#ship under current relay

[apopic]

Ship Current Monitoring Relay (over/ under current monitoring relay on ship electrical system)

Ship overcurrent relays are used to protect sensitive equipment against over or under current conditions. By using current transformers (CTs), these protective relays monitor large AC currents common to large motor starters, circuit breakers, and transformers. Ship current transformers CT which steps down the monitored current to a secondary (output) range of 0 to 5 amps (AC) to power the…

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Quarantine Breach

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)

The first the wider universe heard of the plague on Hydraxsis was when traders began returning to their home systems with tales of a massive human fleet hanging in orbit above the world denying all access to the planet’s surface. Transmissions declaring a state of emergency were relayed from the human flagship and stated that the situation was well under control but for the safety of the wider star community no one was allowed to land.

Naturally concerned with this and seeking to offer aid, many civilizations dispatched medical teams and diplomats to open dialogues for relief aid to begin flowing into the system. Yet once again all they were met with were the same transmissions from the flagship that a state of emergency had been declared and travel down to the surface was strictly forbidden.

The stonewalling tactics did not sit well with several of the diplomats, nor did the numerous jamming devices the humans had deployed in orbit above the world to block any communications to and from the surface as well.

When it became known that non-humans had also been trapped on the surface below by grieving families, the governments insisted that the humans open communications and allow relief efforts to be dispatched to the planet.

There was no reply save for the same transmission played again but this time emphasizing the final part with enlarged letters.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REACH THE SURFACE; THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.

Further enraged and now knowing that several of their own citizens were trapped on the beleaguered world alien fleets began appearing to force their passage through the blockade.

They knew humans were stubborn; it was a core aspect of their primal nature that not even evolution could weed out. Yet it boggled the minds of the aliens why the humans would risk an open conflict over one world.

It wasn’t until a Syndicate Hellbrute Dreadnought, leased to one of the grieving species for a considerable sum, appeared alongside the waiting alien armada did they feel ready to force the blockade.

The two fleets poised against each other as countless weapon bay doors rolled open to reveal their lethal contents. Countless targeting vectors were plotted while missile batteries prepared to unleash a torrent of finite death and destruction when suddenly the human fleet turned.

A lone transport shuttle came racing up from the surface.

Without a moment’s hesitation the entire human fleet opened fired on the tiny transport; completely ignoring the alien warships before them who in turned retaliated against the humans.

Terran frigates crumpled like wads of paper under concentrated fire and carriers were gutted from the inside as torment warheads detonated inside their ships through open launch bays, yet the human fleet gave no return fire to the aliens.

The tiny craft darted like a humming bird through the blizzard of weapons fire directed at it by the humans. Too small for the larger weapons to hit the craft wove its way through the terran fleet as it desperately made for the alien armada.

It had almost made it to the Hellbrute leading the alien fleet when a terran cruiser broke formation and rammed the tiny craft. Unable to avoid the massive size of the ship the transport slammed into the side of the cruiser and detonated in a fireball of destruction.

While the aliens pondered why the terran’s would so recklessly risk one of their larger ships in such a manner they were only further surprised why the same cruiser that had rammed the transport ship then detonated their own jump drives causing a small super nova to erupt between the two fleets.

A blinding shockwave of energy shot out and sent both fleets reeling in opposite directions. Colossal vessels were reduced to nothing more than logs in a rapid current as they battered against each other before finally coming to a stop several thousand kilometers away from where they had started.

The aliens began to reorganize their fleets for another battle but the humans merely returned to their blockade of the world. Only the flagship of the terran fleet remained and opened a direct communication with every alien vessel.

No words were spoken by the terran commander as he opened up a video file and played it. A grainy feed appeared to be from a street camera of some kind of a bustling city. Many assumed that it was from Hydraxsis and noted that it was dated several weeks prior when the blockade first was implemented.

The streets were full of bustling humans and aliens of every kind carrying on their day to day business when one human began convulsing rapidly while crossing the street.

Collapsing to the ground they spasmed so hard that fragments of bone could be seen breaking the skin. Worried onlookers either began backing away from the human or approaching them to try and assist them when the true horror began.

Emerging from the convulsing humans flesh came a thick swarm of tiny red insects. They moved like a stream of water and darted to those who had come forward to help the injured man. With barely enough time to let out a scream the swarm engulfed them in a red tide, dragging them to the ground as a general panic broke out.

Within moments more and more insects began pouring out of the new cadaverous tripling their numbers instantly and just as before began rushing those around them.

The feed then cut away to several days later of the same street as countless fires broke out amongst the buildings. The street was littered with battered and broken aircars while the roads themselves were paved with uncountable bones of victims.

A lone figure came sprinting down the street looking back the way they had come screaming. They made it three steps before tripping over what had been a human femur and falling to the ground as a swarm of insects filling the entire street side to side came down upon them like an onrushing river. The camera was ripped from its mounting by the sheer mass of the swarm and the feed went dead.

The commander ended the feed and addressed the gathered armada. Analyzing the tiny red insects their name was “Ambrogidus Flaxmaxus”, or more commonly called “Red Death”.

A highly invasive species that burrows into living hosts laying thousands of eggs that can hatch within ten seconds to thirty years depending on as of yet to be determined conditions. Once hatched, the larva will eat the surrounding flesh before digging their way out in search of a new host and repeating the entire process with a new host.

Because of the unpredictable nature of the hatching process victims can sometimes carry larva eggs for years without ever knowing. This has made quarantining worlds or victims all but impossible as the eggs blend in with the host’s flesh making them almost impossible to detect by scanners. Even the vacuum of space could not deter the insects as their shells were dense enough to resist the void while the insects themselves hibernated. This reason alone was why the terran cruiser detonated itself the moment it touched an infected shuttle. It was the only way to be sure nothing survived.

The humans admitted that they had been trying to spare the rest of the universe from this plague to contain potential chaos that could be unleashed. Several worlds ranging from small colonies to distant outposts had already fallen to the insect and there had been no designated counter agent for terminating the insects in sufficient numbers.

With a heavy heart the human stated that the “relief” fleet enroute was not coming to help the inhabitants below. It was a scientific fleet with the sole purpose of using the world as a testing ground on new chemical agents and weapons to try and kill the insects.

Even if there had been survivors below the humans had made it very clear.

No one was leaving that planet alive.

[monstersandmaw]

Male centipede-alien x transmasc nonbinary reader (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Final commission from my batch of five! For @mongoose-king!

Content: sassy, confident, transmac reader, non-penetrative sex, oral sex, 't-cock' used for human's genitals, no other areas specified/mentioned. Brief threat to life (not from monster), some mention of isolation on a planet. And a giant pet slug. Wordcount: 6749

“Well. That’s… unexpected,” you croaked, staring incredulously at the small screen on the sleeve of your white space suit as it blinked a red and improbable warning at you.

The planet wasn’t exactly hostile to humans, but the harsh sun and arid air made being outside for long periods of time pretty uncomfortable for humans, and the oxygen levels were low enough that it made you dizzy if you didn’t take a gulp from your suit’s mask from time to time at the very least.

You were quite possibly the only other sapient being within about nine thousand miles, but while you were cataloguing obscure and previously unknown kinds of invertebrate, the research team on the literal other side of the world were geologists from Meliikos Prime, and they didn’t speak Galactic Common very well. They’d been polite enough when you’d hailed them out of courtesy when you’d flown in though, and when they’d discovered you were human, they’d beamed over their extensive survey data of the terrain and marked off water supplies too, which you’d thought was pretty nice of them.

Other than rocks and a few cool bugs though, there really wasn’t anything to write home about on this planet; certainly nothing that was going to win you any research accolades. It wasn’t on any of the major hyperspace links, there were no relay stations in this quadrant, and so far, other than a supremely flamboyant species of flatworm living in a toxic geothermal pool near your research ship, and a type of slug as big as a golden retriever that, rather relatably, hadn’t moved in over a week, there wasn’t anything of note here at all.

And yet, the general alert on your space suit had just calmly announced that a heavy cruiser bearing the insignia and codes of the Porphaerian Empire was inbound to your location and all civilians of the Republic were advised to evacuate the planet as soon as possible and make their way to the nearest Bastion. You weren’t even sure where the nearest military outpost was, given that the ever-belligerent Porphaerian Empire had never shown any interest in invertebrates on remote planets before, and this planet in particular sat on the outer reaches of the known universe and was so bloody insignificant that it hadn’t even acquired a proper name. It was still just: OR-2559-B.

“The fuck?” It came out as a little strangled yelp as you looked up into the purple-ish blue of your dear OR-2559-B’s atmosphere to find the silhouette of a huge ship appearing out of the veil of wispy clouds that whisked and drifted around on the upper currents. These things were only supposed to exist in immersive VR cinemas, and only then to get blown up by plucky pilots operating under astronomically small odds. Plucky you might have been, but you were neither a pilot nor currently in possession of anything more powerful than a handheld scanner for identifying the chemical composition of various types of bug goop. Your ship didn’t even have cannons, though there was a small pistol under the console, just in case.

You snatched up the tray of samples you’d spent the last three hours taking from the placid wildlife around the stream and legged it back towards the small and laughably fragile buggy that you used to cover greater distances into the field from your research ship. By the time you’d jounced over the rough terrain of the plateau and yelled at your little buggy to please find a little more juice in her batteries to get you up the hill at a pace faster than a mildly-inconvenienced slug, you saw other shapes flitting like bats around the underside of the huge cruiser. Fighters.

“Oh come on,” you groaned. Your ship lowered the ramp as it detected your approach and you steered the wheezing buggy up the incline and into the cargo hold, tripping over the side of the roll cage as you floundered to exit the darned thing, and raced to the hatch that would lead you up into the cockpit.

Sweeping a week’s worth of papers and vac-packed ration wrappers off the console, you punched in your code and yelled at the ship to come out of its sleepy hibernation state, which it did with enviable efficiency.

“Hostile signatures detected,” she said in that irritatingly calm voice she had under all circumstances.

“Well the fuck aware, thank you. Now, can we get out of here please?”

The brief thought flickered across your mind that it probably wouldn’t help matters if the ship’s AI screamed at you in panic instead of speaking in a monotone if she blew something down in the engine room, but you had little time to dwell on that as a larger fighter roared right past the windshield and a huge energy blast swept over the ship.

Instinctively, you covered your face and closed your eyes, and when the accompanying cloud of dust and debris had finished raining down and clinking off the glass and metal structure of the ship, you realised she had gone eerily quiet. “Girlie?” you exhaled into the relative silence.

Nothing. Hell, you’d take that dull monotone over this any day.

Opening your eyes and lowering your arms, your body flooded with adrenaline when you saw that all her screens were dark, and the lights had gone off. “Oh, you fucking assholes!” you yelled in the vague direction of the enemy cruiser. “You want my bug slime? Fine! Take it! But you leave my fucking ship alone!”

It was strange what came out of your mouth in times of stress, but you weren’t given the luxury of being able to the psychology of a lone human put suddenly under the immense pressure of an unforeseen and life-threatening situation, because a small fighter landed outside and you scrabbled under the console to retrieve the pistol that you’d placed there on the off-chance you ran into something that thought a scrawny research scientist in a space suit looked more appealing than its usual diet.

A blaster bolt battered its way through the hull of your ship and several more created an enormous smoking hole where the hatch had been, and you stood there, wide eyed, as three Porphaerian soldiers appeared like cartoon villains out of the twisting black smoke. They were all wearing black, form-fitting space suits made of some fancy, matte, composite material, and a shiny, black helmet with a blacked-out visor that revealed nothing of their slightly reptilian features underneath. Their three-fingered hands were also gloved, and they all bore a weapon of some kind: the one at the front of the trio had a blaster, while the one to their left — your right — had some kind of bludgeon that zapped with a purple energy at one end, and the other had a net that crackled with the same energy and a trident with barbed points.

“What do you want?” you chirped, hoping you sounded more composed than you felt. You tightened your hold on the grip of your pistol at your side, and glared at them. “And why are you blowing holes in my baby girl’s hull? She’s a scientist. What’s she ever done to you?”

Your words and tone seemed to confuse the leader of the three Porphaerians for a moment, and they froze, tilting their helmeted head to one side. Seven foot tall, bipedal, with four arms and a long, slashing tail that whipped back and forth behind it like a lizard in a tizzy, they should have been intimidating, but you were so damned outraged at the whole situation, it was hard to be fully afraid. The one to their left let out a growl and chittered something in their incomprehensible language. That was just one of the many things that made the bloody Porphaerians think they were better than everyone else: they had the most convoluted and complicated method of communication out of almost all known species.

“Well, what the fuck do you want?” you barked. As if you had somewhere else you needed to be.

With a put-upon sigh, the leader began to talk in Galactic Common, though their mouth full of pointed teeth wasn’t really equipped for its syllables. “You are in… possession of… a substance that is of… interest to our Great and Glorious Empire.”

You blinked. “You guys… really do want my bug slime?”

“Your… what?”

“I’m a scientist. I’m studying invertebrates. Bugs. The slug outside — its name is Goldie, by the way, and it had better not have come to any harm because of you losers — has become a bit of a mascot in the week and a half it’s been resting on that rock.”

“We are not here for… ‘bugs’.”

“Then I’ve got nothing for you, buddy,” you said with a slightly wild grin that was about 99% panic. If you had nothing to offer them, they’d probably just kill you for the inconvenience of a wasted trip. “But if you tell me more about what you’re after, then perhaps I can help?” You had no intention of actually helping them, but stalling them was going to buy you a few more precious minutes to think of a way out of this, so you took it.

“You are… researching… the refractive properties of… a newly-discovered mineral,” the leader said in stilted Common. “Surrender your research and all samples, and we will leave you unharmed.”

Minerals. Shit, that was the nice team from Meliikos Prime.

“I see that you are cognisant of our request.”

“I… what? No.” You stuck your thumb comically towards your chest and grinned, “Bug guy. Not rocks. And that was not a request either. You guys need to work on your Common. Your vocab is seriously lacking.”

One of them twitched their head as if something had come in over the comms, and all three of them tightened their grip on their weapons.

“Seems like you were telling the truth,” the leader scoffed and raised their blaster.

You barely got to duck out of the way before a shot went off, but when you rolled and came up, you saw that the hole where they’d been standing was now empty. A second later, you heard scuttling on the roof of your ship and panic set in for the first time.

The tapping of many legs skittered across the roof and towards the gap in the side, and then at the top of the hole caused by the Porphaerian’s blaster damage, a creature appeared, peering down over the torn and burned edge of the hole. At first, all you saw was a pair of long, caramel brown antennae investigating the space, but a head soon followed, adorned with colossal, mean looking mandibles that could probably punch a second hole through your poor ship’s hull with even less effort than the blaster bolt.

“What the fuck?” you coughed, reeling backwards. You’d never seen any sign of a centipede that size on this planet. When you spotted one of the Porphaerians moving in the limited view outside though, raising their weapon, you yelped and flailed your arms to get it to move, “Watch out!”

In a sinuous motion, the creature looked up, hissed, and slithered on its series of many, jointed legs down to where the Porphaerian was now standing. It reared up, lashing out with forelegs that looked at once deadly and fragile, like alabaster in the strange light of the planet’s atmosphere, and then in a flash, it lunged for the neck of its would-be attacker and closed its steel-jaw mandibles around it. A green fluid burst like an overripe fruit, and you wondered if that was Porphaerian blood or the creature’s venom. The second Porphaerian was caught by the whiplash of its tail and flung into the side of their fighter ship, and the third was nowhere to be seen.

When the centipede-like creature was done decapitating, it turned around and regarded you. It wasn’t just a giant centipede, you realised, as it had more of an upper torso section, with armoured ‘shoulders’ and a couple of limbs at the top that were more like arms with hands than the sickle-like claws that adorned the rest of the legs on its long, segmented, chocolate brown body, and it was regarding you from black, beady eyes with obvious intellect.

