Mane smiled over at Effus. She was confused but trying to maintain decorum. She'd never been especially good at it. Effus was done filling out some paperwork and standing just inside the hab door with Melody in tow. The latter stood with a wide grin, wearing a cute dress and a collar. That was new, but if the plants referred to humans as "pets" then such a thing could hardly be considered a surprise. The sight still didn't sit quite well with Mane, though, who found it frankly rather off putting. Still, she didn't feel comfortable or safe voicing an objection. 

"You want to join us?" Asked Melody almost in song. Her smile was brilliant and soft and kind. The beauty of her soul practically made it shimmer with light. "My owner wants to meet you!" Mane wanted to say no, but she couldn't imagine her objections being taken seriously. She fought down the urge to be angry-because anger was deadweight to her here, as it had been her whole life-and nodded. She swallowed nervously and approached them. 

"I guess it wouldn't hurt," Mane mumbled under her breath in defeat. She came to a stop standing next to Melody, who took hold of her hand. It started to sink in for her that yes, Melody had submitted to the aliens, and yes, she'd submitted to a specific alien. Melody had an owner, an individual, just like Aria did. Would they be kinder than Effus? Angrier? A chill ran down Mane's spine. 

Fear. 

"It'll be okay!" Melody reassured her with a patient caring tone. "She's very sweet. You didn't think the aliens would give me just any old owner, did you?" Melody giggled and Effus extended two hands, one of which began to pet Melody while the other petted Mane. Melody relaxed and purred while Mane grew only more tense at the touch. Effus did not seem to notice. 

"Relax, dear. You don't want to force my hand do you?" Her vines' thorns seemed to contract and extend like a predator's fangs, glinting in the artificial light of the hab. The effect this had was anything but relaxing, but Mane knew better than to talk back. Feeling the weight of this sword of Damocles hanging over her head, she nodded weakly and tried not to grow pale. Surrender was inevitable, after all, so why should these plants bother pretending otherwise? 

"O-okay. Relaxed." Mane stammered out, "very relaxed." Effus seemed to smile wide. 

"Good girl." Effus' thorns seemed to return to normal and her smile widened. "Come, come, both of you." The hands petting the two humans shifted to take each of them by a hand of their own. Effus strutted off into the ship at large on massive, smooth strides. Melody somehow kept up just fine while Mane was left stumbling uselessly after them. She picked up her pace in an effort to catch up, in order to placate the alien, but her efforts bore no fruit. While she barely moved any faster, Effus only accelerated more and more, and in seeming defiance of the laws of physics Melody started skipping and gained enough speed to be side to side with the affini regardless. Mane opened her mouth to cry out after them only to trip over something on the floor. Her voice was intercepted by the dull thud of the ground striking her forehead. Mane clutched at it with her free hand, but had no time to spend in pain. The hand holding her pulled fiercely. Her body skidded along the smooth grassy floor of the ship and bumped into walls as she was yanked into and around corners. 

Mane's voice came back. She writhed uselessly and started to beg. 

"Please Effus come back! Please-!" Affini were watching. Sneering. Some shielded their pets' eyes as if the mere sight of this disobedient worm would harm them. Some whispered in tongues to each other, their voices ringing with the contempt of an ancient rattlesnake. She was exposed, alone, and in pain. "Please I'll surender! I'll-!"

"Keep up!" Melody taunted her from the other side of the appendage dragging Mane across the floor. She grabbed at foliage and kicked at dirt in an effort to crawl after them. She wanted to go home she wanted to go home she wanted to go home! 

Fuck. Had Melody told Effus? Did...did she know? Was Effus punishing her? Did...did the entire ship know? That she was a cold blooded sadist murderer? Mane's blood turned to ice water in her veins. She went limp yet again as more and more affini eyes planted themselves on her. They saw her. They saw right through her. She knew it. 

For the barest moment, rage towards Melody erupted through her body. It met the chill which had hold of her blood and went cold itself. Icy, coursing hate pulsed from Mane's heart, pumped through her fingers and pounding in her ears. Just as quickly as it came, though, shame and superior judgment excommunicated it from her. It might not be her fault, Mane reminded herself, they could have used hypnotics or drugs or both. Or perhaps Melody had remembered what it was to fear her, and cracked under the pressure. Mane couldn't blame her ex for that-she had always been such a timid thing. 

"I'm sorry Melody!" Mane sobbed. Her body crashed spine first into a wall and the shock numbed her limbs for a second. The snake gripping her hand dragged her through more grass and dirt without missing a beat. She spat out a mouthful of dirt and tried to ignore the rope burn-like sensation attacking her jaw. "Please someone HELP ME! I WANT OUT!" Her sobbing grew more and more erratic. The rope made of vines whipped up and down-

Slam!

Mane's entire body smashed into a conveniently placed bit of marble floors. She howled in agony and spasmed wildly. Her vision whipped about as she flailed and skidded painfully across the ground. Her arm twisted and pulled and squirmed against the affini's grip, until-yes! Mane was free! She flew off some four feet through the air and came crashing down on her shoulder into a roll. The world spun as she tumbled and panted. Pain. Dull, throbbing pain. It was packed tightly into every sore muscle in her battered body. It was ringing in her ears almost as loud as the gossip and scorn and laughter of the aliens watching her like a gladiator facing a lion with his bare hands. She rolled and crawled across the floor to some kind of alien fixture on the wall, which she had no understanding of, and gripped it in an effort to stand. Slowly, with tremendous effort, she rose to her feet. 

Eyes. She could feel them. So many eyes, incomprehensible and old and full of malice. Eyes that looked on her with smug disdain and uncompromised loathing. Mane's head turned all about in an effort to find some avenue of escape. The halls seemed to bend inward on her.everything was hazy and congested and there wasn't room anywhere to run. 

