Light Penetrates

A pale, sunburned man rode mostly nude on the back of a horse through the stony gray and brown scrubland at the edge of a desert, a Futa leashed to the back of his horse by a length of chain. He was sandy-haired and lean, though plump at the hips. She was naked but for a dusty crop of black hair and the bonds he'd locked her in. A set of cuffs connected by chains around her ankles also held her hands behind her back. A metal bar gag was chained tightly enough that it made her walk straight-necked and proud even as her stumbling, exhausted gait made her sway and waver. Her almond shoulders and face were as badly burnt as the worst spots on the man, turning a clay-colored red and brown. Around the metal bar, she slobbered and grimaced like a wild animal. They had been at this for some time now, and even though the worst pains had faded into a steady throb, that didn't mean they were any less real.

The man stopped for a moment and his semi-lucid prisoner nearly stumbled into the back of his mare. Even up on her back, the man's head only came roughly even with hers and not up over it. He took a quick drink from one of the flasks in his saddlebag and then poured some of it on his red face and the back of his neck. He was burnt nearly head-to-toe. As he was reaching back to give some to the Futa, figures started to move at the edge of the terrain around him.

Rising from where they had been half-buried and lying in the sand and shrub like zombies, they descended on the pair of outsiders with weapons drawn, dressed in thin cloaks and face-coverings the color of dead leaves that draped about them and showed no skin as they poured grit and stirred up clouds of hazy dust. In their arms were an assortment of weapons, gunmetal gray and pearly white and midnight black. Shapes he recognized and ones he didn't, most marked with tape in conspicuously consistent ways. Some of it worn and tattered enough to let little unsilenceable lights come through, signs of distinction that would have become attention-drawing in the desert.

"Hello!" The man hopped down from his horse and took a step toward them with his hand outstretched, seemingly unconcerned by their approach.

They didn't respond, though he seemed almost to stun them. They shuffled to a stop at a distance from him, guns trained on him and his Futa prisoner, eyeing both of them with uncertainty.

"I've been looking for you guys for days!" The man gestured to his sunburns and then took another step toward them, only stopping when they more actively pointed their guns at him.

One of the men prodded the Futa with the barrel of his gun and she glared down at him but didn't move. Eyes filled with genuine malice as she breathed out slowly and heavily. She was tall and strongly built even by Futa standards, and her time of forced marching in the heat seemed to have dried her out but stolen none of her power. Her thighs were as big around as some of their chests, her sweat-slick torso lean and rippling with muscle, and her arms tight and vascular in her nearly undersized skin. Her balls hung nearly to her knees in the heat, her cock garish and oversized as all Futa tools were. She looked like, if she were truly motivated to, she could have broken free at any moment and damaged at least one of them beyond repair before they gunned her down.

"Careful," The man stepped back over to her and slapped her noisily on one sunburned thigh. She winced and spittle formed white at the corners of her gag, "She bites."

All of the men around him seemed to flinch and draw in their breath collectively as they watched her. The man kept looking back at them like he couldn't understand what the big deal was. Finally, one of them stepped forward and sighed.

"Desperate people bite," He responded flatly.

"It was a joke," The sunburned man yanked her chain demonstratively, "She can't bite anybody."

"Explain how she came to be on that end of the chain, and you to be on this one," With a gesture, the armed man who seemed to be the leader had some of his lackeys surround the Futa.

"I'm an escaped slave," He pointed down to his chastity cage proudly, which was the only thing he was wearing. The undecorated metal had been flashing and glinting like a beacon even from a great distance in the sunlight. "She's the one they sent out to go retrieve me, but I guess she got bored after not being able to find me. Any time she'd been out looking for me for a while, she'd go back to her little base camp and reward herself with a jerk-off session. I just showed myself during one of those and then took off. Ran right into my trap, dick still in hand. Doesn't look like she likes being the one in chains."

"You're too well-spoken for a slave," The leader kept his gun raised, though his finger wasn't hovering about the trigger like the rest of his company.

"That's what they kept telling me," The man stepped forward and offered a hand hesitantly, "My name is Jules. You guys can shelter me, right? Especially if I trade her for a spot with you?"