Only when it paused, staring at you while your charred ship smoked like something forgotten on a barbecue, did you notice that it had a kind of bandoleer around those shoulders, though it didn’t have cartridges or ammunition that you could see. Instead, there were pockets and some kind of comms device, and… you frowned. “You’re… with the Republic?” you faltered when you saw the insignia.

The alien nodded.

“You have any idea why the fuck the fucking Porphaerian Empire was after my little research ship? Actually, scratch that. They said they were after some funky mineral and — oh God, the geology guys! They —”

The creature chittered something at you, and while you didn’t understand it, you realised it had a distinct air of impatience, with a touch of exasperation thrown in too.

“What?”

Its chitinous shoulders drooped and it scuttled a little closer to the blackened hole in your ship before rearing up and peering in like a dog looking out of a window. You almost laughed, and then realised you were probably a little hysterical from all the adrenaline.

In a rasping, scraping voice, the creature said in Galactic Common, “The team from Meliikos are safe. They told me about you. I came to get you. We need to leave.” Then, after casting a quick, backwards glance, they added, “Now.”

And before you could do so much as grab your favourite pencil from your workstation, the creature had slithered into the ship, scooped you up in its uppermost arms, and was retreating at what felt like a hundred miles an hour out of the shell of your destroyed ship, and out towards the rocky plateau at the bottom of the slope.

As you passed the seemingly-dormant giant slug, you chuckled as it raised its head, eye-stems appearing, and you waved. “So long, Goldie! Take care! I’ll miss our chats!”

“Are you… alright?” the centipede-alien asked, sounding genuinely concerned for your sanity.

Perhaps you’d been alone on OR-2559-B for a few months too long after all. With a shrug, you let yourself be jostled lightly along in their arms and tried not to watch the mesmeric pattern of their honey-gold legs as they rippled beneath their segmented body over the uneven terrain. “Goldie’s been by my side since I got here. I’ve shared most of my research with her. I’m 95% sure she has some pretty nuanced opinions on that comedy military drama thing that came out on earth about a hundred years ago…”

“I will have you checked out by our ship’s medic,” the centipede-alien said as they thundered over the terrain, and you laughed and settled into their arms. Your research had been funded by the Republic, so if one of their soldiers had been sent to rescue you, they could file the reports and figure out what happened next. Honestly, as much as you’d formed an attachment to the community of flamboyant flatworms and the super-gigantic slug, you were suddenly looking forward to an excuse to go off-world and, you know, interact with people again. You just had to make it past the heavy cruiser and its fleet of fighters first.

It turned out that your centipede friend was part of some kind of elite team that made extraction from a hostile environment look like a visit to the archives, and you were tucked away in the corner of their nippy little shuttle while an alien of a species you didn’t recognise, with a crown of antlers and skin like a red nebula, piloted you away from the Porphaerians and out into deeper space. It was one of the roughest take-offs you’d ever endured, but it worked, and it was oddly heart-warming when the Meliikos team all looked around and waved at you in obvious relief when the centipede-alien brought you on board the Republic ship.

The ship’s medic turned out to be really nice, and when you explained that your supplies had all been left on the research ship along with literally the rest of your life in space, they set you up again with your regular prescriptions, and checked you over. After you’d recovered from the aftereffects of the shock, they were happy to discharge you, and you headed out to explore the ship.

Just as you waved your hand in front of the release mechanism for the medbay door though, it was opened by someone from outside, and you took a step back to avoid a collision. The person on the other side halted abruptly in the doorway — literally filling the doorway — and you tipped your head up to take in the full sight of them. It was your saviour, and you grinned at them at the same time as they made a kind of chittering with their thick, black mandibles and waggled their long antennae.

“Hey,” you smiled. “Listen, thanks for getting me out of there like that. I was kind of out of it on the ride over. I never got your name.”

A series of distinctive clicks and chatters left the creature, and you grimaced.

“You got a Galactic Common alternative? My mouth doesn’t, uh… move like that.” The more you thought about their mouth though, the more interested you were in them. They really were beautiful, with a mahogany brown, segmented body and paler legs, and a head with a woodgrain pattern that you hadn’t noticed before.

The centipede alien nodded and laughed, and then said in that harsh voice like bending steel, “I’ve been called ‘Kerritt’ before by humans because of the sound of my name in my own language. You may call me Kerritt, and I use the human equivalent of male pronouns. What should I call you?”

You told him, and he nodded seriously.

“Are you feeling well? I could show you around the ship, but the First Officer would like to speak with you before we do anything else. She sent me down to see if you are well enough to have an audience with her.”

He spoke in short, stilted phrases and his upper body swayed a little. The majority of his body was like that of a giant centipede, but he had a definite waist section that was different from the rest of the segments of chitin and it rose vertically while the rest of him stayed parallel to the ground. And yes, those uppermost limbs were definitely more like arms, with hands that ended in chitinous points and sections of chitin that were more like bracers and gauntlets. His eyes were glossy black, almond shaped, and huge. The way they were placed far apart on his insectoid head was really rather sweet as he regarded you attentively, his long antennae constantly waving up and down in a slow, mesmeric pattern.

“I’m good,” you nodded. “Bit shaken up, and confused as heck, but I’m good. Let’s go talk to your First Officer. Maybe she can explain why the fuck the Porphaerians mistook the bugs guy for the rocks guys.”

He chuckled. “The Meliikosian team will take offence if you call them the ‘rocks guys’,” he said as he turned around in a sinuous curve and began to lead you up the ship’s gleaming corridor towards the bridge. “They are a proud and reserved people.”

“Nah, we’re cool. They like me. They waved at me when you brought me on board. In their culture, that’s practically a marriage proposal, right?”

Again, Kerritt laughed. “Perhaps. Though if you’re so easy to get along with, why did your university send you to one of the most remote places in the entire universe?”

“Ouch! Actually, the Head of the Department was so jealous of my research that she got me funding for a project that would take me as far from the capital as it’s possible to go…” you said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Really?”

“No,” you snorted. “I have an insatiable hunger for the unknown, and some trader mentioned that a cargo pilot said that a friend of hers said there were weird bugs on OR-2559-B. So, I got funding and headed out.”

“That’s… convoluted,” Kerritt said diplomatically. “You went all that way to study invertebrates? Are there none on your planet?”

You eyed him up and down and watched his antennae pull back a little. Was that trepidation? “Sure there are, but what can I say? I’m a dedicated researcher.”

“Right.”

The conversation with the First Officer didn’t last long. She was a colossal Grummgarian with orange-yellow skin and horns on her chin, and absolutely zero patience. When she realised that the only reason you’d drawn Porphaerian attention was by accident, she informed you that you’d be dropped off at the Bastion and would be provided with transport passes back to your university, before she dismissed you with a wave of her three-fingered hand and Kerritt escorted you from the bridge.

“A bit of warning would have been nice,” you shot sidelong at him as the doors closed behind you with a soft thunk.

“There is no warning adequate for that woman,” he said dryly. “You were better off going in cold. Shall I give you a tour of the ship?”

You nodded and followed him as he helped you get your bearings. “Tell me about yourself?” you asked. “I mean, I’ve met a few different species, but I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

“Oh,” he said, and clicked his mandibles. “Do you wish to study me too then? Since I am technically an invertebrate myself, after all.”

“Maybe, if you’ll let me,” you said with a wink and watched his antennae pull back again.

“I think I could be persuaded,” he replied. “I’ve not had much contact with your kind either. I didn’t expect you to be so…” he leaned down and tilted his head “… soft. How did you survive the atmosphere of OR-2559-B? I was led to believe that you require higher oxygen levels for respiration?”

“Space suit,” you said. “It did make me a bit dizzy sometimes, but you know, that can be fun too, under the right circumstances.”

“My sources were right about one thing,” Kerritt said dryly as he drew himself back up to his usual posture.

“What’s that?”

“Humans have strange preferences.”

“Baby, you have no idea,” you laughed, shaking your head. “Come on, let’s finish this tour before I keel over. I’m exhausted.”

The two of you traded light conversation back and forth as he led you up corridors and companionways until that banter devolved steadily into cautious but very much overt flirting, and when he left you at the door to what would be your quarters for the short hop to the Republic Bastion, you said, “If I weren’t so tired that I might pass out before the fun even gets started, I’d invite you in.”

“Another time,” he said with a sympathetic bow of his head. “My quarters are up the corridor, should you need me. I’m off duty for a while now.”

“Nice. And thanks for showing me round.”

Kerritt gave another nod, and then he left.

You watched him go down the corridor to another door, his legs rippling in a sinuous sequence to take him forward, and you remembered how it felt to be carried along in his arms and shivered. Your body was running on fumes, but your brain still liked the memory of that strange, chitinous creature holding you in his arms.

You barely had the energy to shower in the cramped en suite, but once you’d changed into something more comfortable and less singed and gritty than your current outfit, you fell onto the bed and slept for sixteen hours straight.

When you woke and dressed, and staggered out into the corridor, your first port of call was the refectory to silence your growling stomach, but everything was closed since it wasn’t the ship’s mealtime. A diminutive creature with four arms and scaled, purple skin looked up from one of the tables in the empty dining area though and chirped something that sounded like an exclamation.

“Wait, human! Kerritt told me about you!” They had a head like a snake and thick spines all down their back, and although they wore clothing over their top half, their lower half was a thick, sinuous tail that uncoiled as they pushed back from the table and made their way over to you. “You want some food? I’ve never cooked for a human before. There aren’t any on this ship, and I joined the Mantis straight from the academy. I had to look up recipes for you in the species guide! I’m not sure what you’d like, but I made six earth dishes for you to choose from. They’re keeping warm now. I didn’t know when you’d be by.”

Their enthusiasm was almost overwhelming after a sleep that was essentially a fully-blown hibernation, but you nodded and let them lead you into the kitchen where you chose something that vaguely resembled beef chilli, though the beans weren’t the usual ones. They were turquoise blue, but they tasted ok.

You were about halfway through an enormous bowl of it when Kerritt entered the dining hall looking tense. That was, he looked tense until he saw you, at which point he sighed and scuttled over in that smooth way you found so attractive, his body moving like a ribbon between the tables.

“You’re awake,” he said when he reached you. “Are you alright? I had to ask the ship’s computer if there was still life detected in your quarters.”

You laughed long and loud. “Yeah, I do that sometimes. Sorry. Yeah, I’m good. Turns out my faithful little research ship, rest in pieces, wasn’t actually built for long-term habitation, because my god the mattress in my bunk here is like sleeping on a cloud, I swear.” You took another spoonful of ‘chilli’ and asked, “How’s things?”

“The ship is on course to dock at the Bastion in seventeen hours,” he said, apparently not sure quite what you’d meant. “Everyone is interested in meeting a human. They have been asking me many questions about you.”

“Oh? What did you tell them?”

“That I have only known you a few hours and cannot speak on your behalf.”

You smiled at him and shook your head. “Ah, you’re a good soul, you know that, Kerritt? I like you. Tell you what, when I’ve finished this… uh… ‘chilli’, you can introduce me to your friends.”

He nodded. “May I keep you company until then?”

“I’d love that,” you replied. “You can tell me how the Republic knew about the attack in the first place.”

While he was talking, a few people drifted in and approached when they saw that you were there, talking with Kerritt. It seemed like he was something of a hero among the crew himself, and the array of non-humans aboard varied from the reptilian cook with their purple skin to another invertebrate built more like a spider than a centipede, and several humanoid species, though the differences between you and them were marked. Long after you’d finished your chilli, you were all still gathered around your table, chatting and laughing together, and as people left to tend to their duties or head to their bunks for their downtime, you remarked to Kerritt what a tight-knit crew they had.

He nodded. “We’ve seen a lot of action together in the Vith Sector. It has a way of bonding a crew.”

“For sure,” you said, turning more serious. That sector was where the Porphaerians had been making their most aggressive moves in the last decade of their expansion. You sighed and stretched your neck a little.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Mm. Might walk around a bit for a while. Stretch my legs. Wanna join me?”

He bowed his head and scuttled back from where he’d been coiled up on himself while you’d been talking. His legs moved like clockwork parts, clicking on the shiny floor of the refectory, and you bit your lip and ached to touch.

His mandibles drifted a little further apart for a moment, and you got the impression he was scenting the air, but he took it no further and you tried hard to ignore how attractive you found him and his strange body while you walked the ship’s halls together.

Down in engineering, you visited one of the people you’d just met, and they showed you a few details of how the ship’s engine worked, until you started yawning again, and Kerritt took you back up to the corridor with the living quarters.

“You know, I’m tired, but I'm not actually all that sleepy,” you said. “I think it’s just the stress of what happened.”

“Perhaps… you would like to relax in my room? The permanent crew’s quarters are much bigger than the guest room you were assigned.”

“Sure,” you said with a smile. “Thank you.”

He continued down the corridor to his own room and you followed at his side.

“You know,” you said as he tapped a wristband to the reader in front of his door and it opened almost silently, “I never thanked you for saving my life. Those were some pretty badass moves back there. I’ve never had anyone defend me like that.”

His antennae flicked back in what you were now certain was a bashful expression, and he shrugged one chitinous shoulder. “My unit is trained to handle unusual situations.”

“I count as an unusual situation, do I?”

“I… what?”

“You handled me pretty well.”

If his entirely-black eyes could have rolled, you were certain they would have done, but he waved his hand in front of the door panel and it shut before anyone else on the ship could overhear you. 

“You are very… forward, human,” he said, coming closer; close enough to touch.

You reached slowly for his ‘chest’ — or at least, for the section of his body that rose vertically, and which had much smaller segmented parts than the rest of him — and you held your hand out, palm facing him, just a few centimetres from his body. “May I?” you breathed.

He nodded. His own body had gone utterly still. All those mechanical legs holding him rigid as he tilted his head down to regard you, antennae pricked forwards.

Your hand connected with his cool body and a shudder ran through him from head to tail. A second later, lines of neon, bioluminescent green flashed along the length of his body and you gasped, taking your hand away in surprise before pressing it back down and watching the light pulse out a second time. “God, you’re beautiful. Can you feel that then?”

“Yes. Touch is our primary sense.”

You’d suspected as much, but you’d wanted to be sure. You brought your right hand up to meet your left and stood slowly, running your hands up his chest. All the while, his natural bioluminescence pulsed along his body, beginning at the point where you touched him and zipping down the segments of his body like lightning in a regular pattern. The chitin beneath your fingertips felt like glass: smooth and cool and oddly fragile. Your fingers traced the line of one of the segments that sat like armour on his shoulders and he gave another soft gasp and a shiver.

“May I touch you?” he asked.

“God yes,” you laughed, and he brought his clawed hands to your waist then up your torso and neck to rake the points of his fingertips across your scalp. For a second, your soul felt like it left your body and you tipped your head back and moaned.

“You enjoy touch too.”

“Unnfff.”

“Yes?”

You nodded.

“May I pick you up?”

A second and more enthusiastic “unnfff,” left your lips and he chuckled, lowering his mouth towards you for just an instant before he twitched backwards. “Mm?” you asked, only dimly aware that he was actually carrying you across the room towards his wide, comfortable bed now.

“I have to be careful. I have a lot of venom. It’s deadly to humans. Deadly to most species, actually.”

“Oh. I guess that means I can’t kiss you there then.”

“I have to inject my venom for it to be dangerous,” he said, “But I still have to be careful. It’s something of a reflex when I am… aroused.”

“I turn you on, huh?” you slurred cheekily.

“Yes.”

You loved how direct he was, and as he laid you down on the bed and moved his fingers to pause at the fastening of your clothes, you nodded before he could ask permission. He still did, of course, but it was more of a formality at that point. He raked his claws experimentally over your skin, so light it almost tickled, and you arched off the bed.

“I can smell you,” he said when he’d let your clothes fall to the floor. “May I taste you?”

