#Sensor Panel Light

[indobazzarr]

LED Lights - Adlite Electricals

Adlite Electricals offers an extensive range of LED Lights designed to meet today’s energy-efficient lighting needs. Our premium selection includes LED street lights, LED flood lights, LED panel lights, and LED high bay lights, perfect for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. We proudly supply top brands such as Orient LED Light, HPL Solar Street Light 15W, Havells Solar Street Light 15W, and Halonix Solar Street Light 15W.

Our range covers a variety of models, including Orient 2x2 LED Panel, Orient Panel Light, Orient 50W Flood Light, Orient 100W Flood Light, Orient 150W Flood Light, and Orient 200W Flood Light. We also offer HPL 30W, 45W, 50W, 60W, 72W, 90W, 100W, 120W Street Lights and Havells and Halonix models in matching specifications.

Our products are engineered to deliver exceptional brightness, low power consumption, and superior durability. Whether you need indoor lighting like Orient 2x2 LED Panels or robust outdoor solutions such as HPL and Havells 100W/120W Street Lights, Adlite ensures reliable performance.

Adlite Electricals is your trusted supplier of LED lighting in India and across global markets. Choose Adlite for high-quality, cost-effective LED lighting—brighten your world sustainably.

[adityanathyogi]

Syska 20W Batten Light

SYSKA LED Tube Lights’s simple and easy-to-install fixtures are an undoubted champion for your regular lighting purposes. Eco-friendly, Lower Consumption and Energy Saving, Replacing conventional flurescent lamps, Reduces CO2 Emission, Good colour rendering, Long life span (50,000 hrs). Model – Syska 20W Batten Light .

In the realm of lighting technology, there’s a shining star that’s been steadily illuminating the way forward: LED lights. From streetlights to floodlights, panel lights to high bay lights, LEDs have revolutionized the way we light our spaces. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the various types of LED lights, their benefits, and how they are transforming the landscape of illumination.

Shedding Light on LED Technology

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are semiconductor devices that emit light when an electric current passes through them. Unlike traditional incandescent or fluorescent bulbs, LEDs don’t rely on heating a filament to produce light, making them far more energy-efficient and durable. This inherent efficiency has made LEDs the go-to choice for a wide range of lighting applications.

Street Lights: Lighting up the Night Safely and Efficiently

Streetlights play a crucial role in urban infrastructure, providing safety and visibility during the dark hours. LED streetlights have become increasingly popular due to their energy efficiency and longevity. They consume significantly less energy than traditional sodium vapor or mercury vapor lamps, reducing electricity costs and carbon emissions. Moreover, LEDs offer superior light quality, with better color rendering and directional lighting, resulting in improved visibility and reduced light pollution.

Flood Lights: Brightening Spaces with Precision

Floodlights are designed to illuminate large outdoor areas, such as sports fields, parking lots, and building facades. LED floodlights excel in this role, offering powerful, focused illumination with minimal energy consumption. Their directional light output allows for precise targeting of the illuminated area, minimizing wasted light and maximizing efficiency. Additionally, LEDs can be equipped with advanced features like motion sensors and dimming capabilities, further enhancing energy savings and customization options.

Panel Lights: Sleek, Versatile, and Energy-Efficient

Panel lights are a modern alternative to traditional fluorescent troffers, commonly used in office spaces, schools, and retail environments. LED panel lights offer a sleek, low-profile design that seamlessly integrates into suspended ceilings, providing uniform illumination with minimal glare. They consume less energy, have a longer lifespan, and require less maintenance compared to fluorescent fixtures, making them a cost-effective and environmentally friendly choice for commercial lighting applications.

High Bay Lights: Illuminating Warehouses and Industrial Spaces

High bay lights are essential for providing adequate illumination in large indoor spaces with high ceilings, such as warehouses, factories, and gymnasiums. LED high bay lights are ideal for these environments due to their high efficiency, instant-on capability, and superior light quality. They deliver bright, uniform light distribution, ensuring optimal visibility and safety for workers while reducing energy costs and maintenance expenses.

The Bright Future of LED Lighting

As technology continues to advance, the future of LED lighting looks brighter than ever. Ongoing research and development efforts are focused on further improving efficiency, extending lifespan, and expanding functionality. Smart lighting systems, powered by LEDs and integrated with sensors and wireless controls, promise to revolutionize how we interact with and manage lighting infrastructure, enabling greater energy savings, customization, and automation.

In conclusion, LED lights have emerged as the cornerstone of modern illumination, offering unparalleled efficiency, longevity, and versatility across a wide range of applications. Whether illuminating streets, outdoor spaces, or indoor environments, LEDs are paving the way towards a more sustainable and luminous future.

Illuminate your world with LED lights, and embrace the brilliance of modern lighting technology.

[pankj123]

The ESYSENSE Motion Sensor Surface Panel Light is a modern and energy-efficient lighting solution designed for hands-free convenience. This Surface Mount Round Panel Light automatically turns on when it detects motion and switches off when no movement is present, helping to conserve energy. Its slim, stylish design provides bright and even illumination, making it ideal for hallways, staircases, and entrances. With the Motion Sensor Panel Light, you can enjoy seamless lighting without the need for manual operation. The Auto On/Off LED Panel Light ensures safety, efficiency, and a hassle-free lighting experience.

[bswlight]

Energy-Efficient 200W Solar LED Street Light by BSW

Discover the power of sustainable lighting with Jiangsu BSW Optoelectronics Group’s 200w Solar Led Street Light. Designed for efficiency and durability, it offers bright illumination while reducing energy costs. Perfect for streets, highways, and outdoor spaces, this advanced lighting solution ensures long-lasting performance with zero electricity consumption. Upgrade your lighting with an eco-friendly alternative that enhances safety and visibility. Choose innovation and sustainability with our top-quality solar street lights.

[mggslover]

Stuck

In which reader finds herself stuck in an elevator with her colleagues.

Pairing: Hotch x Reid x Morgan x Fem!BAU!Reader Genre: smut (18+) Content warnings: fingering, oral (f and m receiving), face riding, p in v sex, overstimulation, masturbation, breast play Word count: 5,4k A/n: I'm ovulating, so you know what time it is 🤭 I'm really nervous to post this, so I hope you will enjoy!

“Oh, you guys are such babies!” You laugh as Spencer and Derek refuse to step into the elevator, explaining how they’ve been stuck in one before. 

“It’s not funny, Y/N,” Spencer chimes in. “There are six elevator deaths per year. Not to mention ten thousand injuries that require hospitalization.”   

You roll your eyes at his comment, just as Hotch walks toward the elevator. “See!” You exclaim. “Hotch is joining us, and he saved you last time. We’ll be fine.” You add cheerfully.

“You’re coming?” Hotch asks, holding the elevator door open. You nod, pulling Morgan and Reid with you by their arms. 

You chuckle at their nervous reflections in the mirror as the elevator starts moving. A sudden creak causes Derek to snap his head towards you. “It made the same sound the last time!” You were just about to shut Derek up as the elevator shakes and the lights start flickering. 

“Not again!” Spencer whimpers, his eyes squeezed shut like he’s about to fall to his death at any given moment.

Hotch inspects the tight space, his expression grim. “It seems like the electricity went out…” 

“Actually, there are a lot of reasons why an elevator might stop,” Spencer interjects. “It could be worn-out suspension ropes, and it actually happens quite regularly that the motor overheats the safety sensors of the-“ 

“Let’s just solve this problem, shall we?” You cut him off, nudging Morgan out of the way to hit the red button on the panel. 

“You think that’ll do something?” Morgan asks, brow lifted. 

“It will alert someone that we’re stuck. We have to wait until somebody comes and gets us out of here.” Hotch adds. 

“Well at least I’ll be missing my meeting with Strauss,” I sigh in relief. 

“It was at twelve, right?” Spencer asks. 

“Yeah,” you respond with a nod.

“Statistically the average wait time to be rescued from an elevator is less than an hour,” Spencer continues, checking his watch. “That means you could still make it in time.” 

“Now that’s just what I wanted to hear,” you say sarcastically, earning a grin from Morgan. 

“We can only hope we won’t be in here for that long,” Hotch mutters, his impatience visible as he leans uncomfortably against the elevator doors. 

“Okay… so now what? Want to go over a case to pass the time?” 

“No, no cases please,” Morgan groans. “We’ve had three in a row. I’m done.” 

“Morgan is right. We’ve done enough cases in the past few days.” Hotch agrees. 

You mutter an “alright” as you sit down with your back against the elevator wall, smoothing out the crinkles in your skirt. The others look at you with uncertainty. Eventually Reid decides to sit next to you, exchanging a soft smile. Morgan follows suit, sitting in front of you. Hotch remains standing. You leave him be and turn to Spencer. 

“So Reid, I’m sure you’ve got enough interesting facts to pass the time.” 

Spencer looks surprised by the request, not used to directly being asked to share his facts, but his eyes quickly brighten, eager to share. “Well, actually, there are a lot of interesting things to say about elevators. There are approximately 20 million elevators worldwide,” you chuckle at his obvious enthusiasm. “The first elevator was created in 236 B.C. by Archimedes, a Greek mathematician. He used a water wheel and tied animals together with rope to create a lift mechanism.” You hum in interest. “They used lifts in the Colosseum, right?” 

“Yes! Exactly!” he responds excitedly. “The system was powered by eight men who would turn this massive wooden shaft connected to ropes. It could hold more than 600 pounds!” 

“Oh come on,” Derek says, his hand falling to his knee. “You’re telling me you’re actually interested in the mechanics of ancient elevators?”. 

Hotch glances at Morgan, silently agreeing with Derek’s skepticism. 

“Derek Morgan…” you feign offense, placing a hand on your chest. “Don’t act like I’m not curious about knowledge. At least Spence’s got something interesting to say.” 

Spencer blushes faintly, appreciating your defense. 

“Hey, I know facts too,” Morgan says smugly. “How about there being 7000 languages in the world today.” 

“The overall number is actually closer to 8000,” Spencer corrects him. “You only counted verbal communication.” 

“You guys are going to have a facts competition now?” You ask, bewildered. “It’s way too hot in here. I need some light conversation.”

“I agree,” Hotch mutters. “It is getting a little warm.”

You glance up at the AC in the corner of the elevator, which is clearly not working. It probably shut down along with the power. There’s a brief silence before Reid speaks up again. 

“I never thought I’d be trapped in an elevator with my colleagues,” he muses. “It’s a little cliché.”

“Cliche, how?” Hotch asks, intrigued despite himself. 

“You know how, in movies, a group of people get stuck in an elevator and they have to learn to overcome their differences to escape?” 

You shake your head in confusion, “I think I only know the dirty movies where they get stuck in an elevator,” you laugh. 

Spencer blinks at you, clearly thrown off. Derek chuckles at the scene, and even Hotch manages a faint smile. 

“I should’ve known you’ve only watched the dirty ones,” Derek teases. 

“What about you, pretty boy?  Ever seen a dirty movie?” He asks Spencer, grinning. 

Reid looks flustered. “I grew up in Vegas… I’ve seen some things.” 

“Ah, Vegas,” you say, sighing dreamily. “The place where you can’t drive for a minute without seeing a giant porn billboard.”

Morgan grins, leaning back with a satisfied sigh. “Sounds like my kind of place.” 

You laugh and kick his leg playfully. Morgan winks at you, enjoying the lighthearted banter. You glance up at Hotch, who is still the only one standing. 

“What about you, Hotch? What’s your favorite dirty movie?” You ask with a mischievous grin, but your expression quickly drops when you see his stern look. 

“Watch it, Y/L/N.” Hotch warns.

“Come on, Hotch,” Derek says. “Let loose a little!”

“See it as the universe’s sign.” I press on. 

“How is being stuck in here a sign of the universe?” Hotch asks, brows raised.

“Well, no way would you willingly take a break yourself. Now the universe got you stuck in here and is forcing you to relax,” you explain, with a playful gleam in your eyes. 

To everyone’s surprise, he slowly lowers himself to the floor, sitting down next to you. 

You exchange surprised looks with Derek and Spencer. All amazed at how you managed to get Hotch to sit down.

The next few minutes are spent in comfortable silence, scared to say something that will make Hotch change his mind. You’re glad he joined you, but it’s hard to ignore the rising temperature now that another person is sitting in close proximity to you. 

“How long has it been?” you ask, fanning yourself with your blazer. “I’m starting to sweat.”

“Thirty-five minutes so far,” Derek replies, following your lead and fanning himself. 

Hotch looks mildly uncomfortable, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Spencer, however, looks the most miserable using the collar of his sweater vest to wipe his face. 

“You guys should take your jackets off,” you suggest, eyeing Morgan and Hotch. 

You don’t need to tell Derek twice, as he removes his jacket, revealing a black short sleeved shirt that looks a lot more comfortable. Hotch looks reluctant to do the same, but eventually gives in, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt collar. You take a peak as he reveals his broad, muscled shoulders for a moment, before readjusting his shirt. Hotch notices your glance and his eyes shoot up to yours, catching you in the moment as your cheeks flush. You quickly look away. 

“Oh, she’s enjoying the view, alright,” Derek smirks and you give him a warning glance.

“Shut up. I was just surprised Hotch would give in.” 

Morgan grins and nudges Hotch with his elbow, “Look at that, Hotch. You’re surprising us all today. First you smile and now you’re taking your jacket off. What’s next, dancing a jig?” You and Spencer snort at his comment. Hotch rolls his eyes at Morgan’s teasing but can’t help a small smile from appearing on his lips. 

Spencer struggles with his vest and you give him a hand. “Here, let me help you”, you say as you scoot closer, pulling the vest over his head. The fabric feels soft, but incredibly warm in your hands. You don’t know how he managed to keep it on for this long. Reid is taken aback for a moment, but mutters a soft thanks. Morgan and Hotch watch the exchange with interest, clearly amused at the sight of you being so forward with Reid.

“Now it’s your turn, you’re the one who insisted,” Morgan states, and you can’t help but agree as you take your blazer off, giving a satisfied hum at the immediate relief.

“I’ll open up some buttons too, if you don’t mind,” you announce as your fingers start working on your blouse. You don’t give them a chance to respond, since it seems only fair. Their eyes widen at your gesture, all of them staring at the sight of your blouse slightly opening up. Morgan lets out a low whistle, “Now that’s a nice view.”

“You’re insufferable,” you scoff as you stop unbuttoning, showing just a hint of your lacy bra. Morgan’s eyes linger on the sight, clearly enjoying the view. Hotch and Reid look like they’re struggling to keep their cool. Reid is the most flustered of all, turning bright red as he focuses on his hands. Morgan glances around at the others, seeing them struggle to keep themselves composed. 

He chuckles and shakes his head, enjoying the effect you’re having on them. “You know, you’re driving all of us a little crazy here, sweetheart.” 

You let out a small huff, “Give me a break. You’re wearing shortsleeves, I’m the one wearing a blouse.” 

Hotch speaks up, his gaze lingering on your blouse. “That blouse does seem a bit warm.” 

“Thank you!” You say, glad someone is on your side. 

Hotch eyes stay focused on you though, or specifically the bit of exposed collarbone and the lace that’s hugged around the swell of your breast. Your breathing heaves when you find Spencer taking occasional peaks as well, watching with a mixture of awe and embarrassment, finding difficulty in looking away. 

“Let’s just all take our shirts off, I want it to be fair”, you quickly exclaim, done with the heavy tension that’s driving you crazy. Hotch and Morgan exchange amused glances as Spencer eyes turn big, taking in your proposal. 

“All our shirts, are you sure about that?” Derek asks, a hint of surprise in his voice. 

“Then at least you won’t eye me like that.” 

“Oh, I think I’ll eye you only more.” Derek teases, licking his lips. 

“Just take your damn shirt off.” 

Derek chuckles and raises his hands in surrender, “Alright, alright. No need to get feisty.” He says as he lifts his shirt off in a smooth motion. It’s a known fact that Derek is jacked, but seeing him in a setting like this, abs glistening with sweat and pupils still dilated from looking at you, is on a whole ‘nother level. 

You’re glad the attention is taken away from your peering eyes as Hotch follows suit, unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a clearly defined muscular chest with just a hint of hair. You start doubting your suggestion as it feels like the room is only growing hotter. You look over at Spencer, seeing whether he’ll be the next. Spencer hesitates for a moment, his eyes darting between the other’s bare chests and your unbuttoned blouse. His chest heaving with his breath, suggesting that he’s more affected than he’s letting on. 

“Come on, pretty boy. Join the party.” Derek says.

“I’ll go first,” you assure Spencer, not wanting him to suffer under peer pressure. Your hands start working on the buttons. Spencer’s eyes widened at the scene in front of him.

“See, it’s not that hard,” you reassure Spencer, folding your blouse and placing it next to you. 

“I don’t know about that. You’re making things pretty hard, baby girl.” Morgan comments, making you laugh. 

“You’re way too dirty for your own good.” 

Morgan grins. “Can you blame me? I mean, look at you. You’re looking mighty tempting right now.”

