shoving the rest below a cut for dash courtesy, also violence
RED
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 2: Red Fish, Blue Fish
You could die, you fool!
“Better dead than whatever the fuck you want me to be,” Jane rasped.
It screamed with a thousand voices. Her ears felt wet. Metallic salt seeped into her mouth.
She was on the ground. Pieces of the beacon rained down around her. Rain poured into her mouth and nose, washing blood into her sinuses and making her choke until she retched. Faces blurred in and out of view, vaguely familiar ones and one she remembered for sure, stark white against the blood red sky. It looked wrong, though, and it took until ship engines howled overhead and unconsciousness had nearly taken her away to figure out why.
Fear didn’t look right on the bogeyman.
ORANGE
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 9: Unshackled
Jane had been hospitalized for two weeks following the Skyllian Shitshow — less for the gunshot wound and more for ‘being a danger to herself and others’. The food had been unremarkable at best; allegedly, psych ward ate better than regular hospital patients for morale reasons, and all she could think at the time was how much it would suck to be bedridden and eat worse food than the shit they shoved at her through the door hatch. The worst had been tomato bisque, viscous and orange and somehow tasting of nothing but black pepper and whatever pills they’d ground up and mixed in.
YELLOW
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 7: H(a)unt
Nihlus stepped between Jane and the stairs, but before she could chew him out for blocking her shot, his body rippled, organic flesh burning to ash and floating away. The thing that looked back at her had too many eyes and too-sharp teeth and the tree beneath the endless glass ocean shattered the surface with spires. The spires stretched up, up, up to the ceiling, like children begging for a parent’s love.
But the great black ships were just things made of metal and wires and hate. They weren’t capable of love.
Some monstrous creature painted up with white and blue kissed her brow with the muzzle of a Vindicator. Its fingers looked like the spires still growing towards the stars, and its mouth was peeled back in a permanent grin. Jane’s lip curled up to match. She would show these things she had teeth, too. That hers weren’t an empty threat. That she had used them before and would use them again. Behind the shadowy figures presiding over her trial for crimes against the Old Machines, a yellow-striped geth uncloaked. Its big yellow eye stayed trained on her Firestorm like it was the biggest threat in the room. She’d just killed a man with a plastic fork. She didn’t need a gun to be dangerous.
GREEN
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 4: Unfortunate Things
Jane didn’t have clothes of her own since they had to evacuate so quickly, so he’d gladly given up one of his PT shirts and a pair of sleep shorts once Williams and Dr. Chakwas got her cracked out of her armor. She practically drowned in them, but they did the job, even if they made her look so incredibly small. She’d always been on the shorter end, and all the muscle she put on over the years still didn’t bulk out her scrawny frame much more, but she was so… larger than life, it was easy to forget how physically unimposing she looked out of armor and not armed to the teeth.
And with teeth, too.
Unfortunate things happen in battle, John.
Ruthless. That’s what they’d called her after Torfan. If he believed nothing else, he knew that descriptor was true, especially after their final test in N-school. Especially after she’d gunned down a retreating man. Her eyes had looked so hollow afterwards; he’d expected anger, something hot and hissing, coiled up like a viper ready to strike, but there was no life in that deep green lake.
That looked personal, Commander.
It was.
He couldn’t reconcile that person with the small, fragile thing lying so concerningly still under so many blankets – they’d had a hard time getting her body temperature stable, Dr. Chakwas said. They had to sedate her, too, and it had taken Nihlus to restrain her long enough to get the IV catheter in. What had that thing done to her?
BLUE
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 12: Dig (unpublished)
The seagrass had been lost to the river for a long time, but the river couldn’t take that memory from her, of a scrawny boy with minnow-grey plates and eyes like tidepools.
“Really?” Garrus drawled. “I give you the last of my lunch, and this is the thanks I— ack!”
Jane shook the tingle from her knuckles and pushed off his keel, then offered him the same hand. “Stabbed a salarian with your fork, too,” she snorted. “So that’s two I owe you. You look good.” Her mouth curled up. “Even without the tinfoil hat.”
