It was the mechanic’s idea, of course. It was surprisingly easy to sneak the Raptor out of the hangar and to the mechanic’s berth; they both lay under the covers of the girl’s bed, skin pressed against soft metal. She was exploring the F-22’s body, curious and eager. The aeroplane was entirely fine with this development.
“…so this is-”
“Secondary pressure release v-hn-v-valve.”
“What does it feel like when I do this?”
“A-ah…Don’t!…or I’ll start to leak all over your bed.”
The plane pushed the girl’s hands away and frowned. “Some parts of my chassis are more sensitive than others. They are sensitive in order to allow me to gauge the volume of any leaks or blockages.”
The girl snuck her hands around and started massaging the plane’s auxiliary fuel tanks. A new experience for the Raptor. She hissed in a little gasp, and then let the mechanic play with them at her leisure.
“Sooo…you don’t have a pilot, right?”
“This is correct.”
The mechanic looked up at the Raptor’s vibrant, yet…quite dozy eyes. “…can I be your pilot?”
“Absolutely not. I may injure you. You are not trained for the duty. Your body would most likely rupture if I performed even the most basic of manoeuvres. You would lose your job. I would be decommissioned for putting you at risk.”
“Not even for a little bit? Nobody will know,” the mechanic replied, pinching the valves and making the plane jump.
“NH! Do not-”
The mechanic grinned and clamped down, pulling them away from each other. The Raptor’s readouts went a little crazy, and she was forced to bite down on a squeaky little outburst.
“Alright! Okay, I’ll let you-” She pried the girl’s fingers away from her valves and sat up on the bed, back facing her. “-but I refuse to activate any of the neural connections. You will be essentially trapped in a small, metal coffin.”
“Awesome,” the girl replied, running her hands over the plane’s back. It made the Raptor wonder if any of what she just said past ‘okay’ was even noticed. Her back slowly split down the middle, nanofiber meshwork splitting like sticky flesh being pulled apart. Her interior was just as technologically advanced as the rest of her. And a yellow-and-black pattern, something that her technicians had insisted on as an inside joke.
“This is…what I was meant to be doing. I have wished this to happen for…my entire existence, but I failed, and I never thought-” The Raptor didn’t know why she was speaking, but it felt right.
The girl pushed her leg into the sheath of the Raptor’s, and the feeling of being full again, even in part, made the plane shudder and sigh. Internal sensors picked up on the girl’s biological rhythms-heartbeat, blood pressure, the impulses sent by her nerves, the level of moisture on the girl’s skin, its salinity…
The girl slid her other leg inside and wiggled her butt into the aeroplane’s, pushing her arms into the waiting sleeves as well.
“You’re tired. Dehydrated…heartbeat is elevated, but not outside of acceptable parameters. Oxygen levels are optimal.”
“How do you…?”
The Raptor turned her head, smiling. The last worries fell away like rain off a duck’s back. She didn’t care any more. If this didn’t work, she wouldn’t want to go on anyway. “Get in and I’ll show you, my pilot.”
The mechanic reddened, and ducked her head inside the Raptor’s. The sensation of the plane sealing over her back sent a worried shiver down her spine. Trapped inside, no way out, but…she didn’t really care about that anyway. It was slightly cool and completely silent inside the plane. The mechanic couldn’t move her arms or legs, and everything was pitch-black. She was about to ask what was going on, then she felt an odd pressure at her ears.
It was kind of like liquid, or a worm; a warm tendril of some kind pushing into her head while it was held stock-still. It made her want to scream, and she did-but she knew the sound wouldn’t carry past the plane’s inner shell.
When it finally stopped, and she finally stopped panicking, she realised that one of the voices in her head was talking to her. It didn’t feel like anything other than her own train of thought, but some part of her knew it was the Raptor. That’s who it sounded like, but it didn’t sound anywhere near as…severe as the plane normally did.
“Please! Hey, stop…stop screaming, please, you’re scaring me. Hello? Can you hear me?”
The mechanic tried to reply, opening her mouth. Something else suddenly pressed against her lips, a smooth, rubbery bundle of nanofibers unfurling down her throat. She gagged and tried to scream again, but it only came out as a gurgle. Her throat, coated, didn’t seem to respond quite as well as before.
“-ear you think, just think of what you want to say, try-”
The mechanic let out a panicked mental scream, incoherent and terrified.