You nodded, desperate to feel his mandibles against your skin. You were swollen and hard and sensitive already, and when he parted his huge mandibles wide to reveal his mouth and a black tongue, you bucked and whimpered and parted your legs for him.

The feel of his tongue exploring up the inside of your thighs was a torture of the best kind, and by the time he closed his mouth around your t-cock, you felt like you might come just from the touch alone. You had no idea what words came tumbling out of your mouth, but he let out a rumbling growl that made his whole body shake and pulse with light again, and you nearly yelled as he dug his claw-like hands into the muscle of your thighs.

You couldn’t think terribly clearly as he got back to work in earnest, practically worshipping your body with his mouth, his onyx mandibles raised just safely enough not to puncture your body but not far enough away that the wicked sharp tips didn’t prick your skin from time to time. His antennae glanced against your waist and shoulders from time to time and you had to restrain yourself from grabbing onto them. They were not horns, and you might even hurt him if you did. It was tantalising and you thrust your head back into the pillow behind you and let out a long, yowling cry of pleasure as you got closer and closer to coming.

Kerritt picked you up again, lifting you right off the bed with ease, and he brought the smooth segments of his lower body to touch yours as he lay down facing you on the bed beside you, encasing you in the cage of his many legs. The feeling of being held and almost immobilised was intoxicating, and you reached a hand up for his head and gripped around the smooth, curved contour of one mandible. He groaned again and you grabbed for the other with your free hand.

“How careful do I have to be with these?” you asked in a rough voice.

They parted and flexed just a little under your hold, but you could feel the immense strength behind them. You’d been right when you’d thought idly that they could punch through steel. One bite from those and you’d be dead.

“Not that careful,” he said, clearly amused behind his growing arousal.

He rubbed his glowing body slowly against you, catching your cock just perfectly with a smooth segment and you wrapped both legs around between two pairs of his legs to adjust the angle and the pressure. He was getting wet from the opening in his carapace, and the combined mess you were making was enough to set your head spinning.

“I’m gonna come,” you breathed as he picked up his pace, fucking against you more wildly with each of your pounding heartbeats. “Oh god, you’re going to make me come.”

“I’m close too,” he said, and you felt his mandibles start to shake and tremble in your grip. “I want to bite you,” he groaned. “I’m going to bite —”

The thick ring of his black mandibles slipped from your hold and in the blink of an eye they’d closed around your neck like a collar. You came with a blinding intensity, bucking against him while his hot tongue pressed against your throat.

A second later, his whole body locked up and he spilled over you in a rush of hot come that went up your stomach and down between your thighs while his whole body spasmed helplessly. His tail curled around you, locking you even more securely in place while his orgasm wracked his entire body, his legs tightening like the jaws of a bear trap against your naked body.

Eventually he stopped and went slack on the bed, and his mandibles opened slowly. All the chinks in his chitinous armour glowed a steady, quiescent green, and his antennae felt and tested at your neck. You nearly laughed at the tickling contrast between the powerful jaws and tender antennae.

“Did I hurt you? Tell me I didn’t hurt you,” he croaked.

“M’good,” you smiled and kissed one black, glossy mandible before he raised it completely out of reach.

He sighed with relief. “I’m sorry. My kind tend to lock in place during… you know. I thought perhaps with you it would be different, but… I’m sorry. It was a risk I shouldn’t have taken with you.”

“S’all good,” you said, your mind blissfully foggy in the wake of the best orgasm you’d had in months. “Come back here,” you said, petting the side of your neck to try and get him to hold you there again with his mandibles.

He did return his grip to your neck, and he slowly coiled his entire body around yours again while the two of you came down together.

“I think you’ve ruined sex with any other species for me after that,” you mumbled a while later.

Carefully, he withdrew his mandibles from you again and nuzzled the smooth top of his head against you, making a soft, crooning noise akin to purr.

“As I think you have for me,” he rumbled.

Without warning, the door to his quarters opened with its near silent sigh of metal on metal, and someone strode in, looking down at a screen in their hand. “Hey, Kerritt, I need you to sign this report for —”

Kerritt drew you even closer to him, masking you completely from whoever had intruded, and he hissed loudly at them over your head like a cobra.

“Shit! Sorry!” they barked, clearly as taken by surprise at the hissing as he had been by their arrival. “You never have company. I just… I’m so sorry! I’ll… uh… it can wait.”

You started laughing even before he set you back down on the bed, and by the time he had relaxed enough to draw back from his protective hold on you, your laugh had turned into a proper cackle.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he snapped.

“I’ve never had a partner hiss at someone to defend my dignity,” you said, wiping tears from your eyes and pushing up onto one elbow.

He regarded you flatly, and you reached carefully for the nearest antenna, running your fingertip along it before encircling it suggestively with thumb and fingers until he gave another huge, full-body shiver and let out a little moan, light pulsing again.  

“It’s sweet, that’s all,” you smiled and then asked, “You think you’ve got another one in you, big guy?”

“Keep touching me like that and find out,” Kerritt muttered, rolling onto his back, at once docile and provocative, and letting all the tightly-coiled segments of his body unfurl for you like a fern. That light still darted along him whenever you touched him, flaring to life to telegraph just how turned on he was by you.

This time, you rode him to orgasm, rocking your hips back and forth over his slit until you both came a second time.

Watching a creature as powerful as he was come so completely undone beneath you was probably one of the best sights you’d ever seen.

__

I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please consider showing your support by reblogging. It really is the best (and totally free!) way to help the artists and writers whose work you enjoy.

Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar) | Patreon

[hirik0]

False Reality part 3

Ghost/Soap | Si-Fi AU

Subject Lieutenant Simon Riley Human space forece

Days in simulation: 6 SGD

Days till asserting: 6 SGD

The first time something relay strange happend since he passed out is when he listens to some really old song from the 2000s while doing push ups, still a very frustrating low amount of push ups.

Can't count the years on one hand

That we've been together

I need the other one to hold you

Make you feel, make you feel better

It's not a walk in the park

To love each other

But when our fingers interlock

Can't deny, can't deny you're worth it

They just came back from a mission where things gone to shit. Since Soap broke up with Sergeant Marvin Schneider he made it a habit again to stargaze from on of their favourite hidden spots of the HSS Churchill. He feels dumb for doing so the last 20 or so missions Soap did not show up to stargaze together so why should he this time? And still he stits here again for hours just in case sometimes checking their other spots before returning here. They are inthe orbit of a earth like planet and you have a fantastic few at the other planets and moons of this solar system. He's wearing just a old comfy sweatshirt and sweatpants. His face is hiden under the hood rested against the window while he looks at the scene in front of him. He nearly didn't hear the steps apraoching in this rally visited part if the base ship the 141 is stationed, thats why its so perfect to just watch the parts of the universe they are currently visiting. He needs a bit longer then he likes to reconiases the steps as Soaps. His heart beat fastens in exitment and a small amount of hope is filling him. The footsteps stop in front of him and Ghost has do to anything to not keep looking at the stars and not at Johnny. Nothing happens for a while and the hope is slowly ripped out if him by dread. What if Soap just goes what if their friendship didn't survive the 2 year shitt show realtionship Soap,just left 9 months ago. The only clue he has is Soap nervously tapping his feet in the ground and he finally moves his unmask face to look at Soap. The Sergeant is bitting his lower lip clearly thinking, his eye widen when he realises that Ghist is not wearing his mask. Ghost jsut pulls his legs closer to himself to make more space for Soap, an inventation from his site. Soap smiles at him before stitting across from Ghost in the opening. "You eh did this all the time the past two years?", Soap ask while looking out the window. "More or less", Ghost answers vaguely no need to tell Soap he rearrange his cabin so he can sit on his bed to watch the starts while resting his head against the glas. "I see", Soap just says sounding small. Ghost just has the tiniest smile on his face the happiness of them maybe doing this together again. Watching the stars together after a mission when they still to full of adrenalin from the mission, when sleep is not coming again, their is time to file before they are send down on a planet. The only reason Ghost keep doing it was because it rembered him who thinks use to be, when nobody ever thought that Ghost and Soap can't work together anymore, before the misunderstandings and jealousy nearly ripped the 141 a part.

And after all this time, I'm still into you

I should be over all the butterflies

But I'm into you (I'm into you)

And baby, even on our worst nights

I'm into you (I'm into you)

Let 'em wonder how we got this far

'Cause I don't really need to wonder at all

Yeah, after all this time, I'm still into you

They sit there for a bit more then a hour when Ghost notice Soap is shivering. It sometimes happens that Soap gets to cold when they are stargazing, no big deal usally, but now it kinda is a big deal. "Soap?", Ghost ask carefully they didn't spoke since the very beginning. Soap looks in his direction. "You're good?", Ghost ask more out of politeness they both know he don't have to ask. "Forgot how ass cold it is here", Soap complains rubbind his arms to get warmer. Ghost chuckels at this before streaching his legs and opening his arms in an unspoken invertation. A light blush is apearing on Soaps cheeks. Ghost swallows nervously afraid he steped over a line he didn't know existed. They don't do this anymore, haven't in nearly 3 years. Soap moves a bit hesitant before moving in between Ghost legs. A whole mount range is failing from Ghost shoulders when he feels Soaps back against his chest, maybe what they had is can be saved. To test the water Ghost closes one arm lose around Soap the other just he uses to place his head on. They stay like this for a while not knowing what to do hiw far the other allows this to go. "Ghost", Soap breaks the tense silence, Ghost just humms to signal he's listening. "Hug me like you mean it or don't do it at all", Soap says displeased with how thinks are in the moment but still offing a out. "That's an order Sergeant?", Ghost ask sarcastic can't stop the big smile. "Yes", Saop answers clearly nervous and unable to detect the sarcasm. Ghost just closes his arms around Soap placing lifting his chin a bit so Soap can tug himself under there if he wants. And Soap does putting his own arms over Ghosts slitting a bit down so he can rest is head against Ghost collar bones. "To your liking?", Ghost wispers in Soaps hair. "Perfect", Soaps says with a big smile that Ghost haven't seen in a long time. A warm feeling is spearding through Ghost chest realising that even they had two hard years he still feels the same about Soap and he has the feeling it's the same for the Sergeant. "Misst this", Ghost admitted in the now comfortable silence eyes growing heavy as he slowly relaxes. "Me too", Soap yawns cuddeling a bit more into Ghost. The calming heart beat of Ghost, of Simon slowly sing him to sleep.

'Cause I don't really need to wonder at all

Yeah, after all this time, I'm still into you

I'm still into you

I'm still into you

Ghost graons when the song changes, he has no idea what the fuck just happend. He just knows he lays face down on the mat he uses for exercise as if his arm just gave up mid push up. He turns around so he lays on the back, tears start to run down his eyes. That was the Soap that feels so familiar, the Soap he knows. With his big smile, bratty attitude, the bluest eye he ever saw, his stupid mohawk. He amount of feelings he expirence right now is overwhelming. So he lays there and crys for a while, before the logical parts of his brain are able to start working again. If mohawk Soap is the Soap he knows... who the fuck is this teacher Soap then? If teacher Soap is a imposter of some sort does this mean that Emma is infact his niece and not his daughter? What is with Price, Gaz, his family are they also not real? Something is wrong and he will figure out what. His first stop are the photos in the hallway. Family photos, Tommys and his graduation, Tommys wedding, Joseph birth and at various ages on family vacations. Then his blood freezes a photo of his father. Its looks like its at some sort of gala. It is a picture of his childhood he looks around 10. His father holding a trophy of some sorts, all of them with big smiles. He looks at his own warm big smile and he understands why his mum calls him sunshine now. It can't keep his rage, disgust and hatred at bay he's feeling. He finds a other photo of his father and his stupid shit band Bone Lickers. He takes the picture of the wall and throws it across the hall. He then taps all the other pictures with his father down bringing them in the kitchen. He thinks about just throwing all of them in the trash, while these arching head ache is flaring up again, that had him passed out nearly a week ago. He fights again the pain, while he rips his father out if all the pictures. Blood is dripping down as he's nose started to bleed before he passes out on the kitchen floor.

Simulation in critical condition Subject got sedated.

Recalculation needed

Integrating of other importent persone: Kate Laswell, Rodolfo Parra, Farha Karim, Alex Keller, Alejandro Vargas, Valeria Graza

Meanwhile

Soap is angry nothing Ghost was missing for 6 SGD and they found nothing. Well besites a bunch of destroyed Soulless, after they needed 5 days to even find Gjost last location. Je fals on his bed face first while tears are gathering in his eyes. They just started to fix their relationship and now Ghost is MIA. They are curently flying to a black book research facility of the Human Intelligence Agency (HIA) delivering the Soulless corps and meaning with some of Laswells agents. It feels so pointless, he still trys to cling to what Gaz said no blood, so Ghost didn't die or got injured. It could mean he escaped unable to contact them and he he hopes that this is the case. Gjost survived worse then the Soulless trap, he digged himself out of a grave with a jaw bone for fucks sake. It still can't stop the tears running down Soaps face at the moment, the pain in his chest taht makes every breath hurt, the fear that is nesting in his bones. Price told him to not get his hopes up to much, but he dont even know if that can be possible. Every lead they followed needed in them having nothing again and still every lead gives hope rhat Soap needs to keep going. But after every dead end he is in his dark cabin crying, the fear of losing Ghost after they just started to repair their friendship pulling him down. Fear of being to late after wasting 2 years in a realtionship with a person he didn't even loved that much, that he missed the chance of having Simon for himself. The door to his cabin is opening and Gaz is looking at the heartbreaking picture in front of him. He talked Alex in to hacking the door to Ghost cabin so he can steal one of Ghost hoodies for Soap for a littel comfort. "Soap?", Gaz carefully ask in the room, getting no answer. He steps in wanting to quickly drop the hoodie but Soaps sobs let him rethink. He carefully sits on the bed running his hand through Soaps mohawk. "You think they already killed him?", Soap sobs out after several minutes of silence. A cold feeling is running down Gaz spine after Alex was allowed to told them some things regarding the Soulless after the briefing. "HIA found evidence that the Soulless try to turn certain enemy soilders in to Soulless and they think that Ghost would be a candidate for this", Gaz says. "Is that good or bad?" "Good." "How long do we have till its to late?" "They are.not sure they think it depends on the individual. And Ghost is a stubborn fucker so we have probably still time." Soap looks up from the pillow tears and snot running down his face. "Thanks Gaz", he just says before dropping his head again. Gaz pushes Soap a bit so make some space, feeling like he can't leave Soap like this alone. "You dont have to stay I'm just crying." "Soap, you're not 'just crying' you're having the worst time of your life. Let me stay for fucks sake." "No complaints about snot on your shirt then" "Fine."

[department-of-landing-strategies]

So I saw a tumblr post on tiktok about Trevor (Neville's toad) being pulled out of the cup as "Trevor Longbottom" and like a totally sane Percy fan it got me thinking, what if Percy was also involved in this.

We start before the champions are chosen. Barty Crouch Jr manages to mess with the cup that's choosing the champions and puts Harry's name in. Meanwhile, a group of Gryffindor 7th year students joke about putting Trevor into the cup under Trevor Longbottom. Let's just assume that the magic involved in the cup means that it knows what students are in the school at the time the tournament is being hosted. Someone then puts Trevor in as Trevor Longbottom sometime between Harry's name being put in and the champion choosing. Since Trevor is a pet and not a student, it only gets registered as a possibility because of the meddling needed to make Harry's name come out as a 4th champion.