Garrus rubbed the sore spot from his throat as he stood. “Think I liked you in the hospital gown better,” he groused. A blue flush had already darkened his throat.
“You’re still a bad liar, Garrus Vakarian.” Jane socked his bicep and turned back to their shore party.
INDIGO
from Blinding Neon, Shades of Grey, Chapter 1: Hello World
It’s dark when she enters, save for a floor lamp in the corner. One of the show droids, the rabbit, lurks beside the chair that’s turned away from her, a hulking indigo mass that looks far fucking bigger than it does on stage. Someone has traded its stage look for a far more muted suit, finely tailored pinstripes emphasizing every inhuman bend and curve and making it appear taller, endless, looming.
VIOLET
i know i used pink shhhshhh from The Unlikely Adventures of Bitchface and Go F*ck Yourself, Chapter 6: Playing With Fire
Taking another breath, Dillon pushed all thoughts of Zadimus being an asshole out of her mind. He was right, not that she’d admit it out loud. The line of energy glowed a dull violet as it stretched on and on, deep underground, as far as she could sense. She flexed her fingers towards her feet, then closed them, trying to feel the hum solidifying in her hands as she guided it upward. The less she strained, the easier it got to pull, and the higher it rose, the stronger the buzz became until finally she felt it right beneath her feet, tingling her arches where she balanced on it like a tightrope.
i have so many unanswered tags sitting in my drafts but i'm here and this one's quick anyway @sergeantnarwhalwrites tagged me over here ty ilysm!!!
Rules: Pull the first and most recent line from a wip of your choice
tagging: @teamdilf @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @vacantgodling @arrthurpendragon @pluttskutt and leaving it open!
cw mentioned suicide attempt ATTEMPT. I DID NOT KILL TEKER, SOREN, BEFORE YOU--
FIRST
There weren’t many places I could’ve woken up and immediately known I was in trouble. The bottom of a mineshaft, an unfamiliar cargo hold, and the middle of a deep, dark forest clearing immediately came to mind, but the last one carried the condition of lacking both clothes and the memory of traveling there in the first place. I’d been in all three and a few others that were just fuzzy, shimmering memories on the edge of a sand high. ‘Oh, shit’ and I were far more intimately acquainted than ‘well-rested’ or ‘this is fine.’
LAST
I tried to imagine the uncle I’d shouted along with to old rock songs, who was giddy at the prospect of leftovers, sinking to the bottom of the lake, on purpose. I tried to imagine what it would be like, slipping beneath the surface. I was awfully brave all the way up in space thinking the water would spit me out, as if it cared if I was bitter or sweet. The water would swallow me because it could, and it would care as little as the stars about the life it stole.
ty @writernopal for the tag, sorry it's so late before i'm filling it lmao
Writers: post (approximately) six sentences from something you’re working on. If you aren’t ready to do that, add six sentences to your WIP.
tagging: @monstrousfreedom @sparatus @starknstarwars @asher-orion-writes @void-botanist @tabswrites and leaving it open!!
Told y'all I missed Helix, have some Jaen and Saren being terrible together, it's definitely six sentences, don't count them just trust me
The fact that Saren was already waiting for her at the exit before she’d even finished changing was likely less a testament to the efficiency of the store’s checkout process, and more to his permanent resting homicide face. “God, you must have girls falling all over you,” Jane drawled as she fell in stride beside him.
“On occasion, yes, when Nihlus feels the inclination to flail about in a pit of bodies and thus drags me out of my comfortable, quiet apartment. Unfortunate, really.”
Jane hadn’t realized she’d stopped walking until Saren’s talons latched onto her shirt to usher her onwards. She opted to ignore the worst possible way to describe a nightclub. “Unfortunate for who?”
“For whom,” Saren corrected, “and for all parties involved, as I’m both a homosexual and an abysmal lay.”
Theory amended: she’d space herself at the first opportunity.
