#──꒰ V // CLONE MECHANIC ꒱

[abandonedtelevision]

worst thing I've ever drawn I think

[barrackbvnny]

@clonewar gave the prompt: ‘ you need stitches. ’ from halo for whichever muse you of yours could use some more interactions <3

──꒰ SCREW ꒱    🔧🔩🪛   ・・・・・・

She immediately frowns as the pained tears stream down her cheeks. Sure there’s quite a lot of blood . . . and their head feels a bit woozy. But she’s never needed stitches before, so why now? Then again, that is a lot of blood.

❛ Are you sure ? ⠀❜ She asks sounding a bit nervous as the chaos around them slowly comes to an end. She wants to be certain that this is something she needs before she mentally prepares herself for either another stim shot or the sensation of a needle through her skin. They’ve i hired themselves before, but she’s never been hurt this badly before. I guess this is what happens when you’re assigned to the field of battle.

[ajaxgb]

Okay so Murder Drones Episode 7 clarified a lot about what's going on, and I think I now mostly understand The Plot. Pulling my thoughts together into a rough timeline (warning, this is looong, major spoilers obv):

The setting:

Humanity is in the space age, having colonized other planets like Copper 9.

The company "JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!" appears to have invented sentient robots, called worker drones.

Worker drones have no rights and are generally thought of as disposable slave labor.

Worker drones have a known "bug": if a dead worker drone's core is left alone in the body, it has a ~0.01% chance of coming back to life (a "zombie drone").

JCJenson has a fix for this, called "wdOS_606" (assumed to stand for "Worker Drone Operating System 606"). It's installed in dead worker drones to prevent reanimation, but in some cases the dead body can "reject" the update (even after lying dormant for up to five years!) so users are instructed to remove the core and destroy the body, too.

If a drone does reanimate, there's 70.3% chance that everything is fine and the drone is just alive again, a 29% chance of undergoing "terminal lockout", and a 0.7% chance to reboot with "potentially hazardous mutations".

So if you do absolutely everything wrong, there's a ~0.00007% chance of "potentially hazardous mutations".

That's probably fine.

The backstory:

Someone does absolutely everything wrong.

An improperly discarded worker drone awakes in a mass grave of other drones.

This drone is recovered by Tessa James Elliott, heir to the Elliott fortune, who names her "Cyn", after the drone's serial number.

Tessa has a fascination with worker drones, treating them like people and dressing them up as butlers and maids (much to her parents' annoyance). In addition to Cyn, she has three other worker drone rescues, who she has named "N", "V", and "J" after their serial numbers (Tessa is not terribly creative).

Unbeknownst to Tessa and the other drones, Cyn is one of the previously mentioned 0.00007%. She has a mutation (or something) called "Absolute Solver".

Exactly how much of the original Cyn is left in there isn't clear. Exactly what Absolute Solver is also isn't clear. (Personal theory: JCJenson didn't actually invent sentient AI. They found some eldritch alien technology, reverse engineered it, locked the original programming down under a giant pile of safeguards, and referred to it as "potentially hazardous mutations" in the user manual. But that's purely speculation.)

Whatever it is, Absolute Solver is obscenely powerful and dangerous. It can manipulate objects telekinetically with extreme force and precision, regenerate from virtually any injury, project expansive life-like holograms, generate massive bio-mechanical extensions to its body and surroundings, and create "null" zones capable of shattering a planet with the correct placement.

During this time J and Tessa regularly keep Cyn locked in the manor's basement at the request of Tessa's mother, who finds her disturbing.

Absolute Solver / Cyn spreads itself into N, V, and J without their knowledge and spends its time cloning and experimenting on them down in the basement, wiping their memories to prevent them from noticing.

Eventually, Absolute Solver / Cyn attacks a gala the Elliotts are holding, killing most or all of the guests and taking full control of N, V, and J.

Either at the gala or during the subsequent genocide, Absolute Solver / Cyn takes Tessa's body. It's not entirely clear whether AS killed Tessa and is wearing her body like a suit, or whether Tessa is still "alive" in some way (which would be even worse IMO).

Absolute Solver fully mutates N, V, and J into their murder drone forms, cloning them and using them as soldiers in the genocide of Earth. Their original personalities are mostly suppressed during this time, leaving them as mindless killing machines.

Earth is eventually fully destroyed, presumably by nuking its core with a null zone, and waves of murder drones start spreading out to other colonized planets.

The common worker drones on Copper 9 apparently never hear about any of this?

As the wave closes in, the JCJenson outpost on Copper 9 starts doing secret experiments on worker drones that are infected with Absolute Solver, under the code name "Cabin Fever".

For safety, the scientists stock the underground labs with anti-drone sentinels, raptor-like robots programmed to freeze and destroy worker drones.

Some of the worker drones they experiment on never gain any powers. The ones that do eventually become corrupted by Absolute Solver / Cyn and have to be put down. By the time of the final experiment, only two successful experiments remain: 002 Nori (Uzi's mom) and 048 Yeva (Doll's mom).

The scientists manage to develop a patch that can suppress Absolute Solver's influence. The patch is successfully installed into Yeva, but Nori has already been corrupted by Absolute Solver by this point. The scientists frantically struggle to install the patch into her as well.

During this final procedure, for reasons unknown, the intended lead scientist Dr. Chambers never shows up. His hazard suit and name tag are mistakenly taken by Mitchel, the world's unluckiest intern.

Absolute Solver / Nori is rampaging out of control. Dr. Ridley hopes that Yeva can subdue her with her powers, and due to the mix-up sends Mitchel to fetch her.

While Mitchel is gone Absolute Solver / Nori kills everyone in the cathedral lab (except for Dr. Ridley), gets rid of the sentinels, and projects a hologram to disguise the killing.

Mitchel returns with Yeva, but finds the situation seemingly under control and the patch already installed into Nori. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with Yeva in the first place, so with the danger apparently passed he leaves her outside and claims he never found her.

Mitchel leans down to pick up what he assumes is a spare copy of the patch (it's actually the original), and freezes as he spots Dr. Ridley hiding silently behind a pew. Absolute Solver / Nori kills Dr. Ridley and drops the hologram, then flings the patch USB at Mitchel's face to kill him too.

Yeva catches the USB before it hits him, having followed him inside, although the sheer wind force shatters Mitchel's visor and breaks his suit camera. She flings the USB back at Nori, successfully "plugging" it into her at last.

Before being fully suppressed, Absolute Solver throws the USB down a giant hole and generates a null zone in Nori's hand. Yeva slices the hand off and lets it fall into the hole, too. The null zone explodes, partially shattering the planet and killing all human life (rip Mitchel).

Nori and Yeva escape to the surface and join the newly forming worker drone society. One of the failed experimentees, Alice, remains below and begins scavenging parts from worker drones that have been killed by the roaming sentinels.

Nori and Yeva have children (however that works), Uzi and Doll respectively. Although it is not yet obvious, their children inherit the suppressed Absolute Solver.

The main Absolute Solver / Cyn construct was observing these events from Earth to the best of its ability. Faced with the threat of other drones that share its powers but are not under its control, it reprograms N, V, and J to wipe out all the worker drones on Copper 9.

Under the reprogramming, they mostly regain their original personalities (seemingly due to a twisted sense of sentimentality-slash-sadism) but are given false memories of being built by JCJenson as "disassembly drones" to suppress the worker drone "uprising".

Their abilities are "nerfed" to prevent them becoming a threat to Absolute Solver. This may be why they need to consume worker drone oil so frequently, although Uzi and Doll have that urge too. Their ship is also intentionally crash landed to prevent them from returning, and the radio is removed to prevent them discovering the truth.

It's possible that J's reprogramming was different, as she "was getting orders from someone."

In one of their early attacks, the disassembly drones "kill" Nori, but she manages to survive and escape as a core using her Absolute Solver powers. She returns to the underground lab to search for the dropped USB, never telling Khan she's alive. Presumably her goal is to use the patch to stop Absolute Solver / Cyn and the disassembly drones.

V also kills Yeva and her husband, apparently for real. The trauma awakens Doll's Absolute Solver powers.

Khan builds the doors to hide the remaining worker drones from the disassembly drones.

With her powers awakened, Doll needs to consume oil. She begins secretly killing her classmates to survive and training her powers so she can avenge her parents by killing V. Lizzy finds out and fully supports her friend's serial killing / revenge plan.

The present:

Uzi manages to befriend N, leading him to start questioning the corporate propaganda he's been reprogrammed with.

Uzi and N fight V and J. J is seemingly killed, and N confines V to the ship. In reality J's Absolute Solver awakens and takes control of her body, now reduced to a core. V could escape if she chose, but she pretends to be captured for now, seemingly conflicted.

Uzi's Absolute Solver powers begin to awaken.

Absolute Solver / J stalks and kills several worker drones using holograms, seemingly for materials to construct a new body. N and Uzi fight and eventually defeat it. N repeatedly stabs its core with his nanite acid, collapsing it into a small void that drifts away. It's not entirely clear whether it's dead or not.

Offscreen, Lizzy starts hanging out with V? While she's locked up in the ship, I guess?? and forms a semi-sorta friendship with her. Her intention seems to have been to mention prom to V, so that V would get the idea to go there for murder purposes and Doll could kill her. (The Promening is kind of a confusing episode and several characters have inconsistent unclear motivations.)

Uzi begins to notice the disappearances caused by Doll's killings, but is prevented from investigating by Khan, who attempts to distract her from all that creepy stuff with prom.

Doll attempts to isolate and kill Uzi, with Lizzy's support. As far as I can tell Uzi wasn't being targeted specifically, and was just another of Doll's victims. Uzi finds the bodies of Doll's previous victims and escapes. Lizzy goes to let V inside.

V escapes from the ship and heads to prom with the intention of killing everyone. N follows to stop her, joined by Uzi.

Doll crowns herself the prom queen, having murdered all the other candidates. I have no earthly idea why she did this, other than that the murderous psychic girl was crowned prom queen in Carrie (for different reasons) and this episode is a light Carrie reference.

V descends on the prom with murderous intent, but is suddenly distracted by the prospect of becoming prom queen. Lizzy declares that V is her friend and peer pressures the other students into forgiving V and declaring her prom queen. Lizzy eventually decides that V is "hotter than Doll" and warns her to run just as Doll attacks.

If this sudden shift in Lizzy's alliances confused you when you first watched it, don't worry! It's just as confusing in hindsight.

Doll and V fight, killing tons of students nobody cares about. Uzi and N enter the fray, finding themselves defending V instead of stopping her.

Doll and Uzi both attempt to convince the other to join them in taking revenge on / working with the disassembly drones, without success.

Lizzy helps V, cementing their weird semi-friendship.

