Ok I'm just gonna ramble about the Alien: Earth mashup with cybermorphs (if you don't know what those are, welcome to the circus. Cybertronian-xenomorph hybrids. Check the corresponding tag. ANYWAY):
Quick set up? The Maginot is still en route to earth with their precious specimens. Idk if the Ocellus and the ticks and whatnot were also picked up along the way, will figure out later. It's not important rn
The significant cargo is 5 cybermorph eggs: an exceptionally large warmorph egg, a mid-sized civimorph egg, and three small minimorph eggs. 4 of the 5 are morphlings, sexually fertilized ones, and the final is a drone.
I'm assuming the betrayal plotline still plays out mostly the same, with the saboteur intentionally releasing the smallest of the eggs. These things are parasites, he reasons, but the largest specimen is taller than anyone onboard, and the next one comes up to their shoulders. The creatures inside won't target a human: too small to be a viable host.
Now, most cybermorph eggs wouldn't ever hone in on a human. Nowhere near enough body mass to leech from in order to reach maturity. But the minimorphs are much, much smaller, with their average drone only standing at about 9 feet. They're barely bigger than an adult xeno, and in a stressful situation where their secret cache of nestlings has been raided with several of the babies being abducted... yeah, the minimorph facehugger is more than ready to pounce. It pounces on the captain and proves impossible to remove: they can't puncture it's metallic carapace with their tools, and attempting to remove it with force causes it to cling tighter and draw a bit of blood. The drone matures quickly, popping after 10 hours and escaping the cryostasis pod. To speed up it's molt and make up for the lackluster incubator resources, it starts eating the insides of the ship. Stripping iron, copper cables, silver processing units, everything, absorbing as much as it can to build a body as quickly as possible.
Crash still happens. Everybody still dies save for Morrow. Though now instead of infected water and noxious gas (or maybe its still there IDK) the drone kills them all. At the crashsite, the drone does it's best to care for the eggs, and doesn't go out hunting like Maggie does. It's not like it can move the warmorph egg safely, but it's blessed unhurt by the impact. They all are, thankfully. The drone can hear the babies in their eggs, all of them, distantly: their connection to the hivemind is threadbare, especially with their anchoring queen mother so far away, but it gets little bits and pieces. Slivers of feelings, and those feelings are scared. They're sad, and they're frightened. Drone gathers them all up and tucks the remaining three into the same container as the warmorph, beginning to nest and fortify the area with whatever it can find. Mother is already on his way... drone just has to hold on and keep the morphlings safe. Keep them away from those nasty aliens that abducted them.
(Jesus this is getting long)
Something something hybrids show up with Kirsch, something something aliens are captured. Don't ask me how. I don't know
Side note before I continue though: Wendy isn't the only one able to hear morph chatter. I would like to make it explicitly clear that what they're hearing is not a cybertronian dialect, nor is it the more refined morphspeak. It's... a derivative of the morph language, I suppose, severely simplified into clicks, chirps, trills, etc. that convey deep and complex meanings but not in the sense of strictly defined words. I can't think of a better way to explain or illustrate my point, but just let it be known that when the drones "communicates" it's not actually using words. That's the best translation the hybrids can figure out within their own scope of human languages. It's not a matter of them "choosing" her, it's a matter of them making aounds at frequencies humans cannot hear but the hybrid synthetics can. Cool? Cool.
Moving right along! Prodigy Island now has multiple cybermorphs in containment: the minimorph drone and a handful of eggs. The one large warmorph, mid-sized civimorph, then the two remaining minimorphs.
The drone is kept in the highest security cell, made of a basic compound that can't be melted and unshatterable glass. The large eggs are monitored, mostly, but one of the mini ones is dissected.
They've been frozen in stasis for quite awhile, but were placed there close to reaching full development. Prodigy takes a gamble on one of the remaining minimorphs, and slits it open. The whole hivemind rings with violent, inescapable agony as they're wrested from the safety of their shell. In the lab, the fetal cybermorph larva squirms and thrashes uncontrollably on the lab table, still slimy and steaming in the cold, sterile air. They're squalling, gurgling, liquid still filling them up inside and making it hard to scream. They're held down, a needle penetrating their soft, underdevloped polymer flesh. The baby wails and flails and wriggles, still making it's mechanical chittering, and the blood they draw from it glows. Glows as if bioluminescent, and looks to be more viscous than the samples collected from the crash site.
The poor thing isn't much to look at, a white, squishy body that's got a metallic sheen to it, a head maybe the size of a golfball and a fat, short, worm-like body body attached to it. Half-formed dark pits beneath it's semi-transluscent skin show the promise of eyes, and the little mouth is toothless as it wails and spits static. It only measures about 6 inches long, the picture of miserable helplessness as it's pricked and tagged. Poor, poor baby.