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”
Saren glanced over his shoulder, and for just a moment, Jane thought she saw a spark of humor shining through the permafrost. “Gravely,” he quipped, and shoved her bodily into an Armax outlet.
have a few of my favorite bits from unlikely adventures. CW: gore, violence, smut, the usual suspects
CH 2: My Sister's Keeper
Dillon was eight when her parents divorced. It wasn’t nasty. No one yelled. Darren didn’t demand custody, but Cheryl politely requested it, and he signed the papers without a second thought. He even gave up the house, choosing instead to stay in a much more reasonable two-bedroom apartment downtown, closer to his job with the law firm.
But she was eight, and all she ever knew about love she learned from her parents, and all the storybooks ended at ‘happily ever after,’ not ‘and then years later, when they realized they only got hitched because the princess was fifteen and pregnant and the prince was scared of her daddy’s shotgun, there was a civil division of community property and they never spoke again.’ A father should never be his daughter’s first taste of heartbreak, but Darren always was an overachiever. He got to put that trophy right up on his Dillon wall next to ‘Dada was her first word’ and ‘she took her first steps for me.’
She really was a daddy’s girl before, thrashing to his classic metal CDs in the basement and trying to out-belch each other at the dinner table. And after all that, he didn’t even fight for custody. He didn’t fight for her. Dillon saw it as her father wanting nothing to do with her and Daisy, even if he had free visitation rights and took them to the movies and the mall and theme parks. She was always shut down and distant during those trips, believing them to be a farcical attempt at bribing her and her sister, or a token effort because her mom asked him to.
CH 3: Death Doesn't Give Third Chances
“Your dad doesn’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That your sister died.” Cheryl flipped through a few pages. Raised her eyebrows a few times. She set the book down and went down to the basement, leaving Dillon alone at the counter with a massive stack of pancakes. Unattended. Four fell prey to her grabby hands before Cheryl returned.
With a severed head, its face frozen in a scream.
That she promptly whacked against the counter over and over until it cracked open.
“You cut up bodies three nights out of the month, pickle,” Cheryl chided as her daughter lost her pancakes in the sink.
Dillon looked at her mother with a mix of shock and disgust. “Yeah, I cut ‘em up, I don’t brutalize them.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, it’s not like it’s bleeding.” Cheryl dropped the pulpy remains in her daughter’s outstretched hands. “Do something with that, please. I need to scramble this before your sister comes back down.”
With her mind completely dissociated from her physical form, Dillon sputtered, “Like what? I can’t just throw this in the trash!”
Cheryl exhaled through her nose. “Of course not, that’s wasteful. Put it in a bag and put it back in the freezer. I’ll boil it later to make freezie-pops.” She scoffed at Dillon’s continued perturbation. “What? Werewolves get hot, too. It’s too much work to fill a kiddie pool with ice for Gus to roll in every time we go on a run. Get some of my bacon while you’re down there.”
Dillon inhaled to respond, but swallowed the thought at her mother’s look.
CH 4: Like Moths
“Oi, Lawson, fuck off,” Moira barked. She had such an elegant way with words.
“Or what, freak? You gonna hex me?” Troy made a dismissive gesture. “Go back to your coffin, the sun’s still out.”
Dillon could almost hear the creak of Moira’s jaw as she clenched it. The pentacle necklace that never left her neck rose and fell with every angry breath, flashing a warning in the afternoon sun. Dillon stepped up behind her best friend. Her belly button barely cleared the top of the table, but she could still mean mug the shit out of them. Moira didn’t need help taking on six high schoolers, it was the thought that counted.
“Oh look, it’s the littlest Monroe, too,” Troy’s best friend, Conner Stevens, drawled. He didn’t move from his relaxed drape against the back of the booth. “What’re you gonna do, cut yourself at us?”
The bar for being the bigger person suddenly got a lot lower. Moira snarled over the table. Dillon put a gentle hand on her bicep. “No, Troy,” she chuffed. “I’m not. But you wanna know what I can do?” She hopped up on the table, jostling his drink with the jolt and wobble of the table. “You remember what happened to Brett?”
That got Troy’s attention. “What, you gonna pull a bear outta your ass? Wouldn’t surprise me, if you’re as big of a whore as your s—” His voice was suddenly cut off with a wet choke.