Doll discovers that Uzi also has Absolute Solver powers and says she's sorry for her. She escapes, saying she's going to search for a cure and promising to help Uzi if she does.

Uzi's oil cravings begin to get worse.

Tired of waiting for the disassembly drones to finish the job, Absolute Solver / Cyn / Tessa (who I will now call Skyn) arrives on Copper 9 in person to do it herself. She is accompanied by a J clone. Their cover story is that Tessa is working for JCJenson to stop Absolute Solver. It's not yet clear whether this J is aware of the truth or has false memories.

At some point, Skyn and J meet with Doll and give her some information about operation Cabin Fever. Doll agrees to find the key they need to get into the underground labs if they take her with them.

Doll travels to Camp 98.7, a former facility used in the Cabin Fever experiments, to find the key. N and Uzi follow her there to try and figure out what's going on. They bring V and all Uzi's surviving classmates too because why not.

Uzi finds a green robot-bug which has the keycodes, though she doesn't know this yet. N finds a VHS tape describing zombie drones.

Uzi's corruption gets worse. She loses control and kills several of her classmates. V fights Uzi, addressing her as "Cyn", but N manages to calm them both down.

N has been recovering partial memories of his time in Elliott Manor. While at a not-sleepover at Uzi's, he and V collapse as their reprogramming tries to delete those memories, pulling them into a memory of the night of the gala. Interestingly, their screens display "Error: 606" during this time, suggesting a connection to "Worker Drone Operating System 606", the operating system intended to prevent zombie drones.

Uzi hacks into N and V's brains to protect their minds and to recover the memories in full. As she's doing this, Doll breaks into Uzi's home and steals the key-bug. Torn between saving her friends and letting the one clue she's found slip away, Uzi decides to help N and V.

Uzi helps N and V successfully recover their memories of the gala. Uzi sets herself as their system admin to prevent Cyn from tampering with them again.

They follow Doll to her rendezvous with Skyn and J, shocking everyone. While Skyn (pretending to be Tessa) explains her cover story, Doll runs off with the key and ducks into the office complex leading to the lab.

Everyone else follows her, fending off sentinels and Alice (that ex-experimentee from earlier) along the way. Skyn tells N that Uzi is infected and must be killed for the good of the universe, a half-truth meant to drive a wedge between them since Skyn A) is the Absolute Solver, and B) knows about the patch. Alice is killed by sentinels.

One sentinel manages to wound Skyn and goes berserk, probably due to the paradox of a creature that is both human and worker drone.

They find Doll seemingly frozen by the sentinels, but it's a trap. Doll uses the key to summon an elevator down to the labs, opening her own way and leaving them cut off, surrounded by sentinels. V sacrifices herself to let them escape.

Down in the labs, Skyn continue to push Uzi away from N, freaking Uzi out and leading her to accidentally collapse the tunnel, separating all three of them.

With "Tessa" missing, Skyn is free to return to her Cyn form. She torments N with illusions of V and his suppressed memories of the genocide on Earth.

Absolute Solver / Cyn attempts to further manipulate N's mind, possibly trying to wipe his memory again, but is unable to get around Uzi's admin override.

That attempt having failed, Cyn starts dragging N away into the tunnels. He is saved by Nori, who in an amazing coincidence has just today found that patch USB she's spent all these years searching for.

Uzi finds Mitchel's suit cam recordings of the final experiment, seeing her mother horrifically possessed by the Absolute Solver but not the moment when she was cured.

Returning to her Skyn-suit, Skyn accesses and deletes all the Cabin Fever team's notes, while new-J destroys the disassembly drones' ship on the surface, leaving Skyn and new-J's ship as the only way off the planet.

Skyn is confronted by Doll, who demands to know where the patch USB is, determined not to let Absolute Solver use her to destroy the planet (which was never actually its plan). Skyn does a funny Five Nights at Freddy's reference and fatally wounds her.

Nori catches N up on her backstory and the two try to figure out whether Doll or Uzi was the Absolute Solver that just attacked them, unaware of Skyn. Nori makes N promise not to tell Uzi that she's her mother.

Doll, bleeding heavily (a thing she can do thanks to Absolute Solver!) approaches Uzi and collapses. Skyn, re-disguised as Tessa (I swear she does like five costume changes in this episode she's so extra), follows Doll in and tries to kill Uzi, who is having the worst day of her life and is in no mental state to fight back.

N stops her and, determining that she did know about the patch and wanted to kill Uzi anyway, decapitates "Tessa". He tries to give the patch to Uzi, but she's already succumbed to Absolute Solver and destroys it.

N and Nori fight Absolute Solver / Cyn / Uzi. The fight goes poorly, and Absolute Solver / Uzi almost manages to eat Nori before N executes a flawless collective-embarrassment-jutsu, snapping Uzi out of it, but causing her to toss Nori into the giant flesh pit. N spills the beans about Nori and both of them freak out in each other's arms.

Skyn finally reveals herself, devouring Doll's still-living core and beginning to yank Uzi and N into the pit as she prepares to detonate Copper 9's core just like Earth's and kill every remaining threat to her expansion.

J gets hit by a bus, loses her car keys, and is accosted by teens.

Uzi sacrifices herself to toss N the keys and get him out of there.

Uzi is pulled into the pit and somehow ends up in space, looking down at a big hole in Copper 9? Presumably the next episode will clear up what's going on here.

Which brings us up to the present.

[deliciouskeys]

Homelander fans who think the show is moving towards depicting him having DID (see poll): are we just talking about having different facets of personality (inner child persona vs external messaging he’s been getting from his faux parents or a self talk coping mechanism) which can be dramatized with a conversation in the mirror?

Or are we talking about actual dissociation, like Norman-Bates-type ‘one alter doesn’t know what crimes the other one is doing while they take over’?

Because if it’s the latter, kind of dreading that Kripke et al have avoided “the Black Noir clone was the one who raped Becca and ate babies” plot point only to start going down the “it was the bad Homelander who raped Becca, not John”. Because beyond the story problems with that, it starts begging the question did Homelander down the mayor of Baltimore’s plane and not John, flight 37, killing Madelyn, killing(maiming?) Blindspot, dating SF, killing supersonic… that all feels like an icky and frankly weird copout to me…

With the season 4 spoilers about another major character having his own Tyler Durden, and how much the Gen V writers like Unreality and Manifested Inner World, I have to say I can see them going further into DID land, and I feel like it could be really bad. Like maybe drop-the-show-before-s5 bad. 😕 But maybe I’m the only one who feels this way lol.

[kaminocasey]

On My Radar

Summary: You and Tech stay up late working on the pod.

A/N: SEASON TWO SPOILER WARNING!! Heard "The Color Violet" by Tory Lanez and listened to it while writing 💗 I also really love Tech this season, he’s been keeping me inspired like the first time he did when I watched tbb for the first time! 💗

Pairing: Tech x Reader

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI; SMUT!! P in V unprotected (wrap it up pals), angst?, Established Relationship

WC: 2.1K

Gif credit: @starqueensthings

Tay-0 lost the race and now you and the batch are left picking up pieces of him. You look over and notice Millegi and his stupid goons are walking toward you guys, ready to take Cid and do Maker knows what with her. 

“I’m here to collect, Cid.” Millegi’s deep menacing voice rumbles in all of your chests. 

The man was taller than Wrecker and that in itself scares you a bit.

“You’ll get your credits. Just give me some time. I’m good for it.” Cid talks to him like he’s not six feet taller than her. 

“That’s not how this works.” Millegi looks at all of you and starts walking toward your group. “You are out of time.”

You step closer to Omega, pulling her behind you, and Tech steps closer to you. You don’t get to see Tech’s overprotective side often, since he knows you’re able to take care of yourself. But since Hunter and Echo aren’t here, it would make sense for him to feel like he has to fill in for both of them. 

“Wanna step in here? I didn’t bring you guys for the company.” Cid looks back at Tech and Wrecker.

Wrecker drops Tay-0, or what he found of him, and readies his hand on his blaster. Tech steps in front of you and does the same. Millegi’s men point their blasters at you and you glare at Cid. What did she get you into? Again…

Millegi starts to walk toward you and Omega steps in front of you, a little too bravely. 

“Wait. How much does she owe?” Omega sticks her hand up as if to stop the man that looks like he ate the bogeyman for breakfast.

“More than you got, kid.” Millegi stops and looks down at her. 

You ready your hand on your blaster, ready to take it out if he takes another step toward Omega. 

“Well, we’re not done yet.” Omega looks back at the pretty much destroyed pod.

Millegi steps back and chuckles. “Looks like you’re done to me.”

“One last race. If you win, we pay you double.” Omega holds up one finger.

You, Tech, and Wrecker all look at each other and then back at Omega. 

“If we win, we get Cid.” Omega tells Millegi, standing up straighter, not afraid of him.

Cid looks down at Omega with a new expression you’ve never seen before. Perhaps respect? Cid may not ever admit it, but she’s got a tiny soft spot for the kid.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into, kid.” Millegi himself even looks impressed.

“I’m inclined to agree with him, Omega.” Tech turns toward Omega and Wrecker steps closer to join the group huddle. 

“Yeah, I’m inclined too.” Wrecker nods. “We don’t know anything about racing.”

“They’re gonna hurt Cid if we do nothing.” Omega seems genuinely worried.

You, Tech, and Wrecker look at each other again and then back at Millegi. 

“Do we have a deal?” Omega puts on her stone face.

If Hunter and Echo were here… oh man. You’d be in deep shit. 

“We race tomorrow.” Millegi nods. “I keep Cid, the woman, and the kid as collateral.” 

“That is not going to happen.” Tech steps in front of you and Omega again and you can’t help but look at him with a certain arousal. 

You’ve never seen this side of him. Confident. Sure of himself. Protective. 

“Yeah, think again.” Wrecker joins him.

“I wasn’t asking.” Millegi stares at the goggled clone.

“Actually, the kid and I are mechanics.” You sort of lie. “They’re gonna need us.”

With a sigh, he stares at Cid. “Just Cid then.” 

His goons come over and start to lead Cid away. 

“For your sakes, you better be able to pay up.” Millegi warns you before walking away. 

You spend the rest of the day, and well into the night, fixing up the pod. Tay-0 ended up getting run over by another pod so Tech volunteered to race in his place, which you definitely didn’t approve of. 

Omega ends up falling asleep so Wrecker carries her back to the ship so she can get some rest before tomorrow. You and Tech continue to finish up the pod together, nearly done. 

You take your sweatshirt off, toss it onto the workbench, revealing your tank top, and when you turn around, you notice Tech’s eyes on you. When he sees you looking at him, the tension melts from his shoulders and you join him again. 