Cut to the champion choosing with Crouch Sr watching Dumbledore read out the champions that got chosen and Bagman in the side chamber that the champions go to. Since Crouch Sr is there, Percy is also watching Dumbledore read out the names the cup chose. Everything is going smoothly. Then the cup chooses a 4th champion, and turning out to be a 2nd Hogwarts champion when Dumbledore reads out the name "Trevor Longbottom". Obviously the teacher are confused and questioning if Alice and Frank had a 2nd boy. Majority of 3rd years and younger don't know who that this and some are curious who that is because the thing to remember is that Percy's to Ginny's years at least is small compared to the usual Hogwarts year size due to the 1st wizarding war so it's a lot easier to remember who's in what year if you really tried. The 4th years and up are either curious as to who it is or having varying reactions to the fact that Neville's toad just got chosen as a champion. The latter's mostly the Gryffindor table but it can be seen on the other tables such as Luna (a 3rd year Neville's friends with) and Penny (a 7th year whose heard about Trevor's antics from Percy) on the Ravenclaw table. Neville's just sat in shock because he's sure he didn't have anything to do with Trevor's name being pulled besides Trevor being his pet but he's going through his memory as quick as possible in case he did have something to do with Trevor being a 4th champion. Percy, meanwhile, very quickly gets over his shock of Tervor being pulled and gets to work trying to convince his boss to move on without mentioning the fact that Trevor is a toad for reasons I don't have the energy to come up with rn before Neville has to bring his toad up to the teachers area of the Great Hall. Crouch Sr having had a son concludes that Trevor is a friend or lover of Percy's that's currently sick because why else would his assistant cover for someone that failed to show up for a mandatory feast. Ultimately, he moves on while entrusting Percy to relay the rules of the tournament and the contents of the magical contract binding the champions to their participation in the tournament (which Percy later offers to share with the 3 human champions chosen) to this Trevor person.

Cue a Percy and Neville centric A-Plot of this au version of GOF featuring a friendship forming between Percy and Neville, Crouch Sr finding out that Trevor is a toad sometime between Rita's interviews and the First Task, sirens going off in someone's head about Percy being put in charge of the tournament and the consequences of Trevor being entered into the tournament for both Percy and Neville. The B-Plot is Harry just having a semi regular school year while Crouch Jr is coming up with ways to get Harry into the graveyard to resurrect He-Who-Only-Feared-Dumbledore. If we want to add shipping for Percy, then I would say the main four options are the champions and Penny. Obviously, there are other options, but I think the champions and Penny are the most obvious. We can maybe even throw Neville having a crush on Percy that could maybe turn into something post-Hogwats depending if we go past GOF into the shipping pot as well

[ahollowgrave]

There was a post asking RPers with moon-worshipping characters how they handle the moon's revelation, especially with Endwalker. But! I am too shy to reblog that with my actual answers so instead I will post this two page rambling under a cut. (:

Okay, so I look at it through two lenses: 1) How much does your average citizen know about the big wide star and everything our beloved Warrior of Light gets up to in saving it all the time?

There are things in the real world I don’t know and things I am shocked to find out other people don’t know!

The history of the Star is vast and dense and no one can possibly know every crumb of it. 

2) Faith requires a sort of peace in knowing you don’t and won’t know certain things. If you have all the answers to all your questions, you don’t need faith.

The asking of questions is vital, here. If you are not curious about the world around you how can you possibly come to love it and those it shelters? If you believe for a second that you have all the answers to all the questions then your curiosity dies. 

That said with Odette and her convent it really boils down to:  They don’t know!

Odette is young, she may not have been alive during Dalamud’s fall and Bahamut’s defeat. I’m not really sure because time bubbles and I’m very vague with her age because time is my mortal enemy. When the moon started its fall the convent probably took it to mean: gods mad. Who wouldn’t? Even the faithless might pray under such a thing, no?  But the convent is secluded and news is slow to reach them and what does reach them is often embellished or outdated or just untrue. They must pick through the stories they are told and find the truth of the matter - which is subjective, as well! What is true for one might not be true for another. 

It is a bit of a chore, is what I am trying to say, and unreliable narrators are aplenty.

Currently, the Convent believes that earlier scripture naming Dalamud as Menphina’s Loyal Hound were written by Spoken who were trying to make sense of the world around them. They got it wrong, but no doubt there are things we get wrong even now with all our knowledge. 

The point of their faith is not to get things 100% right all the time but rather to meet the star and her denizens with hearts full of love. They don’t allow dogs at the convent, however.

The news out of EW is another matter since it still feels very fresh and new. Odette has stepped into the role of Nun Errant and she does relay information back to her Convent, either in person or via letter. I don’t know if the news of the WoL fighting the 12 made papers and so far it seems that most of the Loporrits that stayed star-side are in Old Sharlayan to learn! A big ship did go beyond the moon but that was… beyond the moon! So, like the nuns, I don’t know! They are but Spoken creatures, they question, yes, but it is difficult for them to see the grand picture being as small as they are.  It should be noted that Odette is not the warrior of light. I try very hard for her to not know everything the warrior of light gets up to in the MSQ because she, realistically, would not know. She’s just some nun! What I CAN say is that if Odette knew everything that I, the player, know she would still worship the Moon and Menphina. Imprisoning Zodiark before more needless death, setting the Loporrits to building a fallback and escape plan, reincarnating her closest and most trusted allies to serve as deities and make sure he cannot be freed? That’s love, baby. Of course, Menphina, the deity of Love, would be the keeper of the moon and its secrets! Also, almost none of this answered the secondary questions but… This is already very long but I could go on about the dark side of the moon, what it means to love, and all that but I’ll end it with this: It is okay for your characters to be wrong and make mistakes, IC! Let them have harmlessly bad and factually untrue opinions. 

BONUS: I recall a question about how a manmade moon might effect a god or goddess who is tied to it! But -- prayer and belief is were deities get their powers.

Well, the 12 as we know them are kind of ‘manmade’ themselves. Yes, Venat sort of reincarnated her most trusted allies, however… It was shown that prayers have the power to change them! We know that this altered Halone in some ways and I believe that it altered Menphina the same. Basically: Enough of her worshippers thought Dalamud was her ‘loyal hound’ and so she got a loyal hound. So, why should the moon(s) be any different?

[ratwhsprs]

Sewers. They were always a place for strange or illegal happenings. Syndicates used them to ship contraband, move unseen, and do other more nefarious acts under the noses of GPD and the city's local vigilante. So too did the cities' rogues - and something that was distinctly... foreign.

Heavy steps echoing with muted tones off of cobbled walls, a large creature made it's way along the twilit gloom. Fiery, ember red gaze panned to and fro as ears perked for wayward sounds, ever cautious of the presence of man. Gotham was a foreign big city to a troll who was instead used to Arcadia; and with twice stolen vehicular engines the Gumm-Gumm hoped he could slip away as unnoticed as he'd come. [ @crystal-grotto ]

Electricity was the main thing he was picking up from his rats. Otis could only think that maybe something had happened to one of the electrical relays that powered the sparse lighting around the immediate maintenance areas...

He just couldn't work out what the animals meant by “moving stone”. That was a new one. He rounded the next corner and froze in his tracks at the looming figure ahead of him.

Croc was the biggest thing Otis could think of that frequented Gotham's sewers. With the size and tail, that would have been his immediate assumption. He would have been content to head on his way with that thought… except Croc was currently in Arkham. 

And with the horns and fur? This guy wasn't him. Otis took a step back.

“... you're not gonna try and eat me, are you?” Came the anxiety-driven waver of his voice.

@crystal-grotto

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 3, exploring and Priority: Palaven:

-Broadly speaking, many planetary descriptions are the same as they are in ME1 or ME2. Some have minor differences.

It’s disappointing. The descriptions have always been an excellent opportunity for world building and ME3 barely utilizes them.

Harsa

-Khar’shan – It’s implied that the reign of the Hegemony is over. Whatever the future may bring, the batarian government will be different.

It’ll be interesting to see if the next Mass Effect game holds to that or not.

Annos Basin

-Sur’kesh – The salarians avoid overpopulation by careful breeding rules.

I suspect part of their frustration with the krogan is the krogan’s refusal to do the same. After all, both species lay eggs. If the salarians can maintain a steady population, why not the krogan?

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but the salarians likely consider those bits irrelevant.

-The salarians are noted as an amphibious species.

Trebia

-The turians classifying information about their moons is amusing. I’m sure records already existed in other species’ systems; did classifying them actually accomplish anything?

Also, how hard is the information to refind? We calculate information about solar bodies that we will never reach in our time. Surely doing so for Palaven’s moons is even easier when you can just swing by a mass relay to observe them first hand.

-Menae – Shepard has no dialogue choices on the shuttle but speaks plenty.

I don’t plan to mention this every time it comes up, but the lack of control of Shepard in this game is grating.

-The turians are under attack and scraping by, so of course Shepard will loot multiple weapons and mods. I’m sure they won’t mind.

-Speaking of, the interaction sensitivity in ME3 is turned down way too much. You have to get very close to an item for it to alert you. The sensitivity in ME2 was much better.

-You should be able to speak to General Corinthus after the initial dialogue with him.

He could provide a lot of additional information and lore on the turian military and current situation. Huge missed opportunity by Bioware.

-Why are the primary enemies husks?

The Reapers are actively fighting the turians. Palaven is right there. We should primarily be fighting marauders.

-You get no additional information on what Taetrus is or why Victus was there, so if you’ve never read up on the Cerberus Network screw you. Figure it out by context.

I’m actually okay with that part – Shepard should know what Taetrus is. However, Bioware could easily have tweaked the dialogue to make it more clear for players and should have added a codex entry on the Taetrus war.

-I’m puzzled at why Victus’ actions on Taetrus are considered so radical.

He let the separatists and the salarians wear each other out, then swooped in and took both out.

Isn’t that what Palaven did during the unification wars?

Palaven remained neutral, let the colonies wear themselves out fighting each other, then swooped in and forced them to make peace and rejoin the Hierarchy.

If anything, Victus’ actions should be considered traditional.

-What’s the point of sending Liara back to the Normandy because it’s behaving strangely?

She’s not an engineer. She’s not even especially good with technology. She sent Shepard to hack those terminals in ME2 on Illium because they’re better at it than her.

I suppose that after the Collectors invaded the Normandy in ME2 it’s not unreasonable for everyone to be a bit jumpy and want a strong fighter on the ship.

-How do the turians feel about Garrus so easily falling in line with Shepard?

He’s clearly high ranking now, but he recognizes Shepard as a superior and accepts their orders.

Sure, Shepard’s a spectre and a war hero but that must still seem strange.

-As many have said, the image of Victus facing Palaven as he processes that he’s the primarch now is powerful.

-On the way to Victus, James mentions the lack of batarians and krogans at the war summit. They should be there as strong fighters.

The batarians are out of the picture because the Hegemony is effectively destroyed. The krogans hate turians and salarians and therefore won’t attend.

Then Victus immediately says the krogans will be needed.

Good foreshadowing on Bioware’s part, and Victus has already been established as a loose canon so it feels natural.

-What is Garrus’ title while he’s on the Normandy with Shepard?

He continues to be Victus’ advisor so there’s presumably some formal arrangement between the Hierarchy and Alliance that Shepard doesn’t care about.

Ambassador? Seconded? Detached?

Normandy

-Hackett acknowledges that everything he does is just a delaying action to build the Crucible. The war will not be won head on.

-Once again, the dangers of building the Crucible when nobody knows what it does is raised. However, there aren’t any better options so build it it is.

And they wonder why the other species are reluctant to join in?

-Hackett says that Cerberus does not have humanity’s best interests at heart.

Considering that Arrival is supposed to be played last in ME2 and it ends with Hackett saying that at least Cerberus is doing something about the state of the galaxy, that’s quite a turn around.

It feels like the writer of ME2 and ME3 were working from different scripts. Which is bizarre, because they’re mostly the same writers.

-Shepard mentions that TIM wants to control the Reapers. Hackett dismisses it; the war will end with dead reapers.

This is what I mean by the endings are not a natural extension of the game. This is the perfect opportunity to hint that Control might be viable – either by Hackett suggesting that TIM might be on the right track or Shepard pushing back that they think it may work.

But the way the scene plays out, Control is treated as failure state. Of course players reject it as valid choice. The game tells them it isn’t one.

Codex

-The Codex says that Reaper capital ships are created from one species each cycle.

It also says the Reapers have lost multiple capital ships this cycle.

That must be extremely heavy losses for them.

-The entry for krogan ancient history mentions Kalros to explain why krogan architecture can withstand vibrations despite Tuchanka not having many earthquakes.

Once again, good foreshadowing by Bioware. This is mentioned well in advance of Priority: Tuchanka.

-Why is Garrus referred to as a combat engineer? He’s an infiltrator.

[jankwritten]

love needs sacrifice (but it's sure worth the prize)

so we accidentally hijacked a post yesterday about Jason putting makeup on Nico and then @phthalomars drew this art and I couldn't resist the urge to write about it. I'll post the fic both below the cut and over on AO3 so you can read it wherever you'd like (if you'd like hehe).

It's about 1.8k, rated general, ship is Jasico but they're not actually together yet. Nothing triggering (though if you ask me to I will put a warning!) aside from a very brief mention to accidental injury while shaving. Hope you enjoy!

“And you’re sure it’s not going to stain?” 

Nico has to physically fight down an eyeroll at Jason’s insistence. You’d think he’d never seen lipstick before, gods, the nerves on this boy. “Even if it does, it’ll be fine. Just don’t get it on yourself, if you’re that worried about it.” 

“I-I just, you know, I don’t want you to be stuck with it. If- If I screw it up.” 

“You won’t screw it up.” It’s a simple fact. Jason has a steady hand, made so by the years of swordcraft - warcraft, really - that he’s endured. Nico would trust Jason to hold a blade over his throat and leave him without a knick, if he’s being honest. 

He shifts a bit, remembering the last time he accidentally cut himself when he shaved what little beard he ever manages to grow. Maybe he should do that, actually, ask Jason to help him not make a bloody mess out of his face every week. But- that is a question for later, since something so impermanent as lipstick already has Jason chewing on his mouth like Nico’s asked him to drink poison again. There’s a lot of trust between them, but it’s not trust Jason has in himself, yet. 

“If you’re really sure,” Jason finally sighs, and presses his hand against Nico’s cheek. He fixes his glasses with the back of his other hand, the wand of the lipstick held pen-like between his fingers. It’s endearing. Nico’s sure he’ll adjust to a more comfortable grip once he gets started. 

He lets his mouth fall slightly open, like Will always tells him to whenever he’s tapped to help with this. Nico tries not to tense up, keeping his face relaxed even as Jason’s chilly fingers glide over a sensitive part just under his jaw, tilting his head up. It’s easier than it would’ve been two years ago. He’s trusted Jason with much more than his face before. 

There was a quest, not too many months ago, wherein Jason dangled him over a cliff’s edge, to trick their enemy into believing he’d turned his back on Nico, that he’d let him fall to his death in order to save his own skin. Nico remembers hovering just out of sight, Jason’s currents keeping him tucked neatly against the stone mountain face, clutching himself in tight, desperately not thinking about how unpleasant it would be to die if Jason’s concentration slipped. He remembers holding his own heart, desperately, when it tried to climb out of his throat, listening to Jason monologue about never being good enough, about never being accepted, until the moment was right that he yanked Nico back up and ambushed their enemy. 

They had a lot to talk about on their trek back to camp after that one. 

Their spoils of war had been a beautiful bronze shield, which Jason had originally held up between them like the physical barrier might keep Nico from asking him if he’d really believed any of that stuff he said, their first night after the fight. Jason was the one who told Nico that as long as he loved himself, it didn’t matter if the people at camp thought he was good enough or accepted him, after all. The monologue had felt real. Jason was also the one who taught him that talking about his feelings was important. 

That was what cracked him open, actually - Nico relaying everything Jason had painstakingly taught him since he was fourteen years old, until the hypocrisy of it had Jason laying the shield flat before the fire and hugging himself, instead. 

It was a good conversation, even if Nico felt like it came a year or two too late. He’s just happy that it happened at all. 

The first brush of cool liquid on his lips startles him back out of the warm fuzzy memory, his shoulders tensing up uncomfortably fast. 

It’s always odd when he doesn’t expect it, when the makeup applicator isn’t guided by his own clumsy hand - it’s always like a knee-jerk reaction to twitch away from the initial slimy feeling. Jason’s palm keeps him steady, though, tightening like he can feel Nico’s attempted recoil. 

