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what the stars don't have

Tomura is not supposed to be on this planet. This isn't his assignment. But he's stuck here for now, and the few resources the Empire left will have to suffice until his handler manages to track him down. Wait, is he stuck in a recombinant disguise again? Shisnak. At least it comes with decent senses and leg strength... And what are these game things anyway? You do not have the time or energy to take in a hybrid, especially an injured one. But you also don't have the energy to ignore one, and now you're stuck with him. Legally, even. He's not too much trouble at least... You don't think you're getting your Switch back anytime soon though. Then he discovers sex. Wait, what do you mean that's not how it works in the Empire? How does it work? Oh boy...

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Uh... Transhumanism?

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.

Index

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Adaptation

You wake slowly. There's a vague soreness to your muscles, a mild ache to places you didn't know you had, and you're not quite sure how it happened. You stretch, but something feels a little odd about it.

"Master?" Keshan. Tomura's voice. Faintly distorted by electronics, flanged by his natural form. He sounds eager, hopeful. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

The second question seems silly at first, then you remember.

"Our wrist terminals operate using a neural link, formed by what you call nanites. Like everything else of importance, they're gene-locked to Imperial-specific sequences," Kurogiri explained. "Having one will allow you to use engram-based learning. Which is a headache, so you may wish to have that done before you wake up."

"Wake up from what?"

"Tomura did explain the different kinds of augmentation to you, didn't he?"

"Dormant inheritable versus active, yes."

"The latter is a full-body cellular alteration, and will include structural changes to some degree. I can't say how much yet, I haven't gone over your genome, but you don't want to be conscious for the process."

"About that… Will I have the same shapeshifting ability you all do?"

"That would be wildly against Imperial law," Kurogiri said. Then he grinned, wide and sparkling with mischief. "Which of course means it's not only possible, but that I can and will do it. You'll be able to shift back to your current base-human form at will."

"I understand, Tomura. How long has it been?" Your voice sounds the same as his now.

"Three months, Master." He's audibly pouting.

You open your eyes. Everything is hazy, like frosted glass or thick fog, and there's a wisp of dark hair floating in front of your face. The lights are brighter than the station usually gets. "That long? I thought it would only be a few weeks."

"Giri gave you some extra engrams. Technology manuals, mostly. And some physical conditioning, with muscle memory. You shouldn't have the coordination problems that normally happen. Or any… what did Magne call it? Dysphoria?" Color flickers. "Giri, Master's awake. Can I open the tank now?"

You can't quite hear the response, although you do recognize Kurogiri's voice.

"Yes, it's all clear," Tomura answers impatiently. "…Good."

There's a faint dragging sensation, and you realize you're floating in a thin fluid. Now that's draining, and the artificial gravity in the tank is slowly ramping back up from the roughly moon-like level it was at before so that your feet are on the floor. It's a PFC mix, you remember, like the LCL in Neon Genesis Evangelion or the diving stuff in that James Cameron movie. Kurogiri told you it would be there, but you were unconscious before being put in the tank, so you wouldn't panic over the feeling of your lungs flooding. You expel it the way you were instructed to, and try to wring it out of your hair as the cloudy fluid reaches your knees.

"You can rinse that off in a minute, Master," Tomura promises. "There's a water cycle."

The shower is lukewarm, but clean, and it's enough to rinse the breathing fluid off. "Did the station renovations finish yet?"

"They're still arguing over how to decorate some of the shared spaces, but our room is done."

"Bathrooms?" The station didn't actually have any real bathing facilities, just a medical rinsing station. Genesuits are apparently not only self-cleaning but also clean the wearer, in that they absorb and sterilize sweat and dead skin cells somehow. You don't care if your clothes keep you perfectly clean, you refuse to give up traditional hygiene practices.

"Just the way you asked for, Master. Tiles and water pressure and tub and everything. You want a hot bath?"

"That would be nice." You pause. Three months… "Maybe after food."

"You don't want a mirror first?"

The water shuts off, then a brief, high-pitched hum rattles your eardrums and the water clinging to your skin evaporates. The glassy wall in front of you slides away, and you see Tomura waiting eagerly on the other side.

He hasn't changed, aside from his hair being pulled back into a messy tail at the back of his neck. As soon as he catches sight of you, his tail whips up so fast it smacks the back of his shoulder and his eyes glow brighter, his mouth falling open.

