Ugh.

Stephanie didn't bother to hide her sneer as she watched the black pupils above her contract, as she mentally traced a line from those black-in-brown pools to the object which had their attention.

She wished she could manage an even greater signal of her contempt as Claire's frown broke away into a pleased smile as the larger woman's eyes found what they were looking for.

"Spending more time with the training doll, hm?" the crouching Omega questioned, her voice low and soft. Touched with a certain...warmth as she focused upon the little figure in Stephanie's hands. "You do spend a lot of time with it, actually." Stephanie promptly jerked her head to the right, freeing her from the annoyance of taking in that pleased face.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered stubbornly as she allowed the doll to vanish from sight within her fist. An amused chuckle sounded from above.

"It does stream usage and feedback data to our servers, remember?" Claire reminded her, earning a grunt from Stephanie as she faced upward again. "Why even try to deny it, though?"

"Because it doesn't matter," Stephanie grumbled, allowing her sneer to return. It didn't. It was just...an amusement, nothing more...she'd do what she wanted to with it...

"Hm," Claire sounded with a thoughtful expression, "for something that 'doesn't matter', you sure take good care of it, though." Another warm smile followed as Stephanie grimaced, and the Omega soon had an elbow resting on the rim of her enclosure, her hand gripping a phone that easily doubled Stephanie in height. She could hear Claire's thumb tapping and sliding away on the other side of the oversized device, and watched as her gaze shifted to the screen in a studious manner. "Beyond good, actually," she noted. "Three and a half weeks, and not a single errant action. Not a single fatal press, nor one that would injure. Not even an uncomfortable press, and I promise you that those sensors inside it can tell. It's something else, really."

"Hell, take a look for yourself."

A flip of a wrist, and Stephanie's irritated visage momentarily crumpled as she took in the hovering screen. A large stick figure - one like you might find on the door of a restroom - took up most of the vertical space, it's green hue grossly incandescent. against the black background.

"See? Not a speck of yellow, orange, or red. That little guy is the definition of immaculate."

Stephanie wasn't quite sure why she did what she did. Not at first, anyway. She would later attribute it to spite. But with almost primal instinct, her fist tightened. Sharply. Immensely.

Crushingly.

For a moment, that stick figure shifted from its pleasant green to a deep haunting red. Despite herself, a light gasp escaped Stephanie's lips, and her grip loosened just as quickly as it had tightened to allow the soft doll to lay comfortably within it once more. Slowly, that horrifying red began to fade into that comforting green once more as the application integrated the new data. That green returned, but...Stephanie could now make out several small specks of red buried within.

Claire turned the screen back toward herself, studied it again. Stephanie felt....uncomfortable, as the warden looked at the results of her action and a disappointed frown graced her soft features, accompanied by a matching sigh.

"It really was something else," she remarked sadly, before Stephanie watched the phone lower and then disappear into the pocket of the Omega's tight jeans. "You've really been taking incredible care of it, especially compared to your friends. Naomi had a few...accidents, the first week, and a few Uncomfortables for a few days after, but she's been wonderful since. Marion..."

The frown transformed into an almost bitter smirk.

"Well, she stays the course, I suppose," Claire continued with a certain amusement. "But you've been perfect from day one. Not many people can manage that, especially with what I've seen you do with it."

Stephanie grunted again, coming back to her senses. What she had been doing was...was nothing special. She had just felt like being soft with it. Then she hadn't. Nothing else.

"I mean that, by the way," Claire stated seriously. "You may not have seen me watching, but I did see you. The way you snaked it between your fingers, how you could give it a lil' toss up and pluck it right out of the air...without even triggering a yellow. That's not something just anyone can do so easily, and definitely not without practice."

Stephanie shifted uncomfortably in her bed at that last part, but remained silent. A decision she felt was the right one as Claire reached a hand over the rim, the appendage balled into a fist. Though as it approached, the index finger began to slowly unfurl, and soon Stephanie had a new guest as the underside of the Alpha-sized digit came to rest along the side of her bed. It was easily a match for its length.

"Can I see it?" Claire suddenly asked with a friendly smile. Stephanie shifted her eyes over to the waiting digit, then back to Claire's face as the larger woman patiently waited for her answer.

"...Whatever," came Stephanie's eventual answer, and she slowly brought the hand containing the little doll over to the Omega's fingertip. She hesitated as her hand hovered above it, momentarily surprising herself over her own apparently reluctance at giving up her little compan-

Sher shook her head.

Her little doll, but soon enough she relinquished her hold, allowing it to fall softly onto the waiting pad. Stephanie's eyes widened just a bit as she took in the form of the beige device as it lay on the tanned pad. She couldn't deny a sense of small wonder as it seemed to almost disappear into that swirling sea of fingerprint upon which it now rested.

She had never...never seen, for real, just how pitifully small a Beta was compared to an Omega. A part of her had known, sort of, but seeing how utterly...utterly insignificant the Beta-sized doll was as it rested on Claire's upturned finger...really seeing it...

Stephanie grit her teeth in annoyance as the doll was replaced in her mind by the form of that little Beta she and the others had run into, as she imagined him...it being taken into the swirling fingerprint like...like the pathetic thing that it was. A light tremble took her as that now familiar thought once more took hold of her mind.

How does she call it her brother?

"I can't tell you how much I used to hate these little things," Claire suddenly stated with a certain amusement. Stephanie jerked her head upward at that, and was greeted with an amused little grin on the Omega's face as her eyes plainly focused on the little thing on her finger. "When I was little, all I wanted to do, more than anything, was to be able to touch a Beta, to be able to pick one up. Then I got a big brother, and all I wanted was to be able to touch and pick him up, to hold him and help him."

There it was again, Stephanie thought with some contempt. That stupid word.