You softly smile at the compliment and focus back on Spencer. “You’ll feel a lot cooler, I promise,” you encourage. 

“I don’t know. I’m not as… toned as the others.” It hurts you to hear how he’s comparing himself to his colleagues. 

“Do you truly think I care about that?” You ask him. “It’s not a competition. I just want you to feel comfortable,” you speak genuinely. Spencer looks up at you, his eyes searching yours for any signs of mockery or deception. When he finds none, his face softens and he nods. He lifts his shirt over his head, revealing a body no less impressive than the others. 

“Not too bad, pretty boy. You’re looking pretty good without that vest on.” Derek compliments. 

“You do,” You agree, as you fold his shirt and place it on top of my blouse. Spencer gives you a sheepish smile, grateful for your help. Glad he decided to take his shirt off as he felt the cool air hit his chest, “Yeah, that does feel better.” 

You look around the room, the scene for sure one to be put down in the history books of the BAU. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve entered a new step in our colleague bonding,” you awkwardly chuckle, trying to lighten the mood but the air feels charged with an unspoken tension that’s impossible to ignore. You can feel their eyes on you, the way they linger, the weight of their gazes following your every movement. You try to ignore it, to stay professional, but your body betrays you. You shift slightly, adjusting your skirt, and that’s when you feel it - the subtle brush of Hotch’s fingers caressing your arm.

You swallow hard as you look away. The air around you is suddenly too tight. You want to curse your body as your nipples harden under his steady gaze, there being no way to blame it on the cold. Derek notices the exchange and leans in, the heat between you two palpable. 

His voice is low and husky, “You're all worked up, sweetheart. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.” 

Your pulse quickens, the sound of your heartbeat almost drowning out his words. “I’m not the only one,” you counter, voice quieter, but the challenge in it is unmistakable. You feel Spencer shift next to you, his body tense as he feels like he’s been caught staring at your chest. “Don’t be shy, genius,” Derek teases. “We’re all thinking the same thing right now.” You can’t help but smile at Spencer’s flustered look. “It’s… It’s hard not to, when you-” He cuts himself off, his voice faltering as his eyes dart away from your breasts. 

Hotch is still standing by the door, his eyes narrowing slightly as he watches the dynamic play out. “We’ve been stuck in here long enough. I think it’s safe to say we all want and feel the same thing.” The air thickens with desire as he dares to say the thought that’s been occupying everyone’s mind. You glance at the others, seeing how Spencer is adjusting himself in his pants and the way Derek is watching you, his gaze so intense it almost feels like he’s touching you. 

“Guess it’s only fair if we all just… give in to it,” you murmur, your eyes flicking between them. The suggestion is there, unspoken but understood. 

From there on everything feels like a blur. You hear Hotch growl behind you as he wraps his bicep around your neck, pulling you in as his lips crash against yours. You whimper against his mouth, which gives him the opportunity to let his tongue slide in. You welcome his tongue with yours as your hand moves to squeeze the arm around your neck, making full use of the circumstances to feel up on his muscles. 

“You’re always driving me crazy when wearing this skirt,” Hotch groans in your ear as his teeth pull on your earlobe. You can find no other way to respond than let out a high pitched sound of enjoyment as his free hand kneads your ass through your pencil skirt. Spencer watches the scene unfold in front of him. How his boss roughly grabs and kisses you, manhandling you. 

 “I- I don’t know about this…” Spencer stammers. 

Morgan turns to him, breaking the intense gaze he had on you and Hotch. “Don’t worry Reid, she’s enjoying it.” 

“Are you sure?” Spencer asks, uncertainty in his voice as Hotch is pulling on your hair, giving him access to plant kisses and bites on your neck. 

Morgan grins, “Let me show you how sure I am,” he says as he steps towards you and Hotch. He rolls your skirt up to your stomach and lets his fingers slide over your panties, cursing when it easily slips between your folds, creating a wet sound. You moan at the friction, not in the state to feel embarrassed by how wet you are. 

“See Reid, she loves it,” Derek points out, licking his lips as he pulls your damp panties to the side. Spencer lets out a groan as Derek reveals your glistening pussy, his hand subconsciously squeezing the bulge in his pants for any form of release.

“Let me see,” Hotch insists, removing his lips from your neck. Derek slides a finger through your folds and proudly displays the stickiness to Hotch. 

“You’re such a little slut, aren’t you?,” Hotch whispers, his nose pressed against the side of your face. “Just been begging to get in a situation like this so we could all fuck you the way you deserve.” You whimper at his dirty words and hot breath on your skin. Your legs feel like jelly as he grinds himself against your ass. Derek continues to apply pressure with his hand as he lets his fingers rub up and down your lips and clit. 

Spencer’s eyes are burning holes in your chest. He just can’t understand how no one has touched your lovely tits, while they’ve been teasing him the entire time. 

“You can come here Spence,” you purr, hypnotizing him to walk towards you. He swallows as he’s close enough to touch you, close enough to hear all the little sounds you’re making as you’re being touched all over. 

“Can I-?” You don’t let Spencer finish his question as you quickly nod, throwing your head back as his finger grazes over your nipple, sending a direct spark of pleasure to your clit. 

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers mostly to himself in awe as he cups your breast, the shape fitting perfectly in his large hand. 

“Thank you,” you whisper back. It’s ironic how his sweet compliment is the thing that's making you shy.

Derek slips a finger inside of you with ease, and you bite your lip to hold back your mewls. “Don’t do that. I like the way you sound.” Spencer encourages, resulting in another moan from you, loving the effect his words have on you. 

Hotch unclasps your bra from behind and Spencer helps him by pulling your straps down, letting your breasts fall free. Hotch grabs your left breast, kneading it with his strong, calloused hands as he rolls your nipple in between his fingers. Spencer uses the momentary distraction to bend down and experimentally licks your nipple, humming at the sensation. He gives a couple more licks to your breast as he pulls your nipple in between his lips, sucking on it as he flicks his tongue against the sensitive bud. 

You feel overwhelmed by the way all of your erogenous zones are stimulated at once; Hotch licking and biting on your neck and ear, while massaging your breast and grinding his hardness against your ass. Spencer’s swollen lips and wet tongue tracing over your nipple as Derek caresses your thighs as he adds a second finger into your pussy. You realize that this is what pleasure is supposed to be like. The zones on your body are all connected and you haven’t experienced true bliss until those spots get triggered at the same time. 

“Morgan, is she ready?” Hotch asks, breathing heavily. 

“More than ready, sir,” Derek grins as he takes a step back. He lets his fingers slide out of you, making you whimper at the loss of contact, but then Hotch turns you around so that your chest is pressed up against the elevator doors where he was standing. 

“I need you for myself,” he groans. Derek tosses a condom from his jeans and Hotch catches it, ripping the package with his teeth while pulling his trousers down to his knees, not wanting to let a single moment go to waste. Your hands are pressed against the wall as he slowly enters you. 

“Oh my god… I feel so full,” you whine and you swear you could feel him grin as you register that he’s not even fully inside of you. You let out a long breath as you feel his balls make contact with your ass. 

“You’re doing okay there, princess?” Derek chuckles and you nod. Hotch slowly moves his length out of you as he slams his hips back in with a groan. You gasp as you wrap your hand around the back of his head, keeping yourself steady as he continues thrusting into you. His growls feel hot against your neck. His sweaty chest pressed up against your back, leaving you completely in his grasp.

“You feel that angel? How your pussy swallows my cock?” You let out a cry as you nod your head in agreement. 

“I don’t understand Y/N. You’re a big girl, use your words.” 

“Oh god…’’ Your head spins as he pounds into you. “I’m not going to tell you again Y/N, use your words.” He orders. 

“Yes!’’ you cry out. ‘’God yes Aaron, it feels so good. I can feel you so deep inside of me.” 

“Say my name again.” He moans as his hand trails down your stomach until it reaches your swollen bud. “Aaron, please… I’m so, so close.” He gives some quick taps to your clit, making you squirm in pleasure as your knees give out. His strong hands grip you by the waist and he hoists you back up on his dick. “I’m almost there honey, you can keep it up, be good for me.” 

You let out a string of whines as he uses the palm of his hand to swiftly move against your folds, indirectly bringing pleasure to your clit. You can’t take it any more, pressing your nails into his arms as you crouch down in front of him, shaking as your release hits you. Hotch groans loudly as his dick slips out of your pussy. His dick twitches as he takes off the condom, painting your back with hot spurts of cum.

You have your eyes closed, trying to catch your breath as you’re still riding down your orgasm. You hum as you feel the soft material of Spencer’s sweater vest against your back, cleaning you up. 

“You okay?” Spencer asks, kneeled in front of you. You nod your head and softly smile at his tenderness. 

“Yeah. I feel really, really good.” You answer, making Spencer return your smile. With him in front of you, you notice the visible outline of his bulge pressed against his thigh and reach out to touch it. Your fingers lightly brush over his length, causing him to shudder. 

“Do you want me to take care of you?” You ask sensually, looking in his eyes. 

“Not really,” he responds, taking you by surprise. He sees your expression and quickly corrects himself. “It’s not like I don’t want you to! I’d- I’d love you to do…”, he’s not actually sure what you planned on doing to him. “Whatever you would do. I just-,” his voice softens, meeting your gaze. “I really need to know what you taste like.” 

Your cheeks warm, feeling your arousal grow. “Okay,” you exhale. Spencer extends his hand, helping you up. You find your blazer and bundle it up for Spencer to lay his head on. You’re amazed at how willing he is to get down on the floor, ready to eat you out in a very nontraditional and arguable unsanitized way. You hover over his face as you get down on your knees, letting out a hum as his breath tingles your pussy. Spencer kneads your calves and runs his hands up the back of your thighs. He tilts his head up, placing a wet kiss on your inner thigh.

“Feels good,” you mumble. Spencer responds with a hum against your skin, the vibration causing you to moan. He grabs your thighs, slowly pulling them further apart. “I can’t wait to taste you,” he admits, sticking out his tongue and licking a stripe up your folds. You moan, arching your back. Through hooded eyes you spot the figure of Hotch. He’s sitting against the wall in front of you, lazily stroking his half hard length as he stares at you. 

Just when you were about to question where Morgan was, you catch him in your periphery. He holds your gaze as he approaches, coming to a stop right in front of you. His belt buckle hangs open, but it doesn’t look like he’s touched himself. 

“If you don’t mind, I’d really like to take up on that offer genius here denied.” You grin at him, hands reaching out to his belt. Spencer is keeping himself busy, licking and sucking up your juices. You pull Derek’s pants down, gasping as his dick springs free, slapping against his happy trail. You groan in delight as you wrap your hand around his shaft. He tilts his head back at the contact. “Fuck baby, your hands feel so warm and soft.” You lean forward and let some of your spit dribble down on his dick, making him hiss. You move your thumb in circles over his tip, mixing your saliva with his precum. When it feels like it’s wet enough, you move your hand up and down his length in a steady motion.

His tip grows red and you cannot resist licking your lips before putting your mouth on him. He feels heavy in your mouth as you take him in deeper, stimulating him with your tongue as you suck. His hands tangle in your hair, holding you as he moves in sync with your movements. 

Spencer moves a hand up the curve of your ass while he uses the other to unbuckle his belt. He slides his hand in his pants, rubbing himself over his boxers as he relishes in your taste. His lips nibble on your labia as his nose tickles against your clit. 

“Don’t get distracted, baby girl,” Derek states, softly pushing your head back down. You swallow around him and try to up your pace. Derek takes your breast in his hand, massaging it. As your nipples harden he takes one in between his fingers, pulling on it. You gasp at the sensation, making his dick slide deeper down your throat. 

“Fuck! Right there baby, that feels so good,” he pants. You blink away tears, continuing the steady movement of your head and swirls of your tongue. 

Spencer’s dick starts feeling too hot in his boxers and he pulls it out, so that it lays against his stomach. Your pussy is absolutely dripping because of the swipes of Spencer’s tongue and the taste of Derek in your mouth. Spencer can’t keep up with licking you clean, your wetness dripping down his chin. He reaches out to grab his length, the skin to skin contact overstimulating him. 

You notice Spencer getting restless underneath you. Derek’s dick pops out of your mouth. “Are you okay, Spence?” You ask. He hums against your clit in response, you let out a high pitched moan and instinctively bend your knees. “Sorry,” you apologize as you want to tilt your hips back up, but Spencer pulls you back down by your thighs, making you sit on his face.

“Oh god…” You moan as he starts devouring you. He keeps a hand firm on your ass as he starts jerking himself off to the beautiful sounds that you’re making. You lazily tug on Derek’s cock, too distracted by Spencer’s tongue. 

“Oh Spencer, I’m going to cum,” you whimper, mouth open and brows furrowed in pleasure. You start grinding yourself on his tongue, seeking your release. You find the perfect spot and Spencer presses the tip of his tongue against your clit, as you fall undone. Spencer laps up your juices and squeezes the load out of his dick as it splatters on his belly. You lift your hips to give Spencer some space. He moves away, joining you on his knees as he sits behind you, pressing featherlight kisses to your back. 

“I’m not gonna last that much longer,” Derek announces, who’s been stroking himself to your orgasm. “Come here, then,” you invite as you take him back in your mouth. Placing a hand on his thigh for support, you use all of the energy that is left in you to suck him off. Your free hand reaches out to play with his balls, which seems to be the trigger for him.

“Fuck, Y/N, baby, I’m going to cum!” He groans deeply as he fills your mouth. You quickly swallow his load, eyes watering as he pulls you in by your head, needing your lips on him as he rides out the aftershocks. 

“Fuck… You’re amazing, sweetheart.” He sighs, letting go of your hair so that you can catch your breath. 

-

“Who the hell is in there?” 

The voice outside is sharp and gruff. Everyone’s heads whip around, startled. Hotch swiftly buckles his belt as he strides towards the elevator doors.

“This is SSA Aaron Hotchner of the BAU. I’m stuck here with three of my agents.” 

The voice responds quickly, dripping with disbelief. "Why didn’t you morons use the emergency button?"

Your colleagues look at each other, then shift their gaze to you, all with accusing looks plastered on their faces.

"Hey, don’t look at me! I’m the first one that pressed the red button!" You say in defense. 

The voice outside huffs in frustration. "Red? It's a black button."

You blink in surprise, your gaze snapping to the panel. You crawl up to get a better look, and sure enough, there's a black button, boldly labeled ‘EMERGENCY.’

"What in the world?" you mutter under your breath. "Then what the hell is the red button for?!"

The voice outside laughs sarcastically. "How the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve been working here for six months. Don’t blame me because you can’t read." He pauses, clearly shaking his head. "FBI agents, my ass."

You blink in disbelief. You share an incredulous glance with Derek, then burst out laughing, your frustration giving way to amusement. "Seriously?" you mutter, shaking your head. 

Derek notices how Spencer’s been unusually quiet. “Speak up, kid,” he urged. 

“I’ve known what the buttons do the entire time,” he says, voice casual.

You and Hotch both turn to look at him, eyes wide. “What?!” You both exclaim at the same time. 

Spencer shrugs, a playful glint in his eyes. “I told you about those movies where people overcome their differences to try to escape. I wanted to see how we would solve it.”

Derek’s mouth drops open. “You’ve been sitting here the whole time knowing exactly what to do and didn’t say anything?!” 

Spencer smiles, looking almost proud of himself. “It’s a team-building exercise,” he says matter-of-factly. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t enjoy it.”

You shake your head, laughing in disbelief. “You’re unbelievable, Reid.”

As if on cue, the elevator jolts, and the soft ding of the doors opening fills the space.

[sw5w]

[ Happy Chirping ]

STAR WARS EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace 00:28:24

[anaktoria-of-the-moon]

At work plagued by thoughts of a mech bigger than you can imagine.

She starts like most of them do, a Titan excavator rig modestly sized for their line: maybe a house or thereabouts, a big house. (Doesn’t matter why she signed up - perhaps a breadwinner, a lone mother or eldest sister, a daughter of aging parents nobody else will take; doesn’t matter what site they sent her to, Earth or Enceladus or Venus or Europa. She’s there, and she lets them strap her in and adapt her for the piloting interface and pump her full of protein ooze and electrolytes and hyperstimulant cocktails as obediently as the next laborer.)

Upgrades come, from big house to bigger, with shovels like hillsides and treads like highways. Still she remains in the cockpit, out only for one day every six months to say hello to her burgeoning family, who have moved nearby to make it easy on her, to meet the baby nephews and nieces whose names she doesn’t yet know.

War comes. The facility hunkers down. It just makes sense to retrofit their biggest digger with shields, to expand her arsenal a little more, give her a better engine, pour all their leftover resources into making her a great guardian, and she rises to the occasion, shielding them from orbital rays, absorbing the energy and taking the pain of it up into her own engines. When the corporate rats who own the site finally turn tail and run the workers and their families band together and do the needful repairs themselves. Her nieces and nephews grow up learning engineering by the light of oil lamps from stolen Old Era textbooks and jailbroken datapads. She hardly ever now glimpses their faces with her own two eyes from within her steel shell but it is a worthy sacrifice to her, to them, for both parties know she is still there, still with them, embracing them in a great steel hug and watching through a thousand glass-lensed eyes.

