#why be a parasite for one creature when you can live in two at different life cycle stages

[secretlysweetmonsters]

Let me tell you something

the endless flow of time for little woims

[space-emperor]

It’s kind of funny to me that the Djesh started as an afterthought/side joke that didn’t feature largely in the plot but have absolutely become the most interesting part of the story to me.

They’re big old parasitic xenomorph-lookin space bug women, right? They do not have a binary sex—only a select few choose to metamorpihize into a reproductively mature imago, while the others remain infertile neonates for their entire lives. Functionally they are all hermaphroditic and can reproduce sexually or asexually depending on environmental pressures. But also: they’re all women. As far as they’re concerned, so is everyone else.

Their closest concept to gender is relational:

A mother is anyone who creates with her body. This could be a literal gestational mother who lays eggs, fertilizes, or gives birth, but it can also mean a creature or person serving as host to the parasitic larvae. A mother in this sense is typically a final, fatal role immediately preceding death.

The Djesh do not distinguish between “mother” and “aunt” but for translation purposes it’s easier to explain with different terms. An aunt is a type of parent who participates in the rearing of young. If a mother or host survives and helps to raise a child, it counts as an aunt-parent. An aunt’s role is to teach and protect and to transmit stories from one generation to the next. An ideal Djesh family consists of many aunts raising young communally—possibly dozens. A family with too few aunts is considered deeply taboo in a way that’s comparable to incest. A Djesh encountering a two-parent nuclear human family for the first time would be horrified and disturbed and have trouble accepting that an intelligent species would reproduce like animals.

A sister is any independent adult who is not actively occupying a parental role. An aunt will revert to sister when her young reach adulthood. An aunt who abandons her role before then is committing a grave taboo—if a Djesh encounters a human who has been deployed on a military or scientific endeavor and left children at home, she will be repulsed and disturbed and potentially hostile.

A daughter is anyone, specifically a child, dependent upon a caregiver. I haven’t made up my mind yet on how this intersects with Djesh conceptions of disability but it’s something I may want to explore.

A Djesh will continue to molt and grow indefinitely. It’s possible that they have the technical capacity for immortality, with no set upper limit. They can regenerate limbs with each molt of their skeletons. As they age, however, the time between each molt grows longer, and the process becomes more difficult and perilous. Because this molting process functions as the only natural limitation on lifespan, there is a taboo against interfering. To succumb to the temptation to help a loved one with a bad molt that would otherwise kill them is to curse them and is a kind of spiritual betrayal… it’s very evil and very, very romantic. The idea of it is horrifying and tragic but they also eat that shit up like it’s Shakespeare.

Most importantly, of course, the Djesh are biologically dependent upon stories. They cannot be Djesh without them. You could incubate and hatch a Djesh egg in a laboratory and provide the larva with all the nutrients it required, but unless you (and, ideally, your entire team) spent time constantly telling it stories, it would never grow into a Djesh. It would survive, sure, but it would take the form of a weird gelatinous animal. This is why Djesh familial units consist of many aunts: the stories and narratives they pass on give Djesh children physical form and act as genetic information more substantially than whatever they inherit biologically. The more stories, the more diverse and robust their DNA-analogue. This is why most Djesh remain neonates and die infertile—they are able to reproduce more effectively by passing down stories than by producing/fertilizing eggs.

Turantirok is sometimes described as the Djesh “religion”. And it is, but only sort of—different populations may have different mythologies and beliefs, but turantirok is better defined as the cosmic force that drives narrative. To other species, Djesh may seem to behave erratically and seemingly act against their own interests. Even those few who manage to get around the language barrier struggle to understand the Djesh, and they are broadly regarded by other species as dangerously insane. In reality, Djesh have an innate instinct for turantirok—they will act according to whatever they believe best furthers a cosmic narrative, up to and including self-destruction. This was an evolutionary adaptation to pass on better stories to their descendants, but now that their planet is incorporated into a galactic civilization, turantirok may be an existential threat.

[ashedink]

A Vulture In Therapy

It’s Never Been About Death (But It Is All I Think About)

-

The hospital was like a labyrinth. I remember having an anxiety attack the first time I went to inpatient therapy here, and the nurses who were talking to me were absolutely useless. They sent me to the wrong floor and were really pushy and suffocating even as I was starting to twitch and cry and hyperventilate.

Now I wore the same sticker tag every day and knew the route. Why did it require two different elevators to get to this floor? I have no clue. I didn’t build it.

My therapist and psychiatrist both wanted me to attend inpatient therapy, saying that it might help me develop some healthier coping strategies, and determine if further treatment would be worth pursuing. I think they were worried about how my suggestion for treatment overlapped with my obsession with death. People get concerned when I talk about how often I think about death. I have to reassure people over and over again that I don’t want to die. It’s a macabre and spiritual fascination. The historical, chemical, spiritual, emotional, and biological process fascinate me. Everything dies. It's one thing all of us animals of planet earth truly have in common.

