#he started out a sort of red-brown color and then his carapace just sort of didnt darken like it should normally

[mantisgodsdomain]

We're going to talk about our cool vampire guy headcanons again. We like to set Monsieur Scarlet as a member of Solenopsis invicta, albeit a very unconventional example of the species. As a fire ant, technically, he is venomous - however, he's not actually had venom production online for decades, and at this point the cost for Making That Bite Work Again far outweighs the perceived benefit.

Would it be directly useful for his survival to be capable of injecting people with venom that causes intense burning sensations? Yes, probably, especially since he's at a scale where the swelling induced would probably take out an arm for hours at a time. He's just not going to fix it, because that takes life force that he could be using for other purposes, like breathing, or keeping his heart running, or having an emergency teleportation stock so that he can fling himself a metre or two in any direction when need be.

[agent-cakeshroom]

Trolls Universe TMNT

There's at least 4 of you out there interested in my thoughts on tmnt being in the Trolls universe. SO HERE IS THOUGHTS

To start with, their species! I figured it would be similar to trolls with there being different subspecies of turtle-people(no idea on name yet). Maybe not all the turtles that exist, but some popular ones. We gotta have the obvious: Alligator Snapping Turtle, Softshell Turtle, Red-eared Slider, and Ornate Box Turtle. I'm debating on whether the turtles all live together, or in smaller groups based on their real life habitats.

Generally, they'd be about a head taller than your average troll. However, turtles like the Alligator Snapping Turtle are twice the size of a normal turtle. When designing any of them, I try to keep in mind they have sharper edges. More square vs Trolls who are more round. They only have three fingers, much like in the TMNT cartoons, although if we include Sea Turtles maybe they'd have webbed fingers?? They all have TAILS!

They're born from eggs of course, but it's more of a community thing than with Trolls. The eggs are kept safe in a pond dug specifically to house the eggs, and there's a rotation of turtles on protection duty. Parents will come and bond with their egg by simply holding them in the water, talking to them, and just being close.

Now onto TMNT specific thoughts! I wanna keep the species to the ones from ROTTMNT since they make sense. Raph is an Alligator Snapping turtle. His skin is tougher than his brothers', his shell is thicker with large spikes, and all of his teeth are sharp. His tail is nearly as long as a troll is tall, and he can control it about as much as a cat. With his size and sharp edges, Raph is incredibly careful and gentle around others. To the point his brothers are entirely unafraid and will climb all over him like a jungle gym. Mostly Mikey. Speaking of, Mikey is an Ornate Box Turtle with yellow spots across his skin, maybe like large freckles? And yellow stripes on his carapace. He's definitely the roundest of the bunch, but still more square than a troll. He's about the size of an average troll, being the runt. Leo is a red-eared slider of course, but unlike the ROTTMNT design the red stripes run under his eyes almost like eyeliner and then down back towards where ears would be. And he has two light yellow stripes on each arm from shoulder to wrist, as well as one on each side of his face from under his chin to his collar bone. Donnie, as a soft shell, is more lanky than his 'twin' but has similar stripes down his arms. However, rather than light yellow they're a dark brown, and he has a faint yellow spot on the outer corner of each eye.

The brothers aren't going to wear masks, but they'll all have an article of clothing with their colors instead. Raph has a large bandana neckerchief/scarf that he likes to hide his face in when he's embarrassed, along with dark red wraps on his wrists and ankles. Mikey wears a bright orange short sleeve cropped hoodie, and he has brightly colored stickers across the front of his plastron. He's also got burnt orange leg warmers, and a few brightly colored bracelets. Donnie has a sort of battle shell, still bright purple, but with a lot less features. He also has his goggles, a tool belt, and dark purple leather gloves. Leo I'm unsure about, so if anyone has some ideas lemme know lol. Been sat here for 20 minutes trying to parse out his design. I'm trying to avoid giving them pants because the shells, almost rethinking Mikey's top too, but I keep wanting to give Leo stirrup socks of some kind.

Ok, I'm getting sleepy so I'll stop here. Feel free to share thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, etc.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “A Ship Named Infinity.”

Hope you all enjoy your morning :)

Geea and Beatrice made their way from the underground bar as the music was still playing. Beatrice had one of her arms hooked through one Geea’s lower left, and together they sauntered slowly up through A136 and towards the docking area. Beatrice flipped a knife between her fingers as she did, “I don’t see why you are trusting this guy.” Beatrice grunted, “He could just as easily hail the Omen as soon as we got close and tell them that they have been hijacked.”

Geea shook her head, “No, he wouldn't, and i will make sure of that.” 

Beatrice looked up at her and she hummed rather smuggly, “If he tries anything, I release all of his criminal activities to the GA and UNSC. there is nothing that he can do about it, besides we are going to have our crew on his ship as well, and they should be able to keep him in line.

Beatrice nodded, though she didn’t seem entirely reassured.

Together the two of them made their way up through the winding passages, and clattering stairways until they eventually made it to the main docking bay. The room was filled with twenty or so docked shuttles, and looking around they found captain Kell sitting with some of his crew members outside a waiting shuttle.

The men and women that stood behind him were….. well , they were no joke.

They seemed fit and capable, though most of them sported some sort of metal attachments.

Captain Kell stood to greet them, and in this lighting the two of them were able to give him a more thorough once over.

The man was still wearing his long brown coat, and the black hood was still resting on his head though it didn’t shadow his face so much in this room. She saw strands of tawny hair peeping out from under the front of his hood. As she had seen before, one side of his face was covered by mechanical components, primarily the right eye, the cheek and down onto the lower jaw. His remaining good eye was a muddyish brown.

Walking up to stand before him it was clear that the man was tall, over six feet to be certain and well muscled, which Geea couldn’t help but find odd in a pirate. Sure pirates did some hard work, but mostly they followed the motto of work smarter not harder, and their life of heavy drinking didn’t exactly lend to people with bodies like his.

Under his jacket he wore a white shirt and a chin around his neck with some sort of arrowhead attached to the end.

His boots were high and tall, making her wonder if he was trying to make himself look taller than he really was. 

She could still see the glittering metal of his right hand as he moved to greet them.

The men behind him eyed them suspiciously. One was shorter and darker than the captain but just as well muscled. He was wearing heavy cargo pants, though his chest was mostly bare except for some sort of bandelier he carried over one shoulder, though it was his honey gold eyes that made it very clear he had no issue with  beating them up and stealing their lunch money.

The woman just off to his right was short and bald with extremely pale skin and bluish eyes, but she had the look of someone who you didn’t fuck with no princaple.

Geea noticed Beatrice eyeing her and tried to ignore it. B was always trying to make her jealous, and she didn’t want to give her that sort of satisfaction.

Captain Kell stepped forward, “Ladies.” He nodded before turning to wave a hand at his two bodyguards, “This here is Angelo.” He said pointing first at the man and then at the woman, “And that is Mace.” The two didn’t even nod their heads in acknowledgement, but looked on at hem in suspicion and distrust.

That was the way of the pirate though.

There was a sharp thudding, and out from behind the shuttle came a tall hulking figure at nearly nine feet tall.

The large Drev wiped grease from his hands as he stepped into place beside his three human companions. His carapace was a muddy black color with a red undertone. Geea raised her head in mild disdain for his coloring, though he didn’t seem to care what she thought.

“And this is our associate Noble.”

The Drev crossed two of his arms over his chest as he looked them over.

“The shuttle ready?” the captain asked.

The Drev nodded, “Yes, the components are clear to fly. That shake was from our right underwing stabilizer, though it was just a little loose.”

“Good.”

He motioned the two of them to follow him into the rusty little shuttle, and they strapped into the seats behind the pilot’s chair buckling in across from Angelo, Mace and Noble, all who eyed them with more than a measure of mistrust and suspicion. The captain for his part, seemed the most pleasant and sociable out of the groop, though he took his seat in the captain’s chair and called in to be let into atmosphere .

The group of them felt it as the struts gifted off the ground, and they hovered slowly over to one of the landing tubes leading up to the surface of the planet.

The doors to the docking bay opened revealing a long, water stained tunnel before them.

“Thirty minutes until the next fire wall comes, so you should be safe.”

He acknowledged the radio, and slowly began to lift them up through the long dark tunnel.

As they approached the top, the heavy steel door that kept them safe from the elements of the A1 death plant opened up. 

There was a heavy mist outside causing condensation to appear on their front windscreen as they rose into the night. In the distance, the sun was just beginning to rise, and from here thre group of them could see the fast approaching firewall on the horizon.

The ground below them was still wet, but that would change soon as rising temperatures caused the water to burn off into steam and return to the atmosphere to start the cycle again.

However, they didn’t stay long enough to watch the spectacle, and Captain piloted them easily upward through the cloud cover.

Geea had to admit that the man was a handy pilot. That was the steadiest flight she had ever had from the surface.

Either that or he just got lucky.

When he exited the atmosphere, he hurriedly made contact with the bridge of his ship. They approached slowly, and she could see the small ship with its sharp lines and black painted hull, better to blend into the background of space. It wasn’t a large ship by any means but it was still a good enough size that she expected it to have at least a class B warp drive.

They docked some minutes later, and the soundless environment around them was suddenly sucked away as a rush of air flooded the airlock. Red lights highlighted their faces as the Captain began powering down the ship. The others unbuckled their seatbelts  and the back ramp opened up for them.

The captain followed last from the ship, stepping onto the deck as the airlock doors opened into the docking and cargo bay.

It was…. Almost exactly how she expected it to be.

The ship was small enough that most of the rooms doubled for something, and men and women lounged around the small cargo space just as they might on her own ship. A few of them were tying down tarps over piles of unknown goods, while others were taking manifest from inside open crates with the UNSC seal stamped on them.

She was surprised to see that, thinking that the man was too much of a coward to pirate goods from the UNSC itself, but it seemed that she was mostly wrong.

The captain spread his hands wide and turned to look at them, “Welcome to the Infinity.”

Men and women in the cargo bay sat up and turned to look at the newcomers, and immediately Geea could see that the crew was a diverse one with Tesraki Celzex Drev, and even the odd Burg, though this  one was one of those strangle Male burg with the gossamer wings.

He turned to look at the crew, “And crew say hello to our new employers for the next month or so.”

The room shifted rather uncomfortably.

“Since when did we do mercenary work?” Someone shouted from the crowd.

The captain grunted under his breath, “They made me offer I couldn’t refuse.” Then he straightened up, “Either way play nice, and don’t get into fights or I WILL shoot you out the airlock. We should be expecting more of their crew boarding soon, so make room, and get to know each other.”

He walked past the group of them without another word, and marched off towards the font of the ship.

Geera and B followed after him their boots clattering on the floor underneath them.

“I am not instilled with a great amount of confidence that your men will behave.” Geea said 

The captain turned to look at her, and the appriture of his robotic eye narrowed, “Look lady, you are the one who came and threatened ME. If anyone here shouldn’t be trusted it is YOU.” He turned on his boot heel and marched up the next hallway, pushing through the doors and  onto the bridge, where he took his seat in the waiting captain’s chair.

The ship itself was a bit old and rickety, and the chair had a bit too much glowing neon on it for her liking, but when he ordered his men to get to work, they worked seamlessly as if they had done it thousands of times before.

Geea had to admit, grudgingly of course, that it was the most disciplined pirate ship she had ever seen. There was no arguing or backtallking or arguing or people trying to shirk their duties, the men and women here worked as if they were trained for it, like those fancy crews she had seen aboard some of the GA and UNSC ships.

This was probably why the captain came so highly recommended.

The Celzex on his shoulder hopped down from his position and into a small seat just off to the side of the captain’s chair. From over the top of his furry head, she could see that he was busy running diagnostics on the weapons systems.

That made her smile.

To think that they would have Celzex weapons on their side was rather thrilling. She, and no one else she knew had ever been able to acquire weapons from the fuzzy little creatures. They may have been willing to join pirating crews, but most of them were still loyal to some stupid and unknown code of honor that didn’t allow them to just spread their technology around, so they kept their mouths tight shut to the annoyance of everyone.

She wondered how this particular human had gained the trust of the Celzex enough to acquire their weapons. In fact, she had never seen a Celzex wit on a man’s shoulder like that, and doubted that was something the Celzex had been willing to do on their first meeting.

This human was becoming more and more interesting the more that she watched him.

He reached out with a gloved hand and flicked the switches on the console before him. He piloted this craft with the same ease in which he had piloted the shuttle.

The Com burst to life just then, “Infinity this is War preparing to dock.”

The captain turned to look at her over his chari, “You named your ship war?”

B snorted at the derision on his face, “She just likes being able to say ‘ This is war” whenever she goes to dock.”

Geea ground her teeth, and Captain kell rolled his eyes as he turned back to initiate the docking sequence, “Waar, this is infinity, please move to docking port A and standby for confirmation.”

He let go of the transmission and looked over at Geea skeptically, “You name your ship like an idiot.”