“You okay?” You ask, softly.

“I will be alright. Thank you.” He goes back to wiring whatever piece he’s working on.

“Can I tell you something?” You ask him.

He nods, putting down his tools and taking off his helmet to look at you. 

“I don’t appreciate how you just volunteered to race like that without talking to me about it.” You murmur. 

He gets up and walks over to the workbench by the wall so you follow him.

“I am doing what needs to be done. Tay-0 is in no condition to race again and we have to get Cid back.” He tells you, looking through the tools. 

You stop him. “Tech, we’re partners… we’re supposed to talk things over before we make big decisions. You didn’t stop to think about how it might make me feel and…” 

He sighs and then looks at you. “You are right. You’ve spoken about this to me before and I disregarded your feelings. I am sorry.”

You let out a breath and smile softly at your partner. “Thank you.”

He puts his goggles up on his head and pulls you to him, pushing you up against the workbench so that he can kiss you softly. You melt against him just as you always do. It wasn’t a secret that the two of you were together, but you don’t always show it in front of the others, preferring to keep it to yourselves in your room above Cid’s. 

Tech slides his hand up your chest, to your throat, moving up to cup your face so he can hold you there. You feel safe again for the first time all day. Right here against him, in his arms.

“Want you…” You whisper against his lips. “Need you…”

“I’ve got you, darling.” He promises, lifting you up so that you can sit on the workstation. 

You start to help him unclick his armor, dropping it to the floor around you, until he’s in just his pants and vest. You quickly undo his vest, sending it to the floor as well. He takes his long sleeve white shirt off until he’s just in his pants, looking down at you with a smirk.

“You’re so pretty.” You grin up at him.

He rolls his eyes, trying to hide his fluster. It’s just as endearing now as it was back when you first met him.

“I believe that you are the ‘pretty’ one in this relationship.” He murmurs as he slides his hands down to the edge of your pants, tugging them off of you and dropping them with his armor. 

It’s dark in this area of the garage, only being lit by the work light that’s shining on the pod, so if anyone were to walk by the open garage door, they wouldn’t see you about to be completely ruined by Tech.

“Seeing you so protective today, really turned me on.” You chuckle as he pulls your underwear down before undoing his belt expertly, with one hand, which just turns you on more. 

Anything this man does with his hands is enough to spur you on, no matter what.

“I know it did.” He releases his length from his pants and moves your bottom down, closer to him.

“You do?” You gasp as he trails his hand up toward your clit when you wrap your legs around him.

“Of course I do.” He pulls away from your neck to look over at you. “I may not be Hunter with the expert senses but I noticed your blown pupils and the way you leaned toward me. I know you.” 

He does know you. He knows you more than any other person has ever known you. Tech taps your lip for you to open your mouth and then slides his finger in, swiping it across your tongue. Instinctively, you close your lips around it and he smiles down at you, staring into your eyes. 

“Does that turn you on, darling? How well I know you?” He asks you, softly, his free hand trailing down to your thigh and squeezing roughly. “How I know exactly what you need?” 

He takes his wet fingers from your mouth and moves them down to your clit, starting to rub you gently, working you up slowly. All you can do is nod with a soft gasp.

“Did you forget how to use your words, cyar’ika?” He teases you.

With you only being able to manage a whimper, he chuckles and starts to line his hardened length up with you. All you can do is watch it slide in, gasping from the sweet pain of how large he is. 

“Kriff…” He groans, squeezing your thighs so that your legs have no choice but to stay spread for him. 

“Tech-” You whimper as he bottoms out.

It’s been a few days since the two of you have managed to get any sort of alone time together, so you know that both of you are pretty pent up. And with the threat of tomorrow… who knows if you’ll get any more time together. 

“So wet for me already.” He praises you. “All for me, hm?”

“Tech…” You groan, pushing up toward him so that you can kiss him again, which accidentally forces him even deeper into you, making you both gasp, breathlessly against each other. “Feels… so good.” 

“It does.” He agrees. “You always do.” 

Tech starts thrusting into you, still rubbing firm circles over your clit, forcing you to bury your face into his neck so that you can bury the sounds, biting ever so slightly, causing him to groan. You’ll never get tired of hearing how he comes undone just for you. 

“H-harder…” You beg. 

Tech begins slamming into you, keeping his speed consistent, and you know he can feel you clenching around him. He grips your thigh around his waist, holding it there so you don’t slide away on the workbench. You hold onto his shoulder with one hand and the shelf behind you with the other, trying to keep yourself firmly in place as he ruts into you.

He pulls his face away so he can practically swallow the sounds you're making, kissing you breathless.

“I need you to cum for me, darling… I need to feel it.” He whispers, his voice low and needy.

“My clit… more…” You gasp, barely able to get coherent words out.

Tech understands, though. Of course he does. He starts to rub a bit faster, applying more pressure, but pushes you back so that he can reach deeper inside of you with his cock. That’s exactly what does it. You feel the warm familiar fuzzy feeling pooling inside of you, threatening to send you flying over your edge.

“That’s it, love… I can feel you so close.” He smirks, slamming his cock in and out of you so perfectly, it echoes off the walls of the garage. 

You start to cum around Tech’s cock, thrown immediately over your edge for him. He loves watching you cum around him, loving the way your walls choke his cock. His hips stutter slightly as he’s thrown from his own edge, painting your walls with himself, filling you as full as he possibly can, leaving both of you gasping and panting.

“I really… am sorry.” He whispers, helping you sit up before pulling out of you.

You rest your forehead against his, nodding, cupping his cheek. “It’s okay. I’m sure everything will be alright. I trust you.”

You know that he knows that you’re thinking of last month when you tried to get that war chest for Cid, who’s just seemingly getting you into all sorts of shit lately, and how he broke his femur… 

“Thank you for trusting me.” He leans in and kisses you.

You both clean up in the fresher before finishing up the pod and going to get a few hours of sleep before you have to be up. You curl up next to each other in the bunk on Cid’s ship, holding each other as tight as you possibly can, since you don’t know what could happen with the race. As long as he comes back to you in one piece, you think everything will be alright.

TAGS: @twistedstitcher27 @rebel-finn @grievouus @madameminor @dumfanting @rain-on-kamino @corona-one @tecker @ladykatakuri @brynhildrmimi @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @zoeykallus @maulslittlemeowmeow @littlemousedroid @arctrooper69 @rexxdjarin @agenteliix @padawancat97 @hated-by-me @sleepingsun501 @crosshairmylove587 @idlenesses @redheadgirl @dnxgma @themcuwriter @ashotofspotchka @sunshinesdaydream @crosshairsimp73 @ariadnes-red-thread @rosmariner @heyitsaloy @starstofillmydream @high-ct5555 @echos-girlfriend @sleepywych @nekotaetae @justanothersadperson93 @brownstalebread @aconstructofamind @book-of-baba-fett @chopper-base @palliateclaws @501st-rexster @dead-poolz @nahoney22 @where-is-my-mind-tho @inparanormal @greaser-wolf @moonstrider9904

[lightwise]

TBB S3E7 Reactions

Alright, in lieu of an analysis this week, you guys get some extra long reactions from me. Spoilers for Extraction under the cut!

- Of course the operative is still alive after being completely buried by rocks

- You okay there Rexy boy?

- Aww, Crosshair helping him up

- “There’s always another way” feels like foreshadowing

- CX does sound awfully like Tech when he’s grunting. Either that or DBB has only one way of making groaning noises 😂

- The rim lighting in this episode is such a pain for making screenshots but so satisfying for watching

- The modified clone theme when Wolffe lands 😭

- Wolffe was really getting 3PO flashbacks there with that disgusted sigh

- Isn’t Hilo a canon commando?? Or is he from legends?

- I will never get over how realistic light looks in this show

- There’s no way that CX just caught himself with his hands

- “We’re waiting on you” they’re not leaving Crosshair behind this time 🥹

- Lol Batcher. Licking cute clones faces. Always the priority

- How is this CX such a good shot??

- Oh Wolffe definitely has a constant headache. Idk how he’s actually put up with being in the Empire this long.

- This purple atmosphere is so pretty

- “I’m much worse” — SCREAMING. And the little tilt with his helmet to make his point clear? This man can have me however he wants. Anytime, anywhere. Call me, baby (I hope someone laughed at that lol)

- So Hunter does hear the ships. I wonder if his senses are more tuned for mechanical vibrations and animal life than people

- Lol Howzer is this really the time for a heart to heart?

- “Loyalty meant something to me” 🫡

- Lol that TK Trooper sounded like a mid-Atlantic 50s movie star

- How is the operative this nimble? Seems suspicious

- Smoke bombs are CF99s signature

- Interesting that for once the stun bolts are being used ON the Batch instead of by them.

- Wrecker and Batcher are a great team

- Hunter just dropping that TK and then Crosshair taking out their ship. Phew

- Also not suspicious at all that they’ve neutralized all the TKs and left the clone troopers for later.

- How did Crosshair sense the operative coming up behind them?

- RIP Nemec 😓

- “Too bad” 😩😩😩

- Oh Cross, you know you’re not the best at hand to hand combat. This is a very bad idea

- That waterfall is pretty though

- Dear lord why did they have to make these scenes so dark

- Oh fuck. I can’t even tell who threw who off the cliff

- The whole squad going after Crosshair even though he told them to get to the extraction point 😭

- CX obviously knows Crosshair and has beef with him. Again, for the millionth time—WHAT THE HELL DID HEMLOCK DO TO ALL OF THEM

- “You had your chance to be one of us. You chose the wrong side”. Really can’t wait for this to be explained.

- Crosshair’s reflexes are so fast for being all gangly limbs

- Okay I seriously almost had a heart attack here (this is a rewatch so my reactions aren’t immediate but holy cow I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing watching Crosshair almost drown. Don’t you dare do it Jen!)

- It is v suspicious how fixated on Crosshair CX is even after he’s neutralized him

- Thank GOD for Howzer

- Okay, I can breathe a little again

- That’s…an awfully long fall for someone to survive

- The TBB team took the water scenes from The Crossing in season 2 and said, yeah, how about we just make that a million times better 🤯

- “That’s not Echo”. No, no it is not

- Good to know that Rex is still considered dead by the Empire (although that honestly seems strange that CX in season 2 knew who he was). That’s heartbreaking that Wolffe thought he was dead this whole time though

- Wow. The respect these two men have for each other

- “Oh I did. Lost a lot of good men that day” *cries in TCW season 7*

- Idk how Rex keeps going honestly

- His voice may be gentle but his face means BUSINESS

- Rex 🤝 Omega - believing the power of friendship can save anyone and anything they come across

- Fuck your orders Wolffe

- “I’ll make sure you’re given a fair trial” you really have no idea who you work for Wolffe do you

- Hunter being willing to stand down when Rex asks him to

- “I know you. As your brother, I’m asking you to do the right thing” the brotherly reunions this season are just paralleling all over the place

- Gregor the handsome fellow that you are. I swear his pauldrons get bigger every time we see him

- “Let my people go” the Exodus vibes are strong here too

- Guess we’re gonna be finding out what makes this CX so special. Still can’t believe he survived.