And death feeds life. That has been the case almost since life has been.

Today was my next to last day. It helped to see other people who were struggling like me, especially when we helped each other with wisdom for our own lives. I made some friends I would never see again. I shared some good moments and some uncomfortable ones. Today was going to show them this other side of me, though.

Today we also ended up, intentionally or otherwise, with death as the main topic of discussion.

When you live in the south it’s hard to find anything that is secular. Even things explicitly said to be secular make sure that there is all the space for religious talk that people could possibly want. I mean I suppose it’s fair, we were talking about death and many people process death through religion.

Still, people kept trying to include me specifically in their religious talk, so when it was my time to speak…

Well…

“I’m not a religious person.”

Several people’s faces got awkward as they realized they had been trying to rope what they assumed was the only atheist in the zipcode into their church talk.

“I am spiritual though. I think about death a lot. I never learned how to mourn correctly. My family tried to hide death from me. I was never allowed to feel or express negative emotions, so even when someone died, I didn’t know how to cry anymore. I would just go numb. Besides, other people around me needed me, and I have a chronic need to be there for other people when they need me. I am a person who can reschedule grief. A month or two months or three would pass and then suddenly that grief would come knocking. My grandmother passed last year. It took me two months of time and three solid days alone to break down and cry.”

I tastefully edited out that the bourbon helped too, because two of the people there were recovering alcoholics.

“To me, the vulture is a sacred animal.”

I held up the painting I’d worked on during art therapy. It was of a swarm of black birds ascending into the sky. I know it looked grim and ominous to other people, but as I talked I could see them begin to understand.

“It doesn’t waste. I love scavengers in general. Creatures that take up the unwanted or lost. I see vultures and I see the grim cleaners of the world. Many people don’t see the value of the scavenger, but we’re far better off with them in it than without. Did you know that in areas with low vulture populations, rabies is more common? This is because without flocks of vultures to break down carcasses quickly, they are instead visited by feral dogs, coyotes, foxes, racoons, and many other mostly mammalian opportunist. This makes carcasses a disease vector. Parasites and disease can spread from conflicts over a carcass,” I realized I was beginning to overshare one of my hyperfixations. Time to wrap it up. “They rarely kill. They consume the rotten and undesirable. They prevent disease. I love seeing them because to me they are not just symbols of death, they’re life. There is no real death here, only the cycle of life reusing its building blocks to make more life. I don’t want to be embalmed when I die. I want to be put in the earth to rot, that way the molecules that make up my body can be where they belong. Everywhere. Death as a continuation of life. Everything that consumes me, I will be.”

I was used to creeping people out. The room was quiet for a bit, digesting the condensed documentary I had just unloaded on them, punctuated with my funeral plans.

What do you see when you look at me? I don’t look like a monster, not until you interact with me. My way of talking has never been quite human. I am physically the human animal. I don’t like that many humans don’t see themselves as animals. We are. We’ve tricked ourselves into thinking we aren’t, that we are something separated from the animals and plants and dirt, and that’s not healthy.

So I refuse to act. It unsettles people.

I am an animal of the dirt and sky and rain.

I just happen to wear human skin.

The conversation moved on.

The day’s session came to a close.

There was a new respect for vultures in that room. I walked away feeling lighter in mind and body. I stood on the 3rd floor of the parking garage and looked out over the streets.

I opened discord on my phone and scrolled back through a conversation with a friend.

-

tigergirltail - 06/06/2024 9:50 AM

Maybe wanting to be a therian is a symptom of being a therian. It didn't occur to me until last night that wanting to have the dreams was a sign.

ashedink 06/06/2024 9:51 AM

That’s a good point.

Kinda like how some people figure out they’re trans, not because of a presence of gender dysphoria, but by the absence of gender euphoria.

tigergirltail - 06/06/2024 9:55 AM

Wanting it is that first symptom.

Yeah, literally how I awakened.

-

We’ve been friends for so long, and we’re still finding new bridges to cross together.

Maybe I will follow you over this one too, if my therapist is satisfied with how inpatient therapy went.

Is it arrogant to try to become that which I hold in such high spiritual regard? Maybe that’s just human greed want it. There is no dysphoria here, I simply exist as I am regardless of my vessel.

But maybe I should try it. Maybe euphoria is waiting for me in an unexpected shape.

I mean, I’ll be an animal either way.

Maybe I'll be a happy animal.

[sleepyfan-blog]

First Mer-Introductions

Author’s note: Thank you to @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan for allowing me to borrow Jophiel and thank you to @egrets-not-regrets for letting me borrow Erriox, Mara and Lenora! First. Previous. Next

tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @the-pure-angel @whorety-k @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan

Warnings: mild panic, poor coping mechanisms

Summary: Jophiel talks Cedric into meeting his mom and not-dad. 

"They are both really kind and good to me. And I've spoken to both of them about each of you. They want to meet you." Jophiel cajoles, a small and hopeful smile on the young Librarian's eyes as he peers hopefully at his brother-cousin.

