Epilogue – Boredom and Boardings
Shi instinctively tried to stretch as she awoke, but found that she was just as tightly restrained as she was the last time she had risen from her catnap. She opened her eyes, found only darkness once more, wiggled her ears, heard only the muted, faint hum of the ship’s power core and engines through the rubber plugs in her ears, then sighed around the big rubber mass filling her mouth and proceeded to stretch her body as much as was allowed.
Had she known she would wind up so completely bored, she may have reconsidered blowing the power core and getting a jumpstart on her next reincarnation. The thought was a bit selfish certainly; Briar likely would have found himself in Erisaya’s realm, but the others? She wasn’t exactly sure of their faith. It wasn’t her right to make that kind of decision for any of them, honestly, not when there had been a chance at living for another day.
How long had she been trapped inside the Seal-Tech? It was easy to lose track of time when you were completely isolated with nothing to do. Well, nothing more to do; she’d exhausted every option she had at her disposal within a couple…hours? Days? Or at least, a couple of periods between consciousness and slumber.
Once Shi had woken up after her confinement within the Seal-Tech, her body still hurt, but she felt rested and refreshed, her magical reserves restored for what little it was worth. She had awoken to complete darkness of course, along with a constant pressure squeezing at her entire body, some parts more than others. Every inch of her had been covered by a skin-tight layer of Seal-Tech, but just being blinded, deafened, and silenced was only the first layer of restraint formed by the arca-tech creation.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize that she too had been fitted with a stout, cervical-style collar of thick rubber, keeping her head straight and almost completely unmovable. Thick bands had formed around her upper body, above and below her breasts, holding her arms firmly against her torso. Her forearms were crossed in front of her in a very tight self-hug, fists still balled up and pulled to opposing sides of her body around the corset-like formation of rubber holding her midsection in a not-quite-crushing grip; she could feel it every time she breathed, extending from the bottoms of her breasts all the way to the tops of her hips. Her legs were pressed tightly together, held there by no less than half a dozen stout straps, though she was fairly certain that a second layer of Seal-Tech had covered her legs beneath the straps, forming something of a sleeve that would have kept her legs together regardless of the extra straps. Even her feet weren’t forgotten, her toes pointed sharply downward into an en pointe position and held there by the Seal-Tech, though what little movements she could manage revealed that there were no heels to enforce the ballet-like position of her feet, just the rigidness of the rubber itself. Even her tail felt restricted, the rubber there making it very difficult to move it at all, the Seal-Tech seeming to want to force her tail to just curl up around her legs.
Though she realized it was most likely useless, Shi had wasted no time in testing her range of movement, finding that she could squirm and wiggle, lift her legs and bend them, with some difficulty, at the knees, but could manage little else. She felt like she was being held in place at the console, and after some additional tugs and jerks, assumed she was similarly cocooned like Hilde had been.
Interestingly enough, she could still feel her gun belts and harness upon her body, and the weight of all three of her revolvers still in the holsters. Apparently the Seal-Tech still couldn’t consume them or further manipulate the enchanted leather. Not that they did her any good at all, of course. She couldn’t exactly do a quick draw inside the straitjacket-like bindings, could she?
It hadn’t stopped her from experimenting, though. Once Shi had collected herself, she had started trying to tap into her magic. She knew that it was pointless, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying; there was always a chance that the strange, rampant Seal-Tech was different in some way from the refined stuff used in the dark elf prisons. She had been limited in what she could manage, of course, but she tried starting with the basics, just tapping into her reserves and creating flames on her hands, like she had done with Briar to try and burn away the Seal-Tech.
Though Shi could feel the magical energy waiting within her, she simply couldn’t utilize it. As she had expected, the Seal-Tech’s strange nature was somehow blocking her from manipulating that energy, as if there was a thin, impenetrable barrier between her and it. A barrier made of black latex, apparently.
After several failed attempts to create fire, Shi instead had focused entirely on just grasping the power, trying to force her way through that strange barrier. That was when the Seal-Tech took notice and reacted, constricting more tightly around her waist and throat, crushing the air from her lungs and preventing her from breathing in more. She immediately stopped her attempts, but the constriction had remained unyielding until she had spots flashing in her vision. Only when she was on the verge of passing out did it relent, returning to its previous tightness.
Memories of a previous experience, in another lifetime, flashed through her mind as she had frantically breathed in through her nose, of being just as helpless within the strange latex, of other punishments for trying to use her magic.