- Rex just lost almost all of his men again 😣😭

- The sheer respect and care that Hunter and Rex have for each other. The hand on the shoulder. The losses that tie them together. The worry and earnestness in Hunter’s face and tone when he tells Rex he can’t win. He doesn’t emote this much to people he doesn’t consider family.

- The ways Hunter still is hesitant to do anything but run and hide, and Rex still can’t give up. Not quite yet.

- How Hunter won’t be able to either until they know what is really going on with Omega.

[timetodiverge]

TL:DR: a brief treatise on learning to love Ahsoka for the gifts it gave us, rather than its shortcomings

Reasons why I struggled to like Ahsoka on first watch:

-my Rebels-fan brain constantly chanting WHERE IS EZRA WHERE IS EZRA WHERE IS EZRA; every episode that ended without him had me screaming

-the portrayal of Ezra as some noble war hero/wise Jedi instead of the little shit devious street urchin thief who, after four seasons of growth, pain, and temptation to turn darkside, turned into an IGnoble war hero with the potential to become a wise Jedi

-the show's habit of far-too-casually dropping facts that emotionally wrecked Rebels fans (ALL the Wrens died on Mandalore?? Could we maybe explore that a bit?? Dave do you remember when you had Sabine collapse into what she thought were her mother's ashes, and the depth of her relief when she realised her family was still alive and she still had a chance to make things right with them?? DO YOU???)

-the show's refusal to recap/reference insanely important events from Rebels and The Clone Wars (Mortis Gods, Trials of the Darksaber, Vader v Ahsoka and Ezra rescuing her via the World Between Worlds, Ahsoka's entire existence, etc) that would have made Ahsoka, Sabine, & Hera's importance in the larger Star Wars universe much more comprehendible for non-Rebels & TCW fans

-watching Sabine, who only ever wanted to be a valued, equal member of a family & team, and who was already incredibly skilled (art/warfare/mechanics), belittling and limiting herself trying to play the part of Jedi Padawan

-the wasted potential of show that could have truly explored how non-Jedi&Sith engage with the whole spectrum of the Force (e.g. other force users such as Nightsisters, loth wolves, purrgil, and non-force-sensative people such as Sabine), instead ultimately championing the light-dark binary and the traditions of the Jedi order (which many of us have little respect for) such as the Master-Apprentice relationship

Reasons why I now adore Ahsoka and would defend it to the death:

-the breath-taking care, love, and attention the production team put into every tiny detail (the sets, the costumes, props, the MUSIC, the background art, the ships and weapons, my god the detail!!)

-the shameless centring of diverse, layered female characters and the exquisite, subtle performances of Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Genevieve O'Reilly

-a mature exploration of how traumatic events e.g. wars may technically "end", but don't end for everyone: Ahsoka and Sabine are still traumatised ex-child soldiers mourning people they desperately loved but had complex & unresolved issues with; Hera still has zero boundaries between being a soldier and her personal life. And this PTSD has very real consequences to the narrative

-the show ultimately resisting the urge to choose a plot-twist Ezra reveal (e.g. turns out Thrawn and Ezra are now buddies/Ezra is the new big bad/Ezra was Marrok), which may have been more interesting but would have deprived us of the wholesome Ezra reveal we actually wanted

-Eman Esfandi giving us the most successful animation-to-live-action transition since Katee Sackhoff's Bo-Katan, and being so perfect in his mannerisms and behaviour that it was almost worth the wait (and looking so much like Ezra's father in Rebels!!)

(...unless you include Chopper, whose transition was actually 120% perfect)

-ultimately refreshing and levelling-up the potential for mature and diverse Star Wars narratives, like Andor did, but instead of leaning away from SW tropes and traditions like Andor, digging deeper into SW tropes and history, and linking non-mainstream-SW-elements such as the Nightsisters of Dathomir, the Mortis Gods, the World Between Worlds, and the existence of other galaxies

[guess-that-ship]

S10 Round 2

Magical and Mechanical

[This description has been modified to remove potentially identifying information.]

V is a wizard looking for a new lease on life. B is a science experiment who was cloned over and over and over again to be an army pawns, though his lack of fighting ability lead to all of them being failures. Despite coming from completely different circumstances, they are drawn together and become almost inseparable.

Specifically, after the organization that experimented on B is destroyed, he's left to pick up the pieces of his life. He decides to open a cafe in town, and joins a sports team centered around bonds and love in an attempt to better himself. There, he meets V, and is subsequently partnered with them for the upcoming game. However, after a spell gone wrong, V loses most of their memories, and ends up relying on B for support. The two become quite close during that time, as V learns more about what happened to B and helps to teach him better coping mechanisms and self love. During this time, they also begin to form a crush on B, but hesitate to do anything about it.

Eventually game day arrives, and the two work together shockingly well. Despite his own lack of skill, B finds success alongside V, and gets further than he ever has before. At the same time, V and B's feelings for one another become increasingly obvious, and are called out by the other competitors (as well as being shipped online in universe. There is in universe fanfiction of these two). Once they're eliminated from the game, the two take a private moment together (paid for by one of the previously mentioned competitors) and finally confess, agreeing to try dating. Ever since, they have been attached at the hip, with V working in B's cafe, and B bragging about V every chance he gets. Love wins <3

Lightning Strikes Twice

The Blade has known only violence their whole life. Raised from childhood to be a weapon, they're an efficient, brutal killer. They strike like lightning, swift and deadly, with no room for anything besides the bloodshed they've spent their existence wading through. And they're perfectly fine with it, until they meet the Rope, who looks at them and sees something no one else has: a person, worthy of attention for more than the violence they reap.

The Rope is a cunning man, charming and roguish with a quick smile and a quicker trigger finger. He has big dreams for how to fix a world that's rotten to the core, but no means to accomplish them… until he meets the Blade. What starts as fascination turns to admiration, as he realizes this broken person raised by death might be exactly what he needs to burn away the rot.

Lightning strikes and a fire ignites. The Blade cuts down anyone the Rope asks them to, and the Rope lavishes them with love and praise for every life they take in his name. He gives them purpose and identity outside of what they were created for, and for that they are determined to always stay by the side. They say love changes you for the better, and the Blade is inclined to agree.

[magadauthan]

the birds and the uhhh... Plants

There's some weird stuff going on with Tristamp where reproduction is concerned. As Matt Damon once said, "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this."

Let's review.

(With big, big thanks to @versaphile for the Tristamp transcripts, which were v helpful for the details.)

It's my understanding that Tristamp deviates from the source material by having the Plants be derived from some ancient lifeform rather than being entirely artificial. Which came from Xitter or something idk, I'm not on Xitter, so there's no citation. Bad scientist, no cookie. Anyway.

That snip of info, combined with Luida's exposition about most Plants being cloned from a single cell, brings to mind the mechanics of cloning to produce an antibody of interest. Without getting into too many specifics, the target cells (spleen) get fused into hybridomas with immortal cells, then the hybridomas get cultured into wells such that (nominally) there is one cell per well, and they grow. Then you check what those cells are producing once you have a culture / cell bank.

Sooooo.... are the Plants grown from hybridomas of whatever alien lifeform the Sinners dug up? More importantly, might they have hybridized the lifeform with human cells to make them grow? Sure would explain why the Plants are humanoid, and why the researchers are called Sinners. (pretty sure we'd call them Sinners too, since human cloning is illegal for a reason.) It would elucidate why Plants tend to produce one basic thing (Luida mentions gravity, electricity, chemical compounds, and maybe amino acids; and of course, water); it's because they're monoclonal, not polyclonal.

Plants are clones (asexual reproduction), but Luida also mentions that under rare circumstances, Plants give birth (sexual reproduction). Not that the Plants are doing the humpty dance in there, exactly, but rather they are recombining their own genetic material in novel ways. Producing polyclonals, so to speak.

Vash and Nai are twins, and they look identical, but they could be fraternal (remember that all their parents are clones). It has happened that fraternal twins from mixed-race parents get different genes from each (this is pretty fkn cool actually) and so express different traits for appearance. With Vash and Nai... could that mean Nai expresses more of the Plant traits, and Vash more of the human traits, from the original alien/human hybridomas?

Both have human-like and Plant-like traits. Vash can eat, drink, and sleep like a regular human, and Nai can create matter out of nothing like a regular Plant. It remains to be seen what human-like traits Nai has, but Vash's Plant trait is being able to send and receive from the Core, to create "souls" (independent life?) where there was none before.

Nai can't do it by himself. Conrad has been busy mucking around in the lab with genetic material derived from Nai's cheek swabs to create human/Plant hybrids, such as Elendira. Why Nai permits it isn't entirely clear, unless he's hedging his bets on creating Independents, but he's got "children." Conrad is sick, but Nai won't let him stop researching until he gets the "children" he really wants... and he won't get them without his brother's (unwilling) help.

let's not talk about what he does next.

Trimax and '98 Trigun didn't have anything to say about how little Plants are created aside from that the humans on NML didn't have the ability to make any more of them. It wasn't at all important to the plot, honestly. Tristamp threw that right out the window, because the climax to the series has everything to do with reproduction. And it makes me wonder... Luida said most of Vash's genetic makeup is human, so is he... fertile? Is that where y'all are going with this?

Vash and Meryl had better use protection, that's all I'm sayin'.

[mushybar]

What would Jen be like as a racer? She's my fave!

CAMP CAMP: SUGAR RUSH — concept designs for david, gwen, daniel and jen

for this AU none of the adults actually race (there might be some exceptions, however—for the meantime they’re just side characters i guess), so unfortunately jen wouldn’t be a racer 💔 however i have some concept art for the four ‘main’ adults!

they all represent a different chocolate ‘flavour’: daniel is white chocolate, david is milk chocolate, gwen is dark chocolate, and jen is caramilk (which in australia is just caramel flavoured white chocolate, idk if y’all have it overseas). some of the roles have changed slightly to what you’re familiar w in the movie FOR EXAMPLE, david is a simple mechanic and secretly goes out of his way to help the kids and train them to be better and faster racers, and gwen is king candy’s private security: she is the only one that protects him💥💥 david and jen’s designs are simple: david is, of course, a representation of king candy AND turbo (i haven’t designed his turbo appearance yet but stay tuned!), and jen is his assistant (she’s the one with a very contrasting design compared to the film: instead of being sour and green, she’s like a beige-ish colour and v sweet!

authors note: yes, gwen and david are very similar to sargeant calhoun and fix-it-felix (they’re basically clones LMAO), but they are completely different characters cos they come from sugar rush. ALSO the dripping stuff on their faces and clothes is just chocolate cos like, yk, they’re technically made of chocolate

[dystopicjumpsuit]

Stars Beyond Number - Chapter 14

The Eyes are Sunlight

Rating: T (rating varies by chapter; mature content will be tagged; regardless of rating, minors DNI)

Pairings: Echo x Riyo Chuchi; Gregor x OFC Cerra Kilian

Wordcount: 3.1k

Warnings and tags: suspense, action, some angst, a nightmare, a little fluff

Suggested Listening:

Summary: Nemec's extraction hits a snag.

