Kor|Thak dun Reth (Gold Star Reviewer) – The Apex Cut, 6-1
Genuine beef is the draw of Apex Cut. This is noted, and respected. The cut was correct. Preparation was not. I requested char, with proper crust aroma and volatile seal. I was served what is called “Well Done,” which is lifeless, with no distinction or layering, and poor texture. Establishment is highly rated and offers Tokh seating. The server was kind and understanding. Suggestion: Hire a proper Tokh chef and expand the menu. Can not recommend presently. Two of five stars.
Vael and I walked out of the portal looking like we were carrying a small bazaar’s worth of natural animal products. She was in her sleek suit, flashing a dazzling smile, shaking hands, and chatting with the people standing guard on the other side.
I, on the other hand, looked like I just stepped out of a warzone where I’d personally mass-murdered people with a glorified steak knife. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too far off the truth of the matter.
Vael was shouldering the raw mass of the haul as if it were a big framed bag full of pillows. I was pretty sure there was at least 60 kilos of prime boar cuts in her pack, not to mention the rolled hides strapped to the external webbing. Meanwhile, I was still getting used to having a bunch of weight on my back. The bag and the frame did their job and distributed the load to my hips effectively. I didn’t feel overly fatigued carrying it around, but the added inertia and changes to my center of mass were something that was going to take practice. Vael suggested tossing some weights into the bag and wearing it around as a multi-purpose training tool. I could see it, but right now, my mind was elsewhere.
She hailed a larger automated transport for the ride back to her place. I had some strapped loot hanging under the bottom of my pack, and my tail also helped conceal the wardrobe failure. She insisted that nobody could see anything, but I was still extremely self-conscious about it. It was relatively early in the day still. Portal time didn’t run on city time; portal worlds could have all sorts of different solar cycles, ranging from no cycle at all, to extremely short or long day cycles.
We discussed what to do with the remainder of the day. I needed a little time and… space, and I think she intuitively picked up on that, because she offered to run out and sell off our proceeds while I was doing a deep clean. We made it back to her apartment without me feeling like I might die of embarrassment.
I let out a huge sigh of relief, set down my pack, and immediately started peeling layers off.
“Where’s your ultrasonic?”
She looked up from examining my pack. “Hm? Oh, I have a dry cleaner, over there, behind that door.” She pointed it out to me, off to one side of the central living space.
“I don’t know how much of this is going to be wearable, but I’ll wash it either way. I don’t want to lose the recycling credit of trading it in dirty.”
“I set aside the products we used last time for you. I’ll be back shortly, okay? I’m just running over to a place down the street.”
I gave her a thumbs-up and made my way into the master bathroom as soon as I’d gotten my boots off. I had to dig out the laces.
My underwear was the most intact and least disgusting of all my clothing, and I peeled out of them in the bathroom.
Hot water greeted me in a sensual embrace that I could feel all the way in my soul.
I leaned forward and planted my hands on the wall, and let the water blast my front and run down my back. It was a foul shade of brown and black by the time it hit the floor.
Here in the shower, with nothing between me and the world, I let the crude levees I’d erected around myself come tumbling down. Within minutes, my breathing was ragged, and my eyes were doing their best to contribute to the water budget.
I’d done a good job of remaining in Dive mode, even during the downtime.
Game face game strong.
After I’d fully relubricated my eyes revisiting being elbow deep in monster guts and furiously stabbing pig-monsters in the eye socket, I grudgingly got to work cleaning myself up.
I can’t get over how soft and sensitive my skin is. I’m still not entirely used to it. I think the full-coverage Dive gear was helping with insulating and isolating the feelings.
I let my hands wander while I washed, pretending that was all I was doing. My body continued to surprise me. My waist dipped inward; my hips certainly did not. My lower back curved into the base of my tail, and the fuller shape behind it made me freeze for a moment. Shapes that hadn’t existed a week ago, somehow alien and familiar at the same time.
I had to address the parts of my body I knew full well that were different. I couldn’t exactly ignore them while washing. The new additions to my body drew eyes like scrappers magnet fishing, and after a day and a half of sweating through fighting and travel, I’d learned that they also trapped heat like a personal sauna.