A vine wrapped around her leg. Mane started to instinctively kick, but she was too slow. With speed dwarfing the one earlier, it stabbed thick curled thorns through her. Mane's mouth shot open to scream-

She had no voice. 

The vine wrenched Mane's leg out from under her. Mane's body spun in place and her head smashed instantly into the floor. She hovered there for a moment, stunned in pain, until the vine wrenched her violently through the air. She struck one wall after another at a hateful velocity. New bruises and tears opened in her skin with each impact. She was yanked crying through the air into another hab with an affini bigger than Effus. Instinct told Mane immediately who this was: the only possibility was Cordi, Melody's owner. Mane's heart took off to its maximum output in awestruck horror. She tried to tell her weary body to move, to writhe, to fight, but she couldn't. Her limbs were too heavy and too numb. The affini scowled at her. 

"I know what you DID," It seethed at her in a voice like a shitty rusted engine screeching to life, "I know who you ARE." The monster's vine hurled Mane into the air and smashed her into the floor so hard she broke a crater into it. Blood oozed down her leg from the site where it gripped her. Mane's mouth burst open and only weak, strangled gasps came crawling out of it. She trembled in fear and misery. Tears rolled hot down her face. "You think your tears will save you!?" More vines, with thorns half a foot long and multiple inches thick, tore into her. The daggerlike appendages shredded through her skin and pierced down into bone.

Mane's body flailed in horror. Veritable geysers of blood blasted out of her body all over her where the vines were lacerating her. The affini ripped and tore until Mane had nary a muscle left in her that hadn't been sliced to ribbons. Her flailing weakened and her pain grew orders of magnitude stronger. The vine around her leg relinquished its grip and a gigantic hand engulfed her entire torso. The beast lifted her and smashed her into the ground several times with increasingly naked sadism. 

"Now let me hear you CRY, SON OF CAIN!"

Mane's voice came back online and billowed out of her in a hoarse scream of bloodcurdling, hair raising terror. The hand oozed some kind of sap into her that stung like acid. Mane squirmed in vain but escape from this giant's grasp was impossible. Her skin peeled away only for a new layer to calcify into its place. In seconds she was healed, yet the pain refused to leave her. 

"Tell me, insect-shall I take your arms off or your ribs?" Mane opened her mouth to answer but vines seized her by the teeth and stuffed themselves in until her mouth was trapped open as far as it could possibly be forced to open. "Or shall I take your teeth? Or your EYES?" Tears rolled down Mane's eyes as she kicked uselessly at the air. She tried to plead for mercy, for forgiveness, even for death, but nothing escaped through the gag between her jaws. A vine curled up over the affini's shoulder like a scorpion's tail. "I'll make everything right, pet. But you hurt my Melody, and I will-I can-NEVER FORGIVE YOU!" A single barbed thorn at the end of that vine dripped some liquid she didn't recognize, likely drugs. 

Please, no, anything but that, Mane wanted to beg, the torture was better than that, please-!

--------------

"Mane," Effus cooed gently, concern thick in her voice. She tapped a switch on the other side of the room and the hab's lights came on, "Mane, are you okay?" Mane didn't respond. She kicked wildly at the air, her sheets long since knocked halfway to the floor, and despite her eyes being closed with sleep her face was powerfully compressed with an expression of discomfort and horror. "Mane!" Still, nothing. Effus reached out to the little human and, ever so carefully, placed a hand on her arm. "Mane-wake-"

"AaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Mane screamed. Her entire body exploded into a violent fit of flailing as she burst up half a foot from the bed. She seized her sheets in one hand, yanked them over herself, and went into a ball with her arms over her face, and screamed "PLEASE ENOUGH DON'T HURT ME I'M SORRY!!!!" Effus felt a terrible wind rustle her flowers at the utterly soul crushing despair in the girl's voice. 

"Dear," Effus tried to whisper, "It's okay. You're s-"

"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" Mane less demanded than begged between heavy sobs. "GO GO GO GO GO AWAY!!!!" Effus's leaves curled tight in a mix of worry, fear, and annoyance. This wouldn't be HAPPENING if Mane would...just…no. If she just drugged her into compliance, Mane might never trust her again. That could solved with more drugs easily enough, of course, but…

"If our 'happiness' is so important, why not class-O our entire species!" She could hear Mane screaming at her inside her core. She felt, perhaps selfishly, that drugging the fight out of Mane would be letting her win. Admitting that Mane was right, and that the affini really didn't care about humans so much as they cared about making them 'happy.' She'd fix Mane on her own damn terms, and she'd make whatever brainless concessions Mane foolishly insisted on hobbling herself with, if only out of spite. 

Effus tried to put those dark thoughts out of her mind. She was annoyed, sure, but that was a frankly insophontic (was that a word?) way to think about a poor little human. She frowned and pondered her options. The affini decided to get some help...even if it meant stooping to getting it from another human-a floret, even. 

The things she did for those in her care. 

"Melody?" Effus called as she moved towards Aria's room. There was a thumping on the other side as the human in question woke up and groggily made her way over to the door. It opened and she stood there in baggy star-patterned pjs, clutching at a pillow. 

"Yes, Effuscia Second Bloom?" Melody yawned. 

"The ward had a nightmare and isn't responding to-" Melody's eyes dilated with horror and she seemed to be jolted awake. Before Effus could finish, Melody bolted past her over to Mane's bed to console her. Effus' body slumped and loosened. Good.

"I'm going back to sleep, let me know if she really needs my help," Effus said to nobody, hopefully at a high enough volume for Melody to hear. She returned to her bed, collapsed into it, and let sleep take her.