The leader lowered his gun but gestured for Jules to lower his hand instead of shaking it. He made a couple of gestures to his men and then unhooked the Futa from the horse, grabbing her chains. She looked for a second like she might try to bolt, and even with a half-dozen men to her chains she probably could have gotten free too. But she likely understood that things didn't live this far out into the heat without a source of shade and water.

"How did you know about us?" The leader stepped toward Jules and lowered his face covering. Despite everything, he was both surprisingly pale and surprisingly soft-looking.

"The Futa love talking about bunches of men hidden out in the desert and the mountains. Everybody knows you're out here." Jules raised his arms and gestured at the expanse of nothing around them, wincing as he did, "If I had known where you actually were, I wouldn't have gotten so cooked looking for you."

"What was your plan if we didn't show?" The leader looked at him almost condescendingly. "Did you have one?"

"I don't know, just keep looking until I'm well-done?" Jules forced a smile, "Would it really be that much worse than being a slave?"

"You underestimate the sun. Ours is not the same as the one you're used to." The leader got a pair of burlap sacks from one of his men and handed them to Jules, "Put one of these on your head and the other on the head of your captive."

"You sure the horse doesn't need one too?" Jules grinned.

The leader scowled as he pulled his mask back into place, making sure that Jules saw it. Jules climbed back onto his horse and leaned over to mask the Futa, then placed the other bag over his own head, letting the men take the reins. When they were both blinded, Jules felt the horse start off and start being walked slowly. They went some way deeper into the desert, Jules heard the Futa fall behind him at least twice and felt his horse lean and waver a bit in the softer sand. Any time he fidgeted in the saddle, trying to get the rough texture of burlap away from a particularly raw patch of skin, he could hear at least one of the walkers adjust their stride just a bit, likely raising his gun again. Outnumbering him a bunch to one wasn't enough, having him blindfolded wasn't enough. They probably could not have trusted him any less. Maybe, if he had been chained and gagged just like his captive was, they would have been just the normal amount of paranoid.

They had traveled for what felt like just over an hour, and the dim light coming through the hood as well as the mostly steady sway of his horse had started to make Jules nod off when he suddenly felt the coolness of shade reach over him and sudden complete darkness. Somebody patted his thigh to let him know he could uncover his face. When he did, he saw that they were not too deep into a cave of red and black rock. The Futa, sandy and still hooded, seemed to be shivering in relief. A giant metal door started to open in front of them, outer labels and markings faded beyond recognition. It made a noise suddenly like something in the gears was grinding and dying and it faltered about halfway open in its track, whining and squealing. A collective sigh of disappointment passed through the men around him and they were brought inside the half-opened gate. As they came fully in and Jules dismounted, several of them broke company and joined a crew of other men who were trying to push it closed again. Several men managing, only barely, to move it agonizingly slowly back into place again. There was no crash or thud, no whuff of pressurization, just a final half-correct clanking and then silence.

In the metal atrium they had entered into, Jules suddenly became aware of his bare feet on the now shockingly-cold floor, as well as how much less dressed up he was than those around him. Even as the desert walkers stripped out of their robes and cowls, they were wearing body-hugging suits or undergarments. As Jules shuffled in place and rubbed his hands together, he became aware of most of the people in attendance either staring at his caged cock, his prisoner, or moving from one to the other. An effete-looking man stepped forward and shook the hand of the captain of the soldiers before approaching Jules and shaking his.

"Welcome!" His voice was higher than Jules would have guessed. He was carrot-haired, just as pale as the rest of them, and a rarity in that he was a bit on the round and the soft side. Jules noticed that even the outriders were all quite thin, almost frail. "My name is Marco, we're pleased to have you."

"Can't tell you how glad I am to see you guys," Jules shivered involuntarily.

A couple of lab coat-wearing men had come out to meet them and joined the soldiers around the Futa. They unhooked and unchained her from the horse, starting to talk amongst themselves. She gave a sudden but brief struggle, turning to run and dragging the men holding her chains behind her for a full couple seconds before one of the scientists pulled out a strange device and pressed a button. Faster than Jules could track with his eyes, something flew from it and stuck in her back. A strange sound filled the room and the Futa collapsed to the floor, twitching and thrashing. They tried lifting and then settled on dragging the limp Futa into an elevator with them, kicking and pushing her limp legs to fit through the doors before they disappeared from sight.

