The Tiger and the Mouse...

     The time was fast approaching again. Every visit it was the same, and every visit Jake suffered more than the last. If the phrase Death by a thousand cuts had any relevance, this was it. He looked skyward and beheld the orbital, a space station that housed hundreds of researchers and scientists performing the studies needed to benefit the denizens of this world and that one. At least, that`s what the propaganda said. But Jake Anders was no fool, and neither were the populace. The research taking place was to benefit the rich first, and the rest when it became feasible and convenient. 
     Fucking corporates. Jake thought to himself. His tail twitched in agitation as he thought of it. He himself had been under the paw of his superior for too long now. Blackmail? Really? In this day and age it was difficult to believe that there were still those who would extort others for such trivial reasons. Being a mere janitor, it was only natural that Jake could never afford to pay for protection, so instead he was forced to perform other services. Services most unpleasant. 
     He worked at the office of one Shirley Tenkra. She was a tycoon with major shares in many of the primary research firms, and she had ties to the orbital as well as many manufacturing facilities on the planet. She possessed more money than was sensible, and Jake was the one who suffered most. She had a sick micro fetish, and who better to satisfy it than a mouse like himself? Shirley was a tigress, and his employer to boot so what chance did he have of finding justice?  
     He took a deep breath as he approached the door at the base of the building. Stopping at the doorway, he reached out with a shaking hand and pressed the intercom for her apartment number. After a few moments, the light blinked green and her voice sounded over the caster. 
     ‘It`s about time you arrived.’ She said to him. He ignored the surveillance unit watching him from the doorway as she spoke. ‘Get up here, I`m losing my composure little mousey.’ 
     If he was lucky, someone might have overheard. But he was never lucky, she had enough eyes in the area to make sure she was never caught. He could kick up a fuss himself of course, but that would only serve to drain his finances to an unbearable level. He had tried once, but the court had ruled only a light sentence, a mere fine of only five thousand credits. She had responded by giving him a severe paycut, and now he was barely able to support himself. The payout had not lasted, and she had since returned to her ways. How could he fight that? 
     Almost to the point of tears, he entered the elevator and his night of suffering began... 

     Jake slumped down beside his bed. He spared a glance to his wall clock as he kicked his shoes off and cringed. It was three thirty in the morning, and he had to be up for work at six! He looked around his meagre living room as he contemplated his life. This wouldn`t be the first time he had considered suicide, and he doubted it would be the last. It would be so easy, to walk over to the window, break the glass, and just let the eight storey drop do its thing... 
     He shook his head and turned away from the widow. It was only now he noticed the blinking light on his wall phone. Well that was pleasant news, one of his few friends had decided to leave him a message! He resolved to investigate first thing in the morning. That was the last thing he remembered before falling to sleep. 

     The infernal blaring of his alarm clock destroyed the tranquil dream he had been enjoying and the harsh reality came flooding back to his mind. It was six in the morning, and he was expected at work by seven. He could call in sick, but with no legitimate illness and the fact that surveillance would refute his claims, it was less of a hassle just to go to work. Despite his exhaustion. Forcing himself painstakingly to rise, he remembered the message from the night before and stumbled groggily over to the phone. He accessed the menu and entered his inbox. It was a message from Dee, one of the researchers aboard the orbital he had befriended about two years ago. Back when times were better, before he had gotten himself into this mess...
     Tired as he was, he was eager to have a friendly conversation. Dragging the stool over from his kitchen table, he called up Dee`s number. It was a full minute before she answered. 
     It was almost like looking into a mirror except for the fact that Dee was slightly bigger than he was. She had the same white fur as he did and a similar hairstyle to his. But whereas her hair had been coloured blue his was left to its natural silver hue. But mostly, she looked just as exhausted as he did. 
     ‘Jake? What is wrong with you? Do you have any idea what time of the cycle it is?’ She murmured and shifted backwards, and Jake could almost swear he saw her left arm not there. She must have noticed his expression, because the camera subsequently zoomed in more, bringing her face into a sharper focus and removing her shoulders from view. 
     ‘I could venture a guess?’ Jake laughed. ‘I`m sorry Dee, but I got your message. And... I really just need to see a friendly face right now. How`s your work going?’ 
     ‘My work is going fine.’ Dee replied. ‘I managed to complete the upgrades on the generators I`d been working on, I finished that PAD commission, and I managed to foil two rock thefts this week. You know, the usual. What about you? Have things gotten better?’
     Jake shook his head. ‘No. She called me for another... session last night. What can I say? If I was to try and tell any of my co-workers they`d only laugh, and we`ve seen how fucked up the justice system is down here.’ 
     ‘Don`t ask me to drop a rock for you Jake.’ Dee said, only half joking. 
     ‘Don`t worry, I won`t ask you to put yourself in an awkward position on my behalf.’ Jake replied. ‘I just don`t know what to do...’ 
     ‘Well...’ Dee was at a loss for words as she tried to think. ‘I`ll think on it. I might know somebody who can help.’