Cedric sighs a little, shifting a bit as he looks briefly over at Jophiel, before returning to the task of grinding together the ingredients he had foraged. The two of them were sitting on a beach, their tails regularly awash with the waves as he ground together the components of a medical paste that helped wounds to heal properly, while also keeping potential illness and parasites away from the wound in question. "Harpies are often quite wary of Astartes, and for good reason. I am glad that you have found a family, but..." He sighs a little, shaking his head a little "Historically, Sons of Dorn and Sons of Perturabo have very rarely gotten along, even before The Heresy. I don't... I don't want to cause friction between you and the Firstborn Cousin who's... Who you've become close to." He didn't want to make Jophiel choose between himself and this Erriox. The presence of the older mer in Jophiel's life was a markedly positive one - and it did help soothe his worries that the other was a Loyalist. 

Things were very different here on Ancient Terra, but Cedric could not bring himself to even try and begin to extend trust to the treacherous heretics. The thought of willingly cooperating with them for longer than was absolutely necessary made his blood boil and he could practically hear the way that his mentor would bellow at him for being so foolish and naive. Moments before the fiery and stubborn older Apothecary charged whichever Chaotic fool was watching Cedric get scolded for being a foolish pup and stabbed until they either died or fled for their own safety. 

Jophiel watched him with Big, Sad Red eyes, his lower lip wobbling a little as the other swum closer to Cedric "Please... At least meet them once? If it goes badly, I won't try and press you to go again. I can arrange for you to meet mama first, even! Older Brother Erriox frequently goes on Hunts, and I'm sure that mother would understand why you would feel a bit uncertain meeting her in their nest! Ooooh, I could take you to where the Gannet Aunties are! They're the ones who showed me how to use my wings properly in the water, and the ones who helped me create this lovely pattern on my wings." The young Primaris Blood Angel explained, shifting a little to show off his osprey-pattern painted wings. 

Cedric really was glad that Jophiel had finally been able to not just reconcile with the fact that he had been gifted wings like the Holy Primarch Sanguinius, but that his wings were in fact a gift. A blessing, and not a curse or a shameful secret to hide. But the idea of being around even more strangers to him who were very important to one of his brother-cousins was... Incredibly stressful. While he wasn't the most awkward son of Dorn... Cedric was keenly aware of the reputation that the wild populations of his firstborn brothers had cultivated when one heard that there was a Black Templar Astartes mer nearby. He ducks his head a little and asks "They... They won't mind that I am a Black Templar?" While none of the mortal humans had been attacked by the Black Templars with lethal intent - at least not with the Templars inciting the incident once the Realization had come that they were on Ancient and Holy Terra... The magical creatures who lived alongside the humans, and especially the harpies and other kinds of magical creatures who were known to be hunters of humans... Were not given the same sorts of distant protection and reverence, despite also being natives to Holy Terra as well. 

Jophiel paused for a moment, clearly considering his question and the implications he meant by it "Well... No! Of course not. Not unless you try to attack them first for some reason. They know better than to assume all astartes of one chapter are the same, of course. Also..." The young Librarian gestured to Cedric "You don't... Exactly look like a standard Black Templar."

"That's because I'm an Apothecary, Jophiel. All Apothecaries have our primary colorations fade to white during the training into becoming Apothecaries, with the occasional bit of original coloration left to identify which chapter or legion we belong to. It's something that happens to all Apothecaries. Just like how all Chaplains primary colorations shift into black or a near-black color with only hints of other colors to identify which chapter or legion they belong to. It's how the Emperor created us to be." Cedric points out with a sigh, shaking his head a little. He flicked his almost snow-white and black striped tail deliberately, splashing his brother-cousin as he finished grinding the ingredients into paste. 

Jophiel squawked and splashed him back, careful to aim so that the water wouldn't accidentally splash into the mortar and pestle Cedric was using and ruining the batch of wound-binding poultice he was creating. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Sooo are you gonna meet mama and older brother Erriox or not?"

Cedric sighed, pausing in his task to check to see if the poultice was at the correct consistency by smearing it a little around the sides of the mortal, rolling his wrist and getting back to grinding it into a finer paste "If I say yes and do my best to make a good first impression, will you stop begging me? When did you want me to meet them?" He'd rather meet them one at a time, but he suspected if Jophiel was truthful about his gene-lineage, the Iron Warrior would insist on meeting him first, or alongside his mate, as was his right. Not that Cedric intended someone who made Jophiel so happy and clearly loved him and cared for him harm. But ancient grudges were not something easily overcome. He'd need to make a proper greeting gift, but what?

Any sort of medical poultice or potion could be seen as an implied threat - that one or both of them might need what he was giving them. A gift of food could be seen as an insult to Erriox's - or Lenora's for that matter - ability to hunt and forage food for themselves. Nest building materials would be presumptuous and a possible implied threat as well. Shells might work? Especially if he checked to make sure that there wasn't anything living within them first. That had been a surprise that could have ended poorly, but Geoducks were delicious, especially once roasted and wrapped in sea asparagus.