A million light years away, it's mother is roaring, clawing at his helm and bellowing for a far-off foe to STOP!
With each of the hybrids hearing the baby screaming, it sets off a bit of a chain reaction. Kavalier is delighted to know that all of his special little prototypes are able to hear "an alien language", and sets them up on a rat race to be the first to crack the code and really understand it. Isaac and Curly are incredibly gung-ho about it, the former clamoring for Kirsch's attention the second he can reproduce one of the sounds from his memory files perfectly, and the latter sitting in front of the drone's cage and trying everything she can to get it to talk to her.
The drone remains stubbornly silent, keeping still and silent almost like a statue as it watches them through the glass. It'll be awhile before they make contact 🤭 They slip the baby morphling into the incubation tank with Hermit's harvested lung. The morphling burrows into the available tissue, trying to hide. There's not enough nutrients to complete their molt, not by a long shot, and they're not fully knitted together on the inside. It hurts. It could take days, weeks, months for the infant specimen to be ready. Of course, Prodigy has just had their legal hearing and have to surrender the specimens within 6 weeks, sooo
Through rigorous testing with the morphling's blood, they manage to figure out a good amount of what raw materials it needs, and are hard at working determining the exact chemical compound of their blood. The incubator is pumped full of silicone and iron and raw condensed nutrients, and over the course of several days the baby develops swiftly. There's a drone nearby, they can hear them, and the scary sounds and lights and aliens that keep poking them just won't stop. They want to get away from all the bad things! So they have to grow, so they can move and get away.
The unborn morphling hears others outside, just beyond the walls of this still, stagnant egg. They sound like her... friends? Family?
...Mother says not family? But then why do they talk to me? She doesn't understand
When she at last outgrows her incubator, only one of the family-not-family ones is there. She should stay inside longer, wait til they're all gone, but... it's long since gone cold in here. There's no food. Drone is nearby. It's time to leave.
The infant specimen chews it's way out of the fleshy incubator, but it doesn't taste good. The walls of her incubator break easily when she tries to jump through, but she wasn't prepared for how bright the world is. Flourscent lights blind her from all directions, and before she's even hit the ground she's pawing at her optics. She hits the ground amidst a shower of broken glass, rolling twice before laying still. She huffs and heaves for breath, whining and rubbing her face into the floor. Too bright! Can't see! Her optics lubricate defensively, stinging under the glaring assault, and she immediately starts to cry.
Wendy watches the specimen, completely flabbergasted when it throws it's head back and begins to wail. Tears pour down it's face, dripping onto the floor where the tile immediately begins to bubble and sizzle.
She can hear it. She's been mimicking it a lot, trying to get the words and pronunciations right and figure out definitions... it's more than enough to understand the baby's extremely limited vocabulary. It hurts!, she seemed to be sobbing. Want mommy!
Nearby, the drone is becoming increasingly agitated in it's cage, pacing back and forth. It pounds both fists on the glass, shrieking and chittering, trying to get her attention.
"Leave her alone!" it says. "Get away from her! She's just a baby!"
It bashes it's thick, dome shaped skull directly into the glass. Trying to break out, but this time, Wendy swears she hears something shudder. She tries to reproduce the sound, holding her hands up to show she's friendly. At her feet, the morphling trills and begins clumsily hurrying across the floor: on all fours, chubby arms and legs loping almost like a very wobbly cat. She collides with the glass wall separating her from the drone, and paws at it desperately. Trilling the whole time, wailing that she's scared and wants to leave.
When the actual scientists eventually arrive, they sedate the drone by gassing his cell, and capture the morphling for more test. They take cell samples and more blood, then confine the newest specimen to a separate cell. Adjacent to the drone, but not allowed to mingle: they need isolated data, after all. Cross contamination at this point would be foolish.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, there's about a million angry cybermorphs flocking toward the planet at lightspeed soon to bring the reckoning to their doorsteps 🤭 but that can come later. That's the main set up, so uh. I hope you enjoyed?? Send me asks if you want more? I have 👉👈 admittedly too many thoughts of the hybrids sneaking the baby out of the lab to play outside 😂
mashup for the poor? ☕ mashup crumbs for the poor?
ALMS FOR THE POOR :D
Ok ok so last we left off, Isaac had spoken to the infant morph specimen, established baseline communication and got to observe several behavoirs up close. The fact that it's smart and self-aware enough to ask for something is amazing! He spends nearly an hour scribbling in his lab notebook, rambling to himself about theories and things he wants to try, and comparing everything he saw to terrestrial fauna.
