Mare Training: Warhorse Drill
The D-class hero — no, the hero currently undercover as a mare on an infiltration mission — snapped back to her senses with a jolt.
"…Wait. You're charging an entrance fee just to get into the market? Is that how this place works?"
"Well, those are the boss's rules. You don't have to come in if you don't want to."
Ah… an android…?
What cut in front of the two porters — who had been cheerfully treating Sonia like merchandise — was a single android, accompanied by a sharp, barked "Hah!"
Sonia identified her counterpart as an android at once, and for good reason. Even in the gloom of the night market entrance, the artificial glow of her eyes shone bright, and beyond them a mechanical red iris flickered with crisp precision — though more than anything, androids were simply that common a sight in Sky City.
"Hello! First time visiting, right? That's what my database says! In that case, please take a look over here and pay the entrance fee! Bank transfers are fine, of course!"
Repeating her previous lines word for word with mechanical fidelity, the android pointed to the enormous signboard erected beside the night market entrance. Ornate electronic billboards announcing the market entrance lit up Sky City's dark night as bright as midday.
Apparently this wasn't the only Horse Market catering to "that particular culture." The emblem on the old medal Sonia had found — the [U] horse-hoof mark — had been redesigned into a cute mascot character and plastered across every electronic display at the entrance.
"Of course we charge! Paying the entrance fee lets us keep the night market cleaner and more pleasant, you know? Buy anything inside and show us the receipt later, and we'll refund the full amount… so, think of it as a kind of deposit?"
Looking closer, this android was clearly wearing a headband as well — a brown donkey-ear hairband pressed firmly onto her head, just like Sonia's. The look was somehow both ridiculous and perfectly emblematic of this place's strange, perverse atmosphere.
She was a cut above the cheap, low-performance labor androids. In Sky City, high-performance androids fitted with distinctive personalities were still legally treated as property — yet by carefully saving the wages that slowly accumulated through their work, they could eventually purchase themselves and become "free androids."
That was why bitter rumors circulated of AIs who, after roughly two years of grueling labor, finally won their freedom — only to turn around, in these hard times, and hire "Humanoids" who had voluntarily undergone mechanization surgery and accepted appliance status, putting them to work as maid robots.
This was no low-grade android limited to pre-programmed speech. She handled the porters who had dragged Sonia here with perfectly natural ease, all while thinking something entirely different underneath.
"Here to sell a mare? Ooh… what a lovely golden-blonde coat. Heh… for a mare that pretty, the entrance fee is a bargain, isn't it? Why not think of it as an investment, sir!"
…The reason a high-performance android this natural could work without complaint while wearing a donkey-ear hairband was simple: she had a rock-solid expectation for the future.
…Four months left… If I just keep going like this… Heh… heheh… The second I'm free, I'm buying a Humanoid and working those humans into the ground… Just you wait… Hit… hihi…
She was a clever android — clever enough not to voice that scheme out loud, get herself fired, and put her grand plan of ruthlessly abusing and exploiting a Humanoid at risk.
The moment the porter reluctantly paid the entrance fee, she turned her head and cut off all interest.
She perfectly deleted from memory the two humans leading away a mare with rather sturdy thighs, and went back to calculating the self-purchase payment due in four months — and browsing internet shopping sites for the Humanoid she would put to work afterward.
Stepping into the night market, an entirely different world unfolded. Loud music, the excited voices of the crowd, and a muggy air thick with unidentifiable spices and animal musk pressed against Sonia's chest.
Stalls selling every manner of bizarre merchandise lined both sides of the street. Ornate leather saddles made exclusively for mares, glittering jewel-studded bits, high heels shaped like horseshoes studded with sharp spikes. Sonia swallowed hard without meaning to.
The stares directed at her grew even more blatant. A middle-aged woman swept her eyes from Sonia's chest down to her thighs with a lecherous smile, whispering something to the person beside her. A young man pointed outright, openly appraising Sonia's "market value."
In their eyes, Sonia was no longer a hero. She was simply a well-built body — a single "mare" waiting to have a price put on her.
"I never heard where we'd get a good price for her… you know?"
"Then we just go to the nearest place, right? They're all more or less the same anyway… and if we don't know any better, well, nothing we can do. We're reselling 'used goods,' so we shouldn't get our hopes up in the first place."
…
Even used, splitting the take two ways would still be a decent haul — and with that, the two porters encouraged each other.