"Nasty things, huh?" Marco smiled, "Symbol of the oppressor."

"Huh?" Jules turned back and Marco gestured to his cage, "Sure."

"Alex will be able to help you with that," Marco nodded toward the leader of the desert men, who stepped forward with a scowl and produced another strange device. It whirred for a second. "You're certainly not the first escaped slave we've had, though you're the first to bring us one of... them."

Jules gasped, the device's humming had reached a fever pitch and then suddenly the metal ring base of his chastity cage broke open and the whole thing fell off of him to the floor. Jules looked down from it to his exposed cock with his jaw slack. His penis was probably the one part of him that wasn't sunburned, and it suddenly looked shrunken and pale in the cold, uncaged for the first time in a very long time. He wasn't sure how he felt about it, but he settled on giving the discarded cage a kick that made Marco chuckle in approval.

"We can give you something less unpleasant to wear, as well as something for your burns." Marco made a motion like he was patting Jules's shoulder but kept from touching it. "And something to eat and drink, it must have been a while. Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Jules looked back at the nearly imperceptible crack of light peeking through the broken door, "The burns first, please."

***

The Futa stood, hung suspended like she'd been crucified, against the rear wall of a clear containment cell. They'd left her on a bed at first and pushed in a tray with food, water, ointment for her sunburns and some first-aid supplies. She'd eaten and drunk a little and treated the cuts and scrapes she'd collected on her feet from walking for so long barefoot through the gravely scrub. Then she'd left the ointment untouched and instead gave herself a quick rinse under the cold water of a shower that came as part of her prison. Rinsing the dusty pale sheen from her hair and the coarse grit from her skin, her sunburn smarted and felt red-hot to the touch, skin overly tight around her like she'd been dried out. She had given the restraints a testing tug and heard metal whine. She could probably snap her way out of them if she was really desperate, but the glass-like substance of the cell would be impossible to break. Or at least close enough to it. Of course, she'd tested the glass, which seemed more like an incredibly dense clear plastic than actual glass. If anything, the rusted hinges of the doors seemed more likely to give way to manipulation.

She wondered how long it had been since somebody else had taken up residence in her cell. None of it was proportioned for a Futa. Her feet hung over the edge of the bed and she had to duck to get her head under what was probably a pretty tall shower for males.

On the other end of one of the glass walls, four men in lab coats talked among themselves. The first one had shown up only moments after they had finished locking her in, the rest had come later. She was observant, but not a lip reader. She could make out roughly the mood of what they were saying, and when it was about her if they glanced her way or gestured, but the only actual communication was through a speaker that they were keeping off. All of them were about the same shape and size, at least by a man's standards. Somewhere between five feet and six, round at the hips but without breasts or with only small ones, light body hair if any at all. Compared to a Futa, even tall men were small and even strong men were weak. They could be smart, at least in the way a pet could be smart. Most notably about these was how they covered themselves. Aside from their lab coats, they wore closed pants without exposed crotches or asses. One wore shorts, but that was as much skin below the chest as they showed. Even more disgraceful, despite them being covered, she knew for a fact they were all uncaged. A man was meant to dress for a Futa's pleasure, especially his cage. The prescribed treatment by the male handlers for one who tried to dress any other way was humiliation. Though, according to the male handlers, the cure to most things was humiliation.

"You, Futa, what is your name?" One of the men asked her over the comms.

"Somebody needs to teach you your place, man-thing," She decided to play the angry brute, at least for now. She spat on the floor to punctuate it.

"Don't make this more painful than it needs to be," The one talking scowled, "Your restraints are equipped to shock you if you're difficult."

"If these were designed for one of you, those shocks might not even tickle me." She spat again. It was a dangerous game she was playing.

