#there were snatches of it in the outpost | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pandoraslxna · 2 days

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hi luna, i found ur fics on ao3 and ran my ass to tumblr bc i just needed more of ur writing. you're so talented!!

i was wondering if you could write a lo'ak x reader story similar to the step bro!teyam fic where he makes contact with the sex pollen. it could be step bro!lo'ak or just reader's bsf idm bc i've been thinking abt that fic for agessss and i'd die for a lo'ak version even where reader is the one that touches the pollen instead 😭🫶 pretty pls and thanks in advance （╹◡╹）♡

Forbidden desires

adult Stepbro!Lo‘ak x female omatikaya reader

Words: 3.8k

Summary: Nine times out of ten, when you were sent to one of those old, abandoned RDA outpost facilities, it went just fine. But there's always that tenth time.

Warnings: explicit smut, stepcest (they’re not blood related), sex pollen, cowgirl position, creampie, teasing, praise

Nine times out of ten, when you were sent to one of those old, abandoned RDA outpost facilities, it went just fine. But there's always that tenth time. And of course it’s when your accompanied by your older stepbrother, who somehow seemed to magically attract any kind of danger ever since he was a kid.

Scavenging abandoned laboratories for essential supplies that the clan could use was usually safer than it sounded, but this place, it was far off your usual research zone and Jake- dad, he said you could call him dad. Well dad said, it would be better to not go alone this time, just in case.

The once bustling scientific havens now stands as a relict of the past, slowly succumbing to the relentless embrace of nature. The laboratory emerges from the foliage, structure weathered and worn by time. Moss and ivy clings to the cracked walls, intertwining with rusted metal equipment. Vines creep through broken windows and shattered glass, casting intricate patterns of sunlight onto the decaying floors.

This place smells sharp, metallic, so much like tawtutes [humans] and the rotting smell of death and burnt earth they leave behind. Not exactly a pleasant scent.

Inside, a sense of eerie tranquility fills the air. Dust particles dance in the faint beams of light that manage to pierce through the overgrown canopy. Dilapidated shelves line the walls, remnants of long-forgotten experiments, holding faded vials and forgotten notes.

Lab benches, once polished and pristine, now bear the scars of abandonment papers lay strewn across the floor, their text faded and illegible. The hum of electricity has long been silenced, replaced by the gentle rustling of leaves and the fluttering wings of Riti [Stingbats] that were abruptly woken by the two na‘vi entering the long forgotten building.

Amongst the ruins, you search meticulously, your eyes scanning for useful remnants. You carefully examine cabinets, hoping to uncover unused medicine, bandages, exo packs that are still intact or any other useful tools.

Your stepbrother however, seemed to have other plans in mind.

"You shouldn’t touch that", you said, snatching his wrist mid way of him prodding at what you hoped was a fake skeleton. Lo‘ak let out a chuckle as he gazed down at you, both of his brows raised in amusement as he wriggled his hand free of your hold.

"Relax, tsmuke [sister]. Are you always this uptight when going on your little adventures?"

"I‘m not uptight, Lo‘ak. I‘m being careful", you said, shaking your head. "Jak– Dad taught me to be. You never know what the vrrteps [demons] could possibly be hiding here. And this isn’t an adventure, we‘re here to get supplies!"

"Right, of course. We‘re on a very important mission here", Lo’ak scoffs sarcastically, then proceeds to yank at the skeletons arm and point it in your direction, poking your hip with the boney finger when you roll your eyes at him. "You think they have traps set here to capture cute na‘vi girls? Ohh, isn’t that scary?"

"You’re an idiot", you giggle, swatting the hand away and playfully slapping your stepbrothers arm.

You both then take the steps up to the second floor of the building, and when you round a corner, you stop dead in your tracks. There was a "DO NOT ENTER" sign taped to the door that was slowly starting to peel off.

Experiments on animals or even na‘vi weren’t really uncommon, and you knew the horrors that the RDA was capable of, had heard and seen it yourself, especially in those research laboratories. Which is why you weren’t sure if whatever awaited behind this door was worth the few extra exo packs and bandages.

"We shouldn’t–"

"Oh, yes we should", Lo‘ak is quick to cut you off, all too eager to push the heavy metal door open. A rush of stale air fills your nostrils and you grimace at the smell.

"I should’ve just asked Neteyam to come with me", you mumble under your breath, closely following Lo‘ak into the room, who had a wide, excited grin on his face.

"And miss out on all the real fun?" He chuckles, shaking his head. "Yeah, you two would clearly make the better duo."

Rolling your eyes, you couldn’t help the feeling of unease that grew inside you, your eyes darting around the room, while your stepbrother's curiosity only intensified. Ignoring your trepidation, Lo‘ak stepped forward, drawn to a large, dusty table at the center of the room.

Among the scattered papers and broken equipment laid a few conical flasks, some of them still filled with droplets of a strange liquid.

Turning on your heals you took a quick 360°-spin. The room was small enough to get an overall view in less than a few seconds. There was nothing but this table and broken laboratory equipment. Nothing that seemed to be of worth for the clan, so you glanced back over your shoulder, already heading back to the door as you pleaded, "Lo‘ak, come on. There’s nothing in here, let’s just go back."

Lo’ak however, couldn't resist the temptation to tease you, playfully waving one of the glasses around. "Killjoy", he mutters under his breath, before shouting, "Here, catch", and throwing the conical flask in your direction. You shriek as you jump around to try and catch the glass in time, but it slips right past your fingers.

You both watch it fall like it’s happening in slow motion, until it bursts on the floor and the glass shatters in thousand little pieces.

As soon as the liquid inside makes contact with the tiled floor, it morphs into a small cloud of steam that smells awfully sweet and you end up coughing a few times before sending a glare in Lo‘aks direction. Sucking in a sharp breath, he makes an apologetic face and rushes to your side, careful not to step in any of the glass shards. "Shit, sorry! I‘m so sorry, are you hurt?"

"No, skxawng [moron]. I‘m fine", you clear your throat, "Great mother, you’re acting like such a child sometimes…"

"Yeah, I hear that a lot", he grins and you can’t help but smile at the coy flick of his tail. "C‘mere, can’t let you get hurt or dad will skin me", he murmurs, pointing at the glass, before scooping you into his arms and carrying you out of the room.

A heavy sigh leaves your lips and tickles Lo‘aks neck as you rest your chin on his shoulder. Your heart was still pounding from the scare, harder than you would like to admit. Nuzzling closer to his neck, you allowed your eyes to rest for a moment, just breathing in the natural, soothing scent of his skin, while he carried you downstairs. He smells so much like cedarwood, leather and freshly cut grass, you notice. And something else that you can’t quite put a name on, but it tingles your nostrils and makes goosebumps raise on the nape of your neck.

"You smell good", you mumble the words before you can throughly think them through, while pressing your nose against his throat. Your lips graze his skin and you can feel his upper body stiffen at that. "Was that a weird thing to say?" You ask calmly, almost a little too calm.

There’s a moment of silence before Lo‘ak shakes his head and murmurs a quick, "no."

Back at the main entrance, he gives a light squeeze to your hips, signaling you that he would let you down to your feet now, but your arms wrap around his neck tightly. He just smells so good, you want to stay here for a while longer. Lo‘ak is strong, you know he could effortlessly carry you all day.

"Can you hold me for a while longer?" Your own voice seems so far gone, so far away, you don’t even hear yourself properly, don’t even realize you’re speaking at all. Your skin tingles where Lo‘ak has his arms wrapped around you, and you can’t help but giggle and squirm, pressing yourself closer against him.

"Tanhì [little star], are you… are you okay?"

"Hmh", you hum, crossing your ankles behind his back like a Syaksyuk [prolemuris] clinging to it‘s mother.

"Are you sure?" There’s genuine concern in his voice, one of his hands running up your back, feeling your temperature at the nape of your neck. "You’re kind of burning up a little."

Your response almost sounds like a drunken mumble, "hmm strange. My heart‘s beating pretty fast too." It’s followed by a little giggle, and Lo‘ak frowns.

He‘s not panicking, not yet, but he knows something is wrong. This was really, really not normal behavior for you. He feels your face entirely too close to his pulse point, can feel your nose nuzzling against him, your lips brushing his throat. It’s not a kiss, he tries to make himself believe.

You’re not kissing up and down his throat. You’re not, because that would be wrong. Why would you— and then he feels it. Your tongue. His whole body shivers at the wet glide of your tongue on his throat, and Lo‘ak swallows thickly, before coming back to his senses.

"O-Okay, listen, uhm, I’m gonna put you down now", he scrambles, untangling you from his body to set you down to your feet. Your knees seem a little weak and Lo‘ak can’t help but reach out to hold you steady, ignoring the way it makes you blush and lean in on him again.

It doesn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that whatever was in that glass container must’ve been some sort of drug or whatever. As soon as the coin drops, Lo‘aks heart fills with guilt. His expression shifts to that of worry and uncertainty as he ponders if calling his father would be a good idea. He knows he has to make sure you’ll be okay, has to get you to the tsahìk, but he knows just as well that dad will most definitely skin him alive if he finds his precious adoptive daughter in this condition.

"I feel weird, Lo'", you snap him out of his train of thoughts. Lo’aks hands are on your upper arms, holding you steady while simultaneously keeping some distance between you and him. His eyes scan you up down, and he almost chokes on his spit as he catches the way you clench your thighs together, squirming, and fiddling with the fabric of your loincloth. "Feels really weird… here", you tell him in a hushed whisper, one of your hands bullying it’s way between your clenched thighs. Your eyes are half lidded and glassy as you stare up at him through your lashes, your cheeks flushed in a dark red.

Now he’s panicking.

"S-Shit", he sputters. His eyes are wide as he adverts his gaze to somewhere, anywhere else but you, trying not to look at his stepsister touching and rubbing herself over her clothes. That’s bad, that’s really, really bad. "Let’s just get you home, yeah? I‘m– I‘m sure there’s a cure to whatever it is that you have."

One quick glance down to see if you had even heard what he just said, and he finds you still clumsily rubbing your hands between your thighs, seeking some sort of relief. "But you", he swallows thickly, "you really need to stop doing that, okay?" Lo’ak knows he doesn’t even sound half convincing, and it takes him more than just a bit of effort to not stare at you right now.

You look back at him under your lashes, bite your bottom lip and shake your head and he knows you’re doing that on purpose— working him up with those helpless little noises, sweet sounds of need and pleasure, thighs clenching and unclenching around your own hand.

"C-Can’t you just help me? Please, I- I need you."

One of your hands then closes around his wrist and before he realizes to where you’re guiding him, his palm cups your still covered cunt. He feels your slick drench the woven coverings under his fingertips and his eyes widen. "Need you here", you plead. "It hurts so bad, Lo‘ak. I‘m so empty."

"I– I can’t, we shouldn’t—" Lo’ak shakes his head, seemingly torn, but suddenly your lips press against his and he just can’t find it in himself to pull away.

Your lips are so soft, softer than he imagined (not that he imagined what kissing you would be like, ever) and the moment Lo‘ak finds himself kissing back you surge forward, the grip around his wrist tightens, urging him to stay right there, teeth nipping at his bottom lip until his lips part and he can taste you, your tongue slipping inside his mouth, your salvia mixing with his.

Your kiss is forceful and he’s so much more into it than he thought he’d ever be. And when you pull back your lips are red and wet, and he knows his mouth is probably a perfect mirror to yours.

"Fuck, tanhì, baby", he whispers, "Gonna get me in trouble…" And in an instant he’s on you again. His tongue tingles as it curls around yours, with drool running down his chin as he backs you up against a tree. You cling to him, desperate and wanting, not letting go of his wrist until he makes you understand that he’s only pulling away to get that damn loincloth out of the way. It nearly rips with the effort of getting it off, but when he finally succeeds you both clumsily pull each other to the ground.

This is wrong, he thinks as he spreads your legs opens. This is so wrong, he thinks as he runs his hands up and down your body, your chest, pushing your top out of the way.

You look so beautiful like this, chest heaving and covered in a thin layer of sweat. Hair messy and eyes dark with lust, pupils so blown it should make him worry, but he can’t bring himself to care when his gaze falls to the space between your thighs where slick oozes out of you in a concerning amount.

"Please- Please put it in, I need you", you slur, spreading your thighs further apart. "Need you inside."

Your pussy looks red and puffy, so sensitive as he runs two digits through your folds and then gently pushes them in. You gasp, but open up perfectly for him. It’s not enough, Lo‘ak can feel it. He curls his fingers, pumps them in and out a few times to hear those sweet moans tumble from your parted lips.

"You have to promise you won’t hate me after this", he says under his breath. His thumb glides over your clit, gently pushing its little hood up to bring the little nub into view and he can almost feel it throb under his touch. "I‘m just helping you out because you asked for it, alright?" Lo‘ak says it as if he’s talking to himself, reassuring that you want this, it’s okay, and maybe it actually is. Peeling his eyes away from the mouthwatering sight between your thighs he finally looks back up at you, swallowing the salvia that has been pooling in his mouth. "Promise you won’t hate me. Please." The restrain is clear in his voice, but he’s nowhere near as needy as you are. "C’mon, baby, say it. Tell me with your words."

"I won’t hate you, Lo‘ak just please–" Suddenly you shove him by the shoulders, rolling over until you’re the one straddling him, pinning him down to the ground. Your hand impatiently reaches between your thighs and feels for his cock, before repositioning it to prod his tip at your entrance. He bucks up into your hand as you give his cock a few pumps, pre-cum dribbling through your fingers.

The sight of him beneath you sends a throb straight to your cunt.

Lo‘ak sucks in a breath just as he’s about to tell you to wait, slow down, but then you‘re already slamming yourself down onto him without remorse. Fuck, it's so easy. Fits right in like a glove; overwhelmingly wet and warm, a terrible combination that scares him.

A punched out moan breaks from his throat as he feels the tightness of your velvety-like walls envelope his length. He’s so deep inside you, he can feel your cervix kissing his tip and it sends a shudder up his spine.

It's almost an out-of-body experience as you get on your haunches and lift yourself up, the head of his cock still nudged against your entrance, and he watches your gleaming lips part before you sink all the way back down again, taking him into the softest, most delicate parts of yourself.

Lo‘ak feels it and knows that he can’t change anything about the way he’s completely surrendering to your control- and he absolutely fucking loves it.

It’s so wrong, but that’s what brings a tingle to his fingertips. So dirty, but that’s what makes heat raise under his skin like a fire burning down a forest.

Lo’ak watches the way your belly contracts visibly, in time with the hitch in your breath at the first few thrusts. Your thighs tense and your fingers finds his braids to anchor yourself, and his hands find your hips and push you down harder on his length and he’s startled to realise how soft you are now, yielding to him in ways he’d never have imagined once. You’re putty in his hands, ridden by nothing but pleasure. A carnal need.

It’s luck that the adventures in Lo’aks life gave or showed him at least a bit of reservoirs of self-control that his karyus [teachers] never thought he had, because after those first few thrusts, you ride him vigorously.

Lo’ak doesn’t know how you’re this in sync, but he knows you want him to fuck you hard and fast. With his hands still gripping your hips tightly, he drives deep and eagerly into your weeping cunt, welcomed by that glorious softness again and again, and you wrap your arms around his neck and meet his thrusts as best as you can.

"Lo‘ak", you draw out his name in a long, pathetic moan, "more, need more!"

"Great mother, you’re greedy, baby," he huffs out in a laugh, grips your hips and holds you down on his cock for a second longer than necessary, just to feel your little cunt pulsate around him. You struggle briefly, before picking up the pace again, bouncing harder than before, but also more uncoordinated.

"S‘just so good," you slur, sounding almost drunk. "You feel so good inside me. Fuck me harder!"

Your tongue lolls out and he catches you mid way, tongues meeting in a hungry, filthy kiss. You taste awfully sweet as you moan into it, and Lo‘ak can’t help but think you would want spurs right now, to urge him on all the more. As if he needs that when you kiss him like this, when you hold him so close he feels your tits, soft and warm and perfect, press against his chest.

His cock throbs and you’re starting to quiver now, distinct from the more deliberate movements you both make. It shows in your breasts, makes your thighs tremble against his sides and makes tremors in your stomach muscles.

For a moment it switches from bouncing to grinding, and Lo‘ak knows what you’re trying to do. You grind and rub your needy little clit against his pubic bone, let out desperate noises of pleasure while you hump him.

Lo‘ak makes a hungry humming noise in return which he feels through his lips, once you break away from the kiss, then a breathy groan when he captures a nipple between his teeth. His tongue swirls around the little nub before he tugs and he enjoys the way you clench around him at this.

One of his hands comes up to palm the other, kneading your soft flesh and twirling a nipple between his digits.

"Come for me", he then says, flat tongue gliding over your breast before goosebumps raise underneath. "Come for me, tsmuke. Do it."

The scream you let out is borderline pornographic. It brings tears to your eyes and nearly tips you off balance if it weren’t for Lo‘ak holding you, fucking you through it with short but deep thrusts that send you gasping for air. "Hmh, there it is. Good girl," he groans, "keep coming for me, baby, just like that. Let it all out for your big bro, yeah? Let me feel how bad you wanted this. Look at me."

You force your eyes to stay on him, watch him as you fall apart, rocking your hips for that little bit of extra friction, and Lo’ak feels all of it. The wetness where you are slipping together, the tightness, the little tremors of your body, the pulse of your clit as it rubs against him.

Lo‘ak doesn’t even realize he’s coming himself because he’s entirely too focused on you. He’s bluntly staring at you, eyes half open, mouth agape. It’s like he is trying to burn the image of your pleasure ridden face and your picture perfect body on top of him into his brain forever. He wants to keep it stored away just for himself, to come back to after this is over because he knows he can’t have you again. Because this can’t happen again.

The wet plap, plap, plap of his thrusts continues until your thighs begin to shake and he’s sure he has emptied even the last drop of his cum into your core. It’s back to just grinding then, wet bodies pressing together, closer and closer until neither of you can’t move anymore.

You’re panting, exhausted and spent, your chest heaving to inhale big gulps of air into your burning lungs. Blinking a few times, Lo‘ak notes that your eyes are halfway back to normal, pupils not as big as they were, your skin feeling less feverish but all the more sticky than before.

Good, that’s good, right?

"You," a pause, he swallows, "you okay?"

Nodding and a little out of breath you confirm it with a quick, breathy, "yeah."

There’s a long, long moment of silence, with just the two of you looking at each other, sweat still pearling at your forehead and messy hair framing your beautiful face. Lo‘ak looks at you like he’s afraid breaking the eye contact would break the spell and you would shove him away and call him disgusting, but you don’t.

"I'm not sorry, you know" he says finally, when he can’t stand it anymore. "I would do it again. For you. I will do it again, in a heartbeat, if I...."

"If you have to," you finish for him.

Lo’ak considers pushing it, considers holding your face and speak more firmly so he could be sure he had your full attention while he tried to make you get it. "Yeah," he says gently instead, risking a half hearted grin that would surely give him away. "If I have to."

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ellaa-writes · 4 months

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Do you mind making a fanfic where König slowly falls in love with the reader that's the team medic. And can it be smut towards the end that's more vanilla than rough?

Hiii! Thank you for the request. Also sent back in November. I always get carried away with these. CW; alcohol consumption but over all its very tame and a little fluffy :)

Working for Kortac wasn't always easy but it sure was awarding. Being the team medic/doctor had its perks. You mostly worked on base, or different outposts. You rarely experienced field work, but you weren't completely useless. The rest of the team wouldn't allow it, specially the Colonel.

You train with them, eat with them, shower with them, cause you are one of them.

As well as going out after a successful mission, when everyone is preparing for there leave. A nice hooray before a break.

You've been with Kortac for little over a year now, you made friendships with almost everyone. The Lifesaver they call you, out of respect and also taking the piss. Getting a nickname meant you were really family.

You don't talk about your personal life, no one does and no one asks questions. But it's not like you want to talk about your failures and joining the military was you lose ditch effort to pursue your dreams. Working in the hospital wasn't ideal anymore, the mundane day after day was draining you. And your tremors destroyed your opportunity to your goal as a board certified surgeon.

Wearing your civvy clothes, nothing special. Your favorite pair of jeans, a simple top and chunky boots. It's a tad chilly so you threw a warm leather jacket over it to tie it all in. Taking a cab with Roze to the local bar. Chatting about plans and wants. Roze using her leave to go climb a mountain. Telling her you wish you had her ambition and discipline. And her telling you that she could teach you some time.

The cab stopped in front of the bar, a fairly busy night. A small group of people were gathered around chatting and smoking cigarettes. Some of them you recognize as your teammates, and the Colonel. He made you dizzy, every time your eyes find him every cell in your body buzzes. Like flies to a street lamp.

Like a million butterflies in your tummy, beating against the inside tying to break out. You waving back to the ones that waved to you, making your way into the bustling bar. Leading the way to the bar, Roze close behind.

"We should find a both, I'm not being stuck at a fucking table." Roze gritted into your ear, remembering the last time you two went out with the boys. "Go find one I'll order our drinks. The usual?" you offered. She gave you a big smile and squeeze to your upper arm. "You are a doll, do you know that?" she yelled as she made her way through the crowd.

You finally flagged down the busy bartender, ordering Roze her vodka soda and your old fashion. Looking out into the crowd trying to find the others. Spotting them at a big booth in the back, a big screen rght above playing some sort of football game.

With a loud clink the bartender dropped the drinks in front, snatching the change out of your hand before turning away to help another. Carefully making your way through the crowd to the others, watching has Roze and Hutch lively convo. Setting the drink down before sliding it over to Roze who mouthed a silent thank you to you.

You slid into the other end of the both the faced out towards the bar, right up to a very tired looking Oni who looked unintereseted in whatever Horangi was saying. "What's up cool cat." he cooed to you, his big arm snaking around to give you a tight hug. "Getting drunk." you cheered raising your drink, the two cheering in agreement as they clinked their glass against eachother.

"Room for one more?" his thick deep accent purred for behind you. Colonel König sliding in beside you, taking up the rest of the both. Causing you to shift over to Oni to your right. "You smell like shit." Horangi exclaimed, raising his glass towards König. Causing the giant to bark with laughter, raising his pint towards the Korean. Causing some to slosh to the side and drip in front of you.

Indistinctively making you jump back to not get any of the stinky lager to get on you. "Sorry about the doll." his rumbling voice reached your ears. Making you blush and say "It's all good sir." taking a big gulp of your drink. Shrinking back as the others talked, stopping once in a while to include you.

König's leg brushing up against yours every now and than. If you were any the wiser you'd think he was doing it on purpose. Downing the last of your drink you plopped it on the solid table with a clank. König eyeing the empty glass while he finished his own. Kindly taking it with him as he went to get another fill.

Roze gave you an odd look from across the table, you just shrugged it off. She's been trying to convince you that the Austrian has been pinning for you. You brush it off as him being kind, but he's never that kind. Small things like bringing you things he found that reminded you of him. Small like trinkets and tchotchkes, either hand delivering them himself or leaving at your door.

Always being the first on the team, even before the muscle. Having first pick over any new recruits, a small luxury. Like you said, he's just kind. And very straight forward and to the point. A confident and cocky man, that knows what he wants and always gets it. And it's definitely not you.

It wasn't long until the Colonel returned with his drink and yours, setting down a colorful fruity drink in front of you. Causing a laugh from the others, but you just blinked at it. "I think this is yours." as you shifted it across the table to Hutch. Who gladly took the free drink cause booze is booze baby. "Aw Koni pal, you shouldn't have." he nearly had it to his lips before König thick hand grabbing Hutch's wrist, giving it a light squeeze before saying "It's not yours." in his husky accent. Bringing it back to you, holding it out. "Do you not like?" he asked curiously.

You weren't sure what was happening, was this some joke that you just didn't understand. "No." you said flatly, eyeing Roze for some help but she just eagerly gulped down her own ignoring you. "Can you excuse me." as you brushed passed the giant now looking at the drink in confusion.

Going to the bar you ordered two shots of the strongest liquor they had. Taking them down like a champ you asked for another old fashion. Feeling a warm hard body brush up next to you, seeing the Colonel standing beside you with that stupid drink still in his hand.

"I'm sorry Katze, I thought you would like." he started to explain. The bartender interrupting to give you your whiskey, taking a quick sip before König moved the drink so it was next to you. "It reminds me of you, that's all." he finished. You snorted into your glass and nearly choked on the smooth amber. Huffing out a coughing laugh.

"I'm sorry sir, but how does that remind you of me?" you giggled, finally feeling the alcohol settle into your worn bones.

"It's colorful like you." he said confidently and also confused at how you dont see it. "I'm colorful?" you asked, taking the drink from his hand. Your fingers lightly brushing against his, bringing the liquid to your nose before downing the whole thing in one try. And setting it back into his hand that remained in place.

König eyes widened at your bold display, a fire burning into them as he watched you lips grip the rim of the curved glass. The way your necked bobbed as you swallowed the sweet liquid. The fire burning a path straight to his pants. Feeling himself grow to life and strain against the front zipper.

"It's nice to see you like this sir." you blurted out and immediately regretting it. Ok, last drink and your leaving, you scolded yourself. "What do you mean?" his curosity peeked. You waved his answer away, getting embarssed by your loose lips. "Dont get shy on me now." he pushed. Moving hs big body into yours more, pining you to the bar stool.

"It's just, your so human." you whispered. A little nervous to his reacton, but instead he leaned his head back and barked out a laugh. Causing people around to jump at the sudden loud sound. A few moving away from the big man.

"That was a good one Katze." he leaned further down to your face. "I like seeing you like this." his hand slowly running from your wrist to your neck, holding it in place. "Like what sir?" you mummured, eyeing his lips as they moved closer to your own. "Flustered." he breathed into your mouth, closing the gap and kissing you deeply. His hand moving to the back of your head to keep you in place. Your lungs seizing to produce air as you felt his soft lips move against yours.

He pulled away slowly, moving his hand to your face, running his thumb over your bottom lip. Your lungs screamed, finally sucking in a deep breath. You could feel the heat rise to your face, you must look like a tomato right now.

"So damn cute." he continued, looking away from you to your abandoned drink at the bar. "Are you done?" he questioned. You were buzzing, almost right out of your skin. So light headed all you could do his shake your head yes. König took that as his sign to make a move, so he lead you out of the bar into the cold night.

"This way doll." as he pulled you to the direction of the quiet street, you could spot the bmw shining under the moon light. "I'll drive us back." he reached the passenger door, holding it open for you as you climbed in. Closing it softly as he jogged to the drivers side, climbing in and the car roared to life.