They needed actual, thorough cleaning.
I’d been prepared for the weight and softness. The way they refused to stay put unless forcibly negotiated into a confined space.
I had not been prepared for certain areas being absurdly sensitive. One careless brush sent a sharp jolt through me that made me nearly lose my footing.
I froze.
“Absolutely not,” I muttered at my body, as if it could hear me.
Then I made the mistake of adjusting the sprayers.
Water pressure, I discovered, was apparently a tactical weapon.
I nearly folded in half and spent several seconds glaring at the wall like I’d been personally attacked.
Being ambushed by my own nervous system is deeply unfair.
I was in the middle of fighting like hell to wash hair that was significantly more of a pain in my ass than I recalled it being when the door opened and an unapologetically naked Vael strolled in. Either she had been scary fast, or I’d been in here longer than I thought.
“I think you’ll be pretty happy with your payday. Sold the meat off to a Tokh supplier. They pay top credits for meat, especially if it’s a quality product to begin with.”
I cleared my throat and turned away to hide my sudden anxiety. “Was it? Quality product, I mean?”
“Low tier, so not the most valuable in terms of mana density, but fresh, real pork? Yes, very much so.”
She stepped into the shower. My nose immediately picked up her scent. Sweat, but more than just sweat. Spicy, a little floral, maybe the faintest traces of citrus.
Cardamom and peppercorn, maybe?
“Let me give you a hand with that?” she asked while running her claws through my hair.
I nodded quickly, but didn’t trust my voice enough to speak. Her tail wrapped around my lower leg, and she crowded in behind me to share the water flow while applying product and working her fingers in my hair.
“This was one of the mutations I noticed. Have you found others?” Vael asked me.
“My hair?”
“Mhm! Maybe you’ll notice better when it’s all washed, but you’ve really lucked out.”
I swallowed. “What’s…?” I let the question linger.
“It’s so much fuller and healthier. Your vitality aspect is expressing in your mutations. You’ve got hair people would kill for, although you’ll probably have some adjustment period and maybe some growing pains.”
“Growing pains, like my ass exploding out of my pants,” I snarked dryly.
She dropped a hand to my flank and asked: “May I?”
Sighing, I gave her the go-ahead. She poked and prodded my hips, thighs, and the fuller curve behind them. When she was done, she leaned over and rested her chin on my shoulder. “You gained a good amount of muscle mass. Something subtle with your skin, too, but it’s hard to say what it is, exactly.”
“Great. I’ve always wanted to crush monster skulls with my thighs.”
Vael belted out a full, loud series of laughs at that. I couldn’t help but grin a bit.
Showering with her was… pleasant. Distracting, intimate, bad for my nerves, but only for the first minute or two. Caring and sensual-seeming, but chaste. More… attentive care. I wondered if this was a Vael thing or a Sul’vari thing in the back of my mind.
Drying my hair was a chore. Squeeze the water out, wrap in microfiber. Brush and blow-dry in sections, only to find I’d still missed spots. Vael was helping, which made me feel like I was useless, but seemed to tickle her pink. Well, not pink. Darker red than normal.
“I’ll brush your hair for you anytime, Kiera, it’s so relaxing!” She’d said, nearly gushing while fawning over my hair.
Sitting on the couch between her legs while she groomed me made me feel absurdly vulnerable. Every brush through my hair sent a shiver down my spine. She was using her aspect to dry my hair while brushing it without needing a dryer, and I noticed her warming me up—literally—with it as well. She applied a scented oil, which smelled strong to me. She told me it was light.
I thought I’d inherited a pig-bear-monster nose mutation. She told me it didn’t work like that, but one thing was certain. After a few short tests, I had a significantly stronger sense of smell. More powerful, and more discerning, too.
We finished up, and I was back in a strappy thong, harem pants, and a stretchy short-sleeve top. I made a deliberate effort to push outside my comfort zone and wrangled myself into an admittedly pretty bra. It left floral imprints on the thin material of the shirt. A once-over in the mirror showed a Kiera that looked softer and prettier. Her hair was shining and filled out the space above her shoulders in a lovely way.