Before he goes in to see the baby again, he approaches Arthur and asks if he can borrow the laser pointer he knows the doctor keeps on his keychain.
"Uh, sure?" He hands it over with a curious look. "Can I ask what you need it for?"
"Oh, it's for the baby."
"The-" Arthur blinks, then squints at him in confusion. "I'm sorry, the- the baby? What baby?"
"In the lab, we have a baby! Thank you, doctor!"
It takes a few tries on a few different days, but eventually, his efforts are rewarded. He's been talking to her as much as he can, mimicking everything she says and picking up more words. Her communicative capabilities are still very unrefined, but considering she's only about a week old, it's very impressive.
He tells her that he won't hurt her. Safe. Want to learn. Want to be friend.
The morphling stops trembling everytime he looks at her, and after 5 days of trying, it finally happens. When he flicks on the laser pointer and beams the little red dot on the floor right in front of her, she bats at it with one tiny, chubby hand. He moves it, and she swipes at it with her other arm.
The dot skitters across the floor, about a foot from her nose. The morphling shifts her weight, still in a loaf position with her arms and legs tucked under her. Her tail loosens from it's anxious curl around her body, and Isaac notices the tip twitching back and forth. The dot zooms in a circle, then onto the back wall. Her gaze follows it, and she shifts again. Her back arches, bottom lifting into the air as her whole body wiggles. Isaac is suddenly reminded of the playful minx his aunt had.
The red dot darts again, and this time, the morphling pounces after it. She springs forward with a surprisingly long vertical jump, hands outstretched straight in front of her in an attempt to catch it. It moves at the last second and she tumbles to the floor of her cell, rolling twice directly into the wall with a clamorous THUD!
Nearby, the adult clicks at her. She squeaks back, untangling her limbs and eagerly scrambling after it. She chases it around and around, in circles all around her cage. She tries to pounce on it, tries to nip at it, but it continues to evade her! Before long, Isaac is laughing so hard he can barely keep the dot going in a straight line. She really is like his aunt's cat!
He shines it onto the back wall, and she tries to jump up to it. He moves it higher, and she chirps in frustration. Come back!
She scoots back from the wall, placing both palms on the floor and straightening her legs to stand. Her knees wobble, but she perseveres, leaning her chest heavily against the wall and reaching for the red dot. She paps at it, chirping in triumphant, before her legs promptly give out and she collapses onto her bottom.
The red dot appears just beside her leg, and she smacks one little hand down on top of it. She squeaks in surprise, seeing it now on top of her hand, and smacks the other down on it, too. She chirps in alarm, and tries again to bite it. Can't get!
At last, he switches it off. The morphling turns in a circle, searching for it, but it's gone. When her eyes fall on Isaac again, he smiles and waves.
The morphling looks down at herself, then back to him. Then to the drone, then down at herself, then back to him. Slowly, she raises both of her arms and flaps them around, almost as if trying to wave back at him.
"Woah...!" he drops the laser pointer so he can wave with both hands, too. "H- Hi there...!"
She chirps a new word at him. One that he doesn't know, but he immediately commits the sound to memory. This is amazing! He can't wait to tell Curly!
...
Ok I'll stop there cuz once again i accidentally started writing fic halfway through 😂 anyway uh enjoy Isaac bonding with the little morphling. Send me more asks (this is not a request. This is a demamd lmfao). Ask about their friendship and about the first time he sneaks her out of the lab and also about how fucked earth is once queen mother Megatron arrives XD he's ready to bring humanity to extinction in order to retrieve their abducted children
uh... hi! im new around here, found your au post in the alien earth tag and im a little confused but is a really cool concept! if isaac gets to live then im sold lol
Omg hello! That's so nice ahhhh ;o; but YE! Justice for my boy Isaac! He didn't do anything to deserve that 😭
SPEAKING OF ISAAC! When the baby morph is in containment, he and Curly have divided the work between themselves. She says she, quote, "doesn't like babies", meanwhile Isaac came from a big family with lots of siblings and cousins. He doesn't mind them at all! Besides, he strikes me as the kid who was fascinated by the subject of metamorphosis: tadpoles -> frogs and caterpillars -> butterflies were his favorite projects in school! Already the baby has undergone drastic changes, and she's visibly different than the adult, so he wants to watch her develop! Imagine if he gets to write the first-ever published paper on an alien growth cycle!!! He's so excited!