"As soon as possible! I'll go ask mama when and where she'd like to meet you! Don't worry, I'll remind her that you're kind of shy." Jophiel reassured Cedric before swimming off excitedly, diving off into the waves.

"I AM NOT SHY! HOW DARE YOU?!" Cedric spluttered at the top of his lungs, sulking at the very notion. He was cautious, not shy!

~

Three days later and after hours of carefully going through his stash of pretty rocks and neat looking shells, he had settled on a small handful of each to offer Jophiel's adoptive mother and Firstborn Older Brother, should things go well. Jophiel had told him that he was going to be meeting both of them along the shoreline near where the Gannet Harpy flock who Jophie referred to as Aunties were roosting, as a more neutral spot then Cedric being led to where the two of them made their nest. Which Cedric felt was an entirely fair and reasonable thing to do, despite the unhappy pout on the Blood Angel's face as he had told Cedric this. 

Cedric swum up to the designated strip of shoreline near Gannet Rock and activated his ability to swim through the air, which was a more elegant way of being able to move, rather than dragging his tail behind him as he pulled himself out of the serf by his arms. He hummed quietly to himself as he fidgeted a little with the two pouches he had brought along with him. If he had put the rocks and shells together, the rocks would break the softer shells into a fine powder which could be used in a number of useful applications that included but were not limited to increasing the amount of calcium in a dish, but was not what Cedric had intended the shells for. The young Astartes was keenly aware that he had arrived early to the spot that Jophiel had promised that he would meet Miss Lenora and Cousin Erriox. Cedric had been tempted to call the meeting off... But he was a Black Templar, damn it. He would face this trial head on, and hope that it went well. 

"Good afternoon, Astartes." Called out an older feminine voice from above and behind Cedric.

This caused the young Black Templar to startle as he twisted around to see who was addressing him. She appeared to be an older Gannet harpy, from the lines on her face and the faded colorations on her wings. "Y-Yes?" Cedric called out, uncertain as to why she was addressing him. 

"Is there a particular reason why you are lingering on this strip of beach, so near where my family roosts?" The elder Gannet harpy asked bluntly, looking him over. Cedric had been brought to Ancient Terra without his armor or weapons and hadn't brought any of the makeshift weapons he had created while on Ancient Terra with him to this meeting. 

"Uhm... I'm supposed to be meeting a couple of beings here? Per the request of one of my brother-cousins. Jophie said that it was fine..." Cedric explained, feeling horribly uncertain now. This was the correct day, if not quite the right time, yes? And Cedric was fairly sure he was at or near the correct spot. 

"You know young Jophiel?" The elderly Gannet Harpy pressed, her eyes widening a little as she looked him over more assessingly "I've never seen an Astartes with this much white in their scales. Which pod do you belong to?"

Cedric squirmed a little from where he sat in the surf. "I... Ah... Haven't really joined up with one of the established Astartes Pods after arriving on Ancient Terra, actually. Though I do have some contact with a couple of my firstborn brothers!" Not that brother Roland or Brother Arnault knew that. He was pretty sure one or both of them would scold him for it. "But that doesn't mean I'm not part of a pod! I'm with a group of five of my fellow primaris brother-cousins! As far as any of can tell, I was the first to be brought to Ancient Terra, and I've been the one who found the others, usually. Though Claude did find Catius, I think." 

"I see. Is there a reason why you haven't sought out an established pod of Astartes?" She inquired, looking him over again, a small frown appearing on her face "Are you perhaps concerned about the reaction that your coloration would provoke in your firstborn brothers?" 

Was she... Was she referencing the fact that Jophiel had been - and to a lesser extent still was - wary about approaching firstborn Blood Angels and their descendant chapters because of his wings? Oh dear... "I... Ah. Though my primarily white coloration does mean something specific among Astartes, it's unlikely that I would get a bad reaction, if I was spotted by a group of Firstborn brothers... Though they would probably chase me down and try to catch me if they spotted me. My specialization is fairly rare, haha... Though not quite as rare as say, Ramiel's or Jophiel's." 

"Specalization? I had not known that Astartes coloration denoted specialization. Would you care to explain?" Mara pressed, floating a little bit closer to Cedric as she asked. 

"Oh, uhm sure. Jophiel's hood denotes him as a Librarian - a magic user. Most fully trained librarians also either carry a staff or a long-handled primary weapon as well. Ramiel's mostly black coloration and the skull-mask of his helm denotes him as a Chaplain. Specifically a Justicar, which is a Primaris Chaplain-in-training. My primarily white coloration marks me as an apothecary. A healer." Cedric explained "If you're curious about Jophie's wings... They're a rare expression of his gene-seed. A rare and precious gift, although it's been difficult to get Jophiel to accept that. You have my deepest gratitude and eternal thanks in getting him to fully accept himself as he is." He hasn't had to treat Jophiel for accidental injuries to his wings in months. A fact that he attributed to both Miss Lenora and the Gannet Harpies helping him become more comfortable in his skin and wings. 