“-WORDS. Think WORDS-”
She found it hard; the Raptor was incredibly tight against her flesh, and the parts inside her were pulsing and moving about.
Then the exhaust and aux intake tubes slid into place, another hot, wet, goopy pressure inside her body soon making itself apparent.
It made her thrash-try to thrash-and scream. In a perverse way, the mechanic felt like she was enjoying it. She was the one leaking now.
On the outside, the plane was still on the bed. Mostly still, anyway…there was the errant twitch of an arm, and the decidedly odd look on the plane’s face. She was…crying? She didn’t know the emotion she was feeling very well, somewhere between joy and sadness and something else, thorough enough to skew her readings. The intimate connection to her pilot, the thing she’d been yearning for…it was finally happening.
Even if she was freaking out.
Eventually, it stopped, and so did she, going limp inside the aeroplane.
“Are you done? Geez, I didn’t take you for a screamer.”
The mechanic put thought into answering her own-inner-voice-that-is-the-Raptor. She had to keep reminding herself…
“You’re not supposed to be ins…inside me. I’m supposed to be inside you!”
“We’re connected, now. I could have just kept you there, but that’s…you didn’t want that. You wouldn’t want that. I forgot how weird humans tasted.”
“…tasted?” The mechanic tested her range of movement, faintly aware of the Raptor’s body compressing her own like an odd full-body corset.
“The chemical makeup of your bodily fluids. Ah, I meant…” The plane laughed, an oddly ethereal sound. “You taste nice. That’s what I meant.”
Slowly, readouts and diagrams flickered up in front of the girl’s eyes, delineating various useless things, and then another flicker-and she could see the ceiling beyond them. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t, her body held immobile.
“…whoooooooa.”
The Raptor blinked, sitting up, and taking the mechanic along for the ride. It was an odd sensation. The Raptor wasn’t lying when she said it felt like a coffin. The mechanic thought it would be better described as a body-sack, or…something. She couldn’t even move her head. She took a shaky breath-or tried to-and the goop flowed into her lungs, as well, a heavy pressure. Somehow she was being fed oxygen, though, so…
The Raptor hugged herself and stood up, stretching and moving her-and the mechanic’s-bodies. The connecting intrusions pulled and tugged inside the mechanic, making her gasp.
“What’s wrong?” The Raptor quietly asked, although the mechanic got the feeling that she was just getting fucked with.
“What IS that shit? It’s…gah, it’s everwhere inside me.” She had to keep a moan out of her voice as she said that. Mechanics don’t get much action, and this…
“Nanopaste,” the Raptor sagely replied, walking around the room and staring at various things, readouts popping up, tagging them.
“That explains nothing.”
“If I explained it, we would be here for days. I can show you an article-” Suddenly, words shoved themselves into the mechanic’s vision, scrolling fast, too fast, by her.
“Whoa whoa whoa, hold on, slow down! I can’t read that fast!”
“What a shame,” the Raptor replied, and the window closed itself. The plane rubbed her arm, and the mechanic felt the pressure. “…I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she sighed, talking out loud, rather than over their connection. “Just…feeling someone inside me. I…maybe this is why I failed? I had no pilot because they did not think I was suitable for a pilot….because I failed,” she ends, dryly.
“I told you, you’ll be fine. Just…is…is this stuff necessary?”
“Do you want to get smothered?”
“Okay, point taken. …can I have control?”
The Raptor moved through the room, and the mechanic realised just how…effortless the plane made it. Each movement was perfectly calibrated, maximum output for minimum effort. Even if they did twist and turn the thick tubes inside her. The mechanic let out a little muffled moan, while the Raptor opened her bathroom and looked into the mirror.
It was as if the mechanic wasn’t there-it was a strange disonnance for her. She knew that she was inside the Raptor, but…there was no sign of her.
“I can’t even…”
The Raptor smiled, and opened her mouth-showing nothing but the sleek entrance to her throat. “I know. But you’re inside me. That’s what makes it great.” The Raptor closed her mouth and leaned forward on the sink, nosecone to her reflection’s. “Would you like me to take you for a walk? We could talk to some people you know and they would not suspect a thing. How…just underneath the surface, we are so intimately connected,” she continues, grinning slyly.
“O-oh my,” the mechanic replied, suddenly realising what position she was in. Maybe she’d overreached herself here. Just a little. Erk.