks who aren’t afraid of getting dirty, but most won’t go that far.” the opossum shuddered as she remembered watching Chloe reaching into a drain cleanout earlier that week, pulling out a mass of condoms and other bodily wastes that had been flushed down the last few months, eventually solidifying into an unholy amalgamation of unspeakable filth, “Maybe we should start hiring more gonks from Pacifica…”
Chloe paused for a moment, sensing an opportunity.
“Well… I know some people.”
“They your folks?”
Chloe nodded slowly.
“Sorry, girl.” Penny shrugged, “But policy says no blood family employees. Lovers and fuckbuddies are ok, but no family.”
“Oh.” the vixen drooped her shoulders, her hopes for a reunification and a good job for her mother and sister dashed, “Why’s that?”
“Well…” the opossum began as she stuck her fingers in her ears to clean them, “A while ago… think I was like… fourteen or some shit? We had a huge fuckin’ nomad rat clan working for the club. Like eight outta ten workers here were rats. They were cheap and hard working as fuck. What no one realized was that all of them were the fuck family of one of the execs. Like they were all his blood bastards. One day they started fucking up the place, cutting wires, bustin’ water pipes, shit like that, demanding that Mr. Wilkins step down and their ratty daddy replace him ‘else they’d finish the job and burn the place down. Course’ he wasn’t having that shit so he flew in basically every single Animals gangster in the city and paid them some serious scratch for every rat they killed.”
Penny squeezed out a soft, yet horrified chuckle as she remembered possibly the darkest day of the Organic Toys club.
“Shit was wack. I watched a roided up Astartes-ass pitbull with ‘ceps thicker than a propane tank tear my old supervisor in half ‘fore tossing him out the window. Like literally,” she raised her arms and mimicked the pit’s exact movements she remembered, even adding in a few wet sound effects to add to the theatrics of the gory reenactment, “-grabbed his neck with one hand and his dick with the other and pulled him apart. Ain’t saying he didn’t deserve it but, man, fucked up way to go…”
Penny coughed and spat, her viscous phlegm, streaking black with pollutants, landing on the drain with a heavy splat.
“Last I heard Richard just shot the ratfucker exec who started this shit before taking OT private. I heard Ms. Charlie poked around his guts for shits n’ giggles and they found out he was a fucking ‘xotic.”
Chloe cocked her head in confusion, “Z… zotic?”
Penny nodded, “Exotics ‘r people who get their appearance surgically changed. Toys are technically ‘xotics but because they’re completely melted down and rebuilt than just modified they’re considered more than just ‘xotics. Us’ully it’s just some gonks who wanna change their fur into a neon nightclub carpet or fit their crotches with a novelty horse cock but some go crazy. Ratfucker? He was a full ‘xotic. A rat who modded himself to look human and climbed the corpo ladder. In this fucking city? The testicles on that guy… Legendary.” Penny shook her head in awe at the memory, “2020, he looked sus as fuck but you’d really have to squint. Short and scrawny, definitely mousy, but it was good enough to fool Richard. Anyways I would’ve given my bro a steady job here if it wasn’t for that but thankfully his food stand started making good money. Lucky bastard. Bangin’ burgers but… lucky bastard.”
Chloe scrunched up her face, trying to think of any way she could bypass that restriction when Penny shook her head.
“I know what you’re thinking, girl. Don’t do it.”
“Wha-?” the fox stepped back, not realizing that she had been read so easily.
“Yeah.” The opossum grunted as she lifted herself off the floor, wincing subtly as she began to put her weight back onto her tired, worn out knees, “Aw, fuck!” Penny hissed as she dropped back down on her back, breathing hard for a moment before looking backwards at Chloe, “Ey, mind givin’ me a hand?”
Chloe nodded, washing the soap off of her hands before holding them out. Penny grasped them tightly, wriggling her legs under her body so that Chloe wouldn’t have to lift up her whole weight. Still, the vixen grit her teeth as she pulled the chunky opossum back onto her feet. Chloe winced, hearing Penny’s heavily worn joints and tendons popping and creaking as they strained.
Penny put her hands on her thighs to support her weight and gasped, out of breath, “Thanks, choom. And naw, they DNA test everyone who applies here. If they match any of the employees as closer than cousins they get automatically rejected and I dunno if I got the pull to open that door. And believe me, this gig you’ve got going on ain’t something you want to throw away.”