Never one to learn her lessons and be a good girl, Shi had of course tried again once she had recovered, several times in fact. Each time the Seal-Tech cut off her air in the same crushing way, only relenting when she was about to pass out. After the third time, it had shifted the way her body was held, forcing her legs back, bending her body into a backward arch position, stretching her to the point that her toes were touching the back of her head. The Seal-Tech had held her there for quite some time, until her body was crying for relief, aching and sore, on the level of the pain she had felt when she’d overdone it with her magic during her team’s ill-fated escape attempt. Then she had been released back to her previously bound state.
Over the hours…days?…weeks?…Shi had been contained within the Seal-Tech, she had made other attempts, of course, but each time it had ended with her breath being taken from her, followed by her body being placed into that painful, extreme arch. That told her some amount about the nature of this Seal-Tech, though. She specifically remembered having experienced additional types of punishments before, specifically electrical shocks, all over her body, especially the more sensitive areas.
She could remember pleasure too, vibrations that teased and edged relentlessly, of tickling sensations all over her body. None of those happened here, so perhaps this type of Seal-Tech wasn’t fully active, or was missing certain other aspects to its makeup? This version still had the life-support magic, though, as evidenced by the fact that she hadn’t starved to death, and hadn’t even begun to feel hungry, even after all the physical exertion she had gone through before her capture, and during her escape attempts.
Regardless, now that she had woken up again, finding no changes, Shi began the ‘workout’ routine she had developed for herself, mostly consisting of stretching her limbs and digits to their meager limits and doing crunches and awkward sit ups. It wasn’t much, but it kept her occupied for a little while at least. The Seal-Tech itself, despite its restrictive hold upon her, also seemed to keep the wearer’s body free of any great pains that it didn’t inflict, meaning that stiffness was lessened, and blood flow was maintained throughout the body despite any odd restraint positions. And she was never cold, her body kept at a rather comfortable temperature at all times instead of the sweltering conditions one might expect within a thick rubber suit.
Did the Seal-Tech do something to calm those trapped within it as well? Somehow, Shi hadn’t gone mad within her isolated state. Though she wasn’t certain how long she had been within the tight rubber, it felt like several days at least, and she hadn’t felt her sanity slipping yet. How would someone like Murissa handle it, though? Not everyone had the mental fortitude Shi possessed from her countless hours of study as an arcanist, after all, not to mention the benefit of many previous lives of experience.
It was during Shi’s latest workout that she detected a change in the muffled sound of the ship around her. The pitch of the humming grew higher, then began to fade. The ship lurched in a familiar way.
They had reverted back to normal space!
Shi rolled onto her side, then tucked her legs in and shifted her weight, awkwardly wiggling herself onto her knees. Though she was tethered to the console, her ‘cocoon’ had given her some small amount of mobility. She strained to listen to what was going on around her. She could just barely make out the sound of the TK-drive fading off to what seemed a normal level, the vibrations she felt through the Seal-Tech indicating the ship was slowing, the engines winding down and bringing them to a halt.
The silence was deafening in its own way. Shi turned her body as best she could, straining to pick up anything at all. For a time all she could hear was her own heartbeat, but then she felt a different kind of vibration, heard a loud metallic clang, then several more, echoing throughout the ship. Those were on the ship’s hull. Docking clamps!
After a few moments, a different kind of rumble could be heard, and she felt a rougher vibration. There was a more jarring shake to everything, then silence returned. Then there was another lurch, which Shi recognized as the ship once again entering hyperspace.
It had to have been another ship they had docked with. Since their TK-drive hadn’t revved up again, that was the only explanation that made sense. Who had picked them up, though? Was it DSM, or was it the dark elves? Someone else?
Shi would have to wait for a while longer before anything else happened. They remained in hyperspace for a long time, long enough that she had slept twice more, and gone through another half dozen exercise routines. She even tried tapping into her magic again, getting to enjoy another painful punishment session before they came out of hyperspace. This time there was a longer period within normal space, and finally more rumbling and clanging as the docking clamps were disengaged, only for another set to be secured to the hull.
Then there was more silence, leaving Shi tense. The dark elves certainly weren’t in a hurry.