The drive back to the base passed in a flash, König nearly dragging you through the building towards his own room. His high status warrants his own private quarters. A small living and dining area, followed by his bedroom and attached bathroom. He unlocked the door with haste and pulled you in. Spinning you around so you were pushed against the back of the door.

His strong body on yours, you heard the click of the lock slide into place. König lips once again on yours, nipping and sucking. Making a trail down your neck, pulling the zipper of your jacket down and off your arms. Tossing it towards his table, his hands finding your ass and hauling you up. You legs mindlessly wrapping around his waist, tugging him into your core more. Earning a low moan, vibrating from his chest.

He yanked at the collar of your shirt, a clean tear running down the front exposing your breast to his mouth. Pulling a yelp from you as he nipped at the sensitive skin. He turned you both around and towards his room, kicking the door open and dropping you on the bed.

"Sir-" you tried to let out but König's lips swallowed your words. "Shhh, baby. Let me make you feel good. Ja." he whispered into your mouth, making you melt into the bed. All you could do was shake your head has you fully leaned back, closing your eyes.

König made good with your clothes, leaving you only in your panties. You watched has he removed his shirt and shoved his jean and brief's to the floor, kicking them away as he climbed back on and slotted himself between your thighs.

Pining your spread knees to your stomach, rubbing his face against your clothed core. His big nose carding its self along your slit, building pressure against your clit. Pulling moans from you, throwing your head back.

König took his time, running his face up and down your thighs. Kissing from your ankle to your inner thigh, over your soaking core, and down the other leg. Licking path across your skin and blowing on the wetness, goosebumps spreading across your body.

Pulling your hard buds into his mouth, swirling his tongue around and sucking. His teeth grazing on the sensitive nipple and lightly nipping. Relishing in the noises hes drawing from you. Humming in approval, slowly pulling down your panties and letting them get lost on the bed.

His fingers find your center, the thick heavy digits ghosting up and down. Gathering the wetness that pushed through, pressing his wide thumb right against your clit. Making you buck into his hand more, König's mouth still on your tits.

He worked his thick middle finger into you, slowly opening you for him. Working knuckle by knuckle, whispering praises into your ear. Pushing another finger into you, making you whimper at the stretch.

"Ko, please." you pleaded with him, feeling his low chuckle. His hot mouth against your ear, cooing "Patience love." as his fingers pump in and out of you. Feeling your slick slide down your ass and onto the sheets.

Whining at the loss of his fingers, but feeling the head of his dick running up and down. Collecting your wetness and spreading it over him before the tip catches you needy hole. Snapping his hips fowards ripped a cry from your throat. Your legs clamping around him and tightening.

"Shh, shhh. Quiet now pretty girl. I'm sorry, I'll be more carefully." and he kept true to his word. His cock slowly stretching you open, your warm folds inviting him in. Squeezing and pulsing around him, König cherished every moment.

Sensually thrusting in and out, lazily rolling his hips. Making sure he pulls orgasm after orgasm from your body.

Not stopping until your begging and pleading with him. Incoherently going on about it being too much, too sensitive.

König could lose himself in you, deeper and deeper. Holding back to not scare you. Wanting to make it all about his sweet little medic. The moment he laid eyes on you he was hooked. Those sweet eyes and kind smile, how quick and smart you were. Such a soft thing, you shouldn't be in this line of field.

Finally letting himself go, he buried himself deeper. Releasing pressed right up against your cervix, shoveling as much as he could to your core. Letting out one last guttural moan as he collapsed onto you, only rolling over when you started banging against his back. Taking you with you, you settled on his chest.

König laid out completely satisfied, head back and eyes closed. He could feel you staring at him.

"Sleep" he commanded. Hearing your giggle as you continued to stare.

#cod mw2 #könig #konig #könig mw2 #konig mw2 #konig cod #könig cod #konig x reader #konig x you #könig x reader #könig x you #könig call of duty #cod könig #cod konig #könig x fem reader

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lightwise · 1 month

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Hidden Monsters

For some reason this has been a bear (dragon, Vrathean, pick your Star Wars creature) to write, but I realized after this last episode of TBB that there was more to the “monster of the week” trope that we all love to get tired of in Star Wars, and specifically for our beloved Batch members. I believe that some of the main “monsters” each member of the Batch has faced and could face represent inner turmoil and the storms/dark things within that each of them has had to wrestle with. The choices each of them have made to tame or calm or live with the creatures they have encountered, instead of automatically killing them or choosing violence against them, is a powerful metaphor. Something that looks like a monster on the outside may not necessarily be a monster on the inside, when cared for and acknowledged properly.

Echo and the Rishi Eel

Echo’s very first mission on Rishi station involved a giant monster, a droid army invasion, watching his superior officer die in front of him, and losing most of his squad along with the entire outpost he had been assigned to help defend. After the Rishi station is overrun by battle droids, Echo, Fives, Hevy, and Cutup escape through an air vent only to land in the middle of what turns out to be the Rishi eel’s nest. Echo is second to last in line and has to watch as Cutup is snatched up by the eel right behind him and swallowed whole. Echo is the only one to look back and commemorate Cutup with his name and a sigh before they have to keep moving. He does the same at the end of the episode when they lose Hevy, thanking him for his self sacrifice. Echo’s mind—strategic, careful, hesitant, wanting to do the right thing—is always on his brothers and their safety, and his own fears and questioning give way to courage and determination as he watches his brothers do what needs to be done.

This formative experience is literally emblazoned on Echo’s chest and becomes part of his identity when Rex shoots the eel in the eye, wipes some of its blood on his hand, and presses it against Echo’s armor as he encourages him to keep going. This combination of bravery, looking death in the eye, and holding compassion for each of his brothers as they fall continues to be a running theme throughout Echo’s character arc—from holding 99 in his arms as he dies, to hanging in the Techno Union chamber where his mind and body were used to hunt down the brothers he loved, to overcoming the changes and loss he’s experienced and finding a new family with the Batch and Omega, to coming full circle and joining Rex to help free his brothers from the Empire’s grip. He has had to watch as brother after brother is taken away from him, but he has learned how to keep going in the face of loss. These experiences bring out who he is—caring, loyal, brave, resolute, and a symbol of endurance—and trace back to the very first monster he had to face.

Hunter, Omega, and the Ordo Moon Dragon

In season 1 the Batch is newly on the run from Kamino after Order 66, finding Omega, and losing Crosshair. They crash onto an uninhabited planet and while trying to repair their ship, an Ordo Moon Dragon makes off with their capacitor, leaving them stranded. Like the Zillo beast seen in season 2, it feeds on energy but is actually peaceful when not provoked. Hunter wants to track it down, by himself, but Omega insists on accompanying him. While tracking the creature, Omega brings up Crosshair’s absence, and Hunter is unwilling to even say Crosshair’s name, and he is very uncomfortable with the conversation. He is unwilling and unable to face his demons right now, and instead is wallowing in self-blame. Hunter won’t be able to fully face his inner turmoil until Crosshair returns and they encounter the Wyrm on Barton IV, another dragon-like creature which also burrows underground (although it is much, much larger, and more harmful than the Ordo Moon Dragon, signifying how much Hunter’s avoidance and resentment grows over time as it is not dealt with). It’s also interesting that this episode cuts back and forth to Crosshair fully under the influence of the chip and wiping out Saw Gurerra’s insurgents in a very violent manner.

Hunter ends up being knocked out by the creature and Omega takes her flashlight and his blaster to complete the mission, going alone into the tunnels where the dragon lives. What Omega learns is that she doesn’t need the blaster to deal with the situation. As scary as it is, she doesn’t have to kill the dragon or use violence against it, as it’s simply hungry and looking for food. The terrifying creature becomes a thing of beauty, green electric shocks running over its rainbow colored body, illuminating the tunnel and Omega’s face as it feeds on the flashlight she throws to it in exchange for their capacitor. The visuals mimic the teal and green rippling over the Vrathean that Omega and Ventress encounter and have to calm down in season 3 (more on that further on).

However, this wasn’t Omega’s mission. It was Hunter’s, but she ends up completing it for him. Omega learns a valuable lesson here, which fits in with her natural tendencies of drawing both people and animals to her caring, compassionate nature instead of judging them based on appearance, but I’m not sure that this was her ultimate trial in facing her own inner demons. (See my thoughts on why this is important at the end of this essay in the Ventress section.) This also was a failed attempt for Hunter, and he would end up facing his trial again in The Return in season 3.

Wrecker and the Rancor (Muchi)

Wrecker was introduced as a character whose expertise is in explosives and making things blow up. He lives for making a ruckus and having a good time, but his strengths are engineered to be used for destruction.

Much of Wrecker’s character arc in season 1 is learning how to become more of an adult/parental figure for Omega, and how to put his own desires and needs aside in order to help take care of hers (letting her eat first, making a room for her in the gunners nest, watching out for her). In Rampage, the Batch is charged with rescuing a “child,” who they eventually find out is a young, ornery, and decidedly huge Rancor. Wrecker is the only one of them strong enough to sedate the creature after a lengthy bout of essentially hand to hand “combat.” They needed to bring Muchi back alive and Wrecker ends up gaining mutual affection and respect with her. Muchi is now calm and tamed enough that Omega can ride on her back with no fear or worry of danger.

Rancors adhere to a strict social and familial hierarchy, and have to challenge the alpha for authority. Wrecker starts out brash and boastful, and even though he is always caring, he becomes much more aware of his surroundings and his standing in their family unit as he grows in his responsibilities toward Omega. Rampage is shortly before his chip goes off, where he almost kills his entire squad. While his brute strength is an asset when used in the right ways, it is lethal if used for the wrong ones, and through his family bonds (especially with Omega) Wrecker is ultimately able to overcome the worst, chipped version of who he had been made to be, and instead be a source of safety and strength for Omega and his family.

Tech and the Zillo Beast

The Zillo beast is a marvel amongst Star Wars creatures. Its armor is impenetrable and highly valuable, and it feeds almost exclusively on energy, which allows it to become larger and morph into an even more powerful creature. When the Batch encounters it in season 2 in Metamorphasis, it tries to attack all of them, but Tech is the only one who is “fascinated” by the creature rather than scared of it. Similar to the Zillo beast feeding on energy, Tech’s mind was what he was known for, and he “fed” it by constantly consuming and integrating data about the world around him (which is transmitted by energy currents). During this episode Tech is confident in his own capabilities and extremely interested in learning more about the cloning technologies they were uncovering on this crashed ship. Tech’s research on the Zillo beast, while helpful, unfortunately comes too late and the Batch are unable to either put down or recapture the creature before it grows too strong for them to deal with. In the process, the Zillo beast escapes and is eventually recaptured by the Empire.

I’ve always been fascinated by the point in this episode where Tech is downloading the rest of the information from the terminal onto his data pad, and Hunter warns Omega that Imperials are inbound. She immediately tells Tech they need to go, and he refuses for a moment, saying he needs to finish capturing the data. If Omega did not pressure him to leave (and the electricity go out), he very well could have been standing there when ships bomb their location a few moments later, and gotten both himself and Omega killed for no good reason. At this moment his love of knowledge is overpowering his common sense and his love for his family, and it almost costs him everything.

Contrast this to a few moments later when he pulls Omega out of danger as they leave the ship, and Plan 99 when he chooses to sacrifice himself not for his own gain, but solely so his family has a chance to live. He had to face his greatest asset where it could also be his greatest failure, and learn how to prioritize and wield his strengths.

Crosshair and the Vulture

In The Outpost in season 2, Crosshair has spent almost two seasons engulfed in poor choices made both against his will (the chip), and of his own volition (staying with the Empire no matter what in pursuit of a sense of purpose and loyalty). His decisions are starting to grate on him and have led him down a dark path, but he hasn’t been fully ready to find a way to change them. When he lands on the icy planet of Barton IV, he encounters fearsome ice vultures shrieking overhead. He is told by the outpost’s commanding clone officer, Mayday, that the creatures are vicious, but admirable, because they find a way to survive.

Vultures signify both death and cleansing and are often feared and viewed with disgust, yet are an integral part of nature. Crosshair’s isolation and status as a clone soldier have put him in a precarious and often misjudged position, in ways he doesn’t even fully realize until this episode. His very life is in danger due to the Empire’s stance toward the clones, but so far Crosshair has believed that he is valuable to the Empire in ways that the regular clones are not. This attitude and perspective are severely challenged by Lieutenant Nolan, who speaks contemptuously both about and to every clone he encounters. Nolan’s lack of respect for them as soldiers, as officers, and even as people, is an extreme look at what Crosshair’s callousness and misplaced loyalty could lead him to if he is not careful. His fate is hanging in the balance.

After being sent on an inhumane mission to retrieve two crates of armor in a blinding snowstorm, Crosshair and Mayday are caught in an avalanche. After coming up out of the snow gasping for air, Crosshair could choose to get himself back to base and leave Mayday behind. Find a way to survive in the cold on his own, but kill the last of his compassion and personal values in the process. Instead, he chooses to put his life even more at risk to bring Mayday along with him.

Unfortunately for both of them, when they get back to base, Nolan has zero sympathy for their self-sacrifice, and allows Mayday to die unceremoniously on the platform from his wounds. Once again, a vulture is circling overhead, waiting to partake of its next meal. It signifies the threat of death but also Crosshair’s struggle and desire to survive. Crosshair is now staring his own lack of value and expendability in the face, and where he finds himself is now fully intolerable. He cannot continue on the way he has been without the very essence of who he is breaking irreparably in the process. Does he reclaim who he is, a compassionate and forceful individual who protects those he cares about? Or does he fall in line with what the Empire wants from him, knowing he will be discarded regardless?

Crosshair integrates his lesson in a visceral manner, his own personal traits mimicking the very essence of the ice vulture as he finally reorients his moral compass, takes a stand for himself and for his clone brothers, and takes vengeance on Lieutenant Nolan. His caution and inner turmoil are channeled into one desperate act as he becomes an agent/angel of death, the framing of the scene creating vulture-like wings spread on either side of him. He doesn’t expect to survive this encounter, choosing a path that looks like death on the outside but is cleansing and redeeming for him on the inside. He can now face the future as his whole, integrated self.

Hunter, Crosshair, the Vulture, and the Wyrm

The vulture and its meaning for Crosshair, as well as Hunter’s cut-short encounter with the Ordo Moon Dragon, both have their bookends in season 3’s episode The Return. Crosshair has seen immense character growth after his choices in The Outpost, and has not only redeemed himself but has been given the chance to start reconciling with everyone he has hurt. This episode has two creatures that serve two important purposes: the vulture returns as a metaphor for Crosshair’s need to reconcile with and forgive himself, and a new creature, a giant wyrm (nice Dune reference there, Star Wars) highlights the fractured rift between him and Hunter, and the anger, distrust, and resentment that Hunter has been running from since Aftermath.

The Batch has returned to Barton IV, and Crosshair is greeted by the ice vulture as they land. The weather is calm and clear this time, and the creature is observing him but not in a threatening way. At the same time, tensions rise to a breaking point between Hunter and Crosshair and a long-awaited argument starts between them. Before it can be resolved, the wyrm erupts out of the ground and puts all of their lives in danger. It had been kept at bay previously by high-pitched noises, (oddly similar to Hunter’s enhanced senses, which he has been so distracted from that he wasn’t aware of the danger ahead of time) and lived underneath the same snow that had buried Crosshair and Mayday.

In their efforts to draw the creature away from the outpost so they can turn the sensors back on, Hunter falls through the snow into the wyrm’s tunnels. Crosshair has already had his inner journey underneath the snow on Barton IV. This time, Hunter has to finally face his own struggles. Every step of the way he has been running and hiding, trying to keep his family and Omega safe by keeping them away from the Empire, away from Crosshair, away from danger, but failing miserably. This time, Hunter could simply let Crosshair haul him back up to the surface when he reaches the spot where Crosshair and Batcher have dug a hole in the ice to pull him out. But he hasn’t confirmed that the wyrm is actually past the boundary and that it is safe to turn the perimeter sensors back on. This time, Hunter stays below the surface, and keeps himself in harms way until he is absolutely sure that his family is safe and that his own emotions have been worked through. He is starting to take responsibility for his journey. His senses start to kick in again and he refuses to leave the tunnel until the wyrm is barreling down his neck, and then he finally accepts Crosshair’s help. Both of them run to safety, the perimeter beacons turn on, and the wyrm is now on the other side of an invisible barrier of sound, harmless and chastened until it finally slinks away.

The boys exchange glances and nods. Their rift has been bridged and they are both willing to move forward, together. This is proven by the end of the episode, where Crosshair, who has remained closed off and unwilling to discuss what he’s been through, opens up slightly to Hunter before they leave, and Hunter responds with forgiveness, acknowledgement, and hope for the future. And for now, it’s enough. Crosshair looks into the sky and watches the ice vulture flying overhead once again. Except this time, it flies off into the sunset, signifying that his lessons from this planet have been fully learned, that the spirit of survival in the face of death that he has been carrying with him can now be put towards living and thriving again. Both Hunter and Crosshair are leaving slightly more whole than when they first arrived, both as individuals and in their restored relationship with each other.

Ventress, Omega, and the Vrathean

Omega gets a second chance at taming a terrifying creature in The Harbinger in season 3. After Asajj Ventress shows up on Pabu to help the Batch figure out the m-count conundrum that makes Omega’s blood so valuable to the Empire, (and after Omega has begged her to stay and test her capabilities), she and Omega go out onto the ocean to test Omega’s potential Force sensitivity. (Also after Ventress had to whoop the boys’ backsides to get them to slightly trust her, but we won’t go into that here).

Throughout this season, (and really for most of her life), Omega has…not been doing well. Her time on Tantiss, leaving the rest of the clones imprisoned there behind when she and Crosshair escaped, and the relentless pursuit of her by the Empire has truly traumatized her and made her single-mindedly want to know why she is always in danger and putting everyone else around her in danger as well. Her mental health has been spiraling a bit and her inner turmoil is starting to rival Crosshair’s in season 2. She knows that m-count is important and is also thrilled at Ventress mentioning the Jedi, while the rest of the Batch and Ventress herself are very somber about the prospect that Omega might have Force capabilities. However, in her desire to have answers, she ends up being very impatient and frustrated and doesn’t even show her typical level of optimism and concentration in working through Ventress’ tests for her. It’s almost like her goal (finding answers) is at odds with what her idea of finding those answers looks like.

After having tried and failed to “reach out” to the Force to summon anything, Omega pouts and sits back down in the boat, seemingly defeated. Ventress has asked her to try to connect to nature, probably because she has seen Omega’s connection to Batcher and assumes that might be more in line with whatever her gifting might be. Two of Omega’s main traits and strengths are her optimism in the face of defeat, and her compassion toward literally every living thing she encounters. She is always curious, generous, caring, and wanting to connect with others. Which makes it even more curious that she is so easily stumped and disconnected by this exercise. She challenges Ventress to prove why *she* is the best person to be teaching Omega this lesson, and Ventress sighs but gently and carefully shows her powers by calling up a school of glowing green fish from the water. “I’m not the one holding back,” she tells Omega.

After a peaceful moment, however, another creature, this time a giant and tentacled Vrathean, emerges from the water as well and starts hunting Ventress and Omega down. It’s unclear if Ventress actually called the creature up herself or not, but if she did it was not intentional. She helps rescue Omega from the creature’s clutches and then chooses to put herself in more danger by letting it grab her, and communing with it through the Force as it tries to eat her. The deadly creature becomes a thing of astonishing beauty as the color of the sea ripples over its body and its eyes soften and recognize Ventress as a sentient being.

This is where it gets interesting, because this peacefulness, calm, and compassion is not something we would have associated with prior versions of Ventress. Her experiences and growth throughout the Clone Wars, her associations with Ahsoka and Quinlan, and her choices have turned her into a much softer and stronger version of herself. This has now become her trial by allowing her to showcase just how much she has changed, and how much her own worldview has flipped.

This is an incredible example for Omega, but similar to how she took Hunter’s trial for him in Replacement, Ventress has now filled what was supposed to be hers. This begs the question, what is Omega actually holding back on? Is she really Force sensitive? Or is just her compassion and tenderness toward everyone around her overtaking her in unhealthy ways? She has always had a tendency to put herself in harms way in an attempt to make up for the complications her presence brings her brothers.

Omega will have to face these implied monsters at some point. I’m not actually certain that she will end up facing a creature like everyone else has—there’s the possibility that because she naturally has more affinity with creatures and beings that look monstrous but really aren’t, she may end up facing her inner demons in another manner. Will it be a person instead? Or a choice? Even, might I say, an identity crisis? It remains to be seen, but the fact that she must face it in order to overcome and integrate it is unquestionable.

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monstersandmaw · 6 months

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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.

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#centipede alien #insectoid alien #insectoid monster #transmasc reader #transmasc nonbinary reader #alien x human

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blood-grove · 2 months

Text

ruffled feathers

avian/harpy! ghost & soap + child! naga reader

tws; broken bones, near death experience, angst, kidnapping?, idk if this would count as DDD :( its jut overall a dark au take on avian and the world they live in, .

a/n; yeah this one is really heavy compared to my other ones stay safe, also my interpitation of harpies are the ones that have normal human arms and a set of wings but everything else about them is cryptid like

I really hate how stupid I was sometimes, I thought if I could just reach the nest get the eggs I'd be done head back down and enjoy the small feast along with all the other things you've foraged today.

The further I went the more painfully exposed I felt glancing around anxiously before reaching the nest digging threw it snatching up the eggs I could grab stuffing a few in my mouth already before starting down the tree a bit unevenly trying not to drop the eggs or fall.

My tail subconsciously wrapping around a branch as I almost had reached the bottom—

Only to have some huge slam into me the bark of the tree digging into my tail as it attempt to try and hold on my brain registering what the hell was going on till there was loud snap and crunch and my own scream of agony till my tail went limp and I was snagged away from the tree a few branches snapping and creak in the process.

Pain radiating threw my body like I had been crushed like a tin can, I was in the air.

I was in the air?

Did I die that quick is this heaven?

"Hope your still alive down there."

That gravely voice was clear indication I wasn't in heaven and possibly in hell.

Simon honestly did not know why he had picked up the small thing he could barely tell if it was still in his talons grip the ragged breaths and tired sobs it started to let out were a great reminder to him.

The thing would barely even be a snack honestly but better than nothing Soap needed that food badly ever since the loveable idiot broke his wing its been critical to nurse him back to health of course Price and Gaz also helped but they also had there own lives own territories so it was usually down to him to help.

Whatever the Owl Harpy could grab he'd bring back ranging from larger to smaller prey.

Small centaurs, hybrids, humans.

You name he's probably killed it.

But right the task at hand feeding Johnny.

Another few eerily quiet wing beats and he was back on track.

Landing on the ground couldn't have been fun from the little snake he hoped it broke or passed on already lifting his talon to examine the snake making sure it didn't look like it was infected the last he needed was to give Johnny food poisoning.

When he saw the little thing stirring out of its unconscious state he sighed rolling his eyes as his talons popped unlocking from around the little snake that started to sob again as I picked it up it weighed decently he hoped it wouldn't put up much of a fight for Soap.

Not his fault the thing decided to keep living usually he aims for the head or body the force of him pouncing and the whiplash of being torn away from where ever they wear would stun them long enough or kill them.

"P-please let me go-"

"What?"

God it was a mess its left arm clearly limp and useless as of now bruises blooming on there body and the few smaller cuts on there tail no doubt either from the tree he yanked it out of.

"Please it hurts—"

Simon just ignored it as he went into the interior of there little nest outpost enough room for wing spans but small enough to conserve heat as he tuned out the Naga's begs and sobs looking to see if Soap was awake finding the man stretching out his uninjured wing perking up at the sight of Simon with a smile.

"Ghost! Ah thought ye'd be gone for a few more days?

"Wasn't findin' much food out South brought ya' a snack though-"

Simon slightly waved the weakly squirming naga Soap grimacing a bit.

"Why is it still alive?"

"Thought it died on the way here guess not, What? Need your food chewed up like a fledgling?"

"Shuddup! Whatever give it-"

Simon grinned as he pulled the snake away out of reach chuckling as at Soap's huff.

"Please d-don't eat me.."

"It can still talk?"

"Yeah?"

"God's Si ye' sick bastard just crush it already you know how I feel about you toying with food- Espcially young ones-"

"Alright alright-"

"Please don't kill me I-I'm sorry!-"

Soap just huffed making a grabbing motion towards Simon as he begrudgingly handed the sobbing thing over.

"God it's barely got any meat on it."

"Best thing I could find when winters coming around the corner soon enough.."

"Can't we just..let it go?"

"And let it just freeze to death up here in the mountains sure-" Simon grinned as he looked down at Soap who just glared back up at him from the nest of pelts loose feathers fallen feathers along with whatever other makeshift bedding they've collected.

"Not what I mean but I guess you make a decent point.."

Soap sighed as he looked a down at the small naga who sobbed and whimpered.

"I- Well I can't kill them Si-"

"Alright I will then-"

"No!- I.."

"Soap..You need food you haven't even in a couple of days and neither have I.."

"Well..can't you get..something else?.."

"..Fine but I'm going to eat them then-"

Soap flinched at this subconsciously tugging the naga closer much to the pain and bewilderment of the child and there broken arm.

"For the gods sake Soap!- Do not make me take that thing away it's a waste of heat and air were already struggling to eat anyways and you haven't been healing well-"

Simon grumbled rubbing his temple as he sighed heavily.

"Please Johnny."

Soap shifted as he looked down at the writhing form in his arms there snake half had constricted barely around his leg in a attempt to force him to let go which did not work as he basically ignored them as he frowned.

"I-..Can't we keep em' Si?"

"No"

"But just look at the poor thing- Look I- Please-"

Simon just just sighed as he turned his feathers ruffling as he picked up a satchel.

"I'm going to go find some more food and some berries or whatever if I can..If you haven't eaten it by then, Then fine you can keep it or whatever but it's not eating our food."

Soap frowned slightly but he took it as a fair enough deal grinning slightly as he looked over to the little naga that had passed out either from pain or shock.

When he looked up Ghost was gone leaving him alone again.

Well not completely.

I could barely register anything that was going on the next time I woke the pain in my arm had gone down surprising a sour tart taste in my mouth either from the lack of water so far or blood.

I was warm,

Like unnaturally warm.

It kept me still the pervious cold that had been biting at my body was gone it made me lethargic looking around I noticed my arm was a in a makeshift sling.

It felt nice..It would feel nice if I didn't feel eyes on me.

"..Ye alive little snake?"