“Throw away? I thought I was stuck here? I got a choice now?”
“Naw, not like that.” Penny coughed, clearing her throat again, “Listen, we might be stuck dealin’ with literal shit but it still ain’t the worst job we could be stuck doin’ here.” she glanced around before leaning in and whispering with an ever so slightly quivering voice, “There’s more underground levels deeper than here, even deeper than the Mariposa BioLabs. I dunno what the fuck they do down there but I know for a fucking fact that I’d rather be fixin’ toilets.”
She groaned as she pushed herself up, pretending to any who might be watching that the last few sentences were not spoken. She stretched her back as she turned to look at the currently out-of-order showers she usually used, the ones she liked because they had raised sitting areas underneath that eased her leg pains when standing, “Fuckers,” she hissed, “How the absolute fuck do you break a ceiling sprayer? Goddammit… this is gonna be expensive…”
“How expensive?”
Penny sighed as she scrubbed her head, “Like I-gotta-get-the-fucking-GM-to-sign-off-on-it expensive.”
Chloe scrunched her brows. Penny wasn’t just some minimum wage grunt. Not the highest ranking manager but she was still part of the Organic Toys administration in some form or another. Perhaps there was something to learn here. “Amelia? Is she gonna be a problem?”
“Hope she ain’t gonna be.” the opossum turned her head upwards and stretched her jaw wide, catching some of the hot water in her mouth before gurgling and spitting it out, “‘melia’s pretty good with spending money to keep things running, thank fuck she ain’t an eddy-pinchin cheapass. But holy fuck is she autistic with deep detes. She wants estimates and margins on everything. How many work-minutes it took to fix shit, what kind of rep our supplier has, weight and materials of the installed part, even meaningless fuckin’ shit like how much water it’s gonna take to properly test the new part. Shit drives me crazy…”
Amelia, a micromanager? Chloe nodded, perfectly believable. But was it worth reporting?
The two exited the showers, turning off the spray heads before enjoying the comforting hot blast of the overhead air dryers in lieu of towels. Chloe ran her fingers through her puffed up fur, feeling the absolute softness and cleanliness that all Toys were required to have. The fact that all were allowed to use the same soaps and conditioners was a bonus to the rest of the workers.
Chloe grabbed her sweat-soaked underwear and bunched it up for her armpit to hold, having learned quickly that casual nudity here was less attention-grabbing than wearing lingerie in an attempt to cover one’s self. And yet she still blushed as she exited with Penny, deliberately kept her walking speed slow to match her boss’ subtle yet obviously pained limp. It was about time she got used to her new normal.
“So what’s goin’ on with you an’ her?”
Chloe's remaining ear twitched, betraying her shock.
Her mind raced, tripping over its metaphorical feet to come as it was forced back to full throttle to come up with some sort of response. A remark dismissing her question would only arouse suspicion. A quick lie would accomplish much the same, though favoritism by management was nothing new. Perhaps that was the direction she should pursue.
The young vixen’s eyes flicked up to meet Penny’s, but immediately turned away. She found her tongue tied into a tight knot by her mother’s strict discipline. If only she had more time to think.
Or perhaps she was overthinking things.
She steeled her throat, taking firm control of her usually quivering speech and forcing it to not taint her response with a suspicious sounding stutter, “What do you mean?” Chloe responded slowly.
Penny reached into her wallet to display her own teal-colored Priority Four Ration Card, the very same one Chloe had been issued.
“This… fuckin’... thing…” the opossum’s voice went low for a single moment before warming up, “took me a decade and a motherfuckin’ half to earn. P6 and P5 cards are a load of shit. You can barely buy a meal’s worth of chow with those each day. Shit, I used to be supermodel-thin if you can believe that. But P4 cards let you actually eat til you're full. Even allow you to have some fun with a Toy if you skip a few lunches and save up. You’re good, Chloe. Real good. But there’s no way in fucking hell you could’a earned this in a month.”
Chloe gulped. Penny chuckled, thankfully neither mockingly nor maliciously but just in confusion.
“And what’s up with the undies?” she pointed to the very sexy bra and panties Chloe held in her hands, trying to hide them from the world.