“Dill—”
“He brought Daisy into it, Moira,” she spat. “His ass is fair game now.” Her head hurt and her chest tightened as her emotions rose higher, but this time she was ready for it, and greeted the pain like an old friend. Passing out would so be worth making that little worm regret even thinking Daisy’s name.
Conner shook Troy’s shoulder, but it was no use. He was fully choking on a massive lump lodged firmly in his esophagus. His blond girlfriend-of-the-week pulled him into a Heimlich position — she was a lifeguard at the community pool, Dillon thought — and on the fourth violent thrust of her hands against his diaphragm, the foreign object in his throat finally dislodged itself.
A clump of daisies the size of her fist slopped wetly onto his half-finished burger.
Dillon felt something wet trickle from her nose. Worth it. “Now get the fuck away from our table before I pick something with thorns.”
CH 5: Come, Devil
"The show hasn't even begun, mon petit aperitif, I still have my pants on." He took his time turning on the shower, fiddling with the temperature, pulling out towels — all while letting Dillon dangle over his shoulder, and when she decided grumbling wouldn't get her anywhere and instead caught one wing in her hands to bite the sensitive membrane, he reminded her that his hands weren't the only disciplinary tools at his disposal, wrapping his tail around her arms and yanking her upright. How she still managed to maintain enough dignity to look angry with her pants and underwear hanging around her ankles, he didn't know, but he liked it a fair share more than he was willing to admit. It's not like anything was fully on display either, thanks to the massive shirt drowning her in fabric, but that was easily remedied. He grabbed the hem and made to rip it free—
"Don't tear my shirt, please." The quiet earnestness of her plea was jarring in the wake of her snarling fit, enough so that it turned his muscles to stone and forced him to meet her eyes. There was a flicker of fear in their hollow depths, suddenly so cold and lifeless, had he not felt her pulse fluttering against the underside of his tail, he'd wonder if she still had one at all. "Daisy bought it for me. It was the first concert we went to together."
Well, fuck. Zadimus set her down and stepped back, watching her kick off her other clothes and slowly, reverently strip off her shirt and fold it on the counter. "You really do love your sister, don't you?"
The fire went right back into her eyes as she looked up with raw determination and something he couldn't place, the sort of vicious familial passion he'd never observed in a member of his own kind; it drove otherwise pacifistic mothers to violent, gruesome vengeance killings, and made brothers fight more fiercely for — and sometimes against — each other than they would in any other circumstance. "I poured my soul into the ground so she could climb back out of it," she spat. "What do you think?"
"I think we're going to get along brilliantly," he replied, then pulled her into his arms again to crush their mouths together. The kiss was short-lived; she drew back and he worried he'd crossed a boundary somewhere, but she thrust her thumbs into his mouth and pried his jaws open.
"So that's what it was!"
"Whah?"
She grinned in triumph. "Your tongue's pierced, you wily fucking devil."
Zadimus batted her hand away. “I have other things pierced, you know, if that’s what really gets you going,” he drawled. “But as it stands, Miss Monroe, you have a filthy fucking mouth and it’s high time someone cleaned up your act.”
CH 8: Bullet on the Tracks
“Did you grab the bacon from up here or downstairs?”
Zadimus pointed to a plate of bacon that looked leaner than usual. “Downstairs for me,” he said, then pointed at the pan sizzling in front of him, “and up here for you.” He dumped the bacon onto a paper-towel-covered plate. “Your mother has a good system, all the cooking vessels are marked so there’s no risk of cross-contamination.”
Dillon nodded, reaching for a slice of her bacon. “Yeah, she adapted pretty quick— fuck!”
“You just saw me take that out of the pan, dipshit,” Zadimus scoffed at Dillon’s pitiful puppy eyes, then pulled her injured finger from her mouth. “It’s just a bit irritated, you’ll live.”
“But it hurts,” she pouted.
With a sigh, he ran his tongue over her finger before resuming his prior task of cracking eggs into the pan. “Better?”
Dillon gaped at the tingling still chasing away the angry red of a minor burn. “Wh— how.”