That their ten-odd colleagues had been thrown clear trying to catch a thrashing mare was entirely those colleagues' own fault; leaving them behind on the mountain had been the only sensible choice. They rationalized it with convenient ease.
One porter led Sonia by the leash. The other trailed behind, carefully scanning their surroundings in case of trouble. And between them, the big-breasted yellow mare walked with her chest thrust out proudly on tiptoe, just as her body remembered — only to snap back to herself with a start, crumple in shame, and then do it all over again.
The leotard-style training restraint suit spared her the fate of being completely naked, but the enormous masses of fat hanging from her chest still drew every stare on the street.
Through the thin fabric, Sonia's nipples were already stiffly erect, their presence unmistakably clear. The sensation of those raised tips rubbing against the cloth amplified her shame and arousal at once, blanking out her mind.
…Eh… heeh… I don't know anymore… Just let whatever happens, happen… Hnn… heh…♡
A Horse Market where mares were bought and sold. Buyers came with all kinds of purposes. Some sought to satisfy a particular fetish for mares. Others wanted to dress one in the currently trendy Triple Crown mare cosplay outfit and spend an intimate evening at a place like a Succubus Salon. Still others were ambitious types hoping to make a name for themselves as jockeys or trainers in the newly expanding mare-idol industry.
Sellers, on the other hand, were almost always people who had either captured a wild mare — or were looking to dump a "ruined" one for whatever scrap price they could get.
Passing android staff who scanned the streets with hawk eyes, ready to fine anyone littering, the porters stepped into a "Mare Exchange" with a reasonably spacious stable attached. Lightly tugged along by the leash, Sonia had no choice but to follow.
"…Anyone home? The interior's pretty unique. …Hello!"
…? …!!! Th… this… ah…? …Wh… what on earth is… A… a mare!?
The porter, who hadn't kept up with the latest mare-idol racing craze at all, and Sonia, who had only ever seen anything like a mare in the bondage-tagged scenes of adult videos — both of them were struck speechless by the interior of the Mare Exchange, its [OPEN 24 HOURS] sign glowing bright.
✦ OPEN 24 HOURS ✦
Right at the entrance where customers came and went, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, stood a stall reserved exclusively for female horses. An actual stable was right there.
…Pe… perverts… This is… this is really… a slave market… isn't it…?
It wasn't quite a slave market — but Sonia had just set foot, as merchandise, into a night market where the trading of racing mares thrived.
This place was an entirely different space from the black markets of the underworld, where illegal human trafficking and slave dealing went on in the open.
Which meant that Sonia's cosplay operation — infiltrating by disguising herself as a female horse — had long since lost its original meaning.
Still bound by rope and led along in that perverse getup, pretending to be a female horse, Sonia was made to stand in a row alongside the other "racehorses" waiting for new owners.
She was no longer an undercover investigator on a mission. She was nothing more than a single living product set out on a display shelf.
The interior of the exchange presented a landscape that seemed to grotesquely mash together the backstage of a perverse fashion show and a high-end livestock judging hall.
Whether a dedicated designer had been hired or not, the mares displayed inside each stall — divided by lattice-patterned iron bars — all wore outfits of different designs.
Despite every external difference, one common point was glaringly clear. Every last one of them, just like Sonia, had her wrists bound tightly behind her back.
On their feet were shoes of every kind: from crude leather boots that would clack and scrape against the floor, to high heels reminiscent of a ballerina's pointe shoes that forced the wearer to stand on tiptoe alone.
Some mares wore leotard-style restraint suits like Sonia's, leaving every curve of the body completely unfiltered. Others wore designs resembling full-body swimsuits that emphasized streamlined figures.
There were even mares standing meekly with nothing but small heart-shaped nipple stickers covering their chests — whether for the practical purpose of reducing weight, or as a commercial ploy to strongly appeal to buyers with particular tastes.
The landscape of the Mare Exchange, stocked with such a variety of "merchandise," was more than enough to slowly short-circuit Sonia's rational judgment circuits.
(…Uh… uh… my… my chest is… nn… pounding… Am I… am I getting turned on… just from looking at this…?)
Trickle… Without meaning to, Sonia felt with vivid clarity the sensation of a hot fluid sliding down the inside of her thigh.
It was the moment she realized that every mare hanging on the stable's product-display racks — for reasons she couldn't know — had deliberately been fitted with a blindfold.