"Fascinating, I hadn't known that... You didn't answer my question when I asked why you were avoiding joining your older brothers in a pod. Is there a reason why?" The older Gannet harpy pressed, her eyes narrowing a little.

Cedric cringed a little. He had many reasons why he didn't want to formally join a Black Templar pod. Many of them were cowardly in nature...Besides... Neither Brother Arnault nor Brother Roland were part of a proper Astartes pod and they seemed fine! They were both really happy with their bonded humans and seemed to at least tolerate his and the other primaris brother-cousins presences well enough. "I come from a particularly migratory chapter, ma'am. Trying to find a pod of them on this world without proper communication equipment would be really difficult." Which is the easiest answer he has. He really hopes that she doesn't notice the way that he's shaking at the thought of joining a Black Templar pod... It's possible he could join an Imperial Fist pod, but they would immediately clock him as a Black Templar, and would likely arrange for him to meet with Firstborn Black Templars and he... Cowardly though it was, had no desire to meet any Leading Black Templars right now. 

Besides... Cedric also nursed the hope that the other Primaris Black Templars who had been killed for the crime of existing while their Firstborn Brothers were angry and could take their temper out on them would be sent to Holy Terra in this time as well. That he would be able to save them, as he hadn't been able to in the 42nd century. But being able to do so hinged on him not being monitored and potentially stopped by nosy older brothers when he received the distress call.  "Am I not allowed to try and figure out who I want to be, without the pressures of my firstborn brothers pressuring me into the mould they want me to be? Being brought to Ancient and Holy Terra has allowed me opportunities to help my fellow Primaris brothers I hadn't been able to have back where I taken from." He couldn't quite look her in the eyes as he said this, but his chin was tilted upwards in defiance. His entire body was shaking a little with the effort, but... But he was trying, damn it! He hoped she would accept this answer and back off.

The elder Gannet Harpy hummed in response to that, seemingly accepting his words. "Very well. Lenora and Erriox should be arriving soon. Have a good day, young one." With that she took off in a flurry of movement and shifting feathers. 

~

True to her prediction, it did not take long after Lady Mara left for Cedric to spot an Osprey harpy flying towards him. Cedric squashed the instinctual desire to shift into a defensive posture, perhaps grab several of the nearby rocks to arm himself for a fight. From the descriptions that Jophiel had given him, the Osprey harpy circling into land was Jophiel's adopted mother - and sure enough, Cedric saw the large venomfin emerge from the waters. He suppressed the desire to arm himself as the firstborn astartes approached him. He cleared his throat a little before calling out "Greetings, Cousin. Greetings Miss Lenora." He placed his hands in his lap, doing his best to keep them relaxed, a visible show that he wasn't armed and wasn't reaching for a weapon.

The Firstborn Astartes called out "So you're Cedric, huh? Where's your squad, Scout?"

"... The chapter I am from don't have Scouts. We have aspirants and neophytes who are then taken as apprentices as older brothers, though we are sorted into squads for missions based on ability, specialization if any, and mentor preference." Cedric responded back, pouting a little in the older Astartes' direction. "I am the only one here, as far as I know." He technically did have a squad! He even had a fellow Primaris Black Templar! Not that he was going to tell the Iron Warrior that. But the others were off on their own missions and far from here."

"Hmmm...." The Older astartes rumbled, looking him over carefully "I'm surprised that your pod let you out without a minder, little Apothecary."

"I'm not little!" Cedric huffed, barely able to restrain himself from pouting more or sticking his tongue out at the older Astartes, as that would be far too immature and childish of him. Even if part of him was tempted to do something so ridiculous. "I'm larger than you are."

"Maybe in terms of bulk, but you're young. That I can tell, also from the stories that Jophiel has told us about you. You're Cedric, correct?" Cousin Erriox asked, looking him over carefully "You certainly look the part of a young apothecary."

"... Of course I am young? I am a Primaris Marine. What else would I be? As far as I know, no one has been taken from much further in time than I and my fellow Primaris brothers, and we have only recently been sent to our firstborn brothers to aid in... Things." Cedric responded, catching himself as miss Lenora landed. It was part of The Rules not to talk too much about Where You Were From while around the natives to Holy Terra of this timeline, for fear of doing irreparable damage to the timeline.

"Erriox please stop teasing the fledgling, he hasn't done anything to antagonize you." Miss Lenora called out as she landed gracefully on the sand, walking her way over to where the two large mer were sitting, sending a censuring stare the Iron Warrior's way. 

Erriox grumbled wordlessly for a moment before huffing out "Jophiel neglected to mention that any of the Primaris Marines he'd found here on Ancient Terra were sons of Dorn. Though, you're surprisingly not-shouty for a Black Templar."