“Magic.”
“In your… spit.”
“Ah, no.” Zadimus tossed the empty carton into the recycling and the shells into the compost bin. “In general. But my hands were full,” he chuffed with a wink, squeezing her thigh.
Dillon scrunched up her nose to hide her grin. “Letch.”
“Careful, Dillon,” he teased. “I might think you like me and my brazen ways.”
She smacked his bicep, but the smile on her face lit the room and the flush of her cheeks warmed it. Zadimus released her into the kitchen so she could go about fixing coffee, as their infernal, unnecessarily complicated device refused to tell him its secrets. He was buying a machine for himself the next chance he got, something with as few buttons as possible and a normal filter. He got so lost in his fantasy of simplicity he almost missed her question. “Where are we going today?”
It didn’t help that she had half a bagel shoved into her mouth. How someone so small managed to open her jaw so wide— he shook off that train of thought before it could go anywhere that might cause another delay this morning.
CH 8: Bullet on the Tracks
So Zadimus let Dillon poke and prod his fading bruises; the single rib fracture that had started righting itself, the kink in his tail he’d already straightened in the back seat with someone’s hoodie in his mouth to muffle the grunt of pain it had wrung from him. That one smarted a bit, and he gave her a token wince so she’d have something to fuss over. He had been around long enough to know mortals needed to fret and tend to each other after a fight, to regain some control over something when everything else had been more or less out of it. He would never know the fear of a final death, but he understood it, and he had felt the stain it left behind once or twice in his thousand years.
He lifted the pads of her fingers to his lips and kissed the worry from each one, letting the tingle of magic distract her from their ordeal long enough to steal another kiss from her mouth. “See? I’m fine.”
He might have been, but she wasn’t — with her worrying hands at last sated to stillness, Zadimus could see where blood had dried beneath her fingernails, where boiling ichor had stained her knuckles an angry red, where she’d cut her lip either with her own teeth or while she was ripping the wraith apart. Flecks of darkness stubbornly clung to the outer edges of her irises. There was that glimpse again: scarlet braid, leather and metal, sturdy hips and silk-over-steel thighs, and the most vibrantly green eyes he’d ever seen.
There was nothing hard about Dillon except her damned head, but she hadn’t lived through war, famine, pestilence — only a pale horse roamed her pastures, yet she was neither afraid of its bray nor its bite. Her struggles all lived in her heart, and somehow it had still remained as chiffon-soft as the rest of her.
He’d recognize those eyes anywhere, though. Like sunlight reflecting off a dragon’s scales, sharp as a sword and twice as lethal, and when he found himself caught in her gaze—
“Zadimus?”
—the tenderness stabbed him with want so deep, so fathomless, he thought it might actually kill him.
Her lip split again when he crushed his mouth against hers. Blood and moss. She tasted like blood and moss and something ancient, something wild. Energy sparked against his teeth, a volley of arrows meant to take out his fortress defenses, and the energy within him answered in kind, pouring over her tongue and down her throat.
The backs of his thighs collided with the kitchen table. Fuck it. Zadimus let her push him back, spreading his wings across the surface and over the sides like a tablecloth. “People eat here, Dillon,” he teased, even as he helped her climb over him.
She bit his nipple.
Interlude II: Bad Blood
“Pamela Foster,” the newcomer clipped. “Castlebury Park. Sorry I’m late, the homeowner’s association meeting ran long because some people don’t seem to understand neighborhood beautification standards exist for a reason, and a black garage door is an eyesore.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Acheron,” Sterling hissed. His chair scraped as he rose, knocking into his hovering servant. If he noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it. “This? This is the fabled new bloodline? What’s she going to do, ask to speak to the manager?”
“Mister La Croix and I have already spoken, actually, thank you.” Pam took her seat at the end of the table. Acheron didn’t miss the mild panic flitting across Jedediah’s face and the subtle scoot of his chair away from her. Interesting. “We’re here because of my turning, correct?”