A/N: This story shares continuity with Martyrs and Kings and "Do It Again," but all three fics can be read as stand-alones.

Start here | Previous chapter | Next chapter | Masterlist | Sign up for my tag list | Read on AO3

There, the eyes are sunlight on a broken column

—T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

They reached the rendezvous point well after nightfall. Once the sun set, Nemec took the lead. He guided Cerra quickly across the terrain using his helmet’s night vision, their speed increasing the closer they got the rendezvous point. 

“We’re going to make it,” Nemec called back to Cerra as she jogged a few paces behind him. “Only a few more klicks.”

Cerra didn’t respond, too busy trying to suck enough oxygen into her aching lungs. Her legs throbbed with every footstep, and her feet felt like they were on fire. She kriffing hated whatever Imperial laserbrain had chosen these boots for the officer’s uniform. Gritting her teeth, she put one foot in front of the other, her mind chanting only a few more klicks over and over. She’d come this far, and she’d be damned if she missed the rendezvous because she collapsed at the last minute.

Nemec skidded to a halt in front of her, the dust and gravel crunching loudly beneath his heavy boots.

“Listen,” he hissed.

Cerra held her breath so she could hear. Distantly, a mechanical whine broke the silence. Echo and Fireball? It didn’t sound like the freighter. It sounded like—

“Shit!” she exclaimed, breaking into a run. “I thought you said they wouldn’t scramble the V-wings!”

“They normally wouldn’t!” Nemec yelled. “Blowing up the speeder must have made them jumpy.”

“If they’re after the freighter, Echo and Fireball must be close. It’s going to be a tight pickup.”

“We’ll make it,” Nemec said grimly.

Adrenaline dulled the edge of Cerra’s agony. She sprinted at top speed, Nemec keeping pace next to her. She knew he could go faster, and he was holding back on purpose so he didn’t leave her behind. She was torn between gratitude and irritation, but she saved her breath, knowing that he wouldn’t leave her even if she ordered him to. Loyalty ran deep in the clones, whether by nature or by design.

“Is that them?” Nemec called as a freighter roared by overhead.

“Yes!” Cerra shouted. “We’re not going to make it!”

“Kark yes, we are!” Nemec said.

He grabbed her hand and sped up, dragging her behind him. The shriek of the V-wing engines was so close behind that she didn’t dare turn to look. The freighter fired at the V-wings, and one of them exploded into flames and careened toward the ground. She stumbled in the darkness, but Nemec didn’t let her fall, just tugged her back upright and kept running.

The lights of the freighter were just ahead. She could see the ship descending, its ramp lowering as the turret gun continued to fire at the other two V-wings. Close, so close, so close!

A V-wing fired and clipped the freighter. The ship shuddered and swayed as it hovered a few meters above the ground, but the deflectors held. Nemec dropped her hand and whirled to fire at the V-wings with his DC-15.

“Keep going!” Cerra screamed. “We’re almost there!”

The freighter’s turret gun fired over their heads, and Nemec turned and dashed toward the ramp. He passed Cerra, and when he reached the ship, he whirled and grabbed her by the waist, tossing her up onto the ramp. She tucked and rolled as she landed, scrambling to her feet as Nemec jumped up after her.

“Cerra! Get on copilot!” Echo yelled from the cockpit.

“On it,” she panted as she slammed the button to seal the hatch.

She stumbled to the cockpit and strapped herself into the copilot’s chair as Echo took off. Fireball manned the turret gun with impressive accuracy, and a second V-wing erupted into flames as the freighter soared into the sky. Cerra programmed the hyperdrive navicomputer as Echo piloted them out of the atmosphere. The last V-wing pursued, but they cleared the planet’s gravity well and jumped to hyperspace before it reached firing range. Cerra sat back in her seat, gasping for air. 

“Nice flying, Echo,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. 

He gave her a small smile, and she turned to check on Nemec. He removed his helmet as Fireball slid down the ladder from the turret gun and pulled him into a tight hug.

“I didn’t think I was going to see you again,” Fireball choked.

“You should know me better than that, little brother,” Nemec replied.

Cerra turned back to the viewport to give them some privacy. Echo wordlessly handed her a canteen of water.

“Miss me?” she asked, nodding her thanks.

“Only because the only two songs Fireball knows are ‘Vode An’ and ‘99 Bottles of Ale,’” Echo said.

Cerra laughed and drained the bottle. “Kriff, that’s good. I think I swallowed about a kilo of dust on that moon.”

“Then you must not be hungry,” Fireball said as he joined them. “I was going to offer you a ration bar, but since you already ate—”

“Fireball, you give me that food, or I swear to the Maker herself, I will shave your eyebrows and dye your mohawk a stunning baby pink,” Cerra threatened.

“All right, all right,” Fireball laughed, tossing her a ration bar.

She tore into it and crammed half of it into her mouth.

“I think you’d look good with pink hair,” Nemec mumbled around a bite of his own.

Cerra swiveled her chair around to face him, finally getting a look at him without his helmet. Nemec was definitely older than Fireball, as she’d suspected. His dark hair was speckled with gray at the temples and long enough that he wore it braided. He had a short beard, and for a brief, heartbreaking moment, Cerra imagined that this might have been what Tup would have looked like if he’d lived.

“It’s settled, then,” she said, pushing the thought firmly away. “You hold him down and I’ll get the hair dye.”

“I can’t believe you’ve only known my brother a day, and you’re already trying to turn him against me,” Fireball said in an aggrieved tone. “And after I saved the good ration bars for you!”

“Damn, those were the good ones?” Cerra asked. “What do the bad ones taste like?”

“Nothing,” all three clones said in unison.

“Jinx, you owe me a Coke,” Echo said, watching Cerra out of the corner of his eye.

She stopped chewing for a millisecond, then resumed with a tiny, crooked grin. Maybe I can do this after all.

It was a day and a half hyperspace jump back to Coruscant. Once Cerra and Nemec had eaten, she grabbed the medkit and kicked her boots off. 

“Kark me,” Fireball said, eyeing the bloody, blistered mess on her heels. 

“Yeah. Those boots weren’t made for walking. Can’t wait to launch them out the airlock,” Cerra said. She disinfected her wounds and slapped a bacta patch on each heel, offering the medkit to Nemec. “Need anything?”

“No, I’m good,” he said. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

She shrugged. “There was nothing we could have done about it, and complaining wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“I have an emergency medpack in my field kit,” he said. “We could have patched you up out there.”

“Solid point,” Cerra said. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I have to walk halfway across a kriffing star system in shitty shoes.”

She sighed with relief as the bacta soothed the fiery sting of the disinfectant. Now that they were safely aboard the ship, the rush of adrenaline ebbed from her body, leaving her exhausted and wrung out. Her eyes drooped heavily.

“Got any caf?” she asked Echo.

“No,” Echo said. “Get some sleep. That’s an order. You too, Nemec. Fireball, you’re on copilot.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Cerra said, imbuing her voice with as much insubordination as she could muster. It seemed Rex’s habit of command was contagious, and she wouldn’t want Echo to succumb without a fight. It was for his own good, really.

She barely got her bunk folded down from the wall before she passed out, so Echo may have had a point. She didn’t know how many hours she slept, but they were still in hyperspace when she jerked awake, panicking as Fireball pinned her shoulders to the bunk.

“Cerra!” he bellowed. “Wake up!”

She lurched backwards out of his grip, cowering against the durasteel wall. Nemec sat on the bunk opposite hers, his face drained of blood and his shocked, wide eyes fixed on her.

“What’s going on?” she croaked.

“You were screaming,” Fireball said in a shaken voice. “I couldn’t get you to wake up.”

“What the kriff happened to you?” Nemec whispered.

Cerra glared at him and sat up, rubbing the grit out of her eyes with trembling hands.

“Everything all right?” Echo called from the cockpit.

“Fine,” she replied.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” Fireball asked uncertainly.

“No,” she snapped. When hurt flashed in his eyes, she gentled her tone. “Sorry, it’s just a lot. I think—I need to hit the head.”

Fireball nodded and stepped back to give her space. In the cramped refresher, she splashed water on her face and took a few deep breaths, infinitely grateful that she hadn’t hyperventilated without Gregor to talk her down. When she finished, she arranged her features into a carefully blank facade before she rejoined the men. Fireball had gone back to the co-pilot’s seat, and Nemec sprawled across his bunk.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“A few hours,” Nemec said, apparently understanding her need to change the subject. “But somehow you slept through Fireball singing all ninety-nine verses of ‘99 Bottles.’”

“I need to teach you boys some new songs,” Cerra said. “You know, Corellians have almost as many drinking songs as we have distilleries. And we have a lot of distilleries.”

“I didn’t know you were from Corellia,” Fireball called from the cockpit. “Is it as bad as everyone says?”

Cerra laughed at his tactless question, grateful for the distraction. “Depends on what part of the planet you come from. My dad’s family did all right, but my mom had to claw her way out of the slums.”

“Do you miss it?” Nemec asked.

“I miss the sea sometimes,” Cerra said. “I haven’t been back in a long time.”

“Why not?” Nemec asked curiously.

“Nothing to go back for,” Cerra hedged. She changed the subject. “All right, Fireball, let’s expand your musical horizons. This was the first drinking song I ever learned after I joined up. I was technically too young to drink, but Corellian drinking age laws have always been a little… Hmm. Negotiable?”

“If you were old enough to fight, you were old enough to drink, in my book,” Nemec said.

“That was certainly my philosophy,” Cerra said. “My commanding officer may have disagreed. He put me on latrine duty for a month when he overheard me singing this song, so you know it’s a good one.”

She sang a ribald tune about whiskey and women and certain anatomically improbable acts, and by the third time she got to the chorus, Fireball and Nemec howled the lyrics along with her, shouting with laughter. Echo shook his head from the pilot’s seat and adjusted the settings of his cranial implant, presumably tuning them out. When she got to the end of the song, Nemec and Fireball cheered loudly.