She seemed entirely too well put together for someone who felt like she was improvising her own existence daily.
Vael drifted up alongside me and draped an arm over my shoulders, bringing her head in to show her fanged smile appearing beside the faint blush of the woman in the mirror. Her eyes moved over me from the bottom up in what my brain read as openly appreciative. The tip of her tongue met her lips as her eyes lazily traveled over my torso.
Is she?
I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I did nothing.
The moment passed, and she asked me, as brightly as ever, “So! Tomorrow is your big appointment upstairs. Do you have any plans for the rest of today?”
I shook my head slowly.
“I have an idea of things to do, would you like to hear it?”
“Okay,” I admitted while feeling the gentle tug of rising curiosity.
“I can tell you were frustrated with your knife and gun in the Dive,” she said, and I interrupted her with a heavy sigh. She only grinned. Here was the I told you so I’d been expecting.
“You mentioned upgrades with your take. How would you like to make a trip out of the rest of the day and go to a crafting guild to try things out and see what you like? I’d be happy to get us a hotel to spend the night in, and then we don’t have to make a second trip tomorrow.”
I froze in place.
Going to X-1, to a real crafting guild. The corporate-level checkpoints. A place I’ve only seen in vids.
I think I might have started trembling slightly, because Vael squeezed my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I promise it’s not as bad as you’re imagining it to be, and you’ll have fun, too.”
My heart thumped in my chest. “But–I mean, I want to go see a guild. Really badly! But I’m a threecit, aren’t they going to try and run me off the sector the moment I go up there?”
Her teeth were gleaming in a decidedly wolfish manner. Two claws ran up my jaw and tapped just to the side of each eye. “Forgetting something already, aren’t we?” she whispered to me, her tone matching her teasing claws.
Warmth rose up my chest and into my neck, embarrassment at first, and then something harder below it.
Anger.
“Is that really all it takes? You’re just born into it or selected by cosmic lottery?”
She drew her lips together, but they were still upturned. More serious, with a hint of mirth. “I agree that Human social structures are very alien, and we think them strange and unjust as much as you might think us odd. Don’t think that my reminder is an endorsement, just a statement of practicality.”
I sighed again, softer this time. “It wasn’t aimed at you, just, ugh, a reminder of how things sit. Sometimes it’s nice to forget the sensation of the boot on your back.” I thought about it for a moment. “It won’t be too expensive, will it? The trip, I mean?”
Vael immediately brightened. “Don’t you worry yourself over my budget. I want you to focus on the lessons you’ve taken out of your first Dive and think about gear, hmm? That was a yes, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Vael. I’ll go.”
She straightened and beamed. “Give me a minute to get ready, and then we’ll go! Since we’re still lugging around a good amount of hide, I think we’ll get personal transport up. Fewer potential questions!”
I grabbed my slate and e-wallet, did a final check, then went out to the living area. Vael came streaming in a couple of minutes later with an outfit that was very similar to mine. I gave her a look.
“What can I say, it’s a good look, and you inspired me!” She combined the packs down to just hers, the bigger of the two. There was much more room now that the meat had been sold off, and she didn’t have to have rolls of hide strapped to the side every which way.
She handed me a small stack of chits, and I thought she was fucking with me.
Eight thousand credits!? For monster meat? I mean, it was a huge amount, but still!
I frowned as I counted them a second time. “This can’t be right. It’s too much, and didn’t you take your cut?”
Vael laughed at me. “For what? Putting things in a backpack that I planned on filling anyway? Kiera, you did 100% of the work. I’m not charging you to show you the ropes and teach you basic skills.”
I made several arguments while we waited for transport to arrive, but she shot them all down.
I used a chit kiosk in the lobby of her building to deposit the chits directly into my wallet. No way in hell was I walking around with that in liftable form, ride or not.
Our taxi was a box on wheels with aircon, a ring of seating, and expansive, one-way windows. A great view from inside, and covered in valuable digital advertising space on the outside.