She didn’t like that much hands balling into fists though B traced a consoling hand over her back.

“Watch your mouth.” She growled, low in her throat.

The man did not seem at all worried by her denouncement of him, “Naming a ship is an art. You have to know her, to feel her. You have to walk around and fly in her to get a real understanding for what she means. It isn’t just about slapping a word on her. Just like you would name your son or your daughter you have to know what she iis about BEFORE you name her.”

Geea rolled her eyes at the sudden fervor in the man’s voice.

She honestly couldn’t give a shit what a ship was named as lng as it worked.

There was a sharp thudd through the hull as her ship docked, and she turned to go and greet her men down in the cargo bay leaving the Captain to contemplate his stupid philosophies on how to properly name a ship.

Making eye contact with him one last time, she couldn’t help but notice the strange fervor she saw in his eyes when he spoke about ships. This was a man, she thought, sho loved being in space.

She herself didn’t mind it so much, but when she looked out the window of a ship, all she saw were stars.

There was nothing particularly beautiful about it.

Together her and B walked into the cargo bay where her men were slowly filtering onto the ship

She only need around twenty of them, sure that that would be enough when paired with captain Kell’s crew.

They didn’t plan a big complex assault after all.

Hopefully, all of this would be done while most of the crew of the Omen were sleeping and they would be on and gone before the shit hit the fan.

Geea spent the next few hours helping her crew settling onto the ship warning them that if they caused any trouble she was going to hurt them. Of course they would listen to her, they were afraid of her and that is what a good leader needed to keep her men in check. Fear was generally the best way to control people she found, and while they didn’t like being ordered around, they would rather do what she said then suffer the consequences.

From there she went to find Captain kell again , and found hm in some sort of meeting room just off the bridge perusing a star map with some of his men and women from the bridge .

“UNSC channels indicate their last known location to be in this area.” A woman was saying zooming in on a cluster of stars as he did, “Now It seems to me that in this area.” she motioned with a wide circle, “We can send out scanning probes to look for his ship. It shouldn’t take too long and the probes aren't likely to catch the attention of a ship that big. I would suggest using a distress beacon to lure them into the nearby nebulae and then use that as a distraction to dock quietly.. Now the Omen is so large that it actually works to our advantage. It has multiple cargo bays and multiple docking bays, all of which have their own set of airlocks.”

There was a sharp blip in the image as the woman pulled up a schematic of the ship.

She heard B mummer in surprise from behind her.

“How did you get that.”

Captain Kell turned to look at her, and the woman crossed her arms seeming rather annoyed to have been interrupted.

Captain kell motioned to the schematic, “What, you think we only deal in goods.” he shook his head slowly, “No no, schematics and information are easy enough to get your hands on if you know where to look.” He nodded towards the hologram, “I bought these schematics off a guy at the Europa station a few years after it was launched. The guy was drunk, but he had been an engineer that worked on it before it was deployed.”

He turned back to the woman, “You were saying?”

She huffed and continued, “Well, from the information I have been able to gather, the primary cargo bays are here and here below the ship, they would be easy enough to bring a small ship up and usie the hacking equipment to open their airlock without being noticed and send a small team inside.”

She turned to look at Geea, “We only need a small team to do what you are suggesting.”

She glanced back at the map, “The only problem with this plan is that the safest place to board is also the furthest location away from the Admiral’s quarters which would be on the top deck right here.” She jabbed a finger at the upper deck, so we are going to have to plan this and our rout up if we want to avoid being spotted.”

Geea nodded, “The maintenance tunnels should be our best bet.’

Captain Kell tapped his chin, “Both yes and no I think. There will be less security there, sure, but the people most likely to be up are those in engineering, and they would spend most of their time in the maintenance tunnels.”

There was a nod of agreement from the others.

“Better to deal with a few nerdy engineers than highly trained marines patrolling the halls.” Geea said 

Captain kell nodded slowly and behind him Angelo snorted rather derisively as if the idea of a well-trained marine struck him as funny somehow.

Across  the table from him Mace was smirking right along with him.

Geea didn’t like those two, there was something about them that made her want to punch them in the face, but she kept her cool and continued to listen to the plan as the group gathered around each other .

She was mostly surprised at what she saw. The crew of this ship was well functional, worked well together, were relatively professional, followed their captain and even seemed to admire him. It was something she had never seen on a pirate ship before. The way they worked together was almost militaristic, but she supposed that is why they had survived so long and gotten so good at what they did.

She frowned as she thought about it wondering why her crew didn’t behave this way. Her crew tended to be lazy slackers most of the time, only working when they wanted to which was hardly ever

But these people did their jobs as if…. Well as if they actually liked them and respected their captain.

See eyed Captain Kell doubtfully. 

They must have been REALLY afraid of him to follow him like this.

She wondered what he did yo people who disobeyed him

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Hidden Secrets

I am finally back!  Sorry for the long delay without stories, but my life’s been rather hectic lately.  I have hopefully compensated with a very interesting storyline I’ve wanted to write for a while now.  Everyone has their secrets, and sometimes if they are revealed, things can come to a head...

“They say the only way to actually understand people is to see things through their eyes.  It won’t matter if they’re dead, though.”  -Thomas Drake

“What’s so wrong with loving an alien?  What is so wrong with loving someone, caring for them, being with them forever, so long as both parties are sentient?  Is it really such a bad thing?”  -Admiral Adam Vir, in a speech to the Galactic Assembly on xenophilia

“In all my travels to thousands of worlds, I have actually never met a xenophiliac.  I have, in fact, seen more Chaos cultists than xenophiles.  However, I can tell you this.  Xenophilia is a crime of unimaginable proportions.  It is almost as bad as selling your soul to the Dark Gods themselves.  It is something that no one, of any species, save perhaps the most absolute perverse of the Drukhari would even think of.  Even then, said Drukhari would most likely be spurned by their fellows.  It is a crime of such monstrosity that death is far too fair a fate for its perpetrators.”  -Inquisitor Amberly Vail of the Ordo Xenos

Aboard the Omen

Three figures sat around a table.  All were relaxed, slightly slouching in their seats.  The lights were not the uncomfortable brightness of the medical bays or halls, nor the dim-lit spaces of the engine rooms or hidden maintenance gantries.  It was a comfortable, cozy light, illuminating the fake wood of the table and the three that sat around it.  

“How the hell did we get on this topic of conversation?” asked Admiral Vir, his face swirling a myriad of colors: the green of his eyes, blond of his hair, black of his eyepatch, and currently, red of his face.  

“I’m not precisely sure,” drawled Commander Shepard, “But I believe it has something to do with our good comrade Quill over there complementing extra-terrestrial hips.”  

“Hey!  There is nothing wrong with pointing out that your chief engineer, despite wearing a face mask and enviro-suit all the time, is pretty hot.  Perfect, well-rounded figure,” replied Quill, grinning and adjusting his long, red-brown greatcoat.  “Though, it’s just an observation.  I’m already taken.  By an alien with just as good, if not better, hips.”  Vir buried his face in his hands, and Shepard just sighed.  “What I don’t get, though,” he continued, “Is why the hell Vir here is attracted to Sunny?  Listen, Gamora and Tali are hot.  They have ass.”  At this, Shepard groaned loudly and joined Vir with his head in his hands.  “I don’t get why you’re attracted to an eight foot tall, four armed, beaked, carapaced alien.  Unless you’re into some pretty… interesting… things.”  Vir looked over to Shepard.

“This is how this conversation’s going to go, isn’t it?” he said.  Shepard simply nodded.  

“Yeah,” he replied.  

“I mean, no judgement if you are,” continued Quill.  “I’ve done it with aliens a lot weirder than Drev.  If you’re into that sort of thing… whatever thing a Drev is, that’s fine.”  Vir simply sighed again.

“Jesus, Quill.”  He looked around, staring at the ceiling for a moment before turning back to his companions.  “Alright.  Fine.”  He cracked his neck.  “You know what?  You want me to ‘fess up, I will.  I…”  He trailed off for a moment, working his jaw and wringing his hands before letting out a breath.  “I… like…”  He noticed the expectant looks of the other two at the table.  “Okay, fine, love… Sunny.”  He threw up his hands, face an even deeper shade of red, if at all possible.  “There.  Said it.  Please kill me.”  

“Well.  No offense Adam, but I wasn’t expecting you to start off with that,” replied Shepard.  

“Neither did I,” murmured Adam.  He looked over to Quill once more.  “It’s not that I like Drev.  It’s just that I like… her.  I…  She… Well…”

“C’mon Adam.  Spit it out.”  Vir sighed again.

“I love her.  No matter who or what she may be.  Not because she’s an alien.  Everything about her being… her.  If that makes sense,” he finished lamely.  Shepard and Quill, though, both nodded along sagely.  

“Yeah.  It does,” replied Shepard quietly.  “I… feel the same way.  In a way.”  He laughed.  “I guess tonight none of us are going to have a way with words.”  He let out a large sigh, and his eyes went distant, seeing things that existed a thousand miles away.  “I… think I do love Tali.  I think I do… but I haven’t even told her.”  He gave another laugh, this one much more bitter.  “I’m telling this all to you, but I haven’t even told her.  I… just… I don’t want to hurt her.”  He looked at his own scarred hands miserably.  “I’m a Spectre, and I’m running the most dangerous mission in the galaxy, on an unauthorized ship, and I just… don’t want anyone to hurt her.  And I don’t want to hurt her.  So I haven’t said anything,” he finished.  

“Yeah,” replied Quill, much more soberly than his teasing before.  “I know how you both feel.  I was a bit of a playboy for a while,” he grinned.  His expression became serious once more.  “But, after I met Gamora, and… was in a world without her, for a bit, I finally understood.  What it meant.  To actually love someone.”  He gave his cocky smile once again.  “Despite, you know, her being a super-assassin who can and has kicked my ass on multiple occasions.”  Both Vir and Shepard laughed.  

“You know, it’s funny how just talking can make you see things differently.  Make the world seem better,” said Shepard.  He grinned at Vir.  “Thanks for inviting us over.”  Vir looked at him strangely, frowning.  

“What do you mean?  You invited us.  You said you wanted to talk, and talk on my ship.”  Shepard responded with an equally puzzled expression.  

“No, I didn’t,” he insisted.  “You invited us here.”  Quill nodded in conformation.  

“Yeah.  You invited us.”  

“No I didn’t!” shot back Vir.  

“Well if you didn’t, who did?” asked Shepard.  Their argument was broken by a new voice, filled with righteous hate and vengeance, as cold as an ice-world blizzard.  

“I did.”  Quill, Vir, and Shepard started.  They hadn’t even heard the door open.  The imposing figure of Commissar Ciaphas Cain, clad in his heavy black greatcoat, boots, and cap, swirled through the door, holding his laspistol at the ready.  Vir, being the one in most contact with Cain (Cain was stationed aboard his ship, after all), had heard stories from the Valhallan infantry about Imperial commissars.  They had all said how lucky they’d been to have Cain, as many commissars were hate-filled, imposing men and women who ruled through sheer terror.  Vir had laughed it off.  Cain was calm.  Cain was understanding.  Cain was always one to look for a solution to any problems, and prevent people from fighting.  Even when they had first met, when the Imperials, so unused to aliens, had tried to pick fights with the Omen’s crew, Cain had calmed things down.  He was the perfect officer.  

But now, Vir remembered the Valhallans’ stories.  Cain fit the description of a commissar perfectly now.  His massive height, the dark uniform, the eyes blazing with a hate that was so un-Cain like and outstretched laspistol made him a figure of nightmares from a totalitarian and xenophobic government.  Xenophobic…  Shit!  Apparently, all three men sitting at the table had the same idea at once, and made a motion to rise.  Cain tightened his grip on the laspistol, and flicked it clearly at each one of them in turn.  

“Ah, un uh.  Sit back down,” he hissed.  “Hands on the table.”  The three complied, lowering themselves back into their seats slowly.  Cain kept the gun pointed at them.  

“Cain?” asked Shepard hesitantly.  “What’s this about?”  

“I’m no fool,” replied Cain, “Though I think you believe me one.”  His gloved fingers tightened on the laspistol grip.  There was a brief pause as Cain glared at the three.

What made both Shepard and Vir such good commanding officers was their ability to read people.  They were experts at knowing what people were thinking, and how to react accordingly.  What shocked them both was the expression of pure betrayal behind Cain’s cold eyes.  That was an emotion neither of them expected.  

“I’d heard rumors, of course.  Some tabloid drama, accusing humanity's greatest heroes of xenophilia, of all things.”  Cain scoffed.  “Disgusting, I thought.  How dare they slander you so!”  Cain’s voice dropped from anger to pure fury.  “But then,” he hissed, “Then I heard more official reports.  I heard your speeches.  I saw pictures.  I heard rumors not from some disgusting two-bit reporter, but from your own crews.  I am not blind, though you might think me so.  And this?”  He waved his pistol around the room.  “You were humanity’s best.”  His voice dropped into a whisper, resonating with hurt and betrayal.  “I gave you a chance.  I thought it could not be so.  I thought that even though you served with aliens, they were subservient to you.  To humanity.  But now I have proof.  Proof of your degeneracy.  From your own mouths.  You confessed.  I gave you a chance to say otherwise, a second chance, but you… scum,” he finished, too angry for words.  He noticed their glances at the door and gave out a dark laugh.  “Oh, no.  There’s no one here to save you, traitors.  I made sure of it.”  