“If you ever teach that to Omega, I will toss you down the underworld portal myself,” Echo said.

The first thing Echo saw when the group walked into the garage was a ship docked in the maintenance bay.

Cerra whistled appreciatively. “Not bad.”

“Thanks,” Gregor said with a smirk. “But what do you think about the ship?”

Cerra snorted and chucked her empty canteen at him. Gregor caught it effortlessly and returned fire with a jogan fruit. Cerra caught it with considerably less grace and took a large bite. Echo rolled his eyes at their childish antics.

“What’s cookin’?” Cerra asked. “It smells amazing in here.”

“Pan-seared pelikki breast with a salakberry gastrique and roasted chokeroot,” Gregor said.

The entire group stopped in their tracks and turned to him.

“Holy sith,” Cerra said. “Will you marry me?”

Nemec shouldered Cerra out of the way. “Hello, my new best friend. I’m Nemec.”

“The audacity,” Cerra gasped. “You already have a best friend. You can’t steal mine!”

“What am I, chopped bantha liver?” Fireball asked in pretend outrage.

Echo sighed and looked to Rex for support. Rex’s grin was tinged with a hint of vindictiveness, and Echo suddenly remembered some of the escapades he and Fives had pulled after they finished ARC training. 

“Mission was a success?” Rex asked mildly.

“We accomplished our objective and nobody got shot,” Cerra said. “I’d say that calls for a celebration. Rex, Nemec. Nemec, Rex. Fireball, get your fingers out of that sauce! If anybody is doing quality control, it’s me.”

Gregor pulled the kitchen towel off his shoulder and snapped it at Cerra, who leapt back with an indignant shriek.

“Nobody’s doing quality control, or there’ll be nothing left for dinner,” he said sternly.

“How is there not enough for dinner?” Cerra demanded. “There’s enough food to feed an army in here.”

“Chuchi and her guards will be joining us any minute,” Gregor replied.

Echo looked up quickly at that, his heart beating a little faster. Riyo. Across the room, Cerra looked at Echo and smirked, then darted a hand out to dip a finger in the gastrique, patently undaunted by Gregor’s dictate.

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Gregor said. He grabbed Cerra around the waist and pinned her against his body, then seized her wrist with his free hand and pulled her finger up to his mouth and sucked the sauce off of it.

“Gross!” Cerra exclaimed, whooping with laughter. “Get that out of your mouth! You have no idea where it’s been.”

“Then you shouldn’t be sticking it in the food that we all have to eat,” Gregor said. “And you called me a heathen.” He squeezed her into a tight hug and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’re home. Now get out of my kitchen.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a saucy tone as he pushed her away from the food.

A strange expression flitted across Gregor’s face, but he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Go torture Rex instead. He’s had too much peace and quiet with you gone.”

Cerra’s face glowed with laughter, and Echo had a sudden and blinding realization that THIS—This is the Cerra that Fives fell in love with. The change in her demeanor could not have been starker. Echo had been confused before about what his exuberant, joyful brother could have possibly seen in Cerra, and now he understood. Fives’s Cerra was not the same person as the Cerra Echo knew. But as he watched her tease and banter with Gregor, Fireball, and Nemec, he thought maybe the old Cerra was still in there somewhere.

Echo noticed that Rex was also watching her with a strange, almost pained expression, which he wiped away, showing nothing but a smooth, dispassionate mask when Cerra turned to him.

“Debrief, Cap?” she asked.

“In my office,” Rex replied. “Echo, you too.”

They followed Rex into the cramped little room where he had set up his headquarters. 

“Report,” Rex said.

“Uneventful mission for the most part,” Echo said. “At least on my end. Just three days of Fireball singing a karking annoying song, a brief skirmish, and then two more days of Fireball singing a different karking annoying song thanks to Cerra.”

“I aim to please,” she said.

“Tell me about the skirmish,” Rex said.

“We were pursued by three V-wings when we entered atmosphere,” Echo said. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“That may have been my fault,” Cerra said. “I had to blow something up, and Nemec thinks it had them on edge.”

“Did anyone see you?” Rex asked. 

“No,” Echo replied. “Our cover should be safe.”

Cerra coughed. “Uh—about that.”

“What did you do?” Rex asked ominously.

“I didn’t do anything,” Cerra said. “I followed the plan to the letter.”

“But?” Rex prompted her.

“Nax saw me. Right after I got through security at HQ.”

“What?” Rex demanded sharply, his brows snapping together. “Did he recognize you?”

“Definitely,” Cerra said. “He called me by name, but then he let me go. I don’t know why he didn’t call it in.”

“Kriff. This could be bad,” Rex said.

“What if he wants out?” Cerra asked. “Shouldn’t we help him?”

“If he’s lost confidence in the Empire, he might be willing to join us. Be our man on the inside,” Echo said.

“And if he’s still loyal to the Empire, he could blow our entire operation,” Rex replied thoughtfully. “Besides, I already have someone on the inside. But… It’s Nax. Kriff. He was at Teth.”

Echo shot a hard look at Rex at that tidbit of information. Only six clones had survived that battle—including Rex. That wasn’t an easy bond to break.

“And just who is this mysterious contact of yours, by the way?” Cerra asked. 

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Rex said in a tone that indicated he and Cerra had had this conversation before.

“If Nax wants out, we have a duty to help him,” Echo said. “We can’t pick and choose which clones to save based on how useful they are to us.”

“I agree with Echo,” Cerra said. “If he is still loyal, why didn’t he blow the whistle on me? He didn’t have anything to gain from helping me, and he had a lot to lose if anyone found out he’d covered for me.”

“I’ll reach out through my network,” Rex said. “It’s a big risk. Normally, the clones who want out are the ones who initiate contact. If Nax was just doing a favor for an old friend, he could expose us.”

“Then we’ll be careful,” Echo said. “Use an intermediary. Set the rendezvous off-planet.”

Rex nodded. “I’ll set it up. Now, how soon can we get Nemec’s inhibitor chip out?”

“Any time,” Cerra said. “The surgical pod is up and running. I figured I’d let him eat dinner before performing brain surgery, though. Tomorrow morning?”

“I’d rather not wait,” Rex said. “Can you do it tonight?”

“Rex. Everyone lived. Nobody got hurt. Can we not take five minutes to breathe?” Cerra asked.

“It’s too dangerous,” Rex snapped. “It needs to happen now.”

Cerra blinked, taken aback, and then that perfectly flat, neutral expression Echo had grown to despise slid into place. “Right away, Captain.”

She stalked out of the room without another word.

“You’re really good at scugging her off,” Echo observed.

“Yeah,” Rex said tiredly. “I’ve had a lot of time to practice.”

---

Next chapter

[barrackbvnny]

──꒰ SCREWBALL ꒱    🔧   ・・・・        ❛        SHE / THEY  ⠀❜

       ・・・・        ❛        22 // 5'2 // demisexual   ⠀❜

       ・・・・        ❛        playlist   ⠀❜

── engineer and mechanic

── could tell you anything about most ships ( including imperial in the empire verse )

── kaf addict. drinks like ten cups a day if not more

── doesn't sleep often

── is incredibly sensitive to bright light and loud noises

── has parental issues

── hates katoo / her home planet

── hates loud sounds but hates complete silence as well

── has a distaste for spice, especially the smell

── workaholic

── rarely eats enough / has eating issues ( both due to self-destructive behavior and the lack of space-wide food katooian's can eat without getting sick )

── doesn't think she's worthy of any love what-so-ever

── smarter than she looks

── accidentally ate a screw once, which is why people call her screwball / screw

── her name in katooian is kikakowkin pronounced ( Key-kah-cow-kine )

── really hates being compared to lasat's

── has enough money to buy their own ship, but is too much of a workaholic to care

── wears light out goggles when working in the daylight

── can see heart rates, blood flow and heat-related things ( thermal vision )

── is lowkey terrified of intimacy

[payeehay]

Idea for a Ghost Plant:

It's called Carneviscus Azulus (thanks to @aikoiya for the name), it lives in low-energy areas of the zone, and, as its name suggests, it’s carnivorous.

It grows in patches up to 30ft wide and as long as the area will allow (one notable, ancient patch is like a mile and a half long). On the surface, it consists only of a bunch of smallish, blue-white, glowing flowers, and it has a very enticing aura to it, like you just want to lay down in it.

It operates not unlike a venus flytrap; when several of the flowers are touched in quick succession, the area around those flowers will sprout a bunch of semi-prehensile, phase-proof vines to trap the unfortunate ghost that dared touch them.

Two options:

The vines are always there, just hidden under the soil, and they extend upward (there’s a v insidious quality to this that I like)

Or

They aren’t always there, but they grow on command (ecologically smarter, as growing a bunch of vines ahead of time that may never get used can be a waste of energy, and also makes a much cooler image with the way they branch out as they grow, and more interesting scars for any survivors (more on that later))

Either way, these vines have a rudimentary sense of touch, and they grow/move toward the vibrations of the now-struggling prey, covering and immobilizing it.

Then the vines start to secrete an ecto-destabilizing substance, beginning to digest it right there. Eventually the prey ghost’s corrosive wounds and its own unmet needs for new energy (ectostarvation) cause its core to destabilize entirely, and the high-energy ectoplasm that made up its body and core soaks into the soil, to be further absorbed by the plant. Once the plant has stopped receiving energy/nutrients from the destabilized/destroyed prey, it either retracts its vines (in the case of the under-the-soil extending kind) or waits for them to decompose to be reabsorbed as well.

Since the plant responds to struggling with more constriction, and any damage to its vines with more, reinforcing vines, the only way to free prey from this plant is to kill it (haven’t decided how yet, again, open to suggestions, maybe it has a v rudimentary core that regulates its energy that needs to be destroyed? Idk)

Any ghost prey that spends any extended amount of time will come away with chemical burns in the shape of the vines that held them, and I haven’t decided yet if I want their secretions to be harmless to living beings, or equally corrosive, for different chemical reasons.

It reproduces by, once every mating cycle, suspending its hunting and allowing ghosts to wander through it harmlessly, in exchange for them carrying the plant’s sticky seeds off to wherever they go next.