“Sorry,” Jason murmurs, though it’s obvious his concentration is turned to max - he sounds distant, low and soft like it’s more of an afterthought to apologize than his first instinct. Nico doesn’t respond. He doesn’t want to move his mouth now that Jason’s in the zone. 

The rest of the makeup Jason’s helped him with has today been flawless: his eyeliner is perfect and precise, equal on both sides in a way that Will didn’t even get on his first try, his eyebrows masterfully arched in the way that he’s loved every since Drew put it on him at the campfire however many years ago, his face covered in blush so heavy it almost looks like sunburn (a style that he actually really loves, even though it drags attention to his cheeks and his nose. It makes him feel cute, and that’s the whole point). Jason even drew a dainty little heart, right on the tip of his nose, with a liquid highlighter in shimmery white-blue, two confident, swift strokes that they laughed about not even ten minutes ago.  

He’s honestly not sure why the lips are what got into Jason’s head. He’s trying not to think about why, actually. Actively pushing it out of his mind. 

Jason swipes the wand across the left half of Nico’s lower lip. His hair tickles against Nico’s browbone. 

Nico hadn’t even noticed Jason getting that close, though now that he has it’s- hard to tune out Jason’s mouth is set into a firm line, his eyes battlefield-intense on his handiwork like if he even so much as blinks, he’ll ruin it. His glasses are slipping back down his nose. It doesn’t seem like he notices. 

Nico tries to distract himself from staring, trying to zone out on the fine hairs of Jason’s eyebrows (Piper plucks them for him) or the pores on his forehead, but his gaze inevitably sinks to Jason’s eyes, again and again. It’s hard not to be drawn into the cliche electricity of them, what can he say. They glow, not unlike Percy’s when he’s standing on the beach, like there’s some kind of backlit nature to them, like there’s something not quite human trying to beat against the supposed window to his soul.

 Blue feels too simplistic of a color for it, when Jason’s all intense like this - cerulean, maybe. Aegean. Spruce. Maybe it’s all three at once, even, shifting in the same way the clouds do, the way the sky does when it fades from evening to the golden time, blue time, to dusk. 

Jason’s eyes flicker, darting as they chart the path of Nico’s lips. 

He tries not to shift, but he’s overly warm all of a sudden, wearing a borrowed Camp Jupiter hoodie and jeans and socks with Jason’s warm palm against his pulse. They’re so close Nico half worries Jason can smell his breath or something. He definitely can. He can’t really close his mouth, though, or else he’ll ruin Jason’s work and concentration, and that feels like too much of a betrayal even though his tongue is suddenly dry and he can’t quite swallow. 

The delicate swab of the lipstick brushes over the final quadrant of his mouth, painstakingly dipping against the inner corner of his lip, gently touching up the peaks that form his Cupid’s bow, going over details and crevices with that same fucking perfectionists touch that Jason goes over his temple dioramas, or a plan of action to propose to the senate of New Rome. Jason tilts Nico’s head back down, his palm shifting ever so slightly, eyes narrowing. 

Nico holds his breath as Jason leans in closer. His eyes widen. What is he doing? 

“There,” Jason whispers after he brushes one of his fingernails, adorned with powder blue polish, against what must’ve been the tiniest flaw on Nico’s bottom lip. He doesn’t move backward. “I think you’re good.” 

Nico still can’t quite catch his breath, even as he closes his lips and presses them together, adjusting to the newly tacky feeling that will dry down in a minute. He watches Jason watch him. He watches Jason blink. He watches Jason meet his eyes. 

That damn cliche gets him again; he feels like he’s being electrocuted, like his body is stuck frozen holding on to something that’s killing him, unable to let go because every muscle is locked up tense with a thousand volts coursing everywhere all at once. Jason doesn’t fix his glasses even as they fall right onto the tip of his nose, barely holding on. His mouth falls slightly open, this time. 

Nico loves him so much it’s frying him alive. 

“Thank you,” he makes himself say in a voice ten times steadier than he feels. Jason tilts backward all of a sudden and fixes his glasses and puts the lipstick away, freeing Nico from the livewire. He averts his eyes over to the only window in the cabin, on the wall opposite the door, staring out at the garden he keeps for Persephone out back because it’s so much easier to look at right now. He gulps a couple of times, trying to wash moisture back into his tongue. Gods. “Where’d the mirror go?” He needs to look at himself instead of Jason, needs to reverse the intensity of whatever he’s just admitted to himself. Of course he loves Jason, Jason is his best friend, he loves him in the same way he loves Annabeth, the same way he loves Reyna, or Leo. Of course he feels it all in the exact same, pit-deep, knee-jerk, spine-snapping way. Duh. It’s all the same. It has to be. 

Jason hands him the skull-shaped handheld mirror Piper got him for his seventeenth birthday. Nico stares into it without really seeing himself, only his bright cherry flush underneath the inauthentic pink Jason painstakingly color matched to look soft on his skin, the too-wide set of his eyes. The width of his pupils. 

“It looks great, Jason,” he compliments without once glancing down at his own lips. He lowers the mirror and understands why Jason kept the shield between them on that quest. He pulls his knees all the way up to his chest and hugs them, ignoring the way the hole in the knee of his jeans pulls painfully on his skin. He can only meet Jason’s eyes for half-second increments. He can still see his own face reflected there. 

Jason exhales like he meant to laugh but forgot the muscles for it. His shoulders sink. “You’re welcome, Nico,” he says. His voice is soft, not at all the one he uses when they’re around other people, the one that leads armies and wins wars. This one is a follower. “I’m always happy to help.” 

A sick little ache in his chest convinces Nico that that tone sounds like I love you too. 

But he’s got his own shield between them still. 

For now, it’s just the makeup. 

[benjaminthewolf]

A Chef’s Snack (Vore Story)

OH BOY WHERE TO EVEN START ON THIS ONE-

So this story was started all the way back during the summer but was abandoned soon after. Only now have I decided to come back and finish it, and wow I cannot describe to you the amount of relief I feel now that this is finally done. Just uh…yeah, enjoy.

****

“ COME BACK HERE WITH THOSE BABY TAPIRS, DONITA!” Chris Kratt cried out to the villainous fashion designer Donita Donata between his sprinting pants through the dense, humid Brazilian rainforest as she continued to comfortably cruise along in her pink jet-scooter while hauling a bunch of captured Tapir young behind herself via posebeam.

“YEAH, THEY DON’T DESERVE TO BE MADE INTO FUR COATS FOR YOUR FASHION LINE! THEY DESERVE TO BE LIVING FREE AND IN THE WILD!” his brother Martin added on just a few seconds later.

To the Kratt brothers’ persistent, unwavering trademark environmental preaching, Donita could only scoff and roll her eyes.

“Dabio, would you be so kind as to take care of them for me please? I need to work on designing my new line of Tapir fur products; OOH LA LA! Isn’t it just exquisite?” she instructed her decidedly dim-witted and gullible, yet somehow considerably handsome, blonde, and buff minion laying leisurely upon the backseat of the scooter.

Dabio, adhering to Donita’s demands, instantly pulled another pose beam ball out of cartoon hammerspace and aimed it towards the pursuing brothers, letting out an obedient: “Yes, Donita!” as he did. The first couple shots were just barely able to be dodged by the chasing brothers, ducking and weaving away from the commanding control of the magenta energy beams as they did their very best to keep up the pace on the two longtime greed-filled eco-villains.

Unbeknownst to the two brothers, however, was that Donita’s current Tapir plight, was only but a diversion. A diversion that would allow the show’s other two main villains to infiltrate the Wild Kratts Tortuga completely unseen.

“Hehehehehe! Never saw this one coming, isn’t that right you Wild Ratts?” Zach Varmitech, a tall lean man with smooth, black shiny hair, as well as a goatee, a black sweater, green eyes, and pale gray skin slowly rose out of some nearby brush twiddling his fingers together in the way that cartoon villains do.

“Once we steal those o’ so precious tellurium crystals right out of that turtle ship from under your noses, it's bye bye to your beloved creature adventuring FOREVER! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!”

“And better yet, Zach,” the villainous chef Gourmand piped up as he, too, rose up from the brush. “Once those crystals are ours, we’ll be able to kickstart OUR OWN creature adventuring with generous amounts of funding! Hehehehehehe!”

Gourmand wore a typical chef’s outfit, and had a rather large, muscular upper body and arms, as well as a shaved head, with a bulbous, pink nose protruding from the middle of his face that he considered to be his best feature. He had a metal quiver on his back that held a wide array of cooking utensils from spatulas to rolling pins.

Whilst Donita continued leading Chris and Martin left right, diagonal, and away from Tortuga HQ through the thick, humid, sight-inhibiting floor of the lively Brazilian Rainforest, Zach and Gourmand villainously tip-toed towards the Wild Kratt crew’s iconic turtle ship as silently as they could manage, before at last, they were lying within some bushes just a few feet away from the entrance ramp leading up to the unorthodox aircraft’s main door, prompting Gourmand to relay the plan to his heist partner one last time before said plan was put into action.

“Okay Zach, now ya see that shell plate panel thing that’s riiight above the leg on the right side?”

“Wha-of course I do! I’m not that incompitent!” Zach semi-agressively snapped back, causing Gourmand to roll his eyes.

“Well if you lift up that panel, there’s a secret entrance into the air ducts through there.” he did his best to continued on in the most professional tone he could muster.

“...because of course it's always gotta be the air ducts.” Zach grumbled to himself as he and Gourmand began to rise out of the bushes once more in order to sneak their way over to the Tourtuga’s right leg.

Once the two of them had made it, Zach immediately began trying to hop up onto the light green, metal limb in order to reach the described panel. When this didn’t work, he thought he might be able to scale it by climbing. Upon witnessing both of these attempts failing miserably, Gourmand smacked his palm on his forehead.

“Can you seriously not make it up there?” he sighed heavily in slight embarrassment to his heist partner as the struggling, weak man slowly slid back down the slick electronic leg upon yet another attempt to climb up it.

“Easy for you to say! I’m not the one with the grotesque, hairy gorilla arms here!” Zach instantly spat back in contempt, before realizing just how stupid he really was to have uttered that sentence but a nanosecond later, prompting him to frantically screech out: “WAIT NO NO NO NO NO NO NO WAIT!” in a desperate attempt to save his skinny ass from what was coming next. Unfortunately for him, the deed had already been done.

A, naturally, considerably pissed off and rage-blinded Gourmand bolted over to the foot of the metal limb, picking up Zach’s now completely and utterly limp-from-fear being by the back of his sweater’s neck, aggressively and non-mercifully twirling him around a few times in his grasp, before at last letting go and firmly flinging him up towards the panel with speed that would make a Cheetah jealous; but due to Gourmand having aimed a little too high, Zach splat face-first onto a panel a couple feet above instead, sliding down the smooth surface of the shell plates as such with that iconic cartoon squeaking noise, before at last sticking a landing. His legs dangled freely on either side of the turtle ship’s own, the impact causing him to let out a bit of a pained “Ow…” a few seconds later, leaving Gourmand from below filled to the absolute brim with nothing, zip, nada, but the sweet, sweet, sweet feeling of revenge.

“AHAHAHAHAH! JUST LIKE AN ANNOYING LITTLE FLY, YES, THAT’S WHAT YOU ARE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

As Gourmand only continued to cry out his gutheral screeches of victory, Zack on top of the leg had finally recovered to the point where he was able to start fumbling his fingers around on the surface of the panel in an attempt to figure out how to open it. After a few seconds of aimlessly tapping around and praying something would happen, the metallic plate finally opened up via a subtle beep noise and a subsequent sliding down into an unseen compartment somewhere underneath, causing the thin, goth man observing the spectacle to give a small shrug, shake his head for a while, and at last call out a firm “HEY!” to the chortiling chef below in an attempt to reassert some level of control over the situation at large.

“Yeah that’s right ya fatty, stand still and be shocked! ‘Cause while you were down there gloating your supposed superiority, I actually managed to get this stuppid thing to open, so why don’t you make yourself at least somewhat useful and get inside already?”

Gourmand almost instantly screeched to a halt. “I’m sorry…what did you just say to me, now?” he slowly scowled out, naturally not very fond of having his situational authority challenged. Or being called a fatty.

“I SAID GET A MOVE ON YA BIG FAT LUG, OR HOW ELSE ARE WE GONNA STEAL THOSE CRYSTALS?” Zack’s voice echoed out from inside the Wild Kratts’ ship as the lean, gray man carefully clambered his way inside.

Despite all his past attempts to make sure that this mission happened the other way round in terms o the division of power, Gourmand was now left with absolutely nothing else he could do except silently follow behind, letting out a slight *pffft* noise, narrowing his eyes and sticking out his tongue in the direction Zack had just been, before at last making his way over to the Tortuga’s leg, so he may climb up its length, and finally make his way inside.

****

“NNNNRGH-STUPID-AAAA!” Gourmand growled out in irritation due to having gotten somewhat stuck in the tortuga’s ventilation system on the way into its chambers. A sudden pop noise could be heard echoing through the air, followed promptly by a great thud, an “OOF!” and finally, a low-pitched “Ungh…”

“Well…” the former gourmet chef mumbled to himself while gazing rather transfixatedly around the room. “We’re here.”

Brushing himself off as he peeled his poor, flattened being off the ground, Zack could only murmur a few somewhat agreeing: “Yeah, yeah, whatever” s as he, too, surveyed the area around them.

The two of them had ended up inside the invention storage room, surrounded in full by all the technological bits and bobs that the Wild Kratts crew would utilize on each of their creature inventions. Everything from the iconic miniaturizer to the lesser known buzz bikes were there.

As none of these inventions were the planned targets of the two villains, however, both of them were rather quick to internally dismiss them all as useful to the mission as they attempted to remember what room the tellurium crystals they were actually after were even located in in the first place.

“I…can’t seem to remember, was it the engine room?” Zack calmly asked himself out loud as Gourmand right behind him only rolled his eyes.

“Didn’t Donita tell you this before we started the mission?” he piped up suddenly at the sight of Zack not remembering the room.

“Tell YOU?” The thin, gray man almost immediately snapped back while scoffing in disgust. “She told the both of us! Don’t you try to weasel yourself out of responsibility this time, big nose!”

It was right in that moment, right in that one, singular moment, when Gourmand’s being snapped. Clenching his teeth aggressively whilst taking one step forward, the now positively fuming man could only let out a hushed: “I’m sorry, what did you say about my nose?” while maintaining rather tight eye contact with his soon to be victim as such, provided Zack refused to apologize right then and there of course. Making fun of his weight was one thing. Making fun of his arms was another thing. But making fun of his nose? His beloved king sized schnoz? Nuh-uh. That. THAT. Crossed a line.

“YEAH YOU HEARD ME YOU PATHETIC CHUBBY NOSED CHEF! YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A REAL LICENSE! AT LEAST I HAVE A LEGITIMATE INVENTOR’S LICENSE, YOU-”

Silence. All that rang throughout the Tortuga HQ’s invention storage room in those next few seconds, was, quite simply, only silence.

****

“Urrrgh… *cough cough* ugh…where am I?” a considerably groggy Zack, who couldn’t remember at first how he had gotten knocked out in the first place, wheezed out while gingerly lifting his head off the floor. The first thing he was able to pick up was the color white upon the ground. While this did indeed confirm to him that he hadn’t been killed by whatever force had previously knocked him unconscious, it still left him with far, far more questions than answers.

Attempting to clear his vision as he made out many large, blurry, multi-colored shapes from his slowly adjusting field of view, Zack’s eyes swiftly snapped onto what was currently the biggest object he could see, a largely tan one with a bit more white around it to boot. The poor, gray man would have to wait a little while for his brain to finish booting back up before he was able to place an identity on what the thing was, but luckily for him, the moment this task was accomplished, the rest of his previously waking body practically insta-reset itself in a jolt as the terrified, skinny man frantically scrambled to his feet.