We settled in for what was estimated to be a half-hour ride. I was reclining in my seat and playing with my fingernails next to her. Vael, as usual, was pressed up against my side, sitting far closer than she needed to, like distance was an optional concept that didn’t register to her.
It had been bothering me for a while.
“Vael… what am I to you?” I immediately regretted how that sounded, like I’d just dropped a philosophical grenade into our taxi. I coughed and cleared my throat.
Vael was quiet for a moment, still pressed against me like the question hadn’t changed anything.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” she said finally.
My stomach tightened.
She tilted her head slightly, eyes on the passing lights and people outside the taxi. “Sul’vari don’t categorize people the way Humans do. Not really. We don’t put things in boxes like ‘friend,’ ‘family,’ ‘sexual partner.’ Those things overlap for us constantly.
A faint squeeze of her arm on my shoulder. The press of her breast against mine. Not possessive… just there.
“You’re someone I chose to take responsibility for,” she continued. “Someone I like, someone I’d trust in combat. Someone I quite enjoy being around.”
She added more softly, “And yes, I also think you’re quite attractive. That part isn’t separate from the rest of us the way it is for you.”
My brain sputtered and stalled out.
Vael sighed lightly, an amused hum. “But that doesn’t mean what you think it means. Not automatically. Not urgently. Not in a way that overrides other things. I was born on Earth, and I grew up immersed in Human culture. I understand these things better than the generation before me does.”
She looked over at me and smiled. “Right now, you’re safe. You’re important to me, and there isn’t something I’m trying to get out of you.”
“But what about the people I see you… full-kissing, like Ellen and the shop owner?”
That should be reassuring, but it makes my mind wander into rabbit holes.
She shifted closer, pushing more physical contact between the two of us. Enough to demonstrate that we could have been much closer all along, if she’d wanted to be.
“Human relationship structures don’t map cleanly onto ours,” she continued. “We use physical contact to communicate different things. Not as a progression to sexual intimacy.”
My face was hot, and I frowned. “Different things, like what?”
Vael studied my face for what felt like a short eternity, then nodded to herself.
“Do you want me to show you?”
My brain stalled, then lurched forward to catch back up in a rush of uncertainty. “Show me what?”
“Sul’vari taste greeting. You recognize it as kissing, but that’s not quite accurate.”
I hesitated. Swallowed. Nodded.
Vael adjusted her posture so she was facing me directly and took my hands in hers, palm-to-palm.
“There are three forms, and they mean different things, so pay attention, please.” She was grinning at me, one fang peeking over her bottom lip.
I bobbed my head in agreement once more.
“First is a casual greeting, what you would do with a friend or an acquaintance. It has a short or a medium duration based on how strong your relationship is. Stronger is longer. Low intensity. I recognize this is probably hard for you, so you initiate, just know that who initiates is meaningless in actual practice.”
With my heart in my throat, I moistened my lips and leaned forward. Vael gave my hands an encouraging squeeze. Our lips met in what was barely a peck, and I froze up. Her tongue slithered out and crossed my lips to meet mine. She led with slow, almost lazy swirling motions.
After a moment, she pulled her head back and shook it. “No, Kiera, you need to reciprocate; or it reads as an insult, like the other person doesn’t deserve recognition.”
I think I nodded. I wasn’t really all that aware of what was going on outside Vael’s face.
She taste greeted me again, and this time I followed the instruction. She pulled back with a smile that had her eyes crinkled up at the corners. “Nice work! That was on the short side, but the intensity tells you it’s casual, okay?”
“O-oh. Okay. Do you count seconds?” I asked, my voice sounding dumb as hell in my ears.
She giggled. “No, don’t count seconds. It’s based on feel and the other party. Now, are you ready to learn a formal greeting?”
I swallowed. “What er, what defines a formal greeting?”
That earned me another bright smile. “Family, close friends, business or work partners, agreement to trades or deals—if the other party is literate in our practices.”
“That… seems complicated. I’m worried I’ll get it mixed up.”
Vael laughed again and slowly shook her head. “No, don’t sweat it at all. Simply participating in the practice as a Human shows a cultural openness that’s extremely complimentary to a Sul’vari, as most Humans have very strong social stigma and taboos around our practices. If you use the wrong one, I promise you it won’t be held against you.”