Idk if they should reproduce asexually or sexually, tho

Sexually means the potential for evolution, and the implication of past evolution to get to the state that they are, but asexually implies that all of the instances of these plants are genetic clones of each other, the same, ancient species (and these things are indeed ancient, they basically live forever unless they’re killed and they’re very hard to kill), but in the case of the latter, there would need to be some other mechanism for them adapting to their environments, and ghosts by nature aren’t the best at changing and adapting. 🤔 It’s recommended to leave it to the experts to destroy baby patches because it’s v dangerous, but it will absolutely take over if it’s not destroyed It can also cannibalize its own self (mostly the vines, unless they’re the retractable, reusable kind) whenever it doesn’t get enough nutrients from its environment. The only real nutrient its survival is constrained by though, is energy (from ectoplasm, either hunted or absorbed from the atmosphere), and to a lesser extent, whatever chemical is in the destabilizer secretion that it uses for hunting (perhaps ectoranium, perhaps its natural habitat is like, somewhere near a lot of ectoranium deposits ,or perhaps whatever chemical is in blood blossoms. perhaps the two plants are relatives)

[username redacted] Oooooooooo Vlad growing some in a greenhouse he does have to rescue an angry, surprised danny at least once, Danny ends up destroying a lot of the plant

payeehay Vlad has to kill the plant to get Danny out :( he’s not very happy with Danny for that (good thing he had several of them, tho) By the time Vlad finds him, he’s got like pink marks all over him where the vines were, the beginnings of ectoranium burns, so Danny’s not very happy with Vlad, either

[the-bad-batch-baroness]

Please Hold My Hand

Clone [insert] x Fem!Reader

Summary: Today is your yearly gynecological exam and you’re less than excited about it, but your boyfriend is there to make it better.

Pairing: Clone [insert] x Fem!Reader

Characters: Clone [insert], Kix

Tags & Warnings: 16+ for allusions to female anatomy, no graphic descriptions, male!gynecologist, gynecological procedures, gynecological tools, fear, anxiety, hurt/comfort, fluff, soft kisses, supportive clone boyfriend, clone insert fic, based on a real life experience and dialogue

Word Count: 3.2k

Author's Note: I had my yearly exam today and it was an absolutely terrifying experience. The nurse had to hold my hand the whole time and she was absolutely amazing! But I thought about how great it would be to have my fave clone there holding my hand instead. This is for all the v*gina owners that struggle with their yearly exams 💚 (I chose Kix as the gyno because I know that man would be super gentle and not weird about it). As always, please enjoy 💚

@clonexreaderbingo Square: Relax

“I don’t want to go,” you pout while sitting down on the edge of the bed and resting your head in your hands. You were all set to go to your appointment, but now your nerves are getting to you and you’re having second thoughts.

“Meshl'a,” he walks over to you, places a gentle hand on your shoulder, and crouches down to look you in the eyes. “You should go. It’s for your health and safety.”

“But it’s uncomfortable,” you groan as your mind wanders to the last time you went to the gynecologist. You shudder and shift uncomfortably at the memories. “It’s awkward and it hurts.”

He sits down on the bed next to you and wraps an arm around your shoulder to pull you against his side. He leans his head over top of yours and breathes softly. “I can go with you, if you want.”

“You would?” you respond with a little surprise. “Really?” Your heart melts. Out of the few boyfriends you’ve had, none of them ever offered to go to your exam with you. They never understood how truly terrifying the exam was for you.

“Of course,” he answers with a shoulder shrug. “If it will make you more comfortable.”

You hesitate and fidget with your fingers as you think about the offer. On one hand, it would be great to have the emotional support for such a frightening exam, but on the other hand, you don’t want him to see you in such a vulnerable state. Not that he would do or say anything to embarrass you, but you haven’t been together yet, so it might be awkward. You put your hands against your face and blush at the thought. 

You remove your hands from your face and clasp them on your lap. “Okay,” you exasperate. “I’ll do it, but only if you go with me.”

“Say no more, cyar’ika,” he gives you a soft kiss on the cheek and gets up to grab his things so he can go with you to your appointment.

As you approach the facility, your anxiety increases and your heart pounds in your chest. You know exactly what is coming and you’re not looking forward to it. You cling a little tighter to his side as you walk in and head to the reception counter. You think it’s a little weird to be at a GAR facility for your exam, but that’s supposedly a perk of being a clone trooper’s girlfriend. You’ve heard good things about the GAR facility’s care, but that doesn’t make you less nervous.

You check in with the receptionist droid and it scans the serial number in his left wrist to make sure you’re eligible to receive care. Your mouth is completely dry as you sit in the waiting area for them to call you in. You hope you get a humanoid doctor and not some cold mechanical droid, but you can never be sure. You don’t get to choose your doctor in these types of facilities. As your foot bounces up and down on the floor, he places a strong hand on your thigh and gives you a small smile.

You take a deep breath and exhale. You tell yourself you’re going to be okay and that he’s with you, so nothing can hurt you in there. You try to convince yourself that this time will be different. Maybe you’ll be able to relax this time. Maybe it’ll fit better this time. Maybe it won’t hurt so much this time. But try as you might, you can’t convince yourself it’ll be better. Before your thoughts can continue, you hear your name called and the two of you get up.

You hang onto his hand in desperation and stare down at your feet while walking towards the droid. Not paying attention to anything else, you suddenly lurch backwards when his hand is no longer moving forward with yours. Unsure as to why he stopped walking, you look up and see the droid holding out its arm in front of him. “Non-spouses are not allowed in the exam room,” the droid states.

“What?” you ask with wide eyes as your anxiety increases. “No, you don’t understand, he needs to go with me.”

“I’m sorry,” the droid continues. “But, protocol dictates that non-spousal family members are not allowed during an exam.”

Your breath catches in your throat. The fear of being alone in that cold room overwhelms you and your heart beats rapidly. You whip around to leave, not caring about the appointment cancellation fee, when you bump nose-first into his chest plate. You startle for a moment, but lean your forehead to rest against him in defeat. Tears begin to form in your eyes. You don’t want to go in there alone. You don’t want them to touch you. You don’t want them to hurt you. 

“Shhh,” he hushes while wrapping his warm hands around your back to hold you tight against him. “Udesii, cyar’ika. It’s going to be okay.”

“I don’t want to do this,” you muffle your words into his chest.

“I know,” he soothes while rubbing his hands up and down your back for comfort. “I know.”

“Would you like to cancel your appointment?” the droid asks.

“Can you give us a moment?” he retorts sharply.

“I’m sorry, but we’re on a tight schedule,” the droid points out.

He lets go of you and confronts the droid. “Listen,” he begins with a gruff tone. “She needs a second.”

“Would you like to cancel your appointment?” the droid asks again.

“Can I cancel you?” he raises his voice in annoyance.

“Is everything alright over here?” Kix asks as he walks into the waiting room after hearing the mild confrontation.

“Oh, thank the Maker,” he sighs in relief at the sight of his brother Kix. “This droid won’t let me go in the exam room with her.”

“I see,” Kix notes as he looks at you, sees your terrified expression, and quickly realizes the situation. “Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the droid starts again. “But it is against protocol—”

“I’m in charge today,” Kix begins to explain with a snarky tone while placing a finger in the droid's face. “So, I say he can come with her.”

“But—” the droid tries to interject again but is cut off. 

“Alright, follow me,” Kix directs while ignoring the droid and walking through the door to the inner facility.

You both follow Kix through the door and down the corridor. The facility is a mirror image of Kamino. Everything is white and bright and… sterile. Your shoes clack on the tile flooring, making an unnerving sound. You grip his hand tighter as you walk through the halls and he gently squeezes it to remind you he’s still there. The further you walk the more your anxiety increases. You can feel the sweat forming in the palm of your hand and you find it embarrassing. 

Your first stop is the vitals station. You nervously step on the scale and Kix notes the weight in your chart. Kix then notes your blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen saturation before leading you both to one of the exam rooms. As you enter the room, you see the exam table with the stirrups and a knot forms in the pit of your stomach. You feel sick. You hate this appointment more than anything in the world. It’s only once a year, but once a year is enough. 

Kix pulls out a gown and a small sheet and hands it to you. “Everything comes off, gown ties in the front like a robe, and the sheet goes across your lap. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

“What?” you ask as your face goes pale. “You’re… You’re doing the exam?”

“Yes, I am,” Kix answers hesitantly as he can tell you are uncomfortable with the idea. “There’s a lifeform giving birth to twenty upstairs, so they pulled some last minute fill-ins from the troops here on Coruscant.”

“Nope,” you squeak out in response as you shake your head and back away until you feel his chest plate against you.

“I’m fully certified,” Kix explains as he tries to quell your worries. “Done it several times and seen it all, literally.”

“Nope,” you repeat. Your head is spinning. You don’t care what credentials Kix has or how many times Kix has done it. There’s no way a he is touching you down there.

“It’s okay, cyar’ika,” he reassures you while gently rubbing your shoulders. “I’d trust this man with my life.”

“It’s not my life I’m worried about!” you retort with fear. 

“I’ll be here the whole time,” he continues to comfort you and plants a small kiss on the top of your head. “You know I won’t let him hurt you, right?”

You think about it for a moment, weighing the options in your mind. The whole situation has completely blown up in your face and you’re not sure you can relax now even if you want to. You mull it over quickly, because you know Kix has other things to do. You also know that your boyfriend really won’t let anyone hurt you and he’ll be right there beside you, but it’s still a hard decision. You take a deep breath and squeeze your eyes shut.

“Okay,” you sigh in agreement while leaning your head back against his chest plate. A male human is still better than a droid.

Kix nods his head and leaves the exam room and closes the door to give you privacy. You give a shy pleading look at your boyfriend and he turns himself around without a word. You take a deep breath and begin undressing. The tile floor is cold against your feet and goose bumps form on your body as the cool air in the room brushes over your skin. You shiver as you tie the gown and hop onto the exam table. You lay the sheet across your lap and cross your legs tightly.

You startle upright when you hear the knock on the door and Kix walks back in. Kix takes a seat on the rolling chair and puts on a pair of gloves while looking at your anxious state. Your muscles are tense, your legs are not quite where they need to be, and you look like you're ready to jump out of a window. “Are you okay?” Kix asks with concern.

“No,” you say with a shaky voice. “I don’t like this exam.” 

“Not many do,” Kix agrees with a soft chuckle, trying to lighten the mood a little. “I’ll do it as quickly as I can, okay?”

You nod your head because your words are lost somewhere in the atmosphere.

“You know,” Kix begins as he pulls out the needed tools. “They say, men are actually more gentle when giving this exam than women are.”

You give a small ‘mhm’ in acknowledgement.

“See,” he says while leaning against the counter next to the exam table. “Kix will take good care of you no problem.”

You really want to slap him in the face for that remark. Not that you would, since he’s genuinely trying to comfort you, but it’s hard for men to understand what it’s like to have a metal duckbill shoved inside you and then being pried open like an oyster. It’s humiliating is what it actually is, and painful. As you wait for Kix to continue, your breath becomes rapid and your body begins to shake. You want to get it over with, but you don’t want to get it over with.