I shifted away slightly letting a raspy hiss.

"Thought so, Y'know ye know A dinnae want tae eat ye honestly yer very small skin an bones"

"I wanna leave"

"You can't really not with that broken arm..You sound parched as hell let me get some water.."

Soap smiled softly shifting a bit as he got up heading over to a part of of the cave coming back with a small bowl full cool clear water.

"Theres a spring that leaks into her..should be cool enough."

Soap sat infront of me as I glared trying to slither back as he pushed the bowl towards me.

"C'mon.."

I just hissed again as I coiled up grumbled ignoring his offer He sighed mumbled before shuffling back to his spot.

This was gonna be a long night.

a/n: WHY DID I MAKE THIS ONE SO LONG ITS SUPPOSED OT BE SHORTER THAN THIS...idk if i wanan make a pt 2 tried keeping it 1st person for reader i default to 'You' a lot bad habit.

#soapghost #john soap mactavish #soap cod #cod #reader #simon ghost riley #ghost cod #child reader #soap x ghost #? i guess #supposed to be a oneshot #call of duty

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watcheraurora · 2 months

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But For This? Absolutely

Actually writing the Ranchers on a ranch for once after my soul was consumed by the superhero/villain AU for so long. What a novel idea /s 4.5k words Part 2

—

A crash, a curse, and a yowling cat jarred Jimmy out of his thoughts where he'd been staring into the middle distance, finally taking a break. A speckled shape shot across the porch and disappeared into the wheat fields.

"Jimmyyyyy! Revenge got out again! He's heading for the gorge!" Tango shouted from inside.

Jimmy wriggled out of his over-shirt to free up his movements. "On it!" he called back. He ran from his spot on the porch's bench toward the stairs, unfurling his wings as he did. He hit the uncovered part of the porch and hurled himself into the air. The wind rushed through his hair and the sun beat down on his yellow wings and shoulders his tank top left exposed.

He soared low, catching glimpses of the black-and-tan cat running through the wheat and trying to keep track. The gorge was fast approaching. Parts of it were too narrow for Jimmy’s wings and the river at the bottom was fast enough that Revenge wouldn’t survive if he fell in. Meaning Jimmy had to catch the cat before he reached the gorge.

He swooped, arms extended and entire body battered by the wheat.

But he snatched Revenge by the middle and shot into the air before wheeling and heading back for the ranch house—or that was the plan.

Before he could roll, he caught sight of something. Across the gorge, a dark outpost loomed. The nearest neighbors to the ranch and not friendly folk in the slightest.

Partway down the gorge’s steep slope just below the outpost was a small shape.

Even from his distance, he could see the distinct shape of Avian wings. One of them broken.

Jimmy looked down at the cat screeching and thrashing to get free. “Alright. Alright. Calm down. Geez.” He completed his roll and plummeted back toward the house. Tango was waiting on the second floor balcony. Jimmy landed and set Revenge down inside before shutting the door to keep him in.

“If that thing wasn’t so good at catching mice I would have found a new home for that nightmare by now,” Tango grumbled. Jimmy chuckled.

“He’s not so bad.”

“Sure. Whatever you say buddy.” Tango held out Jimmy’s over-shirt.

Jimmy shook his head. “I saw something in the gorge. I’m gonna go investigate. Be right back.”

“Take it anyway. Might need it.”

Jimmy took the shirt and tied it around his waist. “Be back soon.”

Tango smiled fondly. “I know.”

Jimmy launched off the balcony, blowing Tango’s fire hair backward in sputters. He pinwheeled and sailed back toward the gorge.

The winged figure hadn’t moved. Jimmy spiraled and peered down. The wings were small. Caught between juvenile down and proper plumage.

Jimmy twisted into a sharp dive and plunged downward. He flared his wings out to brake and landed near the small figure.

The child was lying in a crumpled heap on a ledge. Long hair tangled around the head. Jimmy couldn’t tell if the hair was blond or what for how dirty it was. The wings, too, were filthy. Feathers were clumped and a dull grey-tan that might have once been white. The child wore a torn shirt and shorts and was missing a shoe. Clutched in one hand was a ragged ravager plushie.

Jimmy approached slowly. “Are you alright?”

No response. Not even a shuffle. He finally noticed a small trickle of blood on the ledge.

He sprung into action. He wrapped the child's broken wing gently in his over-shirt and scooped them up. He hurled himself back into the sky, careful to hold their wings in such a way that he wouldn't crush bone or feathers, but so that they also wouldn't increase drag or get any more injured.

Tango was still waiting on the balcony when Jimmy returned. Revenge was having zoomies inside, visible through the windows and balcony door.

Tango's eyes widened as Jimmy rotated his body so he could land. "Tha—tha—tha—that's a child," he said.

Jimmy nodded. "One of their wings is broken. They were below the outpost on a ledge in the gorge."

"Oh my—" Tango breathed, unable to even complete the sentence. "What do we do?"

"I can reset the broken wing bone. Splint it. After that, maybe we do what we can to clean them up? I know how to clean wings. That hair is a disaster, and there's dirt everywhere. I just... I couldn't leave them there."

"No, no. I wouldn't have either. Let's get started, then." Tango reached out and brushed the hair away from the face, so they both could see. The child couldn't have been older than seven. Gender was more difficult to tell with children, but if Jimmy had to guess, he'd probably say they looked more girlish.

Tango opened the balcony door, snatched Revenge, and held the door open so Jimmy could carry the child inside. Revenge got put in his crate—temporarily—and the humanoids left their bedroom to go to the washroom.

"I'm going to clean the wings first," Jimmy said. "I don't want to reset the bone wrong and cause an infection due to dirty feathers."

Tango nodded, already filling a small bucket with water and grabbing a bar of soap. Jimmy set the child down in the bathtub so he could wash their wings a little easier, making sure they were lying securely on their side.

Tango passed him a sponge and his—freshly cleaned—preening brush. "Thanks," he said. Tango nodded.

Jimmy cleaned the child's wings methodically and slowly with the bucket and the soap and the sponge. The brush would be for later. He did his best not to jar the break, but the child didn't seem to react to anything. They were still alive—Tango obsessively checked for breathing every few minutes—but deeply unconscious.

Gunk, dirt, and dust washed off between the child's feathers with every pass of the sponge, washing down the drain. The icky grey gradually turned to white. Pristine and slightly shimmery. "Look how pretty these are," Jimmy whispered, admiring the feathers.

Tango didn't say anything, but a small smile appeared on his face. While he kept checking for breathing, he started to wash and tidy the child's hair as delicately as he could.

Before long, Jimmy had cleaned the mess off the child's wings and preened them both with oil from their preening glands and his brush. Once they were as cleaned as they could be, he carefully probed around the break. Grian had drilled wing care into his head when he first grew his, so even though Jimmy wasn't really medically trained, he knew how to care for a busted wing.

"I'm so sorry, kiddo," he whispered.

He reset the wing.

The child's eyes flew open and a scream filled the washroom.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay!" Jimmy said, reaching to rub the child's spine right between their wings—a calming spot for most Avians. "Tango, can you grab—"

"On it." Tango rushed out of the washroom.

The child was panting, eyes wide. They were deep blue. The child's hair, now that it had been cleaned and brushed by Tango, was as white as their wings.

Tango returned with sticks and string. "Here, here," he said.

Jimmy quickly constructed a splint for the broken wing. "There you go. You're okay. It's okay. My name's Jimmy. What's yours?" He gave the child a soft smile.

They blinked at him. "S... Skye," they said.

"Okay, Skye. Nice to meet you. Do your grownups use she, he, they, or something else for you?"

"Sh... she. B... but I... I don't have grownups anymore. Just... just the pillagers." She shuddered. "And the cage."

Tango's hair burst into flame. "I'm burning that damn outpost down," he muttered. "Keeping a child in a cage?"

"Not now Tango. You're scaring her," Jimmy whispered, watching the way Skye gasped and shrunk away from Tango.

Tango took a deep breath, the fire of his hair slowly burning down until it was just hair again. Jimmy kept comfortingly rubbing Skye's spine.

"It's okay. He's friendly. He won't hurt you. This is Tango. He's just mad that the pillagers put you in a cage," Jimmy said comfortingly. Tango gave the girl a small smile. "See? He's nice."

Skye shivered, wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing them.

"We're not going to hurt you, kiddo," Jimmy said. "We just want to help you. See? I'm like you." He unfurled his wings a tiny bit, flapping them a little to make the feathers flutter. Skye's deep blue eyes watched his wings. She almost smiled. "Can Tango help that little cut on your forehead?"

She eyed Tango warily. Then looked back at Jimmy. Then back to Tango. Then nodded.

Tango slowly extended his hand, thumb raised. He rested the pad of his thumb against the little cut. Yellow-gold magic swirled around his thumb and when he pulled away, the cut had scarred over. "Better?"

Skye nodded again. "Th-th-thank you," she said.

"Of course."

"Let's get you out of those damp clothes and into something comfy and warm, okay?" Jimmy asked.

Skye nodded.

Jimmy leaned back and snatched a towel, helping Skye wrap it around herself without hurting her wing, using his own to maintain his balance.

Tango left the washroom and returned with one of Jimmy's over-shirts. Jimmy took it from him and held it out for Skye. "We're gonna leave so you can change. This is gonna be a little long on you, but pretend it's a dress. It's got the holes in the back for your wings. We're gonna be nearby in case you need anything, okay? Just call out for us."

Skye carefully took the shirt and nodded.

Tango took Jimmy's hand and led the way out of the room.

The SoulBond between them warmed. She "doesn't have grownups anymore"? Jimmy... Tango's thoughts said down their bond, his red eyes sad. Jimmy's expression mirrored Tango's.

I know. Do you think they're dead? Or do you think she was kidnapped?

Tango shrugged. I don't know. The way she said it... I don't think they're alive anymore.

So, what do we do? Jimmy asked.

Tango released Jimmy's hand to rest his fists thoughtfully on his hips. Well... if her family is gone... she needs time to heal. Is she even old enough to fly?

Barely. I doubt she knows much or would be able to stay in the air for long.

Tango pursed his lips. It's not like we don't have the room and resources...

You want to take her in? Jimmy almost didn't dare to hope.

She's just a kid and we're out in the middle of nowhere. If her parents are gone and she's been in a pillager outpost cage—someone has to take care of her. I can build another room up here pretty quickly. She'd be safe here. I'll reconstruct the ward to keep the outpost out of our business.

Jimmy smiled softly. I thought you didn't want kids.

Tango rolled his eyes. I'm not going to turn away an innocent child in desperate need of help just because I didn't want kids, he retorted. She's welcome stay here as long as she wants.

Jimmy beamed, grabbed Tango's face in both hands, and kissed his forehead. Ohhh thank youuu! Thank you, thank you, thank you! His wings flapped happily and Tango shook his head affectionately. I really wanted us to be able to take care of her here. Even if it's just while she heals and we can look to see if her parents are still alive. Thank you, Tango.

Tango brushed his fingers through Jimmy's soft hair. You're welcome, pretty bird.

Jimmy went red under his freckles—

Right as the washroom door opened.

Skye stood there in Jimmy's over-shirt. It was basically a dress on her, the sleeves trailing to nearly her ankles.

Jimmy smiled and knelt in front of her. "Need some help rolling those sleeves up, kiddo?" he asked. She nodded and held out her arm.

Jimmy made quick work of rolling up the sleeves, being friendly and chatting to her. Skye watched quietly. Tango leaned against the wall and watched the scene with a smile on his face. "I'm gonna go get some stuff together," he said to Jimmy, setting a hand on the latter's shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah," Jimmy said. Tango headed for the stairs.

Once he was gone, Skye shuffled on her feet. "Why are you being nice to me?"

"Oh, sweetheart," Jimmy said. "You're just a kid—and you're hurt. Of course we're going to be nice to you."

"He looks scary."

Jimmy sighed. "Tango's family history makes him look scarier than he is. He's really a big softie. He went to go get some stuff to make you a room here. So you can be safe while your wing gets better. His magic isn't strong enough to heal your wing like he did the owie on your forehead, so he's going to do what he can to make sure your wing can heal naturally on its own really well."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh. How are you feeling? Does your wing hurt?"

"Mmhmm." Skye nodded.

"Can I pick you up?"

"Okay."

He scooped her into his arms, still being gentle. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. Jimmy's heart melted. He snuggled her closer and carried her downstairs. She tapped his bare shoulder. "You have dots on your shoulder."

"They're called freckles. I have them on my face too." He tilted his face so she could see the splash of freckles across his nose and cheekbones.

"Why?"

"I get them from being in the sun. I'm supposed to wear a shirt with sleeves when I'm working outside so I don't sunburn my shoulders, but I forget a lot, and so I get freckles on my shoulders."

"Oh."

Tango was kneeling in front of one of their chests, building supplies he'd taken from it on the floor next to him. Jimmy took Skye to the kitchen counter and set her down on top of it. He'd noticed when he rolled up the sleeves of the over-shirt that she'd scrubbed herself off a little better, leaving her cleaner than she'd been when he found her. "Hungry?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I have just the thing. We've got some home-grown potatoes and chicken that you're going to love."

Tango hummed. "That'll be good for you to get your strength back, kiddo," he added, gathering his supplies into his arms and getting to his feet to get back upstairs. "Potatoes have lots of nutrients. You'll need them." He paused at the stairs and retraced his steps to the kitchen. He shifted his supplies to one arm and held a hand out toward Skye. "High-five? It's okay if you don't want to."

She stared at his hand for a second—before giving him a high-five.

Tango did a little fist-pump of celebration. "Yes," he said softly, smiling at her. She grinned, a small thing but still visible. Before Tango made happy, singsong noises and did a goofy dance up the stairs, still singing.

Skye giggled. "He's silly," she whispered to Jimmy.

Who grinned down at her. "See? He's a big softie."

She smiled a little brighter. "He's not scary," she decided.

"He's not." Jimmy pulled a potato out of a barrel full of others and stuck it in the smoker, stoking the fuel back to life. Skye giggled again. "Have you ever had a jacket potato before?"

"Why's the potato wearing a jacket?"

Jimmy blinked. "Also called a baked potato?"

Big blue eyes blinked owlishly at him.

"Okay. Maybe you've had one and just didn't know that's what it's called." He busied about the kitchen, pulling some butter out of the chest full of packed ice. Ice was nearly impossible to come by in this area, let alone packed, but a little magic from Tango had given them just enough for food preservation.

Upstairs, Jimmy could hear Tango breaking down one of the walls to start building. Revenge's meowing was also audible, and Jimmy assumed Tango had freed the cat from his crate.

The smoker finished cooking the potato and Jimmy pulled it out. He tossed it between his hands—it was hot—and set it on a plate. He put some chicken in the smoker from where it had been in the ice chest. Then prepared the potato, cutting open the peel and opening it to put some butter inside. "Want some salt and pepper?"

Skye blinked. "Er... sure?"

Jimmy smiled and added some.

Upstairs, Revenge yowled and Tango squawked in surprise. "You're fine!" he said. "What're you yappin' for? You can't whine for affection while you're draped over my shoulder you dingus."

Jimmy snickered as he pushed the plate toward Skye, handing her some utensils. "Go ahead. Eat up."

She took the utensils and stared at them for a few seconds.

Then set them down on the counter and picked up the potato in her hands and dug in.

Jimmy shrugged and went to grab her a serviette to wipe her hands off later, tucking it under the plate. He munched on an apple for a snack while he waited for the chicken to finish cooking, leaning one hip against the counter casually.

"Skye?" he asked carefully.

She looked up from the potato, a little melted butter and flakes of pepper on her chin. "Mm?"

"Have you learned to fly yet?"

She shook her head. "Too little," she said around a mouthful of potato. "Wings not strong enough."

Jimmy nodded. "I thought so," he said, ruffling his own wings with a shake of his shoulders. He stretched the pinions backward to ease an ache in the elbow joints.

Upstairs, a thunk closely followed by Tango shouting a Blaze curse made Skye and Jimmy both turn toward the stairs.

Jimmy boosted himself up onto the counter next to Skye. "Kiddo. When you say you don't have grownups anymore, were you taken from them by the Illagers?"

She sniffed and shook her head. "N... no." Her eyes started to water. "The... the pillagers had crossbows. And axes. My parents tried to hide me in our storm cellar. The pillagers..." She sniffed again. "They chased them. I heard Mama scream, and then Papa. And then nothing. The pillagers came for me. They kept me alive." She shook, putting the potato down, and started to cry. Jimmy wrapped his arm and a wing around her, pulling her close and rocking her soothingly.

"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry," he whispered, letting her bury her messy face in his side. "Me and Tango just needed to know if we needed to ask around about finding you. I'm sorry, Skye." He kissed her soft white hair. She kept crying. He felt her tears soak through his tank top.

His other hand reached into the smoker and grabbed the chicken before it could burn, setting it on her plate.

Tango's footsteps echoed down the stairs and he reappeared. The SoulBond warmed again. What's going on?

I asked about her parents. They're dead. The Illagers.

Ohhh. Can I help?

I don't think so. How's the room coming along?

It's coming along fine. Not going to be anything fancy but it'll be comfortable.

Jimmy nodded. Thank you. He moved his arm around Skye to rub between her wings. She was still shaking against him. Tango nodded back and slipped nearly silently back up the stairs.

Jimmy started humming low, rocking Skye until her sobs calmed down. Once she wasn't shaking anymore, he wiped her tears with the serviette—and then the butter and pepper left on her face that hadn't come off on his tank top.

She looked up at him with big, watery eyes. "What... what's going to happen to me now?"

"Well, first, you're going to finish your food," Jimmy said with a warm smile. "And then, you can stay here. Tango and I will take care of you. For as long as you want. We'll help you heal your wing. And when it's ready, I'll teach you how to fly."

Skye gasped. "Really?" She looked hopeful.

"Of course! But your wing has to heal. And if you want it to heal well, you gotta give your body the energy it needs. And in order to do that, you gotta finish your food."

She nodded and went back to eating. Jimmy smiled.

He stayed on the kitchen counter with her until Tango returned to the kitchen, Revenge draped over his shoulder. His hands were covered in ash. Sawdust that had caught fire, probably. He grinned at Jimmy and inclined his head toward the top of the stairs. "Ready," he said, looking proud and pleased.

Jimmy handed Skye the serviette again. She wiped her whole face with it, and then her hands.

"Your room is ready, kiddo," Tango said, pitching his voice up just a little to sound more friendly.

Skye looked up at Jimmy. He nodded and slid off the counter, taking her hands to help her down. Tango led her upstairs, Jimmy bringing up the rear, still holding her hand where she didn't let go.

The second floor of the ranch house wasn't much. It was largely built into the roof. But Tango had adjusted so that the blank wall opposite the washroom—that originally led to a 5-block drop to the ground outside—now had a pastel pink wood door. Tango took a position between her door and the door to his and Jimmy's bedroom at the end of the hall, gesturing for her to open the door.

Skye looked back at Jimmy for confirmation, he nodded.

She pushed open the door and gasped as she entered the room.

The room was the same wood as the rest of the house. Oak and birch. But the bed was purple and the little table and chair were the same soft pink as the door. He'd even made a small balcony. Smaller than the one off his and Jimmy's room, but big enough for an Avian to take off and land from. The fence posts of the balcony had flower pots on them, each with a gentle but colorful plant in them.

Skye looked like she was going to cry again as she took in the whole room. "This is... mine?" she asked tentatively.

"Uh-huh," Tango confirmed with a small grin—not opening his mouth enough to show off sharp teeth—and a nod. His fire hair was flickering low and warm like a homey hearth.

Skye let go of Jimmy's hand and rushed at Tango, throwing her arms around his middle. "Thank you," she said. "It's really pretty."

Tango knelt to be at her eye level and hugged her properly. "You're welcome."

But Jimmy could see the way Tango's pointed ear twitched and his red eyes didn't quite meet Skye's. Jimmy brought the SoulBond to life between them. You feel guilty that you couldn't make it nicer, he said. Not a question.

Tango's ears pinned back to his head. We have the resources for an extra room. We don't have the resources for a perfect one for a little girl, he thought back. I did the best I could.

Tango. Look at her. She loves it. "The best you could" was more than enough.

Skye let go of Tango and rushed over to the bed, hopping up on it and wiggling in delight. Tango's gaze followed her with a small, fond smile.

I'm going to clean up the dishes. Stay here and chat with her, maybe? Jimmy suggested.

Yeah, yeah. I can do that, Tango replied, sounding like he was trying to convince himself of that more than Jimmy. Who just pushed his fingers through Tango's warm, burning hair affectionately and slipped out of the room.

—

Tango sat up in bed. Moonlight streamed through the windows and the door to the balcony. His ears flicked and twitched. What had woke him? Probably Revenge whining to be let out into the animal yard—

His whole body went rigid when he realized what he was hearing wasn't the cat.

Skye was crying.

Slowly, so as not to wake Jimmy, Tango slipped out of bed. He slid out of their room and to the new door on the wall. He knocked. "Skye?" he asked softly. "Are you okay?"

Sniffling was the only reply he got.

"Can I come in, kiddo?"

He heard the creaking of a mattress and small feet tiptoeing over the floor. The door opened.

Jimmy had—somehow—managed to save her ravager plushie from death-by-filth. It was clutched in one of her arms, the other one hugging herself. Her face was wet and her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. "Come in," she said quietly.

Tango followed her in. She went back to the bed and boosted herself up onto it. Her broken wing's splint was still in place, the other flopping across the mattress behind her.

"Can I sit by you?"

She nodded. Tango sat beside her.

"You know," he said. "I'm from the Nether. That's why I look like this. Buuut..." He leaned down to smile conspiratorially. "That's also why I'm really warm to hug. Any time you need a warm hug, you just let me know, yeah?"

Her deep blue eyes were dark in the dim light of the bedroom. "Can I have a hug?"

"Of course, sweetheart."

Skye leaned and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his side. Tango wrapped his around her and held her close. He wanted to ask why she was crying, but he had a good guess. Her first night of freedom after being in a cage for who-knew-how-long. Now that she was no longer fearful for her survival, her grief was probably catching up to her at losing her parents.

Tango copied how he'd seen Jimmy rock her gently, trying to comfort her. He wasn't as good at it as Jimmy. Jimmy just had a knack for people. He could connect to them on a level Tango didn't quite understand, but tried to. But Tango gave it his best shot for an innocent child who didn't deserve the hurt she'd experienced.

When her sobs eased into hiccups and her grip around his middle wasn't so deathly tight anymore, Tango felt her go slack against his side.

Having cried herself to sleep.

Tango smiled sadly down at her. He carefully scooped her up into his arms and turned her covers back down so he could tuck her in. He positioned her on her side the way Jimmy slept—the way Jimmy had set her in their tub to avoid jostling her wings—and tucked her in. He smoothed a few loose hairs out of her face and crept out of the room, easing the door shut behind him.

He lingered in the hallway for a moment, the fire of his hair warming the hallway with low light.

Setting his jaw, he slipped stealthily downstairs and out the front door. His Blaze Rods appeared around his head, spinning fast. He shot into the sky, hurtling toward the gorge. The ranch's wheat fields whizzed by below him.

The gorge plunged into darkness below him. He kept going.

When he got close enough, Tango started banking in a fast circle around the outpost, pulling back his arms and hurling fireballs at the dark oak wood of the outpost and its wooden cages on the outskirts. Continuing until it was fully engulfed in flames. He didn't like to fully indulge his Blaze blood often.

But for that sweet, poor child? For what they did to her? Absolutely.

#trafficshipping #Team Rancher #Rancher Duo #TangoTek #jimmy solidarity #Tango Tek #this might be a fun little one-shot series to make... just little snapshots of their life with a kiddo #Traffic Light SMP fic #Double Life Fic #Aurora Writes #Rory Writes

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its-in-the-woods · 3 days

Text

Chapter six (Final for now), Life's Too Short

Chapter one , two, three, four, five, <- if you missed it.

Cooper howard/The Ghoul x Lucy Maclean

Post end of season 1

No beta.. I tried to edit 🫠

Leaving it here from now.

⚠️ Warning ⚠️

This is fluffy and a lot of smut. Biting, riding, finger fucking, leaving marks, screaming.. it goes on. V and P. Deviates from canon clearly.

🚨+18 only - MDN🚨

Slow burn is over!

Please be nice this is my first fic in almost a decade 🫣

Will eventually post on AO3 once I can get access... or where suggested 🤷🏻‍♂️ Like please tell me I am old and don't know things anymore.

Getting out of the Deathclaw’s territory proved to be tricky. Particularly with a Brahma, the beast was not really happy about being dragged along. There was also the Deathclaw’s head strapped to it. Making sure it got water and something sort of like food was difficult. It made the traveling slow. By the time they got to the next outpost, Lucy was out of water and Cooper was dangerously low on chems. They had gotten a lot of looks as they walked through the big pieced-together gates. Most went back to whatever they were doing. But some stared. Lucy made sure to keep herself close to the Ghoul. They hadn’t really discussed anything since the warehouse, much too busy trying not to die. But something had changed, the leather-cladded man didn’t scoff when she ran into him. Didn’t mind when she snuggled up to keep warm overnight. The idea of a bed and not being hunted by giant damn monsters sounded amazing.

The head of the Deathclaw that Lucy had blown up hit the front desk of the outpost hotel. Well if you could call the two-story pieced together building that. The small man looked at the head for a moment, then back at the two of them.

“I am guessing you want a room?” He raised his eyebrows at the two, his glasses perched on the end of his nose.

Cooper also grabbed a paper from beside the hotel manager's head and slammed it down beside the head. “Also take the caps for its bounty, and where we could offload a Brahma.”

“Well,” The man looked up over his glasses at Cooper. “The bounty is for the full body of the Deathclaw, and the beast can go to the farm east of the town.”

Cooper leaned closer to the little man. “Want me to ‘ive yah directions to the thing? Or should I walk yah over to the corpse ‘yself?”

The man had tried to lean away from the Ghoul but he had followed him. Making sure his face was within the inches of the man. Lucy bit her lip, something about watching him take charge did-. Well, it made things get hotter in the room.

The man stammered, “Let me get my manager and we will sort your caps.”

Cooper stood up and gestured dismissively at the small man, as he scuttled away. Coop leaned against the desk as Lucy watched the door hand on her pistol. The man came back looking flustered and plopped the bag of caps onto the desk along with the room key. Cooper snatched it up, tipping his hat at the man.