“A completely new bloodline hasn’t appeared since the seventeenth century, just mutated from older ones, so this is… most unusual,” Idris explained. “We’re sure you’re perfectly capable, but--”
“But what? I sent in my curriculum vitae, you’re all aware of my leadership capabilities, and further--”
“A leader ain’t just a few fancy words on a piece of paper, Pammy.”
Pam’s eyes narrowed and her mouth pressed into a thin line. Acheron felt his entire body threaten to implode into itself to escape. “Do not interrupt me, Mister… the Dragonheart, is it? Or so help me, you will find out why I was chosen as this line’s progenitor.”
Hagar’s mouth quirked up into an intrigued grin. How long had it been since another member challenged him like that? How long since anyone had?
“Further, I have submitted my territory demarcation through the appropriate channels, so I hardly think an entire meeting is necessary. I’m sure you all have better things to do,” the newcomer concluded. Her shock of bleached-blonde hair seemed to move in a breeze only she could feel. What little of it could move, anyway; the pixie cut looked sprayed and gelled and spiked to within an inch of its life.
Her conclusion once more erupted the room into cacophonous bickering, and again Hagar fired his gun to silence it before Acheron could even raise his voice. A second chunk of plaster joined the first. Pam did not look happy about it, and wouldn’t you know, the big brute actually flinched.
“Can we at least pretend we belong in our respective positions and act with a smidgen of civility? We aren’t werewolves,” Acheron snapped. Seconds later, he was clawing at an invisible hand constricting tighter and tighter around his throat.
“The woman I intend to take as my mate is a werewolf, Mister La Croix.” Pam’s eyes glowed a deep, dusky red. Her clothes swept up in the quickening breeze. “Tread carefully.”
I didn’t post anything on Sunday anyway so thx for the tag @callista-curations (on my main blog) bc for ONCE I have something soft, just a small break in the clouds lmAO
Dad knew we were coming. I knew Dad would be waiting for us at the usual docking bay. Rima also knew, and her transport arrived right as we stepped into the harsh sunlight of a Taetran afternoon.
Maybe it was because I’d thought he was angry with me, or because I didn’t believe I didn’t dream the whole thing up, I wasn’t expecting the taller, slightly-leaner carbon copy of Dad that was real and tangible even after I tried to blink away the ghost. I almost didn’t recognize him — I couldn’t remember the last time he smiled that big for anything, and in that moment, that smile was for me, as were his open arms.
“Nico!” I screamed, uncaring of the looks it drew as I took a running leap into his embrace. He squeezed me tight and spun me around and around and then grabbed my arms and shook me — not hard, but enough.
“You are such a shit,” Nico scolded. “Runnin’ off like that.” His anger vanished as quickly as it came, though, replaced by wobbly mandibles and a harsh sob that he buried in my hoodie. “I was an asshole too, though. Wasted years—”
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Please, don’t.” Quinn was rubbing off on me, it seemed.
And rubbing my shoulder, I noticed, and tilted my head to rest my cheek on her knuckles. “You’re the one that likes Blasto, right?” she asked, doing what she did best: lightening the tension.
Nico wiped his face off on his sleeve and sniffed up the rest of his emotional outburst. “Yeah, that’s me,” he answered. “The one whose headphones she stole, too.”
“You’re not gettin’ ‘em back either,” I quipped, sticking out my tongue.
He pushed it back into my mouth and I bit his finger. Just like old times. “Got a new pair, anyway, fuck, that hurt. Dad! Atria bit me!”
Big hands looped under my arms and lifted me into the cowl I used to call home. “Well, don’t stick your hands near her mouth and you won’t get bit,” Dad chuffed. Cigarette smoke and gun oil wrapped me in a secondary hug — no whiskey. “Hope you girls brought your walkin’ shoes. Ain’t far enough to waste the gas.”
tagging: @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @writernopal @sergeantnarwhalwrites @starlit-hopes-and-dreams @teamdilf @void-botanist @vacantgodling -- feel free to hop on this as an open tag too!
from Blinding Neon, Shades of Grey, Chapter 6: Catch
Bonnie’s grin does falter at that; his ears droop with a quiet whirr. “What made you look into your dad?”