"Do I look okay then?" you ask.

"I knew you were high-caste…" he breathes.

"Excuse me?"

"I-I mean, your augments are— Giri didn't say, he didn't tell me, but you got the kind of augments that only high-caste species get and those are decided by base genome and you're compatible with them! I was right! I knew you'd outrank me if you were Imperial!" He's ecstatic, trembling in place, and his gaze keeps flicking off to the side.

"I'm still not Imperial," you remind him gently. "You're not anymore either."

"Don't care, you're still my Master."

"I suppose I'll need you to explain the augments to me then?"

His cheeks flush purple. "Yes, Master," he squeaks. "Only, can we go to our room first? I can bring you some food, just…"

"All right then." You take the genesuit and bracelet that he offers you, sliding the latter onto your wrist, then hold his hand for the warp out of the gene lab. "What's on the menu?"

"Anything you want. Kurogiri is learning food from America this month, but we can order something if you don't like that."

"Hm… Pancakes with sausages and eggs sounds nice, actually."

Air twists around you, then your feet are on a familiar rug. Your bedroom has been set up quite well while you were out. The basic furniture was already there, you didn't go into the tank the day you arrived, but before it was bare dark metal and a haphazard jumble of boxes and furniture, the bed sitting alone in the inner room of the small suite Kurogiri gave you. Tomura managed to assemble your bedroom almost the same as how it was in your apartment, although the open hanger bar has been replaced with a closed wardrobe and there's a desk built into the wall by the door that leads to the living room. You can see your couch and coffee table through there, along with several new rugs. Another door, this one closed, has your bathrobe hanging next to it. All of the furniture is anchored in place with magnets.

"I'll go get your food," Tomura says. He gives you a lingering stare, then warps out.

You take the opportunity to turn on your new wrist terminal. You understand how Tomura always controlled his without touching it now. You don't quite have a HUD, but you can see the text in your mind's eye, going through the setup menus and everything. This one has already been jailbroken, going by the notes you can see from Himi, the main hacker and programmer of the family (the money that went into furnishing the station was her doing, apparently she found abandoned bank accounts and siphoned funds from them or something). Under the warp utilities, there's another note from Atsu, explaining that he's already calibrated the inbuilt transceiver for 'delicate work.' A smartphone emulator contains everything from your somewhat battered Huawei, with a message from Tomura in the note app. Several messages, actually. He wrote a whole diary in your phone over the last three months.

You pick up your hairbrush from the dresser, careful not to look in the mirror — you don't want to deprive him of his explanations — and start working it through your hair while you read. It's surprisingly clean, measurably longer than you remember, and a rich indigo color that contains enough scattered strands of navy, sky blue, plum, and lavender to make it look as natural as it now is. He writes about the renovations, and about how Spinner ran himself ragged trying to explain the details that Tomura never figured out. He writes about how his siblings are so much more annoying now that he knows they are siblings, when they were plenty annoying to start with. He writes about the games he's collected, and what Himi did when she discovered Minecraft and its modding community. He writes about Kurogiri's adventures in cooking, and Jin's mishaps with wiring the station for human appliances, and the three live (stray) cats that Atsu stole on a whim, and the way Dabi started deafening everyone as soon as he discovered loud music, and Magne's fascination with Ancient Rome. But mostly he writes about how much he misses you. He pines. He misses your presence, hearing you speak and having your body heat next to him while he sleeps. He misses you touching him, misses you telling him how to touch you or when to touch himself. He uses his hands, uses the toys — tells you about the new ones he bought — but it's not the same. He writes about the dreams he has, the porn he tried watching and the ideas it gave him to try.

You pull your hair into a loose braid once the tangles are worked out, then go to look at the things strewn across the desk. There's a large bottle of lube, the biggest that your preferred brand comes in as far as you know, half-empty, and a jar of what looks like oversized softgel capsules next to a plastic lube injector. He's been inventing.

You've just finished reading when he comes back with the tray. Four sausage links, three pancakes, and two fried eggs, with butter and maple syrup on the side. He sets it down on the table, disappears again, and returns after three seconds with tea in one hand and an English muffin in the other. Only once the tea is on the table next to the tray does he look at what has your attention and turn bright red.

"I… made… something useful?" he tries to explain.

You raise an eyebrow. "I saw that. It's safe, right?"