Years pass. The brightest of her nieces works out how to modify the nutrition cocktail going into her cockpit so she will never age, never die, never fall sick. Somewhere in there all the metal and ceramic encloses her ever-sleeping body like a lotus flower around the benevolent, immortal form of a bodhisattva.

The outpost survives the war, somehow. Refugees hear of the little town on the colony that could, guarded by a goddess the size of a temple, and flock there. It makes sense to add to her control, among her array of sensors and actuators, the new city’s power generation and delivery system, its wall defenses, its waste management, its communications mains. Nowhere is anything safer than with her.

With all these new additions come techs and custodians to keep her in good care. They build modest crew cabins nestled amongst her treads (now rusty from disuse) so they can be close to her, the better to help her.

Slowly more and more falls under her purview, new cabins, then mezzanines and stairways and platforms between them; each generation has their own superstitions that they add to those of the last before them, so paintings crop up on her metal panels now, in nooks and crannies, often crude symbols that promise good oil changes or swift code updates, or simply depictions of their goddess, of the war she survived. Still she watches.

Her nieces and nephews are all dead now, and their nieces and nephews look on through rheumed eyes as the city attains new heights, heralded everywhere on every planet that still lives as an oasis of peace and prosperity. Still she watches.

A new company comes, enticed by the stories. They want to buy her. Buy her! The people scoff. As if you could just buy a person! - A person? asks the representative from Acher Spaceways, perplexed. - We heard she was your goddess.

She is both, of course, the goddess who lives, the goddess who is one hundred percent flesh and one hundred percent machine.

Acher doesn’t like this. They send machines - zero percent flesh, entirely drones - screaming down from the stars for a more insistent negotiation, one phrased in metal slugs and incendiary fire.

So your goddess rises up to meet them.

It is over in a short day. The drones lie in pieces; Acher, from orbit, licks their wounds, and the goddess rebukes them with a single laser blast, modified from her very first mining waymaker photonic drill.

The blast is precise and surgical. It tears apart the whole platform, spinning central axis to annular habitat space, which supernovas into a blossom of shining proof in the night sky at which the citizens below cheer.

But the pieces are falling, and soon they will pepper the surface below with molten debris, kick up dust into the atmosphere and make it all but unbreathable. The people could leave, the goddess advises them through short-wave radio bursts. They could use her emergency shuttles to escape gravity before it is too late, or they could go underground and salvage her rarest and most precious resources to survive until the surface is safe again.

Here is the thing - every pilot is augmented, and most augments are for the benefit of the plainly physical, for strength and speed and stamina and sharpness of perception. When her people augmented her, they augmented something else entirely. With every new module, every sensor upgrade, every painted symbol and hidden shrine, they gave her a superhuman capacity not for stamina or speed or strength, but for love.

It is her love that saved them, so they must save her back.

For two days they work tirelessly, the whole city, while above them the shattered pieces of Acher Spaceways looms ever closer. When they are done the treads are gone, the cabins dismantled, only the little drawings carefully preserved under coats of abrasion- and heat-resistant paint. And under her, their city, their Haven, lie rockets, ten of them, repurposed from the old all-ore crucibles, fit to move an asteroid.

She’s out there somewhere by Orion now, they say, the fourth jewel in his belt. And she has only grown: from three thousand then to three hundred million. Creatures from all over come to pay her their respects, or to visit lovers, or to live there themselves. There is always room in a body that is ever expanding, like the cosmos itself. Over all of them, she watches, eternal.

Among all the stories they tell of her, they repeat this one the most - how she tore apart a whole space station for the sake of her people, knowing she would die if she failed, for how can a whole city hope to flee? She guards them, and in turn they do not abandon her. They are two halves of the same whole, they say reverently, love manifest - the people and their city; this pilot, this great machine. This Haven.

[keferon]

im glad that my first submission was enjoyed. this was meant to be a part of it, but i struggle a lot more writing first aids pov than vortexs. its still not perfect, but i figure i should let it out into the wild before it drives me crazy.

some further questions: what exactly are the quintessons made of? are they techno-organic? entirely mechanical? or like...synthetic materials mimicking biology? and whats up with the program that produced vortex? did it shut down? or is it still operating (maybe under shockwave now?) did jazz go through it?

______________________________________________________________

His head is killing him. 

Felix comes to in the unyielding dark of Vortex’s cockpit, squinting uselessly before giving up, letting his head lean back against the seatrest. It pulses in time with his heartbeat- elevated- sending waves of fresh misery through him. But he’s alive, Vortex let him live, and the realization pulls a miserable laugh from him. 

Vortex saved him.

Vortex saved him.

Vortex saved him.

From Pharma.

The thought is like ice water poured over his head washing away any lingering exhaustion. Pharma. What the hell was going on? Why did he-? Had the irritable CMO finally lost it? Or was there something else going on? 

Felix’s stomach churns uncomfortably at the thought of Pharma obeying another- who would order this? Who could order this? To what end? How had none of the other medical staff noticed? Or did they notice and not care?

His stomach lurches again, and Felix fumbles at the restraints- looser, now- and finally manages to hit the quick release clasp, practically flopping forward before he catches himself, swaying pathetically in the dark- pulling his helmet off is a welcome relief, the cooler air of the cabin circulating around his abused head. All of his muscles are sore, each joint something just a little firmer than liquid. The only light comes from the running lights, blinking on like soft red stars against Vortex’s night, and Felix lets himself stare blankly at a particularly interesting assortment of them, trying to will the nausea to subside. 

It does not. In fact, it strikes back with a vengeance, and Felix presses a fist to his mouth to stifle his suffering. It works, somewhat, his gorge settling slightly. He needs to get out of here, out of the blood-and-bleach scented warmth of Vortex before he overstays his welcome. Maybe he already has, and Vortex is just biding his time before he kills Felix gruesomely. Right on cue, he can feel the familiar faint prickling sensation of cameras and infrared sensors being trained on him, the behemoth paying its quarry its undivided attention. 

“Vortex,” he says, or more accurately, tries to say. All that comes out of his mouth is a pathetic little groan. His stomach is churning again now. 

“Vortex.” he tries again while fumbling for the canopy hatch- God, movement was a bad idea- and while it still fails the benchmark of being a word, it at least sounds like Vortex’s name. 

His gorge rises again, and Felix can’t stop the faint whimper as he runs his hands over the instrument panel, looking for the canopy release lever. He is not going to throw up inside Vortex, even if worse things have been thoroughly ground into the panels and seams of the mech. Felix still has some pride. And he doesn’t need to risk Vortex’s wrath any more than he has. 

“Vortex.” and now it sounds like a proper name. Felix can feel the hum of Vortex’s machinery and wiring change underneath his palms. His head spins, and the tug of exhaustion has returned, borne on the back of the enveloping warmth of the cockpit.

His stomach flips again.

“Vortex, open the cockpit.” Felix tries, giving up on fumbling in the dark for the lever. “Please,” he amends, because apparently his manners have left with his health. 

The darkness takes on a vaguely threatening feeling. Vortex must have spent all his goodwill on not killing Felix earlier. 

“Vortex, please-” he gags, pressing his fist to his mouth again, “I- I’m going to-”

He gags again, and this time- thank you, Vortex!- the canopy lifts, barely a few feet before coming to a stubborn stop, the dull halogen glow of the docking bay lights breaching the cockpit. The opaque filter over the canopy bleeds away, returning the familiar blood-red hue to Vortex’s visor. Felix barely makes it to the edge of the cockpit before throwing up, practically lying out over the instrument panel as his arms fail him. It spatters, worryingly dark against the burnished metal of the catwalk. He lies there bonelessly, his throat burning and head spinning. How the hell had his life ended up like this? Cosmic punishment for stealing organs still? Felix had thought getting demoted to nurse and resident Vortex-cleaner punishment enough.

He eventually rolls off of his stomach and carefully (gracelessly) slithers back to sit on the floor of the cockpit, head resting against the instrument panel, staring up at the cockpit ceiling. The dark plating is smooth, almost seamlessly jointed together, only interrupted by the explosion of wires and cording comprising the neural connectors. It’s…almost peaceful, in the cockpit, with only the purr of Vortex’s systems humming through the panel that Felix is resting his head on interrupting the silence. The halogens filter through the red polycarbonate of Vortex’s canopy, staining the light bloody ruby. 

His mouth is dry. Horrifically dry. He needs water. Getting water means leaving the relative safety of Vortex’s cockpit. 

Water can wait. 

Pharma might still be out there, lurking. 

His head swims, stomach vaguely threatening to rebel again. Felix turns his head, pressing his cheek to the warm metal of the instrument panel. It feels pretty nice. This particular piece of Vortex only smells like metal and circuitry, not blood. If he closes his eyes, it’s just pleasantly dark enough to settle into a half-sleep slumped against Vortex’s plating. His skin prickles faintly.

The pang! Of a piece of plating hitting the floor wakes him from his doze, sending fresh gouges of pain rippling across his skull. Felix blinks, headache settling squarely behind his right eye socket and encompassing his entire skull. Where had that come from? Was something wrong with Vortex? Or more likely, had Vortex tired of his presence and was preparing to finally kill him?

The plating sits on the flooring, looking as deceptively innocent as any non-sentient sheet of metal can. Felix huddles back further against the instrument paneling. The canopy was shut sometime while he was drowsing, completely locking him in. Light ripples across the cockpit, and Felix slowly twists around to squint up at the display.

[OPEN THE BAG]

Bag. Open the bag. What bag? 

Felix casts helplessly around the cockpit space, searching- there! In a shadowed cubby against the far wall, which- if he remembers from the pilot’s manual correctly- should not be there. Felix attempts to stand, legs wobbling, before giving up and crawling over to the alcove. His skin prickles again, and he refuses to feel shame underneath Vortex’s mechanical gaze. It’s because of the stupid medical boot. Not him. He pushes the loose plating aside and is rewarded with a screech of metal-on-metal that sends his head throbbing again. Felix sags against the wall with a groan before throwing what’s left of his caution to the wind, sticking his hand into the alcove and dragging the bag out. Vortex does not take his hand off. Not even a finger gets scraped on the exposed metal. There’s not a hint of violence from the mech, and Felix sneaks a glance at one of the cockpit cams. It’s trained directly on him, lens shadowed in the claret gloom. He gives it a weak smile. 

The bag is the heavy black polyester duffle ubiquitous to military installations, and it takes a bit of fumbling for Felix to find the zipper and tug it open. Inside is a fresh pilot’s uniform-the Nomex base-side kind, a small toolkit, a radio, a number of MREs and-

Water. 

Felix grabs the first bottle, twisting the cap off and chugging the water down. It’s warm, with a strange plasticky aftertaste. It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He drinks another just as fast, water settling heavy in his stomach and washing the taste of bile from his mouth before leaning back against the wall again, the steady rumble of machinery behind it a small comfort. The ex-medic checks the cockpit display, but it remains a steady blank. Another check to the camera confirms that it’s still trained directly at him. Felix gives it a second awkward smile. 

“Vortex- I ah…I- thanks.” He finishes lamely, rubbing his face. His skin is disgustingly oily to the touch. What do you say to a thousand-ton killing machine when it doesn’t kill you? “For-”

Not killing me. 

Saving me from the evil clutches of Pharma.

Giving me water. 

“For everything. Yeah.” Felix cringes at the awkward words. He’s never been particularly well-spoken, but this is just embarrassing. He almost wishes that Vortex would try to kill him again, just for the possibility to escape this torture. 

They sit in silence, Felix’s gaze focused on the floor, skin prickling. His stomach clenches, water threatening to make a reappearance. 

He should’ve known better to drink anything Vortex offered. He slowly stands, one hand against the wall of the cockpit for stability before slowly crossing to the front. “...can you please open the cockpit?” He hazards, one hand pressed to his openly rebelling stomach. 

There’s the distinctive sound of the locking pins dropping. Felix winces as his stomach clenches again.

“Please-” he retches, throat burning as bile forces itself back up his worn esophagus. “I-I don’t wanna-”

The canopy lifts with an almost petulant hiss of the hydraulics, only a few feet again. And again, Felix barely gets his head out of the cockpit before throwing up. The water burns as it leaves, and Felix spits a few times after it to clear his mouth, hand pressed to his cramping stomach. His head pounds under the unrelenting light, and he slips back into the welcoming dim dark of the cockpit. For the second time that day, Felix finds himself sitting on the floor of Vortex’s cockpit, mouth sour and throat stinging, staring up at the ruby wash of light across the ceiling. The canopy hisses shut, locking pins ch-chunk-ing into place with finality. The red light ripples, disturbed, and Felix can’t stop the weary sigh as he lifts his head to read Vortex’s words.

[FELIX-BABY, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SWALLOW]

Felix feels his cheeks heat, and he looks away from the chiding display. He’s not sure which is worse, being called baby by Vortex or the joke. 

“I threw up. That's different.” He mutters, running hands through his sweat-stiff hair. 

The ventilation stutters, on-off-on-off, like human laughter. His cheeks heat more. 

[DRINK MORE. SLOWLY]

Felix gawks at the screen. He must have brain damage- there’s no way Vortex is giving him medical advice. Advice in general, actually. This must be a trick of some kind. 

But he is thirsty. 

He shuffles back over to the bag.

Opens another water bottle. 

He drinks slowly, stealing small sips each time until the bottle is mostly empty and his stomach settles into a kind of low-grade simmer. His headache eases some. Immediate crisis resolved, Felix’s attention wanders back to the medical boot. Why does he have it? His leg doesn’t hurt- he wracks his brain, did he injure it sometime before Pharma got to him? Or did he put up enough of a fight to injure himself? Was that why he was drugged? 

His memories are not forthcoming, but it makes sense. Many sedatives interfere with the formation of new memories; if it was put on at around the same time as the IV, his brain might not have had the ability to recall why.

It leaves only one course of action. 

Felix fumbles with the buckles and straps- thank god Pharma only used one of the temporary, removable braces rather than something more permanent like plaster or fiberglass. Otherwise he’d have to stick his leg into Vortex’s machinery to get it off. He pulls the boot off with little difficulty, studying his leg. A simple check; wiggling his toes, rolling his ankle, flexing his knee. No pain. Not even any cuts or bruises cross his flesh. Which means…Felix pokes around the wads of cotton padding pulled from the brace. There!

A small metal device, no bigger than a coin, nestled into a fold of gauze. A tracker? Or some kind of…recording device? He holds it up for inspection, skin crawling as Vortex’s cameras and scanners snap to it. A surge of malevolence fills the cabin, Vortex’s wrath roused by the discovery. Plating rattles, the low purr of the mech’s engine climbing to a dull roar. Felix draws his legs to his chest, curling against the bag for its flimsy protection, device clutched tight in his fist. Another panel pops loose, clatter of metal half-drowned by the increasing volume of machinery grinding. 

[DESTROY IT]

Felix does not need to be told twice, scrambling to toss the cursed thing into Vortex’s grinding gears. It’s shredded immediately, fragile circuits ripped apart and ground to silicone dust in the face of his fury. There’s a high pitched whine- Vortex’s weapons systems charging, oh god- before it all subsides. The silence is profound against the pain in Felix’s head, the mech’s engines and drives settling down towards their previous quiet purr like nothing happened. The plating stills, returning to inert, the gap where Vortex had offered Felix a place to throw the thing the only break in the metal.

The medic carefully replaces the panel covering the humming machinery, plating hooking into place smoothly, seamless. No response from Vortex. He casts a glance at the cockpit canopy, but there’s no chance that Vortex will let him out, and he’s not about to ask after all of… that. There’s only one thing for him to do, other than try to sleep- which is not happening.

He goes through the bag again, trying to regain some semblance of calm, hands clammy. The toolkit is compact, but it has a surprising number of tools, most of which Felix has no idea how to use. He's a medic by training, not a mechanic. He carefully checks each one anyways to occupy himself, pristine metal warm and smooth against his fingers. Next are the MREs. Still sealed and within expiry date, no obvious signs of tampering. He puts them back in the bag. But the real prize is the pilot’s uniform, fabric stiff with disuse and heavy across the shoulders and chest with patches. Felix pulls the suit out of the bag and half unfolds it over his lap, running his fingers over the patches crowding the suit. Different patches for different bases, various military campaigns from all over the world, rank, even for different specialties. The owner had been cross-trained as a helicopter mechanic.

He lingers over the name, petting over the coarse thread picking out VORTEX over the right breast of the suit. Felix toys with the velcro; his own pilot patches haven’t come in yet…

It’s a dirty thought, stealing a dead man’s name tape for his own use, especially if the dead man in question is watching and prone to fly into fits of rage. Felix might’ve sunk low to reach this point in his life, but Pharma must’ve really dosed him up with something if he’s this out of his mind to even consider such a thing. He shouldn’t even want Vortex’s name emblazoned over his shoulder. But the thought lingers the longer he stares at the patches. 