“So what now?” asked Shepard calmly, breaking the tension.  

“Now?” replied Cain, laspistol still pointed at the three.  “Now I kill you, as is my duty.  I lock this door, and pretend there is some urgent conference I need you for.  I tell Kasteen and Brocklaw to have Simone set a course to Watch Fortress Novus Galactica, and there the Inquisition will purge this ship, then return for the others.  There is no escape.”  Vir stood up, hands raised, fury on his face.  

“If I’m going to die I’m going to get my say.  I never did enough of that in life,” he said with a bitter laugh.  He fixed Cain with an equally furious stare, looking at the double-headed golden eagles on Cain’s cap and lapels.  Those eagles.  Those god-damned eagles.  “I’ve had enough of people like you.  I’ve had enough of trying to explain myself.  I’m not some sick fuck.  I’m not a degenerate.  I love an alien for who she is, not what she is.  And if you kill me, then you kill me,” he spat.  Cain smirked.

“So be it.”  He was interrupted by a sound.  A metallic click-click.  A sound known by every member in the room.  A sound known to almost every human and alien in existence.  A sound known by all who ever watched human movies, or fought human armies.  A sound that first came into existence in 1835 and was repeated every day, somewhere in human territory across nine galaxies ever since.  The sound of a revolver hammer being cocked.  

“Put the gun down, Commissar.”  The voice of Thomas Drake was smooth.  Unemotional, and uncaring at the drama unfolding in front of him.  His matt-black revolver, held by his dark gloves, was pointed at Cain’s head.  He was at a perfect distance, where Cain could not turn on him before being gunned down.  Vir still stood, Shepard and Quill both seated, their hands still up or on the table.  The only movement Cain made was to clench his jaw and extend his pistol arm farther.  

“Drake,” hissed Cain.  “I should have known.  You knew all their secrets.  You hid this from us!”  

“Of course,” replied Drake.  “Their actions are their own, though, and their secrets were not mine to give out.”  Cain’s hand squeezed the pistol grip even tighter, his augmetic fingers balancing it through his rage.

“I can still kill them, Drake.  I suggest you put your gun down before that happens,” he suggested, his voice tight.  Drake laughed.  

“Yes.  One.  Before I kill you.  One squeeze of the trigger I can’t prevent.  I can prevent two, though.  But you won’t.”  Drake’s voice was delighted, smiling wryly at a secret only he possessed.  “You won’t because I know you won’t.  You won’t because I know your secrets.  I read your book!  Your autobiography!” he announced with malicious triumph.  “I know how your mind works, and I know that you don’t want to die on this ship, or anywhere else, especially for the life of one measly heretic.  So you put your gun down, Commissar.”  Cain struggled for a moment, his muscles clenching and unclenching, before he finally gave a disgusted snort and tossed his laspistol on the table.  Vir, Quill, and Shepard let out breaths they didn’t know they were holding.  

“So then,” sneered Cain.  “What now, oh Captain Drake?  You have already proven you won’t kill me, and they cannot be allowed to live,” he said.  Drake merely smiled.  

“Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘To understand someone you must see the world through their eyes’?” he asked.  The other four occupants of the room nodded, unsure of where this was going.  “Well, that’s precisely what’s going to happen.  Let’s see if you’ll kill each other when you know precisely how you each operate.”  He gave a dark grin and gestured with his pistol at Vir, Shepard, and Quill.  “Now.  You three.  Put your weapons on the table,” he ordered.  The three stared at him in shock.  

“But… why?” replied Quill.  “You saved us,” he said, as if that explained his reasoning.  Drake simply laughed again.

“I like to be the only one in a room holding a weapon.  Especially in a situation as intense as this.  Now.  Guns on the table.  Vir, you aren’t carrying a weapon.  Shameful,” he drawled.  “Your pistols, Quill, and the knives I know you have in your sleeve and boot.  Your sidearm, Shepard.”  The three complied, Drake’s revolver now pointed at them as Cain scowled at the situation.  “Wonderful,” said Drake.  He took a step back, walking through the doorway, and gestured at the four men to follow him.  They complied grudgingly, still shooting death glares at each other.  Drake put a hand to the communications device in his left ear, not moving his gun arm an inch.  “Beam us up, Scotty,” he said simply.  With a whir and flash, the five disappeared from the Omen, only to suddenly see the hallways of the Enterprise around them.

“So.  Kirk and the Starfleet officers are in on this as well.  Why I am not surprised,” stated Cain, looking at his surroundings with grudging simplicity.  

“Maybe.  Maybe not,” replied Drake.  He lowered his pistol, finger coming off the trigger.  “No one’s here, either.  No help from the crew here.”  He tilted his head to a large grey door.  “In that room.”  Looking warily at his gun, trying and thinking how to take it from him all the while, the four followed Drake’s command.  The room was an empty expanse of darkness.  None of them could tell its purpose or how big it truly was.  

“What is this place?” asked Quill.  

“It's called a ‘holodeck’,” replied Drake.  “It is a room that is, essentially, a massive virtual reality.  It’s usually used for some sort of training simulation programs, but this time, I’ve made sure it can read memories.  Oh yeah,” he grinned.  “It can do that.  And that is what’s going to happen.  We are going to delve inside each of our minds, and see what makes us all tick.  Maybe if you see someone else’s entire life laid out in front of them from their point of view you’ll be less likely to kill them.”  Drake took in their apprehensive glances.  “Oh yes.  I know.  All of us have secrets.  And I’m sure none of you really trust this.  That’s why I’ll go first.  Let us begin.”

There we have it.  Cain can tolerate a lot of things, including working with aliens, but absolutely not romancing aliens.  I shall continue this story line, with all of these characters giving their own horrible memories.  As always, I own no one except Drake, and all characters belong to their original rightful owners.  If you have any criticisms, comments, concerns, questions, or requests, feel free to tell me!  

[remmushound]

My spooky gift exchange to @nightneko!!

Content warning: Blood, decapitation, character death, trauma

Leonardo was running. He was running but it wasn’t enough. The rain pounded all around him like the song of his own demise, the stone under his feet growing slick and the purchase hard to find, but that didn’t matter. As he long he kept going forward, that didn’t matter. The momentum was needed, and he couldn’t slow. Not for a second. The moment he slowed, he knew he would get caught.

It had all started out so innocently. He had been practicing his portals after a bout of insomnia seized him in the night like the claws of a great raptor in flight, and he had to do something to pass the time. Sleep didn’t come after an hour, or two, or three. On the fourth hour came resentful training up on the rooftops of his city, so beautiful and bright when compared to the suffocating fog and black sky of this doppelgänger world He found himself in.

Time after time, he had traced a circle in the air and step into it. Time after time he thought of the places he wanted to go— from the Bronx to Brooklynn to Queens... to Tony’s Pepperoni’s and Murakami’s Place; the blind salesman would always leave out leftovers for the Yoru ni kuru hito, the ones who came in the night, who he couldn’t see but knew where there and would make sure he got home safely. Then Leo had gotten reckless. He started testing his speed. How fast he could teleport. How fast he could think of new places to go. Testing the limits of his weapon, fueled by a cocky sense of invincibility that most teenagers had. Hueso had warned him of such things as portal jackings and the horrors they could hold for the one attacked. How, the more times you teleported, the stronger the signal you sent out, like a beacon to your coordinates. How it made it so easy for them to find you.

When Leo had finally decided to go home, he had such a clear image of the lair in his mind. Bright and colorful, the walls covered by Mikey’s increasingly impressive graffiti, some of the older examples drawn over by Donatello’s equations whenever he’d have a breakthrough without paper handy. Numbers and symbols traced over colorful pictures of old, worn from the years but still carrying so many memories in the peeling paint. Leonardo imagined everything down to the last detail; every last crack left by Raphael by accident or on purpose. The groove worn into splinters chair by years of repeated use. The kitchen filled with leftover pizza, the snore of three sleeping turtles and an old rat echoing down the halls. But there was none of that when he stepped through the rift and landed on the other side.

Instead of the warm invitation he had expected, the air was cold and lifeless. The walls were gray and the floor stone, with no mat or rug to block the barrier of frigid ground. Instead of comforting light, there was dim gray, and his breath came out in heavy plumes of fog. There was no gentle snores— no sound at all, in fact, apart from the distant sounds of running water. The air didn’t smell of breakfast, but of rot and decay. It smelled like death.

“Wha... guys?”

His voice echoed in a haunted melody that returned to him from all directions.

“This is a surprise.”

Leonardo jumped and spun around to face the figure approaching him, not quite at tall as Leonardo, but regardless was walking in such a way that made him feel small. Hands folded behind his back, a peculiarly designed white lab coat draped over his bulked form, and a mouth frowning. A mutant. A turtle. With a purple bandana.

“Who are you...?” Leonardo had asked once his body allowed him too. The other was so familiar to him, yet somehow... monstrous. Maybe in the way he didn’t smile— nothing like when the Donatello back home rarely ever offered the gesture. When Donnie did that, it was just Donnie being Donnie. But this frown seemed almost sinister, somehow.

The other mutant only hummed. On his three-fingered hands were red gloves— no, they were white. They must have been, at least, under the layer of glowing crimson that coated them top to bottom in a A viscous layer. It was then Leonardo noticed that the pattern on the lab coat wasn’t just a pattern— it wasn’t a pattern at all— it was blood.

When Leonardo’s eyes began to adjust to the dark of the sewer tunnel, more patterns and items came to his view. Strewn up on the walls and on showcase in dim, glass cases— in jars, fermenting in some kind of liquid, and on the floor and even some hanging from the ceiling. Body parts. Mutant body parts. Fur and scales and skin— organs and bones and... shells. Three of them. Hollow and empty of the lives stripped from within them, adorned with ribbons and weapons. The pelt of a mutant tiger laid on the floor, mouth opened in an eternal cry of agony. A rat— an old, mutant rat— was stuffed and positioned in such a pose it were as if he were alive; mediating in an eternal slumber. Leonardo had almost called out to him until he saw the stitches. The stiff and limp tail, the unmoving body. And that’s when Leo ran.

He splashed blindly through the waste-infused water, charging through the blackness parted only by the odd storm drain offering lamplight from above. Quite often he’d stopped to catch his breath and to try and listen through his heaving and the pound of rain from the surface. Every time he did stop, he was faced with the heart wrenching sound of the second set of foot steps getting closer. Closer. Closer.

The five minutes it took him to find the nearest manhole felt like five hours, and the time it took him to scale the ladder and escape through it felt like even longer. Longer for the blood-splattered mutant to catch up. The first thing he has done once he crawled out into a trash-strewn alley was to find the nearest fire escape— if he could just get away long enough to stop for a moment, long enough to think, maybe a plan could be found in the chaos. There was always an escape. There was always an escape. There was always...

Three buildings crossed and Leo looked back. Three building down he saw the sick, perverted Donatello standing there silhouetted in the light of the street, bō staff in hand. Grinning at him. Leonardo ran on.

Seven buildings crossed and he turned to look back. The monster was even closer now and Leonardo could make out the features more clearly. He could see the other turtles eyes. He didn’t know what to expect when he gazed into them. The red, glowing eyes of a monster, perhaps? Eyes void of any sanity or sense? Maybe! But no. They were just eyes. Just normal eyes. Bronze, gleaming with life. Leonardo ran on.

Ten buildings down. Thirteen. Fourteen. Leonardo couldn’t run anymore. His legs gave way and he crashed to the ground, yet still his pursuer kept on going. His pace did slow when he saw the other mutant collapsed there on the building, but he didn’t stop. Leonardo tried to crawl. If he could just get into the sewers again, or the streets, if he could just disappear!

It was too late.

“Wow.” The donatello—no, Leo couldn’t bare to think of him like that— the mutant stood over him with a partial smile. He wasn’t panting, hardly even breathing. It was like he wasn’t even alive, and with the appearance of him it was easy to believe. “Y’know, I would’ve expected you to put up some sort of fight. My Leo sure did.”

Fight— fight! Leonardo reached behind his shell. The Mutant clicked his tongue and laughed, shifting his body to show off the gleaming sword supported on his back.

“Probably shouldn’t have dropped this either; just, in hindsight, you know.”

“What— please—“ Leonardo couldn’t get full sentences out; breathing was far more important.

“I know, I know.” The mutant laughed and waved his hand, “but hey— it’s all in the name of science, huh? I’ve never worked with a Trachemys scripta elegans, so you're something entirely new to me!”

He pulled out a needle filled to the brim with hot pink fluid.

