The first line of wax stings more than Karai expected, like a line of fire brushing gently over her belly. She sucks in a sharp breath, hands tightening in Shini's grip. 
"Easy," Shini murmurs, squeezing Karai's hands. "Breathe, Senpai." 
Breathing? Breathing is easy, sure. There is nothing easy about the weight of wax pooling on her stomach, drizzling back and forth over the line between scale and skin. She's half shifted right now, her tail a tight coil of tension while the heat from the candles warms her heaving her breasts. 
More candles rise from the floor around them, drifting through the air. "Show off," Karai mutters. 
April snorts slightly from where she's sitting next to her, eyes closed and hands folded primly in her lap like she's meditating. As if she isn't as naked as Karai and Shini are, the red down beneath her legs close enough for Karai to touch if her fucking hands were free. 
They gathered a bunch of different candles for tonight's event--red, blue, yellow, even purple and pink. The one that comes to a stop over Karai's breast, ever so slowly dripping down onto her breasts, is a vivid orange. Karai can't take her eyes off it. 
Heat flares against her breasts, spilling over her nipples. Karai gasps a curse in Japanese, voice slightly higher than she'd like, as her tail snaps against the floor. Those two conniving bitches chuckle, because of course they do. Acting like they're above this, as if Karai can't smell their arousal as vividly as her own. 
More wax drips onto her arms, her legs, swirling around and around in a dizzying pattern. If she squints, Karai can see Shini corralling the candles with tendrils of shadow, helping April keep their movements precise. 
She knows they're making a message of some kind, or a picture. She's seen them huddled over their papers and phones, muttering to each other and scribbling down patterns, driving her away with hisses whenever she tries to take a look. 
Karai still doesn't know what they want to say, and right now she doesn't care. Her only concern is how the wax burns so sweetly, biting into her skin with sharp little teeth. How she can feel it slowly, but surely rolling down her tail. 
And--fuck, she can feel Shini's shadows wriggling over her scales, cold spots that make that much more intense. Nudging all the little wax droplets into a colorful pool, pushing them towards the most sensitive parts of Karai's tail. 
It took a long time to figure out how Karai's genitals worked in her snake form, but the three of them were determined and horny enough to be more than suited to the task. Shini knows exactly what she's doing, as does April, whose eyes are closed in concentration as she lifts a free hand to shift the blobs of wax on Karai's tail into distinct patterns. 
That hint drags over Karai's spot and a moan spills free, fangs suddenly heavy in her mouth as her concentration slips. Shini sighs at the sound, grinding her bare lap against the back of Karai's head. April's finger clench and a significant glob of wax falls onto Karai's belly button, triggering a shocked yelp. 
Even as the heat at her cunt flares, Karai can already feel the wax cooling over other parts of her body. It pulls at her scales and pores ever so gently in the process, sending her oversensitive nerves singing. 
There's wax dribbling along her cheeks, over her temple, like butterflies with flaming wings. She must look a damn rainbow by now; ridiculous for a leader of the Foot, who should always be controlled and composed. 
Fuck that. 
"More," she rasps, and she doesn't care how desperate she sounds. "Come on, damn you, I'm not getting any you--" 
Shini cuts her off by muttering something, and then tiny flames spring up from every single clump of wax on Karai's body. It doesn't have time to burn her before Shini's cutting the fire off again, but it's enough, more than enough to send Karai writhing desperately with the sheer, glorious heat of it. 
It's the kind of heat that burns your bad thoughts away, the kind of heat you could go mad for if it wasn't shared so madly and willingly. To hear it all at once, even as the wax clings to her hungrily...it's a bit like an embrace from a fallen star. And she supposes that's not so far from the truth of what it means to love her mutant and her witch. 
April spreads her hands as Karai cries out, the last of the candles breaking apart into colorful shards of wax like small fireworks. They splash down on her shoulders, her hips, the tip and sides of her tail, her face. It's like she's being nibbled away from the inside out. 
Now that she's not holding the candles anymore, there's nothing to stop April from taking her power and pushing a bolt of energy into Karai's aching cunt. It's enough (too much) to send her spasming, burning, breaking. She cries out, a shriek-hiss that's ugly and undignified and glorious to make. 
Shini snaps her fingers and the fire goes out again, but Karai's still trembling. The others hold her through it, gentle fingers tracing the ripples of Karai's throat or along her sides. They keep her and the patterns they've built together until the trembling stops, leaving Karai just this side completely overwhelmed. 
For a second, she just blinks up into the silence, and when she speaks, her voice is raspier than she'd like. "What," she swallows, "What did you..." 
In answer, April leans forward and presses the tip of her finger to Karai's temple. An image flickers into her mind--a body, her body, spread out on her back. And covering her from temple to tail-tip are words. 
Or, rather, the same word in many languages. The largest one blossoms over her cunt in carefully designed kanji, while English adorns her collarbone in smaller letters. And there are other words in all the languages Karai has been taught or taught herself over the years in her journey to master Shredder's empire--Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and more. 
They're a bit blurry at the edges, maybe, but she can read them all well enough to know they each say the same thing. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. 
The connection cuts out, but it's enough to leave Karai reeling. "Fuck," she breathes. And shit, those are tears in her eyes, aren't there? 
"Why?" she manages to force out. 
They share a look over her head, then Shini glances down at Karai like she's said something mildly ridiculous. "Because that's what we feel every minute we're with you." she says, brushing a gentle hand through Karai's hair. 
Soon, they'll have to take the wax off. And that will be a whole new experience in itself, one that she knows her girls can and will make as long and exquisite as possible, until Karai has crumbled as badly as the wax itself. Then she'll have to reward them for all this, see if she can undo them as well as they've undone her. 
But right now? Right now all she can do is sob, soft and ridiculous in a way she almost never lets herself be, because...because this is insane, because it's the kind of insanity that feels so wonderful. This tribute to her knowledge, to her history, to her determination, to her from two people she didn't think she could love any more than she already has. 
She opens her arms, offering all the Love back to them, because damn it, everything they're praising her fits them just as well. April and Shini shift to lie down beside her, hands running gently and carefully between the words on her skin. 
"I love you," Karai says. It's the first time she's dared to say. 
And from the looks in their eyes, she can tell that they already knew that a long time ago. They were just waiting for her to admit it.