leap
from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 17: How to Mistakenly Assume You Have Everything Under Control
Yeah, not likely. I narrowly dodged an undulating blue wave that caught an unsuspecting vorcha in Stasis. “I’ll go home when I’m ready!” I shouted, rolling behind a trash bin Citrio Lifted like it was fucking nothing. I swung myself around the corner into the alley and quickly climbed up the closest building’s maintenance ladder. It had been a while since I hopped my way around rooftops, but after stumbling twice, I fell back into the rhythm: vault the artigrav generator, slide to the other end, grab the edge, hang down, kick off the wall, grab the next ladder, climb, vault over the edge, roll to the other side — step by step, leap by leap, I carefully calculated my jumps, dodging the flashes of blue cast up at me from the ground. I knew he wouldn’t follow me up there, former street kid or not. His talons were too nice. Torch probably would have followed me, though, and suddenly I was even more grateful she’d given up when she did.
faith
from Stellar Parallax, Chapter 5: A Matter of Pride
Valern and Tevos shared a look, then she spoke up. “If humans are to join with Council space, regardless of where we draw the border, their territory will be touching the Terminus, and the wholesale slaughter of a colony is… a rather slippery slope. What’s to stop them from escalating if we don’t show these attackers that the humans are under our protection? What faith would the volus, the elcor, and the hanar have in us then? We can spare an agent or two to help them in the wake of this tragedy.” She nodded to herself. “At the very least, the presence of Spectres will be a sufficient deterrent.”
leaf
from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 19: This is Everything I Never Wanted
Pudge came thundering into the clearing with more gusto than I thought such a round beast was capable of — his claws gouged deep furrows in the soft earth beneath the leaf litter as he also realized he was going far too fast and tried to throw on the brakes. He, too, hit a tree trunk with a harsh crack, but shook it off just as quickly. Leaves were still raining down from the canopy as another creature emerged from the shadows. It was then I remembered there was a second shatha, as if one notorious killer in the household wasn’t enough. This one was far slinkier than Pudge, sleek and skinny and crawling low to the ground.
sky
from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Chapter 20: Dissent/Descent
“Dumbass,” she chuffed and finally looked away, watching the clouds roll across the sky. “Snuck out of the barracks every night just in case you showed up.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you, dipshit, why else?”
um hey so the rules say three sentences but I got carried away mwah under a cut for length and mild spice, mind the pov switch
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
Catching up to Frankie is the easy part; catching her is harder now that they’re within surveillance range of the club’s patrons and she’s adopted her undercover persona for the evening — feisty and effervescent, she’d told Roxanne, somebody who’s only there to have fun. As he ushers his giggling date towards the entrance, he can’t help the twinge of something he doesn’t want to name that washes over him when she glances back, all toothy smiles and crescent eyes he knows aren’t real. Aren’t for him.
Foxy’s hand trails down her bare arm and jumps tracks to travel back up her side, catching the short edge of her dress on the way up. It’s not enough to outright flash anyone, but it’s enough to keep up the appearance that they’re just another couple of freaks out for a night of high-class debauchery. “Just stick close to me, dollface,” he murmurs into her hair. Really, he could have shouted and she doesn’t think anyone would have heard; the music is so loud even outside the club she can almost make out the individual notes. Yelling, however, isn’t conducive to keeping their cover. Orville and Hippo know they’re coming, of course, but none of the patrons do, and they’re allowed to do their poking and sniffing so long as said poking and sniffing doesn’t affect the more debauched poking and sniffing that keeps them in business.
Frankie isn’t sure anymore how much of their act is really an act at all. When they finally make their way inside, the music transforms from the cacophonous, rattly bass it was outside to a heavy, pulsing vibration that licks and strokes her from head to toe, sensually caressing between her legs and melting her back against Foxy’s chest. She opens her mouth to make an attempt at preserving her dignity, but all that comes out is a raspy groan.