Pilots typically wear number badges to denote their mech anyway, what’s the harm in wearing a name instead? Vortex is already known better by his name than by his serial number. It’s fitting for his pilot to wear his name too. Vortex seems like the kind who’d like that sort of thing.

Felix hastily folds the suit up, stuffing it back into the bag before temptation can overwhelm sense. His unfortunate predilections aside, stealing from the dead is a violation of numerous ethical codes, and he’s pretty sure Vortex would kill him for even considering taking something so personal from the remainder of his belongings. Even if the mech has been almost…tame towards him so far. Not a pinch or a threat. Even some banter. No, this must be the calm before the metaphorical vortex sucks him in and kills him. 

He casts a reluctant glance towards the exit again, skin prickling. He’s just going to have to wait this one out. It’s not a terrible concept, waiting here in the dark and warm for Vortex to make his mind up. It’s not like Pharma can find his way in. Whatever happens, it’s at least a break to figure out what he does next. Whatever that is.

ANON. ANON LET ME PICK YOU UP AND HOLD YOU FOREVER. ANON I DONT KNOW YOUR NAME BUT I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND FKFKGKMRJFKFNDJKSK

Haha mmm. I'm fine I'm okay I'm normal

Yeah so about Quintessons. I imagine they can be all kind of creatures. Organic, techno organic, straight up just techno. Tf:one, Cyberverse, straight up Pacific rim Kaijus. All kinds of monsters haha

Also, Vortex was the part of the first batch of pilots for Mecha program. The technology was very new and VERY underdeveloped so...yeah, Vortex was part time pilot and part time lab rat.

The whole process of making someone into a pilot was a lot more dangerous and painful back then because no one really knew what they were doing. But after some time it became safer and less painful. So when Jazz joined he didn't suffer as much as Vortex. And when later Blurr joined he didn't suffer as much as Jazz.

(You didn't ask but. I like to think that Vortex knows quite a lot about all kinds of side effects of neural connection. Also about side effects of physical procedures and all kinds of weird fucked up experiments. Just because. You know. He went through it all. A lot of times.)

Previous Next

[orellazalonia]

Unexpected Outlook

Summary: The Avengers launch a mission to raid a known base of the organization you now work with and discuss over what they found.

Word Count: 1.7k+

A/N: A little shorter since it’s Father’s Day, but I also wanted to add more weight to the previous chapter and progress the story.

Main Masterlist | The One You Don’t See Masterlist

Preparations moved fast. Too fast, maybe.

Steve didn’t like that they were running with incomplete information, but the longer they waited, the deeper this organization could dig itself into global systems. And the more time you had to assist them, whether willingly or not.

Still, it didn’t sit right. None of it did.

Bruce pulled the files. Natasha studied known locations. Sam monitored chatter. Bucky cleaned his weapons with a look in his eyes like he wanted answers he didn’t have the right to ask.

Yet no one brought up your name again. At least, not directly. But it hovered beneath everything.

The way Bucky checked each plan twice. The way Natasha’s jaw twitched when she reviewed footage. Even the way Steve hesitated before calling it an official mission.

The woman Bucky liked didn’t voice objections anymore. She simply kept a kind, quiet distance, like someone watching friends argue over a lost cause.

And within a week, the op was set.

Steve gave the greenlight with his jaw tight and eyes harder than usual. The mission was clear: infiltrate a suspected communications hub. A nondescript, rural compound masked as a grain storage facility. Satellite data showed encrypted signals routing through it over the last month, signals that matched ones the Avengers used internally.

Which meant either someone was watching. Or someone had been taught how.

They went in with a small team. Just Steve, Sam, Natasha, and Bucky. No need for Hulk or Thor; this wasn’t a battering ram job. It was a retrieval and disrupt operation. Quiet and clean.

Or so they thought.

The quinjet landed half a mile out, under cover of dense fog rolling over the hills. The forest beyond the compound was eerily still like it had been holding its breath since before dawn.

“They want us to find this,” Natasha muttered, brushing a branch aside as they crept through the trees.

Steve didn’t argue. His shield was strapped to his arm, but he hadn’t raised it once.

They reached the clearing. The compound was just as expected. Gray concrete, flat roof, minimal security fencing, and a gravel path leading to two entrances. No guards. No movement. Even the air felt… hollow.

Sam scanned the building with a handheld sensor. “No heat signatures. Not even a rat.”

“Too clean,” Bucky said, voice low.

They breached the back door.

Inside, it was dark but not ruined. Every surface was wiped. Consoles powered down. Not destroyed, removed. Carefully like a move-out rather than an attack. Upon investigating further, files had been cleared, drawers emptied, and chairs pushed in with bland desks.

Whoever had been here knew exactly when to leave.

Steve turned in a slow circle, taking it in.

“This was active,” He said. “Days ago.”

“Hours, maybe,” Natasha said, crouching beside a desk. She tapped the edge, there was a faint spot where something electronic had been sitting. Someone had worked here… and then vanished.

Sam stepped into the central control room. There was only one thing left behind: a monitor left switched on, flickering a soft blue light in the dimness.

A single message scrolled across the screen.

Too late, Captain.

That was it. There wasn’t any long monologues. No other mocking comments. Not even a signature or sign-off present. Just a cold fact. Steve stared at it like he could will it to change. Bucky stood a step behind him, arms folded, expression unreadable.

“I don’t like this,” Sam muttered.

Natasha approached a wall panel and pried it open effortlessly. Inside, wires had been sliced. Intentionally. However, there were no explosives. No traps could be seen anywhere either. It was all just… closure.

“They stripped this place surgically,” She said. “No fingerprints, no traces. It’s like they wanted us to know they were here… but not who they are.”

Steve closed the monitor with a clenched jaw. “This wasn’t a base. It was a decoy.”

“No,” Bucky said suddenly. His voice was soft but steady. “It was a base. It just outlived its usefulness.”

They all turned toward him. He looked at the empty room, the missing equipment, and the quiet hallways. Then, to the message. And for a moment, something shifted in his eyes. Guilt, maybe or something deeper.

“They planned for this,” He murmured. “Someone told them exactly how we’d come.”

No one responded, but no one needed to. Because they were all thinking it.

-

The debrief room was thick with a heavy silence, the kind that pressed down harder than shouting. Ghost-blue blueprints and photos of the abandoned compound still flickered on the monitors, reminders of how quickly their plan had unraveled. Notes about the missing equipment and the chilling message on the screen scrolled slowly, marking everything they should have anticipated.

Steve hadn’t sat once since they returned. He stood rigid at the head of the table, hands braced on his hips, and a deep furrow like it was etched there permanently. Sam had stopped pacing but his leg bounced nervously, jaw clenched tight. Natasha’s fingers tapped against her thigh in a rhythm so steady it barely seemed voluntary.

Only Bucky remained perfectly still, arms crossed, and eyes locked on the screen across the room. He said very little since they’d left the empty compound since that message haunted him.

Too late, Captain.

The words weren’t just text; they carried a weight, a deliberate coldness that dug into Bucky’s mind. Whoever had left it knew him. Not just the soldier, but his moves, his instincts. And worse, their enemy had used the knowledge you once held to outmaneuver them.

The memory played on loop in his mind. Not just the words but the feel of them. The calculation in them. Whoever was behind that terminal… knew him. Not just facts. His patterns.

And maybe worse than that, they’d used your knowledge to do it. They probably used you to do it.

The door hissed open.

She stepped in with her usual soft elegance, cradling a fresh cup of tea between her hands like she had no idea anything had gone wrong. Dressed casual, warm, and comfortable. Like she belonged. Like she didn’t feel the same tension that pulled everyone else taut. The one you used to be jealous of had sat out for the mission after all.

“Oh,” She said lightly. “You’re all back already.”

Her tone wasn’t mocking. If anything, it was gently surprised, as if she’d simply walked into a meeting that ended early. Steve didn’t answer right away. Neither did the others.

She blinked, smile sweet and expectant, like someone unaware they were intruding. “Was it a short mission?”

“We were too late,” Steve said flatly, straightening.

Her brows lifted, and she crossed to the table, setting the tea down. “Really? That’s unfortunate. I thought it was just one of those cleanup things. You all make those look so easy.”

Sam looked over, jaw tight. “They cleaned up, alright. Took every last trace of themselves. Left us a polite message, too.”

“They knew how we’d approach,” Natasha added with her arms crossed now. “Like they knew our pattern. Our flow. They stripped the place within hours of our arrival window.”

“Hmm.” She tapped a fingernail against the ceramic. “That’s strange. Maybe they had inside intel?”

“No,” Steve spoke, narrowing his eyes. “Not unless someone studied us long before they left.”

“Oh.” She blinked, tilting her head. “So… do you think your old administrator friend told them?”

Bucky stiffened.

Natasha’s voice was sharper now, eyes narrowing. “She’s not our anything.”

That seemed to amuse her. She let out a light laugh, the kind meant to dissolve tension, not that anyone was asking for it. “Well, you’re not wrong,” She smiled. “ She didn’t really fit in here anyways, did she?”

Bruce, who had been mostly quiet, looked up sharply. “She worked here for over two years.”

She didn’t seem phased. There was no malice on her face actually. Just soft confidence.

“I guess I didn’t think she’d be important,” She sighed simply. “Kind of kept to herself. I always assumed she’d move on.”

Sam stood, voice tight. “She did. Straight into the hands of the people trying to tear us apart.”

Her smile faltered just a touch. “I didn’t mean—look, I’m sure she was… sweet. I just don’t see how it helps to chase after someone who clearly didn’t want to be here. Don’t you think she made her choice?”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t know that yet.”

“I mean, sure,” She said gently, “But if she’s really that dangerous, wouldn’t you have noticed before she left? You didn’t even realize she was gone until weeks later, right?”

Bucky shifted slightly. The burn in his chest deepened. Not from her words exactly, but from how true they rang.

They hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t looked.

The woman moved closer to Bucky, noticing his subtle distress as she rested her hand lightly on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I just worry about you,” She confessed softly, smiling up at him. “You’re all stretched so thin already. I’d hate to see you waste energy chasing ghosts.”

Her hand lingered. But Bucky’s jaw clenched, and for once, he didn’t lean into her touch.

“She’s not a ghost,” He muttered. “She’s a mirror. Of everything we missed.”

Her expression flickered for barely a moment. Then the sweet smile returned.

“Well, if you have to go after her,” She brushed her hand away, her expression turning more solemn. A hint of pity evident, “I hope you’re prepared for what you find. Sometimes people change… and not always in ways you can fix. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

She reached for her tea again, her fingers wrapping around the cup like it was an anchor.

“And if you do decide to keep going after her, well.” She gave a gentle little laugh, looking around with open, innocent eyes. “I hope it goes well. I really mean that. And if you need my help at all… just let me know. I’m always happy to support the team.”

The door hissed softly behind her as she walked out, quiet heels tapping against the floor in steady, graceful rhythm.

The rest of the team stood in silence for a few long seconds, each lost in their own storm of thoughts.

Steve broke it first.

“We move forward. We stop that organization before it spreads deeper.”

“And if she’s helping them willingly?” Sam asked, his voice low.

Steve hesitated.

So, Bucky answered instead.

“Then we stop her, too.”

Taglist: @herejustforbuckybarnes @iyskgd @torntaltos @julesandgems @maesmayhem @w-h0re @pookalicious-hq @parkerslivia @whisperingwillowxox @stell404 @wingstoyourdreams @seventeen-x @mahimagi @viktor-enjoyer @vicmc624 @msbyjackal @winchestert101 @greatenthusiasttidalwave

[matcha3mochi]

GLASS BETWEEN US | II Pairing: Merman Rafayel x Scientist Reader

author note: tyy for all the love and support on the previous one! ive decided to write a second part to this! maybe a third part? who know :)))) anywho pls enjoy!!!

wc: 4,057

chapter 1 | chapter 2

───⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

Dr. Havers was already waiting when your shift ended.

He stood just beyond the junction outside Lab C, posture rigid, arms folded tightly across his chest. The dim security lights overhead buzzed faintly, casting bluish reflections across the glass walls of the corridor. You recognized the look on his face before he spoke—not disciplinary, not furious—but exact. Measured. Like the outcome was already decided and the only remaining task was to deliver the verdict.

“Walk with me,” he said.

You nodded, once. Your hand tightened slightly around the edge of your tablet, knuckles pale under the harsh fluorescents. Then you fell in beside him.

The two of you moved through the east hall without speaking. The air was too cold, dry from over-filtration. Every footstep echoed with sterile finality against the polished epoxy flooring. On your left, the wall-length display of Lab C showed only system diagnostics now—no live feed. The camera feed had been blacked out. You knew what that meant, and your stomach turned with quiet dread.

Havers led you through a security door you hadn’t passed since your orientation weeks ago. It closed behind you with a sound that echoed louder than it should’ve.

The briefing room was stripped bare—no windows, no active terminals, no live data displays. Just one heavy-duty table bolted to the floor and two brushed metal chairs. The walls were lined with sound-dampening panels disguised as blank white boards. Even the air inside felt different—stiller, heavier, like the pressure in a room seconds before a thunderstorm hits.

He gestured to the seat.

You didn’t take it.

He didn’t, either.

Instead, he pulled a slim black tablet from the inside pocket of his lab coat and tapped the screen. You heard a soft tone as the screen lit up. He turned it toward you.

It was paused on a still image: your hand against the tank wall, Rafayel’s claws mirrored against yours on the opposite side. His eyes locked to your face with unnatural focus. The background lighting bathed everything in a soft, immersive blue, as if you had both been submerged together in water.

Your breath caught—shallow, involuntary. You recognized the moment instantly. Not just the scene, but the feeling of it. The density of the air. The quiet vibration against the glass. The sense that the entire lab had narrowed into a single point of contact.

Havers didn’t speak. Not yet. He pressed play.

You watched yourself step forward on-screen, watched Rafayel respond—slowly, precisely, his body language unmistakably attuned to yours. The alignment wasn’t coincidental. It was intentional. He was echoing your movement with a kind of quiet precision that felt more human than instinctive. More conscious than reactive.

Then he spoke—his lips moved on the recording, though the volume was muted. You didn’t need audio to know what he said.

Free me.

The moment hung there, pixelated but real, hovering between you and Havers in silence.

When he finally stopped the video, he didn’t look up.

“This is not a reprimand,” he said.

But your muscles had already gone stiff. Your pulse was climbing, quick and uneven beneath your skin.

“Then what is it?” Your voice came out low, steady, but with a thread of static in it.

He swiped across the tablet again, this time bringing up a full behavioral overlay—sensor data logged over the last two weeks. Heart rate. Neural markers. Tail velocity. Cortisol-like stress proxies. All plotted in tight, color-coded patterns.

All tied to your schedule.

“He rises the moment you enter,” Havers said. “Activity levels stabilize within forty-five seconds. Sedation thresholds drop. Neuroresponse modulation increases. Mirror behaviors are precise, even anticipatory. Eye contact is sustained longer with you than any other observer by a factor of four.”

He paused.

Then, more quietly: “He doesn’t respond to anyone else now. Not even to direct provocation.”

You stared at the data, eyes scanning the peaks and troughs, remembering how those moments felt—not just as data points, but as experiences. As connections.

“I didn’t intend for any of this,” you said quietly.

“I believe you,” Havers replied. “But intention isn’t the problem.”

He finally looked up from the screen.

“The problem is attachment. One-directional. Immediate. And escalating.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but couldn’t find the argument. Your body tensed instead—jaw clenched, shoulders rigid, fingers digging slightly into the base of your tablet.

“He’s not mimicking anymore,” Havers said, as if reading your mind. “He’s focusing. Every behavioral marker suggests a fixation, not a response pattern. When you’re gone, he doesn’t shift to baseline—he withdraws. When we attempted to replace your observation window with controlled stimuli, he ignored it. The tank systems detected a full physiological shutdown cycle.”

You swallowed hard. Your breath fogged slightly in the cold air.

“What are you doing to him now?”

“We’ve begun sedation rotation. Carefully dosed. Enough to keep him compliant while we recalibrate protocol.”

Your voice cracked without warning. “You’re drugging him to make him forget me.”

He didn’t deny it.

Instead, he said, “We’re preserving containment integrity.”

And then, with quiet finality:

“You’re being reassigned.”

The world tilted slightly in your vision.

“What?”

“You’ll report to Neural Indexing, Sublevel 2B. Starting tomorrow. Your clearance to Lab C has already been revoked.”

He picked up the tablet and powered it off.

You stared at him. You could feel your chest hollowing, breath going thin.

“This will break him,” you said.

He hesitated—just for a breath. Then he said, “If it does, it proves he was never stable to begin with.”

And that was it.

You were dismissed.

No further discussion.

The first night in your new quarters, you didn’t sleep.