I leaned forward.
She reminded me, “Remember, short, high intensity.”
The difference was immediate and unmistakable. Lazy swirling had been replaced with fairly aggressive wrestling and jousting.
I had to take a breath when she was done demonstrating it. “You um. You do that with your family?”
The thought was breaking my brain a little, but I was doing my best to keep an open mind.
She nodded energetically. “With family, it runs longer, not shorter. The closer the relationship, the more you’d give. A Sul’vari who greeted their mother the way you just greeted me would be saying something quite cold.” She released my palms after one more squeeze, and turned back to her original position at my side.
I took a moment to think and calm down. “What about the third one?” I asked after collecting my thoughts.
She looked over to me and grinned. “That’s the one that would be like your tongue kissing. The intimate form. It can be any intensity, but is defined by being long, always.”
I squeezed my hands together. “So… if you were trying to like, signify you were dating or married, or trying to… you know, escalate to uh… sex?”
“Exactly! I know it’s confusing, because your kind distinguishes intent by location, although different Human cultures do vary a lot about this.” She held up a claw. “One quick note, though. Marriage for Sul’vari is purely a political and legal framework. It has nothing to do with the intent to have children or declare monogamy.”
I was suddenly reminded of something I’d heard, but had never had the chance to actually validate.
No time like the present, I suppose.
“Vael, is it true that Sul’vari consider monogamy offensive?”
An appropriately serious look came over her face, and she nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s extremely offensive to our culture. Intercourse for us carries a lot of different meanings, like taste greeting. Bonding, affection, pleasure exchange, socialization–it is all of these things, and none are privileged. The least common form of intercourse between Sul’vari is the kind intended for reproductive coordination. That’s entirely out of the question for someone with whom you haven’t shared a significant amount of life experience, or a political pairing.”
“How do you keep jealousy and infighting from breaking out?” I murmured, mostly to myself.
She beamed a stunning smile at me.
“We have a saying for that very concept: ‘Vael’sur A’eth,’ which means ‘to overflow with warmth for others.’”
I blinked rapidly. “Isn’t that… just your name?”
Another laugh. “My name is Vael’Sura, and it translates to ‘bright presence’ or ‘a warm being,’ so they’re closely related!”
We’d boarded a Deepwell a minute or so ago, and it had apparently finished loading, because there was a soft nudge and the sensation of vertical motion. We were close to one of the edges, having loaded in early, and I could see the big pie wedge structure of 5-3, and its strata dropping away.
Twelve sectors forming a full circle, each separated from the other by full-length megastructure walls eight hundred meters high. Three layers to the entire city, each separated by a massive plate supported by the inner sector walls and outer defense wall. Four hundred meters between plates, with some structures extending through plates to have presence in multiple sectors.
I knew that most of the corporate arcologies that occupied a major chunk of the ground space on X-1 penetrated through and had their ‘feet’ hanging above X-2. They served as loading, shipping, and deployment docks to the lower city.
It was rare for a threecit to get a proper feel for the true scale of the city from the claustrophobic lives we lived in X-3. Seeing it now, even just a small piece of it, a single sub-sector, it was… breathtaking.
“Even with all the filth, the crime, and the death, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I mused. “The city itself, I mean.”
I had my mom’s beaded bracelet on, and my right thumb was circling her icon of Four.
Vael chuckled and gave me side-eye. “Are you sure you’re not part Tokh?”
I gave her a questioning look. “They have a serious appreciation for engineering, pretty much at a species-level. It’s one of the things you and they share in common. It was a combination of earned respect from battle, failure in sieging the Arks, a burning desire to see what's inside of them, and how it worked that wound up creating the peace between your species.”
Sul’vari came in peace. The Tokh invaded with the intent to eject us from the planet and seize control of it for their empire. It’s weird to think that one of our strongest allies was once a mortal enemy.
Vael offered her hand to me, and after only a moment’s hesitation, I took it. “Are we going to keep diving together?” I asked her.
“Do you want to?”