“We’ll start with the pap smear, then a pelvic exam, and finish with a quick breast exam,” Kix explains while wheeling over in front of the exam table. “Sounds good?”

You nod automatically, but you really just want to vomit.

“Lay back, scoot forward to the edge of the table, and put your feet in the stirrups,” Kix instructs.

You take another deep breath and start scooting down the table. Your face turns red at how awkward this is. The silence in the room is deafening. It feels like they’re both staring and judging you, even though they aren’t. You lift your feet up and place them into the stirrups, but lean your knees against each other with an iron grip, too embarrassed to expose yourself. You try to swallow the lump in your throat as you think about what’s going to happen next. 

Kix gives you a soft and compassionate look at your discomfort. “I'm gonna need you to spread your legs out.”

You look up at the ceiling and hold your breath as you slowly open your legs to put them in the proper position. Your heart beats rapidly and pounds in your ears. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be here. You tell yourself this over and over again as your body shakes in fearful anticipation. You're pulled out of your downward spiral by a warm hand being placed atop yours. You look over and it’s him, standing right next to you, looking at you with his big brown eyes.

“Please hold my hand,” you ask with a shaky voice. He smiles and opens his palm for you to grab his. His hands are so much bigger than yours, but also gentle and warm. You feel a bit more strength while holding onto him.

He bends over to get on your level and places a kiss on your cheek. “Cyar’ika, you’re doing great.”

His presence and words of comfort give you a small sense of peace, but the feelings quickly dissipate when you hear the dreaded clink of the speculum. You grip his hand tighter and you feel your body tense up automatically. You know tensing only makes it worse, but who wouldn’t feel tense being splayed out like this? You try to breathe through it, but it’s like you're underwater and drawing in fear. You hold your breath and brace for it.

“Take a deep breath for me and relax,” Kix coaches you as he rolls to the side to look at you and motions with his hands. Kix takes a deep breath along with you. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

You take another deep breath and feel the torturous instrument intrude. “Ow!” you flinch away from the source of the pain and grip his hand tighter. The instrument intrudes a little farther. “Ow!” you yell, digging your nails into his skin. Ow! Ow! Ow!” you yell louder in succession. “Please, stop!” 

Kix stops the exam and gives you a moment to collect yourself.

“Do we have to do this?” you ask through a panting breath as tears form in the corner of your eyes. Seeing your distress he kisses your temple to comfort you.

“I’m sorry, but we do,” Kix laments, feeling awful about your pain and discomfort. “I know this isn’t fun.”

“I don’t want to do this,” you say while bringing a hand up to cover your face to wipe the tears away.

“Eh,” Kix begins while rummaging around in one of the drawers. “There might be a smaller one in here somewhere.”

“I’m so sorry,” you cry in embarrassment at how childish you are being.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Kix encourages as he pulls out another speculum. “You’ve done nothing wrong. There are a lot of women who struggle with this exam.”

“I think you’re doing a great job,” he reassures you while nuzzling the side of your face with his own.

“Ready to try again?” Kix asks with a kind smile.

You take a deep breath and mutter ‘no’ under your breath, but you nod your head yes instead. Kix starts the exam again and you feel the instrument start to intrude. “Ow!” you wince. It’s still uncomfortable, and painful, but it’s better than the last try. “Ow!” you grimace as it finally makes some progress. Now you can feel the instrument start to pressurize your insides. You groan and grit your teeth and scrunch your neck at the pain and discomfort. You tighten your grip on his hand.

“Easy,” he whispers into your ear in response to your intense grip. He kisses your cheek. “Deep breaths, cyar’ika. Deep breaths. Relax. I’ve got you.”

That’s right. You forgot to breathe again. You take in a few deep breaths, but the room starts spinning as you realize your beginning to hyperventilate. You want to leave right now. You turn your head to look at him with pleading eyes, waiting for him to scoop you up and remove you from this torture chamber, but he doesn’t. He just gazes lovingly into your eyes. So much love. So much care. So much comfort. 

“And done,” Kix says as he pulls the speculum back out. “How are you doing?”

“I…” you say breathlessly while swallowing hard against your dry throat. “I’m okay.” In reality, your insides are throbbing and your head is spinning.

“You’re going to feel a little pressure again for the pelvic exam,” Kix warns as he grabs the surgical lubricant off the counter. “Are you ready for this?”

Of course you’re not ready. You’re never ready for someone to do this to you. You’re not sure which one is worse, the pap smear or the pelvic exam, but they're both terrible. You let out a little ‘mhm’ in response and take a few more breaths. As the pressure increases, you wince. “Ow!” You shut your eyes tightly and squeeze his hand again as you wait for it to be over. You feel the pressure subside and you let out the breath you were holding in.

“All done,” Kix says happily as he tosses his gloves in the trash receptacle. Kix puts on a new pair and does a quick breast exam. “The results of the pap smear will be back in a couple days, but other than that, you’re all set to go.”

“Thanks,” you say while slowly sitting up on the exam table. You feel dizzy and your legs are like jello. Your boyfriend stands up beside you and slides a hand across your back to help stabilize you when he notices your sway. You pull your shaky legs out of the stirrups and let them dangle down the side of the exam table.

Kix gives you another smile before taking his leave. “You did great kid. Like a real trooper.”

You smile back at Kix and he shuts the door behind to leave the two of you in peace. You lean your head against his chest, and he wraps his arms around you and plants small kisses on the top of your head. He was right, it was much better with him there. To be able to hold his hand and squeeze it when you were in pain was such a relief. To know he was there, giving you praise, and encouraging you through the whole thing was amazing. He’s definitely a keeper.

“Why don’t we go grab some ice cream,” he says while helping you off the exam table and steadying your wobbly legs on the floor.

“That would be perfect,” you answer with a sigh of relief.  

Masterlist

A03

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[stealingyourbones]

Danny Phantom Merfolk AU

Ok so I wrote about merfolk batfam (you should check it out It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written), so it’s time to write about Merfolk Amity.

Ok so get ready for some worldbuilding and some wack-as-hell creatures because, as I have said before, I am a hoe for biology. These bitches are gonna be funky sea creature people and look scary as hell. (all sea creature species will be linked to its name)

Danny: Comb Jellyfish. I have so many reasons for this one.

1.) they look rad as fuck. enough said.

2.) they asexually reproduce by making clones of themselves so Dani can literally be one of his clones and that is sick as hell.

3.) they are bioluminescent and imagine the cool shit you could do with that and Phantom

4.) he could have a super cool looking jellyfish bell tail and be semi-transparent (one may even say ghostlike). The bioluminescent and rainbow parts of his bell travel up his sides and back and go up the underside of his arms and all the way up to the back of his neck. He has two long tentacles w/ that trail behind him that are a part of his bell that like gently sway in the water really ethereal-like. 

I tie between that OR a Glass Octopus

Like, look at that thing. It’s so beautiful and also v ghosty. It even has little green spots!

In this rendition. Danny is like 10ft long in total with all his tentacles. He has suckers on the undersides of his arms, and his body looks almost fully see-through even though you can’t see any of his organs (idk it’d just look really creepy if it did.) He still eats with his beak so his mouth is used solely for conversation. 

Jazz: I was debating between the Venus Girdle, Fangtooth, and Giant Manta Ray and I think that I’ll stick to Giant Manta Ray. They have the biggest brain of any fish and they pass the mirror test! Super smart animals. these fuckers have a 29ft wingspan they’re positively massive. Jazz has black and white skin, her arms are connected to the top part of her fins, and she also has a barbed stinger and will stab the shit out of you if she feels like it. 

Tucker: Mantis Shrimp. homie got the shrimp tail and legs. he can see all of the colors. his body has a reflective rainbow colored plating all over and he has eyes on stalks. you can fight me on this. He has claws on the ends of his arms. Manta Shrimp literally make vacuums in the water with how fast they punch their prey (acceleration as fast as a 22 cal.) with these funky little clubs they have near their mouth. The dude can easily break your skull in two with his claws if he wished. Tucker is sick as hell. 

Sam: Was debating between Stonefish, Terrible Claw Lobster, Stoplight Loosejaw, but I think I’ll have to settle on Hagfish. These living fossils are the reason I got into researching strange aquatic life. These bitches be jawless. No jaws but they DO have teeth. their teeth aren’t even like regular teeth. They’re made of keratin. KERATIN. These bitches are bottom dwellers that feast on already dead fish on the ocean floor. Wanna guess why they haven’t evolved from their 500 million-year-old evolutionary design? Their defense mechanism is to produce mass quantities of slime whenever threatened. It chokes out fish that try to eat them and causes the predator to back off. If it ain’t broke I guess. 

Anyways I went on a far too long tangent. Sam has a very long hagfish-esque tail. her skin is slightly purple. She does in fact have actual teeth and a proto jaw. It’s difficult to speak English with sadly and she keeps her jaw open as a scare tactic.

I was trying to aim for more funky sea creatures for what they would be as merfolk but absolutely feel free to share what type of sea creature/animal you’d think fits best! or for anyone in the DP universe 

[broken-bottle-chandelier]

Star Wars design studies and other doodles

Decided to just bundle up all the Star Wars doodles I had lying around from this year into one post since... it would seem the only way my brain knows how to get used to drawing things is by making either memes or just drawing the first thing that comes to mind...

Aaand that leads us to the word vomit section! (Enjoy the bonus sketches!)

Been trying to do a lot more studies as of late of things and one of my favorite mechanical designs, quite possibly ever, is General Grievous. I maaaay have a bias to it though because repetitive shapes in designs are my favorite thing and he is just... full of arrows and V shapes... Which is why drawing his full body, be it chibi, was really fun to do! Though that drawing definitely had some room to improve, I was just aiming for the overall idea of Grievous. Finding references of him that aren't from the front was definitely a fucking journey xx*xx ... I had been planning to do a study of the back of him as well but after cross-referencing 5 different photos of him to get the side view I was a liiiittle intimidated by that ahahaa... That being said, he is incredibly fun to draw, especially his little disc ear thingies Also yes, I am spreading my Grievous and EV-A4-D agenda around, you are powerless to stop me.

In between doing that, my friends and I were re-watching Clone Wars (2008) and got to the first batch of the Cad Bane episodes. And, though a little clunky, I'm incredibly intrigued by Todo's weird droid body type - how he finds balance is beyond me... Aside from having another shape-heavy design, I dislike Cad Bane's treatment of him and was compelled to draw him enjoying life because he deserves it. >:'[

And here's some bonus meme drawings of Grievous including the 2003 version being, as I like to put it, "reduced to juice". The Grievous ballin' one was just cause a friend of mine REALLY wanted to see Grievous playing basketball...