“Probably shoulda warned you about the music, huh?” That, at least, is enough to jar her out of her trance, but not enough to remind her to be embarrassed about the display. Not that she has anything to be embarrassed about, apparently; a cursory glance around reveals a series of tables in semi-private alcoves occupied by humans and droids alike, and everything in-between, drinking brightly-colored cocktails, poisoning their systems in just about every method one can think up with drugs she didn’t even know existed before now, and visually feasting on dancers in various states of undress. Before them, sunken a bit into the ground, is a central dance floor undulating with what she can only describe as a fully-clothed pseudo-orgy.
Maybe it’s the music affecting her system, or the cloying smell of chemical smoke nearby, but as they make their way further inside, the frenzied writhing starts to look more like maggots feasting on the rotting remains of something that used to be beautiful, the four floors of tables above them filled with carrion birds looming, waiting, lusting for the succulent rot to ripen, and she plants her feet firmly, refusing to get any closer. Something cold seizes her heart and lungs and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes until the tissue oozes through its bony fingers, soft and sticky as river mud—
“Frankie? Frankie, baby, stay with me,” a familiar voice slithers in her ear, around her brain, wrapping tight and keeping it safe within its coils. Slowly the fog retreats from the threatening rattle, the warning hiss, and she can breathe again.
Here’s a bit from Sensitive Information Handling Tactics, yet another kryterius oneshot. Under the cut for... well, you see the community tag.
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>kryik: u up? need 2nd opinion
With the trap baited, all he had to do was wait for his quarry to come calling.
And figure out the best position in which to drape himself on the couch that would show off his black leather chest harness without being too obvious about his intent.
Sure enough, the call came through moments later. “Guns, armor, or that treasonous act you call a wardrobe?”
“First of all, hi, Saren, nice to catch up with you too,” Nihlus drawled. “Second, I don’t call it a wardrobe, I call it the clean-clothes basket, and third, it’s a fashion question. Vidshare with me?”
He had to be way out there for a several-minute long comm-buoy delay. “I don’t have the bandwidth at the moment.”
Nihlus fought down the disappointment in his subvocals. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t love it when Saren called him pretty — or what passed for it in Saren-speak.
“Just send a picture,” Saren huffed. “Preferably one of the front and one from the side so I can determine if it’s flattering or not.”
Oh, it was flattering, alright. “Yeah, okay, hold please.” A different angle was called for, then — and lucky, that. Pictures were easier to pose for than live video. On his back was the easiest, to ‘show the front’, obviously, but his side was a bit trickier; he settled on curling one knee up and flinging one arm over his crest, a view Saren had once claimed was his favorite to wake up to. You look like some ancient noble’s layabout heir, he’d said, and I’m the homely knight to which you’ve somehow become attached.
Nihlus thought it was the opposite way around, personally.
“When I open this,” Saren sighed in resignation, “will there be a cock in the frame, or are you actually seeking advice?”
“Nah, the main gun’s tucked away—”
No, not resignation. What Nihlus had previously taken as long-distance static was actually the subtle buzz of longing-disappointment.
“—but I can pull it out if you want.”
Another delay.
“N-no, that’s… that’s… oh.”
Mission: success.
Nihlus flicked a mandible. “Where are you right now?”
“On Silence, I’m leaving Altakiril in the morning,” came the response, delayed again and a little breathy. “I was visiting Desolas.”
“Where to after that?”
“Citadel. I need to pay a visit to the Archives.” Hesitation, but this time, it wasn’t because he was busy ogling — Nihlus assumed — the pics he’d been sent, but because of the standard, constant-vigilance skepticism that came along with the Arterius Special. “Why?”
“Be awful convenient if you took the Osun Relay from there.”
Saren scoffed. “Inefficient, I believe, is the word you’re looking for, Nihlus. That adds an entire extra—” a quiet ping announced the arrival of a third picture with cock-in-frame “— stop… to my… Spirits…”
“Inefficient maybe,” Nihlus purred, rolling to his feet to slap the locking panel on his door — rather pointlessly, it was about ten paces from one end of his room to the other, and he probably could have reached from the couch if he stretched. “But that’s waiting for you if you decide to inconvenience yourself.”
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