My feelings about her were still a tangled ball of yarn I wasn’t prepared to unpack at the moment. I was getting a strong inclination towards my feelings on this specific matter, though.
“I’d really like that. I–I don’t want to have to feel like I sold my soul to go work for a corporation, and I don’t know anyone in the world of guilds. No family, no associations.”
She rocked her head from side to side and hummed under her breath.
It felt like several minutes passed while we sat and rode the massive cargo elevator up to X-2. They weren’t fast, but they could move damn-near-literal mountains.
There was… a vulnerability I wasn’t expecting to hear in Vael’s voice when she finally spoke. “I went on hiatus with my guild and took a break from formal diving after Rill died. I haven’t officially done a Dive in years, and I’ll be honest with you, Kiera. I’m not convinced I’m ready to go back.”
She laid her other hand on top of mine. Warm, as always. We made eye contact.
She continued, “But I have to admit that I did have quite a lot of fun with you yesterday and today. I’m out of form and let my metabolism drop back down. I’d have to get my actual gear from home.”
She wrinkled up her nose at that last bit. “I’ll make you a deal,” she offered.
I nodded along.
“If you’ll take training seriously and keep listening to more experienced divers to improve, then I–” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll do my best to work on getting over my own issues with returning to Diving.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and bobbed my head rapidly. I’d felt my stomach drop to the seat of my harem pants when I’d thought she was turning me down. Now it was back up and higher than it should have been, all fluttery.
The taxi jostled once more, and we’d arrived on 5-2. The barricades came down, and we stayed put while the rest of the huge platform offloaded people on foot, cars, trucks, and huge cargo vehicles.
It was so bright outside, and we weren’t even in the area where sunlight was streaming down from the ports in the plate above. There was even some greenery, with potted plants hanging from the front of buildings and larger pots in medians between the streets.
So this is what the middle-class experience is like. It’s such a dramatic difference. I can’t even imagine what X-1 is like.
“We’ll have to put together a team and get papers,” Vael said, interrupting my rubbernecking out the window. The lift was now loading, and I expected we’d be back underway within a minute.
I looked over to her, and she had a somewhat distant, but thoughtful expression on her face. “Why? Can’t the two of us just do it? Less split, less drama. You know I soloed nearly exclusively.”
She glanced over at me, a soft smile on her lips. “It’s a pretty solved formula, Kiera, although we can certainly build a non-standard team to run with. Three to six people are optimal for Dives. You get better carrying capacity, better coverage of skillsets and abilities, and you run Dives at a more efficient pace. The difference in pace, plus the ability to take out a greater volume and more varied materials, means you’re actually making substantially more per hour, and also minimizing your risk profile.”
I’d heard all the arguments before. I knew these things front to back. I still felt a sense of disappointment and apprehension.
“I don’t want to–”
She interrupted me mid-sentence. “And you don’t have to. Do what you want to do, Kiera, and grow your abilities in the direction you want to take them. Just because there are conventions and trends doesn’t mean they’re automatically correct. When it comes to team running and size, the math is what it is. When it comes to composition and tactics, there are good rules of thumb, but there aren’t hard rules and definitions.”
I studied her eyes. She didn’t look away. A smile broke out on my face, and I told her, “Thank you, Vael. That… really means a lot to me. Maybe I’m being silly or stubborn, but I really don’t want to feel like I’m an accessory.”
She tilted her head over and lightly knocked it against mine. “So don’t be one. That starts by figuring out what sort of gear you want to use. I assume you’re planning on making changes?”
I let out an explosive sigh. “Yeah. You can say that again. I had some ideas, maybe you could help me with them?”
She shook her head. “No. What you need to do is get hands-on with people who know what they’re doing, and find what feels right for you. When you have narrowed it down to one or more things, then you can debate the merits. Anything else is a frustrating waste of your time. You could be dead-set on using one weapon or style, and then find out you actually can’t stand it when you try it.”
Nibbling my lower lip, I conceded the point. She’d been right so far about pretty much everything she’d told me.
I just needed to trust that she wasn’t going to mislead me.
I glanced out the window of the taxi.
It’s probably going to be harder to get past my own hangups and preconceptions than it will be to trust her.