This chapter comes with an illustration by Plasma Dragon. All art was used with permission and assistance from the artist.
Down the stairs it came with her, to her workshop.
"Your fault, Rose," She said softly. "You can hide your family from me. That's fine. You can hide your body. You can hide... All sorts of things. But,
locks
, Rose? My favourite things in the whole world? Really?" She shook her head, chuckling to herself. "Do you know me? Do we know each other? My sweat, heavenly mother bird... You should know that won't, ah, fly." She seated herself on a stool, smirking. "And yes, I knew you'd be mad..." She said, softly, slipping the tensioning tool into the belt's lock and taking the standard pick from the table. "But I'm tired of you hiding what you are from me. What you enjoy. What you
do.
You should
know
I'll accept you. It's disrespectful to me, isn't it? So... do you know what I've done?" She leaned forward, pulling in the magnifying glass excitedly. "I've hidden all your keys. And I've picked all the locks... On your little chastity belts..." Her voice fell to a soft purr, smiling smugly at her own fantasy as her heart beat faster and faster. "Do you want to try to pick this one? You'll have to, if you want to punish me like you did when I, h-ha, messed with your book. Oh, and it's so, so strong! I don't know if we'll ever be able to get it off... Please, won't you help me, Rose? Will you unlock..." Her glossy lips savoured the word -- "
Me
?"
She panted a little, the lewd scenarios she could set up with these chastity belts - with this one, which fit her so well - circling her mind. Seeming, by the second, ever so much more real, more exciting. Slowly, she shook herself, absent mindedly chewing on her short, black hair. The fantasy was annihilating her focus, preventing her from getting any clicks out of the lock. The belt slipped under her hands, then, and she sighed, getting up and moving her stool over to a vice, in which she secured the belt as she slipped her picks into it again.
And then, she continued to pick. And pick. And pick.
And pick.
What was wrong? She couldn't seem to get it to click at all. And the inside, of this lock, felt... So, so strange. The pins -- that must have been the pins, not the lock floor - were soft, spongy. They moved freely under her pick, but they never clicked. Were they even pins? It felt like one springy blanket of soft metal.
It made no sense. Had she tripped something? She started over, releasing and then re applying the tension, but still, nothing was binding. And still, the lock felt strange, perhaps alien, to her practiced tinkerer's fingers. How
frustrating
.
She took the red key, wondering if the belt would still open. Indeed, it did. And relocked, too. She looked down at it, trying to figure out how the strange bitting was in any way different to, say... She pulled out her house key, comparing them. The difference was somewhat subtle, but Mavis couldn't see anything that couldn't be put down to minor manufacturing mistakes, or, perhaps, the opposite? No. This was too strange to be intentional, surely.
Magic. That was the last option available that Mavis could think of. Immediately, she reached for the goggles hung on the wall, slipping them over her eyes and looking closely at the red key. Bingo. It was enchanted. But... Not with any sensible enchantment. With a strange mixture of what looked like teleportation magic, and form magic... Not a hint of the magnetic, or communicative magic, that would be required to coordinate with another enchanted part. Nothing that would activate when near the lock. Not a spell she could discern at all. Probably not even relevant to opening the lock, but for finding the key in a pinch?! Damn!
How was this key able to open the belt? She decided to quickly cheat, looking carefully over the red key and moving over to her cutter, entering what her trained eyes thought the bitting code might be. A few moments later, she confirmed by a side by side comparison that she had a copy! A copy, that... did not, turn the belt's lock.
Hmm.
Mana-lock-interop was supposedly one of Mavis's main fields. What was she missing here? She turned slowly back to the belt, slowly considering something.
Here she was, already making progress. Already finding things out. This belt, and its lock... They'd surely been made either by Rose, with all those clever little ideas Mavis had taught her, or... Her eyes moved to the prominent symbol, wondering. The Church of Virgo. The organisation to which the angel chose to dedicate her life.
What did she know about the church? About the angels in general? Only that they were fiercely religious and loyal to their goddess, whom some of them even got to meet -- and the things they prized most highly. Loyalty. Fidelity. Chastity.
Chastity. Mavis's eyebrows slowly raised, her eyes returning to the cross on the front of the belt. On the front of all of the belts. The serial numbers, indicating some form of central manufacturing authority. The surely mass produced components she'd seen on the Maiden's Guard...
Rose's book.
Means
. The angel kept it with her at all times, reading it at the table. It was adorned with that same cross -- and the same, silvery padlocks. Those were just illustrations, carved on the metal cover of the book alongside the cross. But the lock that kept the book shut on the rare occasions she found it set aside, albeit never far from its owner, remained very real. She couldn't help but wonder, then, remembering the ornate, official looking boxes the belts had been in. And those prestigious looking Enochian engravings. What... Exactly, did chastity belts mean to the church? What did the church feel they were for? What on earth were they... To Rose?
Mavis shook her head, wondering how she'd even bring this up. She still couldn't make progress on the lock. She thought she got a click after a few minutes, but still, the belt was giving her nothing. And she couldn't seem to find anything new...
It was... demotivating. And the sun had gone down, now. It was dark outside.
Maybe she'd get some coffee? At eight o clock at night?
Ah, Mavis. Don't be so silly.
She thought. What would motivate her more? Perhaps... This belt, could be her weekend project. Her plans tonight, and tomorrow... What had they been? Mess with clockwork? And... Maybe, play with herself, a little. To the thought of, Rose, and, um... Chastity belts...