The room was a concrete cube, one meter shorter on each side than your old assignment bunk. The cot creaked when you breathed. The walls sweated faint condensation. No simulated day-night cycle. Just harsh fluorescents that flicked off at 2200 and left you in complete grayscale. No one spoke when they handed you the keycard. The silence had the flavor of punishment, even if they never called it that.

You turned over the same sentence in your head:

“You’re being reassigned.”

And the second one, delivered even colder:

“Your clearance to Lab C has been revoked.”

Your tongue kept finding the shape of it in your mouth. Revoked. Like a limb amputated with a signature. The moment the door sealed behind you that night, the silence was more than absence—it was separation. You could still feel the residue of the tank glass against your fingertips, as if your body hadn’t yet caught up to what was gone.

They said the reassignment was for “containment stability.” That the connection between you and Rafayel had grown too strong. Too unpredictable. Too disruptive to the scientific objectives of the project.

But you knew what it really was.

Control.

They couldn’t control him anymore. Because he had started responding not to data, but to you. And that terrified them.

You had expected the transition to be clinical. Procedural. A clean severing.

It wasn’t.

The new lab in Sublevel 2B bore none of the atmosphere that defined Lab C. There was no subtle dimming of lights to mimic marine depth. No soft thrum of oxygen injectors syncing with the artificial current. No hum in your bones that came from proximity to something ancient, breathing, and alive.

This place—Neural Indexing—was quiet in the worst way.

The kind of silence that didn’t make room for thought but pressed against it. You sat in front of rows of stimulation modules and feed monitors, reviewing endless neural scans: meaningless loops of synthetic cognition, shallow patterns designed to imitate thought, emotion, response.

There was no presence in the data here.

No gaze tracking yours across a pane of reinforced glass.

No ripple of bioluminescence in response to your voice.

You were surrounded by function but starved of connection.

The others in your department didn’t speak much. They had the tired, hollow eyes of people who lived too long with screens instead of subjects. You were the new variable now, a name without a narrative—transferred in the middle of a cycle, given no debrief, carrying a silence everyone had been instructed not to ask about.

At first, you tried to adapt. You told yourself this was necessary. Sensible. Safer—for everyone involved.

But the rationalizations peeled away by day four.

That’s when the dreams returned.

They started faint, like echoes.

Just fragments: salt on your tongue, the pressure of water folding around your body, the low vibration of something massive swimming just out of reach.

Then the fragments sharpened.

In the dreams, you stood before the tank again. But this time, the glass wasn’t there. Rafayel floated just a breath away, watching you with stillness so complete it felt like gravity. His eyes were brighter than you remembered—wide, expectant, but solemn. No words passed between you.

He didn’t need them.

But some nights, the dream changed.

You weren’t in the tank room. You were on a beach, barefoot, the water dark and glimmering as it crawled across the sand. The sky above was violet and streaked with long golden clouds, as if lit by a sun that had never belonged to this world. The shore stretched endlessly in both directions, flanked by black cliffs heavy with overgrown moss and deep blue vines. Strange constellations flickered in the sky overhead, unfamiliar and ancient, like stars from a memory long buried.

The surf was gentle, but its song was heavy—carrying something old, something mournful.

You stepped into the water.

And the moment it touched your skin, the dream transformed.

You were no longer on the shore, you were beneath it.

Submerged in a vast, tranquil ocean bathed in blue light. Columns of sunlight filtered down from above like cathedral beams, illuminating silt and floating motes of golden plankton. The water was cool but welcoming, dense with reverberant silence. All around you were ruins: ancient stone arches overgrown with bioluminescent coral, broken statues of sea kings swallowed by algae and time.

And then—he was there.

Rafayel.

He emerged from the shadow of a collapsed temple gate, his form luminous against the gloom. His hair flowed behind him in an ethereal halo, purple-mauve, drifting like silk ribbons. His body moved with impossible grace, every motion effortless as he cut through the water. His tail gleamed with streaks of cobalt and opal, curling around him protectively.

When he saw you, he stilled. As if time had paused. And then he came to you. Not with urgency. Not with hesitation.

With knowing.

You drifted forward to meet him, arms parting the water like a slow tide. Your clothes floated weightless around you, strands of hair suspended in the soft current. You reached out. So did he.

When your hands met, everything else disappeared.

The moment your palms pressed to his, you both inhaled. The water shimmered. Light flared from his chest and from your fingertips. You drew closer, your bodies aligning instinctively. His tail curled gently around your legs, not to trap but to anchor. His claws traced your waist, reverent, uncertain if you were real.

He pulled you closer, as if sensing your doubt. His hand cradled the back of your head, his lips brushing your brow, not a kiss—a promise.

He would not let you go.

You rose slowly the next morning, the weight of the dream still heavy on your shoulders like wet silk.

There was something about that beach—those ruins—that felt impossibly distant and unshakably close. You told yourself it was just the brain pulling symbols from subconscious grief. But that was a lie.

It felt real.

Not just real. Remembered.

You couldn’t explain the familiarity of his hands on your face. The exact shape of his breath, the warmth of his chest against yours, the way your fingers had threaded together like you had done it countless times before.

There were moments in the day—quiet, disarmed moments—where you would touch your own wrist or collarbone and expect to find him there. As if some trace of him should remain in your skin. As if he had once been stitched into the very rhythm of your body.

The more time passed, the more the dream solidified, not as fantasy—but as truth.

The day passed in pieces.

You reviewed three sequences of neural pattern recognition, sat through one impersonal systems check, and responded to zero messages. Your hands performed the motions, but your mind lagged behind, half-anchored to that sunken city beneath your thoughts.

And then you heard it.

Two lab techs stood just around the corner of the central corridor, their voices hushed but not hushed enough.

“Still not responding.”

“Nothing since the last handler shift. He’s not eating. Not even moving.”

“He’s never been like this. Even when agitated, there was still... something.”

“Now? It’s like he’s just... stopped.”

You didn’t breathe.

Your hand hovered over the touchscreen you were pretending to use. The hall hummed with fluorescent lighting, the air too dry, the walls too close.

You stepped back, slowly, unnoticed.

You didn’t know how.

But you knew it was something you were not meant to forget. And it led you to a decision you never voiced aloud.

You stopped trying to make sense of the protocols. You stopped rationalizing the transfer. You stopped pretending he was better off without you.

Because the ache that filled your chest when you woke—the ache of almost losing him again—was worse than anything the facility could do to you.

The decision to access the archived feed wasn’t a conscious one. It wasn’t premeditated. It was something your body decided before your mind could catch up.

It happened on the ninth night.

You hadn’t planned on stopping at the terminal. You had intended to walk the long way around, avoid the side corridor near the equipment maintenance bay, bypass temptation entirely. But your feet slowed as you passed it. Your gaze flicked sideways. The hallway was empty, as always. The low hum of the wall consoles and the faint click of pressure valves were the only sounds.

And the screen was there. Dark, waiting.

You approached without realizing it, your hand already reaching. The screen lit up at your touch, a soft glow blooming in the dim corridor. The system prompted for access. You entered the override code. The one no one knew you still remembered.

A few seconds passed. Then:

ARCHIVED VISUAL LOG — LAB C TIMESTAMP: Day 9 – 01:46 HRS

The footage loaded.

And the ache in your chest returned full force.

There he was.

Rafayel.

At first, he was barely visible, curled in a shadow at the base of the tank. The lighting in the room was reduced to emergency-grade, flickering low blue and violet hues. Most of the central overheads were offline. The water itself was so still it looked like tinted glass.

He lay against the curved wall of the tank, his long body wrapped inward. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, tail looped twice around his torso. The sight was almost fetal in its stillness—too still. Not relaxed, not conserving. Withdrawing.

His head rested on one arm, turned slightly in the direction of the observation deck. His hair drifted gently in the motionless current, no longer radiant or alive with light. His gills fluttered faintly—shallow, slow. One flick every few seconds. Barely enough to sustain him.

Your breath caught.

He wasn’t sleeping.

He wasn’t hibernating.

He was fading.

The vibrant shimmer that once pulsed across his body like underwater lightning had dulled to the color of bruises—indigo near his spine, violet near his chest, and something close to black along his lower limbs. The glow that had always signaled awareness—of you, of presence, of thought—was fragmented. It gathered dimly near his heart and left the rest of him in darkness.

There was no motion in his shoulders. No twitch of his claws. Not even a tail flick.

Stillness had taken him.

Then the camera angle shifted slightly.

And you saw his eyes.

They were open. Only half-lidded, but open. Just enough to confirm what you already suspected: he wasn’t unconscious. He wasn’t sedated.

He was aware.

And he was waiting.

Even now—silent, unmoving, forgotten by the staff rotating around him—he was still facing the same section of glass.

The place you had always stood.

Your throat closed. Your fingers curled tightly against the edge of the console as you leaned closer. The impulse to reach for the screen was overwhelming, but there was nothing there. No heat. No pressure. No connection. Just pixelated light and silence.

The feed time-stamped forward.

A technician entered. She moved through the chamber with a clipboard and an ambient monitor, barely glancing at the tank. Routine. Impersonal. She stopped, approached the glass, and tapped once.

Rafayel didn’t move.

She activated a low-frequency stimulus from her control panel. The pulse made the water shift.

Still nothing.

She made a note. Paused. Looked up again, perhaps longer than protocol required. But even if she noticed the difference—how still he was, how wrong his glow had become—she said nothing. Just turned and left.

The lights dimmed further after she exited.

You were left staring at the footage. Alone again.

And so was he.

Something cracked inside you: you couldn’t cry. Not here. Not now. Your body understood what your mind had refused to fully face.

This wasn’t just a physiological decline. It was a psychological death spiral. They thought they had sedated him. Pacified him. Reduced risk.

But they hadn’t seen what you were seeing.

They hadn’t understood that his stillness wasn’t peace.

It was mourning.

And you knew exactly what it meant. Because you felt it too.

You pressed a hand to the screen, even though it couldn’t feel you. You sat there, shoulders rigid, stomach hollow, barely able to hold yourself upright.

He was suffering because they had taken you away. It was killing him.

You shut off the feed.

And for the first time in nine days, you stood up not as a staff member. Not as a researcher.

But as someone who was going back.

No matter the cost.

The tunnels were colder than you remembered.

Condensation clung to the curved ceilings, gathering in long droplets that slipped soundlessly to the metal grates beneath your feet. Pipes hissed softly with steam every ten meters, venting pressure from unseen machines. The walls were a patchwork of corrosion and riveted seams. Red emergency lights pulsed slowly along the floor, painting everything in alternating waves of rust and shadow.

The silence down here wasn’t the passive hush of the main halls. It was active. Watchful. Like something waiting to be disturbed. Every footfall sounded like an echo inside a steel drum. Every breath you took came back twice as loud in your ears.

The auxiliary entrance to Lab C was sealed, just as it had been for days. But the access panel hadn’t been wiped. Your code still worked.

The light on the console flickered, then shifted green.

The door groaned open, metal scraping metal, and cold, salted air rolled out to meet you.

You stepped into a room suspended in time.

The room was colder than you remembered.

Not by temperature, but by absence. The chill that came from a place left unattended too long. The tank’s filtration hum had slowed, its resonance no longer constant but stuttering every few seconds, like a faltering breath. A faint chemical tang hung in the air, sharper than before. The lighting had dimmed further—no longer the soft, ambient blue that mimicked ocean depths. Now the tank was lit from below, casting warped, ghostly shadows against the walls, like the inside of a body lit by its own flickering pulse.

And there he was.

Rafayel.

Floating in silence.

He was curled loosely, his arms hanging in front of him, palms relaxed and half open, the gesture somehow vulnerable. His tail hung like a long, unmoving ribbon in the water. His glow was barely there—a faint wash of violet through his chest, flickering intermittently like the last ember of a fire trying not to die.

The sight of him hit you like submersion.

It was too much, too fast, too familiar.

You stepped forward without thinking, boots echoing on the composite flooring. The air thickened with every stride, like pushing through static. Your heart drummed against your ribs, quick and uneven. You were afraid he wouldn't move. Afraid he wouldn't see you.

You reached the tank. Stopped.

“Rafayel,” you whispered, the word cracking in your throat like a fault line splitting open.

He didn’t respond.

But something shifted.

A flicker of movement along his spine. A ripple of light blooming faintly across his gills.

You held your breath.

Then—his eyes opened.

Slow. Bleary. At first unfocused, then… locked.

Right on you.

Recognition didn’t explode—it unfolded. Layer by layer, like thawing ice. His pupils narrowed. His chest lifted with a sharp inhale. The violet in his body surged brighter, edged with silver, crawling like veins across his arms and into the tips of his claws.

And then he moved.

Not swam. Not lunged.

He rose.

Weightless, effortless, he emerged in a slow, unfurling motion. The water parted around him in gentle folds. He drifted toward you, the sleek muscle of his torso shifting under the soft luminescence. He was broader than you remembered. Stronger. His body moved with the control of something ancient, practiced. But there was fragility under the surface—an ache in the way he carried himself, like a wounded predator willing itself toward the light.

When he reached the glass, he stopped just short, hands spreading flat against the transparent barrier. His palms trembled faintly. His claws clicked softly as they touched down.

You mirrored him.

Hand trembling, you placed your palm where his rested. A perfect match. Skin to glass. Heat to cold.

He blinked once, slowly, gills fluttering. Then his breath hitched, and a soft tremor ran through his shoulders. His face was unreadable—but in his eyes there was no question.

It was you.

He tilted his head slightly, hair drifting like a halo. You caught every micro-expression: the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers twitched against the barrier. Not fear. Not confusion.

Emotion.

His voice, when it came, was a raw murmur.

“You came back.”

You nodded, a tear finally breaking loose and running down your cheek. You didn’t wipe it away.

“I couldn’t stay away.”

He leaned forward slowly, until his forehead pressed lightly against the glass. His eyes closed, and your breath caught.

You leaned in too, matching him, your own forehead meeting the cool barrier.

There was no sound but your twin breathing.

Then he opened his eyes again.

And they glowed.

Not violently, but with purpose. A steady, growing light. The silver along his ribcage rippled outward, trailing down his arms. The soft blue of his irises deepened to something oceanic, endless. His tail shifted behind him, wrapping once around itself like an anchor stabilizing him.

You stepped back.

His gaze tracked your movement, but he didn’t speak.

You turned toward the console. Slowly. Deliberately.

His hands didn’t leave the glass.

The screen lit under your fingertips. The system had locked you out days ago, but you bypassed the prompt using the old maintenance override. The keys clicked too loudly. Your heart beat louder still.

MANUAL OVERRIDE: CONTAINMENT LOCK Confirm: YES / NO

You hovered over the button.

Thoughts pressed in all at once—about consequences, about duty, about what would come after. But none of it mattered more than this moment.

Not after what you’d seen.

Not after what he had become in your absence.

You didn’t hesitate.

You pressed YES.

A low mechanical chime rang out. Steam hissed at the tank’s base. The floor panels lit red and the water level began to fall.

And you turned—slowly—to meet his eyes as the locks disengaged.

He didn’t rush forward. Didn’t break the barrier. He stayed exactly where he was, eyes locked on yours, waiting.

He simply watched you.

The moment stretched, suspended in steam and soft red light.

Then the tank opened.

taglist:

@orange-stars @flameo-hotman12 @paper--angel @vynn30 @lalaluch @wilddreamer98 @multisstuff

[adityanathyogi]

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[woradat]

SCENARIO: Hall of Record (1/2)

PAIRING – sentinel prime, airachnid, orion pax, d-16 x reader (bonus darkwing)

NOTE – please be informed that scenario-chapter is just an additional part/story that this expands on the HALL OF RECORD (one-shot) not a full series and this might come out a bit weird and a little out of character? I don't know. I wrote this fic with three lattes shot and a lot of confusion, so enjoy?

and you can tell who my fav is. I'm a little biased here

O r i o n P a x

The sound of the metal door—untouched for what might as well have been an eon—whined softly as it scraped against its timeworn track. The hinges gave a creak like an old archivist waking from a nap, cranky and reluctant, groaning at being disturbed after centuries of peace. It was a small sound, really. Barely louder than the low thrum of power conduits far down the hall

But to him, it was the sound of trespass

Orion Pax stepped inside as if the shadows might bite

Faint cerulean light dripped from ancient overhead strips, casting the corridor in the sort of glow usually reserved for ghost stories or forgotten secrets. The deepest level of the archive—the forbidden floor, shuttered by Sentinel before Orion had even existed—still exhaled softly beneath its shroud of dust and disuse. It felt less like entering a room, more like entering a memory that didn’t want to be remembered. He moved like a student sneaking into the dean’s office—half-curious, half-sure he’d regret it

His fingers grazed the edge of a shelf, careful not to disturb the decades of quiet. Or the dust. Especially the dust. It looked like it had unionized

“The Matrix…"

He murmured under his breath, blue optics catching the faint shimmer of dormant holograms “There has to be something here. A record. A clue. Anything” He leaned down, reaching for the ancient relay socket at the base of the console—

“Trigger that, and you’ll wake the whole sound grid"

The voice came from behind him. Calm. Dry. Unhurried. The sort of tone one used when catching a cat burglar who clearly forgot to check for traps. Orion flinched hard enough to rattle a few data shelves and spun around on his feet

You stood there, half-veiled in the shadow of a pillar—taller than he expected, posture relaxed, like someone who’d been waiting for him to trip the sensor just for fun. The faint light from your data reader bounced off your optics, revealing a gaze far too unsurprised to belong to a stranger

It wasn’t your first time sneaking in

“Who are you?”

