“Hmmm. Intriguing.”

Tatyana leaned back from the trio of monitors, crossing her arms as she looked between them. The tigress flicked her eyes from the live game stream run by ‘Ultizeta’ to the art page of a lizard named ‘Ultilix,’ eventually settling on the discord community that was run by the lizard outside of both. They were the same person, no doubt about that, and a most interesting individual they were.

Though if I could narrow down just what was interesting about her, that would make my life significantly easier.

Still, even with that mystery, she knew that she liked something about this Ulti. Whether arting, gaming, or generally hanging around, there was a thing there, a value that the lizard had that others did not. There was something in her that resonated with it, and more than that, wanted it.

The problem was…how did she get it?

Tatyana stood up from the chair, her lab coat sweeping behind her as she paced back and forth. One hand under her chin, the other across her chest as she took the same five steps one direction, turned on her heel, and went back the other way.

How does one socialize? No. Better question. How does one boost the value of their company to the point where another will see them as desirable to be around?

Questions needed at least vaguely quantifiable answers. Without more logical questions, the answers could never be found.

The answer, however, eluded her. Despite the success of her lab and the depth of experiments that she ran within it, Tatyana knew herself well enough to avoid social arrogance. She knew that she didn’t have the skills of interacting with other organic individuals outside of buying and selling the supplies that she needed for her lab. Anything else was well beyond her capabilities.

And yet…

I want this. So figure out how it works.

Well, the simplest way to get someone to visit was hypnosis. There were a hundred different ways to hack a machine and send a spiral down the line, as well as to get basic information out of them, but that wasn’t enough. She wanted this to be a…

Was the word ‘friendship’? That word felt too little, but it would suffice for now. A friendship that would last, not merely continue so long as their screens glowed and the spiral spun. She needed more information than she could get from a distance. Which meant –

Ping.

Tatyana paused in mid-turn, her eyes going back to the discord screen. There was a pending message. She flicked a finger across the screen –

Ulti: Hey, nice profile pic. Got a full version?

Her heart may have skipped a beat at that moment. She hadn’t expected any contact from the other; the idea of entering the server had been done purely as an experiment, making sure that all the other accounts were the same person. And now…

She acted before she could doubt herself. A few key-taps sent a file across. She saw a flicker of motion on the bottom of the screen, an attempt to type back…then they stopped.

Silence.

Then there was more typing. A few seconds later, another message came through.

Ulti: Pretty colors…

Ulti: Spinning colors…

Ulti: Feels…good…

Tatyana nodded; that was to be expected. The spiral programs were powerful, if a trifle crude. They were sufficient for perhaps a day’s worth of hypnosis after the program stopped running, no more than that. She would never use them for something serious, but for something small like this, it was useful. She typed.

Tatyana: We will meet.

Tatyana: Tomorrow.

Tatyana: Game store half a mile from your place.

Ulti: Will be…there…pretty…

Tatyana sent a kill-program for the spiral and exited out. The game stream was lagging now; the spiral must have caught her off-guard for the stream, leaving her helpless. Not ideal, but at least the meeting was on and – And now she had to find a way there in less than twenty-four hours. Tatyana blinked, then sighed.

“One day. One day, you will do something that you cannot follow through on.”

#

A favor-driven flight on a super-sonic plane and far too many coffees later, Tatyana sat in the game store at one of the tabletop booths. She still wore her lab coat – someone had asked her why she was cosplaying, and she just stared at them in mild confusion until they walked away – and under it she had a strict black shirt and a black skirt that ran down to her knees. As far as she knew, that would be sufficient for keeping modest and looking somewhat professional.

She sat with one leg crossed over the other, wrap-around sandals going tack-tack-tack on her heel as she tapped her foot as she waited. Each breath was even, each beat of her heart measured – she knew it was, she had timed it, twice – and she was still feeling…off. Nervous, almost. Perhaps the word ‘anxious’ might even apply, though she would hope that she had better self-control than to feel that right now.

I have not felt like this since the facility was invaded by the Digital Dozen and half of it burned down before I could get a handle on it…

And this was just one person. One singular person that she wanted to meet, and yet, she felt like this.