“And here’s something new to you!”

Leonardo crawled to the ledge and tried to escape over it, only to be met with a sharp kick to the middle of his carapace that pinned him to the stone.

“This is just a little something to make you sleep...”

“DONATELLO!”

The voice sliced through the night like a knife. A woman’s voice. The Mutant’s force on Leonardo’s shell lifted, and when Leonardo turned to look, the turtles back was turned to him, staring at a girl. A girl with ginger hair and a pale face speckled with brown freckles.

“April!” The abomination gave a grin.

April? This girl was April?

“Donnie this has to stop.”

Leonardo could escape now if he wanted to. Sure, his legs were still numbly sore, his chest still heaving, but there was some sort of energy returning to him. He couldn’t just leave April though...

“Come on April, you know I have to.” The Mutant walked toward April with gentle demeanor that betrayed the darkness inside him. “Sacrifices have to be made in the name of science!”

“How many is it going to take, Donnie?” Tears flowed freely through April’s eyes like water spickets. “Leo, Raph, Mikey, Splinter... am I next?”

“I would never hurt you, April.”

His sword— if Leo could just grab his sword he could save himself and the April! He could grab the sword and he could...

No. He could never go through with it. Not with that monster looking like it did. Not with him looking like Donnie. But if Leo could just chase him off...

“Splinter didn’t didn’t even fight back, did he?” April went on. “He didn’t even try to stop you!”

The mutant shrugged. “He could never hurt his son.”

“You’re a monster...”

Leonardo pushed himself slowly to his feet and crept forward. His hand out in front of him, ready to grab for his swords hilt, just praying this April kept the Mutant distracted long enough.

“I’m not.” The Mutant shook his head, “I’m a scientist.”

Leonardo bit his tongue in his focus with enough force to draw forth the metallic taste of blood. Just a little closer...

Then his wrist was seized when the other turtle spun around with lightning speed, gripping him tight and hoisting him up like a ragdoll. The Mutant fixed Leonardo with an amused stare. “And I’m also a ninja.”

Leonardo tried to struggle away. “Please— please just let me go!” He had no shame, he had nothing to lose but his life, “Just let me leave! I wanna get back to Donnie and Raph and Mikey!” His cheeks were stained hot with tears, and his chest felt as if it were being constricted by a python. “I WANT MY DAAAAD!”

The Mutant stopped. Leonardo gave a soft whimper as he was dropped violently and landed with a hard THUMP. He wiped his eyes to try getting a better read of the other turtle. To look in his eyes and try to decipher what thoughts were hidden behind the dark pools.

Then the Mutant laughed. The turtle dressed in purple laughed. A laugh that made his eyes close and called forth a few snorts between breaths. It was wrong— it was all wrong. A laugh should be gentle and lighthearted, drawn forth by a genuine joy. A noise meant to make your heart flutter a bit, especially when it was you who called that heavenly sound to release. But not this noise. This noise was a sinister one, a cold pleasure that made the surrounding air drop at least a few degrees. A monster like that didn’t deserve to laugh.

“You should see the look on your face!” He howled the evil tune of Leonardo’s demise. Then, all at once, the laughter stopped.

Leonardo’s ears rang. Though it took his mind several moments to process what had just happened, his body registered everything at once. A warm wetness all over him and the rooftop around him. The sound of a blade had come first of course— unmistakable to the swordsman— flashing through the air and slicing flesh. Slicing bone. And it was that which expelled the red fluid off in all directions. Then there was a thump. One loud, powerful thump that set Leonardo’s heart to continue the pattern and beat in his chest far too fast, far too hard. Surely it would jump out at any moment and leave him there, bleeding out with a gaping hole in his chest.

Then sound exploded back into his ears. The taste of iron flooded his senses, drowning out everything else. He touched his hand to his face and when he withdrew it, green had turned to an oozing red. The teenage girl stood there behind the headless corpse, holding Leonardo’s sword in shaking hands, just as bloody as Leonardo was. Her bosom heaved. Her breaths came out in soft whimpers, and her arms soon gave way and let the sword clammed to the ground. In the next moment she was gone, down the fire escape and leaving Leo there with the body.

He didn’t know how long he sat there waiting for his legs to regain strength, but by the time he was able to move, the blood had already begun to dry on his skin and flake off in a brownish powder. He picked up his sword and his numb arm guided the blade to make a portal. He gave a chuckle. Almost perfect.

He just about stepped through it before he remembered he was only holding one sword. He turned back to the dead mutant, a slight blood still oozing from the severed neck. Pillaging it’s body like a vulture made Leonardo sick, and he had to make a dash for the ledge of the building to hurl over it. He had his sword though. He could go... home?

Home. Warm and bright. By now it would be filled with the bustle of his family getting ready for the day. The whistle of Splinter’s morning tea... Mikey making breakfast. The sound and scent of sizzling bacon became so alluring it was almost real— and then it was. When Leonardo opened his eyes after stepping through the portal, Splinter sat at the head of the table, sipping his tea as he clasped it between two paws. Raphael and Donatello were bickering about something or other, and it was like the sweetest music. Leonardo looked down at himself and he was as clean as he was when it left— somehow the blood had left him, even though he swore he could still feel it slipping across him. A nightmarish sensation. Mikey, bright-eyed and yet to reapply his shell paint, turned to Leo with a smile and offered a plate of eggs and bacon and toast.

“Hi Leo!” He grinned. “You’re late for breakfast, mister! Here— eat.”

Leonardo smiled and almost broke into a sob as he accepted the plate. “Thank you, hermano...”

His eyes flashed to Donatello. The words that fell from the softshells lips were silent upon Leonardo’s ringing ears. When he blinked, all he saw was the blade slicing down— slicing him.

Suddenly, Leonardo wasn’t so hungry.

[ramblinganthropologist]

Theme Cage

Summary: Garrus meets the Corporal and learns that Shepard knows... a lot... about hamsters. Turns out he’s passionate about something that isn’t Reaper related.

(Pre relationship, ME1.)

---

“Hey, Garrus. Could you hand me that bag?”

It was supposed to be a simple request. Garrus kept thinking that to himself as he looked around the room that was assigned to the Spectre, feeling his mandibles twitch in outright confusion. All he was supposed to be doing was handing off some datapads to the Normandy's commanding officer from the medbay. Now...

Well, he didn't know what the hell Shepard wanted him to do.

The man was currently seated in front of a large tank, a small container off to the side. A few bags surrounded him, full of shredded material in various colors. Others held wooden structures of various sizes, some of them bearing chew marks. All of the had a weird, woody smell that Garrus wouldn't necessarily have called bad, just odd.

Odd; that's what the situation was.

“Garrus?”

The turian snapped back to reality as he glanced around. “Yes, Shepard?”

One blue eye glanced over a shoulder to check on him. “You ok, Garrus? Turians don't get low blood sugar too, do they?”

No, they didn't. That was a human thing that the turian was still trying to forget, thank you very much. It wasn't every day you walked in on your commanding officer slumped over his desk, only to be saved moments later by a children's candy. Bizarre didn't even begin to cover it, but how the room looked got close.

“No just...” He cocked his head to the side. “What are you doing?”

The tips of Shepard's ears flushed to match the short shock of red hair that stuck up in the front. He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling nervously. Then he gestured to the smaller container that was sitting off to the side, tucked safely away.

“Oh, uh... Corporal Fluffytail needed a cage change.”

Corporal... Fluffytail.

Garrus realized now that there was something in the small cage, watching him with beady little eyes. It was a space hamster, he realized – like the ones he saw in the Citadel gift shop, only much rounder and much calmer. The ones exhausted parents bought for screaming children tended to practically be chewing on the bars of their cages as they got carted off. Instead, he was pretty sure the Corporal was sizing him up.

How did a hamster become a corporal anyway?

“A cage change.”

Shepard nodded as he gestured to the large glass tank in front of him. “I like to do a deep clean monthly, and he needed a change of scenery. It keeps him from getting bored and engaging in destructive behavior.”

He gestured to the bags by the door. “Can you grab me the red and pink bedding? I'm almost out over here.”

Garrus responded by stiffly making a grab for the bag and depositing it by the Spectre. This put him in closer contact with what Shepard was working on. He already had a good amount of white material at the bottom of the tank, all of it much cleaner than the stuff he saw other space hamsters living in. There was also... more space, he supposed.

Really, did space hamsters need that much space? Especially on a warship?

“Does the corporal need such a large tank? Looks like he takes up the whole table.”

Garrus regretted his words almost immediately as a switch flipped in the mild mannered Spectre. A real fire glowed behind those mismatched eyes as Shepard started to tap in something into his omni-tool. All the while, Corporal Fluffytail watched. The little bastard almost looked smug.

Shepard's voice was a quarter pitch higher than it usually was as he turned to face the turian. “Space hamsters and Syrian-space hybrids like Fluffytail need at least 600 square inches of unbroken horizontal floor space for adequate living area. Any smaller, and you start to see cage biting and other stress symbols.”

He tapped down with firm resolve. “So no. He can't have a smaller space. Not if I want to raise him right.”

The turian winced as he held up his talons. “I meant no disrespect... I can't say I know all that much about space hamsters. You never see them in cages that big on the -”

“The Citadel gift shop needs my damn foot up their ass! Those assholes keep trying to sell genetic cedar as bedding!” He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Really, did they do any research on hamsters before they decided to sell them... and don't get me started on how small the wheels are, do they-”

He stopped, and his cheeks turned blood red. Garrus was left blinking, processing the conversation. It was... well, those were certainly words. His translator was doing the best it could to keep up, but specialized knowledge was often beyond its reach sometimes. Usually he just had to download packs for that...

But for hamsters?

“Right. They've got it all wrong for proper care.”

Shepard's face was still red as he dug into the new bag to start laying material down. “Sorry. I keep trying them to adopt better husbandry practices but they practically laugh me out of the shop when I try.”

“Maybe being a Spectre will get them to listen next time.” At least it got the man's shoulders to lift as he continued to spread material. “So... why red? Did they run out of white or is it easier to find the corporal that way?”

It could have been possible, given the corporal was a little on the beige side with some darker brown spots on his face and the top of his head. Honestly, he was kind of cute – in a beady-eyed small rodent kind of way. He still would never understand why humans kept rodents as pets, but at least this was one of the less obnoxious ones.

Leave it to Shepard to pick a good one.

“Oh, I was going for a theme this time.” The Spectre's tone was much lighter now as he tucked a tube under some bedding, then placed more pink material around its entrance. It kind of reminded Garrus of flower petals on the Presidium. “Something nice for Valentine's Day, you know? It'll give him something to explore while we're in FTL.”

Garrus' translator supplied the information – human holiday, romance, lots of hearts. The Citadel had been participating in growing strength ever since humans had come into the galactic stage, but it really wasn't his thing. Not much time for romance and dates when you were chasing down bad guys or drowning in paperwork.

Not much time for the Corporal either, given Garrus didn't see a friend in there with him.

“I'm pretty sure hamsters don't celebrate Valentine's Day.” He paused, before adding, “They don't, do they?”

Luckily, no lecture followed. Instead, Shepard chuckled softly as he finished spreading out the pink and red bedding. Now he was working on arranging the wooden toys he had picked out, sometimes holding them out to the cage for Fluffytail to inspect. Judging on the pile that was slowly growing with each rejection, he had discerning tastes.

Great – a spoiled hamster. At least it only affected his owner.

“No, they don't. That's mostly for me. Themed cages help me have a little fun, you know?”

Never before had Garrus been convinced humans translated that word completely differently than he did.

“Ah.” The turian knew when to let an issue die. “So... does the corporal enjoy it?”

Shepard nodded as he stood to grab a small pan of what looked like sand. “I think so, he loves exploring when I come up with something new for him. You should come by to watch in a few days when he's awake, he'll probably have moved it all around by then.”

And then the human laughed again as he placed the pan inside the cage. It was the second time Garrus had heard it, and he had to admit it wasn't a bad sound. Honestly, it was pleasant – in a human sort of way. With all the shit they were being put through, it was no surprise he didn't hear it often.

Something like that should be more frequent...

“Hey, do you want to meet him?”

The turian blinked. “Meet... him?”

“Yeah, Corporal Fluffytail. He's awake right now and I need someone to keep an eye on him while I put the wheel in and get his food.” Shepard sounded oh so casual as he reached down to the small cage. “I promise he won't bite.”

At that moment, Garrus very much doubted the corporal could bite through his carapace. Still, his heart skipped a beat as he watched the Spectre carefully cup his hands around the furry body. Slowly, man and hamster rose up, bright eyes focused straight on the turian. They were coming over.

A few seconds later, Garrus was having his talons manipulated in order to hold a hamster right. Turians, as it turned out, needed a different grip that he wasn't altogether used to as the Spectre moved his hand around in order to make sure the corporal would be safe in his care.

Was it hot in there, or was it just him?