He asked, voice low but edged with a kind of jumpy defiance. His hand inched toward the nearby control panel—not so much in defense as in that universal gesture of ‘I might make this worse but I’ll do something, I swear'

You didn’t answer right away

Instead, you let out a breath. You sighed—the long-suffering kind. Then tilted your head and gave him a look that could only be described as academic disappointment. You looked at him the way a librarian might regard a wayward patron using a sacred first edition as a coaster

“The better question is: what exactly are you doing here?”

“This isn’t a tourist wing. No one's supposed to be down here. Not unless you're a glitch in the system or a Prime in disguise" Your optics flicked over him like a scanner on autopilot—dusty fingers, light frame, and most telling of all: the cavity at his chest. Empty. No transformation cog. No fancy upgrades

A miner

Your field didn’t spike, didn’t flinch. Just took it in with the sort of ease that said: "Ah. One of those"

He bristled. Just slightly

“And what about you?” He countered, trying for defiance but landing somewhere closer to awkwardly offended “You’re not supposed to be here either… right?”

You smiled then. Not the friendly kind. The kind that curled at one corner like a page in a too-old book “Smart enough…” you said, arching an optic ridge

“For someone who leaves the ventilation hatch wide open while sneaking in"

He snuck into the archives more than once—and more than once, he stumbled into you. Neither of you had the right to be there. You both knew it. But you never sent him away and though you pretended not to care, you always watched him—always

Orion was like a flicker of flame brushing through the ashes inside you. A dreamer, yes—but not a fool. Funny, but never dismissive of history. Stubborn, but when you spoke, he truly listened. He wasn’t like anyone you'd met since the age of the Thirteen

He wasn't afraid to ask stupid questions and he wasn’t afraid of you. You often looked at him with a weary kind of exasperation, the sort reserved for someone who should know better. But he always laughed when you snapped at him, as if the weight of silence in the archive had never once touched him

You told him once—by accident more than intention

The air between you had been dusted with a kind of trust you hadn’t felt in countless cycles. A quiet ease. The sort that hadn’t truly touched you since the age of the Thirteen faded into ash

Orion Pax—a randomly-forged miner with far too much hope and far too little support—was the sort to chase impossibilities like they were his rightful inheritance. He reached too far, spoke too loudly, and stood too often where no one asked him to. And yet, he never stopped. Not even when they laughed

“..I used to be Alpha Trion’s aide”

you said, voice quieter than you expected

He froze. Then—almost immediately—he dropped down beside you, like the truth might vanish if he didn’t plant himself right there, fast enough to catch it. Surprise widened his optics, but so did something else—recognition. The name Alpha Trion carried weight: Scholar. Sage. Keeper of knowledge

“Really? I’ve heard of him, but it was always more like… like a myth—”

“It does sound like a story, doesn’t it?”

You gave a faint huff of laughter, more memory than mirth “But I was there. I walked the Hall of Records with the Primes themselves — I once transcribed battle doctrines meant to change the course of the war. I was Alpha Trion’s eyes. His ears”

“And now?” You gestured vaguely, as if your current state explained itself “..Now I’m ‘Advisor to the Prime’ Sentinel’s pet title”

“Sounds good on a datafile, doesn’t it?”

You let your gaze drift toward the ceiling “But it’s a cage. He doesn’t want my counsel—just my silence. He doesn't want me asking, no more. He says it’s time to let go of the past"

Your voice dipped on that last sentence, quieter than even you meant it to be. Beside you, Orion slowly set his hand—close to yours. Not touching. Not yet. But close enough for the intent to be felt

“So… what will you do?”

“How long will you let him keep you quiet?”

You looked back at the desk. Scattered with restricted data slates—salvaged from sealed archives. A few of which you had, perhaps, allowed him to read. Just fragments

Maybe, in some strange way, you weren’t so different from him after all. You’d slipped away whenever the chance arose. Found your way back into old vaults that should’ve been wiped from the map. You’d pulled truth from the edges of erasure, and hidden it in places no one else would look. In hopes someone, anyone—would find it. Someday

You smiled “It’s not like I’ve been sitting still"

He laughed—low and warm, like it lived in his chest “I think I’m starting to like you”

“No! I mean, I like it when you.. don’t just stay still!” You rolled your optics, but couldn’t hide the fact that the corner of your mouth twitched into a smile as well

“You gonna record me, then?”

“–If I ever turn into something important?”

You stared at him. Long enough for him to shift his weight, then chuckle—awkward and a little sheepish

“Kidding. I know someone like me doesn’t exactly scream historically relevant—”

“Please. I’ve been archiving you every days, spark-for-brains” You cut him off, tone dry, but softer than your usual “And if you ever do become something important… I’ll be the one to write that story. Properly. With footnotes”

He blinked — You didn’t smile–but your optics said enough

D – I6

The underground quarters of the labor miners weren’t much to look at

Concrete walls, low ceilings, overhead conduits that flickered as if sighing with age. Everything smelled faintly of rust and recycled air. It was the sort of place where voices fell flat against the metal and hope tended to decay faster than the tools on the racks. No one expected anything new to walk in and yet—one day, Orion Pax brought someone with him. Not a supervisor. Not a guard. Not an auditor sent from the upper halls

But you. You, who walked in with a step just slow enough to take in the room

Not cautious, exactly—but composed. Observing. Weighing. Like you had done this far too many times, and were still waiting to be surprised. D-16 recognized you before you even spoke. He had never heard your name—not officially. There were no public briefings with your designation, no files that reached the lower sectors. But he had seen you. On every state broadcast, every emergency address, every ceremonial function where Sentinel Prime spoke before the world. You were always there—never in front, but never far like the shadow just behind the throne

Orion had mentioned, in passing, that you had once served beneath the Thirteen themselves. The statement had sounded so absurd at the time—like someone claiming to have dined with myths. But now, standing a few meters from you in the dim half-light, D-16 wasn’t laughing

He swallowed. Then, before his mind could interfere with his mouth— “Did you… really meet Megatronus Prime?”

The words tumbled out like gravel down a mine shaft—too loud, too fast, and entirely unrehearsed

Immediately, he stood straighter. As if trying to fold the question back into his body by sheer posture. His arms snapped to his sides, shoulders tense, expression schooled into impassivity. But even a casual observer would’ve noticed how the plates at his spine had locked up stiff, and how his field—normally tight and subdued—now bristled with mortified awareness

Orion, standing nearby, shot him a sidelong look that all but screamed Seriously and pressed his mouth into a thin line, clearly biting back laughter. His field buzzed with that particular kind of amusement only friends could afford

But you didn’t look offended

You simply turned to D-16 with a slow, deliberate grace. One optic ridge lifted in mild surprise, not mockery. The look you gave him was not one of superiority—but memory. And something just shy of sorrow, your gaze slow and precise, like someone turning over an ancient page

“I didn’t think I’d hear that name spoken aloud” you said, voice soft and even “Not in this era. At least”

Something in the way you said it made the air feel older. D-16 opened his mouth to respond—then overcompensated entirely

“I— I mean, I respect him. Megatronus. I really do. Not that I don’t respect the other Primes! I do! It’s just—his power, it was… I mean, the records say he was beyond classification. Singular”

He said it all in one breath, like pulling off a bandage, or confessing something shameful. The words just stumbled out faster than he could polish them, tumbling over one another in a mess of admiration and awkward intensity. For someone usually so reserved, the enthusiasm betrayed him utterly — The silence that followed was so complete it could have been scripted. Orion exhaled sharply through his nose. If he’d had something to throw, he probably would’ve thrown it. But you—

You just laughed

Quiet. Warm. Deep. A sound dredged up from beneath centuries of dust, as if even your voice had forgotten how to smile “You’re the first to say his name with that kind of light in your optics since the fall”

“If Megatronus could hear you now, he’d probably be baffled that he’s become some kind of hero to miners” You tilted your helm, smiling just a little “Though, honestly, I’m not surprised”

D-16 looked like he wanted the floor to collapse beneath him. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, trying to will away the flush creeping across his faceplates. But then—your voice shifted. Quieter now. Calmer

“I stood beside him. Yes”

You didn’t elaborate immediately. You let the weight of that admission settle, like dust returning to a long-forgotten shelf

“Not as a disciple” you said, after a moment “But as a witness”

D-16 froze. Not just with reverence, but intent. His posture didn’t just still—it listened “Was he really like the stories?”

You didn’t answer at first

Your optics drifted upward, tracing the long silver line of a power conduit above, but your vision reached far beyond it. You were looking back—through wars and ages, through the collapse of dynasties and the silence left behind “He was strong"

“Of course he was. But that’s not what stayed with me” Your gaze returned to him. You didn’t look at D-16 like he was a soldier or a worker—you looked at him like someone who had just asked the right question “What I remember most… was the way he shielded the weak. The way he stood between them and harm like he was born to carry the weight of their world, and never once questioned if it was too heavy..”

Silence again. But not a heavy one this time

A reverent, holding sort of quiet. Then, you stepped closer—not imposing, but deliberate. Your optics met his without flinching “If you want to walk his path…”

“Don’t begin with your fists, begin with what you’d give your life to protect”

You weren’t surprised that Orion kept returning to the old archive. He was persistent like that—drawn to lost records and locked doors the way some bots were drawn to light. What did surprise you, however, was that he started bringing D-16 with him. Not just once. Not as a fluke. But again. And again

Each time, the miner sat with his back straight, posture stiff as if the room itself required reverence. He never touched anything without permission. His focus was unwavering—his questions, clear and concise. Never a wasted word. At first, he spoke like someone walking on thin ice. Awkward, hesitant. Always respectful. And always—always—his questions were about Megatronus

“Did Megatronus ever overrule the other Primes?”— “Is it true he once fought a Quintesson with his bare hands?”– “What did his voice sound like?”

It was always about him in the beginning. D-16 would ask you to recount field notes not available in the public archives. He’d ask what Megatronus thought during the final war—what moved him, what held him back. And you told him. You told him everything you remembered. You spoke of war. Of victories. Of moments carved from metal and memory. You even told him how Megatronus once pulled you bodily from the battlefield—without hesitation

But then—quietly, gradually—his questions began to change. They grew softer. Slower. Less historical. He started asking about you instead. At first, you hardly noticed the shift. His voice was steady, his tone still careful. But the pattern had changed. His curiosity had turned inward—toward the storyteller rather than the story and you realized, one day, mid-sentence— You were no longer recounting the past. You were being recorded into it

He hummed

A low, thoughtful sound—less an answer than a pause, a space carved out to think, to consider. The kind of sound someone makes when they’re weighing the ground beneath them before taking a step they can’t take back and then, it came. The question.

Delivered with the kind of casualness that only made it more obvious

“And—did you… ever have anyone? Back then. During the wars" His voice caught near the end, like the question had tripped over its own boots on the way out

Your optics lifted from the datapad slowly. Not sharply. Just… knowingly “Anyone?"

It was a simple word, but layered with intent. You weren’t asking for clarification. You were asking if he knew what he was really asking

He immediately straightened his posture—a move so sudden it bordered on mechanical. Which was impressive, considering his spine had already been stiff enough to pass for reinforced alloy “I mean—allies. Or comrades. People you… trusted. Fought beside..”

The correction tumbled out like bricks falling into place—too neatly, too fast. His words tried to anchor the moment back into neutral ground, but the field around him betrayed him. It had shifted—subtly, but unmistakably. That buzz of restraint pulsing just a little too sharply at the edges. You didn’t respond right away. Didn’t reach for sarcasm. Didn’t turn away.

You simply let the silence sit between you—undisturbed, like dust in a sealed room “I had those” you said, voice low, level. A truth you’d long since polished smooth from memory “And more..”

That did it. The datapad nearly slipped from his fingers—just slightly, just enough. He caught it without looking, reflexes honed from years in the mines, but his control faltered for a breath. Long enough for you to feel the ripple of heat in his field. Not embarrassment. Something quieter. More sincere

he muttered “Right, of course- makes sense”

His optics stayed locked forward, trained on some far-off point just above the floor. Nowhere near you. Nowhere dangerous. And after a moment that pulsed like a heartbeat— He said it – So softly it barely left his frame “I think… I’d like to be one of them.”

The words didn’t echo

They didn’t need to

They settled into the room like something that had been waiting a long time to be said. You turned to him slowly

Not with surprise. Not with mockery. But with something gentler. Quieter. As though he'd just offered you a piece of himself he wasn’t used to sharing—and didn’t yet know if he should regret it. He didn’t meet your gaze. Couldn’t. But you noticed the tight line of his jaw. The slight tension in his servos. The way his shoulders rose—just enough to brace against whatever answer you might give and his field—normally so disciplined—was frayed at the edges. A flicker of static in his composure. Like a transmission that wanted to say more but didn’t know how. You didn’t press — Didn’t tease. Just… watched him, the way one watches something rare and very carefully offered, without changing your tone, you smiled. Not the kind of smile meant to reassure. But the kind that held memory in its corners. That knew what it meant to be seen

“Then start by asking better questions” you said, voice low—carrying more warmth than he probably knew what to do with “I might even answer them”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely. But it was there. Not quite a smile. Not yet

But close

You hadn’t said it like a joke. You hadn’t said it to dismiss him. You said it like you meant it. Like there really was a door, just slightly open, and all he had to do was reach and that—that was dangerous

Because he wanted to. He wanted to know more. About you. Not just the archive, not just your history, not just what you’d seen. You. The way your voice changed when you spoke of memories that mattered. The way your optics drifted skyward when you thought no one noticed. The way you never laughed at his awkwardness—only… watched. Quietly. Kindly. Like it didn’t bother you at all

He let his helm rest against the wall

Shut his optics

Let out a slow vent

He shouldn’t get caught up in it. He knew that. He was a miner. A worker. Just another cogless bot trying to survive and you… You were memory incarnate — You carried wars and wisdom in your voice. You stood beside Primes. You remembered gods.

What business did he have wanting to be remembered by you?

But still—under all that logic, that silence, that self-restraint— His spark pulsed just a little faster

S e n t i n e l P r i m e

The corridor stretched long and silent, wrapped in a hush that felt too deliberate to be natural—like a room holding its breath

Ancient murals loomed on either side, half-lit by overhead glowpanels designed to mimic the old morninglight of pre-war Cybertron. Each image painted a different fragment of the same sacred lie: unity, strength, unbroken lineage. The brushstrokes were delicate, reverent, rendered by artists who had believed the Primes were eternal. Immortal. Immutable.

You moved through that quiet with hands folded neatly behind your back, each step measured, silent. You had walked this wing hundreds of times before. Cataloged each pigment, each artisan’s mark, each brittle metadata layer coded beneath the paint. But now—even the images you knew by spark felt… remote. Like they belonged to someone else’s story. Your gaze paused at a depiction of Solus Prime—tall, radiant, her forge-hammer glowing in the cradle of creation. But the dataplate had been changed: “Commissioned in honor of the Divine Reconstruction”

Reconstruction?

That plate hadn’t been there last cycle..

Your hands clenched slightly behind your back, jaw tightened. Then—footsteps. Not hurried. Not stealthy. Just… assured. You didn’t need to turn. The rhythm was unmistakable

“You always did prefer this wing”

The voice came soft—too soft. Like an echo meant to blend in with the art.

“The lighting’s better here” you replied evenly “Less curated”

Sentinel Prime’s presence filled the space behind them long before his frame did. His silhouette—massive, statuesque, lined with cold gold filigree—moved into view with all the ease of a king inspecting his garden. But his steps were quiet. Thoughtful. He approached not like a ruler claiming ground, but like a memory creeping forward on quiet feet.

“I remember” he said, now beside you

His tone was warm. Familiar. Intentionally gentle “You used to drag me here to correct plaques. Spent hours lecturing me on timeline deviations”

“I let you talk. You do know that, don’t you?”

Your optics flicked toward him, then back to the mural “I wasn’t lecturing”

“You were” he said, smiling “But you were right. Mostly” His voice was lower now, quiet enough to ripple through the stillness like heat. He was standing just close enough for his shadow to graze the edges of your frame

You turned toward him at last. Slowly. He was tall. Too tall. The kind of height that once symbolized protection—but now only loomed. You wasn’t small, not by any Cybertronian standard, but beside him, you looked like something meant to be set aside. Kept behind glass. Preserved “That didn’t stop you from rewriting it all”

His smile twitched. Only slightly

“Things change”

“Convenient”

“I’m not here to argue”

“You never are” The space between them was thick with old familiarity, but strained now—like a song slowed half a beat too long, dissonant where it once sang in sync

“I miss when we used to talk” Sentinel said, his voice thinning with a note too careful to be casual “Real talk. You—challenged me”

“so I’m still here”

“You just don’t like the shape of the challenge anymore” He moved a little closer. Not to dominate. But to surround

“You don’t have to fight me..”