They walked back into the town, Lucy bartered some of her bits and bobs with a merchant getting herself some radaway and a few stimpaks. As well as some better-fitting clothes, and a new poncho. Then she and the Ghoul walked a little ways outside the camp to trade the Brahma. The farm had looked a little flustered but offered to give them a good supply of dried foods and moonshine. They didn’t want to owe Ghoul but a Brahma was something sorely needed. Cooper had accepted the offer as he was not interested in hauling the animal around.

Then they were back in town with all the eyes on them. Cooper had disappeared into a particularly shady spot. Dogmeat standing guard in the dingy alley. She made sure to keep her wits about her. The place wasn’t bustling but it wasn’t quiet either. Women sneered at her muttering about Ghoulfuckers. It made her stomach flip again. Was it that obvious? After being on the road for weeks, being beaten to shit by various creatures. She figured she’d had to have started to blend in a little. She looked around again. A couple more men had walked out to look at her. She moved closer to the alleyway entrance, her finger on the pistol.

“Come on Coop, get the chems.” She muttered her hands mindlessly running over Dogmeats soft fur.

The longer she stood out there the more people she saw looking at her. She licked her lips, they had become permanently chapped at this point. Maybe they'd be callous over time, like the rest of her. The wounds in her back and thigh still ached. The mark on her shoulder had healed, for the most part, but it still aches if she overused it. A hand touched her hip. She jumped hands on her pistol as she turned Cooper’s crooked grin greeting her. Her shoulders sagged as she leaned against him.

“Come on Vualtie, let's go see what accommodations we got.” He guided her back toward the hotel.

***

Coop locked the door behind them as they got into the room. It was more of a closet with a somewhat functional toilet and standing shower. But at least they weren’t hiding from any deathclaws tonight. Maybe some pissed-off townsfolk but they’d take that as they came. Right now his eyes were on her. He had gotten a nice stash of Chems from the backdoor pharmacy, they had water and some decent food. As far as wastelanding went they were better off than most. Dogmeat had already settled into the bathroom closest to the door.

Lucy had placed all their weapons within reach and laid out some food. She had even drunk a good slurp of water, and they could get more too.

“What do you feel like? They said this was mole jerky, but I don’t know how reputable the vendor was. Plus I haven’t seen a mole that wasn’t glowing in a long time.” Lucy rambled, waving the offending jerky in the air.

“Not really feeling like eatin’ food,” Cooper stated licking his lips.

Lucy turned her brows furrowed, she looked up at him. “Oh. Well.” She looked back down at the food and then back up at him. He could see her piecing it together.

“Oh. Oh. Do you mean?” Lucy blushed and looked down at her feet.

“Don’t get bashful on me, killer. You nearly blew me up with a grenade and dragged me across the desert barefoot. Stripped me down to my unmentionable and pulled out a damn piece of bone out of my chest. You don’t get to play coy with me anymore.” He stated plainly as he walked towards her, his hand tilting her chin up so he could look at those big doe eyes.

Lucy licked her lips looking up at him. He didn’t know what she saw in him but whatever it was had her melting in his leathery hands.

He couldn’t fuckin take it anymore his free hand grabbed at her hips pulling her into him. His mouth clashed against hers as he kissed her. Not gentle like the first time, or even the second time. No, this was hungry. The months of being together, watching her move and change. Her lying on the floor of that fuckin warehouse. No, not anymore. He wanted her and he wanted her now. He wanted her more than he had wanted anyone in two centuries.

She started pulling at his duster fingers, shaking as she pushed the leather off of him. He grabbed the hem of her shirt and dragged it up off of her. She untucked his shirt and pulled it up over his head. Hat falling onto the ground behind them. Lucy giggled and snatched the hat placing it onto her head, before leaning back into kissing him. She pushed him down onto the mattress sliding herself onto his lap. He groaned as she ground her hips down onto his crotch. He grabbed her hips rocking up against her, eyes rolling back in her head as she felt him press.

He grabbed one of her breasts in his hand rubbing against the smooth flesh there, fingertips rolling nipples that had Lucy biting her hand trying not to cry out. Cooper batted her hand away.

“No, no, I want everyone to hear you.” He hissed, pulling her down so he could bite at the top of her breast.

A small cry squeaked out as he left an indent on her skin. She ran her hands over his head holding it against her skin. He rolled her so he was on top, leaving a trail of fresh bite marks that had the Vaultie rolling underneath him.

His hands trailing along the edge of her pants, she tried to wiggle free of her pants but he held her firm. Licking and kissing along the top edge. Tomorrow if her shirt rode up everyone would see the marks. He wanted them to see the marks. To know that her screams came from him. He bit hard right below her navel and she bucked

“Oh, Oh, dang it that hurt.” Lucy groaned and pushed his head down.

“Come on darlin’ tell me whatcha want.” Ghoul grabbed at the edge of her pants pulling them slowly down.

“Just-” Her voice cracked.

“Come on. Say it.” He growled, pulling them a little further down. Her hips moving and wiggling trying to get him to take them off.

“I want you to lick me.” She swallowed looking down at him eyes so dark

The man grinned, yanking her pants down. Leaving her underwear on, he pushes his shoulder in between her knees pressing his face against her. Breathing her in, she smells so good.

Lucy lets out gasp her knees pushing against the side of his head as her ankles lock behind his head. His tongue flicked out to go over the thin fabric.

“Come on, tell me. Tell me what you want me to do.”

Lucy let out a few strangled sounds as her hands grasped for purchase. He sucked at the wetness coming out through the underwear.

“Say it.”

“Ohmy, if you-” She choked again as he kept sucking. “Please- ughn- I want to feel your tongue in me please.”

“Good girl,” He grinned using a finger to push the thin fabric aside he leaned in and ran his tongue along her. She tasted so good, he groaned and sucked on her lips. Before sliding his tongue down using his fingers to separate her folds, she was dripping as licked in there. Her fingers gripped the sides of his head, as her back arched up pushing him forward. He moved his hands under her ass, lifting her hips towards his face.

“Oh, don’t stop.” She trembled her body, vibrating as he licked inside of her.

He pulled his head away licking at his tattered lips and sitting back to admire her. Lucy’s legs trembled as he pulled her underwear off, leaning in to nip at her thighs. She cried out as he left a line of marks up where her thigh and hips met.

Lucy pushed herself up, staring at him, her eyes lidded, lips red and swollen. “If you don’t-”

“Don’t what?” Cooper hummed, taking his fingers to run up and down between her lips.

Her eyes rolled and she shuttered,” Torturing me,” Her words were stuttered and hardy formed as a finger sunk into the wetness.

“Not torturing you,” He hushed, “No gulper bait here.”

She gasped as he pushed back and up, hitting a soft spongy spot that made her toes clench.

“Motherfucker,” Lucy gasped as her hips started to push down onto his finger.

The Ghoul leaned forward sucking at her clit as he pushed another finger in slowly. Purposefully dragging it out, making her keen and grabbed at the bed as he scissored and edged her. He watched her for a moment more before he began to a steady pace the wet sounds filling the tiny room. Her hips rolling with him, insides sucking him further in and squeezing tightly.

“That’s it, let it go.” He murmured licking and sucking against her clit.

Her legs began to shake as her fluids gushed forward as his fingers kept going until she was trying to push him away.

—

Lucy was a puddle, and there was actually a puddle under her ass at the moment. The damn man between her legs was going to kill her. Nothing in her very small sexual history had felt like that.

Cooper rested his bald head against her thigh as he lazily made circles around the bruises. Then he was moving before she had time to recuperate, his pants clattering to the floor as he snatched that hat off her head.

“Think this belongs to me, little lady.” He grinned down at her, gold eyes almost black as he pushed his hips forward against her.

Reaching up she pulled him down on top of her, she was so overstimulated but the hard line of his cock against her was making her want more. Damnit if she didn’t want it right now. She rolled her hips up and kissed along his jaw. She could taste herself on him, they tasted so good together.

“Fuck me,” She whispered into his ear taking the lob into her mouth, her hand found away between them fingers running over his hard length.

“Come again,” He grinned and sucked at a new mark along her neck.

Her toes curled as she stroked him, fingers pushing at the slit on top making his hips stuttered forward.

“Fuck me, Cooper,” She said into his ear as her hand tried to get him where she wanted him to be.

He leaned back looking down at her like he had never seen her before, as if he was trying to memorize her features. Then he pushed his way in, and both their mouths opened slightly. The girth made her inside ache as he seated himself as deep as he could go. They stretched a hot fire that made her inside shiver.

“Fuck, you are so beautiful.” He groaned and began to pull out, Lucy immediately wrapped her legs around his hips trying to get him pushed back in.

“Nuh-uh,” He grinned as he grabbed her legs and bent her in half. He slid back out and then slammed himself back in making Lucy see stars as he bottomed out. “I am in control here.”

Each word was punctuated with a snap of his hips, Lucy felt like her brain had gone foggy, her mouth hanging open as she pushed back against him. His pace started to increase as he held onto her hips bouncing off of her hips, her breast bouncing. She let her fingers grab at her nipples pulling at them, how was she so close already? Heat spills into her stomach as another orgasm builds up again.

“I am gonna-”

He pulled himself out, making her scrambled to try and get him back. The Ghoul placed one large hand on her stomach holding Lucy in place. Cooper grinned from under his hat the tip of his penis sitting right at the entrance.

“Told you, Princess. I am in control.”

Lucy growled fighting herself up from under him rolling so that she was on top of him. She grabbed his cock without a second thought and pushed it back in.

“Oh, oh yes,” Lucy groaned, tipping her head back as she started to move her hips in circles. His hands grabbing at her breast, squeezing, started to move his hips up against her. She tucked her legs a little, hands on his scared stomach pushing herself up and ridding him as he fucked her.

The heat built as the man’s fingers rubbed at her clit. There was no stopping it now heat uncoiling as her hips moved wet making his dick slip in and out with slick wet sounds. Lucy’s voice came in as she called out his name, her second orgasm making her tremble and bite her lip hard enough that she felt blood.

Cooper took the opportunity to roll them again, one hand grabbing both of hers and pinning her to the bed. He bit onto her collarbone hard enough to make her wonder if he was going to take a chunk out of her. His hips snapped so quickly as his other hand held her hips close, his eyes rolling close as his own pleasure slipped deep into her. Hips stuttered from overstimulation in jerky motions till he stilled. The Ghoul let go of his bite, a deep mark blooming, his head resting over her pounding heart. His tongue licked out over his lips.

Then he was up, Lucy groaned. Trying to get him to come back, she watched as he walked over to his saddle bag. Muscled body moving swiftly as it dug around for something. She sighed staring up at the ceiling. Her body hurt in many different ways. The marks would be visible for days. Lucy’s fingers came up and felt at the one on her collarbone, clear indents where his teeth had sunk in. Her face flushed realizing that everyone would be able to see that.

The bed dipped and Cooper handed her a bottle, the label was barely readable ‘Rad-x’. Reaching across he also grabbed the flask with water.

“Take two,” He said firmly before getting up again despite her small whines of annoyance.

She looked the bottle over and uncapped it, taking out two of the pills. They smelled awful, not nearly as awful as some of the bugs she’d eaten. She popped both in and swallowed, they burnt a little but it could have been worse. Sighing she stared at the ceiling, it was stained. Lucy rubbed her face as Cooper came back in with a towel.

His hand grabbed her ankle and he dragged her to the edge of the bed. She squeaked as he spread her legs and started to clean her. Biting her lip she watched as he carefully wiped her down. Leaning in to kiss the bruises before he tossed the rag into a corner.

“Thank you,” She giggled, reaching for him, he climbed in dragging her to his chest.

“Anything for you. Life's too short."

I may come back to this, I haven't decided yet. But I like it where it is fo now.

Let me know! Thanks for reading. More to come <3

#cooper howard x lucy maclean #cooper x lucy #fallout #fanfic #the ghoul #ghoulcy #fallout tv #vaultghoul

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danaredbeard · 2 months

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She is us… and that is the problem.

Ok … so the CRM is an organization that allows B’s who are every day worker bees to live and kills A’s charismatic leaders.

I am 99.96% sure that Alexandria was a CRM outpost before Rick and family showed up (I’ll make a post about this later).

The Alexandrians were in their B-level bliss until these ruffian A’s showed up. All they had to do was every now and then help the CRM to eliminate A’s. In return, they were provided with beautiful shelters, food, and weapons.

So they sent their guy out, Aaron, with high-tech surveillance equipment to find some A’s. He comes upon Rick and his family “People are a resource”. Rick was right about Aaron (who later changed his mind and Deanna when they realized that they could help them survive.)

If you are CRM you notice that by adding a few A’s to the bunch forever changes the dynamics. Suddenly, every coward and lowly pantry assistant is taking up arms and fighting Walkers like they have agency or something.

So here is what I fear (could be 1000% wrong, I just like to theorize) the Echelon briefing is. First what are they inferring in the name:

ECHELON refers to a global surveillance network operated by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It was reportedly established to intercept and analyze communications from satellites, microwave transmissions, and other sources. It has been the subject of controversy and concern regarding privacy and civil liberties.

So… I think that the CRM has outlined all the communities that need to be destroyed … like Alexandria etc.

Why?

Because they are breeding grounds for future A’s

I think Jadis knew that the Grimes children were not at Alexandria. She wanted to ensure that Rick got back to the CRM so he would be killed with the rest of the A’s.

This season Michonne has been the Deus ex machina. Was Okafor a “good guy”? It is interesting that Michonne snatched Rick out of the sky as soon as he said that he was “All in”… that sounds like the divine intervention saying “Ah hell naw!!” , She got them out of the helicopter before it crashed.

In the finale previews it seems that by accident (what did I say about divine intervention) it is Michonne not Rick who gets the Echelon Briefing… and she is in horror. Not my babies…. Let’s see this is still a theory.

#the ones who live #the walking dead #towl spoilers #rick grimes #twd towl #towl #richonne #michonne #twd spoilers #danai gurira #andrew lincoln #Echelon Briefing #TWD CRM

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xalygatorx · 3 months

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Unbound | Chapter 17, "Get Up"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Already weakened from their fight with the duergar and subsequently Glut as well to protect Spaw’s circle, the party encounters their most monstrous enemy yet in the Underdark while they seek a place to rest. On their last legs and fighting for their lives, Áine reawakens an old power within herself to save them all at a cost. Astarion, mortally wounded and terrified for Áine, scraps with his allies as they try to help him. The group finds a safe spot to make camp and focus on recovering. An old acquaintance returns to Áine.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Graphic fantasy violence (appropriate for canon, but described in detail); blood; descriptions of pain and injury (seeing it on others and feeling it); grief; trauma and descriptions of trauma, panic, and anxiety responses; angst; comfort/hurt; close calls for canon characters; no one dies but I do love to toe that line, besties; suggestive dialogue and content; lightly proofread

Word Count: 9.3k

Listening to: Destroyer - Of Monsters and Men

“I knew that fucking mushroom was going to be trouble!”

“Seemed like a fun guy at first.”

“Karlach,” Wyll warned through a snicker at Gale’s joke, “he didn’t mean it.” More likely it was Wyll who didn’t mean what he was saying because Gale had gone all-in on that one.

Karlach was halfway between laughing and barbecuing their wizard. “Gods, I hate you both,” she seethed, her flames calming in time with her chuckling. “Affectionately.”

“Chk,” Lae’zel grumbled. “There is no overlap in love and rage.”

“There is when it comes to dealing with their puns, Lae,” Karlach noted, adjusting the straps of her pack. “Gods, I need a nap and away from these two… Áine!” Up ahead, the bard paused and glanced over her shoulder at the tiefling barbarian. “How long until we camp?!”

“Soon,” Áine called back, taking stock of their party while she was half-turned. They were all tired and battered—the duergar had proven a tough fight, especially when their plan to take them by surprise had failed and one of the slavers had raised a small army of zombified corpses to fight on their behalf. Gale had helped to minimize the damage by destroying the rope ladders connecting the wooden platforms and funneling them into a singular nearby path, but they’d still taken a beating.

And then there was Glut. They’d no sooner finished one fight before another was started and they’d had to kill the clanless myconid, who’d attacked them as soon as Áine refused to betray Spaw’s confidence.

They’d meant to take a more straightforward path back to Spaw’s circle, but the path had led them in a more roundabout route than intended and they were now more fatigued than ever. At least the path forward was clear—the Selûnite outpost was just up ahead and with a couple of short climbs, they’d be back near its crumbling walls and able to retrace their familiar path from its gates, back to their old camp.

“What do we think?” Áine asked no one in particular. “Keep going until we’re back to the circle?”

“The outpost is just there,” Shadowheart pointed out, unable to keep the wrinkle from her nose when she gazed upon the outpost again. Áine resisted rolling her eyes. “I don’t recall the circle being too far from where we ran into those minotaurs, do you?”

Áine shook her head. “Not too far, no. And we are likely the safest there while we recover.”

“It sounds as though our best option is to make our way back in full,” Halsin supplied, supportive of their conjectures in his reaffirming way. He cast a glance across the others, his features a little grave as he took in the smattering of split lips, bruises, and limps. “Anyone opposed?”

Silence stretched and Áine drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself. She looked to her side, meeting Astarion’s eyes as she said, “We keep moving then.” He nodded once, equally roughed up but ready to settle down somewhere he felt safe enough to meditate and heal. He walked along just behind Áine as she approached a rocky incline and said, “If anyone starts to feel otherwise, please say something, alright?”

There was a collective murmur of agreement as the group fell into step behind her. Áine set her jaw and prepared for her body to protest as she scaled the craggy outcrop. It echoed its ongoing soreness with renewed fervor, but she made it to the top just fine. Her shoulder was even cooperating for once and it made her a little more optimistic about their journey back.

She was so focused on assessing her condition that she didn’t notice the statue she’d risen beside until it nearly scared her out of her skin. Áine hopped back, prepared for a fight until she realized it was merely stone. On closer inspection, she saw that it was a life-sized statue of a drow in mercenary garb.

On even closer inspection, she realized it had once been a drow. It wasn’t stone-carved, it was a petrified elf. “What in the Hells…,” she murmured, her fingertips tracing along its arm.

“A statue?” Gale asked, stepping to the other side of the petrified drow and lightly knocking against its shoulder.

“Not always, I don’t think,” Áine murmured, her eyes shifting further down the path and seeing more of the same. She raised her voice slightly as she ordered the party, “On your guard.”

“Always,” Lae’zel murmured in confirmation, her hand resting against the hilt of her sword as her reptilian eyes traced the eerie plateau.

Áine neared another of the petrified drow mercenaries, noting that this one was unmasked. The look of unbridled terror on his face, frozen into eternity, sent a chill down her spine. There was no telling when this had happened exactly, but every survival instinct she had urged her not to linger. “Let’s hurry up t—”

She was cut off by an unnatural rumble through the ground beneath her feet. Áine steadied herself, glancing toward her friends also struggling to keep their footing. “Another bulette?” Wyll wondered aloud. It did seem the most likely based on their experiences so far, but Áine’s urge to hasten away intensified nonetheless.

“I don’t want to find out, let’s go,” Áine said, turning around to step back down to the plateau and get to the break in the outpost wall. She didn’t manage more than the turn before she looked up and saw precisely what had created this purgatorial statue garden they stood amongst.

Spines rippling with every undulation of its ghastly tentacles, the monster that had upset the earth in its uprising lifted into the air and opened its singular, enormous yellow eye. Its pupil spasmed and adjusted, skittering between them for just seconds until its mouth opened on a scream, the expression splitting its nightmarish face in twain.

“RUN!” Karlach shouted, jarring them all from their varied states of panicked freezing.

Bolts of light shot from the ends of the spectator’s appendages, barely missing Áine and Gale, but hitting Shadowheart and Halsin. The bolts paralyzed them, rooting them in place with only their eyes able to move. Any plan to retreat was shelved then and those still able to move turned to fight.

Gale was the quickest to react, unleashing a fireball at the creature and hitting it squarely in the eye. It screeched and flung an appendage at him, sending him sprawling against a nearby outcrop. He clutched his side, rivulets of blood weaving from beneath his hair and across his temple as he shot more fire at the creature. “Ardē!”

Arrows sliced the air from Astarion’s bow, finding purchase in the creature’s leathery skin and the jelly of its eye. Lae’zel surged forward, sword in hand, only pausing along the way to free Shadowheart from her paralysis. The cleric looked jarred but nodded to the githyanki in thanks as she quickly dredged up what healing magic she had left, spreading it across the group.

After Halsin was also cured of his paralysis, Wyll concentrated his final dregs of power to unleash bolts of red eldrich energy upon the beast, unsheathing his rapier when he felt his strength draining from the effort to little avail. Nearby, Karlach screamed wrath into her veins, aflame as she took her battleaxe into the fray and hacked at one of the spectator’s tentacles.

Their confidence was momentary. Fleeting, even, as their preexisting injuries screamed back to life, worsened or accompanied by new ones with every bite, every hit, and every bolt the monster threw their way. They were reminded that they’d meant to retreat, only fighting out of necessity, when the spectator took a chunk from Halsin’s broad, blackened shoulder with its needly teeth and flung him into the dirt near Gale.

The appendages ignited anew with bolts of what they first thought would be another paralysis spell but instead found purchase on the petrified drow. Reinvigorated from stasis, the mercenaries were propelled into the spectator’s defense and caught the party’s blades with their own.

Astarion’s attention diverted to sinking arrows into the resurrected drow, finding his shots counting for more against the smaller enemies descending upon their companions. He was unloading an ice-imbued arrow into a mercenary nearing Áine’s flank when the spectator unleashed a new wave of paralysis that caught him in its turning tide. The arrow had found its target, loosed just before the light struck him.

His crimson eyes froze wide as the spectator descended upon him, shredding his torso and right arm with its teeth. He was left unable to scream his agony as his blood poured from the gaping wounds, his undead body barred from beginning any sort of healing process until he could move again.

Cold blood waterfalled from his slashes as the spectator ravaged their frozen, bloodied friends, only Karlach, Lae’zel, and Áine left mobile. He felt his body growing colder, his mind growing fuzzier and number, sending him back in time to when this was his normal state of mind, bloodless and barely alive. If he could have shuddered, his body would’ve made him. Instead, he remained frozen in time, his struggle against the enchantment rooting him in place weakening with every second he continued to bleed.

It occurred to him that only seconds had gone by, seconds that felt like eons, when he heard Áine scream his name. With effort, he focused on her. Unfortunately, so did their foe. As the creature turned on her, suddenly bleeding out in his paralysis wasn’t his worst fate.

Watching this thing kill the woman he adored and being unable to save her was.

Áine had been working off adrenaline and horror ever since the monstrosity hovering over them had hurled Gale to the ground. Each time one of them was paralyzed, it was a race with just her battered legs and her swords to fend it off one of her defenseless friends before it killed them in their stasis. Suddenly it was just herself, Lae’zel, and Karlach left moving. The drow were all dispatched save two. Áine had rushed to help when she saw Karlach roll with one of the resurrected elves over the edge of their plateau and disappear, only stumbling to a stop when the one Lae’zel had been fighting threw the injured gith against a rock and came at her instead.

An arrow had sliced the air and punctured his side, a sweep of ice blossoming beneath the drow’s feet that immediately sent him down on his face. Áine’s mistake had been to assume that was enough in her desperation to get her blades back into the monster assaulting her friends, her vision tunneled into protecting her loved ones as she’d slid on the ice herself and fallen on the drow’s upturned blade.

The possessed mercenary thrust up into her when she slipped and Áine gasped, muffling a low whine of pain as she stabbed her scimitar into his neck, effectively finishing him off. She looked down at the long, spindly dagger he’d plunged into her stomach and her fingers twitched, aching to pull it out despite knowing she shouldn’t. She felt a familiar tickle of drow poison spreading through her, but her resistance was such that pulling the dagger out and letting her wound bleed more freely was the larger danger.

The keening of stripping metal and tearing of flesh broke her bemusement and she whirled, tracing the spectator and seeing amongst its multitudes of teeth—

“Astarion!”

Gods above, there was so much blood. All around her, but leaking without pause from his pale body, his armor shredded where he spurted red. This can’t be the end…

Her vision shifted as her wounds and her panic at seeing her lover and her friends so horrifically mangled sank into her mind. She didn’t see the spectator change course. She wasn’t even sure she would have cared if she had. Perhaps she would have felt relief that it turned its attention away from Astarion onto her. Maybe he could get away.

Áine’s eyes rose to meet the spectator’s gaze, her features taut with defiance as she stabbed both her scimitars into its dripping, lacerated sclera. It responded with an unearthly shriek and a hurl of its tentacles that slammed her like a ragdoll into a nearby stalagmite with a hard crack.

The scream in Astarion’s throat was half-loosed when the paralysis finally wore off, but the condition’s fade sent him immediately tumbling to the ground, into puddles of his own blood. Shaking, he raised himself on his elbows, his nails digging and scraping against the plateau gravel as he tried to drag himself forward. The sensation brutalized his mind with intrusive flashbacks—the scratching and clawing against a stone crypt lid, painstakingly picking dirt out of the ridges after seizing against the dungeon floor for hours after being whipped, beaten, and carved into. He ignored them, unwilling to let his last thoughts be those long wretched years. If anything would be his and his alone, it would be his death.

“No, you can’t die,” he gritted out, his voice barely managing above a murmur as he clawed the dirt in a daze, desperately trying to get to Áine. What would he even do when he got there?

She was slumped in a heap on the ground next to the rock she’d hit, her shiny pearl locks bathed red and pooled around her face. A dagger he hadn’t even seen pierce her stomach was buried to the hilt and poked past her arm folded beside her. The spectator made a breathy noise that almost sounded like a laugh and the odious air flowing from its jaws stirred Áine’s hair. It was the only movement Astarion saw from her.

He snarled, one of his palms slipping in blood and sending him to the ground again. “Get up, damn you!” he growled, but his voice cracked in desperation.

Áine, barely lucid, slowly tilted her head, looking through hair stained red at Astarion. Around them, the paralysis was slowly wearing off the few it affected, Shadowheart included, but the damage was so great and the situation so hopeless that the freed immediately collapsed beneath both. Áine’s vision blurred and she heard Astarion plead with her as if through a long, narrow hallway, his words clear but far away.

Subconsciously, she extended her arm, reaching for him despite knowing neither of them could make the crawl. She winced at the simple movement, her body rending around every injury. She could feel her pulse, an irregular burning around the dagger buried in her belly. Get up, she growled inwardly, her mind’s voice sounding a mix of hers, Astarion’s, and voices from her past, not all of them fond.