“G-GOURMAND!” was all he was able to sputter out as the now gigantic chef before him gave a single hearty laugh.

“YES THAT’S RIGHT YA PUNY, FRAIL LITTLE COCKROACH! TOOK YA LONG ENOUGH TO ESCAPE FROM DREAMLAND, HUH? DIDN’T IT?”

Zack was absolutely lost for words. Not because of anything Gourmand was saying to him, but because he still had absolutely no clue how he had gotten so small in the first place. It wasn’t until he began to meticulously piece all his observations together, however, did he finally understand. The white-gray bottom, the circular shape, the fact he was shrunk…all of it could only point towards one thing…

“LOOKS LIKE THIS DARNED MINIATURIZER CAME OF SOME USE FOR ME AFTER ALL, HEHEHE!” Gourmand only continued on, hurling sentence after sentence of overjoyed, catharsis inducing insults at his tiny fellow villain, as Zack standing on the center of the invention was only able to stand still and shudder.

“...wh-what’s going to happen to me now?” Zack slowly stammered out in pure, undistilled horror as the looming giant before him formed a cheeky grin upon his face.

“WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN TO YA? WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN TO YA? THINK ABOUT IT, ZACK!” Gourmand practically howled out at the miniaturized man below as the delightful jittering across his body only grew. “Why…I am a chef, Zack.” Gourmand began to explain before swiftly reaching out an arm and aggressively clenching his grasp around the form of the poor, unresisting tiny as such, before getting up to his full height and raising his fist to the sky. “Which would, naturally, make you……MY DINNER!”

And just like that, Gourmand’s fist opened up, causing Zack to plummet unrelentingly into the gaping, cavernous maw that awaited him below. The larger man’s hot breath brushed upon his skin as he breached the barrier of the lips, causing Gourmand to snap shut his jaws but a mere second later, trapping poor Zack inside as a result.

Zack had become so mentally numb at this point that he didn’t even fight back at all as the slick, smooth tongue gently slid its way out underneath him and began to douse him thoroughly with its warm, sticky saliva, starting, of course, with his head. The sleek, pink muscle trailed across the shrunken man’s hair and face, coating it nicely in a thin layer of wetness, before tracing itself around the man’s middle, stopping periodically so it may savor the taste upon its buds for but a few moments.

Gourmand could not help but drool a little as he rigorously examined the flavor. Zack tasted a bit like a delicious Oreo cookie, his dark black hair and clothes acting as the cookie’s exterior, while his gray-ish skin exuded the taste of the creamy white stuff within. The considerably larger chef on the outside delicately soaked in the tingling upon his tongue as he practically wrapped up poor Zack in a squishy blanket of flesh before sensually swishing him between his cheeks, warming and wetting the poor man even further with each and every single second gone by.

Eventually, though, it was time for Zack to be delivered down to his ultimate destination. Thus, carefully unwrapping his tongue from his prey, Gourmand immediately flung the poor, unresponsive man all the way towards the back of his throat, the practically frozen man within just barely avoiding scraping his head against the rough ridges at the roof of the maw, and leaving him hanging head-first above the gullet as soon as he landed, able as such to stare all the way down into its deep, squelching confies of Gourmand’s throat, the plump, dangling uvula swinging freely above his head all the while.

Gourmand was just about ready to gulp, thus squeezing Zack into his esophagus and sending him plummeting down towards his stomach, before, for the second time this hour, his body instantly froze.

Zack on the inside had no way of knowing what was going on. In his mind, Gourmand was only stalling the swallow as a method of teasing him, going “Haha, I have the ability to send you into your doom at any time I like, but I choose to suspend the moment, if only for my pleasure!”

Quite unfortunately for the larger man on the outside, however, that was not to be the case. Aviva, Koki, and Jimmy, who had only now returned to the Tortuga, honestly would’ve just chalked it up as a gulp of fear if they had really noticed it, but ultimately, it really didn’t matter. All Gourmand was able to sense in those next few moments were the blurry forms of the rapidly dissipating world and people around him as he frantically dashed for the exit, taking the door closest to him that the three members of the Wild Kratts crew weren’t blocking the way of.

Of course, Zack on the inside still had no idea that what had previously been his and Gourmand’s mission was interrupted. All he was able to pick up as the pink, squishy muscles of the throat continuously squeezed him on down, was the distant, yet rapidly growing heartbeat (in both speed and intensity of course, not like Zack was able to tell,) that boomed and thumped away inside the larger man’s chest.

By the time that the only thing separating Zack from Gourmand’s heart was a thin layer of slick, smooth muscle and saliva, the pounding was practically echoing all around him as his ears worked rapidly to make sense of all the intense audible waves being delivered into them, causing poor Zack within to become numb to the sounds as well after a while, leaving him thus unable to tell when he was to be squelched through the lower esophageal sphincter and make a splash landing into the giant chef’s stomach as a result. Of course, he still had the option to just, well, look down, but in his current state of mind, such a logical thought was practically impossible to be formed, and due to all this, once Zack could feel his feet entering out into a considerably wider area, he knew his journey was just about done.

Gourmand, meanwhile, only seemed to be getting started. Yes, he had managed to get out of the Tortuga just fine at this point, much to the combined confusion of emotions that was relief and dismay of the Wild Kratts crew, but since he had managed to get through that hurdle…now what? He had made it here via Donita’s jet, not his truck, and frankly, he had absolutely no idea where that thing was parked at the moment, so for now, his only option was to run. Internally cursing himself for not knowing where a gigantic, pink jet was located in the middle of a dense, green jungle, Gourmand eventually decided to just dive headfirst into the nearest hole in the ground he saw, and pray continuously that no animal that he couldn’t beat in a fight was inside. Not even a second after he had done this, however, did he sense a slight sloshing motion coming from within his guts. Reasoning it must’ve been from Zack landing inside his stomach, Gourmand let out a sigh. Then he began to think. And think…and…well…eventually, Gourmand had an epiphany.

Yes, the mission failed. Yes, he didn’t have the crystals. Yes, Donita was probably going to hate him for months upon months upon months after this…but, really…in the moment, to Gourmand, none of that mattered. None at all. All that did matter was the fact that right now, the infamous Zack Barnitack, the fellow villain who had just attempted to override his power, was trapped helplessly inside his guts, only able to squirm and shiver around as any attempts to escape were simply all in vain. Of course, due to how out of it he was right now, Zack didn’t exactly have it in him to start resisting, but nonetheless, the point still stood. Winning the war could wait, because right now, the battle was Gourmand’s.

Meanwhile, back on the inside of the victorious chef’s guts, Zack had all but curled into a fetal position against the walls, and was trying his very, very, very best not to shed a tear. He had absolutely no idea why the splashing, rippling pool around him wasn’t painful in nature, but really, that didn’t matter. After humiliation like this, after all, Zack might have even preferred being dead, but regardless, right now, he was alive, and shivering helplessly inside the warm, gurgling chamber that was Gourmand’s stomach. That was his reality, and for the time being, he was just going to have to accept it, in order to not go insane.

The thick, goopy walls churned and squeezed around him as the ambient white noise let out a series of high-pitched gurgles and rumbles, followed after a while by a much lower growl. As the ever-present, enveloping heat continued to soak itself into his skin, and the harmless, liquid pools gently sloshed and swished around him, Zack soon found himself pushing his head and upper body deep into the walls of the stomach, if only so he may make use of their rather cushiony nature, and escape back into a pleasant land of dreams.

Sniffling slightly from the entirety of the situation at hand, it finally began to settle within Zack that if he buckled under pressure like this so easily, handling those situations as a leader was well outside his capabilities.

Of course, all he had been after in the first place was the power, but really, what use was any of that if he didn’t know how to use it? Merely permitting these questions to start to settle in, Zack slowly closed his eyes, as he snuggled up against the walls of the giant villainous chef, until at last, he began to drift asleep.

Allowing his tongue to loll out of his mouth as he gently pat over his guts (the moment he had re-angled himself into a comfortable-ish position inside of the rather tight hole, of course), Gourmand nodded his head, as a soft bout of his iconic, evil laughter leisurely escaped from his throat.

Suddenly feeling something else attempting to escape his throat, Gourmand did have a slight moment of panic where he thought that Zack might have found a way to get hurled back up, but as soon as the deep, echoing force that was a gigantic belch graced the ears of the rather satisfied chef, he rather quickly calmed down with a slight shudder of delight, allowing the reality of the situation to tingle its way up his spine.

Patting over his audibly growling stomach a few times as it tirelessly worked away at all the nutrient slush therein (excepting Zack of course, though Gourmand also had no idea why that was the case, not like it mattered,) Gourmand proceeded to stretch his arms outwards (due to the nature of the tunnel he couldn’t really do so vertically) as a great yawn was released into the area, causing him to gently smack his lips a few times after it had finished.

Over the next few minutes, after having closed his eyes, Gourmand would slowly drift asleep himself, whilst keeping one hand over his guts, absolutely nothing, zip, nada, but wondrous bouts of euphoria coursing through his veins. For right now, he had managed to claim the victory over the one who dared to challenge him, and to Gourmand, in that moment, absolutely nothing, NOTHING. Else mattered.

[procrastinatorproject]

I'm back! :D Today's entry comes courtesy of @regionalpancake (by way of @jazzfic's original prompt. Yes, still.)

I was talking about how all the writing I've been doing has essentially just been the same story in so many self-indulgent repititions. To which Pancakes, rightfully, pointed out that many people will, say, watch reality tv that is essentially the same story week in and week out and extremely self-indulgent, too. "[And] they don't even have warp cores!"

So, of course, my brain immediately grabbed onto that and I had to pen another chapter in this ongoing saga...

Context: This takes place a couple weeks or so after the big showdown on Coppelius. As many people, myself included, have pointed out, the crash on the plantes' surface must have knocked out all of La Sirena's Emergency Holograms, which is why they didn't activate during the ample emergencies Picard and Agnes ran into during the climax of season 1. @thelaithlyworm actually wrote a lovely little story about this issue (it makes me cry every time!), and this snippet happens in the aftermath of all of that.

---

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing?”

There was a flash, a bang, and then a rain of sparks followed by a puff of smoke.

“Jesus sufferin’ Christ!” Ian crawled out from under the injector assembly and glared at his colleague. “You do not sneak up on a man when he’s handling live circuitry! I could have blown up the ship!”

The EMH was utterly unfazed. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t be working on live circuitry in your current state.”

“Ach.” Ian waved a dismissive hand and adjusted his hat. “I told you I’m fine. And the injectors have been acting up all week. What if we need to make a quick getaway and suddenly the warp core goes offline?”

Emil raised his eyebrows and gave his colleague a judgy look. “The captain doesn’t seem worried about it.”

“The captain,” Ian said as he got to his feet, “has other things on his mind.” He tucked his hands under his arms and practically dared Emil to find a way of denying that.

To his credit, the EMH didn’t try. “Be that as it may, you shouldn’t be working. You shouldn’t be in here at all.” He made an expansive gesture before shoving his hand back into his pocket.

Ian looked around Sirena’s small engine room. Apart from the relay he’d just blown out, every bit of machinery was in acceptable working order. But between all the recent battles and chases and trans-warp conduits, not to mention a full-on crash landing without any power, a lot of routine maintenance had been neglected. To Emil and the captain, everything might look fine at first glance, but Ian could practically feel all the little problems that had been accumulating over time. Sure, a .078° misalignment in the injectors might not sound like much, but it had almost doubled since the last time he’d managed to check on the assembly., The growing discrepancy was like an itch at the back of Ian’s algorithmic mind.

“I’ll be done in a tick,” he said imploringly. “Just let me finish this wee bit of maintenance and then —”

“You nearly blew up the ship.” Emil sounded almost offended. “Do you really think I’ll just let you continue fiddling with highly sensitive engine parts when you’re so clearly unfit for duty?”

Ian’s emotional algorithms shifted slightly towards defensiveness and he pulled his arms more tightly around himself. “I dinnea mean that. I wouldn’t have blown up the ship. You startled me, is all.”

“Yes and that’s exactly the problem!” Emil took a deep breath, then he continued a little calmer: “Don’t you always say that you optimized your input buffers so much that no unexpected sound or sight could ever overload them?”

Ian could tell where Emil was going and a part of him knew that his colleague was right. Still, he wasn’t willing to give up so easily. “It’s a minuscule lapse in compression efficiency. Barely noticeably. It only means that my responses have slowed down to the same baseline as all of yours.”

Emil didn’t dignify that with a response but simply gave Ian a Look instead.

“Besides,” Ian continued quickly, “there’s no guarantee that shutting down now is going to help. That fundamental field-replicator the synths gave the captain might work wonders on hardware, but it has thrown the computer maintenance routines for a loop.”

Once again, Emil knew better than to argue with the facts.

Ever since Dr Jurati had brought the holograms back online a week ago, they had all felt the lingering effects of both the damage Sirena had taken when the Orchid drained her power and the wonderful new synth tool that was only partially compatible with the ship’s patchwork systems. Raffi Musiker, Dr Jurati and the captain had been trying to get things back into working order, but with everything that had happened over the last month, Ian could understand that none of them had a lot of time on their hands right now. And what little time they did have, they chose to spend together or with their new friends, and who could really blame them for that? After everything they’d been through, they deserved to finally enjoy this bit of connection.

“Ian.”

Emil’s hand on his elbow made the EEH jump again. He blinked, surprised to find the EMH standing much closer than he had been.

Emil’s face no longer showed his typical exasperation, but instead was brimming with deep sympathy. “I know you feel responsible for the ship, and you can’t bear it if you feel like you’re neglecting her. But you’re an essential part of Sirena, too. And right now, that part needs your attention and care more than any of the others.”

“Ach.” Ian grabbed the front of his hat and pulled it down over his eyes for a moment, trying to escape Emil’s unbearably kind look. But he knew his colleague was right. Of course he was. And if Ian hadn’t been so run down, he probably would have seen it a lot sooner, too.

With a sigh he shoved his hat back in place and put his hands on his hips. “Aye, you’re right. I’ll shut myself down for a few hours and let the computer run some maintenance. Just let me finish this bit and then I’ll —”

“Now, Ian.”

“Yes, yes, fine, now.” Ian cast another look around the engine room. The warp core was humming away, its harmonics ever so slightly off from where the EHH would like them to be at rest, but close enough that it still sent his diagnostic subroutines something akin to reassurance. “You know,” he mused, staring at the swirl of colours, “given our recent troubles, maybe I shouldn’t shut off all the way. If I keep my matrix running and merely put all higher processing into standby, it won’t slow down the maintenance subroutines but I can access my cache and restart much faster in case of an emergency.”

Emil made some disapproving noise, but after a moment he huffed: “If that’s what it takes, fine. But I’m putting Enoch in charge of deciding what constitutes a real emergency for at least the next twelve hours.”

Ian looked at him over his shoulder. “Eight. That’ll be more than enough to —”

“Ten,” Emil said calmly, “and that’s final.”

For a moment, they looked at each other, the air bristling with tension, but then Ian’s lips twitched and he chuckled. “All right, you win. Ten hours.” He stretched and simulated a yawn. It seemed appropriate, somehow. “And I’ll set up additional monitoring so I’ll wake up if the computer’s maintenance cycle gets interrupted.”

Emil gave him another long look.

“So it’ll alert Enoch if the computer’s cycle gets interrupted and he can fix it,” Ian emended.

“Good.” Emil clicked his fingers, and suddenly, the large pile of holographic pillows and blankets that was usually reserved for sickbay was settling in a colourful heap against one of the walls of the engine room. The EMH gave Ian a knowing look. “I’d suggest finding somewhere less noisy to sleep, but knowing you, this actually constitutes a ‘restful ambience’, doesn’t it.”