Cedric hunched in on himself a little, biting back the first response that came to mind. He didn't want to cause friction between Jophiel and his adoptive parent and older brother, so he would do his best to be Polite and deliberately chose his words as carefully as he could manage, despite the irritation prickling at him "Would you rather I have charged you, calling you a heretic while trying to tear you apart with my bare hands?" He was aiming for dry sarcasm, and hoped that he managed it. 

"Hah. I am a loyalist, which I am certain Jophiel has already told you. Still, I'm surprised that we aren't being menaced by your pod for being this close to one of their not-Scouts." Erriox hummed, a small smile gracing his scarred face. 

"I am here to meet the two of you for the first time. What I do in my spare time as long as I don't deliberately put myself in danger is no concern of my older brothers." Cedric sniffed. Not that he had a proper pod who he belonged to. Nor had he told Brother Arnault nor Brother Roland he was doing this, unsure as to what their reactions would be. He was... Sixty-percent sure that Jophiel had told the two firstborn Templars about Erriox in enough detail for them to know that he was a pre-heresy Iron Warrior, but he couldn't be entirely sure. 

Erriox actually chuckled at that, eyes shining with mirth "I'm sure your older brothers would protest that. You're a handful of mischief, just like Jophiel."

Cedric flinched at that, ducking his head a little, realizing that he had been silently challenging the other by too much direct eye-contact. He couldn't help but grind out a sullen "And?" despite himself.

"That's not a bad thing." Lenora called out, much closer than he'd thought she was moments ago. He shifted to look at her, while keeping Erriox in his field of view. She slowly reached out and ruffled his short white hair "It's wonderful to meet one of the brothers who Jophiel has spoken so much about. He loves you all very much."

"And I know I speak for the others when I say that we all love him very much. Jophiel was decanted a couple of weeks after we were. Despite protesting that it doesn't make much of a difference, it really does." Cedric hummed, a small smile appearing on his face. They did occasionally tease Jophie about being the youngest of their group, but he made it so easy sometimes. He froze when he felt her touch, his eyes going wide as he tried to process the gentle touch being given to him by someone who wasn't a fellow Primaris Marine.

"Who was decanted first?" Lenora asked, stumbling over the word a little, sending an unreadable look at Erriox who shrugged in response. 

Cedric didn't immediately answer, the warmth of her hand and the light, pleasant scratchy feeling of her claws on his head had completely derailed whatever he was going to say. He was keeping very, very still as he tried to figure out whether or not he was enjoying himself or he was going to try to figure out how to politely ask her to stop touching him right this very minute.

"Mmm, I think you've short-circuited him. Sons of Dorn are stubborn as hell, but give them an unexpected friendly touch and they freeze up. They're not great about expressing or receiving affection. Like at all." Erriox, the bastard accused him of. 

The young Apothecary made a small sound in the back of his throat. He had attempted to growl at the older marine but had failed miserably. It was somewhere between a purr and a squeak. "We do not! As for your question earlier, Ramiel and I were decanted within minutes of one another. Rami likes to argue he was first, but he's wrong. I was." Cedric answered, attempting for playful confidence... though from the way his voice shook, he'd failed spectacularly. 

"Uh huh." Lenora hummed, smiling as she pet his head again.

Cedric leaned into her touch, a rush of complicated emotions that he was doing his best to Ignore and shove in the Feelings Box in the back of his mind, a whisper-soft purr starting to rumble from his chest. He understood why Jophiel liked Miss Lenora so much. She was warm and kind and just the right kind of stern when the situation called for it. Her scent was soothing as well. If he thought she would let him, he'd curl around her and beg her to keep gently touching him like this. It was so comforting and he was trying to blink back tears. They weren't angry or terrified tears, but they were still stinging his eyes, though he had yet to let them fall. "I am... I'm the oldest of the five of us. Not only in terms of decanting, but in how long we were each in the there and then before being brought here. Catius got lost in the Warp during the Primaris rollout. Calude would have been killed by being crushed to death by a flying tyranid he killed. Jophi... Jophiel won't tell me what happened just before he got sent to Holy Terra. And Ramiel... Ramiel died in my arms years before I was sent here." He desperately hoped that the other Primaris Marines who were killed by the... Capriciousness of their first-born brothers would be or have been sent to Ancient Terra, and that they had survived or would be able to survive with help... Or maybe even on their own. 

"... What the actual fuck did the Mechanicus do to you pups?" Erriox grumbled, a growl low in his chest.

Cedric flinched and shifted so that he was physically between miss Lenora and Erriox. His mind reminded him that the two of them were mates and it was vanishingly unlikely that Jophiel would come to care for and trust the Iron Warrior if he had shown habitual cruelties towards his mate... But long years of experience with firstborn brothers had taught him that that kind of growl coming from one of them always, always meant pain and suffering was sure to follow. Usually immediately.  "Arch Magos Bellisarius Cawl along with his team of mechanicus priests and trainers created and trained us before we were sent off to our chapters, on the orders of the Imperial Regent, once he learned of us. Some of our trainers were Iron Hands, and others were -" Cedric shuddered, keenly aware of the very harsh training methods that the silver and grey astartes whose chapter name was never spoken of. Their power... Their psychic might and viciousness with which they punished any signs of hesitation or weakness. "I don't know what they were called. We were not to speak of them when they weren't present."