Shaking, she withdrew her outstretched hand and planted it against the ground, her bicep straining as she tried to do as he asked. The hilt of the dagger clacked against the dirt, sending a new shock of pain through her body and she shuddered, a hiss escaping between clenched teeth. Áine managed to push herself up just enough to turn towards the lingering spectator, her body vibrating with the effort while her legs remained buckled beneath her. A cough wracked her body and a spatter of blood projected from her parted lips.

The spectator blinked slowly, its lids hitting the hilts of her blades still sheathed in its eye. It seemed undeterred, its gigantic, slobbering tongue slipping over the surface of its teeth as it stared at her and then began to advance again.

She heard her name croaked again from the vampire lying nearby, too weak to even sit up despite trying desperately to. She could hear his hands splashing against the gore he crawled through, too drained to find purchase on the slickened cave floor.

Áine’s mind remained addled with her own urgent demands to her body, her memories surfacing in a mingling of voices. Astarion’s, Shadowheart’s, the illithids’, even her father’s. Was this what people meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before their eyes? Was she dying?

No. No, she wouldn’t die. None of them would. An old voice resonated in her, reminding her, and her mind traced the contours of that voice with recognition, finding within it a buried ancient power she’d long refused, ignored until it faded into ether and the bearer of that voice left her too. Áine, for the sake of her new family, would embrace them both now.

She shoved herself up once more on one shaking, bleeding arm and with the last of her might extended her other hand toward the looming creature, its bared teeth littered with scraps of their flesh and smears of their blood. Its maw split open, still hungry, still eager to strip every scrap of her skin, every ounce of her defiance off her bones.

A deadly silence fell over them all until all that could be heard was the crackle of building power around Áine’s hand, a building flush of emerald light blaring from her fingertips and the slits of her half-hooded eyes as, in the quiet that also extinguished the vocal clamor in her mind, one final word caressed her conscience with a tone of recognition.

“Oathbreaker.”

The crack that split the air was deafening and, for a second, scattered conscious members of the party feared that Gale’s orb had detonated. A blinding, sickly green light erupted from Áine’s hand. When the light cleared, the spectator lay in steaming slices of viscera across the cavern floor.

When the ringing in Astarion’s ears faded, he heard Áine collapse, unmoving against the rocks. No, was the only word he could think with any clarity and it grew repetitious and feral as his terror and fading condition mingled. No no no no no no no no no no no—

Something touched him and he snarled, swiping backward with one blood-covered hand. He heard Shadowheart mutter at him to stop moving as she dodged around him and turned him over to assess his damage while looking half-dead herself.

“Don’t touch me!” Astarion hissed, attempting to shove her hands away from his destroyed armor but finding himself too weak to win the battle of wills. The realization just made him further lose his composure.

“Hold still!” she snapped, prying apart what she could of his scrapped armor to get at the deep wounds beneath. Shadowheart caught Astarion’s wrists, drawing another angry snarl from the vampire spawn fighting against her aid. “Wyll, help me!”

Wyll’s face appeared in Astarion’s vision and the Blade took hold of his wrists from Shadowheart, pinning his arms above his head and away from her work. Astarion’s anger bordered on panic. There were too many hands on him and he was too weak to rid himself of any of them. He hissed and growled, still struggling despite knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that they were trying to help him. All he could think of was getting them off him and Ái—

“Go help her,” Astarion gritted, snapping at Wyll’s arm when it came within reach. The Blade held fast, avoiding his fangs and maintaining his bruising hold on the vampire’s arms. Seething, Astarion shouted at Shadowheart, “Go to Áine and get off me!”

“You are dying, Astarion,” Shadowheart finally snapped, near-black bruises under her eyes as she forced her remaining magic through her fingertips as they pressed into his torso.

“So is she,” he tried to snarl back, but the words came out with a panicked whine. He twisted desperately to try and see past Wyll to where Áine had collapsed. He got a vantage point just as Halsin and Lae’zel stooped to peel her limp body off the floor. “Bleeding Hells, Áine!”

“Halsin will help her until I can, but you’re in more dire shape than she is and she will never forgive either of us if you die,” Shadowheart gritted, finding Astarion even harder to hold in place now that he’d seen Áine.

“I don’t care!” Astarion spat, his eyes rolling back in his head as his vision blurred sideways again. “I don’t care, just help her—please—”

Shadowheart felt panic lance through her as Astarion started to lose his focus. At least when he was fighting her, she knew he was lucid, but he was drifting again and she could only assume the worst. “Shit,” she snapped, holding his face as his head started to roll sideways. “Stay with me. Astarion!”

Wyll looked at her, panic in his eyes that only flared further when she pulled one of Astarion’s daggers from his belt. “What are you doing?”

“He needs blood,” Shadowheart said under her breath, her features contorted in pain from her own injuries.

“Let me,” Wyll quickly said, holding out his hand. Astarion was half-conscious and had stilled his struggle in his delirium. “I’m in more of a condition to do so.”

Shadowheart hesitated, but he was right and they both knew it. She hesitated, handing him the dagger and switching her hands down to Astarion’s wrists. Wyll sliced his palm with a quick wince and held his dripping hand over Astarion’s mouth, squeezing the wound. There was a moment of uneasy stillness before Astarion’s entire body seized, almost succeeding in bucking Shadowheart off him as he lunged up toward the source of the blood. Wyll jolted but held his ground as Shadowheart wrestled the drained vampire back down onto his back.

“That’s enough,” Shadowheart said as she saw Astarion’s pupils begin to react more normally when shadows passed over them. “That will help and we’ll still be able to cart him to wherever we set up if he fusses again.”

Wyll retracted his hand, starting to scout a makeshift bandage when he felt Shadowheart’s fingertips against his, a gentle light cascading from the touch to knit his cut closed. Wyll looked up, meeting Shadowheart’s tired but grateful gaze. “Thank you.”

Realizing they were lingering, the two quickly retracted their hands and set back to work on getting Astarion into a stable enough state to move him. Astarion had grown slightly more aware with some fresh blood returned to his system, but he felt dissociated from himself. When his eyes did wander, they tried to follow Halsin’s hulking form as he struggled to find Áine again.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head had lolled on her neck when they’d picked her up, not an ounce of fight left in her. Furthest from his mind at that moment was what she’d done to save them all. He didn’t care as long as it meant she’d saved herself, too.

It made very little sense to Áine, when she awoke, that she was still alive. It simply didn’t add up. Not the way she felt her eyes open in such a familiar corporeal sense, not the warm hands she felt resting against her stomach, and not the way her persistent, stubborn heart still thudded in her chest.

But her eyes did open. So who was she to argue?

Past the fringe of her lashes, she saw a blur of dancing blue light, a shimmer of iridescent motes. When her amber eyes focused, she saw the bioluminescent spores for what they were, aglow as they wove in through the flap of her tent from outside. Their song thrummed gently against her aching head and seemed to settle among her bruises and cuts, their faint warmth second to the touch against her waist.

Gingerly, Áine turned her head to regard the cleric hunched over her. Shadowheart’s focus was solely on the wound she was pulling together in Áine’s gut, the dagger that had made it set aside near her medical pouch. The pouch was dotted with blood as if the dagger, coated in the substance, had been thrown down in a hurry. The shadows under the cleric’s eyes were nearly black against her ashen skin and while her hands appeared still against Áine’s flesh, she could feel the faint tremble in them through the wound they covered.

Áine tried to speak but found her throat dry as a bone. Shadowheart heard the little sound she made at least and her eyes flickered to the bard under her care. “Welcome back,” Shadowheart murmured, an attempt at humor.

“Did you have to revive me?” Áine asked, managing to find her voice this time but just barely.

“No,” Shadowheart said, the glow fading from her palms as she removed her hands to reveal a fresh scar where the drow’s dagger had run Áine through. “But it was close. Not just for you.”

“Is everyone—?”

“Don’t stress yourself and undo my work,” Shadowheart scolded Áine as she tried to sit up too quickly. “Everyone is alive. We’re back in the circle. We’re safe…” She gave Áine a peculiar look. “Thanks to you.”

Áine let out a shaky sigh of relief to hear the others were all alright. She parsed back through what she could remember before blacking out, but it was scattered. More vividly than what she’d done specifically, she remembered that whisper in her mind, the familiar gravelly voice as vivid in memory as in life. “Oathbreaker.”

At least it had worked.

Áine glanced at Shadowheart’s imploring eyes, feeling bare under the other woman’s scrutiny. She focused on the shadows beneath her eyes again and the bruises and cuts she could see scattered across her uncovered skin. “You should rest, too,” she informed the cleric. When Shadowheart grimaced, Áine insisted, “Seriously. You’ve done more than enough. Take care of yourself for a while. Please?”

“Fine, fine,” Shadowheart mumbled, waving Áine off as she gathered her things back into her pouch. She plucked up the bloodied dagger with a sneer of resentment. “I’m going to rid us of this unless you want it for some reason.”

“I’ve had enough of it, thanks,” Áine murmured.

Shadowheart nodded but didn’t yet budge from Áine’s side. She broke her troubled silence just as Áine was about to insist again that she go get some rest. “You know… Whatever you were before we met, before you were a bard, it’s okay,” she said, catching Áine off-guard. “It won’t change anything, even if you feel it might.”

Áine frowned. “I’m not so sure.”

Shadowheart nodded, meeting Áine’s eyes. “I understand. And I can’t speak for everyone, of course. But I can relate in a way. I felt the same fear when I hadn’t yet told you I was a Sharran. And, for whatever that’s worth in relation to what you’re dealing with, that ended up okay.”

“It’s different. You’re not riddled with shame for it,” Áine said, trying to gentle her curt tone. “But I understand your meaning. And I’ll take it to heart.”

“That’s all I ask,” Shadowheart said, patting Áine’s hand. “That and for you to check on Astarion when you feel ready to get up and around again. Not that you wouldn’t regardless, but—”

“Is he alright?” Áine asked with renewed urgency. Memories of his torso slashed apart, his panicked frozen eyes, and how he’d tried to drag himself to her flashed through her mind.

“He is,” Shadowheart hastened to reassure her. “He wouldn’t be if you hadn’t done what you did. None of us would be, I don’t think. But he made it very difficult to save him and I’m worried I didn’t find all his injuries before he ran me off.”

“Ran you off?” Áine repeated.

“It took me and Wyll to stabilize him on that cliff so we could move him,” Shadowheart told her. “He was fighting us nearly the entire time and telling us not to touch him.” Áine’s heart stung. “And yelling at us to go help you instead. Then when we finally got back and I took you over from Halsin, we had to all but cram him into his tent for him to leave your side and actually rest. Succeeding that, he wouldn’t let anyone in to finish cleaning up his wounds and—”

Shadowheart was becoming more and more impassioned and blustering as she recounted it, only pausing when Áine rested her hand against the cleric’s arm. “I’ll go.” Shadowheart was frustrated and Áine could see it, but she only got this flustered when she was also worried.

“Right. Thank you,” Shadowheart said breathily through a sigh as she ran a hand across her forehead. Her palms and fingertips were speckled with blood she’d missed between patients and her nails were crusted with dirt and grime. She looked like she could pass out at any moment and it was finally that fatigue hitting that encouraged her to follow Áine’s advice. “I think I’ve said it before,” she said as she turned to leave, “but I can’t remember in my current headspace if I’ve said it aloud to you… I was wrong about him.”

Áine adjusted to her side so she could push herself into a seated position. “How so?”

“I told you a while back that I doubted his intentions with you,” Shadowheart explained. “And I still sort of did, even after he asked me about your shoulder. But I was wrong. He loves you. Dearly.”

Áine blushed and the color got mixed in with the bruises splotching her skin. “I wouldn’t go that far, but—”

“Oh, I would,” Shadowheart insisted. “You should see the way he looks at you, especially when he thinks no one’s paying him any mind. Then you wouldn’t be able to argue with me.”

“I’m sure I’d still find a way,” Áine mused, gathering her hair into a low side-ponytail and noting with some alarm how streaked with blood her hair was. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she supposed she’d just forgotten both how much she’d bled and how much blood she’d fallen into in general during the fight.

“Hm. Probably,” Shadowheart hummed. “Take it easy tonight.”

“I will,” Áine assured her, watching her leave before slowly staggering to her feet. She ducked through her tent door as well, her eyes finding the cleric and watching her progress back to her tent.

Shadowheart started to deviate toward Halsin, who was working on closing a wound on Gale’s scalp. She hesitated and glanced furtively back as she felt Áine’s eyes on her. Áine gave her a scolding look that put Shadowheart back on a path to her tent, not satisfied until the cleric was in her tent with the bit of canvas falling back into place behind her.

Satisfied, Áine scoped out the camp, noting Halsin and Gale again but not resting until she also scoped out Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel. The last she’d seen of Karlach, the tiefling had been scrapping with one of the drow mercenaries and it had taken both of them over a ledge, but at a glance, she seemed the most intact of all of them.

Wyll looked more or less just a bit bruised with a few treated cuts to his name and he was assisting Karlach in checking a wound on Lae’zel’s head. Lae’zel had only agreed to Karlach evaluating her wounds, as she saw a sister-in-arms in the tiefling and felt less scrutinized by a fellow warrior. However, Karlach couldn’t touch Lae’zel without setting the young githyanki ablaze, so Wyll was permitted to be Karlach’s hands, carefully moving Lae’zel’s bloodied hair so they could check the damage.

From Áine’s vantage point, they looked like they were doing well to take care of each other, which meant she could feel zero qualms about going to see Astarion and likely staying there for the rest of the night thereafter if he let her. They’d been cohabitating since he’d confided in her just a couple of nights back, but she’d never seen him in such a state of injury and figured there was a chance he preferred to weather those conditions alone.

Meeting her comrades’ gazes as she passed them to get to his tent door, she exchanged smiles and reassuring looks with each, her heart full and her head light with relief that everyone, somehow against their odds, had survived another night. As put-together as she seemed on the surface though, her mind hadn’t stopped racing along with her heart since she remembered how badly wounded Astarion was before she fainted. Neither slowed until she was able to peek through the door of his tent and confirm he was inside, alive and in a deep reverie.

Áine held a hand against her aching heart, a sigh easing from her chest and relaxing her frame. He was okay.

Astarion lay on his bedroll, his fingers curled into small circles for his meditation and his skin littered with cuts and bruises. Shadows bloomed as dark as Shadowheart’s under his closed eyes, standing out against his porcelain pallor, dark petals against snow. He was without a shirt, either of his choosing or something Shadowheart and Wyll had managed to do when they’d fought to stabilize him. His pants remained but they were tattered from the battle, slashed through in several places.

To Áine’s relief, the wounds she remembered pouring blood to stone looked well on their way to healing. His chest rose and fell with even breaths despite not needing to breathe. She was glad he did anyway—it reassured her in times like this.

Her gaze shifted down to a small bowl of water and a cloth near the bedroll, the bowl half spilled across the dirt beside it. A relic of Shadowheart’s scrap with him, she supposed. Áine shook her head as she carefully sank to her knees beside him and submerged the cloth in the lukewarm water, wringing it over the basin. Didn’t he understand that whatever vigil he may have kept in or outside her tent would have done her no good at all if it hindered his healing?

She smirked softly as she supposed he probably hadn’t thought that far at all. He rarely could think more than two steps ahead into a plan at any given time.

Áine started with his arms, carefully wiping away the remnants of blood Shadowheart had been unable to get to and Astarion had likely left in favor of tending to his pain and exhaustion. She took her time to be thorough, humming the melody to “Lilac & Gooseberries” under her breath while she worked, musing over how she could change more of the lyrics to suit his fine qualities. When she felt a sliver of her bardic abilities touch upon the tune, she allowed them to flow in, giving the strokes she made with the cloth a touch of magic to help along his recovery.

She sighed again, soft and more sad this time. My poor boy, she thought, locating his essential oils near one of the pillows she’d brought from her tent and adding a couple of drops to the basin before she began cleaning the blood from his chest and neck. He was okay and she knew that. He’d go hunt and be better in a day’s time and he was already most assuredly more healed up than she was. She just kept thinking back to the look on his face after she’d gone down, and kept hearing that crack in his voice as he’d begged her to get back up.

It was possible, she thought while she featherlight cleansed his neck, face, and ears, that she may not have found it within herself to reawaken that old, unexplored power had she not felt compelled to push through for him. She was giving up before hearing his voice. She’d felt herself buckle, delirious with pain and fatigue, and flood with despair at seeing her friends so broken. At seeing him so broken, too. She’d started to lose hope.

A star in the Underdark, indeed, she thought, thinking she was perhaps still a little delirious with pain when she noted the sappiness of her own musings. She felt herself smile even though it aggravated the split in her lip. Áine drew her lower lip between her teeth, fidgeting with the healing cut while she moved on to Astarion’s hair, meticulously smoothing the red tints from his silver strands.

She didn’t notice he was conscious until a few minutes after he first opened his eyes, too focused on tending to his curls. When her eyes met his, she found them already on her bearing a mix of emotions, some of which she couldn’t quite translate. One almost looked like anger.

Áine’s lips curled in the beginnings of a smile that fell away when he suddenly bolted upright. They stared at each other—Astarion agitated and Áine bewildered—until Áine’s gaze once more traced the dark shadows beneath his scarlet eyes and held out her wrist. Astarion looked between her confused expression and the vein she offered him before scowling as if insulted and swatting her arm away.

More flummoxed than before, Áine’s eyes narrowed and she parted her lips to speak, but he lunged forward and swallowed her words, his hand catching around the back of her neck as he angled her head and kissed her hard. She made a small noise of complaint against his lips, bracing her hands against his chest when he crowded her with his body.

Regardless of his reasoning, Áine was uncomfortable and her wounds were aching as he pulled her closer and she slapped his cheek with as much force as he’d swatted her wrist away. It was enough to jar him and he withdrew, looking at her with shock that had mirrored hers just moments ago.

“Cut it out,” Áine mumbled once her mouth was free, the split on her lower lip feeling like it might bleed again. “Astarion, stop,” she said emphatically when he yanked her closer by her belt, slapping his hands away from the buckle.

His eyes, somehow far away and yet present enough to react, flashed with hurt. “I…,” he faltered, his empty hands hovering with nothing to touch as he tried to reroute his reactions. “Darling, I’m sorry, I just need to be close to you.”

“Then come here and be close to me, my love,” Áine suggested simply and with a patience beyond her years. She guided him to her and folded him in her arms, one of her hands moving to cradle his face as he buried his head against her chest. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” he murmured almost too softly for her to hear. She felt his tears trickle over her hand before she heard them in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Áine felt her faint frustration with him melt away along with the presentation of his poor coping mechanisms that had caused it in the first place. “You didn’t.”

Astarion craned his head back to look at her, his ear still pressed to her heart. His eyes were rimmed in red. “But I almost did,” he argued in a whisper, a quiet crack in his voice.

“And I almost lost you,” Áine murmured, sniffing against her own tears that threatened to come. “But I didn’t. We didn’t. We’re both alive and on the mend.”

“I don’t think you understand, dearheart,” he said, clearly very shaken. “I can never feel like that again.”

Áine frowned, smoothing her thumb against his tear-dappled cheekbone. “We will,” she told him honestly, not liking it any more than he did. “Probably several times before this is over.”

“Well, that’s…,” he paused, drawing a shaking breath. “That’s shit.”

The bard offered him a smile dipped in nothing but understanding and sympathy. “That’s life.”

Astarion scoffed. “There has to be something I can do,” he seemed to muse exclusively to himself. “If at the source of the tadpoles’ creation, we can sort what controls the cult, the parasites, even the Absolute, too, then—”

“Astarion,” Áine admonished him, her tone flat and unyielding. He stopped and looked at her, his expression pleading. “Power doesn’t make you safe. In fact, it often does the opposite.”

“Darling, I need the means to protect you,” he murmured through clenched teeth as he sat up from her arms, his hands moving to cradle her face. “To protect myself, to protect both of us.”

“I don’t need protecting,” she told him, her hands resting over his and holding them to her cheeks. Áine turned her head just enough to kiss the inside of his wrist. “This is the risk we take in—,” she sighed, kicking her anxiety aside, “in loving each other. Especially in our present circumstances.”

“Well, I hate it,” he snapped, his tone severe even as he stroked her face as carefully as if she were made of glass.

Áine raised a brow at him. A mostly teasing challenge. “You want out?”

“No!” Astarion muttered, tensing with embarrassment at how quickly he’d shot down the notion.

Áine tried to contain her smile but failed utterly. “Good. I don’t either.”

Astarion finally smiled a little and the sight eased the tightness in Áine’s chest. “Good,” he echoed. “May I kiss you now?”

“Depends why you want to,” Áine said. “Is it still old motions?”

“No,” he assured her, still occasionally blown away by how much of him she truly saw. It was becoming less jarring every time. “I just want to kiss you.”

“Then please do,” Áine said with a smile, giggling when her face was immediately peppered with kisses. He relished the sound of her delight before pressing his lips to hers again, his fearful urgency gone and replaced with a gentle savoring that did perfectly well to coax them both back into their bed for the remainder of their rest.

Áine fell asleep in Astarion’s arms, a thing that was now common practice for them but felt much more significant and rare when they’d even for a moment questioned the possibility that they’d ever have this again.

She woke to a faint tugging on her ponytail and when her eyes fluttered open, she saw the cloth she’d been using to clean the blood off Astarion being used to gently wipe down her hair. Áine watched him work for a moment, admiring his hands, before she traced the line of his arm up to his face. He briefly met her eyes to smile at her before he focused back on his task of painstakingly smoothing every reddened layer from her white locks.

“Good ‘morning’,” he said, using the term loosely as it was just as dark outside as when they’d finally settled in.

“Hello, love,” Áine mumbled, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. She noticed the water in the basin had darkened, which told her he’d managed to sort through more of her hair than she first realized. “How did you manage to do all this without waking me sooner?”

Astarion smirked. “Roguish stealth and dexterity, my dear,” he answered simply. “I’m afraid though that because of the oils you added to the basin last night, you’ll smell like me now.”

Áine laughed. “I probably already did.”

“Because you’re mine,” he grumbled as he leaned in to kiss her temple, reaching over her to wet the cloth again and wring it out.

The bard smirked. “Am I now? And what am I to you exactly?”

She’d never seen Astarion get so immediately flustered. His hand froze against the basin and nearly caught the edge and knocked it sideways until he steadied himself. He cleared his throat so hard he had to turn into his sleeve to cough. Were he not low on blood, she was sure he’d be a cherry red. “Well, I…,” he mumbled, realizing she was waiting for an answer. Astarion made an impatient noise in his throat, “Oh I don’t know! But isn’t it nice? Not to know?”

Áine snorted. “Is it?” She hadn’t expected this response, but it was an interesting one.

Astarion groaned and gestured vaguely when words didn’t immediately come to him. “Well, you’re not a victim. Not a target. Not just one-night-it’s-better-to-forget,” he listed off, seeming to find it difficult to look her in the eyes lest she see the vulnerability there. As if she hadn’t seen it before. “But then… Whatever in the world could you be?”

“Is this a test?” Áine asked, raising an eyebrow.

He sighed loudly as he brought the cloth back to her hair, working on the last few streaks so he could have a secondary reason to not look at her expression. “Well, what would you call this?”

“You mean what would I call us?” Áine bartered.

Astarion bit down a small, schoolboyish smile. “I do still like the sound of that,” he mumbled. Áine melted a little. What a silly man this was. She leaned up and kissed him, a smile curling her lips as she felt him melt into her. When they parted, he tenderly added, “And I do rather like that, you know.”

Áine smiled. “I know,” she murmured, nuzzling his cheek. “I do, too.”

He hummed, ducking his head to brush noses with her. “Thank you, by the way,” he murmured. Before she could ask what for, he bridged the gap and told her, “For snapping me out of my habits. For not taking advantage. For being patient with me.”

Áine’s gaze softened. “No need to thank me,” she told him, her voice a gentle lull. “Thank you for telling me what you needed and letting me help.”

Astarion’s stare became unfathomable and it was mesmerizing for Áine to simply watch the way his features shifted. He swallowed, but the motion looked difficult. “No need to thank me, dearest,” he murmured finally, nodding a little to himself after as he reaffirmed that this was something he could do, something reasonably expected. Something healthy. Something real.

“I would call us partners, for what it’s worth,” Áine answered him at last as he set the cloth back in its bowl. “And I’d also call us late to breakfast based on that aroma coming in.”

Astarion smirked. “You’re late to breakfast, dear,” he corrected her as he rolled the word “partners” around in his mind, testing it against his tongue without moving his mouth. Equal standing, level field, two halves of a whole. He snorted softly as Áine got up to get ready to leave their tent. Cute. He wasn’t entirely sure whether the word crossed his mind in response to her answer or to just watching her get up and around, but he supposed either could’ve been the case.

The couple ducked out of their tent and Áine’s eyes went straight for the campfire, smiling when she saw their friends gathering around to eat yet another hearty meal Gale had somehow scraped together from their supply bags. She was about to apologize for their tardiness when she heard Astarion ask over her shoulder, “Who is that?”

Áine faltered and looked up at him, following his gaze toward where Withers was set up. Her stomach dropped, but she also wasn’t sure why she was surprised. She’d reawakened the dormant powers of her broken oath, why wouldn’t he show up again?

Standing adjacent to Withers was an ornate phantasm of a knight, fully ensconced in spotless bronze armor cloaked in blackened patina. Fierce, fiery eyes of vibrant orange glowed through the slits in the helmet, plumes of necrotic energy flaking from the orange aura to lick at his plating as he leaned against his enormous greatsword. His angry eyes were already resting on Áine by the time she registered his presence.

Astarion expected her to gawk at least, as he was. Or be perturbed by the intruder in their camp space, even if Withers for whatever reason didn’t seem to be. What he didn’t expect was what she actually said.

“An old friend, I suppose,” Áine said, sounding more exasperated than appropriately horrified. It reminded him of how she’d reacted to Withers showing up in their camp as well, excluding when he’d intentionally or unintentionally jumpscared her of course. “I’ll be back in a moment or two.”

Her tone told him well enough that she wanted to speak to him alone, but he felt the urge to insist he accompany her as that innate protectiveness swelled in his chest. Ah how the tables have turned from the original “plan,” he mused, glancing down at her as she walked toward the knight. She was half the strange apparition’s size and yet strode with all the confidence of someone who towered three feet above him. Not for the first time, Astarion found his nerves easing a little at the sight and thinking, That’s my girl.

Áine drew in a deep breath as she crossed the thatch in the myconids’ circle, offering the knight a half-smile as she stopped in front of him. “Hello again,” she greeted him almost sheepishly.