He picks up on the morph chatter pretty quickly, and he quickly realizes just how afraid the morphling is. She stays huddled in the back corner of her cell whenever he's around, always crammed up against the wall closest to the drone. She's loafed almost like a cat, arms and legs tucked under her body and tail wrapped tightly around herself. Panting heavily with the tubes on her back expanding and contracting rapidly. Her weird, mechanical eyes remain tightly shut, and he's reminded of a little kid hiding under their blanket to escape the monsters under their bed. The vital signs on the monitor reveal higher-than-average blood pressure and a heartbeat that's almost twice that of the drone's.
Her constant, mournful chirping conveys only a few, simple desires on repeat
Wanna go home
Want mommy
Cold
Scared
Wanna go home...
He practices diligently, in private, to properly reproduce their sounds. If he makes a mistake and accidentally insults her or marks himself incorrectly or something, he could irreparably damage his future with the project. Don't do anything if you aren't sure, that's what Kirsch had said about sterile lab technique. Recheck the SOPs, disinfect it again, run the math a second time. He had to do this right. Their first time talking had to be perfect.
Ideally, he'd like to do it when the drone was asleep, but it never seemed to sleep. He'd gone through 72 hours worth of laboratory security footage, and while the drone had paced, and scratched at the cell walls, and displayed at least 8 other anxious behavoiral patterns, it had never once seemed to rest. Oftentimes it would stand still, but even then it's body language + the way it's head occasionally moved made it doubtful the creature was actually sleeping. For her part, Curly didn't seem to know if the drone slept, either. When he asked, she simply lifted one shoulder and gave him a noncommital hum. That was all he got out of her, too busy scrawling in her composition notebook. Her notes, no doubt.
5 days after he'd been assigned to the baby morph, he makes his move. They haven't used any greetings, so he can't exactly say hello like he wants to. Doctors always said hello to their patients when they first came in. Once, when he'd asked his mom about it, and why, she said it was to make them feel safe and more willing to talk about their problems. Ideally, he'd be able to say hello, but he doesn't know their greeting yet. So, he has to improvise.
He gets down on the floor, folding his knees under him just before the baby morph's door. Today, she has her eyes open, and she attempts to hunker further down into her corner when she spots him. Isaac continues, lowering himself down til his chest touches the floor, and he pulls his arms under his body to support his head.
There were plenty of ways to greet animals! Humans gave a vocal cue and often gestured with their hands. Many feline species greeted with slow blinks. Elephants would entwine their trunks. Surely these ones had a way to greet, too. Mimicking her stance seemed like a good place to start.
From the corner of his eye, Isaac notices the adult sidle up to the front of the glass, barely 3 feet away from him. It seemed to be watching intently, despite it's lack of visible eyes. The baby morph squeaks, tiny head swivelling from Isaac to the drone and back.
Isaac makes his move, and, carefully puckering his lips, perfectly mimicks the noise back.
The baby morph jumps, head doing the swivel again. Her eyes get big and wide, glowing brighter.
Sounds like me?
"Sounds like me?"
The baby morph sits there with her eyes still very wide, and stares at him unblinking for several seconds.
Hear me?
Isaac nods his head up and down, exaggerating the motion as much as he could. "I hear you."
She tilts her head a little bit, chittering softly to her herself. She glances back to the drone for guidance, but it still remains silent. Isaac brightens when her body shifts, and her tiny hands begin attempting to knead the floor of her cage. There was no give to be found, but it's something he hasn't seen before!
You hear... mommy?
He was not expecting that. She sounds so sad, and almost like she's begging.
Want my mommy... wanna go home, she haplessly continues pressing at the floor, trying to self soothe. Her tail tightens around her body, and he notices her lips trembling. Please... want out.
"I-" Isaac blinks, then smiles. His face curls into a nervous smile even though he definitely shouldn't be smiling right now. "I'm sorry, I can't let you out."
And with that, the baby begins to cry hysterically. The drone snarls at him like an angry chainsaw, and at last abandons the front of the glass. It hurries to the back corner, crouching down and chittering to the distressed baby, trying in vain once again to scratch it's way through the wall.
Isaac stands up, grabbing his notebook off the floor as he goes. It... god, it really sounds like a human baby when it cries like that. She's got her face pressed into the floor like a toddler having a tantrum, arms tented over her helm as she wails and sobs like the world is ending.
...he needs to go write his notes and lab report.
...
Uhhh. Impromptu mini-fic? Was not my intention lmfao. I just really like Isaac ok ( ._.)
Just so you know none of the kids die in this AU. Usually I love killing off humans. Not this time. Every single one of them is gonna survive and ya'll are gonna LIKE IT
(Please note Kavalier and the other adults are NOT included in this. They're fair game. There will absolutely be a body count and Boy's death is gonna be the creme de la creme, but none of the hybrid kids are gonna die. I refuse. Im still upset about Isaac. and Arthur too tbh neither one of them deserved their fates)