*     *     *

     Looking as inconspicuous as he could, Jerome strode through the crowd towards the bedraggled mouse he had been looking out for. Even as he closed the distance, he took notice of how the other mouse walked and conducted himself, mimicking the behaviour as best he could. He noticed the fringe brushed to one side and was momentarily reminded of Dee and her own hairstyle. He had agreed to this out of friendship to her, and if this fellow was in need of aid he would do everything in his power to help him. Jake Anders, a white furred mouse not unlike Jerome himself. 
     The task had sounded simple enough when Dee had asked, but as time had worn on Jerome realized just how far he was going to have to go. Taking down a corporate goddess was not going to be easy given the ease with which she could simply buy her way out of trouble. With that in mind, Jerome had come up with a different strategy. It was a simple enough plan, but it required a technical knowledge and an iron will and fortitude. Jerome could tell at a glance that this Jake had none of those in the required levels. 
     He grinned to himself, already running a dyed brush through his hair to eliminate the teal tint he normally wore and return it to its natural silver. He increased his pace as Jake approached his home, a simple apartment in a run down building on the western edge of town. Slipping in unnoticed, Jerome followed his quarry upstairs. To his credit, Jake at least seemed to have noticed he was being followed. Oh well, there was no more need for games. As Jerome reached the top of the stairs at level eight of the building he found Jake waiting with a look of trepidation on his face. 
     ‘Why are you following me?’ The bedraggled mouse asked, shaking slightly. 
     ‘Calm down Jake. I`ve come here to help you.’ Jerome replied. 
     ‘How do you know my name?!’ Jake demanded. ‘Who the hell are you?’
     ‘My name is Jerome.’ The confidence in Jerome`s voice seemed to be unnerving, and he realized that Jake had probably suffered a lot of oppression recently that had done long term damage to his self esteem. ‘I`m a friend of Dee, she asked me to help you. You know Dee right?’ 
     ‘I do...’ Jake replied, narrowing his gaze. ‘How do you know her?’ 
     ‘Dude trust me.’ Jerome sniggered. ‘A lot of people “know” her. She`s not exactly the shy type. I used to live up on the orbital as a security guard. She and I became acquainted on more than one occasion.’ 
     ‘Oh? I see then.’ Jake replied timidly. ‘So why would you want to help me?’ He had relaxed somewhat and after a few short moments decided to lead Jerome back to his apartment. Reasoning mainly that his life was hardly in a position to get much worse. 
     ‘Friends of friends.’ Jerome replied simply as Jake unlocked his door and opened. It. He followed the other mouse inside and took a look around. The place was a half kept mess, with clothes of varying levels of cleanliness strewn about  the floor and the rather sparse furniture. 
     ‘As you can guess, I don`t entertain much.’ Jake explained before slumping onto his bed and cupping his face in his hands. 
     ‘So...’ Jerome began. ‘When are you next expected to visit Ms Tenkra?’ 
     ‘Tonight unfortunately.’ Jake cringed. ‘Last trip was a week and a half ago. Usually I`m lucky to make it a fortnight between, but that didn`t happen this time.’ He sat back up and locked eyes with Jerome, who still stood just inside the doorway. ‘That was when I called Dee. So what`s your plan anyway?’  
     ‘Simple.’ Jerome grinned. ‘I can do things you can`t, so I`ll go instead disguised as you. We only have a few hours by the sound of it before you`re expected, so I`m gonna have to learn a lot about you very fast...’ 