“I have been waiting for you,” the knight informed her, the familiar voice stirring memories that brought her both pain and comfort. Gravelly and thickly accented, but shockingly kind. In more than a few ways, the strange soul who’d saved her in that first year of freedom. Until he’d realized she wanted nothing to do with the power her broken oath granted her and needed to make his way elsewhere to souls who needed his guidance more. At least, that’s what she’d assumed when one day she’d found him gone. “I felt your call rise again. Your broken chains echoed as they shuddered.”

She nodded slowly, still hesitant to accept this part of herself. It felt like a trap, retaining any remnant of her past and the creed that bound it. Even the shattered pieces. “I have people to protect now. I did it for them,” she said softly.

“A noble cause,” he acknowledged. “Just like the first time. I trust you still remember why you abandoned your oath?”

“Every moment of every hour,” Áine said, her throat tightening as her mind shoved the memories back down where she always held them fast. “I… I’ll never forget.”

“Good,” the knight decreed. “To know the reason for your fall, to remember it, is to know the shape of things to come. Your undoing should remain a source of comfort. For all oathbroken who have realized they are far better to choose their own path…but especially for you, Áine Ts’sambra.”

“Forgo my bloodname,” she ordered on a shaken breath. “My kin lie with my oath.”

“Your kin are alive and continue to spread their ill at Moonrise Towers under order of their master,” the knight said. “But you already suspected that.”

Áine’s blood ran cold. She had, but it was something different to hear it. She felt bile burn her throat as she asked with a forced even tone, “And my father?”

“Aye,” the knight confirmed, inclining his incorporeal armored head. “No less would be expected.”

She gave a flippant shrug of one shoulder. “I dunno. Rather hoped he might’ve died, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?” he challenged her.

“Are you suggesting I miss him?” she hissed in an effort to keep her voice low. “That I would ever forgive him?”

“No such thing,” the knight said. “But even now, the shadows gather around you. They have been with you since you ran. They sense the cracks in your armor and they yearn to be used. To be inflicted. Your power reawakens reborn. It is your path to pave, lass.”

Áine pursed her lips and glanced toward her feet. She knew what he implied. And he wasn’t wrong. While her fractured heart and broken mind reeled in terror at returning to those sickly lands knowing that the ones she’d fled still lived, some part of her looked upon this and saw opportunity. Closure. She’d always sworn to kill him, any of them, if they came after her, and some dark part of her welcomed that possibility as it drew ever closer.

“Will you be with us again now?” she asked, turning her gaze back up to his flame-made eyes. “Or is this just my ‘welcome back’ party?”

“You were not ready when first we met,” the knight said, his tone almost gentle. “You accepted this power out of fear of your family, out of fear of your weakness. You now know your way, but we reunite so I may show you how you might reach it if you have need of my teachings.”

Áine nodded. “Well, you are welcome in our camp, if you care for my permission,” she said, drawing a breath. “And I feel as if I owe you an apology. Not for resisting my power, but for how I treated you for most of our time together. I wasn’t myself.”

The knight actually chuckled. “You were young. Tortured. And too kind for your own good. Still seem to be.”

Áine smirked, a guilty press to her lips. “I suppose that’s something I’ll never shake.”

“See that you don’t,” the knight advised. “It is a rare thing and you possess the strength to protect that kindness rather than be taken advantage of for it.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Áine said, adjusting her ponytail and tracing her fingertips over the wet strands Astarion had cleansed the blood from just earlier. She glanced at Withers. “Hope you don’t mind a roommate.”

“Thou art as ever far too keen to seem amusing,” Withers informed her.

“Did you just say I’m not funny?” Áine balked. “You know what, nevermind. I’m done with both of you for a while.” When she turned to walk to the fire, the two strange figures exchanged a glance behind her back.

Áine joined Astarion’s side and served herself a bowl of porridge from the pot hanging over the fire, plunking a dab of honey into it from a jar nearby. She was surprised there was any left given how fond Halsin was of the stuff. As she stirred the honey into her breakfast, she cast another glance back at the stalwart knight. It was so strange to see him again, but also strangely reassuring. As frightening as it was for aspects of her past to be coming full circle, it felt overdue. She only hoped she proved herself in the end.

“Áine, did you hear me?”

“Hm? What?” she piped up, following the source of the voice back to Gale. “Sorry.”

“No need!” he hastened to say. “I was just curious about our, uh, new guest.”

“Do you know them? Or it?” Wyll pressed warily.

Áine deliberated for a moment before she shrugged and went back to eating her food, relaxing when she felt Astarion’s hand trace up her back. He was starting to get a little too attuned to when she was stressed. Or perhaps that was okay. Perhaps that was something she needed like he needed certain things from her.

“Just another member of the ‘Undead Peepaw Corner’,” she said, speaking a little more loudly so she could be sure Withers would hear her. “He’s fine.”

The group shared glances, save for Karlach who was fully focused on shoveling her breakfast into her mouth. Lae’zel also seemed generally unbothered, her trust in Áine enough for her to not push further.

“There has to be more to it than that,” Wyll asserted, earning surprised glances from Shadowheart and Gale for the suspicion in his tone.

Áine glanced at Wyll and set her spoon in her bowl to scratch the owlbear cub’s head when it ambled over to her side. “I mean, you’re welcome to go ask him yourself.”

Wyll glanced toward Withers and the knight before pulling a face and thinking better of striking up that particular conversation.

Next chapter: Chapter 18, "Bard Dance"

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trigunwritings · 1 year

Text

Blue Period

Summary: You have never seen the sea. You paint it anyways.

Rating: General Audiences

Relationship: GN!Reader/Vash

Written by @blood--hunter

Note from author: I know very few things about oil painting

Blue. A rare color, all things considered.

The only thing on Noman’s Land that echoed it was the never ending sky. It stretched as far as the sand until it kissed the horizon and disappeared beyond. The desert was vast—so much so that they named it The Great Sand Ocean in an ironic twist of words.

Your grandmother had told stories of the ocean. The old one, on a planet whose name you scarcely remember from her storied whispers. She had lived there when she was very young, somewhere near the sea before it had dried up and humanity itself was forced to take to the stars. She often whispered in your ear when she grew too frail to get out of bed; about dipping her toes in wet sand, watching seaweed wash up on the shore, of catching fish and finding shells and crabs and a bounty that seemed impossible to visualize.

She was gone now. Along with the last memories of something that often filled your dreams from her old stories of childhood. Sometimes you imagine how it tastes when the tears fall over your cheeks and reach your lips, but that’s only on days when you have the strength to cry.

“—Hey!”

Your thoughts, the ones that tended to drag you down into their dreary depths should you stay in them too long, are suddenly broken.

You have to squint your eyes, smiling at you is Vash, his grin so wide and so big that you it matches the sun.

He is holding onto something in one hand. You raise a brow and, with the slow uncurling of his fingers, he reveals its secret to you.

Small, no longer than his palm, is a tube of oil paint.

It can’t be helped. Your eyes widen. You climb down from the hood of Meryl and Roberto’s truck. The two had decided to trek along the expanse, accompanied by Wolfwood, in order to retrieve parts for the broken down vehicle. With the “Undertaker’s” help they were certain to return unharmed, but it the nearest outpost was still a full day’s travel or more. Vash had volunteered to stay with the truck in order to protect it from bandits and varments alike. You had voted to stay with him.

It gave you time to think. To create.

“Where did you get this? And when?” You snatch it out of his hand, holding it up to the light as if you didn’t have enough already, the midday sun baring down on you.

Vash only smiles conspiratorily. It was your ongoing hunch that whenever you started feeling down, he would provide you with another tube of paint from wherever or however he gets it. This only lended more evidence to your hypothesis.

“Pthalo Blue.”

So far you had red, orange, black, white, and yellow.

You smile to yourself. With this, you could create so much more. Paint, especially oil paint, was hard to come by in the desert outside of large cities. It was simply too difficult to produce for anyone but those with the most double dollars, and there weren’t exactly very painters this far into the open terrain.

Vash’s own smile only brightens. “Well,” He says, something eager in his eyes, “Are you gonna use it?”

Without a word you walk towards your pack, thoughts rolling through your mind like the morning fog. Canvas was another thing hard to come by, but if one knew how to use it correctly, it could be taken a long way. You often make your own canvases; stretching the material over wood, nailing and gluing it down piece by piece.

And unfortunately, being around Vash meant being around danger. And being around danger meant getting your stuff damaged. You had only one fully formed canvas left. You would have to wait until you got into town to make more, but that was a problem for later you.

Right now, you wanted to create.

“Blue...” You hum to yourself, beginning to lay out your supplies. Your palette, your brushes, the small bit of turpentine you have left, and of course your canvas and pencils.

Vash stands over you, watching as you plunk right down in the sand and begin drawing.

The scene doesn’t start with any concrete ideas, but it comes to you slowly.

The ocean takes a vague form as you recall the old stories from your grandmother. You don’t know what it looks like. You can’t imagine that amount of water in one place, just waiting to be swam in like a giant bath, but with all sorts of creatures native to living in the waters.

You can’t drink from the ocean—you remember your grandma telling you that. It’s too salty, like tears. But it’s big and blue, just like the sky.

It takes an hour, maybe two, but the piece comes into focus eventually. A careful sketch of ideas that, to an onlooker, seems like a chaotic mess.

And then you start painting.

Vash watches every stroke of the brush as it carries color across the canvas; some smooth and long, others short and targeted. It takes the better part of a day. The color piles on. Thick on thin.

The ocean forms beneath your brushstrokes.

When the morning sun rises Vash is still asleep, so you slide away from your canvas and settle in the front passenger seat of the car, hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye at least.

. . .

“—Whoa!”

The words wake you with a jolt. You pop your head out the window so you can view your art laid out on the hood of car.

“This is amazing!” Vash beams at you.

You stumble out, sleep deprived and a bit hungry. You hadn’t seen your work in the light of day—hadn’t truly seen it finished.

There it is.

The ocean (or maybe it’s the desert? It is the only thing you know,) lies under the dark sky, stars beaming down from their lofty thrones. Kissing the horizon is the pthalo blue, mixing from light to dark as it sweeps across the space. Walking along a wave’s (or a dune’s?) edge is a red cloaked man. His back is to the viewer, but he leaves footsteps in his wake, his hood up, his journey long.

You blink at it, only when you look at your hands do you realize you are the one who made it. The paint is still there, the blue hiding your nails with how thick it is.

“Is that me?” Vash asks, grinning wide again and pointing to his own face.

You smile back at him, nodding. “Yeah.”

“It’s amazing ... but it’s missing something.”

“Like what?”

And when he tells you, you smile.

When the others come back, supplies and parts in hand, they all view your newest painting with amazement. A second figure now walks beside the first:

Vash is still crossing the vast ocean but beside him is you, your footsteps overlapping as your journey together.

#trigun #trigun stampede #trigun x reader #vash the stampede #sfw #writing #vash x reader #fic #vash fic #gn!reader #gender neutral reader #sfw writing #otherswriting #others writing #blood--hunter

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altocat · 5 months

Note

I read the other day that when you take little babies away from their mothers after childbirth it's an traumatic event for both of them and can actually scar the baby for life if the separation is too long.

Interesting! I think I've heard something similar. I guess that sorta means that Sephiroth is perpetually traumatized in a way since he was snatched up the second he was born.

Now that I think about it, I really do wonder how they were able to keep him away from Lucrecia. He was presumably born in Nibelheim and likely remained there during his toddlerhood before being moved to Midgar. But how is it that Lucrecia was being kept away from him without even getting to see him when the layout is so small? Was there a Shinra base there where they were keeping him? Or maybe he really was just taken to Midgar right away? But then he talks about how familiar Nibelheim looks to him and I REFUSE to believe it's from the dumb Halloween event lmao.

So it had to have been that back then there were more Shinra outposts and he was kept away from Lucrecia. Either that or it was straight to Midgar and Sephiroth can just recall newborn locations because Jenova or something idk. I don't even want to bring Vincent into the equation since Lucrecia was also busy with that and Hojo kept popping in to bully her. Where was Gast? WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY IS THIS TIMELINE SO DFGHFDS

#asks #ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #crisis core #sephiroth #sephcanons #lucrecia crescent #hojo

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is-there-an-echo-in-here · 8 months

Text

Strength in Duty

Read below or read on Ao3

...

Grievous played his usual game with them and Obi-Wan was determined, this time, not to allow the separatist general to escape.

He believed that they took Grievous by surprise as much as he did them, dropping out of lightspeed in a heavy nebula that glitched the scanners and essentially blinded them to their surroundings. Their cruisers had practically bumped into one another as they made their opposite paths through the nebula. Grievous had launched an attack in an instant, aiming for their engine room, their data collection, anything that would decimate Obi-Wan and his legion or give his masters the upper hand in the battle.

Obi-Wan guarded the main data point, where they stored the outpost locations, the Jedi general’s missions, the clone ranking lists. His commander was stationed at the engine room and, if his urgent call over the communicator was anything to go by, Grievous was making his way there, cutting down clones as they made hasty, final reports into the comms, ending in screams and static.

Obi-Wan left his post—left it in the very capable hands of a clone unit he had commandeered, but left it all the same—in favour of joining his commander, in fear of losing him.

He heard the death screams of his men over the comms as he ran down the corridors, and wondered if he would be able to identify Cody’s if it came. It was not a pleasant thought. It was a fear of his, one that concerned him greatly, because Jedi should not be afraid of loss. Jedi could not grow so attached, so selfish in their affections, and to fear the death of a clone of all people was, in Obi-Wan’s opinion, doubly concerning. Clones died every day. They gave their lives for the republic, for their brothers, for the Jedi, and Obi-Wan convinced himself that, although their loss was tragic, it was also honourable.

He did not know why it was so hard to convince himself of that in regard to his commander.

A flash of movement down the corridor spurred his efforts, sprinting after Grievous as he made a break for the engine room. Blaster fire erupted through the hallway and Obi-Wan rounded the corner to see Grievous advance on the commander and his men. The separatist general deflected shot after shot. Clones yelled in pain. Obi-Wan leapt for Grievous’ back, parried by a swinging saber.

A clone had a grappling hook around the general’s left arms. He and Cody were straining to hold him. Grievous cast a defensive slash at Obi-Wan, forcing him back a step and using his moment of respite to wrench the line forward, flinging the clone towards him and sinking two lightsabers deep into his chest. The dying choke let out by the man fuelled Obi-Wan forward in a fit of anger. Cody, similarly, fired off a merciless round of blaster bolts, avoiding Obi-Wan’s erratic movements with an expert precision.

It was just the two of them left standing. Obi-Wan trusted him completely. He was able to sever one of Grievous’ arms at the joint, tearing a mangled scream from their foe. Cody buried three shots in him, maiming his wrist of another arm, setting burning holes in his chest, and provoking the general to lunge at him with a frightening malice.

Cody dodged, rolled beneath the swinging arm, blocking Grievous’ escape now, grazing his head with another, rapid shot. Obi-Wan held position at the entrance to the engine room. He tilted his head when Grievous groaned in frustration and cast a glare back at him.

“I will accept your surrender,” said Obi-Wan with a crooked smirk, “and you can avoid any further damage.”

Grievous growled, guttural and defeated, turned towards Cody again, and Obi-Wan’s heart thudded. One saber swung back at him. The other thrust forward at his commander. Obi-Wan managed to keep Cody in sight as he dodged the mad swing, relieved to see that his commander avoided his own attack, and promptly panicked to watch Grievous snatch a hand to the front of Cody’s chest plate.

He slammed Cody against the wall so hard that, for a moment of stunned fear, Obi-Wan thought he had killed him too. He ran to his commander as Grievous took off down the hallway in retreat. Cody was pushing his hands to the ground before he even got there, shoving his helmet off to spit blood from his mouth.

“Commander,” Obi-Wan gasped, moving to crouch by his side, but Cody was shoving himself to his feet with a determined growl and with blood on his lips and teeth.

“I’m good,” he rumbled, and kicked into a sprint after Grievous, leaving Obi-Wan to followed, slightly bewilderedly, behind.

Another man would have stayed down. Obi-Wan had expected him to stay down, in truth, and not rise again unless aided by a medic, if at all. So often now, Obi-Wan expected to lose him. Every time, Cody proved him wrong.

They chased the separatist general back down the corridors, keeping a ruthless pursuit under Cody’s lead.

“He’s going for the hangar!” Cody huffed, and kept the speed as he lifted his blaster, firing rapidly at Grievous’ back.

Blaster bolts were deflected back at them through swinging blades. Obi-Wan pushed forward to protect his commander, slashing his lightsaber out and he scarcely had to aim. The weapon knew. The force knew. This man was theirs to defend.

A bolt slammed into Grievous’ jointed leg, stumbling him through the hangar doors. Cody launched himself forward with a shocking speed, sliding and rolling in front of the general and lifting his blaster in threat. The force lashed out for him. Obi-Wan wrenched Grievous back a pace and those hollowed eyes turned on him. A ragged chuckle jolted his frame.

“Your other soldiers died easier, Kenobi.”

Cody twisted a grimace of a mirthless grin, showing off the blood staining his teeth.

“This one still cannot be called a challenge,” the separatist general wheezed, lunging towards Cody, sabers swinging.

Cody ducked and weaved beneath the slashing blades, flicking something small and dark from between his fingers. It attached itself to Grievous’ left side as Cody rolled under the back-handed swipe cast at him, blaster aiming as he was still moving, firing before he had come to a complete stop, and hitting the item with blunt precision.

It detonated loudly, a fireball gouging a messy crater and severing both of Grievous’ left arms. He shrieked in rage or pain. Obi-Wan leapt forward to block the frenzied attack aimed at his commander, though he was beginning to suspect that Cody did not need his help.

Blaster fire rained upon Grievous as lightsabers locked in battle. Cody was merciless in his assault. Obi-Wan gave the same courtesy. The enemy general yelled in wordless, groaning anger, slammed a hard attack to fling Obi-Wan’s weapon from his hand. He dropped to his remaining limbs, launching himself at the Jedi in a furious frenzy. Obi-Wan had scarcely enough time to reach blindly for his saber before Cody was in front of him, holding Grievous back with his bare hands, straining to hold his wielding hands at bay.

Fighting not to gape in shock at his commander’s suicidal bravado, Obi-Wan summoned his own weapon back to his hand, lunging forward when Grievous yelled and tossed Cody aside. He hit the ground somewhere to the side with a loud thump of armour, and Grievous slammed Obi-Wan back again, leaping up and shattering his way through the cockpit of a fighter.

Footsteps behind him had Obi-Wan casting his arm back, catching Cody at the chest as he moved to pursue, because it was no good. Cody had tested fate so many times already during this attack. Obi-Wan’s determination to capture Grievous had ebbed away over the course of the fight, coming so close to losing Cody with every assault of the separatist general. The gust of the ship leaving the hangar had Obi-Wan slumping back to sit on the floor, catching his breath and feeling his bruises.

“Sir?” said Cody, sinking to one knee beside him, concern bleeding through in his voice.

“We stopped him,” Obi-Wan said. “We won.”

Cody gave him a stiff nod. “Yes, sir.” He looked the Jedi over. “Are you hurt?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Someone will turn up soon anyway. We caused quite a commotion.”

Cody huffed, fell back to sit beside him. “I suppose so.”

They caught their breath there, together, on the ground.

There was blood on the floor. Obi-Wan looked over to where it led, over to where Cody had landed in Grievous’ final blow, following it back to Cody himself, who turned his head aside to spit firmly. His face was a mess of crimson. It was coming out of his nose now as well as his mouth.

“Are you okay?”

Cody smiled faintly, looked over at him. “Nothing serious, sir.” He glanced back at the entrance to the base, bringing his hand up to wipe at the blood dripping from his nose. “The rest of the men were not so fortunate.”

Obi-Wan lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry, commander.”

The corner of Cody’s mouth twitched upwards briefly. “It’s what we do, general.”

Obi-Wan regarded the side of his face, the blood shining at the arch of his cheek, on the bridge of his nose, on the swell of his bruised lower lip. His face was a mess. His eyes and his heart were full of light and purpose that Obi-Wan both admired and feared. Cody was brimming with determination and courage and honour. Cody was prepared to die and, although Obi-Wan could not admit it, he was not prepared to lose his commander. He was not ready to be without that constant, comforting light that Cody provided simply by being.

“Something on your mind, general?”

Obi-Wan was staring, he realised belatedly, and cleared his throat as he averted his gaze. “You must forgive me, commander,” he said, explaining himself to Cody’s soft frown. “I believe I have been underestimating you.”

Cody’s lips curved gently at the corners. “They didn’t make me a commander because of my skill at paperwork, sir.”

“Indeed,” said Obi-Wan, taking the risk and wiping the blood from Cody’s jaw. The commander said nothing to challenge such intimacy. “Although, you are also good at paperwork.” He considered the events that had just unfolded, taking his time with his words. “Most people would have stayed down.”

Cody looked up at him. “I have my duty, sir.”

“And you do it well,” said Obi-Wan, “but you don’t have to address every sentence with ‘sir’ or with ‘general’… nor is it necessary for you to die for me.”

Cody’s eyes were very soft, very kind, and Obi-Wan was beginning to realise that it was his natural gaze, his inherent state. “I respectfully disagree, sir. With the latter more than the former.”

Obi-Wan looked him over, wiped at the bridge of Cody’s nose and a spark of pain narrowed the commander’s eyes. “Sometimes you give me the impression that you want to die.”

“I have no strong desire to die any time soon, sir,” said Cody, and his nose was red even beneath the blood, “but I am not so arrogant as to assume I will survive this war and, when I die, I will be glad to die for you.”

Concern worked Obi-Wan’s jaw. “Don’t,” he murmured softly.

Any embarrassment Obi-Wan may have felt for staring before was a distant memory now. Cody’s expression was soft and sympathetic. Cody always looked at him gently. Cody always looked at everyone gently.

He turned those same eyes on the squadron of men that breached the hangar, blasters raised for the threat, lowering instantly when Cody gestured a wave at them, and they rushed over. The medic among them came to Obi-Wan first. It had never sat quite right with the Jedi, that the men were trained to prioritise him over their own. Cody seemed not to mind, however, he cast that quiet smile at the men who knelt beside him to colloquially check his welfare.

“Not to worry, boys,” he murmured, clapping an anxious rookie on the shoulder. “Gave Grievous a good lick. Won’t be back too soon.”

“Chin up, sir,” the medic at Obi-Wan’s side ordered, fingers hooking beneath his jaw to tilt his head, flashing the scanner against his face and head.

“I’m alright,” Obi-Wan said, gestured a nod towards Cody. “The commander took a beating. I’d like you to look at him, please.”

“I understand, sir, but there is protocol to be followed—”

“I am overruling protocol at this time.” The medic lowered his scanner, shifted his jaw in conflict. “Please.”

The medic hummed, shrugged one shoulder as he looked to the screen built into his wrist bracer. “Your scans are clear anyway, general.”

He did as he was told, moving his attentions to Cody, instructing him to keep still as he passed the light of the scanner over his body, lingering at his chest. Obi-Wan watched his commander’s face, unchanged, watched the medic’s face, creased.

“Found some trouble, huh?” Cody uttered, huffed a strained breath of amusement.

“You’ve broken several ribs, commander. Your sternum is fractured.”

Cody hummed. “Up for a few injections then.”

He was remarkably calm, but, then, he always was. He got up by himself—though the medic held his arm and muttered concerns and the men around him frowned anxieties and twitched forward to aid him, waved off by a dismissive hand from their commander—and turned to Obi-Wan with a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“Coming, sir?”

Obi-Wan quirked a forced smile to match Cody’s own. “As you wish, commander.”

Cody held a hand to him, as if to help him to his feet. Obi-Wan took it to honour him, but put no pressure on his hand, his legs holding every scrap of weight as he rose to his feet. His commander surely noticed, but said nothing. He was good at holding his tongue. It was necessary, in his line of work. If the Kaminoans had not stressed their duty of obedience so strictly, Obi-Wan was sure that Cody would be far more vocal about a great many things.

His commander was a good soldier, however, and he released Obi-Wan’s hand, turning to allow the medic to lead them out of the hangar and down the hallways to the infirmary. There was an almost imperceivable limp to Cody’s step, an inconsistency so minor that Obi-Wan may not have noticed if he did not know his commander so completely. He did not mention it, wishing to save Cody this façade of strength he was putting up.

In the infirmary, a scant collection of medics took the needle right into the split of the bone, using their scans to angle precisely into the break and injecting a scarce amount of binding fluid to each side. It would encourage Cody’s ribs to knit back together, like magnets attracting and melting into one another. It was a painful process. Obi-Wan had received the injections himself more than once and the movement they encouraged from the bone could be agonising. Cody took it without complaint, even continuing to type up his report with one hand, the holopad laid on the mattress at his side.

Men would come in at intervals, relaying news of the ship’s condition or Grievous’ escape, or simply seeking the advice of their commander, and Cody spoke to them all even through the needle piercing his side. Obi-Wan watched him, in utter awe of this man and his strength. He tapped into a holopad of his own, accessing the medical records of his commander’s current state, a file still being updated. He mulled over it from his seat in the corner of the room.

“General,” a voice uttered, dragging him from his snooping, and he lifted his gaze to another medic. “Is there anything I can do for you? Were you injured at all?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” He shifted his jaw. “The commander is not.”

The medic’s brow pinched in soft confusion. “Sir?”

It was too personal, too transparent of his anxieties. Obi-Wan swallowed hard.

“How was he continuing like this?” he settled on asking.

The medic scarcely seemed to know what he was talking about. “We are soldiers, general. The commander, he was trained intensely, and he is greatly skilled.”

“His ribs were broken,” said Obi-Wan distantly.

“There is a reason he is our commander, sir. Our leaders are… brilliant and terrifying.”

Obi-Wan regarded the medic for a moment, tilting his head in interest, and turning his attention back to his commander. As he watched Cody take the injections with no word of complaint, type up his report with quick fingers, give straightforward orders and gentle advice to his men, ‘terrifying’ was not the word that came to mind. He had a great many thoughts regarding his commander, but that had never been one of them.

He supposed, if he were to ask Grievous, the separatist general may have newly inspired thoughts on the matter. Obi-Wan, certainly, had his own revelations today regarding his esteemed commander.

“There is a reason he is our commander,” Obi-Wan echoed, because Cody was his as much as he was his troopers’, because Cody was strength and courage and kindness, because Cody was light and life and Obi-Wan was in awe of him now more than ever. “He is brilliant.”