You have control. You have many ways of keeping control. All you have to do is wait for her to get here, and then you can take control properly. All you fear is the first phase of the plan not working. So long as this succeeds, the rest of the plan will fall into place with ease. And if it fails –

Tatyana shook her head. No. She was not going to turn into some crazed stalker. She recognized the symptoms, understood where her head was going, and she nipped that in the bud. She even mimed pulling the thought from her forehead and flicking it off to the side as she took another slow, measured, deep breath.

It was not the first time that she had become fixated on something, though usually her fixations were focused on experiments, deadlines, things that were more practical than some random individual that had crossed her feeds online. Even so, the feelings were the same: intense interest, a focus that denied her any interest in other projects, a need to keep this in her life and embrace it with a near-maniacal desperation – they were all very, very familiar.

Unfortunately, this was the first time that it had happened with someone that she didn’t have power over, and she was…certainly not charming. Pretty enough, one would imagine, but charming? Hardly.

Thus, this fact-finding mission. Provided that Ulti showed up, everything would go just…fine.

She shifted one leg over the other as the door opened. She looked up just in time to see the glasses-wearing blue lizard step inside, her hair a little bedraggled from the windy day. Tatyana forced herself to lift a hand – people wave at each other, not just stare – and caught the lizard’s attention after a few seconds. Ulti waved back, wandering between the aisles of cards for sale, the miniatures, and the bigger wargaming tables all the way to the back of the shop.

“Hey, didn’t know you’d be waiting for me,” Ulti said, sitting down and putting a bag on her side of the booth. “Not too long?”

“No. Not long.”

Six hours, if you count transit from airport to here.

“Thank you. For meeting me.”

“Well, um, actually. I was – heh, this is awkward. I was kind of wondering, could you tell me why we’re meeting?”

“…”

“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to remember, you know?” Ulti said, pushing her glasses up and chuckling with obvious nerves. “I mean – you – you’re very pretty, but I don’t usually go out to meet someone from the discord. It’s kinda weird to me, but – I’m sure that we must have had a reason, right? Was there some kind of art project we were going to do or –”

It was to be expected; the spirals worked as an instant-hit of hypnosis, but they didn’t last long. Ulti must have either had a strong sense of will to feel the incongruity, or the lizard had gone under a number of times before. Either way, she was already halfway toward figuring out that this meeting wasn’t natural.

Which made Tatyana even more interested in her.

“It is alright,” she said, shaking her head as she reached for her own bag off to the side. “We are meeting to discuss a project, yes.”

“Great. I’m not going crazy.”

“That may yet happen. I can be a…somewhat picky woman.”

“Long as you keep me in the loop, I’m pretty sure I can make you happy.”

“…There are multiple ways to take that.”

“What – oh. Oh. Oh, god.”

As Ulti groaned, Tatyana used the distraction to pull an old classic from her bag. It was a simple collar, one made of a wire mesh that had been threaded through some leather in a bygone time. Before she had taken control of her facility, the collars had been used to keep various subjects in line, ensuring that they had too much fog in their brains to realize what was going on. It affected the neural system with an overwhelming, if subtle, signal, shutting down higher thought and temporarily blocking out memory with the excess white noise in the mind. The longer it buzzed, the less that someone could remember what happened while they wore it.

“Wear this.”

“Wear – whoa, that’s a little –”

Click.

Ulti sat up straighter on the other side of the table, eyes going wide, pupils narrowing as the collar took immediate effect. The lizard’s arms stiffened at her sides and her chest stuck out as her body was ‘corrected,’ her posture adjusted, everything shifted ever so slightly to be more productive, more focused, more…exposed.

Tatyana’s eyes drifted down to the lizard’s breasts for a moment. One had come a little out of alignment with the other. Most likely a little twist in her bra. She lifted Ulti’s shirt just enough to expose them, tucked the loose breast back in, and tugged the shirt back down again.

“You cannot hear me, I imagine. But if you can. I am not going to hurt you. I do not want to scare you. I…am fascinated by you. Intrigued by you. I – I want to know you better, so that I can make sure that you have a reason to keep me around.”

She wasn’t sure why she confessed to that. She wasn’t even sure if it was a full confession, all things considered; it was barely an explanation of what the collar did. Tatyana shook her head.