“Oh,” Chloe nervously held them out. Presented to her boss and in the light of the hallways they seemed to become more and more valuable then she had initially realized and Charlie certainly seemed like the type to not worry about how expensive her underwear was. “Charlie let me borrow these. And I don’t have any others.”
Penny paused for a moment in thought, then shook her head as she deflated.
“Sure.” she cleared her throat, “Look, I ain’t askin’ because I’m-” she paused again, “Naw, no lies, I am a bit jelly that you’re getting the preem treatment. But I gotta know, as your boss…” Penny leaned close and narrowed her beady eyes, asserting her authority over Chloe for the first time but also in an attempt to hide the bit of fear her clenched jaw quivered with, “You’ve got a fucking P4 rat-card, wearin’ some expensive lookin’ lingerie, and a direct connection with the GM, our head Ripperdoc, that cunty VP, and Mistah’ Richard ‘Daddy’ Wilkins him-fuckin'-self. Are you or are you not someone I should be fucking scared of?”
Chloe shook her head, of that much she was certain.
Penny continued to narrow her eyes for a moment before easing away.
“Fine. Frankly, I dunno know who the fuck you are or if I even wanna know. You’ve got a huge fucking debt. But you’re getting the good treatment. But you’re still unfuckin’ toilets. Willingly. Why?” she muttered to herself.
A line of vending machines buzzed as they entered the now nearly empty mess hall. The mess made by Naomi’s gang earlier had been swept away, leaving nothing but distant echoes of their gluttony. Chloe glanced at Penny to make sure she was free to leave before she walked to the vending machines, wondering what to eat.
“Shit…” Penny mumbled as she waddled over to the pizza joint.
The scruffy, skeleton-thin cig-smoking tanuki solo manning the small food joint mindlessly unwrapped a new yet already inedible looking frozen pizza, carelessly launching it in the oven like a frisbee while nodding to Penny as she looked at the week-old slices and sides still sitting in the hot displays.
“Sup, bitch.”
“Sup, cunt.”
He took a long drag of his knockoff cigarette and tossed it backwards over his shoulder into the overflowing sink.
“Don’t you dare fuck up my display.” the tanuki grunted, resting his greasy elbows on top of the even greasier warmers.
“Oh fuck off, Masao, it always looks like shit anyways.” Penny grunted in return, squinting her eyes to peer past the dirty glass before sticking her ration card in the half-broken reader, “Gimme one’a them.”
Masao raised an eyebrow but didn’t object as he slid the window open and scooped up a medium Honey’d Locust and Extra UltraCheeze pizza onto a paper plate before handing it over. The crust was well beyond cardboard, having been baked into a disc of unbreakable adamantium that could’ve been used as armor plate. The cheese had formed into a single dark brown flake while the locusts fossilized from being heated into oblivion.
“I’ll be honest Penny, I dunno how the fuck you can stomach this slop. I can eat here for free and I still don’t eat here.”
Penny shrugged as she rolled one of the slices into a burrito, stuck half of it into her maw and bit into it, aiming her teeth towards the largest concentration of fried locusts so that it would create the loudest possible crunch, grinning mischievously as she watched the tanuki scrunch his face in sheer disgust at his food actually being eaten.
“Goddamn possums…” Masao shook his head and grabbed a ladle, turning around so that he wouldn’t have to see any more of the disgusting rodent who only continued to chew with her mouth wide open to maximize the sound.
The opossum cackled as she made her escape, ducking her head to dodge the ladle that had been flung at her head.
Chloe stared at the long line of vending machines. She had passed by machines selling the very same items many, many times in her youth as a streetrat, yearning to fill her empty stomach with the delectable goods hidden within. And now, with a surprisingly generous allowance she could buy it all, anything she wanted was hers. All she had to do was slide her card and press a button or two. The last few times she had defaulted to the same Burrito XXL that she last ate with her family before she was dragged away, but now…
“Suh what’choo havin’?” Penny spoke through her full mouth, chewing audibly with each bite.
Chloe shrugged as her boss walked up behind her.
“...I dunno.” she finally mumbled, still staring at the seemingly endless options presented before her. The machine right before her advertised something called “Mexican”, whatever that was. The fact that she could now afford anything and everything the machines could offer only made choosing anything much more difficult.