#obi-wan has a competence kink #i don't make the rules #commander cody is the most capable man I know #commander cody #obi-wan kenobi #the clone wars #ao3 #star wars #tcw #clone wars #codywan #writing #fanfiction #kit writes #been a while since I wrote anything

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mara-xx217 · 3 months

Text

Jamais Vu (Signalis Commission)- Human Gestalt/Everyone (Especially Stars and Storch)

This was quite a meaty commission! I hope you all enjoy!~

Love. Forbidden love.

Or was it love that simply shouldn't have happened at all?

The line between 'love' and 'cruelty' is dangerously thin...

Warnings: Dead Dove Do Not Eat, Rape/Noncon, Extreme Power Imbalances, Power Dynamics, Abuse of Authority, Imprisonment, Shock Collar, Hazing, Groping, Sexual Harassment, Technically Workplace Harassment, Blood and Violence, Broken Bones, Copious Amounts of Blood, Drowning, I'm really sorry about the German and Chinese I did the best I could

The gestalt worker’s body shook in rhythm to the rumble of the cargo ship’s engines. Equipment rattled and rolled in their containers, machinery and large parts trembled and vibrated throughout her body, making her eyes see double and her teeth to chatter. Her feet didn’t quite touch the ground, her shoes scuffed from use and unpolished, her uniform crinkled and improperly buttoned.

She stared down at her hands, her fingers twitching and curling into her palms. Her hands were rough from a brief lifetime of hard work and the calluses were a raised, ugly sight upon her hands. The gestalt picked at them and flinched as the skin just underneath her pinky finger was torn raw. Her legs dangled, feet reflexively kicking out as the sting of air hit her tender flesh. The weight of a bag hung on the tip of her shoe, a delicate balancing act that the gestalt couldn't remember initiating. She blinks slowly, eyes dry and unfocused from an undisclosed amount of time without blinking.

Upon this primordial body, the lands were changed, shaped, by gestalt and replika hands.

What becomes of a consecrated shape that has been meddled with in ignorance?

The head is in disagreement with the body.

Uneinigkeit

分歧

The tail shall be devoured in place of an effigy.

The ship shudders to a stop, its weight heaving and shifting in place as it settles to the ground. There is movement. Chatter. The sounds of heavy metal feet stomping around as replikas make contact with the cargo ship’s pilot, asking for documentation, for the cargo manifest. The noise outside of the ship is constant, a low drone through the thick shielding of the vessel. The gestalt doesn’t move, doesn’t hold her breath as she waits. It isn’t until the loading dock door is open that the gestalt finds herself focusing, blinking in the harsh light and wrinkling her nose to the strange consistency of the still newborn Heimatian atmosphere.

“-hurry up and get all this in the loading bay. The storm’s about to pick up and we don’t have time to- Huh?” A replika worker freezes in place as her eyes fall onto the unaccounted human being in the cargo hold. She was an anomaly. A threat.

Gefahr

威胁

Panic spread throughout the replika workers. The STARs were called in, who then called upon the STRCH unit of the outpost in. The gestalt was compliant with the security units’ demands, allowing them to place her in handcuffs and keep their guns trained on her as they waited for their overseer to determine if you a spy or merely a very foolish human that would face the wrath of the Resistance for her insolence and stupidity. Storch snatched the gestalt worker’s identification card and the paperwork found on her person when the STARs frisked her, narrowing her eyes and curling her lip as she tilted her head towards the loading bay doors.

“Take this one-” She gestures to the worker with a flick of her wrist.

“-in for questioning. And the Elster unit as well. Take her gun and cuff her.”

Elster units aren’t known for malfunctioning in such a way. Their gestalt blueprint was chosen specifically for her willingness and eagerness to follow orders and for her disdain for the Empire. Such a unit disregarding orders was odd. Suspicious, especially given her defiance in refuting the charge of taxing a potential spy to an outpost that was declared lost after a catastrophic storm wiped it off the map decades earlier.

There was no note of any gestalt workers that were to be shipped to the outpost, there was no need for any such workers, yet there were supplies to support no more than one human for approximately the equivalent of six revolutions of Heimat, something that was not only unaccounted for in the cargo manifest but also in the ship’s fuel supplies, as it only had enough to make the trip to the outpost, not to leave it as well. Yet in spite of this all, Storch held in her long, strong fingers a work transfer slip that clearly outlined how their mysterious gestalt worker was to be shipped to the now ‘destroyed’ Outpost 773-5-94S for emergency deployment. The assignment given, though, was unclear, only stating that it was for the eyes of the FLKR unit overseeing the outpost and for no one else.

She was placed into isolation, just as the Elster unit, per their regulations. The replika was unaffected by the conditions, preferring it, even. The gestalt was more tense, upset by the procedure but not combative. Storch contacted the Commander, presenting her with both the replika unit and the human along with the cargo manifest and the work reassignment order that was on the gestalt that indicated that she was notified of this transfer and no one else. Storch saluted, standing to attention as the Falke unit towered over her, hands clasped behind her back as she stood in front of the gestalt worker’s cell.

“There was no one else within the ship?” The Commander’s voice was smooth, authoritative. Storch nodded, breaking her salute and handing Falke the documentation aforementioned.

“The only things not accounted for are the human and the supplies for its stay.” Falke was silent as she glossed over the documents. Her eyes narrowed as she shifted the worker’s reassignment documentation that clearly stated her name, Eusan National identification card, and the outpost’s classified designation.

“Interesting.” Commander Falke resituated the documents and handed them back to Storch, who took them and awaited her orders. Would the trespassers be executed? Sent back to the New Nation for further questioning? Perhaps her Commander would allow her to extract further information from both the replika and the gestalt… The Commander was tall enough that she needed to bend at her waist in order to view either prisoner in their cells. Her grey eyes flicked over to the replika, then the human, eyes lingering for just a moment before she stood upright and said-

“Release the gestalt and place her on domestic duty.” Storch blinked in shock.

“I- C-Commander! Is that a wise thing to do if we don’t know what its-”

“Are you questioning my judgement, Zwei?”

“...no ma’am.” Commander Falke narrowed her eyes and Zwei didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Place the human on domestic duty. Any work the EULEs detest, she will do. In the meantime, the Kolbris will monitor both her and the Elster unit. See if you can get her to talk, will you?” Zwei started her Commander and remained until she was formally dismissed.

Deep inside, the Storch seethed as one of her Star units unlocked the gestalt’s cell. Walking away to her office and slamming the door with enough force that some object inside was knocked to the floor, shattering to pieces, the Storch struggled to find adequate outlets for her bubbling anger. The Commander had one of the Star units, one paired with Zwei during her training before they both were assigned to Outpost 773-5-94S, to calm her and redirect her misplaced anger towards a more productive outlet. Paperwork needed to be filed, the Elster unit needed to be questioned further, the gestalt needed to be monitored…

Commander Falke’s judgement wasn’t something that could be thrown into doubt. It was one of the flaws of the replikas, or perhaps not, as this ensures their loyalty to the Nation that created them. The falcon’s reign is ordained and none may challenge it, not her storks, not her hummingbirds and certainly not her beloved eagle, though even he found pause at her reasoning to allow an unknown gestalt to wander their outpost, though it wasn’t as if she was unguarded or unmonitored. It was such a strange thing for his beloved Commander to do and it didn’t escape Adler’s notice, even if Falke gave no further reasoning behind her decision.

A Star unit had fitted her with a monitoring choker that would track her every move. The moment Zwei suspected the human worker was up to no good or getting a little too comfortable, all she had to do was snap her fingers and a painful jolt would be shot throughout her body in an instant. She demonstrated this with glee, grinning to herself as the little woman crumpled into a pained heap on the floor, wheezing and gasping for air. Perhaps the shock knocked some sense into her, or maybe the adrenaline pumping through her veins made her feel brave, as the gestalt looked up at the Storch unit for the first time since her arrival.

And she frowned.

Brows knitted together, the human’s face was finally unobscured by her hair. She was unremarkable, a dime a dozen, just as all humans were. Yet Zwei looked her over and her own face dropped, though only for a fraction of a second. Something in her artificial gut began to knot up. There was an electric shock that snapped just behind her face plate. It made her nose scrunch up. Pressure was building in her neck and Storch felt surprise turn from annoyance straight into anger. But just as she realized she was getting angry, her body began to cool down as she simply just-

SNAP!

The feeling was gone as quickly as it came. Whatever look was in the gestalt’s eyes was gone just as quickly. She went back to being a nameless, faceless, expendable thing, just like how all humans were. The twisting in her gut remained, though, and it itches and irritated Zwei enough that she, again, typed in the worker’s details and, again, she was faced with nothing other than a ‘error, invalid worker designation’ message flashing across her screen every time she entered it.

Did the Commander know something that she didn’t?

Zwei informed the highest ranking Stars unit that she was heading to her private bathing quarters and wasn’t to be disturbed for the rest of the day, unless ‘the uninvited guest’ did something worthy of note or if the Commander, herself, asked for her directly. Storch models were notorious for running hot and it was past time for her to cool off. The gestalt was assigned to domestic work, which fell under the Eule units’ jurisdiction. She was out of her hair and had the means to end her with a snap of her fingers. This power made Zwei feel more at ease, if a Storch could feel such a thing.

A human worker has never been to Outpost 773-5-94S. Talk of espionage was hushed but excited. There was a divide between those that were delighted by the prospects that a spy had been captured, that their little outpost would be finally put on the map and they would be recognized by the New Nation and that there would be a possibility for an expansion, and between the units that felt like this would only bring unwanted attention to the outpost and could possibly lead to reprimands and even the dissolvement of the outpost and the units that worked aboard it. The domestic and economic workers craved the change while the Protektors and the administration were on edge to the point that a mandatory curfew was set into place.

There were no quarters for any gestalt workers, only ones for replikas. It wasn’t as though there weren’t any spare bunks in the outpost, there were, as it was chronically understaffed. The issue was how to ensure what security believed to be a spy wouldn’t attempt to steal information when no one was looking, or try to transmit the outpost’s location to the enemy, the Empire. But there was no transmission equipment that was accessible to the workers, nor even to the Protektors, as only Commander Falke had clearance to such a device. Not even Aldler had access to it, which only proved how much secrecy was valued in Outpost 773-5-94S.

The Eule dorms were the largest but they also contained the most vacancies. Not many, only three of the seventy bunks were unoccupied, but it was a bed and it was something that was in need of occupation. The worker replikas were abuzz when you were guided in by a Star unit. There was music and light and a warmth that was absent from the rest of the outpost that took the gestalt aback for a moment. A crowd of eight, the Eules were all dressed similarly yet different, some merely in the signature, skin-tight diving suit unique to replikas while others wore a light, thin garment over their petite frames that was reminiscent of a leotard, in pinks and purples and light blues… The sociable Eules easily adapted to a new face in their dorms, the Star not bothering to place security expectations onto them as it would only cause undue stress to their personas. Besides, security was a Star’s duty, and it was one that they all took with a seriousness that was befitting for their status as Protektor units.

“If you have any complaints, you know how to reach me.” The Star leaned down and whispered into one of the Eule’s ears. There were giggles as the others stared at the Star, then at the gestalt, then to the Eule whose ear was turning dark from oxidant as the security unit lingered for a moment before turning towards the human woman that stood lone to the far side of the room then said with the narrowing of her eyes-

“We will be watching you.”

And then left, just like that.

The chatter in the room instantly died as she left. The heavy door creaked shut, a loud and oppressive noise that cut through the air. An echo left an impression on the room, the Eules look between each other, faces straight and grave though it ultimately didn’t last for long. There was a giggle from one, then the other, then they all were smiling and laughing. The warmth was back and the music was crystal clear once again.

“Did she scare you?”

“What?” The gestalt was surprised by the question and blinked. One of the Eule’s approached her with a grin.

“The Star! They’re all a little intense sometimes.” It was said with a nonchalant tone. She touched the worker on the arm and guided her over to one of the two empty bunk beds in the dormitory. She sat down on the bottom bunk, which was firm enough not to sink under her weight whatsoever.

“Y-Yeah….” The Eule’s eyes fall on the collar around her neck, lingering there long enough for the gestalt to notice it. Once she did, though, the Eule’s eyes snapped back onto her eyes.

“I’m Tawny.” The replika’s eyes shone at the prospect of making a new friend. The other Eules gathered around closely, all listing off the names that they had given one another.

Ash, Mina, Sandy, Strix, Glaudice, Athene, Niona…

They all looked the same, the standard Eule models that the Nation created enmasse. All the same but different, looking like octuplets and as though she would be able to tell them all apart. The music playing on the record player in the room was beginning to swell slightly, putting the atmosphere on edge as Tawny sat beside her new roommate.

“Since you’re new here…” Tawny gently draped her arm over the human’s shoulder, pulling her flush against her artificial body. It was warm though not soft like an organic one, a little smooth with a slightly pliable surface but it was a little too rigid, somewhere between where it should be and something that was an imposter that left the hairs on her body raised slightly.

“...you’re going to have to undergo ‘the Tasks’.” There was a ripple of excitement from the other units. They all whispered to one another, giggling behind their hands before looking at the gestalt, only to laugh again as some shifted from foot to foot in anticipation.

“‘The Tasks…?’” She parroted it back to Tawny. The Eule smiled and nodded.

“See, these are things all new units must do before they are accepted into our groups. It’s like a right of passage, of acceptance.” The other units nodded firmly, almost solemnly as they looked her over.

“Since you are new, you need to undergo this too, just as we all had.” Tawny’s became so quiet that it was barely heard above the music. The worker nearly couldn’t understand what she was saying, having to lean in close to hear what she was saying. She placed her hand over her breast, emphasizing herself as she said-

“I had to go through it too! It’s only fair that you do as well, right? And besides-!” The gestalt’s shoulders shook gently as the replika squeezed her.

“-if you go through it too, and complete it, of course, then that would look better to the Protektors! Just think about it: you abide by the traditions of the outpost-” Tawny gestured out vaguely towards the other Eules. She was referencing the facility as a whole but it came off like she was merely talking about herself and her fellow Eule units.

“-then surely they can see that there’s been some kind of mistake and that you are just another worker, like us!” The human woman frowned a little.

“Trust me, this won’t be anything too extreme. We usually have the rookies sleep on the floor for like, a week and they do the work that their ‘senior’ Eules don’t want to do and dress up in a silly costume throughout what we call their ‘probation’. After you do all of this, you’ll be equal to us all!” Tawny motioned between herself and the other Eule units. Again the gestalt frowned. She swallowed thickly, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s… a little much, isn’t it?” The warm, affable air suddenly dropped and it became tense. The music droned on but it seemed distant and cold.

“What?” Tawny’s smile faltered slightly. Her brows knitted together and she genuinely looked surprised.

“Well… I just got here, and… well, I’ve already been through a lot…” She placed her hand on her neck, fingertips digging into the nearly nonexistent space between the collar and her neck. Everything has been cold and cruel since she got here, the only person seemingly showing her any mercy being the Commander of the outpost, which was something Falke units weren’t exactly known for. Wasn’t she just here for a test assignment? Details were fuzzy in her mind and she frowned. The Eules were frowning, too, and Tawny’s arm dropped from her shoulder.

“But… you have to do it to become part of the group.” The worker shook her head, still frowning.

“I… don’t know… Should I be a part of it…? I-I don’t-” The replikas were beginning to look dejected, almost sad. Their lower lips all began to puff out and their shoulders dropped visibly. If they were trying to be subtle, they were failing miserably. Or maybe they were purposefully trying to be over the top to make her feel bad…

“C’mon! Would it be so bad? Trust me, it’s not even that bad of tasks! It’s just simple things that you would be doing around the place, anyway!” Tawny fidgeted in place, tugging on her clothing. The others were crowding. The gestalt looked to her feet.

Just a little…

It will be quick!

Shush! Don’t be like that…

You can’t say no…

Will you disappoint us yet again…?

You said ‘yes’ before…

You can’t change your mind now.

A feeling was squeezing in her gut. Her hands become clammy, her heart racing in her chest as a fog laid itself over her mind. She was numb in spite of how her heart slammed into the back of her throat. It was almost as if this had happened before…

Deja vu…

Bekannt

亲密的

No, this was different, a different time, a different place… The gestalt fiddled with her uniform’s skirt, shifting in place slightly as she began to clear her throat.

Well… What is the worst that could happen?

“I… alright.” Tawny squeaked in excitement and pulled her close. Some clapped and giggled, others nodded in approval.

“Wonderful!” The tension that was in the air quickly evaporated. It was like a veil of some sort was lifted and the uncertainty and apprehension that the worker felt was now mostly gone, though it lingered ever so slightly.

“But I don’t want to do anything crazy, alright? I just…” She frowned. The nature of her assignment eluded her. The gestalt knew she was there to work but to what end was it? One of the pillows on the bottom bunk was tossed into the floor, the blanket from the top torn off and tossed right on top of it. One of the Eules, Athene, pointed down to the pile.

“C’mon! Let’s get you settled in!”

The night was an uneasy one, at least for the gestalt. The nickname ‘Newbie’ was given to her, even though she had specifically asked them not to do such a thing, but Eules were particularly with the names given to those in their cliques so there wasn’t much of a way to dissuade them from calling her that. Newbie was surprised by the amount of clothing and beauty products that the replikas were allowed to carry. It was more than she had ever seen in her entire life! Eules were always prim and proper and cared greatly for their appearances but they were also subjected to the same regulations as anyone else in the New Nation and had a very specific dress code to follow while in public. It would seem, though, that special permissions were given to them that allowed these units to both keep and also occasionally wear clothing that fell outside of typical regulations. Newbie didn’t think this exception would fall over her as well, but the Eules were adamant that she wore an ankle length dress that was the appropriate Eusan colours but also was decorated with unnecessary frills and lace. It was difficult to believe such a dress would be allowed underneath a Falke’s rule but Newbie was directed to take her uniform off all the same, to which she did. Hesitantly.

“Go on! Take it off!” A Eule unit, Ash, waved her hands at Newbie as she urged her to undress. It wasn’t uncommon for Eule units to monitor gestalts in their daily lives, especially while they dress and undress, as to make sure no contraband was slipping through the cracks. Newbie nodded, still uncertain that this was a wise decision to make.

She unbuttoned her uniform, revealing a plain, black blouse underneath. The gestalt folded her clothing as she took it off, a reflex that was a lifetime in the making. She slipped her skirt off, then her skin tight leggings, leaving her in only her plain undergarments. Newbie waited for one of the replikas to hand her the dress but no one did. She furrowed her brows and frowned.

“Where is it?” Athene tilted her head to the side.

“Where is what?”

“The… dress? Where has it gone?” There was a brief moment of silence before Athene laughed, then others were laughing too, all at once.

“Oh, Newbie…” It was Tawny- or was it?- that placed a hand on her shoulder. She was warm to the touch but still cooler than a human body, which was a little unnerving to Newbie.

“You don’t wear anything in the dorms! It’s better to not wear your uniform unless you’re going out! It prevents it from getting dirty or wrinkled!” That… actually made some sense… Newbie nodded slowly, grabbing the blanket on the floor and wrapping it around her bare shoulders.

“Cold? Don’t get all shy on us now! You’re gonna have to get used to this!” Another Eule, Ninoa, winked at the human and she blushed a little.

“I-I’m not-”

“Don’t worry about it! Some of us don’t feel the need to wear much of anything and others like at least a little something.” The replikas didn’t really appear to have any sexual characteristics other than the impression of breasts, like gently sloping mountains. The Eules all appeared rather girlish, almost androgynous, with long torsos and long legs. Their proportions weren’t exactly unnatural but it was close to becoming uncanny. Newbie’s eyes occasionally shifted down but she managed to look down at the ground before any of the replikas noticed exactly where her eyes were wandering towards.

“Y-Yeah… R-Right…”

Sleeping was nearly impossible that night. The ground was cold and the blanket she was provided did nothing to prevent the chill from seeping into her bones. Sometime in the night, Newbie thought that someone was trying to subtly tug the blanket off her body. It was so slight that she genuinely thought that she was imagining it, though it happened with enough frequency that it couldn't merely be all in her head… Or maybe it was? Perhaps the Eules were still messing with her, hazing her for being ‘new’.

New or unfamiliar?

Why treat her with such comradery if they had only cruel designs for her in mind?

They all laughed upon seeing her in that dress.

Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

Snickers behind hands.

Leers out of the corners of their eyes.

She is vulnerable.

Verletzbar

无助

All of Newbie’s tasks revolved around placing herself in uncomfortable positions: bending over, scrubbing the floor, cleaning things that the other Eules didn’t want to deal with… The bathrooms were all spotless but regardless she was to clean them all twice daily. Every last one of them, on top of her typical duties of cleaning the rest of the outpost. Her arms, legs and back aches before half of the working day was over, allowing for the realization to sink in that she would not be able to physically keep up with her tasks the longer she was here.

“Oh, I’m not worried about you! I’m sure you can keep up.” Was all that was said to the gestalt whenever she brought up her concerns to the Eule, Mina.

Throughout her shifts, a Star unit was assigned to keep watch over her as she worked. ‘Just to make sure she didn’t sneak off’ as was said by one of the units. They all barely regarded her, watching her but seemingly uninterested in either speaking to her unnecessarily or even looking in her direction though… Newbie couldn’t help but to feel their gazes on her only when she had her back turned or was busy with something underfoot. Her imagination, surely, but the professionalism of all the replikas would soon evaporate as she was pushed to work more and more, especially in the more private quarters of the outpost.

As she was cleaning the mining workers quarters, she was bumped from behind. The only other unit in the dorm with her was a Star unit, so the sudden push greatly startled the gestalt. She picked herself up and smoothed down the bed she had just made, turning towards a large pile of small, soft, seemingly worn down plush dolls that were piled haphazardly in the corner. How did something like this escape her? It was odd… What replika would hold onto such things? Newbie picked one of the dolls that laid on its side, at her feet, and placed it back onto the pile. The Star unit noticed this and narrowed her eyes but said nothing. The gestalt was quick to move on, for fear of reprimand.

The mining workers’ dorms were filthy, covered in dust and mud and other organic debris from Heimat’s soft planetary crust. It took Newbie hours to clean it, so when she was through, she was utterly exhausted. There were holes in the walls, only barely just hip height. Much of the dirty debris in the dorms seemed to originate from those holes. Holes? Here? The Star unit seemed totally unbothered by the sight, almost as if they were supposed to be there. As Newbie began to clean around them, the Protektor warned her against getting too close to them.

“Don’t go poking around in there. The Ara units will have a fit if they see anything out of place…” Was it a courtesy warning or was it something else? Newbie kept her distance from the holes, for fear of upsetting one of the Aras. What about all the… dirt? Metal shavings? What was on the floor? She sighed as she looked out across the dorm, realizing that she likely had a dozen or so rooms to go in this section of the outpost alone…

Perhaps it was dirt, as more than a few of the rooms in the ARAR dorms were dedicated solely to plants of all kinds of variety. Mostly flowers, colourful and delicate looking, while others were merely leafy greens that looked totally out of place inside of a building. None were exactly tree-like, though they seemed to have trunks of sorts. All the plants were well manicured even in spite of the scant few leaves that littered the floor. The human worker’s shoulder was grabbed every time she entered one of these rooms and she was warned to leave any and all plants alone, for the Ara units’ sake.

‘They’ll have a fit if you touch them.’

After what felt like hours, she slunk out of one of the many dormitories, covered in sweat and body trembling from over exertion. Newbie had passed the pile of plush toys once again and, yet again, they toppled over. She had a mind to leave it alone but feared repercussions should everything not be as it was before she had begun her duties. The gestalt put them back into a pile, as haphazard as it was, and paid little mind to the guard that was eyeing her up from the far end of the room.

Stepping out into the hallway, the door slid shut as the Star exited on her heels. Newbie didn’t take a full step before she was stopped by the replika, a short, curt whistle cutting through the air and causing the gestalt’s shoulders to raise and their heartbeat spike into their chest.

“W-What…?” Newbie felt small underneath the Star’s gaze, needing to crane her neck up to even meet the replika’s chilly grey-blue eyes.

“Before you continue, I need to make sure you didn’t take anything from the Ara and Myhna dorms.” The gestalt was a little taken aback by the Star’s insinuation that she had stolen something, though she knew better than to question the authority of a Protektor unit. The Star noticed her slight hesitation, taking it as a possible admission of guilt.

“Do you have anything to admit to, worker?” The gestalt shook her head.

“N-No! I have nothing to hide. I didn’t take anything from the dorms.” It was a fact. Newbie didn’t take anything and she only touched things that needed to be cleaned. Maybe the replika was just trying to intimidate her or maybe they did have a protocol where the domestic workers were frisked every time they completed their duties. Whatever the case, she complied with the Star’s orders and she turned to face the wall upon her request.

“Turn and face the wall- Yep, just like that. Now place your hands on the wall and spread your stance wide.” This wasn’t the first time she had been searched. All gestalts have been subjected to random searches and detainments at some point in their lives and Newbie wasn’t an exception.

Even though she has done this before, and though she knows for a fact that she hasn’t done anything wrong, the gestalt still felt sick to her stomach as the replika began to pat her down. First she pulled Newbie’s hair back, tousling it and pausing for a split second as though considering something before letting it drop back to her shoulders.

“Anything at all I should know about?” The Star ran her hands down the long sleeves of Newbie’s dress, the replika’s strong fingers curling around her wrists as she felt for any hidden objects.

“No, nothing…” Newbie stared at the wall as her other arm was searched. It felt as though the replika slowed down significantly, making the process agonizing as the gestalt just looked forward, expecting the absolute worst to come from this encounter.

“Are you sure? Your cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine levels just shot through the roof.” The Star’s hands tickle down the worker’s sides, the thin dress doing nothing to stifle such a firm touch. Fingertips dug into the swell of her hips, an uncomfortable chill running down her spine as the replika’s hands shifted forward, slowly, slooowly moving up her torso and towards her breasts.

“I-I… didn’t take anything…” Her voice was just barely above a whisper as dexterous fingers cupped her bosom. The dress was technically up to code, not showing any unnecessary skin and not having too many frills. It wouldn’t pass inspection in any other Heimat settlement but here it was different.

Newbie’s breath hitched in her throat as the Star unit didn’t even attempt to hide the fact that she was outright groping her. The replika squeezed her breasts, massaging them in the palm of her hands and even catching and pinching one of her slightly hardened nipples in between her fingers. Instinctually, she stiffened and arched her back, her legs closing as she felt an intrusion somewhere in between her knees. The Protektor forced her legs open, shoving one of her long legs in between the gestalts and effectively forcing them back open as she pulled her knee up, until the worker’s body was straddling her leg and barely able to touch the floor with the tips of her toes.