*     *     *

     Jerome looked at himself in the tinted glass of the apartment building as he approached. With the quick restyling of his hair, some iris altering contacts and a set of clothes borrowed from Jake, he now fit the description of the other mouse perfectly. That had been the easy part. Far harder had been the genetic disguising, just enough to fool any surveillance that Shirley may have had. It had been a bit of a trial, but he`d managed to mimic the pheremonal signature without too much trouble and his genetic code was similar enough to Jake`s to be fooled by the low budget scanners installed in this area of town. Mice and certain other Rodentia generally had a limited gene pool that the older scanning systems struggled with. It didn`t seem to be too much of an issue. Thankfully the tigress had a desire to keep this interest of hers secret, and as such these meetings always took place in a rental apartment block. 
     Jerome approached the buzzer at the ground floor and hit the button Jake had told him to. The voice answering him reminded him of some of his past relationships as it called to him. 
     ‘Jake my special little mousey.’ She cooed. ‘You`re early today! This hasn`t happened for a while.’ 
     ‘If it`s alright Ma`am, I`d rather we just got this over with.’ Jerome replied, imitating a timid and oppressed voice perfectly while suppressing his own grin of anticipation. It was not simply because of his similar appearance that Dee had asked Jerome to do this. She knew from personal experience that he thrived on what Shirley was forcing Jake to endure.
     Shirley simply laughed in response and the door clicked open. Jerome blinked and his ocular and auditory implants activated. He shambled through the door and immediately broke into a run when he was past the video unit at the entrance. As he climbed the stairs he craned his neck skyward, the implant in his eye working as quickly as it could manage to identify the security measures surrounding Shirley`s room. 
     As he suspected, they were rather lax. There was a simple detector unit positioned on her doorway, but that would be easy to hack and deactivate.  As he reached the level of her room, panting softly, he took out a small device from his coat pocket. It was a disruptor, one that would allow him to scramble the signals of the detector and allow him to enter without alerting her. He flicked the switch and blinked again. His own bionic eye had also been scrambled, meaning he`d have to stall for a few moments once he was actually inside. But that wouldn`t be a problem. 
     ‘My little mousey, is that you?’ He heard her voice as he walked through the doorway. 
     ‘Er...yes!’ He called. The nervousness of being caught by some unexpected security measure added to his trepidation as he closed the door behind him. 
     ‘Why are you always so nervous?’ She said. She leaned around a doorway across the apartment`s living room and Jerome saw her clearly for the first time. Shirley was a well known figurehead and Jerome was able to recognise her as she slunk around the doorway towards him. She was stark naked, revealing the full extent of her feminine form. Jerome froze, briefly wondering if he`d made the right decision before he remembered that he was only pretending to be Jake and that he actually loved this sort of thing. Once that little thought was past, he once again had to struggle not to grin excitedly. 
     ‘It`s... It`s just that...’ He stammered, hoping that by stalling he`d come across as timid. So far she seemed convinced. 
     ‘Shhh!’ She cut him off. ‘Mousey has no say in this remember? Now come little Jake, and pleasure me.’ She wrapped her giant clawed hand around his tiny wrist and led him forcibly into the bedroom. It was a dimly lit room with next to no furniture beside the bed and a simple dresser unit. 
     ‘Uh...okay?’ He wondered if she would issue commands or if he was expected to remember some routine. As he looked up at her striped figure, almost twice as tall as he was, he cursed himself for being in too much of a rush to ask Jake any details. ‘W-what do you want first?’ 
     ‘Take a guess.’ She purred. She let go of his hand and fell back onto the bed, letting her legs spread apart as she did so. Jerome`s eyes bulged and his jaw nearly hit the floor as she laughed cruelly. ‘I never get tired of seeing your face!’ She giggled. ‘Now, get to it.’
     Having only the vaguest idea of what to do, Jerome resolved to wing it and hope for the best. His eye began to receive flickered vision, meaning that his bionic was working again and the detector in the doorway likely was as well. He sidled forward on his feet and as he reached the end of the bed her feet shot out and wrapped around him, dragging him closer to the glistening orifice. 
     Now he knew what she wanted... 

     He allowed himself to be dropped on top of her and lowered his right hand to gently massage her womanhood while the left tenderly rubbed her abdomen just below her breasts. She purred loudly and stretched out beneath him. 
     ‘Ooh Jake, usually I have to make you do that. Are you finally catching on?’ 
     ‘I... I guess so.’ He replied. ‘No point in making this last longer than it needs to right?’ He hoped his voice was conveying suitable levels of nervousness rather than the excitement he was struggling to hide. He could understand why Jake would hate this, but personally he was having a great time. 
     Quickly he wondered what Dee was doing and whether she had hacked into his bionic yet. The plan had been simple enough, his bionic eye was recording this and broadcasting on a set frequency. Dee was supposed to be hacking the signal and rebroadcasting to Shirley`s key contacts as well as the local authorities. Jake`s earlier misfortune had proven that the justice system could not be relied on fully, so they had decided upon humiliation as a backup. So far he hadn`t detected any outside signals, so it seemed likely that Dee was either still searching or hadn`t even begun yet. 
     He continued in this regard for some time until he finally felt the tingling in his ocular implant and saw the data begin to stream across his vision. Dee was in. Dee was watching... 

*     *     *

     Dee had to stifle a laugh as she watched what Jerome was doing through his own eye. But as hilarious as this was she could not suppress the pang of sympathy she felt for Jake. After all, this woman was deviant in the extreme. What had started as a simple caress had quickly escalated into an unbirthing scenario of the sickest kind. As Dee recorded the data she found herself looking away. It was too much to take in, even considering some of the “favours” she`d done in the past. She was at least grateful for the fact that this would only need to happen once. 
     She almost pitied the tigress, but another glance at the recording window was enough to quell that. Almost an hour had passed and even Jerome was no longer enjoying himself. It was time to finalize...