“Yeah the chow here ain’t too great, even if you got the scratch. The best you can get here is probably Molly-O’s. They’re good, but they sure as shit ain’t worth the eddies they charge. Ya gotta go out for the good stuff.”
Or at least that’s what Penny would have said had she not been speaking through a mouthful of half chewed locust pizza, the foul smell of which finally made Chloe wrinkle her nose and look away.
Penny grinned and held out the remainder of her pizza, playfully mocking the one disgusting tolerance she still had over Chloe.
“Want some?”
Chloe shook her head, trying not to look too disgusted for politeness’ sake, “No thanks.”
She let out a final chuckle before waddling away, “Suit yourself. Imma head out. G’night.”
“Good night…” Chloe mumbled back before returning to stare at the vending machines. After a while she randomly pressed a button, making the machine whirr and buzz softly for a minute before two freshly microwaved tamales wrapped in flashy plastic flopped out of the bottom.
The vixen slowly crawled back to her quarters, wincing a bit as her phantom pain stung at her left leg with each step. During work it was something minor enough to be ignored but now with her mind free there was little else to focus on. She gently squeezed her warm, paper-wrapped dinner with her hands to feel their soft delectable innards, her stomach yearning to be filled. Chloe swallowed, resisting the urge. Her mother had hammered into her mind that dinner was to be eaten at the table and not while walking around.
Once upon a time she would have killed to be free of her mother’s constant nagging, but now? It was so strange, being so far away from home she thought she would have long abandoned everything she had taught, to have made her own rules and ways. Yet here she was, constantly squeezing her eyes to remember the ways of things her mother had said to her.
The door to the boiler room, or at least what used to be the boiler room, swung open smoothly. The spiders skittered away as the old, tired light bulb flickered back to life with a pull of the little metal chain, revealing a tiny room of dusty bare concrete, filled with rusting pipes and machinery whose purpose was unknown to her. Milk crates and stolen sofa cushions made her bed in the corner while what little personal belongings she had collected was hidden away in a small drawstring bag. Her uniform for the next day was placed on a box that was her only table, folded neatly. She'd have to pick up a new pair of boots later.
The modified corn masa seemed even gritter than usual as she bit into her dinner.
Chloe looked around her silent room and began to think. Everyone else had been stuffed into long rows of barracks bunks, all except her. Was it part of that “preem” treatment Penny was referring to to receive her very own room or was it a punishment of a shitty room that was simply not shared by anyone else?
She casually brushed off a centipede that had crawled up her leg. Preem treatment, she decided as she rolled onto her back, blowing out a cloud of dust from the worn out cushions. There was nothing here worse than what she was already used to.
Chloe finished off her dinner and balled up the wrappers before tossing them into her dedicated garbage box.
She laid in silence for a few moments to get her thoughts in order.
Worry, as she was failing Amelia for not having any information important enough to report. Being useful was the only reason she was not starving. Hopefully she would understand that she hadn’t had much contact with the important people.
Gratitude towards Penny for not being a horrible boss. Chloe shuddered as she imagined a different life in which she was forced to work under Samantha.
A longing to be reunited with her family once more. But without an address or communication implants even talking was impossible. And a bit of guilt towards them as well. A whole month had passed and what had she done to reunite with them? She couldn’t reasonably expect to be rescued, she was on her own. And yet here she was, mindlessly grinding away at her job. Her mother would have given her head a firm whack with a rolled up screamsheet for even implying that a day spent on honest work for honest pay was a day wasted.
She felt Zara’s hand playfully smack her on the shoulder, reminding her that boring days weren’t bad days and that’s all she needed to worry about.
The bulb flickered once more. A sudden rush of fatigue and tightness gripped the back of her eyes, making her yawn widely. Today had been no different than any other but for some reason she felt more tired than usual, as if six months had passed and this was the first time she had laid down.
The teen rubbed the sides of her head as the yawn made her jaw muscles painfully yet heavily satisfyingly ache. She sluggishly reached upwards and tugged on the light string, plunging her and her room into darkness.
Not every day has to be an adventure, Zara had said.
Chloe huffed, flaring her nostrils as the annoying little sister she was resurfaced once more before closing her eyes for the last time that night.
In this fucking city?
Sure.