“He's... warm.” Garrus kept his arms close to his carapace. Fluffytail was sniffing at his talons, but no nibbling was going on. He seemed curious, if those bright eyes were anything to go by. So... this was a space hamster.

“He's a soft little guy, comes from his Syrian side.” Shepard was smiling as he watched the two. “I'll be right back. Just stay calm and he will be too.”

And then the Spectre was gone, leaving Garrus alone with the corporal. The hamster kept sniffing at him, shuffling around in his talons. Once, he got close to the sharp edge. Garrus could feel his heat jump in his  throat. Then the instincts took over.

“You better not pee on me, Corporal.” Garrus gently deposited the hamster in his cowl. After all, if it was safe for baby turians it should be fine for anyone. Or in this case – anything. The hamster shuffled around a bit, but at least he didn't try to climb down his back. “Good... just hang out there until Shepard gets back.”

A furry body brushed against his mandible and settled in. Corporal Fluffytail, it seemed, was a rather calm fellow. That, or he was terrified of turians and this was a hamster terror display. If that was true, he was about to be in deep water with the Spectre.

“I guess I can see why he likes you. You're not loud, you don't smell... I guess the biting might be a problem, he doesn't have a carapace.” Garrus didn't really reflect on the fact he was talking to a hamster as he carefully reached up a talon to pet the small, furry head nestled close to his mandible. “Not a bad pet for a Spectre, though I think I would go for something a little more intimidating.”

If the corporal was bothered by this commentary, he didn't let it slip. Instead, he accepted the rub and didn't try to bite his talon. That, in Garrus' book, was a good sign. Add in the fact he really was damn soft, and it was all green for him, or at least until he found droppings in his carapace.

“So, do you alert for low blood sugar? I read up on that. “Garrus' mandible twitched. “Or... guess not. You're not a dog. Or at least I don't think you're a dog. Damn dogs come in so many sizes it's easier to guess what isn't one.”

Fluffytail never answered, just kept hanging out somewhere between his mandible and cowl. His furry little heart was quick, and something about it put the turian at ease as he waited for Shepard. A hamster might not have been his pick, but... they weren't bad. Not bad at all.

Maybe the Spectre was onto something.

“Well, looks like you two are getting along.”

Garrus picked up his head to see Shepard had returned and placed food in the corporal's enclosure. His cowl felt a little colder as he carefully scooped the hamster up and handed him over. Once his paws touched the bedding, off he went digging. He was fast.

“He makes a decent enough pet.” the turian nodded. “I'd say we were civil.”

Shepard chuckled again as he brushed some bedding from Garrus' cowl, fingers almost dangerously close to his mandible. “Looked like you were more than civil to me. I knew nobody could resist a cute hamster.”

He went to toss the bedding and empty bag away. “By the way, what did you come up for earlier?”

…

The datapads were still by the door, waiting for Shepard to read them over. They had both walked by them multiple times in the process of getting the hamster situated. Just the sight of them made Garrus want to make like Fluffytail and dig a hole. Instead, he cleared his throat and made a grab for them.

“Dr. Chakwas wanted me to give these to you.”

Thoughts of hamsters were abandoned as the pair slipped back into duty. Still, there was something about the faint scratching of a corporal exploring his new surroundings that put Garrus at ease as he watched Shepard pour over the contents. He could get used to that kind of sound, undying embarrassment notwithstanding.

Maybe if he was lucky, he could come see him again. Though... that would mean hanging out with Shepard more.

…

Well... there were worse things to do with his free time he supposed.

[twitchesandstitches]

“Hey,” Damara said softly, and probably a bit dangerously. That might go without saying; it was Damara, after all.

Tavros swallowed. A little bit shy, a little bit sort of terrified. He shifted back a bit as she approached, his shirt feeling uncomfortably tight across his broad, muscular body, sleeves outlining every curve of his arms as he cautiously waved, flexing a bicep the size of a full-grown watermelon. As she got closer, he couldn't help but stand up straighter, swallowing again, trying his best to suck in his stomach. Yes, it was big and a bit on the pudgy side, but it was almost all muscle, and that didn't do much good for him.

Damara stopped a few feet from him, her shadow cast over him. Big as he was, close as he was to the average maximum height of the male spectrum for trolls, he was tiny compared to Damara. He loomed up from somewhere around the region of her upper thigh, and he could plainly see that it was several times as wide and thick as he was; round, the strong muscles softly defined, the black carapace lightly tinted with rust-tones so bright they looked dark red in the right light.

He looked up, past a belly that was fairly big and solid with muscle, and couldn't see her face at all. He just knew she was smirking down at him intently, he could feel her doing it at him. (That, and it was essentially Damara's default expression when she wasn't enraged.) The problem was, her rumblespheres got in the way. They were massive, the size of troll-issue exercise balls relative to her size, and she was holding herself in such a way that he couldn't possibly see her face. A hint of her long horns, certainly, bit of hair, but nothing of her face.

Damara was gorgeous, and frightening, all at once, beauty and badass-ness blending together to something that was intoxicating and terrifying at the same time. His biomechanical legs tensed, impressively large backside clenching and loosening as bits of his mind couldn't quite decide between staying there or discreetly zipping out of there.

That sweater. The only thing Damara seemed to be wearing was a sweater, if you could call it that, and he wasn't sure what to call it. Heavy knit rust-red fabric, evidently in the style of the nation of Beforus that Damara originally called home. It covered her breasts except for a few inviting outlying regions, the dark skin showing up nicely against the color of her sweater, the lower sections sliding around her waist in a wide band and stopping just short of her upper thighs. There was no back at all, the sides exposed as well, and he could see the massive globes of her backside rising high over her body, wobbling and shifting as she moved and the sweater constrained her figure just enough to give her extra bounce.

Damara carefully lowered herself down, body wobbling invitingly all the while. Tavros gulped, entranced by the display. He'd heard all the terrible stories about Damara, but she'd never done anything to him, never even hinted anything like that. Maybe she was working her way up to it...?

Her rumblespheres lowered as she leaned over enough to look him in the eyes, which was a considerable degree as he was less than half her size. Due to the sheer size of her rumblespheres, they occupied all the space between her body and the ground, actually buoying her up a little bit. They squished up as one thick arm clasped her knee, the other holding a cigarette burning dully between her very large and thick lips. Tavros couldn't help but stare at the dark red shapes, thicker around than his palm, and his eyes darted up to her eyes.

Pure rust, and they were older than they should be. He felt bashfully aware that his own brown eyes still had a hint of childish yellow in them, though it had been years since he'd matured to adulthood.

The cigarette floated away from her, twirling away and the smoke turning into spirals, going over his horns. The cigarette extinguished itself, and without thinking about it Tavros politely took it and placed it into a waste disposal receptacle. Damara blinked and raised an eyebrow. “You are...” she paused, looking for the right sort of words. “Too nice?”

It was a little hesitant, like she wasn't sure she'd thought of the right phrasing. “Um...” Tavros looked at the ground. That was hardly any better, because his view was dominated by rumblespheres bigger around than he was. He instead looked straight up to the sky. He could feel her smirking again. “I guess so?”

“Hmm.” Damara stood a little straighter, still on level with him but adjusting herself so she was just tall enough to remind him how toweringly big and curvaceous she was. Her free hand patted him on the cheek, claws lingering on her skin. Her palm was big enough to cover his face, the edges of her claws light on her claws.

Tavros got the impression that she hadn't been expecting him to do that in particular, he wasn't sure if she liked it or not.

Regardless, her hand was still on him. He'd expected her to basically grab him and disappear with him, and he was still standing where he wanted so... progress? “You,” Damara said finally. “Come with me.”

Tavros tilted his head. “Huh?”

She snorted. “Alternians. Slow.” She moved forward, and Tavros squeaked as her face approached, lips parting. Her rumblespheres got there before the rest of there, the sweater enfolding him and twin spheres completely overtaking his whole body, from head to shoulders he was surrounded in softness. She was so warm, made warmer by the sweater, and it was actually rather comfortable before he realized just how soft and squishy her rumblespheres were, a faint sloshing around him, his arms pinned to his sides by her encroaching body-

Her lips met his face. She was bigger enough than him that her kiss took in his entire face, rust-red lips softly meeting the entire part of his face from chin to just below his horns. The world went dark, went soft, went warm. Soft and passionate, the squishy pressure around the rest of him getting stronger as her arms wrapped around her breasts and pressed in, every inch of him buoyed up by her body.

Her kiss went deeper, ferocious, like if she stopped kissing him right then and there the world would collapse beneath his feet. Her arms squeezed harder, he squeaked into her mouth as the wobbling squishinesss against every inch of him was too much and his bulges uncurled from his nook, soft metal against his pants and inquisitively moving against her breasts. Damara rumbled approvingly, kissing him harder before finally releasing him with a very faint noise that might have been a pop.

As her head moved back, reluctantly but acknowledging that Tavros did need to breathe, their horns tapped together nicely.

Her eyelashes fluttered at him as she stood up straight, Tavros still clutched between her rumblespheres and starting to sink now. “I...” Damara spoke slowly, trying her very hardest to find the right words and make a proper impression and not screw this up. “Wish for you to... hrm. See my hive?” She raised an eyebrow challengingly. “And then... breakfast?”

“I, okay?” Wait, he thought. It was the afternoon. You had breakfast in the morning. He followed this train of thought, extrapolating appropriately...

Damara sighed, but waited patiently.

“...Oh. Oh!” Tavros blinked up at her. “You... okay? Um. Okay!”

Damara smiled and patted his head. Without another word, she marched off back to her hive, Tavros in tow and quite comfortable in her cleavage.

[soniafaruqi-blog]

Chapter One: Fire and Water

“This supper is a special occasion, Coralline,” said Trochid.  

Coralline frowned at her father. The eighth of July meant nothing to her. But her mother had set the table with their finest limestone plates, which did suggest that it was, in fact, an occasion of some sort. But it was not Algae Appreciation Day or Horrid Humans Day. It was not Coralline’s birthday, nor was it either of her parents’ birthdays. That meant it had to be…Ecklon’s birthday—his twenty-sixth! They hadn’t been together long enough to have celebrated his birthday together, but he had recently mentioned the surprise party his fellow detectives had organized for him last year. Coralline had neglected to note the date.  

His birthday would explain why he looked particularly handsome this evening, in a jet-black waistcoat with half a dozen large lettered olive shells forming a column of buttons down the center. Coralline’s mother was also elegantly attired—in a white corset with wispy sleeves that fluttered gently about her shoulders—as was Coralline’s father—in a new, tan waistcoat. Come to think of it, Coralline herself was also well dressed, though it was not intentional on her part.  

She had returned home late from work, swum into her bedroom, and proceeded to do what she usually did at the end of a long day: massage the muscles in the back of her neck with her fingertips, in an attempt to loosen the knots formed over a day of bending over medications at The Irregular Remedy. She had then burrowed under her blanket and, closing her eyes, had thought of her most unusual patient of the day: ninety-one-year-old mermaid Mola, who suffered from dementia, and whose memories of her husband kept falling as irreversibly out of her mind as her molars had fallen out of her mouth.  

Coralline had been about to drift off into a nap, when her mother rushed into her bedroom, flung off her blanket, and, surveying Coralline’s corset, pronounced, “You can’t dress so hideously for supper. Ecklon is coming, remember?” Her mother then handed her a new corset she had sewn for her, with emerald vines that met and separated over a glistening bronze fabric that precisely matched the bronze scales of Coralline’s tail. Coralline had slumped on a chair in front of the mirror as her mother had tugged her long black hair into a pillowy mound at the crown of her head, and circled the bun with a string of little white spirula shells.  

How embarrassing that Coralline had forgotten Ecklon’s birthday, especially given how he had spoiled her on her own birthday, a few months ago. He had taken her to their favorite restaurant, Alaria, where he had presented her with The Universe Demystified, the latest book by the stargazer Venant Veritate. Like a telescope into the universe, The Universe Demystified had opened brilliant new galaxies in Coralline’s mind. Ecklon admired Venant just as much as Coralline, describing him as “the detective of the universe,” but she still couldn’t imagine how Ecklon had managed to get the book autographed, for the stargazer was known to be just as reclusive as he was illustrious.  

It was true that Coralline’s wages as an apprentice apothecary at The Irregular Remedy were meager, but she could still have gotten Ecklon a pen as a gift, perhaps an engraved one, which he could use in taking notes during his investigations. In the absence of any gift, the least she could do was sing. Clearing her throat, she began:

Happy birthday to you

May you have friends old and new

May life jolt success your way

As grand as a manta ray

Coralline smiled at her parents across the table, encouraging them to join along, but her father’s dark-brown eyes squinted at her, and her mother gaped. Undeterred, Coralline continued:

May your sight never fade

Nor your hair gray

Happy birthday to you

May this year all your dreams come true

Coralline clapped—alone.  

“My birthday isn’t for another month, Cora,” Ecklon said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.  