“To business.”

The tigress dragged a tape recorder, an old one, from her bag. She set it on the table and depressed the record button.

“Speak. What are your interests?”

“I like gaming…cooking…Art. I like a lot of the stuff I draw.”

“The fantasies?”

“The sex…”

“You are very focused on certain types of sex. Hypnosis?”

“Mmmm…”

“You enjoy being hypnotized? Commanded?”

“I like to enjoy things…get my brain out of the way…Show off without thinking about it…Kiss a few butts…a few boobs…”

Tatyana nodded. She’d guessed some of that from the art work that Ulti had online. Some of it was slightly different than the others, perhaps a sign that she liked some more than others, but that did not matter. The collar would keep her honest about her personal tastes.

“What else do you like?”

“Spending time…with good people. Pretty people. Like you.”

“…Like me?”

“Pretty colors, pretty tigress.”

“…Moving on,” she said, not sure why her voice felt like it would crack.

She dug deeper, delving as far into Ulti’s life and psyche as she dared in a more public setting. Every time she found something that the lizard liked, she pushed for specifics. When it came to cooking, she asked if it was cooking or baking, whether she preferred sweets, sours, spicy things, or other flavors. When it was gaming, she asked for genres, for consoles, for specifications of what sort of systems she had and what their limits were. She asked for details on the game types, the makers, every single question that she could think of to make sure that she had all the variables penned down.

Art? What program, what method, whether she had a wish for something else, whether she did it for fun or for money and what she would do differently if she had more time and less worries.

Sex? What kind of people she liked, what things she wanted that were possible, things that were impossible, and the things in-between.

Through it all, Tatyana found her heart speeding up. She controlled it and her breathing and all the other little external signs of her excitement, but it did not dilute the experience. There was something about Ulti, something about the gentle, excited, open woman that made her want more. She didn’t even know what it was she wanted, just…more. More of her. More of this. More time to –

Ding ding.

Ding ding.

She looked in her bag. The remote that monitored device batteries warned her that the collar was overheating, losing charge. It must have been one of the older ones, damaged or something. She grimaced; she’d have to bring this to a halt.

Shaking her head, she reached for the recorder.

“Our time for this is coming to an end. When I finish this, I am going to tell you what happened. You will believe it. I will – I will be in touch, and I will arrange a better time for us to do our project.”

“Do we have to?”

Tatyana blinked.

“Do we have to? I…like this.”

“…”

“Can I do something for you? Before you go?”

“…Why?”

“I don’t know. I like you.”

“I…” Tatyana hesitated. “…Come with me.”

She stood up, carrying her bag – and Ulti’s after a moment’s hesitation, knowing that the lizard would forget it while in trance. The tigress walked into the store’s bathroom, waited for Ulti to step inside, then jammed the door shut. She pointed to the middle of the bathroom, waited for Ulti to walk over to it, and pulled an older camera from her bag.

“You want to do something for me?”

“Yes.”

“Then take off your clothes. I…want something to study while I set up our next meeting and come up with a project.”

Ulti nodded, slowly pulling at her shirt. She moved in what was clearly her memory of what a striptease looked like. It was clumsy, of course, as any remembered movements were under trance, but she was very willing. Tatyana watched, shaking her head as she turned on the camera.

This is new data, she thought, watching as the blue lizard gently discarded the shirt, leaving her in her bra, her pants, a pair of boots. I am not so…interested, usually. It is not so…engaging as this.

And yet, watching as Ulti undid her bra, letting her breasts free – with a little flop-bounce from them falling out – Tatyana felt quite similar to the various depictions of younger women seeing the person that they might one day fall in love with. She did not know if it was the same for her (highly doubted it, in fact), but the feeling was…strange, and engaging, and interesting, and…exhilarating, all at the same time.

As the lizard pulled at her pants, showing off the shift in scale color that delved between her legs, Tatyana watched in silence. The collar had a few minutes left; she could get at least one of the other woman showing off every inch of her body.

And that…that will be a lot to study…and a lot to find to make her happy…

People stayed with those that made them happy. She hoped she could find ways to make Ulti very, very happy.