An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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For anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to read it on AO3, the chapter is under the cut.
You name is Vriska Serket, and you are less than absolutely sure you can handle this new undertaking.
You were walking through the field after another session of FLARP, when you heard a piercing cry. After hurriedly calmly checking your surroundings to make sure it wasn't some lusus trying to score food for it's charge or was otherwise hungry, you began to examine your environment more closely, to locate the source of the sound. After a minute, you narrowed it down to a ditch covered in foliage. After cutting it away with a sword retrieved from your sylladex, you discovered what had caused the noise.
There was a small human grub - you can't tell its age, but you'd guess about 2 sweeps - laying on a mattress made out of foliage. It appeared to be sleeping, and without any sopor. What was it, dumb? Though, on the other hand, you don't really know much about humans, beyond that they were pets often only adopted by other nobles. Maybe they don't need sopor? Regardless, it appeared to be having a nightmare, judging by the small moans and screams it was making. The sound caused a new wellspring of pity to well up in your chest.
Being as posessed of iron will as you are, you squashed it. You couldn't take it to your hive. You had a hard enough time feeding your own lusus to act as one for another, after all. This conviction had lasted you a good few feet before the grub had let out another pitiful cry. ‘D8mm8t’, you had thought, and then went back and grabbed the grub up. It had stopped crying pretty much immmediately, causing much of the pity to vanish. ‘When it's not crying’, you can't help but think as you look at it, ‘its pretty cute, for a human gru8′. Then, you went off to find the scuttlebuggy.
Which brings you to where you are now: Driving home in the scuttlebuggy, human grub buckled into the seat beside you, and wondering what you had just done.
===> Skip to home already.
===> Skip to home already.
The road leading to your hive stops just shy of the cliff the hive is situated upon. Carpenter droids had long ago carved a staircase through the cliff-face leading to your hive to make travel easier. Normally, the staircase isn't that difficult to climb, but combined with all the work you did FLARPing tonight, and it's enough to cause you to be slightly tired by the time you reach the top. You pause for a minute, both to catch your breath, and to inspect the grub. It seemed to still be asleep - how heavy a sleeper is this kid? Is that unusual for humans? - despite the hours-long drive and walk up the staircase.
“Welcome to your new home, little gru8.” You say aloud to the small human clutched in your arms. In response, it lets out a small mewl that causes your bloodpusher to tighten with some emotion that you can only describe as similar to what you had felt for Terezi long ago, before everything had gone to shit. ‘They're 8arely a sweep or two old, and asleep, 8ut they're still almost as good at manipul8tion as me.’ You think as you walk up to the large cerulean-colored doors of your hive. You open them with your metal arm, the other, fleshy (Because, no matter how deep a sleeper the grub is, the cold metal would probably wake them up) arm clutching the grub. You stride through the entrance hall, up the central stairway, and into your respiteblock.
You aren't sure how human biology interfaces with sopor, so instead of placing the wiggler in the recuperacoon, you grab a splaysack, drag it over to where you could see it from the husktop, and placed the grub gently on it. With the human situated for now, and nothing else to do tonight beside give your lusus her lunch, which can wait for a bit more, you sit down at the husktop, turn it on, and begin to schoolfeed on humans.
> Human
Woah, way to many results. Let's narrow that down. What's the little gru8s most pressing need...
> Human food
A few less hits. You find what seems to be a credible site and click on it.
A pet human can eat and will eat lots of things! It can safely consume most of the milder foods that you would eat, but do be careful about heat. Humans can be susceptible to many of the diseases that lurk in raw meat.
Easy enough, you'll just have to make extra portions of whatever you decide to eat. You decide to search grubs themselves next.
> Human grubs
Only a few results pop up this time. You click a couple links.
The human reproductive process is very strange. Instead of a mother grub, human females develop the grub inside themselves. The grub spends about a third of a sweep developing, the human grub emerges from the female.
Weird. You remember certain subspecies of lusus reproducing similarly, and you think you remember reading about other races that the Empire had exterminated in some books Aranea had lent you. The other link contained information about human growth.
For humans, there is no clearly designated stage in the life cycle where they pupate. Instead, they will continue to get bigger, and will begin a stage called "puberty" when approximately six sweeps old. Through "puberty", the human will mature into a suitable candidate for another human to pail with. This stage ends after about two sweeps.
Hmm. If your guess about the grubs age is correct, then you should have about four sweeps to prepare for this and do more research. Judging by some pictures, you're new wiggler is a male human.
The wiggler begins trying to move around on the splaysack, only to find that's sopor-filled composition causes it to sink further into the 'sack. You roll the chair over to in front of the splaysack and inspect the wiggler closer. A mop of black hair covered his head, and overly long bangs blocked your view of his light-blue eyes in some places. You make a note to yourself to check out the human hemospectrum later. If they have one, that is. So far, despite similar appearences, trolls and humans appear to be completely different biologically.
"Hello, little gru8. Do you speak Alternian?" You ask the boy, softly as possible to avoid scaring him.
"Yes." The boy says, eyes looking around the room, apparently scanning his surroundings.
"Alright then. Do you have a name?" You ask next.
He shakes head no. You give a sigh.
"Well, we'll figure out something later. In the meantime..." You draw yourself up into a pose, and the yet-to-be-named wiggler lets out a giggle.
"I am Vriska Serket, your new owner."