He had the gall to be enjoying her confusion. Well, she was confused no longer. If it wasn’t his birthday, there was just one other possibility that would make this supper a special occasion. But she didn’t want to be wrong again; hoping to obtain a hint, she asked, “How was work?”  

“Fine.”  

Coralline sighed. Ecklon had been like this since their very first date. He listened intently to her chatter about her patients but divulged little about his own work until Coralline prodded. The trouble was: He was too modest. His work was more than fine, Coralline knew. He had been promoted four times during his six years at Urchin Interrogations, the local Detective Department of the Under-Ministry of Crime and Murder. Just a few weeks ago, his boss, Sinistrum Scomber, a middle-aged merman with an enormous nose and perpetual grimace, had told Ecklon that he was the best detective Urchin Interrogations had ever hired. Sinistrum had sworn that as soon as Ecklon solved his next case, he would tenure him, making Ecklon the youngest detective to ever hold a lifetime position at Urchin Interrogations.  

“You got tenured, didn’t you?” Coralline gushed.

“Not quite, no…”

If it wasn’t his birthday and he hadn’t been promoted, what else was there to celebrate? Coralline crossed her arms over her chest, in part because she was annoyed and in part to suppress the growls of her stomach. She eyed the scarlet fronds of dulse at the center of the table. Patients had swum through the door of The Irregular Remedy from morning well into the evening, and she hadn’t had a bite to eat since her rushed breakfast. Why did she have to work so hard for her supper?

“This day is a special occasion,” Ecklon said softly, “because it marks six months since the day we met. Remember the day?” He grinned at her, dimples forming triangular wedges in his cheeks.  

She couldn’t believe he’d been counting the days, but she smiled back—even if she were to ever have dementia like her patient Mola, she would not forget the day they’d met.

He had swum into The Irregular Remedy with a purple-colored right elbow, the joint stiff and unmoving at his side. Discerning at a glance that it was fractured, Coralline had opened the medical textbook Splinters and Slings on her counter. Upon perusing a section titled “Elbow Ligaments,” she had directed Ecklon to extend his arm to her across the counter. Warning him that it would hurt, she had felt up and down his arm, pressing into its length with two fingers. Other patients would have whimpered, but he hadn’t even winced.

Upon concluding her examination, she had dabbed horned wrack salve onto his elbow, to reduce the swelling. Then, clasping his shoulder with one hand, she had leaned over her counter to crook his elbow at a ninety-degree angle against his chest. She had wrapped the joint with a gauzy bandage of pyropia, and she’d started slinging red strands of spiny straggle around the pyropia, to hold it all in place. But a lock of hair had fallen across her cheek.  

Reluctant to recommence her sling, she had shrugged to encourage her hair back behind her ear, but her effort had only resulted in another strand tumbling across her cheek. Ecklon’s hand had crossed the counter between them to push her hair back in place. Coralline had drawn her breath—her counter formed a barrier between herself and her patients—he’d crossed the line. She had made the final knot of spiny straggle rather tight around his elbow, then, worried it might restrict blood flow, had loosened it with her fingers.  

“Thank you for your attention, Cora,” he’d said.

“Coralline,” she’d corrected emphatically, wondering how he’d known her name. But of course: He would have read it on the badge pinned to her corset.

“I’ll collect you here for supper tomorrow evening,” he’d continued.  

Don’t bother, she’d been about to retort, offended by his assumption that she’d be free for supper (though it was true), but she’d found herself speechless when he’d dropped a scallop shell in the carapace crock on her counter. Patients paid what they could afford—no one had yet given her a ten-carapace scallop shell.  

When Ecklon had swum through the door of The Irregular Remedy the next evening, Coralline had been tending a mermaid with pustular calluses across the pale blue scales of her tail. “Wait for me outside,” she’d told Ecklon coolly, in part because the clinic was small, and in part because he’d arrived at his convenience, not hers. With a nod, Ecklon had slipped outside The Irregular Remedy.  

Patients had trickled in one after another for Coralline’s attention—a wiry merman complaining of weak gills, a shivering insomniac, a mermaid with hyperthyroidism—and it was not until the waters had started to turn dull and dark and the clinic had been about to close, that Coralline had slid out the door. Her tailfin had flicked to commence her swim home, when a voice from behind had startled her. “Ready, Cora?”  

She’d whirled around. Ecklon had been leaning against the wall of The Irregular Remedy, his arms crossed over his chest. She had not known then that he was a detective, but the sight of him lurking in the shadows, seeing but unseen, hovering so still that he was almost as hidden as a seahorse, had made her think she was being pursued by a detective. “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I forgot you were waiting.”  

He had regarded her without impatience, without insult—rather, with respect—and had never mentioned it again.  

She smiled at him now, sitting at her left at the dining table. That very first evening they’d met, she had found his face to be a handsome study of contrasts, and she found it to be so still. His jaw was hard but softened by a vertical cleft in the chin. His hair had the varied shades of pebbled sand, but its texture was always sleek and uniform between her fingers. His mouth formed a resolute line, but his lips were tender in shape—they made her think of a poet lost in verse.

In their six months together, not once had they bickered, not once had their opinions differed. Coralline had initially assumed their lines of work to be a world apart, but had soon gleaned that they were more similar than different. He pursued clues, she pursued cures. He kept merpeople safe, she kept merpeople well. He dealt with murderers in the form of criminals, she dealt with murderers in the form of maladies.  

“I’ve spoken with your mother and father, Cora,” Ecklon pronounced, his silver-gray gaze locked on her own. “I’ve told them what I now tell you: I love you.”  

That was a notable difference between them—his sense of propriety. His job was to investigate those who broke the law and he possessed an equal reverence for societal law, in the form of tradition. Coralline, meanwhile, regularly swam out the window rather than the door, even though her mother often told her that to do so was “the hallmark of an ill-bred mermaid.” Maybe Coralline should have been elated at Ecklon’s declaration of love, but she wasn’t, for she already knew in her heart that he loved her, just as she knew she loved him. It felt strange to verbalize it for the first time in front of her parents, though, so she managed no more than to mumble, “Er, thank you.”  

She then reached eagerly for her stone-sticks, pleased his “special occasion” announcement had been made, and she could finally eat her supper—

“I wish to marry you.”  

Coralline’s stone-sticks clanged against her plate, and her gills fluttered wildly along the sides of her neck. She looked at her parents. Her father’s eyes shone with happiness, the lines around them spreading like sea fans. Don’t ruin the best day of your life, her mother mouthed to her. Coralline tried to pull the muscles of her face into a semblance of normality as she turned back to Ecklon. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to have noticed her reaction, for he was extracting something from his waistcoat pocket.  

His hand unfurled before Coralline to reveal a shell with a pale pink center melting into smooth alabaster along the edges, like a slow summer dawn. The symbol of engagement, a rose petal tellin.

“Cora,” Ecklon began solemnly, “will you make me the happiest merman in the Atlantic by marrying me?”

Before this day, marriage had been a vague concept to Coralline, something in the distance, like the clouds in the sky. Now, she felt as though the clouds had descended suddenly upon her and struck her with lightning. Her mind churning, she considered the changes to her life that would be wrought by marriage. Her name would change, for one; she would go from Coralline Costaria to Coralline Elnath—the new name just didn’t have a ring to it. More importantly, she would no longer live in this home with her parents and little brother, but would live with Ecklon and his parents in the Mansion—the largest home in Urchin Grove. But she didn’t want to live in the Mansion.

“Cora?” said Ecklon.  

His hand trembled under the tellin shell, Coralline noticed through her haze. It was that slight movement that shook her; it told her that, for the first time since she’d known him, he was nervous.  

She thought back to the day last week when she’d been sick with a cold. She hadn’t told Ecklon, and she still didn’t know how he’d learned it, but he’d come knocking at her door with a bowl of buttonweed. “How did you know I was sick?” she’d asked. “I’m a detective—it’s my job to know,” he’d said. “Well, I’m a healer,” she’d countered, “and it’s my job to not make you sick.” His eyes glinting, he’d wrapped his arms around her waist. In contrast to her words, her body had melted against his, and her fingers had tangled in his hair. “I wouldn’t care if I was sick every day as long as I was with you,” he’d said, and given her a long, languorous kiss.  

What was she thinking? Did she have dementia like her patient Mola? This was Ecklon, proposing to her—Ecklon, courageous and kind—Ecklon, as her mother often reminded her, the most eligible bachelor in the village of Urchin Grove. She would be fortunate to marry him. His proposal was a surprise, that was all, and she hated surprises.  

“Yes,” Coralline said, raising her blue-green eyes to his. Then, more emphatically, “Yes.”

Ecklon smiled at her, then at each of her parents. They beamed back at him. Coralline found that, like a star, his smile could swing any satellite into orbit, even her mother and father, who otherwise rotated in opposite directions.  

The rose petal tellin was strung on a translucent vine, and Ecklon held it out toward Coralline so he could clasp it around her neck. She turned away from him, grateful to have a moment without her face in full view. His fingers brushed her shoulder blades as they closed the clasp at the nape of her neck. The click of the clasp made her think of handcuffs, and her heart pounded in her ears. Turning back to face the table, keeping her gaze down, Coralline raised the rose petal tellin off her collarbone and ran her index finger over its surface, back and forth. The shell’s texture was smooth, its ridges gentle—as their relationship had been.  

When Coralline looked back at Ecklon, she found that he had heaped dulse onto his plate, as had her mother and father. Finally, it was time to eat, but, though Coralline was hungry, she had no more appetite for the fronds she otherwise loved. She continued to examine the rose petal tellin, as if it would show her the future.

Suddenly, a tremor distilled into the living room through the window, its pressure that of a drumbeat, its vibrations throbbing through the stone of the house and pulsing through Coralline’s very marrow. A stone-stick slipped out of her father’s hand. It skittered slowly toward Coralline’s tailfin, but she did not dare retrieve it for him.  

Her parents and Ecklon sat still and stiff—the standard reaction to passing ships, in order to reduce the possibility of detection—but Coralline clutched the rim of the dining table. Goosebumps climbed from her wrists to her shoulders, and her stomach clawed at itself. She longed to hide under the table, but it would look cowardly. In an effort to distract herself from her terror of the danger above, she started counting her breaths. But she’d managed to count only to five, when the grasp of her fingers started to loosen, and her head started to feel as light and bouncy as plankton. She was beginning to feel faint; it happened to her often. Her father said it was because she did not take the time to eat adequately; her mother said that fainting occasionally was fine, so long as she remained thin.  

Coralline tried to anchor her thoughts onto something, for it would help her remain conscious. Her glance fell on her father’s right arm.

It was a narrowing rod that culminated not in a hand, but a bony swelling of a wrist. There was a filmy softness to the skin of the wrist, like that of a newborn; though her father was fifty years old, the skin over his stump was just months old. Coralline shuddered to remember the day his hand had been severed: His wrist had been a mangled mess of bone and sinew, blood spurting out of it like the ink of an octopus. Her mother called it his haccident—an abbreviation for “hand accident”—but Coralline considered the term misleading (though she’d grudgingly come to use it as well). What happened to her father had not been an accident: Ocean Dominion, its ships ever-present on the waters, had planted dynamite in a coral reef in Urchin Grove, in order to kill and collect schools of fish.  

Coralline’s father, a coral connoisseur, had been studying the reef with his microscope. He’d made a note on his parchment-pad that coral polyps, the tiny, soft-bodied organisms whose exoskeleton formed the reef, were finding it difficult to absorb calcium carbonate from the waters, due to ocean acidification. When he’d looked up from his parchment-pad, he’d spotted dynamite tucked in a crevice of the reef. Immediately, he’d inserted his hand into the crevice to extract it. He’d managed to wrest the dynamite out, and had raised his arm to hurl it away, but it had exploded, taking his hand with it.  

Coralline’s mother had told him he should have bolted the scene instead of risking his hand and life.  

“My hand exploded, so the reef wouldn’t,” Trochid had replied. “I would do it again, Abalone.”  

“Well, I don’t want a handless husband!” she’d snapped, amber-gold eyes flaming. “And if you have such poor judgment, I must insist you retire, Trochid.”  

Applying steady pressure over the next days like a tightly bound tourniquet, Abalone had compelled him to resign from his role in the Under-Ministry of Coral Conservation. In his retirement, he had become a shadow of his former self, in Coralline’s opinion. He drifted aimlessly through the living room in the early hours like a ghost. His desk, previously stacked with books like The Animated Lives of Anemones and Love of Limestone, now sat empty, except for one volume: Handling a Difficult Adjustment to Retirement.  

Coralline looked at her father’s stone-stick on the floor. It divided into two, then three, until it looked like an array of fingers. Her head started to loll, but, just then, the tremors in the waters ended. The ship had passed. Her daze dissipated slowly… Once she was mentally steady again, she bent at the waist, collected the stone-stick, and handed it to her father. He took it, but, rather than eat with it, he set it to the side of his plate. He clasped his left hand around his stump, as though his wrist throbbed with a phantom pain in proximity to the phantoms on the waters.  