*     *     *

     ‘Ms Tenkra.’ Jerome said, crawling back away from her as she prowled towards him licking her lips. ‘I don`t want to do this anymore.’ Imitating Jake had become far easier now since Jerome truly had reached the limits of what he would willingly do. But Shirley was no done yet.   
     ‘Jake, we`ve been over this.’ She replied, growling this time. ‘What you want doesn`t matter. You belong to me and there`s nothing you can do about it.’ She coiled slightly and pounced on top of him, causing him to hit his head against the wall of the apartment and grunt in pain. She brushed up close, bringing her eyes directly level with his. For a moment he feared she`d recognise him but almost immediately she withdrew slightly and smiled. 
     ‘I`m not kidding Shirley.’ Jerome spoke up again, more forcefully this time. He was under no illusions that he was putting himself in real danger now, but if that was what it took then so be it. 
     She narrowed her golden eyes at him and leaned in close. ‘Shut up, rodent. You think you matter? You don`t. The justice system can`t help you, we`ve seen that for ourselves haven`t we? What are you going to do little mouse? Hire an investigator on your pay?’ 
     ‘It hasn`t occurred to you that there are other reasons for an investigator to take a job?’ Jerome glared back at her, slowly rising from the floor. ‘Like true justice and friendship?’ 
     ‘Oh please.’ She laughed, standing to her full height and looming over him. ‘Even if you did convince someone I was a threat to you, who would care? I could pull a few strings and have you doing an even worse job than the one you have now!’ 
     ‘Dee, hurry up.’ Jerome muttered. This drew a curious look from the tigress and with horror, Jerome realized that she had caught on. 
     ‘Oh my fucking god!’ She exclaimed. ‘What the fuck, who are you?!’ She roared and surged forward, seizing Jerome by the throat and lifting him up high. He was shocked into silence, grabbing her massive hand and struggling vainly to prise her off him. 
     ‘Let me down you bitch!’ He yelled back and kicked out as hard as he could. His foot caught her in the gut and she grunted in pain, loosening her grip just enough to allow him to wriggle himself free. He instantly made a run for the door but before he could reach the handle something strong grabbed him by the tail and yanked him backwards heavily. He landed heavily on his backside and fell to land looking straight up at her. 
     ‘You rat bastard!’ She snarled, putting her heavy foot down on his chest and driving the air from his lungs. ‘You think you`re getting out of here now? Ha! No, whoever you are, you`re finished!’ She pushed down harder with her powerful legs, leaving Jerome flailing helplessly on the floor as he struggled to inhale. His vision became blurry and indistinct as he began to lose consciousness.
     Damn... He thought. Of all the ways to go... 
    
     Moments before he blacked out he was dimly aware of the door breaking down and armed figures streaming into the room. Dee had done her part.

*     *     *

     Three days later...

     ‘So when was the last time you visited the orbital?’ Jerome asked. As they disembarked from the shuttle he smiled slightly at seeing Jake`s reaction to the shift in gravity and pressure. 
     ‘Been a while now.’ Jake confessed. ‘Few years at least back when I was one of the chief technicians. Back when I met Dee.’ 
     ‘Cool.’ Jerome replied. He kept as casual as he could in order to keep Jake at ease and help him readjust to his new life. With Shirley Tenkra safely locked up for attempted murder and extortion, Jake was free to seek alternative employment. Dee, being the generous soul she occasionally was, had arranged for a few interviews which would give him the chances to return to work here. For the most part they had ignored the media shitstorm, both of them declining to comment on the events and honestly not overly concerned about the future of Tenkra Incorporated. 
     It was not far to one of the main taverns and the two of them found a seat close to the bar. A short time later the pair were joined by Dee. She caught them both by surprise as she sauntered up from behind them and greeted them with a surprising ‘Boo!’ 
     ‘Ah!’ Jake jumped back in alarm but relaxed immediately when he saw her smiling face. ‘Dee, I can`t thank you enough for this. If there`s anything at all I can do, just let me know okay?’ 
     Dee nodded and took a seat next to him before glancing at Jerome across from her. 
     ‘Oh, I get it.’ Jerome winked before standing and heading over to get another round of drinks. He shot one glance backwards to a confused Jake and grinned. 
     ‘So Jake.’ She said. ‘Do you remember the days we used to work together?’ She slid closer to him and placed a hand gently on his thigh under the table. 
     ‘I do...’ he replied. He was nervous, but this time it was... different. It wasn`t nerves stemming from fear, but rather excitement. 
     ‘We worked well together didn`t we.’ She continued. ‘You helped me out on a lot of my projects and it occurred to me that I owed you quite a bit of thanks.’ 
     ‘Are you trying to say we`re even now?’ Jake was a little puzzled. 
     ‘Nope.’ Dee answered. She grinned and leaned in close, making it very clear what her intent was as her hand moved to a more pleasant location. ‘You helped me at least a half dozen times. I`ve only paid you back this once.’