For a brief moment, Ian rested his hand against the gently thrumming warp core. “Aye,” he said, more to himself, “this’ll do nicely.”

[the-elder-beato]

out of curiosity, what did you think of the piano entry? i wasn't really sure what to make of it, though i remember kris plays the piano much better when they're not under the player's control

(also yeah it's super weird to me when people focus on shipping of all things in ut/dr lol)

To me it was basically a showcase of just how much kris and noelle have shut themselves off from the world. In kris’s case they seem staunchly adamant about not letting anybody in, even someone who has known them intimately since childhood. For what reason, we don’t exactly know yet, but i’m willing to bet it has something to do with either past traumatic events (specifically what happened to dess, as kris is undeniably connected to that event) or because of the otherworldly thing or things possessing them at any given time.

I also find it a very important detail that something as personal as music is the thing that kris does not want anyone else to see, my friend made a really good observation that toby is very acutely aware of the idea of music being the window to the soul, and it really shows just how afraid/against kris is about letting anybody into their internal world that they can’t even allow noelle to watch them play the piano. My gut feeling is that it’s out of protection, because there are lots of little hints throughout chapter 2 that Kris does still care very much for noelle, as they don’t react negatively to most dialogue options that express their care for her (the exception being choosing to go with her to the festival at the end of the chapter). They might feel as if noelle has already been through the wringer with dess’s disappearance and considering what is currently happening to them and not being in full control of themselves, they don’t want to risk drawing noelle in closer and potentially further hurt or traumatize her. That’s assuming that kris was getting controlled/possessed by some entity other than the player at the time the blog post was written, which i don’t think is all that unlikely

In Noelle’s case, her way of shutting the world out is through denial. Notice how after all this time, she still questions whether or not kris even considers her to be a friend despite how long they’ve known each other and what they’ve been through together. When she says that final line “It felt like a concert just for me”, it’s only after she’s resigned herself to not trying to catch kris in the act or interrupting them, and instead closes her eyes several rooms away, aka she shuts out reality. I think noelle is desperate to find that connection with kris, as thoughout chapter 2 she’s still searching for ways to bond with them on a deeper level (not in a shippy way), and I strongly believe that is in part because of her desire to hold onto people who had a former connection with dess. Dess herself is gone, azzy is gone, kris is the one major person left in noelle’s life that she probably feels she can relay these feelings to and who might understand. This is why she’s so immediately susceptible to following the player’s orders guised as kris’s voice in the snowgrave route; she is hoping for that connection so badly that, even though she knows this behavior is unlike kris, she is willing to brush it aside and convince herself there’s some other explanation for it in the hopes that it means she and kris have come to a deeper understanding

But it’s clear from this blogpost and certain events in chapter 2 that kris isn’t willing to let noelle in, for whatever reason. They seem more open to showing their true feelings to susie, at least when given the opportunity from the player, but noelle is completely off-limits. And I do believe in some way, this does come from a place of compassion from kris; nothing about their behavior has shown that they dislike or distrust noelle. In fact, it’s probably because of how long they’ve known one another that kris is especially uncomfortable at the idea of inviting her in. Either way, it’s definitely not a comfy, bonding, shippy, etc scene the way a lot of people are interpreting it. To me it’s honestly pretty tragic, knowing that these two lifelong friends share a lot of memories, both good and bad, but even after all this time, there’s still something there preventing them from really being open with one another

anyway that’s just my interpretation, and i’m sure someone smarter than me could explain all of this with much more clarity and shed light on things that i didn’t catch. but regardless, that’s my thoughts on that blog post, and i have a feeling it’s pretty damn close to what toby was going for

[ripperdoc-is-daddy]

She wins her own buckles

Reader is black coded and AFAB.

It's your first barrel race and you are nervous af. Inspo was me reminiscing back when I used to do western riding events. Heavy on the Western Horse world terminology. Mare slander abound. Geldings FTW. MHA/BNHA gang are support af. No pairings but if you can ship it if you want. It's written for you to interpret that aspect yourself. Fluff!

You were nervous. Today was the day all that training and work was gonna finally gonna come to fruition. You were competing in your first barrel race. You were in the open Adults (18-34) category and there were quite a few entrants. You would estimate that there were around 25 people including yourself who had all registered to run. The excitement of the competition was starting to make you nervous and you were gnawing on your bottom lip.  

A harsh jostling under you and between your thighs breaks your thoughts. Looking down you frown at your Grulla tovero mare and smack her thick neck. “Aiight. That was a dick move. How about we just not?” you speak to your steed knowing she doesn’t care. Mares never did. Rolling your eyes you look around for your trainer to hurry up and arrive.   

You had driven here 2 days ago with your mare and both of y’alls equipment. Your 4-horse Gooseneck trailer with quarters was a better ride and more comfortable for the horses than his 2-horse bumper pull. Plus, it had AC and the horses could lounge inside out of the heat. Drinking filtered water and munching that good, good, Alfalfa hay to make them nice and hot. Your trainer would show up the next day and help you prep.   

  

Well, that had been the plan. Clearly, that isn’t what went down since it was just you here. By yourself. Taking care of 3 horses and getting all the gear sets up and organized. Shaking your head, you bite your lip and glare at nowhere in particular. You were going to give him a verbal ass reaming when you saw him. He didn’t even have the decency to call and let you know what the fuck was going on. Well, he might have. You tilted your head off to the side and scrunched up your nose when you remember the signal here was spotty at best. He still could have called one of the other riders you both knew or even the organizers to relay the message to you, so he wasn’t off the hook!   

  

Righting yourself, you nod your head. Satisfied with your logic that said he was def in the wrong. Your mare begins to paw at the dirt impatiently. You cluck at her and she stops with a snort and neck bounce. Shaking your head, you begin to whisper self-affirmations inside your head that will reassure you that you will do great! You will score 2-D and bring home some cash so you can brag to a certain someone that he isn’t the only one who can make money racing.  

A woman with a long blonde braided ponytail is fast walking towards you with a clipboard and some dark shades on. Her skin is a beautiful warm umber color and she carries herself with a sense of authority and command. She stops when she is next to you, gives your horse a quick rub on the neck before her focus settles on you. “You’re up after this run. Gate 2. Stay behind the line and don’t move up until you are told to. Good luck.” She nods at you and you return it. She turns away and you nudge your mare forward with a shift of your body weight.   

As you ride forward to your gate you catch sight of the current race going on for the Men’s Division and wince. The runner had a horse who dropped its shoulder. That was bad form. He was all up in that poor thing's mouth too. Busy hands. It looked like a hot fuckin’ mess. Shaking your head, you nudge with your heels on your mount’s barrel and she begins to trot forward. The aisle is clear so you aren’t too worried about being reprimanded for bad etiquette. Besides, you both had nerves to work out. It’s all good.   

  

You bring your mare to a complete halt after you arrive at your gate and line up. You were happy all the work you put into this paint mare was worth it. She was a registered, 16hh Grulla Tobiano out of a dam and sire you had been in love with. She was pedigreed out the ass with amazing extension and the most beautiful engine you had ever seen on a horse since her Great Great Grand Dam. Densely muscled but testing negative for HYPP and Lethal White she was also a breeder's dream. Hopefully, this would be the beginning of a lustrous career that would set her up for a successful breeding career afterwards. She clocked high and was fully grown and matured at 4 years old. Sure, she was older than most of the 2-year-olds here but she would outperform the vast majority of them. You knew it. Now you had to do it.   

“What are you smilin’ like that for? You look creepy smilin’ to yourself like that.” A brash and deep voice breaks you out of your musings. “Mmm. Oh, look. You FINALLY decided to show up. Good for you. I’m about to run now soooo, you can go. I grained your horses as well. You’re welcome.” you snap back letting annoyance bleed into your tone of voice.   

  

“Yeah, yeah. I had some shit to do back home before I headed out. I thought I sent you a text about it but I guess it never sent out. Thanks for taking care of my idiots. Now stop being an idiot and get out of your head. You haven’t won shit.” Your head whips around so fast you feel the bones snap in a somewhat pleasant way though it sounds alarming as hell. “What the he-ARE YOU OK?” his voice gets louder as he inquires on your status after hearing that. Your mare snorts and begins to nod her head rudely over and over while pulling at the reins.   

Both of you chastise her and she turns her head to rudely bump your trainer in the chest. He grabs her chin and pulls her closer then scratches between her ears. “You haven’t lost shit either. Go in with a clear mind. Remember she reflects you. If you are shit for brains then she is gonna run for shit.” he scolds you while cooing at your mare and telling the traitor that she is the most beautiful and important woman in his life.   

Rolling your eyes, you tap your mare’s neck with the reins lightly and face both your heads forward. “Yeah, yeah. I got it, Bakugou,” you grumble, adjusting the Black Swarovski crystal-studded, 20x Beaver Felt hat with an Ostrich leather hat band that had cowrie shells around it. You hear an approving grunt in your trainer's direction so you sit up a little straighter in your seat. Thankful that your saddle was broken in so nicely. He “tch’s” and flips you off. “Bakugou, is it now?”  

  

Warm hands lightly pat your leg and you lift your black base with turquoise and red feather-stitched ARIATs out of your stirrups while the blonde owner of the hands begins to shorten your stirrups a bit more. “You need a proper seat. You had um too long. Leave them here for now. Any higher and you’ll be a jockey.” He says in jest though part of what he said you know is the truth. You look over at his tall frame, making contact with his Sanguine colored eyes. “Worried?” you question him. “Nah, I believe in her.” He kisses your mare’s neck and brings her head down for another smooch just above her brow bone. “You got a medicine hat. You’ll both do amazing.” Two more pats to her neck and he 2 finger salutes you.   

  

A cough on your other side breaks your attention away from your current conversation. Katsuki continues to check your gear and double-check your girth. Smacking your mare’s gut when she refuses to let out. She does with a loud fart and a rumble in her chest. The blond shakes his head and readjusts the girth one more time.   

“Move to the gate, please. You’re up.” Another somewhat shorter blonde winks at you from underneath a bright red rabbit-felt hat. It had matching red feathers on the browband and a single bright topaz concho affixed to it. “Thank you kindly.” You say as mockingly polite as you can. Trying to hold in the snickers. “Go away Hawks. She needs to focus. Why do people call you that?” Bakugou complains loudly as she places a hand on your mare’s rump and moves behind you both to cross the aisle.   

  

“Later boys!” you call out behind you as you nudge your mount forward. “Later. DO YOUR BEST!” Hawks calls out after you, breaking from his conversation with Bakugou. “Kill ‘em all!” Bakugou yells slightly louder earning him a few wary stares. You chuckle to yourself and steel your mind. Your moment was about to happen and you were going to prove that you were gonna be one of the best.  

  

The aisle is cleared and you see the attendants hop up over the corrugated steel gates. On either side. You are instructed to go forward to the starting line. You take a deep breath and clear your mind. Focusing on the beat of the music and calming yourself. Heart rate slowing and the sound of the crowd was drowned out the by words of the music.  You didn’t need to completely tune out everything.  

  

You hear y/n with your mare’s registered name along with nickname announced. Sucking in one last breath you let all the tension leave your body. Right now, was your time to shine.   

  

And shine you did. As soon as the signal to go went off, your mare shot out them gates like a bat out of hell! You made your way to the first barrel. Hugging it so tight it looked like your black, boot-cut ARIAT jeans were gonna touch the barrel but they didn’t. You and that mare were in perfect sync as you came around to the second barrel. Your hat is still firmly affixed to your head via bobby pin magic. Your 2B Senegalese twists were blowing black behind you as you came around the side and continued the pattern to loop the last barrel. After this, it was the straight shot.   

All those close turns shaved your time down but what you really needed was your mare to let go in this final stretch and secure y’alls win. Rounding the final barrel you kick your mare a few times and urge her to go all out and out all she does. The two of you are blazing down the center. You atop your lightning-fast steed, lookin’ like a force of nature. Running through the exit you use the lane to slow your horse down and bring her into a circle at the end to slow her down into a trot and then a walk until you can finally stop.  

You fan yourself several times and grab the collar of your black and turquoise stitch ARIAT long-sleeve top and pop it to give yourself some air. “Holy shit. Holy shit.” you chant to yourself realizing you finally did it. You made your race! A smile steals itself across your face and you beam up looking proud. You begin to walk you and your mare outside for a cooldown and to clear the lane for the next runner. Trusting your trainer to get back to you about your score results.   

  

You are on your cooldown walk with your mare when Hawks comes walking up to you eyes wide. “You did it!” he cheers quietly so as not to startle your excited beast of burden. “I did it!” you chime back at him happily. He gives you double-finger guns and comes up to your side to help you down. You take the offered assistance and slide out of the saddle and into his arms. You stare up at the man and thank him graciously. “Where is Katsuki?” you ask as you bring your reins around and unclip them as Hawks halters her up and hands you the lead once he is finished.   

“Mm? Dynamite had a run himself that started after yours. He is probably getting both of your scores right now.” the taller red and yellow Stetson-outfitted man says as he hands you a water bottle you have no idea where he produced it from. Not lookin’ a gift horse in the mouth, you begin to chug it. “Settle down now. We don’t want you to choke after that perfect run.” He chastises you.   

Rolling your eyes must have been the theme of the day because here you were doing it again. Sighing you shook your head and resumed drinking till the plastic bottle was empty. The two of you headed back to your truck and trailer pleasantly chatting and catching up with one another. When you arrive, you see a couple members of your circle lounging on your black Dodge Ram 3500 fully loaded.   

  

You whistle at the group and wave at Kirishima, the Todorokis (Touya and Shouto), Ashido, and Midoriya. They look over at you and cheer. Touya nods at you in his black jeans and black short sleeve t-shirt combo. A stark contrast from his brilliantly white hair. He walks up to you and takes the lead out your hand. He guides your mare to the round pen you had brought with you and set up off to the side. Out of the way of everyone and with permission from the grounds manager. He removes her gear and sets it off to the side while he leans against the gate and watches her buck and fart after he turns her out.   

You smile fondly at him admiring how he dotes on your mare. Cheering her on and praising her. Overinflating her already overly inflated mare ego. That would be a thing you were gonna have to deal with later. When you got home. You weren’t gonna deal with that attitude right now.   

  

Right Now, you wanted to celebrate with your friends and wait for Bakugou to get back with your damn results. You already knew he had won his run. He always does. Huffing you dance over to your group. Moving to the rhythm of GIMS-YOLO. Ashido meets you and the two of you giggle as you celebrate your run and Keigo (or Hawks as he goes by) recounts your run with much embellishment.   

  

The playlist continues to go through GIMS, Mohammed Ramadan, Idris, Soolking, and a few of y’alls other favorites when Bakugou shows up with his Gelding. Scowling. Like normal. He ignores you as he removes his tack and ties his horse to the trailer. Going inside the stall compartment to grab a hose, brushes, and various other things he would need to cool his horse off. Izuku joins him and begins to water his horse and quietly praise him while Bakugou leans back on his heels contemplating.   

  

You start to wander over in his direction but stop when two women boldly come up to him and begin to chat him up. Shouto side-eyes them and nudges Eijiro as they turn their focus onto your trainer and his new companions. The conversation starts out harmlessly enough. They praise his run. Say it was expected since he is a 4-time Pendleton Round-Up champion. He nods boredly at first and gives the usual canned answers. It wasn’t until they begin to talk about you that his attitude changes.   

You were upfront by the speakers with Ashido to give Katsuki some space to have his conversation since the area was small when you heard the slander.   

“You must be so sick of y/n following you around all the time.” A short pale blonde commented.   

“For real! Her race wasn’t even that great. I left as soon as I heard you were running, Dynamite.” a slightly taller redhead says beside her.   

Your head snaps back and to the side with your mouth doing an “O” face in surprise. “Oh no they didn’t like I am not here!?” you loudly whisper to Mina who motions for you to quiet down and points to Katsuki who appears to be neutral about the whole thing. For a whole four seconds. Then he is roaring with raucous laughter.   