"And the only thing standing in the way of that," the Omega continued, her voice taking on cloak of playful annoyance, "was that little doll. Do you know how we get cleared, Stephanie? What we have to do, to be able to finally, truly interact with a Beta?"

Stephanie shook her head. She didn't know, she didn't care. She didn't want to be having another of these talks. Unknowing, and perhaps uncaring, of her thoughts on the matter of this conversation, Claire reacted to her response within seconds. The thumb of her nearby hand unfurled and shifted, began to lower toward it's protruding companion. Stephanie watched with a certain fascination as she realized what the pad of that thumb would soon be lowering onto, and just a few seconds later she played host an audible gulp as the pads of the two digits collided, trapping her little doll between them. Smothering it. Crushing it.

Obliterating it.

"This. We do this, Stephanie," Claire explained. "For eight straight hours, from the time we got to class til the time we left, we had to keep one of these little things just like this. Right between our fingertips, as it would transmit our pressure data to the Instructor's phone. There was no room for mistakes, Stephanie. Not one. Not a single. Little. One. Either we kept our little buddy nice and green while we went through the schoolday, or we failed and had to wait two more weeks to try again. We couldn't even cause a single yellow blip. It was all or nothing."

"And I was...not good at it, to put it lightly," she continued with a chuckle. "I tended to get more and more eager, with each passing hour. And as I got more eager, I also got more careless. So for nine months straight, after just a few hours, my assigned doll would just...disappear, really, between my fingers. And I felt it, every time. Cried every time, too. I hated it. I just wanted to be able to hold my brother, and these little dolls just didn't seem to want to let that happen. So for nine months I had to watch my friends get cleared, one after another. Watched them leave me behind, until I was the only one left who still hadn't passed. Watched them be the first ones to help my brother, instead of me. It was nine months of misery to me. Nine straight months of one failure after another."

Claire's face had momentarily shifted to one of somberness as she continued to look down at her punched fingers. There was silence for a moment, and Stephanie was thankful for it. Unfortunately, it didn't last.

"One night, though," Claire continued, her ever-powerful voice lowering to a near whisper- her lips curling into another warm smile, "one night, before the last test I would take...I got a helping hand. The best help I could have gotten. The stupidest, too, but still the best. From the person that mattered the most to me. So the next day, when I took the test..."

"Well, I think you can guess how it went," her warden finished, positively beaming as movement to her side caught Stephanie's attention. The thumb was lifting from its position, and Stephanie's eyes slowly widened as it began to pull away, her mouth began to hang agape.

Bullshit.

The doll remained there, on that finger, seemingly undisturbed. Seemingly undamaged. That was...It had to be a trick, Stephanie though. She couldn't...there was no way she could do that. No. Fucking. Way.

"Go ahead. You can take it back," Claire stated in that same frustratingly soft tone. God, she was tired of that. Still, though, she begrudgingly reached a hand out and gingerly - a little too gingerly, she thought, too late for it to matter - retrieved her little doll. Pulling the little thing in close to her stomach, Stephanie once more peeked up at Claire, still wearing that same warm smile. The hand remained where it was, near her bed.

"So what's all that crap got to do with me?" Stephanie deadpanned. She wanted to make sure that woman understood just how much of their time she was wasting with these stupid talks.

"Oh, not much, I guess," Claire coyly responded, "I just couldn't help but think about how well you probably would have done with that test. I bet you would have passed on your first try, actually, with how well you handle that little doll."

"Especially," she continued, and Stephanie couldn't help but take immediate note of how low the massive woman's voice suddenly was, "given how long it's been for you, since you last really held a Beta. Like you've been doing with the doll, I mean. Like you used to."

Stephanie shuddered, grit her teeth once again in a wave of anger. Why couldn't this woman just stop? Why couldn't she understand? Why couldn't she just shut up?

And to that end, Stephanie very nearly told her to do so. Nearly. Before Claire continued on.

"And because," the Omega followed up, "I think we shared a similar feeling, once. That mixture of pride, of contentment, of joy, as we held our small brothers in our hands. As we kept them warm and safe, all on our own for the very first time. Would you agree with that, Stephanie?"

Stephanie clicked her tongue, a rising fear growing in her gut of cracking her teeth as they continued to grit.

No, I fucking don't, she angrily thought, even as she hugged the hand holding her little doll into her stomach. She didn't. There was nothing to feel about those stupid little things...nothing.

"Can we," Stephanie started with what was practically a growl, "can we just get the fucking session over with?" She was tired of this. She always tried to make these stupid little connections.

Claire's eyes closed for a moment, and a heavy sigh escaped her lips. Within a few seconds, though, those eyes were open again, staring down at her.

"I suppose we can get started down that road for today," she remarked with some resignation, and the hand that had been resting nearby sprang to life. "I am somewhat short on time." Stephanie soon found herself being scooped off of her bed, much in the same fashion in which she had retrieved her doll.

Her doll.

Stephanie considered dropping it to her bed, leaving it behind. But she found herself stricken by some unnatural hesitation, and instead she held it even more securely within her fist and Claire's large fingers curled around her body. Their firm grip made any movement, and therefore any prospect of leaving the doll behind, impossible. So it seemed as if she would have a companion for today, she thought, as Claire rose to her feet.

"Of course," Claire started again as she turned to leave her room, as she always did, "we're not quite done. I do still have a bit more I want to talk to you about." Stephanie groaned. Why couldn't she just escape from this constant grilling? "Well, need to talk to you about, is more like it. Because how that goes, little Stephanie, is going to determine our session for today."

" 'cause I have a little deal of sorts in mind for this week, Stephanie," her warden stated simply, catching Stephanie somewhat off guard as those brown eyes cast themselves softly upon her, "and I truly hope you take advantage of it."