“I’m not fighting. I’m resisting. There’s a difference”

His expression shifted—only slightly. Not quite hurt. Not quite angered. But something beneath the surface moved “Then stop resisting” he said, barely above a whisper “Let me in again”

The words hung too heavy in the air

You turned to face him fully now, field flickering slightly—not with fear, but warning “You’re not asking me to let you in. You’re asking me to comply. To pretend none of this happened. That this mural, and the hundreds of others like it, still mean the same thing”

A long pause. Then—quieter “You want me to become part of the illusion..”

He didn’t deny it. Instead, his field pulsed faintly outward—magnetic, warm, intentional. The kind of closeness that might’ve once felt like comfort. But now only pressed too much, too close “I never wanted to lose you in this”

“Out of all bot, not you”

The words were too tender. Too particular

And you heard it — The inflection. That little fracture of emotion that didn’t belong in a public address. That wasn’t meant for a former archivist. That—if left unchecked—would lead to something harder to survive “Then you shouldn’t have replaced everything we stood for”

Silence

He didn’t step away. Not yet. But his gaze lowered just slightly. Not in defeat—but in the careful weighing of what he couldn’t control and just before leaving, Sentinel said—so quiet it barely moved the air “You don’t have to be the last relic of the past, you could be part of what's next”

“There's still a place for you, beside me”

Then he turned. The shadows swallowed him slowly, step by step, until only the lingering hum of his field remained—warm, familiar, and unbearably wrong. You remained there, surrounded by murals of rewritten myths and stories you no longer recognized, stared up at Solus Prime one last time. And for the first time in cycles…

You couldn’t remember what color her optics had been before Sentinel repainted her

You had always wondered—quietly, carefully—why the miners had no T-Cogs. Why these workers–those newborns, forged strong and silent beneath the surface of Cybertron, lacked the very thing that made transformation possible.But it was only ever a question left unspoken. Not because you lacked curiosity—but because you knew Sentinel would never answer you

And so speculation took root. Not in accusation, not yet. Just quiet observation—hypotheses formed in the hush between truths, the kind no one dared to say aloud. Still, you didn’t want to believe it. You couldn’t. Surely not even Sentinel could be that cruel, could he? Or at least, that’s what you told yourself. Until you could see it with your own optics

He treated you much the same as he always had. The teasing still lingered in his voice, familiar as a memory. The smiles came easily, often too easily—warmer than necessary, threaded now with a tension you couldn’t name. He could have just wiped you off. Silenced you. Replaced you. But instead, he kept you close. Closer than before. You told yourself it was strategy. Easier to watch you. Easier to contain

But perhaps, just perhaps— he couldn’t bear to let you go. Perhaps Sentinel had drawn you so deep into the architecture of his world that the thought of ruling it without you — felt incomplete, dangerous, like failure. And so, in every public address, every state broadcast and ceremonial decree, when he stepped into the light and into the eye of the world— you were always there. Not to speak. Not to challenge. Not to stand as an equal. But simply to stand. Beside him as if that alone would be enough. And it was. That’s all he needed. For the new age he ruled to begin—with you still in it

The plaza had been remade—not merely rebuilt, but reborn for this very moment. Steel arches arced overhead like the fossilized ribs of a long-dead colossus, burnished to a gleam beneath the planetary sun. Between them hung banners of deep cobalt, stitched in gold thread so fine it caught the light like fire

THE ERA OF CONTINUITY, they read

Beneath that, the unmistakable crest of Sentinel Prime—repeated, mirrored, multiplied across every surface like a sigil of divine right. A thousand optics turned as he emerged onto the marble dais. Flanked by honor guard. Flanked by silence.

And flanked by them — You followed exactly half a step behind, as protocol required—close enough to signify loyalty, far enough to signify subordination, your frame was immaculate under the precision lighting, each panel polished, each edge adorned with ceremonial filigree. Upon your chestplate gleamed the freshly-forged insignia of Principal Historical Advisor to the Prime—a title announced only a cycle prior, yet already murmured through the chambers of power like scripture passed hand to hand

Sentinel raised a hand

The plaza obeyed

“My fellow citizens of Iacon” his voice unfurled like silk over steel—calm, crystalline, unyielding “today marks not only remembrance—but restoration. A new page. A unified future”

He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. His voice carried like gravity—inevitable, inescapable

Behind him, you held your stance with exquisite poise, expression serene, the curve of lips calibrated to precision—not warmth, not joy, but symmetry. The kind of smile meant for monuments, not mouths. You weren’t unrecognizable. You had merely become… curated — A fixture, flourish

“In every age of transformation” Sentinel continued “we must reach not only toward innovation—but to those who hold the lineage of wisdom. And so, I walk forward with those who once stood beside the Primes themselves” He turned—just slightly—enough to cast the gesture like a flourish of choreography, an artist unveiling his favorite piece “My advisor. My historian. My conscience”

Applause

You bowed, flawlessly. An angle measured. A nod practiced

“They remind me—daily—that the past is not to be erased, but honored”

And that, you thought behind your perfect smile, is what a lie sounds like when it wears poetry for armor

The crowd didn’t know. Couldn’t know

They didn’t see the redacted records, the vanishing cross-references, the warped timelines spliced together like a forgery passed off as scripture. But you did, knew every phrase pre-approved for the interview after this, knew which questions to feign surprise at, which answers to lace in ambiguity, which smiles to hold half a second longer—for the press, for the pose, for the pageantry

When the mic was passed to you, you spoke clearly. Without tremor “It is my privilege, to ensure that the light of Cybertron’s past still guides our steps. We move forward… not in forgetfulness, but in reverence”

The voice did not falter. But behind your back, fingers curled

Just slightly

You could feel him watching. Not with threat. Not with command. But with the kind of gaze one reserves for polished statues—an artifact restored, admired, and displayed. He stepped closer. Just enough for proximity to read as intimacy to the cameras drone. Just enough to veil the weight behind the words “That was beautifully said” he murmured

You didn’t even look at him “I know”

“You still surprise me sometimes”

“I shouldn’t”

He laughed. Quietly. It sounded like warmth. But you knew the tone was forged from pressure. You just smiled again— for the cameras, for the world, for the lie. All the while counting the seconds until they could shed this costume of allegiance—

and return to silence. To truth. To records that hadn't yet been rewritten

The applause hadn’t faded. Not truly

Even as the final words of the speech dissolved into the crisp evening air, even as the recording lights dimmed and flickered out, the plaza still thrummed with the afterglow of orchestrated pride. A thousand optics shimmered with patriotic sheen. The banners above caught the wind like the sails of a sanctified warship—reborn, rebranded

Sentinel turned slightly as they stepped from the marble dais. His hand extended—not in earnest assistance, but in something more… choreographed. Just close enough to suggest warmth. Just distant enough to deny obligation

You did not take it. You descended with mechanical grace, each movement refined to ceremony, smile remained a studied curve, not a flicker out of place, electromagnetic field was wound tight, compressed close to frame—static-thick, airtight. But Sentinel didn’t retract. He adjusted A beat. A breath. Then he fell into step beside them. One hand still positioned loosely at their back—not touching, not quite, but present. Suggesting

“You handled that perfectly” he murmured, voice pitched just for them—an intimate register dressed in silk “Even that line about reverence” he added, with a glint behind his words “It almost moved me”

“I was quoting your own speech, from six cycles ago. You just don’t remember”

He laughed—quiet, indulgent “That’s why I keep you close”

His hand settled lightly at the small of your back. A touch that, from a distance, would read as fondness. Dignified. United. Photogenic. The Prime and his trusted advisor—a tableau of loyalty

You didn’t recoil. But felt it. The message in the weight of it. The duration. The confidence. The performance. You tilted your head a fraction—not a glare, not yet, but a signal

“You’re taking liberties” you said, voice sheathed in quiet silk. A murmur passed as jest—but honed like a blade

“I’m taking advantage of optics” Sentinel countered, unapologetic “That’s what this office demands” He leaned just slightly toward you, as if confiding something lighthearted. The angle of his smile curled with practiced ease “Besides” he added, almost inaudible beneath the hum of the crowd “if I wanted to take liberties… I’d be far less subtle”

Your optics slid toward him — Sharp. Unblinking. Glacial “Then it’s fortunate, that subtlety suits you. It keeps your hands clean”

He didn’t respond immediately

Let the silence grow roots. Let the proximity say what words couldn’t. Then, with the grace of a ruler accustomed to applause, he stepped ahead. Half a pace. Reclaiming the lead. Shoulders squared. Expression unblemished. A portrait of command. A symbol of benevolent strength. Behind him, you followed. Impeccably. Your smile still worn like enamel. Uncracked

The drone captured the moment—the Prime descending the steps, his advisor close at his side. A soft brush of proximity. A glance. A smile. Unspoken trust. Unshakable partnership. A unity sculpted for the archives

You kept the pace

Matched the image

“You don’t want me. You made that clear from the beginning”

“No” he said, softer, took a step closer now “I said I could no longer have you in the same way”

Unmasked. Unarmored. No shield of title, no pageantry of power. You’d forgotten how tall he was. Or perhaps he had been refitted—Prime-forged and sculpted for presence. It hardly mattered. What mattered was how close he stood now, and how easily someone like him could end you if he wanted to. One strike. One breath

And yet — He never had. Not once. Not with force. Not with violence. He wasn’t that kind of tyrant 

“You were a pillar” he said, voice slow, deliberate “Unshakable. I relied on that. Trusted in it”

“But this world—my world—has no place for things that do not change” His tone was not cruel. It was… sorrowful. Almost reverent. The voice of someone delivering last rites to something sacred “That doesn’t mean I wanted to break you”

“You’re the last piece of a world that made me who I was”

A i r a c h n i d

The hallway this time was brighter

Wider. Less suited to shadows, and yet—still quiet enough for things to go unnoticed

You stood near the polished threshold of a secondary archive chamber—one of the newer annexes built under Sentinel's regime. The walls were smooth. Unscuffed. Sterile in a way that felt unnatural, like something grown in a vacuum instead of history. Every surface gleamed too perfectly. Nothing here had aged yet. Nothing here had memory. You scrolled slowly through the contents of a datapad—not reading, not truly. Just moving. Optics skating over headlines, edit trails, deleted citation links. The silence here was curated. Sculpted

You weren’t here for the records

You were waiting

And right on cue “You're early today”

The voice arrived like a brush of silk through charged air. Smooth. Deliberate. It always was. Familiar now—but still edged like a knife’s smile. You didn’t look up immediately, didn’t have to

You already knew who it was

Airachnid was leaning against the terminal bank, as though she’d been there since the system powered on. One hip balanced lightly against the edge, arms folded, posture relaxed—but not truly at rest. Her helm was tilted just enough to unnerve, like she was watching from an angle no one else thought to use. Her smile was slight, carefully measured. It didn’t quite reach her optics, but that was the point

“You’re very consistent” you said mildly, glancing at her from the corner of your optics “Do you clock in like this for everyone?”

“No” Her tone was a velvet purr, low and intentional “Only the ones worth watching”

“I’m flattered”

“You should be”

The silence that followed was thick enough to hold shape. You looked back down, scrolling through the datapad with a laziness that masked purpose “Do you enjoy this?” you asked, voice light

“Watching me sort metadata? Or is this just another item on your schedule?”

Airachnid’s helm tilted further, just a fraction “Do you enjoy testing the patience of your security detail?”

“I prefer to test the depth of curiosity”

That earned a quiet sound from her. Not quite a laugh—more a click. Dry. Surgical. Like a scalpel being returned to its velvet-lined case “You don’t strike me as the reckless type”

“I’m not. But I’ve spent more time speaking to corrupted code than to people lately. You’re more intriguing than most encrypted files” Airachnid uncrossed her arms with slow precision and stepped away from the terminal bank. Her movement was seamless—gliding, but deliberate. Too fluid to be lazy. Too elegant to be harmless

“Careful. Curiosity makes a poor shield”

“So does ignorance”

They stood across from one another now.

Not close enough to touch, but close enough to read nuance. Like two scholars dissecting the same artifact, each searching for a different truth beneath the same surface “Tell me something” your voice gentler now

“Were you always like this?”

Airachnid’s optics narrowed slightly

The light from the overhead glowpanels traced cold reflections across her faceplate, catching in the sharp line of her jaw, the subtle gleam of her plating “Define this” she said—quietly, but with that razor-curious edge. Like she was offering you a choice: explain, or be dissected

You didn’t flinch

“Loyal to the point of silence. Efficient to the point of invisibility — I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone hold power so tightly… without wanting it”

Airachnid said nothing. She simply looked at you. For longer than was polite. Longer than was comfortable. Not with surprise—no, she rarely wasted optics on emotion but with something like scrutiny. A kind of analytical regard, like she was reassessing a threat level. Then, just a half-step forward. Just enough to be noticed

“What makes you think I don’t want power?”

“Because you already have it. And yet, you stay in the shadow of someone else’s crest” You didn’t hesitate, voice remained even

Her smile shifted at that—small, curling inward like a claw retracting just beneath the surface. It wasn’t a smirk. It wasn’t for show. It was closer to truth

“You assume I follow him”

“Don’t you?”

The silence that opened between you wasn’t heavy—but precise. Like a scalpel laid on a sterile tray, gleaming and untouched. No breath. No movement. Just tension wound in stillness “I serve Sentinel Prime” Airachnid said, her tone glass-smooth “Because he knows where he’s going. And because he gave me a place where I no longer have to pretend”

You didn’t blink “Pretend to be what?”

Her optics glinted—cool light on polished alloy, the gleam of a trap sprung just enough to warn

“Anything less than what I am” That landed harder than you expected. Not just the words. But the way she said them. The calm certainty. The unapologetic sharpness. You watched her—still, quiet, measuring

“He trusts you”

“Utterly”

“That’s rare”

“That’s earned”

This silence felt different. No longer stretched like wire across a minefield. It settled between you like cooling metal—coiled, yes, but no longer poised to strike. A mutual understanding, or something close. You gave a small nod

“Thank you. For the conversation”

Airachnid didn’t nod back. Didn’t tilt her head. Didn’t break the mask. She simply said, plainly “I’ll still be watching”

“I know” You turned back to the datapad—but didn’t move. Didn’t scroll. Didn’t type. Your hands rested on the console’s edge, tension vibrating faintly in the joints

Behind you, Airachnid moved with the silence of trained instinct—less like she walked away, more like she was subtracted from the scene — Gone. Clean. Seamless. Somewhere behind her careful silence, something lingered. Not doubt. Not regret. But the smallest flicker of recognition. The way one predator sees another in the wild—not a threat, but a mirror. A different species of survivor. She’d known from the first time she was assigned to monitor you

You were dangerous

Not because you fought. But because you watched. Because you remembered. Because you asked questions like knives and in this golden empire built on curated truths, it was those who asked quietly that had to be watched the closest. As her shadow faded into the long corridor. Airachnid didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. You were still there—rooted in archives, cloaked in dignity, poised like a weapon Sentinel still thought ornamental and if there was war coming beneath the sheen of peace

Airachnid would not choose a side

She was the side — Already chosen, already loyal, already lethal

Sentinel doesn't have the time to watch you every day. To follow you. Track you. Monitor your movements. And that’s precisely why Airachnid does it in his place. He entrusted her with the task—assigned her to keep a careful, unflinching eye on you. To guard you, yes. But also to measure. To evaluate. To intercept, if needed — She has never failed him before and so, Sentinel has no reason to question the arrangement

When you are not with him then you are with her. It’s always one or the other and you’ve grown used to that rhythm. Far too used to it. Used to it enough that you’ve begun to speak with her. Start conversations. Ask things. Curious. And, strangely—perhaps suspiciously—Airachnid lets you

She allows the exchange. Doesn’t cut you down. Doesn’t shut you out. Maybe it’s a tactic. Maybe she’s letting the walls fall just enough to get closer. To make it easier when the time comes—when Sentinel finally decides to erase you but you know how to play this game. You’ve survived long enough by knowing when not to step away. And you’re not about to waste the opportunity now

“You already have power and yet, you stay in the shadow of someone else’s crest”

She almost laughed at that. What a foolish perspective. Sentinel isn’t her shadow. He’s her axis. He gave her a place where she didn’t have to soften herself to fit. You doesn’t understand that kind of loyalty. Because theirs is built on memory. On rules. On history. And all of that burned. Still—Airachnid cannot help but.. observe you

You doesn’t speak like a politician. Doesn’t stand like a servant. You carry something harder. Older. The weight of someone who has seen too much truth to be satisfied with a lie, but is too tired to shout it anymore. She doesn’t hate you. That surprises her. She respects. And that’s dangerous. Because it means that if Sentinel ever does order her to remove them— it won’t be clean. It won’t be mechanical. It will leave a mark

The archives were quiet, but that’s nothing new. What was new, though, was the feel of someone waiting in the wings—someone not standing in the open, but lingering just at the edge, just beyond the light, as if they were the shadow. Airachnid’s presence was invisible, like most things she did. The moment Reader began to analyze data once more, she appeared at the edge of their peripheral vision, standing just far enough not to intrude. She didn’t speak. Didn’t even move. She just waited

“I thought you’d be occupied” you said, voice not accusatory but more curious “Or are you always so quiet?”