“The hell are you two harpies talkin’ about? You tryin’ to say she is a buckle bunny? Hah! Right! She is so much of one she went and earned one herself!” he announces proudly as he flashes you a bright and happy smile. Breaking away from the now put-off women to strut over to you and hand you a paper with your time on it circled in bright red.   

  

You had placed first! You were 1-D! Your jaw drops and you begin to whisper your disbelief. “Is this legit?!” you demand to know. “No shit, Sherlock.” He flicks you on your forehead. You jump up and wrap your arms around his neck and hug him dearly. “I won! I really won!” you cheer and chant over and over. “OH OH! GROUP HUG!” Mina announces and runs over to join in. Katsuki growls and wraps his arms around you returning your hug and accepting Mina touching him when she joins to hug you.   

The rest of your group joins in, including Touya. He enjoys the look of misery on Katsuki’s face. Your crew completely dismisses the rude pair of women who summarily leave. They are not missed as your circle continues to celebrate till your next event is to start later that night. Everyone smiles as they cheer you on and leave you fresh and ready to take on your next sport which you were completely at home with. You were on Bakugou’s cow-eatin’ Bay Tobiano Stallion and you were getting ready to show everyone what the sport of cutting was all about.   

  

You grin up at the crowd, wave then turn to face your opponent. A beautiful black Angus steer that had mean written all over it. He was a beacon in the herd of red Angus. Tipping your hat to your quarry you grin deviously and move forward. Ready to win this shit and take home another buckle.   

  

Fin 

[bradan-writes-stories]

How Rice Sank the HMS Ibis

The HMS Ibis gracefully glided through the azure waters, guided by the skilled hands of Captain Rocklin Balo and his experienced crew. Their mission was to embark on a journey to the rice-growing regions of Southeast Asia and secure a trade route for The King.

Captain Balo gazed across the bustling harbor of Bangkok, renowned for its abundance of rice, his weathered eyes scanning the array of ships and cargo. The warm tropical breeze carried with it the exotic scents of spices and trade.

The ship’s crew diligently prepared the vessel, ensuring it was seaworthy and ready for the long voyage ahead. The HMS Ibis was a majestic two-masted brigantine built to withstand the treacherous seas and renowned for her remarkable speed, even while under a load.

Meanwhile, Captain Balo accompanied by his first mate Anthony ‘Jolly’ Hailey ventured ashore to negotiate the purchase of precious cargo. They met with local rice merchants, who offered an assortment of rice varieties, each boasting its distinct aroma and flavor.

After careful consideration, Captain Balo chose a prized selection of fragrant jasmine rice. The ivory grains shimmered like pearls in the sunlight, promising a bountiful feast for The King. A deal was struck and the HMS Ibis’ hold would soon be filled to the brim with loose grain.

“Don’t you worry about the load shifting and capsizing us?” Anthony Hailey asked under his breath — careful to avoid eavesdropping ears.

“Not at all,” Captain Balo said with perfect composure.

“There’s no sacks nor barrels to contain it. They’re throwing the rice about as if it were bilge water.”

“Do you trust me, Jolly?” Captain Balo asked without turning his gaze from the hardworking men on his ship.

“Of course, Captain,” Anthony said lowering his gaze.

“Your concern is understandable. Many ships have been lost to Davy Jones but rest assured, I’ve planned for that,” Balo explained and placed his hands on the sleek wooden railing of the ship. “If you load the hull to the brim, and I mean to the brim. Fill every nook and cranny down below then tell me. Where can the rice go?”

“It won’t have anywhere to go,” Anthony said as his eyes began to light up in understanding.

“Precisely. Overload the ship to properly accommodate the cargo. That’s why we shed weight back in Singapore by selling some cannons and other un-unnecessities.”

Anthony stared ahead in wonder, amazed by his Captain’s knowledge. Balo laughed and clapped his first mate on the back.

“You have to take chances in life, Jolly. You’ll learn which ones are worth taking and this is one of them. We’ll be renowned for bringing home far more grain in a single haul than any other ship in his majesty’s fleet.” He paused for a moment to hold out a gold coin, “And that’s why we’ll be paid more than any other ship.

After the final preparations were made, the HMS Ibis departed Bangkok. The majestic ship sliced through the waves, guided by the stars that adorned the night sky, as it embarked on its homeward journey.

The return voyage was not without its challenges. They navigated the maze of islands, skirting dangerous reefs and unpredictable currents. Days turned into weeks as they ventured deeper into the heart of the Indian Ocean.

As the sun began its descent below the horizon, casting an amber glow across the restless sea, the crew of the mighty seafaring vessel prepared for the night. Unbeknownst to them, lurking beneath the dark depths, a monstrous force stirred.

Suddenly, with a thunderous crash, the sea erupted in a tumultuous frenzy. Towering tentacles breached the surface, coiling and writhing like serpents on a rampage. The Kraken, a colossal creature of myth and legend, had emerged from the abyss, its massive form dwarfing the ship.

“Ready the cannons!” Captain Balo shouted as he sprinted for the ship’s helm.

“All hands on deck,” Anthony relayed the captain’s orders, “Ready the cannons!”

The crew gasped in awe and terror as the Kraken’s behemoth arms descended upon the HMS Ibis, grappling with the masts and ensnaring the hull.

“Fire!” Balo shouted over the chaotic frenzy.

As the sea-born terror crashed against the weathered hull, the ship’s cannons roared to life, unleashing a thunderous volley. Billowing clouds of smoke and the acrid scent of gunpowder filled the air as each cannonball propelled forward, soaring with deadly precision.

The iron projectiles arched through the air, leaving trails of white foam in their wake before punching holes through the Kraken’s body before crashing into the churning sea, creating geysers of spray that briefly competed with the surging waves. The cannons’ resounding blasts echoed across the water, sending shivers through the hearts of the crew as they fought for their lives.

Seconds felt like hours to the souls aboard the HMS Ibis. The Kraken’s malevolent eyes gleamed with an insatiable hunger, threatening to drag the ship down until a well-placed shot blew apart the beast’s eye. Mucus and fluid rained down on the ship as the creature yielded and descended into the murky depths below.

Tensions were high as all eyes were plastered to the choppy waves, waiting for the next attack that would test their mettle and the strength of the ship. When no sign of the Kraken presented itself they rejoiced in safeguarding the cargo, and more importantly, their lives against such a force and made haste to flee as quickly as the wind would carry them.

Davy Jones had no plans for an easy voyage for the crew of the HMS Ibis and plotted to send them to the depths of his locker. Dark clouds amassed on the horizon, heralding the imminent arrival of a tempest. The atmosphere crackled with anticipation as gusts of wind intensified, whipping through the sails and rattling the timeworn rigging.

The peaceful sea transformed into a turbulent abyss, with towering swells rising and crashing against the ship’s hull. Rain poured in torrents, obscuring visibility and drenching the weary sailors to the bone. Thunder boomed overhead, its deafening roar matching the relentless pounding of the waves. The ship creaked and groaned, strained under the onslaught of nature’s fury.

“We’re not going to make it,” Anthony shouted over the roar of the storm.

“As long as I’m still breathing we’ll be fine!” Captain Balos yelled, blinded by the ocean’s spray.

Lightning illuminated the chaos, briefly revealing the harrowing scene that unfolded. The crew, clinging to ropes and desperately securing loose items, battled the elements with unwavering determination. Fear and adrenaline coursed through their veins as they fought to keep their vessel afloat amidst the raging storm, praying for respite.

The HMS Ibis careened precariously to the port side as Captain Balos fought to maintain control of his ship. Each wave that crashed against the hull threatened to capsize the ship.

“Hailey, take the helm,” Captain Balos commanded.

Once relinquished of his duty Rocklin fought his way across the ship and descended below deck. To his confusion much of the rice within the hold had gone missing, creating space for it all to shift to one side of the vessel.

What he didn’t realize was that the constant buffeting of the waves and their prior Kraken attack had caused the grains of rice to settle. The vibrations urged the individual grains to fit more efficiently and now threaten the ship’s stability.

Above deck a mighty wave, like a titan rising from the depths, loomed over the ship, casting a shadow of impending doom. Its towering crest glinted with an icy menace under the gray skies. The colossal wave crashed upon the ship’s weathered deck, overwhelming it.

Helpless against the sheer power of the ocean the vessel, already tilted precariously, groaned in agony. The crew, caught in a maelstrom of chaos, clung desperately to any available purchase, their hearts pounding in their chests. But the relentless wave proved merciless, its immense weight capsizing the ship with an inexorable fury.

The once-proud vessel succumbed to the wrath of the sea, its keel breaking free of the surging waters, sending the crew and its cargo, plunging into the churning abyss. The ship disappeared beneath the tumultuous surface, leaving only scattered debris and the lingering echoes of a devastating tragedy in its wake.

Although the story is a work of fiction the dangers of hauling grain by sea-faring vessel are very real. Typically grain ships are required to have a lower point of gravity with allowances given to vessels specifically designed for such cargo, like beveled edges in the hold or vertical baffles.

Images used created by Nexneedsanewpen, Midjourney, and myself.

[pitchperfectinspace]

Pitch Perfect in Space: Energy Leak

The scene opens on the bridge of the USS Bella-trix, where Cynthia, the captain of the ship, is standing at the front of the room. She looks grim, her face set in a serious expression.

"Attention, all Bellas," Cynthia says, her voice crackling over the intercom. "We have detected an energy leak on board the ship. The leak is coming from somewhere in the crew quarters, and it is imperative that we find the source and fix it immediately."

Beca, the group's leader, hurries onto the bridge, her face filled with concern. "What's going on, Cynthia?" she asks. "Is everyone okay?"

"Everyone is fine, for now," Cynthia says, her voice grim. "But if we don't fix this leak, the ship could be in serious danger. We need to find out who is responsible and stop them, before it's too late."

Beca nods, her mind racing. "I'll gather the Bellas and we'll start searching the quarters," she says, turning to leave the bridge.

"Wait, Beca," Cynthia says, her voice firm. "We need to be careful. This could be the work of a saboteur. We need to be on high alert, and report any suspicious activity immediately."

Beca nods, her determination growing. "You're right, Cynthia," she says. "We can't let anything happen to the ship or the Bellas. We'll find out who's responsible, and stop them."

As the Bellas set out to search the ship, they are completely unaware that the traitor is hiding right under their noses. Aubrey, one of their own, is secretly working against them, siphoning off the ship's potential singing energy and sending it back to her master, the evil hacker group DSM.

Aubrey is hiding in a vent, her body pressed up against the cold metal walls. She is completely undetected, and she smiles to herself as she listens to the Bellas searching for the source of the leak. She knows she has outsmarted them, and she relays her success back to BB8, her accomplice and hypnotized puppet.

The scene fades to black as Aubrey returns to her quarters, confident in her ability to continue her sabotage undetected. The Bellas have no idea what they're up against, and it will take all of their strength and determination to stop the evil forces that are threatening their mission.

Click here to see all currently posted chapters of Pitch Perfect in Space!

[shizuu-chann]

OC: Kaetus Rix (a short-ish bio)

Name: Kaetus Rix* (pronounced KAY-tus**) Age/Birth year: 27-31 (from ME1 to post-ME3), b. 2155 Romantic partner: Ezri Shepard (Once again, my Shepard's younger sister.) Occupation: Commander in the turian 43rd Marine Division--Special Forces, captain of the frigate THS Impera, became a Spectre in 2182. Works with Ezri in a kind of joint Turian-Alliance military/ambassadorial "task force"--basically two frigates that form a team that are equal parts military and diplomatic in nature, and work with the Hierarchy, the Alliance, and the Council. (I'm still working out the logistics, etc, but this is the general idea.) Homeworld: Digeris colony; Apien Crest, Castellus System

Current place of residence: sizeable apartment on the Citadel, Zakera Ward close to the inner ring/Presidium; lives with his bondmate Personality: He's very easygoing and loves to laugh. He's not big on formalities, and is a self-proclaimed "bad turian." He jokingly chocks this up to growing up with a human best friend and taking on human mannerisms/attitudes and points of view. He's clever and witty and fond of unconventional military tactics, but he's not impulsive, nor is he likely to abandon traditional turian strategy if it remains the best, most efficient and useful option. That being said, he's often unapologetically receptive to Ezri's whims. Loves PDA, thrives on it, in fact. Physical appearance: Very tall, 7'3", with amber eyes, dark charcoal colored skin/carapace, and purple facial tattoos. He has a small, jagged scar under his right eye (not pictured, it's on the other side), extending from the lower socket edge and slightly through his face tattoo. His crest is on the long side, something he takes pride in. Family/Connections: His family is somewhat large, and is generally well known for being excellent soldiers and lifelong military. Both his parents are still alive, and he has three siblings. His relationship with his father is strained, but he gets on very well with the rest of his family.

His eldest sibling, his brother, is Avitus Rix. They are very close, he became a Spectre because his brother inspired him to accept the offer, and was disappointed but understanding when Avi left the Spectres after the Saren fiasco. Kaetus is still torn up about his brother leaving with the Andromeda Initiative.

His mother, Valaena (pro. vah-LAY-nah), still serves in the military as an engineer. She is incredibly intelligent and loves ships, tinkering, and making funky gadgets to entertain her children (when they were young) and just for fun. She had an initial dislike for humans, much like Marcelio, and held onto those beliefs until they moved to the Citadel. Closer proximity to humans moving to the Citadel lessened them, and when a 6-year-old Kaetus announced he was now best friends with a human, it really helped her realize those prejudices were silly. She adores her son's best friend and lover, and frequently chastises Marcelio for being ignorant.

His remaining siblings are his sisters, Nyra (second eldest) and Karas or "Kara" (pro. CAR-ah, and is the youngest child). They're both currently serving in the turian military and are very happy with their positions. Nyra plans to be lifelong military like Kaetus and their parents, and is the XO on a different frigate. Kara is biotic and is still adjusting to being moved to a Cabal unit, but she is thus far quite happy. They're very close to each other and Kaetus

His parents both served during the Relay 314 Incident/First Contact War, but only his father, Marcelio, actually fought on Shanxi as a soldier. He was honorably discharged from the military after a severe injury three years after the R314I and moved his family to the Citadel (Kaetus was 6). He worked as a military attache for the Hierarchy to the Council, due to his experience and expertise, until Kara (the only child born on the Citadel) went to bootcamp at age 15, then moved the family back to Digeris. He still makes frequent trips to and from the Citadel, as he is still a military advisor. --He still has a grudge against humanity, outwardly dislikes humans, but isn't aggressive about it and generally keeps his thoughts to himself. Before his character growth, Marcelio hated that Kaetus was best friends with a human for most of his life, and frequently tried to convince him to find a different friend, but was severely outnumbered within his own family because everyone else is fine with humans and adores Ezri. Fun fact: The last real conversation Kaetus had with his father was yet another instance Marcelio made his opinion of Ezri known, and Kaetus ended the conversation with something like "Well, I'm going to ask her to marry me, so sucks to be you, I guess." (I love him because like I said, he goes through a lot of character growth, and really he's just kind of old and crotchety, and battles with his own pride. Like, he's moved on from those grudges, but is too proud and generally doesn't know how to say that he doesn't actually dislike Ezri--or humanity--anymore. It all comes out during the Reaper invasion, though >:))

I really could go on, but I'll leave it here for now. This will probably happen again, lol. Kaetus is MY OC, and the art was commissioned and payed for by ME. Please respect that and DO NOT STEAL!

*I headcanon that his name is fairly common among turian males, like Chris or James for native English-speaking humans--ergo, it feels like every other turian is named Kaetus sometimes. **His name is definitely inspired by Kaetus from ME:A, but it is pronounced the way I believe it should be based on previous Mass Effect name pronunciation conventions. Come on. If Haestrom is pronounced like HAY-strum? Idk who tf decided it should be pronounced "KAI-tus", but I want to smack them, because it doesn't even make sense.)