He called her bluff. She felt the cuffs around her wrists and ankles fizz for a second before slamming her. It certainly wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was much more like a full-body cramp than any sort of torture. The restraints whined as she thrashed about in them. The wall they had emerged out of had been marked with a Futa-sized and Futa-shaped tape outline like the full-grown form of the smaller male form painted into it. The panels seemed loose and haphazard. None of it was made for her. She wondered for a minute if she should play up how much it hurt and give him what he wanted. Then she reconsidered. The man in control was a nasty little red-haired thing. A little pudgy, shorter than average. Well-fed and disinterested like a housecat until he could make something squirm. All too willing to scratch and yowl to get his way.

"I told you so," She spat on the floor again, but sounded less certain than she'd expected herself to. They all looked squeamishly at where she was spitting. She wondered if it was anal-retentiveness or if they saw her as some kind of biohazard. Maybe both. "You might run out of settings before you find one that's actual torture for us."

"We can certainly try," The nasty little red-haired man smiled humorously. She suspected he was hoping she'd give him the opportunity. "Of course, there are other, less pleasant things we could do as well."

"My name is Nina," She shrugged.

"No family name?" He frowned a bit, she suspected she'd spoiled his fun. A housecat indeed. The ones behind him made notes.

"I never knew a family," Nina tried staring at him to see if he'd back down, he didn't. "Most Futa are raised communally. Family name has to mean something for somebody to care about passing it down."

"That sounds lonely," He responded apathetically while his associates kept furiously scribbling.

"How else would it be done?"

"Normal families, proper families, are a mother and a father," He seemed to freeze a little, like there was something testy about that subject.

"Just two parents sounds lonelier than many mothers," Nina prodded, "And besides. What's to keep the daughter from fighting the mother for possession when she comes of age?"

"Possession?"

"Ownership of the father," Nina rolled her eyes. "Or does she have to wait until her mother dies for him to be passed down?"

"In normal families, men aren't owned," The nasty little man scowled again.

"Unowned men wandering around the place?" Nina made a face of exaggerated shock, "What kind of backwards place is this?"

"A beacon of comparative sanity in this world," He hissed.

"Sanity," Nina spat again.

"Get her to stop contaminating the examination chamber-" One of the other labcoated men whispered in a panic before the nasty little man closed the line again.

The three behind him chattered to themselves and he occasionally interjected. They were all at least distinct enough in hair and skin tone, but outside of that they all looked the same to Nina. They all had puffy lips and smooth, round faces that made them pleasant to look at. Or at least, made most of them pleasant to look at. The nasty little man's face made her feel more a desire to discipline than it did anything else. She had seen wild men before, and these were not wild men. Wild men had unkempt body or facial hair, they looked skinny, underfed. Their lips were thin and their cheeks less round. Slavery, or at least proximity to the Futa, gave man his desirable shape and texture. Made him soft, fattened him up in some cases. She'd never met a Futa that preferred the wild look. But these?

These weren't like wild cattle so much as a colony of well-fed dairy cows that had simply slipped their ear tags and brands. They had no tattoos, no piercings or cages. They dressed in a way that covered their natural curves. They had shed every trace which would mark themselves as owned things but for the pamperedness of their bodies. Peaches hanging ripe to burst from a tree, decorating themselves with thorns while the juice leaked and sweetened the air. Just one of them would have been a prime slave, but the whole group?

Red hair said something to the rest of them. A dark-skinned one with lips almost pitch black pushed up his glasses and seemed to argue. Another, a lanky brunette, argued back. The third, an especially chubby one with blonde hair and skin like beach sand, marked something on his clipboard before stepping over to the desk behind them and grabbing three writing utensils. He broke the tip from one and then shuffled them behind his back before holding them out in his closed fist, tips hidden in his palm. They all took turns taking one and the dark-skinned man was the one to draw the tipless instrument. He shook his head and muttered something, then disappeared from view to the side of the chamber for a moment before Nina heard grinding from the wall. Eventually, a whoosh of air, then another grinding creak before the unlucky man entered. He was dressed head-to-toe in an enclosed yellow suit that was like he was wearing a balloon. Looking down at where her spittle had landed, he stepped around it awkwardly. Fetching a small phial from his belt, he plucked a few hairs from the pillow of her bed.