"... But none of these trainers are here, in this time?" Lenora asked, one hand still petting his hair, the other drifting down to rub soothing circles into one of his shoulders. 

Cedric gave into the shameful urge to bury his face into her belly, the tremors wracking his body getting more violent "N-no. N-not as far as I know. I haven't seen or heard of any of them. And I would have heard of them, at least by the bloody wake they leave in their path. They... Really... don't like Chaos Marines. Ancient Terra or not, I don't think that any of... Any of them would tolerate the presence of chaos marines on Holy Terra, previous agreements by other loyalists be damned."

"Father's balls I don't want to meet whichever chapter scares a Black Templar this much." Erriox rumbled, sounding much closer to him and miss Lenora than he had been before.  A marine sized hand came to rest on the shoulder that Miss Lenora wasn't massaging. "Ancient Terra is safer than the hell you managed to escape, young one. You're safe here with me and my mate."

"Thank you sir." Cedric mumbled into Lenora's belly, his body slowly stopping trembling. "M'tired all of a sudden."

"Yeah. Lots of high emotion will do that to someone. Especially traumatized Scouts. Rest well, we will guard you." Erriox rumbled, gently squeezing his shoulder in reassurance.

"Thank you, sir." Cedric mumbled again, relaxing into the Harpy's warm touch, sleep pulling him under sweetly.

He could hear them talking as slumber took him, Erriox's voice rumbling. "We should take him to the nest. He'll be more comfortable there, and our other pup will be glad to see one of his chosen brothers there."

"Alright… Please help me carry him? He weighs more than you do."

"Of course, love." A chuckle "He's bigger than I am."

[red-poppies-growing-in-black-ink]

"Alright, this probably won't hold them for long, especially with the grabpack. But it's better than nothing..." You recognize the toy's voice as an exact match for Dogday while he mutters to himself while looking over his handiwork.

Upon noticing you, the off-model dogday lets out a deep, annoyed sigh.

"Great, I thought the tape was longer given all the weird add-on hands..."

Formally Introducing: The persuasion mechanic.

When one world bleeds into another, the resulting ecosystem results in a lot of meshes between the dominant creatures.

As trying to presaude an entity that is incapable of doing so is just wasting time, it's important to learn that each group has it's own levels of sapience, sentience, and willingness to reason with a strange non-toy and non-ink creature that comes from outside the ecosystem like yourself.

Toys: All living toys are made out of human beings and posses human level sapience and sentience. There is exactly one entity inside the toy that you have to persuade and that is the toy itself. But while all toys are *human* that doesn't mean that all of them are easy to persuade. Most of them are children who are both afraid of human adults and untrusting of them, some of them are babies who are incapable of understanding what you are saying to them, and the very few adults and or teens you do find in the fully toy category do have their own things to worry about.

Toons: While toons' sapience and sentience comes from humans, toons are entities made out of Ink and unless the toon in question was made with one specific person in its mix, the Ink used to make toons is a slurry of people molded into a convenient humanoid shape with one toony personality slapped on to be in charge. All humans used to make toons are adults (with a few older teenage exceptions), but convincing Little Sally stuck inside the Candy Cat that you're not going to hurt her could be much easier than convincing the Boris made out of 32 frontal lobes that letting you leave is a good idea.

Tooned Toy: Uh oh! Someone killed a toon and stuffed a toy with it! Luckily for both parties, the resulting hybrid seems to be adjusting well as we can tell by the fact that the toon's features bled out into the toy instead of becoming an inky mess oozing out of the stuffing. But unluckily for you, persuading this creature means that you'll have to persuade *at least* two people.

Toy of a Toon: While there might not be any difference between a toy and a toy of a toon, it's easy to mistake them for toons so you need to be aware they exist so you don't get caught off guard.

Toon of a Toy (Specifically, why they're NOT here): Just because [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] got the Ink Machine to work as intended doesn't mean that [REDACTED PRONOUN] would want to make toons of toys willy nilly. Plus, when you already have living toy versions of the characters, wouldn't making living cartoon versions be redundant?

Inked Toy: Watch out for ink leaking out of a toy's seams or dripping out of eye sockets. A toy can be reasoned with, an inked toy is basically a hollow shell with an inky parasite inside it. Before you dismiss this group as impossible to persuade on the grounds of not having human intelligence, remember that a human can count as a parasite.

Corrupt Toon: A toon that has been opened up, had important parts taken out (and possibly replaced with Junk), and sent back out. You are completely unable to verbally persuade a corrupt toon as most of the time their lobotomies involve the removal of the language processing center of the brain. However, even the most fucked up of corrupt toons understand fire, food, and violence.