“Humans are a menace,” Trochid said. “Our only solace is that they cannot disrupt our lives any more than they already do.”   “Why not?” Coralline asked.

“Because they’re fire, and we’re water. Fire vaporizes water, and water vanquishes fire. The two can never truly meet.”

Izar stepped out of his small basement office and looked right and left down the hallway. Satisfied that he was alone, he turned on his heel and strode down the dimly lit corridor to the private elevator, where he flashed his identification card before the scanner. The elevator was right there—Izar was the only person to ever use it—but it was so old and ramshackle that its bars moved as slowly as arthritic knees.  

Izar examined his identification card as he waited for the elevator bars to part. A circular bronze-and-black insignia glowed on the back of his card, the letters O and D intertwined over a fish-hook that slashed the circle in half. The front of the card stated: Izar Eridan, vice president of operations. Underneath the words was a faded picture of him—light-blue collar, chestnut curls, indigo eyes staring at the camera somewhat anxiously, for the day the photo had been taken six years ago had been his first at the company where he’d decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life.  

The elevator bars groaned to a halt. Izar stepped inside the decrepit cage and rode it from the first floor of the basement, B1, down to the second floor, B2. The thirty floors of Ocean Dominion above ground were sleek and modern—the building formed a bronze glass arrow pointing toward the sky in Menkar—but the three underground floors had always intentionally been excluded from renovation. The floor B1 contained Izar’s office and those of other key men in the operations department; B2 was accessible only by this private elevator, to which Izar shared access only with Antares Eridan, the president of Ocean Dominion. But Antares had never descended into B2 after Izar’s first day at the company, so Izar considered B2 his private asylum. As for B3, it was accessible only to Antares, but Antares had no use for it, so it lay dark and dusty.  

When the elevator opened again, Izar marched three steps to the one door on B2, and stepped inside the room. It was a windowless warehouse with unpainted walls and untiled floor, but he felt as comforted to enter it as though it were a penthouse—this room was his Invention Chamber. Every night, as soon as the responsibilities of his vice president day job were complete, after other employees had grumbled their way out the doors of Ocean Dominion, Izar slinked into his Invention Chamber to start his night-shift: Castor.  

Outside the Invention Chamber, Izar existed; in the Invention Chamber, he came alive. But not tonight.  

Instead of stomping into his lair like a lion onto a savannah, Izar closed the door and leaned against it, his shoulders sagging. Looking resolutely away from Castor, he took off his pin-striped suit jacket and dropped it to the floor. He then uncuffed his white, starched-cotton shirt sleeves and rolled them up to his elbows. His glance fell upon his watch; the luminescent hour markers told him the time was close to eleven at night. He unclasped his watch and dropped it upon his suit jacket on the floor, finding the concept of time too manacling in a place where sparks of innovation appeared and disappeared as suddenly as the glimmers of fireflies.  

Izar continued to stand there, leaning against the door, for how long he did not know. He despised procrastination, but this night, the odds were stacked so high against him that he could not bear to face them…not yet. If he succeeded in what he intended, he and Antares would become the richest men on earth; if he failed, his life to date would have been a waste, like the dirt under his shoes. Not only the years of his adulthood but also his childhood would have been a waste, for he had been preparing for this purpose for the last twenty-five years, since the very day Antares had adopted him at three years of age.  

Izar still remembered the moment like it was yesterday: Kneeling before him, Antares had lit a match. Izar had been mesmerized by the flame—it was a drop of suspended sunlight, a tiny golden phoenix—but Antares had dropped the match in a glass of water. Izar had plunged his fingers into the water to try to rescue the flame, but it had died instantly. Izar had snatched the glass out of Antares’s hand, raised it over his head, and smashed it to the floor. He could still feel the droplets of water splattering his shins.

Antares had not rebuked him. Instead, he had smiled. “I believe you’re a very clever boy,” he’d said in his hoarse smoker’s voice. “When you grow up, I want you to invent underwater fire.”

Izar had nodded, and, from that day, become obsessed with the idea of underwater fire. He had played incessantly with matchsticks; he had switched the stove on and off, staring at the crown-shaped blaze for hours; he had torn apart wires and sparked them against one another, reveling in their fumes. Throughout his early childhood years, the question that had driven him was how—how he would invent underwater fire; it was not until his adolescence that he had thought to ask Antares why.  

“Because trillions of dollars’ worth of jewels lie beneath the ocean floor,” Antares had answered. “But they lie so deep that they cannot be accessed without blazing a path down. And yet no man on earth has found a way to sustain fire underwater. I myself have hired dozens of scientists at Ocean Dominion to attempt it, men with prestigious degrees and accomplishments, but, without exception, all have failed. You will invent underwater fire, boy. Gold and diamonds will form the embers of your flames.”

This night, the eighth of July, marked the end of Izar’s underwater-fire journey. If a fire didn’t flame today, not only would he consider his past to be a dead, dry slate, a barren wasteland, but also his future. It was not written anywhere on his business card, but his true role, the one for which he lived, was not vice president of operations, but inventor. He had given the title to himself; this night, he would learn whether he’d earned it.

He longed to know whether he’d succeeded or failed with his underwater-fire mission, but he could not summon the courage…not yet. Now that he was at the end of this road, he thought it fitting to pay tribute to the lampposts that had lit his path over the last six years. Most people retained pictures as mementos; he retained implements, which lay scattered all over the floor of his Invention Chamber—ores of iron, sheets of magnesium, rounds of bullets, panes of sensors. An onlooker might view them as dangerous tripping hazards, but Izar knew precisely what each object signified.

He knelt next to a low mound of ash, and swept his hand through the granules, watching them trickle through his fingers like black sand. They were the cinders of creators—the cinders of not one person, but dozens—and not their bodies, but their theories.  

Izar had commenced on his underwater-fire journey by consulting scientific manuals, engineering treatises, and technical articles about combustion. They had all asserted, implicitly or explicitly, that underwater fire was an impossibility, a contradiction in terms. “Oxygen is the catalyst for fire,” one chemist had stated, “and water does contain oxygen, but it might as well not, for the act of combustion requires oxygen in gaseous form, not liquid.” “Even a child recognizes that the role of water is to devour fire,” had claimed a physicist, “not to nurture it.” “When it comes to fire,” had declared an engineer, “water acts as the wolf, not the sheep.”  

Izar had piled up all the papers and thrown a lit match upon them. A fire had blazed, and its smoke had scorched his eyes but straightened his vision. In his new clarity, he had resolved that the only applicable laws in the universe of his Invention Chamber would be those that he proved or disproved himself.  

Now Izar rose to his feet, strode four steps, and, kneeling, thumbed through a crimson-covered notebook that lay half open on the floor with its spine up, like an injured cardinal. Some of its pages were crumpled, others had corners that were softened by water, a few had burnt edges, and all were yellowed, but Izar grinned at the notebook. The night of the cremation itself, he had started scribbling in this notebook. Over the next years, he had written countless chemical and physical formulae onto its pages, logging also the outcomes of all his underwater-fire experiments.  

Though Izar had chosen the notebook arbitrarily—it had happened to be lying around that night—he seemed to have chosen well, for its length was just right: only one page remained. If Izar succeeded today, he would jot his final note on that page, and it would consist of just two words: Mission accomplished. With those two words, the journal would become the most important object in the Invention Chamber, for it would make his work replicable. If he failed, he would destroy the journal.  

A burble sounded. Rising to his feet, Izar glanced at the labyrinth of pipes in the ceiling high above. In his first month at Ocean Dominion he had found the sporadic noises of the pipes irritating—they sounded like explosions of dysentery from a maze of intestines (sometimes, he could hear them even from his office upstairs)—but he smiled at the pipes now as at an ailing relative. The pipes had been with him all these years, their sounds his only source of companionship in his Invention Chamber.

His glance landed on the shelves along the walls. The shelves at least were more organized than the floor, though it was more out of safety than any punctiliousness on his part: The shelves were stocked with hundreds of flasks of flammable liquids and powders, potent enough to burn down the entirety of Ocean Dominion, all the way up to the thirtieth floor. Izar had collected them from all over the world, and had experimented with each of them in his underwater-fire mission.

But his favorite memento of his journey lay not in the room but in his bone itself, in the form of a platinum chip. He had obtained the chip three years ago, soon after he’d begun experimenting with melting points for all types of metal—lead, tungsten, titanium, cobalt, iron—and had concluded that magnesium was optimal, for it was able to reach and sustain the highest temperature. He had molded himself a torch of magnesium and stuffed it with an array of combustion powders. With his right hand, he had pulled the trigger of the torch in a pail of water, placing his left wrist directly before the barrel to detect viscerally if any heat emerged. With the first iteration of his torch, he had felt no more than a wisp of smoke. The second iteration had singed the hair right off his wrist. He had then doubled the diameter of the internal gas chamber of the torch, to increase its storage capacity for oxygen. When he’d pulled the trigger in water this time, the resulting flame, though ephemeral, had shot out so sharply that it had burned the inside of his left wrist clean to the bone.  

Doctor Navi—the Ocean Dominion doctor from the company’s earliest days, a gaunt man with shifty eyes that scurried right and left like a rat’s—had replaced the charred inch of Izar’s bone with a platinum chip that he’d claimed would make Izar’s wrist as strong as an anvil. As Izar examined his wrist now, he smiled dryly to think that he, the wielder of metal, contained metal also within him.  

When he looked up, his glance fell on Castor, and he recognized intuitively that it was time. He strode toward the robot. Looming to more than three times Izar’s six-foot-four height, Castor stood in an immense tank of water with a bullet proof glass boundary.  

Izar knew Castor better than any man he had ever known. So profoundly did he relate to Castor, in fact, that, to his own bemusement, he had taken a knife and carved a hook-shaped scar into the side of the robot’s jaw to match his own.

His own hands had laid Castor’s flesh with the densest of metal alloys, and his own fingers had shaped Castor’s skin with zinc-galvanized steel, to prevent corrosion underwater. He had ensured Castor’s legs weighed more than one ton each, to enable the robot to retain his balance on an uneven ocean floor. He had slid magnets into the soles of Castor’s feet, in order to attract jewels, and he had also added a sieve of sensors, to separate the valuable materials from the worthless ones. He had inserted suction conduits as nerves inside Castor’s legs, to convey the precious metals and minerals to the cylindrical storage vaults in his vertebrae.

He had crafted and embedded a circular bronze shield of Ocean Dominion onto Castor’s chest, with Castor’s name written atop it. Behind the shield, he had inserted a vault that he’d loaded with hundreds of bullets. They were not ordinary bullets, but bullets that he had himself designed—cylindrical and streamlined, in order to counter water resistance. He had arranged them in concentric circles in Castor’s chest, as though artillery were an art.  

He had also programmed Castor with a self-defense instinct. For instance, if any merperson were to touch Castor during a mining mission, let alone try to stop him, Castor would shoot the intruder. Izar had loaded long-range cameras inside Castor’s eye sockets, so that Izar would be able to view the robot’s underwater surroundings on a computer screen, and amplify or override Castor’s self-defense instinct by remote control, if necessary.  

As a lobster has two different claws, one a crusher, and the other a pincer, Izar had given Castor two different arms, one a crusher, and the other what he called a dragon. At twice the circumference of his right arm, Castor’s left arm was the crusher, capable of pulverizing strata into sediment in a matter of seconds. Castor’s right arm, the dragon, was intended to blast fire; it was on this arm that Izar’s dreams hung.

Mentally, Izar ran through how he hoped it would work tonight.

Upon the push of a button on Izar’s remote control, Castor would grow instantly hot, like an electric burner plate. His heat would transform some of his surrounding water into vapor. Catalyst chemicals would fly out of the glands along the sides of his neck, tearing apart the oxygen atoms in water vapor from their hydrogen companions, and compelling them to bond with one another to form oxygen gas. The gas would then funnel into Castor’s dragon arm through a one-way distillation chamber inserted in his skin, designed to permit only oxygen gas. The oxygen would spark the combustion chemicals loaded in Castor’s arm: sulfur, red phosphorus, potassium chlorate, and the finest of glass powders—the elements of matchsticks. Castor’s arm would then crook at the elbow and a blaze would spew forth. Through the continuous cycle of heat, water vapor, and oxygen distillation, Castor’s fire would be self-sustaining, able to continue as long as the combustion chemicals lasted, or as long as Izar permitted through his remote control.  

Izar snatched his crimson-covered journal off the floor, then climbed the ladder alongside the tank of water. He disembarked upon the platform above Castor’s head, which resembled a wide diving board but had a steel-grid base. Kneeling on the platform, he looked at the two objects lying there.  

The first was a battery. Bending forward at the waist, Izar dipped his arm in the tank of water up to his elbow and inserted the battery in Castor’s skull. The size of a textbook, it fit perfectly, metal sliding reassuringly inside metal. The second object was a remote control. Grasping it with trembling fingers, Izar held it over Castor’s head. In his other hand, he clutched his journal, also above Castor’s head. If his attempt at underwater fire failed, he would drop the journal in the water.  