Shi was actually startled out of another nap by the faint shouting of several voices. She jerked at her bonds as she came fully awake, again forcing herself to her knees. She could make out at least half a dozen voices then, all speaking the native dark elven tongue. Not DSM, thankfully, though there were still plenty of uncertainties ahead. Though she couldn’t see them, several individuals were moving around her, more than just the voices she had heard.
Shi let out a squeal into her gag, hopping up and down on her knees to draw their attention. She was reaching the limit on just how much she could handle not knowing what was going on, not to mention how much boredom she could take.
A moment later two people came up to her. One immediately grabbed onto the grip of the revolver still on her chest rig. He just as quickly screamed in agony as a crackle of electricity filled the air between them, boots thudding on the deck as he staggered backward and fell to the floor with a colorful stream of curses.
Shi winced, biting into the gag. She’d forgotten about that little security feature… She tried to speak, wiggled her bound arms back and forth, but it was far from coherent.
To Shi’s complete surprise, the other person in front of her grabbed at her special revolver too, yelping as another shock triggered from the unfamiliar touch. That person started cursing after they’d hit the floor too.
“Idiot! What is wrong with you?!” shouted a male voice over the curses, in quickly spoken dark elvish. “Was the first time not enough to teach you not to touch that gun? Get the collar on her and take her out of here! We’ll worry about those weapons later, not like she can use them anyway.”
There were some unintelligible murmurs from the two who had just gotten shocked, the first one picking himself up after a few moments. Shi felt a hand press roughly onto her head, the thick Seal-Tech collar shrinking and reshaping, merging with the rest of the latex coating her body, leaving her able to move her head for the first time since she had been consumed in the stuff. Another collar was quickly secured about her neck, though, the metallic lock snapping shut and beeping several times as an electronic component engaged. This collar was weighty and felt fully metal, but was not nearly as tall as the one that had just vanished, more like three inches or so.
The other person her gun had shocked took hold of Shi’s arm and hauled her upright so that she was balanced on her toes. Shi felt a tug at her neck, a leash, she realized, as she was urged forward. Grunting angrily, Shi tried to walk, but her legs were still bound tightly together. A firm slap on her backside made her squeal just as angrily, leaving her butt stinging as she took the hint and started hopping on her toes. She recalled that the Seal-Tech seemed to have an uncanny ability to keep those trapped inside with their feet trapped en-pointe upright, though her natural sense of balance from being a kerryn certainly didn’t hurt.
As Shi was being led away, she heard some faint, muffled shouts from the direction of Hilde, then felt the thump as something heavy hit the deck, followed immediately by a scream of pain. “Move it, prisoner!” said the guard holding her arm, in the common tongue, just before he slapped her ass again, just as the other one tugged at the leash.
Shi snarled into her gag, but kept moving, balancing precariously on her toes as she hopped along, her balance a bit off thanks to her being unable to move her tail as easily as she normally would. She didn’t care one bit for the guards’ antics, but would cooperate for now. She couldn’t really do anything to them after all, not unless she could find a way to force her special revolver into one of their hands, anyway. She would just have to play along until she could have a chance to speak with someone and try to get her team out of the mess they’d found themselves in. She had too many questions about what was going on that needed to be answered. A little more time inside the Seal-Tech wouldn’t matter, not with a burning desire for revenge on the asshole who had betrayed them burning within her.
And there we are, at the end of the tale of Red Team and the Black Ship!
I sincerely hope that you enjoyed that ride as much as I did. This story was one I wrote fairly quickly, over the course of about a month last year, and it has undergone some revision work all the way up until it was posted here as new developments in my setting have come from other stories. But, this one was special; I love the setup and story, but I really enjoyed the characters, though not all of them saw as much development as others.
But fear not, because THERE IS A SEQUEL!
That’s right! I’ve already written the second story of Red Team, and now that things have calmed down somewhat, I’ve expanded on the rest of the team and developed them further. You spent a lot of time with Shi in this one, and while she’s still the main character in the next story, you get a lot more time with the others as well.
I probably won’t be posting the sequel immediately, instead posting other stories in this setting and beyond, but it is out there and it is DONE. It took quite a bit more time to finish due to various circumstances, having been started in August last year but not being completed until March this year, but it is a much longer and more complex story, since I decided to switch through the other characters’ POVs. You also get a slower paced story, with more kinky situations in this one.
Planning has already begun on the third story, which is in the outline phase currently.
Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me this long! I really do hope this was a fun ride for you!
Stay tuned for something different next week!
Until then, Urban out!
Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server! I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!