“P-Please, m-ma’am-!” The gestalt’s voice was a high pitched squeak as she struggled to remain balanced in place. Her core was beginning to throb from excess blood pooling in between her thighs and she was becoming light headed and dizzy from such contact. The Star unit leaned over her, whispering into her ear as she continued to molest the worker.

“Keep your legs apart for me. Failure to comply will result in your arrest and a full body cavity search…” Newbie’s eyes go wide at the implications. N-No. No, she’s n-not-

But she was, and she didn’t simply stop at groping her chest.

The Star ground her knee against the gestalt’s heated sex. The friction was uncomfortable and made her squirm in place. It was painful to have her full body weight resting on such a delicate part of her body for so long. Newbie could feel the replika’s breath on her ear, not quite warm but not cool either. It made a shiver wrack her spine and she gasped as the hands on her chest were removed and she was placed back onto the ground. W-Was it over…?

No, the Protektor had only just begun. She placed her hands on her hips and slowly traced them down the length of her trembling legs. Instead of remaining on top of her skirt, the replika pushed her hands underneath Newbie’s dress and touched her bare skin, something that was very, very much against protocol in all the Eusan Nation’s settlements. Even so, it wasn’t like she could do anything to stop the Star.

“T-This-!!! P-Please, ma’am! Please-!!!” Newbie’s voice wavered and trembled as the replika’s hands moved up the sides of her thighs.

She was wearing thick, black tights that left absolutely no skin showing, per regulations, but she still felt everything. The Star’s fingers were long and slick, digging into her skin and likely leaving bruises in her wake. As she reached the gestalt’s waistline, she swiped her hands forward, so that her fingers dug into the soft fat of her pubic mound. The gestalt body responded violently to the unwanted contact, knees fully buckling and back arching as she tried desperately to escape the touch. Newbie was on the verge of hyperventilating, fully expecting some sort of retribution for resisting the search. Would a stun baton be used? Would- Would- Her throat squeezed shut at the thought of the collar around her neck delivering an electric shock. She waited for the Star to jab the baton into her back, or for her to ignore her resistances completely and just… doesn’t stop. But-

Her hands were removed from Newbie’s hips. The gestalt had the knee jerk reaction to face the replika but fought against it and remained facing the wall. The Star fluffed out the skirt of her dress and took a step back, shifting in place as she likely looked the human up and down.

“Alright, turn to face me. Slowly.” Newbie was sniffling and hiccuping, struggling to not break down into sobs. She kept her hands up a little, terrified to make a wrong move. The replika stood with a hand behind her back and one clenched in a fist in between her and Newbie’s bodies. The gestalt stared at it, confused.

W-What was it…? What-?

“Thought I would miss this, huh?” The Star narrowed her eyes as she lowered her closed fist to the other woman’s eye level. Newbie’s eyes watered to the point that tears streamed down her face. What was she talking about?! She didn’t take anything! S-She didn’t!! The Star’s face was flat as she began to open her fist. Newbie didn’t know what it could be. It shouldn’t be anything because she took nothing! Nothing! In the replika’s hand, there was- was a…

…a leaf…?

Newbie stared at it, confused. She… didn’t understand. W-What…? She could only blink her tears away, heart slamming into her throat a handful more times before it began to slow down dramatically. Was… Was she…?

No, the Star unit had a smirk on her face whenever the gestalt looked back up at her. Was this some sort of joke? There was only a small, curved, yellowed leaf in the palm of her hand. It was chipped and cracked, as though dried. Totally dead. Newbie’s tears dried quickly and were instead replaced with dry blankness. The replika crumpled up the dried leaf and allowed the flakey remains to scatter onto the floor at the gestalt’s feet. She wiped her hand clean and seemed to take great pleasure in the look of utter exhaustion that overtook the human worker’s face as the adrenaline in her veins harshly mellowed out.

“For this time and this time only, you’ll be let off on a warning, worker. Taking anything from replika dorms is and always has been strictly prohibited, no matter the object taken.” The Star unit leaned against the wall behind her and crossed her arms, soaking in the details of the gestalt’s crestfallen face.

“...of course, ma’am.” Newbie kept her tone even as she spoke, struggling to swallow down the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her.

“Hmm… Good. Now, before you go-” The Star grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her to the ground.

“Make sure to clean this mess up before you move on.”

It wasn’t only the Eules and the Stars that took glee in humiliating and pushing the gestalt to the brink. All replikas in the outpost would soon partake in the ‘hazing’ ritual that the Eules first proposed to her. Perhaps calling what was taking place a ‘hazing’ was far too lenient for what was truly taking place.

At first, it was more subtle. Newbie was tasked with all the things the other domestic workers didn’t want to do. Working long hours in a confining dress made every working day a living nightmare. Her back and knees ached, her feet were walked raw and her hands chaffed from constant exposure to water. Hard, back-breaking labour wasn’t something new to gestalts, certainly not to her. Having a work load solely on her back, though, wasn’t something that she had ever really experienced before, and it was utterly overwhelming when combined with the other treatment she received.

Newbie was subjected to multiple searches of her person throughout every day she had been at the outpost. The Stars never bothered to make the search particularly professional, as they continued to escalate greatly every time they took place. At first, it was frisking with some under the clothing touching, then it was strip searches that took place in the common areas of the outpost, where any replika could witness her humiliation. The touching was perverted and the Stars’ intentions clearly lecherous. Some enjoyed forcing their fingers into the gestalt’s mouth, pushing it so far into her throat that she would gag. Others began to touch… those places on Newbie’s bodies. She is ashamed to admit that she never tried to stop the Stars from violating her in such an intimate way. What could she even do? They would drag her by her hair over to a flat surface, a dest, a chair, another replika’s waiting knee, and would conduct the search there and then, making sure that Newbie knew that they derived genuine, perverse pleasure from harming her and, worse of all, the gestalt’s body responded kindly to those moments.

After the fact, the touches always lingered. Her body was heated and buzzed with overwhelming sensations of humiliation and pleasure. She had never touched herself in the manners that those replikas had and her body began to react before those attacks would even take place.

Why was this happening to her? Why her?

Why did her body anticipate such things before they even happened?

Was she… disturbed? From the very beginning?

Who was at fault?

Wer hat sich verändert?

谁有缺陷?

What day did the gestalt shift from ‘the Newbie’ into ‘the outpost’s new Toy’? She didn’t know… She didn’t even know how long she had been in this place. The human’s rations were becoming more and more strained, either due to the fact that there simply wasn’t much left given there has been no resupply dropships in what must have been months or because the replikas merely wanted to harm her even further. In order to eat, she needed to work, but working while faint from hunger and exhaustion is nearly impossible and the replika units all knew this.

Was she watching this…?

F̷͉̙̺͔͗̓́̔͋̓͗K̵̢̡̛̛̭͍̠͓̟̦̄͛̍̒̈̈́͊̋͐̈́̓͘͜͠͠Ļ̶̡̼̱̼͉͉̖͍̹̘͓̩̩̎̂͂͒͋̽͌͗͐̽͌̏̑͝͝͝R̸̤̩̄̒́̎͋͛͜

L̸̥̿̓̇̀̑̍̆̄̃̕i̵̢̻̯͎͓̥͇̤̘͆̇͗͑̑̒͊̆͑͆̕̕ȩ̶͒̂̀̓̓̏̒͒̅̊̒̚̚͠b̶̬͋̉̈́͗͆̈́́̄̔̓̇e̷̛̺̮͓̻̞̟̫̦̞̤̦̻̼͂̌̒̾̈́͗͂͋͛̂̍͛̇͘̕͝r̷̲̤̘̓̊͒̚ ̶̛͚͎̌̇̍͗̽͆̎̇̓͂̾̔̑̊̌͘F̴͔̠͚͍̜̠̏͆͐̈̈́̀̑͒̀̽̄́́͒̕͝å̷̢̗̗̜͓̳̳̞͇̣̝͔͐͒͐͒͛̈́̌́͛̓̿͝ͅl̷̤̫̼̋̒̊͆̈͑̂̊̕k̴̠͉̲̫̝͇̘͈̠̣͚̼͉͕̽̍̓̿̿̈́̆͑̏̋̋͘ͅȩ̷̻̠̗̝̞͛̆͑̄͌,̴̧̦͉̲̘͑̄̏͌͆̿͌́͊ ̷͍̜̫̬͋͌̂̎̃͑̓̋͂̎͒͝͝ͅw̸̱̤̿̌̔̎͐̐̎̽̃̑̆̕̚a̷̡̰̙̦͎̞̙̙̐̔̅r̸͙͉̮͉̣̠̜͍̩̮̞̞̫̝͉̱̲̐̔̊͆̓̾̍͌̀̓̋̑u̸̡̢̻̻̖̬̘͈̭͚̞̠̺̣͋̿͗̀̉̅̽̑̂̿̈ͅm̷̧͙̻͌̐́̅̈́̃́͑͋̈́͐́̚͠ ̶̦̃͛̄̒̑̓͌̒̌̍́̈́̕͝ḩ̴̭̠̝̹͓͎̣̤̖̠͖̭̤̍̏a̵̢͚̣̪̟̳͇̱̫̮͕͗̀͗̕̚̕s̶̮͙͔̗̉̿͋̃͆͗́͂̔̓̇t̶͖̦̖̼̋̊̎͝ ̵̖̣̽̿͒̌͗͋̂͌́̆̏̓̈́̚͝d̶̛̥͔̤̲̘̭̘̑̊͒̋͝͝u̶̖̦͔̯͚̻͍͓̤̣͗͂̂̽́͝ ̷̫̺̻͕͗͋͠ͅm̶͖͓͉̦̯̈́͒̉̈́͋̈́̌̕͝ȋ̶̢̼̤̠̪͛͗̑͛͝c̸̡̣͎̬̟͎̙̝̃̔͐̾̍͜͠ḧ̷̡̛̰̲͚̭̗̣͙̯̰̳̦̗̰̞́͛̔͑̽̿̓̅̕̕ͅ ̸̨͚̳̰͚̺͉̼̤͉̩̻̖̞̀̄̉̄͛ͅv̶̗̟̫͔̫̰̝̻̒̏͊̇́͝ͅė̶̛̞̥̂͒̄́͊̒̽̓̚r̸̼̮̹̳͕̔́̽̈́͐͆̆̃͑̏̌͊̂͐̃͘l̷̡̛̘̗͓̗̪̠̗͈̰̺̓͂̚͝ä̵̢̧̳̞̹̝̩̬͕̳͓͘̚s̶̲̄̏͆̈́͂̀͂̈̓s̸̢̙̠̮̺̼̺̠̤͛̿̌̚̚͝͝͝e̵̫̻̯̩̤̹͛̑̆̅͗̎n̴̨̤̦͔͍̾͂͊̕͠?̸͍̰̯̗̬̯̬̠̖̜̻̣͍̠͊̅̅̾̔̇̕ͅ

̴̢̮͖̦̫̰̠̹̻̞͉̩̞͍͆́͜ͅD̴̨̀̅̉̓̀̈́̉͛͝͝u̵͙̦̫͕͇͕̹̹͗̈́ ̷̘͚͔͉̝̗̯̲̗̆̋͌̀̉͋͗̽͐̂͆̚͜͝͝͝s̷̨̢̨̲̻̳̞̪͔͕̹̎̍͛̈́̀̑̀͊̄͒a̵̧̧͔̟̥̬̟̰̘̝̠͎̩̲̐̋̋͆̒̽̂̇̚g̶̨̮͕̬͛͛̒̚͜t̵͎͓͒͌́̓́̄̓̀̆͛̏͘͠ę̸̫̼͍͇̙̬̲̗̰͈̏̄̓̆͗͂̈́̇̂̑̌̓̍͝s̵̡̝̦͖͍̟̹͉͍̤̝͐͒͆̍̿̉͊̾͐̾͂͛̚͘͜͝͝͠t̶̡̟̜̜̓̋̽-̷̡̭̜͉̰̗̣̭̜̬̟̍̑

̶̤̠̤͓̬͍̩͔͔̳͖̻̰̭͗̽͒͒̄͂͘͝͝͝

“J-Just don’t-! N-NGGH!~” The gestalt’s voice trembled as she felt a familiar pair of hands caress up the insides of her thighs. Three Stars were leaning over her at the same time, one to her left with her hands on the worker’s left leg, one to her right with her hands around the workers right leg and one directly behind her, pinning her hands far above her head. The woman tried to push her body against the wall in an attempt to escape the replikas’ touches but a firm hand pushed her lower abdomen flush against the Star’s groin. There was a thick, stiff hardness that pressed into the small of her back that made her knees buckle and her mind grow fuzzy and blank.

W-What was it-?! W-Why was it so… s-so-

Déjà vu,

the unfamiliar is known.

Or was it jamais vu?

Things that should have remembered

have been repressed.

Has the tree fallen

if none are there to mourn it?

那么为什么?

为什么你要让他们伤害我……？

“So, little spy. How have you been enjoying our little outpost, hmm?” The Storch towered over the gestalt even when sitting, long legs crossed and splayed out haphazardly before her. The gestalt was no longer a ‘newbie’, though she wasn’t much else to the replikas other than a distraction. Zwei observed how the worker balled her fists into the skirt of her dress and swallowed thickly.

“...it is an honour to work here.” Zwei narrowed her eyes.

“Mmhmm… So, tell me-” The tall replika was fingering the stun baton that was magnetized to her side. The way her fingers brushed past one another made the gestalt’s skin crawl with anticipation. Zwei removed the baton and examined it nonchalantly, making it a point not to make eye contact with the human worker as she spoke.

“Why do you want an audience with Commander Falke?”

The gestalt bristled.

“I don’t-”

“You know there’s no point in lying, right? The Kolbris know everything there is to know about you…” Zwei swung her legs and sat upright, leaning down towards the seated worker and leaving her with nowhere to go other than further back into her seat.

“...and damn do they have some interesting things to share about you and your time here.” The replika tapped her baton on the worker’s knee, causing her to jump and writhe uncomfortably in her seat. She didn’t maintain the Storch’s intense eye contact, looking down and to the side as she struggled to calm her breathing.

“N-No… I-It’s not like-” She was doing everything she could to swallow down the feeling that was trying to creep down the back of her throat.

It felt like she was about to drown…

“Like what? I’m not accusing you of anything. Not yet, anyway.” Zwei continued to tap the baton on the gestalt’s knee, rhythmically, with enough force to make her leg reflexively kick out.

“Really, I’m just curious about somethings. I’d like to conduct an interview.” The words she used took the human worker off guard. An ‘interview’? Not an interrogation but an ‘interview’...? She was already wary, but as time went on, she would become more and more uneasy as their conversation continued on.

“Don’t give me that look. I don’t have anything personal against you, you know.” The Storch sat back in her chair, raising her hands- including the baton- in the air in a bid to feign innocence.

“I just want to verify some things that the Kolbris had reported to me, that’s all. No bullshit, just doing my job.” Still incredulous, the worker looked the Storch up and down. It simply wasn’t possible to read what a Storch was thinking. They were brash and harsh, always on edge and working with a secondary, hidden objective that would be unknown to anyone other than the Commanding Falke. Regardless of this fact, if a Storch askes something, there is nothing to do other than obey her every command. To disobey a Storch is akin to treason in the eyes of the Commanding force that is the New Nation and her Falke…

“A-Alright… of course. Whatever you need, ma’am.” It felt as though the gestalt had just signed a warrant of some sort. The Storch was clearly pleased with her response and went to stand, an action that made the gestalt’s head and stomach swim with vertigo as she looked upon the goliath replika.

“Good answer. Come with me, worker.”

The gestalt shouldn’t have suspected such a thing yet being led to a large, filled bathtub of water filled her with a sense of nostalgia that she couldn’t shake, like a bad memory that had been buried deep within the recesses of her mind suddenly exploding just underneath the surface of her conscious mind that didn’t quite breach the surface, only disturbing it enough to make itself known to her. Watching the Storch sigh to herself as she removed her Protektor equipment, leaving her bare in the signature black-and-red skin tight suit that was a staple of the replika look made the gestalt’s skin crawl in a way that confused her. Was it disgust or was it excitement?

“Do you mind? Keeping this outpost safe is hard work, you know. Gotta cool off one way or another…” There was a hint of something in the replika’s eyes as she swung one of her long legs over the side of the tub, then the other, before lowering herself down into the steaming waters with a loud SPLASH! Water overflowed from the sides of the tub and crashed down onto the floor, covering it and the gestalt’s shoes in slightly murky water. There was a clean, herbal smell in the air that almost made the worker’s eyes water, stirred up by the Storch’s movements.

What was she expecting to find

in a hollow shell?

“Ahh~ Much better…” Zwei stretched out languidly and moaned softly as her footless legs draped over the side of the tub. Even with how large it was, it couldn’t contain her impressive leg length. Her short bob rested just above the waterline and she propped her cheek up on one of her palms as her other hand dipped into the water.

“Now then… Tell me: what purpose did it serve you to come to this place?” Zwei’s ice grey eyes stared a hole into the gestalt as she stood before her, tiny even while the replika was soaking in a tub full of water. She swallowed noticeably and blinked.

“...I was assigned this position by our Nation.” Zwei clicked her tongue and sighed heavily.

“You know, you keep saying that… And while you do have physical documentation, it doesn’t change the fact that there is no record of a gestalt by your name or worker designation in all of the Nation’s databases.” The worker frowned, tilting her head to the side and blinking slowly as if confused.

“I don’t understand-”

“You’ve ticked all the boxes and yet that still couldn’t change the fact that you don’t exist according to our Nation’s laws…” Water splashed onto the floor as the Storch sat upright in the tub. The way her brows dipped and the corners of her mouth twitched made the gestalt tremble with anticipation. A vice grip had a hold of her lower gut and only tightened exponentially when the replika grabbed her by the wrist.

“I had all my Stars double check this-”

“-d-don’t-”

“-even had the Commander’s Adler triple check-”

“-please-”

“-and while he’s found no trace of you whatsoever-”

“-p-please-!”

“-he certainly has some… interesting theories about you!” Something in the gestalt’s wrist and shoulder snapped as she was suddenly yanked forward off her feet. She cried out in pain, it being cut short as her mouth collided with the rim of the tub. For a fraction of a second, everything blacked out, a blinding heat pooling against her teeth as blood filled her mouth. Her eyes fluttered and her limbs went limp, allowing the Storch to easily pull her over the lip of the tub and into her still steaming hot bath water.

Water filled her mouth and nose as she was held underwater. Her dress was heavy and constricted her movements, constricted the few, precious moments that she had to breathe when it all became too much to bear. The taste of bath salts stung her eyes and made her stomach and windpipe cramp further, causing mouthfuls of water to fill her lungs. The gestalt kicked her legs out and continued to drown further as the skirt of her dress was ripped over her head and her body was finally thrown over the side of the tub, allowing her to vomit out the water that had invaded both her stomach and her lungs.

“And don’t get me fucking started on what the Kolbris had told me! All the shit that you’ve done-!” The gestalt could only cough and retch as she struggled to pull the rest of her body out of the tub. Zwei had one of her thighs in a bruising grip, causing her to scream and cry as something physically shifted in her hip as she was pulled partially back into the tub.

“YOU’RE the kind of trash our wonderful Nation warns us all about!” Her leggings and underwear were both torn in half with a sharp pull. The gestalt was still struggling to keep her head out of the water, to keep her lungs full of air… It isn't possible to escape from a Storch once they have decided that you are deserving of punishment. She couldn’t do anything other than cry and beg for mercy that she knew that she wouldn’t receive.

“P-PUH-LEASE! PUH-LEASE! P-PUH-LEASE!!!”

SPLASH

SMACK!!!

She screams as a hand strikes her from behind. An indescribable pain blooms against her backside, the pain not only surface level but seeping into her bones and making her briefly lose control of her bodily functions. Her diaphragm seizes painfully, making breathing totally impossible in spite of the fact that the gestalt was desperately trying to suck down as much air as she physically could.

“‘P-PUH-LEASE- P-PUH-LEASE-!’ What are you even saying?! If you’re a Eusan National then you should be speaking properly!”

SMACK!

SMACK!!

SMACK!!!

The sound of her pounding heart drowned out the animal-ish howls that escaped the back of her throat. It was nearly deafening, even to the Protektor unit that was accustomed to both civilian and military war zones. As grating as the noise was, it brought the naturally cruel Storch a kind of satisfaction that she’s never really experienced before in her artificial life. Yet… it was so familiar… Haunting and arousing at the same time. Something inside of her body was shifting and flashes of what the Kolbris had shared with her began to flicker behind her eyes.

S-So dirty…

It’s disgusting…

This deserves punishment.

“T-They say ‘loose lips sink ships’ but that’s the case for both pairs that gestalt females have, you know!” The gestalt was clinging to the lip of the tub directly to her right. The Storch repeatedly grabbed her by her now undoubtedly shattered hips and forced her back into her lap. The feeling of something hard pressing against her body was lost on her, the only sensation the human could decipher being pain.

Everything in her lower body was just hot. White hot and in a vice grip of agony. An electric shock of pain made her legs tremble and a chill raced up and down her spine repeatedly, settling somewhere in her extremities and in a place vaguely in between her legs. The pain she felt only grew two, three, then four fold as it felt as though something was beginning to split her in half from her groin up. This renewed the gestalt’s need to flee from the replika but after she felt something tear in her gut, her body began to seize again and she was unable to do anything other than scream breathlessly as blood-red water began to splash over the side of the ivory tub and onto the white-tiled floor underneath.

“H-HA-! HA-! HAHAHA-!!! FUCK-! If I k-knew that it would feel like this, I w-would have done this sooner-!!!” A burst of manic energy forced a bubbly giggle out of Zwei’s mouth. It was just as her Stars had reported to her: the human was a sick little pervert that was likely sent to disrupt the Eusan Nation’s forces from within, likely to either corrupt the replikas and/or other gestalts or to sow general chaos throughout Her ranks.

The things the Kolbris had shared… that the Alder had shared…!

It was something that Zwei had felt from the moment the gestalt had landed on the outpost. There was something wrong with this human and it was only just now, nearly ninety-six days after her arrival, that the Storch unit finally understood exactly what it was that irked her about the human. It was the way she looked at her. From the very beginning, the gestalt looked at the Storch with eyes that seemed to rake up and down her body, her gaze lascivious and her body just as crude, eagerly welcoming the ‘routine’ searches that Zwei’s Star units had performed on the gestalt per National and outpost policy and even getting off to such mundane acts of security. How could such a disgusting human be a part of their great Nation? Her appetite for the obscene had no bounds and if she, Zwei, couldn’t appropriately punish her for such a thing then who could?

Not Falke,

not Falke…

Pain was the best teacher there was but even so, the gestalt’s body was beyond receptive to the Storch’s use of pain and seemed to derive a twisted sense of pleasure from it. Even as her replika body part damaged her human sexual organs, Zwei could tell that the human was enjoying herself.

She can feel how the walls of her vagina squeeze down around her shaft, how she lubricates herself as she pulls her tiny body down lower and lower, until yet another barrier within her is breached and a cascade of red-brown fluids flood into the replika’s bathtub-

“Y-YOU-!!! YOU ARE DIRTYING MY PROPERTY!!! YOU-!!!” The gestalt’s nose breaks as her head bounces off the inside of the tub’s now red-stained walls. Blue-green stars invade her vision, her already weak body now falling limp as thick, slimy tears well in her eyes and sticky blood fills her sinuses and her mouth. Her body slides forward and her head dips into the water, violently being dunked as the Storch’s hips jerked and bucked without any rhythm to speak of.

“Y-You think you can just foul everything up and we wouldn’t do anything to stop it?! That I wouldn’t do anything to stop you?!” Zwei pinned the gestalt down by the back of her head, pushing her until her face was flush with the bottom of the tub.

“Did you really think that I would let you dirty up MY Commander Falke?!”

Her already fleeting consciousness completely blanked out within moments. The gestalt already couldn't breathe and when combined with the rapid blood loss both externally and internally, it was no surprise that she would succumb to her injuries. She wouldn’t die immediately though this was no thanks to Zwei seeking medical attention for the gestalt after realizing that she had lost consciousness.

The gestalt lingered in between life and death for far too long, long enough that something was picked up by the Kolbris units that answered directly to the Commander, Falke. What they picked up wasn’t words, it wasn’t even a code, it was a… sensation, something that was so strong that it pulled every single bioresonant replika into a state of decay that was unlike anything that the outpost, or any Eusan controlled sector, had ever seen.

How could such a human sensation have such an effect on the inorganic?

Was it an STI of the body or the mind?

Krankheit

瘟疫

Would god allow such a thing to fester and rot?

Life-water filled the gestalt’s lungs, dribbling out of the side of her mouth and from her nose. Her body was pale and cold. Lifeless, damaged beyond saving and yet a faint pulse persisted just underneath her damp skin. It could be felt in her neck, in the insides of her wrists, though could not be heard in her chest when a replika pressed her ear to her breastbone. No ghosts of a breath tickled the unit’s finger when she placed under the gestalt’s nose though it could be heard as a faint, almost imperceivable wheeze that was unpleasant on the ears, even to a seasoned, well conditioned replika that was built to be impervious to any and all outside stimulus other than the ones of her maker’s design.

In her glassy eyes, a reflection met the eye of its beholder. A stray hair was pushed behind a cold, stiff ear. It was a face that was plain but familiar.

Nostalgic…

Those hands were tiny and pruned, stained red-brown and popped when stroked by fingers longer than the hand they were touching. Pale lips brush against bruised knuckles, tracing a pattern that was familiar yet unfamiliar to the replika.

Jamais vu…

Her hummingbirds were shrill in her ear, her eagle pealing at her feet and begging for just a look. A look… a passing, fleeting look…

But all the falcon could see was her, ash-grey and in a death spiral. She didn’t care if her flock was spiraling down alongside her.

Their calls all melted together and all that she could hear was the deafening rumble of a ship’s engines and the rattling of equipment as they jostled in their containers, straining against their straps as a deafening hum reverberated throughout her body….

@prettycutebunny, @infinitewhore, @kennbb, @slutwithadegree, @dead-bxxxtch-walking, @space-arsonist, @pink-soft-shadow, @sinlessdesire, @hoemine, @memoryofheather, @horny-3

#signalis #paid commission #original characters #none of the replika's present are in the game's story #elster #lstr #arra #ara signalis #star signalis #eule signalis #storch signalis #falke signalis #adlr signalis #mynah signalis #kolbri signalis #dead dove do not eat #rape/noncon #x reader #signalis x reader

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