Airachnid remained still, like a spider perched at the edge of its web.

She didn’t look directly at them. Not yet “Sometimes” her voice just soft enough to blend into the silence of the chamber

“quiet is all that’s needed”

“You’re not here for me to ask you questions”

Airachnid shifted her weight slightly, taking one step closer without breaking that eerie calm that surrounded her “I don’t answer questions” she said, stepping into the slight illumination cast by the panel. Her silhouette now clear, framed in the soft light “I observe. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

You turned, but the motion was slow, thoughtful “Observing? ..or controlling?”

Airachnid tilted her helm a fraction of an inch, her optics glinting in that same sharp, calculating manner they’d seen so often. Yet, this time, there was a softness, a subtle understanding that hinted at something deeper “If I wanted control, I wouldn’t have left you alone long enough to ask me that question”

There was a moment of hesitation—of silence that stretched far longer than it should have. You lowered your optics, a soft chuckle escaping their lips, though it wasn’t directed at Airachnid

“You do like keeping your distance, don’t you?”

“Distance is necessary” Airachnid replied simply, her voice like ice melting in the sun “But observation... that’s personal”

You stopped, looked at her again—not with caution, but with genuine curiosity. For all her quiet, for all her efficiency, there was something about Airachnid that had always fascinated them. The way she moved—measured and deliberate. The way she saw things others missed

“Why do you stay here? Why stay with Sentinel?”

Airachnid’s optics darkened slightly, but she didn’t look away. Her answer came with a slight, almost imperceptible shift in her stance

“I don’t stay. I’m here because I choose to be”

You let the question settle, watching the way she stood, poised but not impatient and just as your optics lingered too long, just as your mind shifted—Airachnid’s hand moved, almost without a thought. She slid a small data disk onto the edge of the console. Not just any disk. One with new directives “It’s not what you’ve been told to look for” she said softly, almost as if she had read the question forming in their mind “But it’s something you’ll need soon”

You stared down at the disk, thoughts moving a mile a minute, hadn’t expected this. Not from Airachnid, not from someone so loyal to Sentinel. But the glance she gave them—fleeting, calculating—spoke volumes

“Just make sure you don’t miss it”

she added, before stepping back into the shadows, fading from view once more. The disk sat there. Silent. Waiting. As if it, too, knew that its secrets had already begun to spill, even before you had reached for it

She remembers their last conversation—low-lit corridor, quiet exchange. The way they tried to read her.

As if she were text on a slab of archive steel. ‘You can’t catalog a predator’ she thinks. And yet… something in you had watched her not with fear, but effort. Like they wanted to understand. To connect

It was foolish. Possibly suicidal. But it was real and real things are rare — She reports to Sentinel later that cycle. The conversation is short “They’re stable. Contained. But restless” Sentinel leans back in his chair. Fingers steepled, voice soft

“And still trying to find where they belong?”

“You’ve already decided where they belong”

He smiles. That cool, refined smile that has sealed fates without ever raising his voice “Then make sure they stay there”

She nods once. No hesitation and yet—Later that night, she walks past the corridor where you sometimes works late. She does not stop. She does not speak. But she slows. Just for a moment. And in that moment, she wonders ‘If they ever fall… will I warn them first?’ It is a thought that should not exist. So she leaves it behind, buried in silence. Where it belongs

Sometimes when you sneak out to hide in the old archives that are considered a forbidden place for no one to invade, or even when you talk to the bots that you shouldn't, she doesn't report that to Sentinel

BONUS ON

D A R K W I N G

The lower quarry shook with the thunder of drills

Sparks flew. Gravel sang under heavy treads. Miners shouted to one another over the noise—some urgent, some desperate, most ignored. And at the center of it all stood Darkwing. Massive. Smudged with energon soot. Half-snapped shoulder armor from who-knew-what yesterday. He barked at two workers who’d paused too long

“I said get it moving, you slagging excuses for bolts! You want the Prime’s wrath down here next?! MOVE!” He raised a reinforced datapad like he was going to throw it. The worker scrambled back —someone coughed

A soft, polite cough. A very high-ranking, polite cough. Darkwing froze. Turned–

You stood at the edge of the overlook, flanked by two silent escorts and dressed in the calm, formal sheen of someone who did not come here to yell, ust… to observ

“Oh. Uh. Sir—Ma’am—Advisor—”

Darkwing stiffened, saluting with one shoulder (the only one still intact) “Didn’t, uh—didn’t know you were coming down today”

“It was unannounced” you replied mildly, stepping closer “I was told this sector has been underperforming”

Darkwing nodded too fast “Yes! I mean—no! I mean—uh—there were some delays. But nothing that can’t be—! Well, you know. Handled. Promptly. Professionally”

You raised an optic ridge. Behind him, a miner who’d just been shouted at looked up, mouth slightly open at the shift in tone “We noticed an unusual spike in damage reports from your crew” you continued

“Yes—eh—that’s…” Darkwing tried to scratch the back of his helm. Realized he had a dent there. Scratched beside it instead “We’re in a rough phase. You know how ore layers get. It’s the… uh. The fault of… geology”

You stared. He stared back.

Then laughed—awkwardly. Loudly “Heh! Cybertron, right? So unpredictable!”

The silence behind Reader was immediate and cold

“We’ll be reviewing your operation logs and your conduct notes”

“Absolutely. Please. All yours. I love paperwork. I dream of audits”

“Of course you do” You turned slightly to speak with their aide, but before they could finish a sentence— “Would you—like some energon, Advisor? We have, uh, local brew. Very unrefined”

“...No, thank you”

“Good choice. It’s terrible”

You looked at him one last time. Measured “Carry on, Supervisor”

Darkwing saluted again—sharper now. Nearly knocked his own helmplate with the angle. Once advisor and their group disappeared from the walkway, he let out a sound between a groan and a short-range radio malfunction

Behind him, one of the miners whispered “Did you just call geology unpredictable?”

Darkwing glared “SHUT UP AND DIG”

Maybe it was Sentinel’s bad habits rubbing off on you. Or maybe it was your own emotionally-repressed tendencies finally leaking out sideways. Because, sometimes.. you enjoyed bothering Darkwing. There was just something undeniably satisfying about watching him get flustered—just a little. The way he’d fidget, posture, start to sweat wires the moment you casually inquired about the progress reports and mining quotas under his jurisdiction. Naturally, that only made you press harder. Because why wouldn’t you?

It was fun. In a terrible, twisted, borderline-unethical kind of way. It wasn’t you. You swore it wasn’t you. And then when you know Orion and D-16. After that, well—let’s just say you suddenly found a lot more reasons to “personally inspect” the lower levels of the mines. Every now and then, you’d find an excuse to stop by. Just a quick visit. Just enough time for a few questions. Some light conversation. Perhaps a little friendly interrogation

Occasionally, you had to bribe Darkwing with a few of Sentinel’s private assets— Nothing serious. A datachip here, a high-grade component there but most of the time? You just threatened him. Nicely. Harmlessly. In that special way that makes guilty bots break into a cold sweat and confess things they didn’t even do. Honestly, it was probably fine. Mostly …Probably

[luetta]

i saw someone joke about robot girls as an example of kinks that are just impossible to ever be made reality, like they're completely in the land of fiction. but ... that is just not true!

you can set the mood in your room. turn off the lights but put on some little coloured purple and blue blinkers. sit her down on the edge of your bed and sit down behind her. let her eyes flutter closed since there's no reason to keep them upon in this dark, safe room. softly coo into her ears, she's been such a good robot day! doing so many tasks so efficiently! making everyone around her so happy. but, silly her, she overdid it. so you're just going to have to do a tiny bit of repair work. "will that be okay, dear?" of course it will be. she trusts you completely. you're her admin. you created her. of course she has a safeguard preventing just anyone from powering her down, but she lets you override that with no resistance. such a good girl.

press your finger into the back of her neck, and then drag it down her spine. as she powers down, glide her limp body softly onto the bed. put her feet up so she's lying down completely now. maybe hold her limbs up a bit and let them drop. yep, she's powered down now. she's not unconscious, just mental faculties are capped at 10% and body autonomy is disabled. all you have to do now is find where she's sustained some damage. trace your fingers all along her chassis, poking in with a "screwdriver" to take her outer layer off and examine the wires and joints. hmmm... oil is a bit thin. these wires are too close together, could cause sparking and overheating. goodness, your fan is dusty. you've been working so hard, haven't you? gently turn her over onto her stomach now. it's time to investigate her processing unit, her software.

make sure her arms aren't stuck underneath her. once she's all comfy, you can unscrew her entire back panel. make sure to trace your fingers all around her back and spine as you do, robot girls love that shit. the soft human touch is heavenly to a machine of metal and electricity. and such a well designed chassis too, so beautiful. but off it comes, what's underneath is even prettier! oh, even now, it's still hot to the touch. you've been thinking so much today ... you don't need to think anymore though. just let me explore you. read out her event log for the day. algorithmic neural plasticity score. joint lubricant levels. corrupted data percentage. things like that. they're like scores to her. praise her if she's gotten good ones, tease her if she's gotten bad ones.

i could write so much more and maybe i will...like roleplaying injecting a virus into her neck or chest, and feeling the code flow all down her body...your cock can even be the usb!

also, at some point lay your whole body weight onto them - arms over her arms and legs over her legs. to calibrate pressure sensors or something. bc lets face it if she's a robot girl then she is 100% a neurodivergent cutie who'd love that sm <3

[thick-monster-thighs]

I beg. You HAVE to please do a Pilot Yautja from Killer of Killers x solider Yautja reader. just imagine it, seeing you're superior being frustrated he can't find a planet worthy for his hunt because he's grown bored of it. Then reader decides to offer themselves to him as a "stress reliever"....

I swear he looks so dominating and demanding

I cannot get that yautja out of my head idc if he's bald he's still fine!!😩

but yeah the reader can be GN! since I think ALL should have a taste of him😋

one serving of the bald cutie coming right up

Title: Stress Relief Rating: Explicit (18+) Fandom: Predator: Killer of Killers Ship: Baron (Male Yautja) x GN Yautja!Reader Word Count: 1.4k Warnings: NSFW

He's pissed. But then again, when isn't he? The Baron pulls another cable out of the console near the pilot's seat, cursing quietly to himself as the lights on the centre console, directly in front of the steering, flash weakly. As he pulls out another plasma cable, a sharp flash of light dances across the panel, causing him to recoil with an angry hiss and twich of his mandibles. You struggle to suppress a snort of laughter, but when the Baron is as annoyed as he is today, provoking a fight is not a good idea. "Why the rush?" you ask instead, leaning against the console with one hand on the knife attached to your belt. It's always within reach, there to keep you safe when talking to the pilots. All pilots have a short fuse for their own reasons, but they are all connected by their wild temperaments. And he's no exception. He's your assigned pilot and is technically a rank above you. As a mechanic for the Vayuh'ta Kv'var-de, the fighter pilots, you have to deal with his moods and quirks. But would you openly confront a superior just because he's annoying you with his angry rants about the poor electronics in his consoles? And it's not even your area of expertise or your fault? No, it's better to remain neutral and avoid setting off his temper further.

"I'm in a hurry because I'm flying to the next planet. The next hunt," he replies curtly, with an aggressive undertone. He disappears back into the console, pushes the next panel aside, and searches for the cause of the malfunctioning internal sensors. You nod and snort through your closed mandibles. "Then fly without the internal sensors," you reply. "The external sensors are working." The growling from inside the console grows louder, and you can smell the pilot's anger. The smell is bitter and deep; even the smell of a burnt-out plasma line cannot mask it. Caution is advised - he seems really angry. However, you can't resist hitting your knee against an outer panel of the console with a dull thud.

"That's the fourth planet in this cycle," you say deliberately, while noticing his aggressive scent unleashing a certain anger in you as well. If you're not careful, this will end in a fight. Or is that exactly what he wants? It wouldn't be the first time you've taken out your frustrations on each other. "You won't find what you're looking for in the stars." Now you've gone too far. With a roar, the Baron pulls himself away from the spaceship's console and slams you against the cockpit wall by pushing his chest into yours. You immediately reach for the spear on your back, but he's faster: With a precise and calculated movement, he catches your hand and redirects it away from the weapon. Using his other hand, he reaches around you from the other side, pulls the spear from its anchor in your armour and throws it carelessly to the side where it lands with a clatter on the floor. You and your opponent both growl, mandibles open to threaten and impress, to read each other's scent and intentions. Your insolence is an affront and an act of presumption - you both know it - but it's too late to take back your words. Instead, the Baron presses you against the wall, puts one hand on your throat and makes it unmistakably clear that one does not question a superior.

Your mandibles fold back; it's more of a staring contest than open aggression now. Since you've already got him all worked up, why not kick him while he's down?

"Did the council approve your list of planets?" you ask hoarsely, voice dulled by the hand on your throat. “Did they approve every hunt? Every single one that you think isn't good enough for you? Or are you doing all this under the cloak of deception?” He grunts, neither amused nor appreciative of these words. He certainly doesn't respond to these questions with a mere growl, because his response is as follows: He takes a slight swing and then rams his fist into your stomach. A dull, pressing pain instantly explodes in the centre of your body, and you hiss in pain - but this is still a very restrained punishment for your presumptuous behaviour by his standards. Normally, he would throw you across the cockpit and engage you in a fight, would not let go until you're bleeding profusely. It wouldn't be the first time you've challenged him and he's challenged you in return. It's a whole thing you two have going on. Instead of fighting back, you grab his belt and push aside the metal loincloth. Your hand follows the leather straps that hold the belt and weapon holder in place, quickly finding the target of this intimate, impulsive search: your hand closes around his erect cock, twitching impatiently, accustomed to your attention. Is he really that stressed? If yes, then you'll gladly offer to take care of that for him. What warrior would say no to a little fun, a fight of a very special kind? Certainly not the Baron, who is only too happy to put his hand between your legs and demand satisfaction. And after a brief, intense struggle to set the mood, you always do exactly that. You grab him firmly with your hand and run it up and down his length; meanwhile, he grabs your locks and pulls you closer to the wall, his gaze fixed on you as if he wants to supervise the work. Pilots are all the same. They always have to keep a close eye on everything. After the initial slow pumping motion, he tightens his grip on your locks, sending a pleasant shiver down your neck scales. He knows exactly how to give him a good time. Stress relief. Your hand moves faster now, varying the pressure it exerts. You apply less pressure at the base and more at the tip, moving in a way that follows his anatomy. He's hard - very hard - and his pelvis is nestling against your touch. Apparently, a lot has built up over the past sub-cycles, and today it has manifested itself as him angrily cursing about his faulty sensors. All he had to do to get your expert help was ask! But none of the flying warriors can do that - expose themselves by asking and starting a proper mating ritual. They always have to argue first instead of going straight to an erotic battle of strength. The Baron always makes things more complicated than necessary because he has the ego of a council member. And that despite the fact that he himself has only been wearing his mark for a few cycles!

He grunts and presses you closer to the wall. This is a clear sign that he wants more and wants it faster, so you comply with his request and speed up your pumping movements. Occasionally, you brush over his tip as you do so, feeling the soft, warm skin and enjoying the soft growl - or purr? - that vibrates almost imperceptibly in his chest. After two or three minutes, his breathing becomes shallower and more irregular. He groans and presses his face into the crook of your neck, inhales your scent; he inhales the arousal and the desire to give him release. He rubs his pelvis against yours, encouraging the movements of your hand on his shaft. The first drops of hot semen cover the tip of his cock.

Then, with a deep, throaty groan, you push him over the edge and he climaxes, spilling hot liquid between your bodies. Your hand and both of your armours are now wet with the slightly sticky liquid, while he takes a deep breath and hisses a content growl against the scales of your neck.

"S'yuit-de," he whispers. Shit. His deep voice sounds much less tense and the clicks in his pronunciation are less sharp. Good — maybe he's a little more bearable now than before. However, when you pull your hand out from between your bodies to wipe it off, he grabs the back of one of your thighs with one hand and roughly pushes your loincloth aside witht the other hand. With the annoying fabric out of the way, he can now grab your other leg as well and push you up against the wall. His still hard cock presses against the inside of your thigh as he searches for the tight entrance he's only too happy to claim for himself. Oh, okay. It seems there's still more stress he needs to relieve. But - that's fine with you. Maybe he'll be less pissed after round two.