He pushed the button on the remote control.  

Heat began to emanate immediately out of Castor. The water roiled in disconcerted ripples and, in the span of a minute, the air above the tank grew as moist and humid as that in a sauna. A bead of sweat trickled down Izar’s temple, paused over the scar along his jaw, then dripped off and disappeared into the tank of water. Chains of perspiration dribbled down his back, mingling to form sticky sheets.  

Castor’s head swiveled side to side. This showed Izar that at least the first part was done; Castor had reached a sufficiently high temperature, and his glands were spraying catalyst chemicals into his surroundings. Next, the process of creating oxygen gas from water vapor also seemed to transpire without incident, evidenced by the streams of bubbles that erupted in the water.  

Izar’s hands were so drenched with sweat that the cover of his journal felt slippery between his fingers, like a fish trying to escape. He placed the remote control down on the platform but continued to dangle the journal above the tank. Victory was not yet assured, not nearly—the most difficult part remained.

A thunderous rumble sounded as Castor’s right arm lifted slowly from his side to crook at his elbow. Izar’s jaw stiffened and he stared at Castor without blinking. In his anticipation, he could not breathe—the fire would blaze forth now or else never—

An orange-red flame pounded through the water. A horizontal cannon of fire, it flowed continuous and consistent like lava, as inextinguishable as a ray of sunshine.  

The journal slipped from Izar’s fingers. His other hand caught it just before it struck the surface of the water, and placed it feebly next to his knees.  

He had done it. His relief was so tremendous that, closing his eyes, he swayed on the platform on his knees, as though in a hypnotist’s trance. “Well done, son,” Antares would say when Izar told him. Izar had waited twenty-five years to hear those words.  

Izar opened his eyes and gazed at the fire below. A flaming key, it would sear open the door to his future. Within a week, he would set up an assembly line, and, using the instructions in his journal, would commence the process of creating thousands of Castors. Each would be a foot soldier in the mission of underwater fire.

Deposits of jewels were richest in the areas where merpeople lived. (Izar had overlaid maps of the ocean floor’s topography with maps of merpeople population centers, and the maps matched precisely.) Castor would turn their homes and gardens to rubble in order to extract the precious metals and minerals beneath. Merpeople would have nowhere to live, nothing to eat. By the end of the year, they would be extinct. Their extinction would be an important side benefit of Castor: Merpeople had killed Izar’s biological parents, and Castor would kill them.  

[hewn-city-couriers-den]

Day 9

(Material- writing day.)

Quinton wakes with a start.

At first the Fae is disoriented, afraid, and thrashes about in the nest that is much much too big for him. Then he relaxes as he realizes and remembers no, it’s alright, he’s in a room at the Armory.

The hay of the nest trembles next to him, and before he can truly be startled and strike at it, Aleru comes crawling out, yawning and eyeing him curiously. Quinton lets out a sigh of relief, and pets the mouse for a moment, sitting in the dark.

Then he hears movement. Something skitters across the stone floor of the room, and in the dark Quinton can only make out a flash of a row of long white teeth. Aleru bolts into the hay, and Quinton jumps into the air, flapping furiously and rattling his fins. He hurries over to a lantern and uses his Breath to ignite it, lighting the room in a blue hue.

The creature looks up— it’s long, with four stout legs and ends at a headless neck. Down this neck and presumably along its belly is a mouth, full of teeth that glint silver in the blue light. The creature is inky black, with a sheen to its body that indicates a sort of shell like material. It hisses up at the Fae.

Quinton, understandably, screams and flies right out of the room, bolting down the hall to where he hopes Moralis is. He runs into the drape once, and then gets past, yelling into the dark “Help, help, you have to help; there’s one of those shadow creatures in my room!”

He sees a head pop up out of the black, and weary brown eyes meet terrified blue. “I’m coming,” says Moralis as he stands and shakes off the hay of his nest, and together the Nocturne and Fae leave, coming to stand in the doorway of the latter’s room.

Moralis peers around the drape inside. The creature is sniffing at the nest, drooling its black ooze all over the hay. The Nocturne grits his teeth and then rushes in, giving the creature no time to react before he claws and crushes down at its carapace. In the blue light, the blood that results looks silvery, and splatters onto the stone floor. The creature roars, using its whole mouth, and attempts to bite Moralis, but is stopped as Quinton dives in and panickedly rips away part of its shell, exposing black meaty flesh.

The creature roars again, snapping its long jaws at them both. Moralis goes for another crushing move, but is batted aside by a large purple metal paw. Ages emerges from the darkness of the room drape way, and with a roar that puts the creature to shame, emits a burst of fire from its maw. The creature shrieks as it’s lit on fire, and then gurgles as Ages pounces on it, crushing it under his giant paws.

The Guardian rips at the shell around the creature, ignoring the flames, the creature wiggling underpaw until it has been throughly de-shelled; when the fire hits the meat underneath, the creature screams and falls still. Ages stomps on it a few more times, and blows a little more fire at it, eyeing the burning body with glowing red eyes.

The shell pieces have seemed to melt into that black ooze, and Moralis shakes his head at the mess. “What I don’t understand is how it got in here,” he says.

“I’m just glad it’s gone,” Quinton says as he lands back on his nest, Aleru scurrying from wherever he hid out to greet him. The Fae looks up at the Guardian as it swallows the remains of the creature’s body. “Are you sure it’s dead?”

“Affirmative, life signs negative,” it says.

“What are you doing with the body?”

“Field sample will be returned to creators for study,” it says idly, sniffing down at the ooze, puffing our a tiny burst of fire at one puddle— it flickers across the black liquid, and then seems to dissolve it into nothing.

“So Fire seems to be a weakness,” Moralis says. “Lucky we can produce it, then.”

“Only in the form of Breath, though; Ages has true fire...”

“Hm, good point.” Moralis bends down on all forms and breathes brown colored Breath fire at one of the ooze puddles; it remains when the Breath goes out. “Guess it’s just true fire then. Ages, clean this mess up, please?”

“Affirmative.”

Moralis sits with Quinton as the Guardian works; one paw of the Nocturne’s is on the Fae’s back, vibrating slightly as the latter still shakes.

“It’s alright,” Moralis says.

“No it’s not! One of those things got into populated space! It was going to hurt me or kill me or eat me! How can we even be sure there aren’t more attacking other people right now?”

“They seem, in my experience, to be solitary. I wouldn’t worry about there being more in the Armory.” Moralis gives the Fae a smile, though it doesn’t reach up to his eyes. “Would you like me and Ages to stay here with you for the night, just in case?”

The Fae pauses, and then nods.

“Alright then, we’ll stay.”

[songofsunset]

Four’s funeral had been full of flowers.

Six hadn’t known why, when she asked him. She vaguely remembered that he’d always been more interested in human culture and traditions, while Four had gone off learning science with a single-minded passion that her replacement couldn’t remember feeling for anything since her carapace had hardened and her memories had started being properly recorded again.  Six said that it was probably just one of those weird human things, putting flowers everywhere at a time like this. She thought they were pretty. She knew Four wouldn’t have. 

She’d asked him what kind of flowers these were, and he’d tilted his head thoughtfully and said he didn’t know that either. He’d waved Megan over from where she’d been standing with a group of Four’s old co-workers, and together they made her tell them the names of all the flowers they could find, daisies and baby’s breath and lilies and carnations- and camellias. The camellias were deep red, nearly the same color as her newly hardened shell, and when the people running the funeral had asked if she wanted to keep any of the flowers, to bring them home to her new-old-silent apartment, she’d asked for the camellias.

They’d fallen apart a few days later, and when she told Six he said that she’d been supposed to keep them in water, that they were still alive enough to drink, even if they’d been cut off from their main plant.

This fascinated her.

And then she went into work, and there was nothing but petri dishes and sterile gloves and charts and meticulously labeled vials and she wanted to climb the walls and cling to the ceiling and hiss and hiss until people just left her alone and stopped expecting things from her.

But these experiments had been important to her predecessor and she felt obligated to finish them, so instead she nodded and waggled her antennae and listened politely to her coworker’s concerns and didn’t climb out the window and hide on the roof nearly as often as she wanted to.  

Four hadn’t cared much about the roof garden. It was a scraggly thing, only a handful of bushes and some potted grass, more a place for employees to visit on their smoke breaks than any sort of natural experience.

Four’s replacement loved it.

Sometimes she’d find ants crawling over the concrete pots and follow their winding trail back to the nest. Sometimes she’d break browning leaves off the bushes and crumble them into dust, just to watch it be carried away by the wind. Sometimes she’d crouch real low and look at all the tiny green plants growing in the shelter of the bushes, all their different leaf shapes and hopeful root patterns- and inevitably, someone would come find her, ask her to come answer their questions, and she’d sneak a look back at the plants as she followed them back inside, feeling like a drowning man taking one last gasp of air before being enveloped in glass and concrete.

She took to harassing the botanists on her lunch breaks. At first she’d just stared longingly in their general direction- her predecessor had known the botany labs were down the hall, but had never particularly cared, always more caught up in her disease cultures. Four’s replacement, on the other hand, found herself zoning off, imagining what wonders their labs might be hiding, and finally had just marched over one day and demanded to be let in.

An advantage of being the only alien working in an entire government facility is that everyone knew who she was, even if she hadn’t picked a name yet, and no one was willing to say no to her. Sure, the managers of the botany lab could have demanded to know what she needed in their labs, but it was easier for them just to let her in and keep an eye to make sure she didn’t screw any of their experiments up.

Not that she would, hah. She remembered that much from her predecessor, and she darn well knew how not to screw stuff up in a lab situation.

Mostly, she just sat in the greenhouses and watched the plants, watched how they grew and changed. Sometimes she read the books they left out on the counters. Eventually, the botanists just ignored her.

———

It changes one morning while she’s hiding on the roof before work.

“Oh!” says someone behind her, and she turns around, bracing herself for whichever of her coworkers needs her already- but it’s not one of them, and in retrospect it hadn’t sounded like them at all.

It’s an old man, his face white with stubble, clutching pruning shears in front of him. “Oh,” he says again, and he starts to laugh “I was not expecting you up here, not at all, you about gave me a heart attack.”

She waves a foreleg at him, trying to be calming and inoffensive. He waves back.

“I knew there was an alien in the building, but I wasn’t ever expecting to actually meet them. And then, well, I thought I was going to get eaten as revenge for a lifetime of gardening, but I suppose you get that a lot.” He laughs.

She wiggles her antennae in amusement. She did get that a lot, in fact, but she was used to it.

“So uh- you like it up here? I didn’t think people tended to come up here, to be honest.”

She nods, shrugs, nods again. There’s no way this man knows Mantid signing, so she’s just going to have to make do.

“For a moment there I just assumed the camellia bush had bloomed out of season- no one told me what a delightful color you were, to be sure, but if it were the right season, you’d blend right in.”

She tilts her head, looks at the bushes, looks back at the man. How could there be flowers from these scrawny bushes? Weren’t flowers supposed to come from the ground? She points at the small flowers growing in the decorative grass, does her best to project confusion.

“Ah, you’re new here, right? Well, come winter, these bushes bloom some right pretty red flowers. See?” he says, pulling down part of the bush. “You can already see the buds.”

The replacement remembers the red flowers from the funeral, and looks at the bushes with something close to awe. She had never imagined they could bloom, but there the buds are, proof. She touches a bud gently with a foreleg, looks over at the man.

“If you like this,” he says, “you should come over to the botanical gardens sometime. I can show you around. I only come up here for maintenance once in a while myself, I spend most of my time over there keeping an eye on things.”

The replacement nods, patting the bushes fondly, and the man smiles.

———

She visits him, and he shows her around, and it is everything she could have dreamed of. She comes back again and again, and he starts learning her sign language, and she is happier than she can ever remember being this time around.

Quietly, she starts typing all the notes about her predecessor’s lab experiments that she can possibly remember. They won’t lack for information when she is gone.

The botanists wonder why she’s stopped hassling them, but they don’t dare to question it. Her coworkers are just happy she’s gone back to something resembling normal.

———

Once, while watering down at the gardens, she finds a tiny praying mantis hiding in the flowers. They stare at each other for a long moment- then the breeze picks up and the flowers sway and the small mantis skitters away.

The man laughs at her when she tells him.

“There’s a fair few that hang out around here,” he says, teasing. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to have collected one more!”

She sprays him with the hose, and he laughs and laughs and laughs.

———

The lab manager is confused, staring at a pile of paperwork and data files. “Okay,” he says to the lab at large. “Who the hell is Camellia and why have they just put in for retirement?”

The replacement perks up, giving the lab manager a wave. He mouths silently for a moment, flips through the collected files of everything they need to continue the experiments without her, then collects himself enough to say, “Ah. Well then. Carry on.”

———

Camellia shows up to her first day of work at the botanical gardens a few weeks later.

On the roof of her old lab building, the camellia bushes bloom.