"Y-yes? The shell is the same, it just melts at internal body temperature… Liquids have to be contained to be warped…"

"Have you been that bored without me, sweet boy?"

"Not bored, Master. Lonely without you," he says plaintively. Then his eyes drift over your shoulder again and he swallows. There's a solid tent at the front of his pants.

"Did you test them?"

"I did! I even bought things for it! It's not the same!"

You sit down at the table and pick up your fork. "Eat your sandwich, then go get cleaned up," you order.

He barely takes the time to chew the first three bites, and you have to tell him to slow down before he chokes. Then he disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back, you point to the floor beside you and he promptly kneels at your feet, looking happier already.

You eat slowly, then wash it down with tea and take the tray into the living room — there's a tiny kitchenette in the corner, hot water dispenser, hot plate, and microwave next to a sink recessed into the wall — then you return to the bedroom where Tomura is still waiting by your chair.

"All right, sweet boy. Stand up and come tell me what's special about my new body."

He jumps to his feet and turns you toward the mirror. Your skin is a deep purplish gray, in keeping with your new hair color, with flat pads on your palms, fingertips, and you suspect your feet as well. Your eyes have turned a bright, luminous gold, although the color isn't solid — you still have discernible irises, which are the only truly glowing part, while the whites are a much paler shade, and your pupils have eyeshine like a cat. Your ears aren't much longer than they were, but they're pointed.

You're taller now, at least as tall as him, although you're not sure how much of that is from your heels not being quite on the floor and your shins being straighter. Not human-straight, but not the pseudo-digitigrade arch that most of his family has either.

The most drastic change, however, is the extra limbs. Examining your memories, you weren't using your hands to wring out your hair when the tank drained. Although 'limb' might be a stretch in most cases. Wrapped neatly around each arm like a ribbon is an appendage that your memory whispers is called a secondary tendril, growing from your back just above the shoulder blade and halfway out from your spine. They're currently mostly flat, but when you flex the end of the left one where it rests on the back of your hand, it narrows and thickens to about the size of your thumb. There's a second pair, slightly thicker, anchored to your lower back just above your hips and wrapped around your legs.

Of Tomura and his siblings, only Dabi has secondary tendrils, and then only the upper pair. Himi's three pairs of feeding tendrils are similar, but not the same.

But what keeps stealing Tomura's attention is the tail. All of the station-dwellers have one, the men's being relatively short and tipped with fur. Yours, like Himi and Magne's, is twice as long, smooth-skinned, with the bone structure tapering out in favor of purely muscular articulation partway down.

Tomura gamely forces himself to focus, explaining your new sensory range — you can hear higher pitches now, and can see better in the dark — and how the secondary tendrils are stronger than they look — they should be able to lift the weight of a grown adult, and will hit like a whip but the impact will sting if you don't curl the tips right, because there are as many nerve endings as a fingertip on one side. Only once he's done telling you how dexterous secondary tendrils are does he move on to the tail, at which point he begs permission to touch you.

As soon as you grant it, he turns into a flushing, stuttering mess. "D-do you remember, I-I mean I did tell you, ri-ight? That Eshai are, that we can— H-how we're supposed to be able to breed with a-anyone?"

You nod, winding a secondary tendril around his ponytail and tugging gently. "Yes?"

"B-but I didn't say— I didn't explain how it works f-for females?"

"No, you didn't."

"Aaand I didn't say, I mean you only asked about Eshai, but it's not just Eshai, it can't be because of how we're born, I mean how our parents work, it's actually other castes too, not everyone but some, especially the more engineered subspecies, and—"

"Tomura."

He stops. "Yes, Master."

"I understand where you're going, sweet boy. Tell me how it works. Show me."

He squirms, rubbing his knees together, and explains how the gonads are at the base of the tail, protected by vertebral protrusions like snake ribs. He points out the blood vessels running toward the tip. Then, fingertip hovering a millimeter off your skin, he points out the seam running the last several centimeters of the underside, and the thumbprint-sized spot at the upper end of the seam where the texture looks slightly different.

"You saw how my sisters wear a band around their tails, right?"

You nod.

"That's because… Can I? Please?" He stares at you, wide-eyed and hopeful.

You run the pad of your tendril along the top edge of his ear. "You have permission."

He shudders. Whines softly. Then he presses the softest kiss to the textured spot.

Taglist: @addicted2tomura @fr3shc1trusfru1t