Ink Creature: Just like toons, ink creatures are slurries of a bunch of different people in inky bodies. Unlike a toon that is molded into shape and has a personality slapped on, an ink creature is just the raw stuff and most of the time it wears its level of sapience and sentience on its sleeves.

[mooneltwo]

HI I WAS JUST WONDERING HOW LUFFY MET EVERYONE IN THE MERMAID AU

omgg it's pretty funny really! So you should know in this au is kind of set in a modern-ish au, Sea creatures are pretty normal in this world but they're treated differently, because y'know sea and water... Anyways heres the ones I thought out so far: Ace, Sabo and Luffy: So first off! Sabo is a brooding parasite, so he was dropped by the reef Ace was born in!! The two managed to hit off the moment they opened their eyes and considered each other as brothers. Luffy on the other hand was a late hatchling from his mother's clutter of eggs, so he was left alone to be free food for anyone who came by, but fortunately for him Ace and Sabo took pity on him and just considered him as their own (This is the reason why the three of them are different types of merfolk!) Shanks - So It started with young Ace, Sabo, and Luffy being hungry and because they're carnivorous they thought Shanks would be an easy meal, so they sent Sabo to lure in Shanks so they can maul him in the water!! But unfortunately for them Shanks is surprising adept at handling all kinds of mermaids (ESPECIALLY children/guppies) 😔 Coby - Coby was only fishing this time and by mere coincidence he fished up Luffy! He was quite shocked and scared because he accidentally hooked Luffy by his mouth and apologized before letting him free, but Luffy hitched a ride on his boat for awhile (much to Coby's reluctance) Zoro - Zoro is a merfolk being held at a beach that Coby n' Luffy managed to sail to. Zoro wasn't really bothered, mostly annoyed at the fact that he was put on display as a tourist attraction by beach officials and kept in a just a decently sized tank with not much stuff to do. Luffy saw this and broke him out because the tank seemed pretty terrible to stay in. Usopp - in this au Usopp is a mer! but an octopus like merfolk, he's pretty poisonous.. But unluckily for him Luffy is immune to most poisons in the ocean so Luffy tried to chase and eat him before hitting it off with him because Luffy knew Yassop (Usopp and Yassop surprisingly has a pretty decent relationship in this au because Yassop visits him and his mother from time to time!) Law - For some reason I thought about him and his crew being marine biologists and for some funny reason, Luffy swims by them during their scuba diving expeditions and just gets a headache because Luffy and his pod keeps messing around with their job XP

I'll answer this here too! When Ace, Sabo, and Luffy decided to split up and go on their seperate ways, Ace traveled through the oceans and spotted a ship! He thought it was one of those ships that kept merfolk captive because of its sheer size and many people, so he tried to beat them up Ace doesn't really have much of a good experience with humans except for Shanks and his team because while growing up the coral reef him and his brothers lived in was accidentally got bombed by fishermen using unethical fishing methods :( So when Ace saw the net behind Whitebeard's boat he was quite angry because it might accidentally go through a coral reef and break fishes' habitats. But when he did try to assassinate the Whitebeards, they seem to brush Ace off easily making him pretty mad. But then Ace finds out the Whitebeards actually clean up oceans and seas he starts to feel embarrassed and ashamed because he was accusing them of bad stuff and even cussed them out. But he did eventually manage to apologize and warm up to them!! The Whitebeards have a few merfolks on board! They're not held captive or anything they just stay around there and hang out, sometimes helping the team do research about other fish species and try to keep the ocean clean as possible

[monkeymindscream]

I feel like hopefully stirring up a discussion/inspiring people to share their own thoughts, so have some headcanons I have regarding the Krangs' fucked-up society/biology/etc:

—The Krang as we see them are basically a space-parasite that glommed onto the utrom species. The utrom scientists of yore poked Dimension X too hard (the dimension just past the prison dimension and right before the nothingness that sits at the center of all realities), and accidentally unleashed the eldritch horrors that existed within. i.e. The aforementioned parasites. The utrom ended up being completely overtaken, cordyceps-and-ants style, and countless lives across the galaxy were destroyed as a result of them not leaving well enough alone. Nice work, ya chucklefucks.

—Krang morality is… weird. They do understand there’s a separation between right and wrong, and as a group they tend to try to stick to the “right” side of the equation. And despite being just a shade away from being a hivemind, they can even have individual moral codes about what they personally view as acceptable and reprehensible.

It’s just that unfortunately, their definition of “right vs. wrong” is very different from the rest of the universe. That whole “we’re stronger which means we know better than everyone else” mentality.

—They genuinely think they’re helping when they assimilate planets. Uno wasn’t spouting bullshit when he declared “I am saving this WEAK planet!” Because, really, why would he bother to bullshit at that point? He’d thought his victory was assured, and that Leo would either die at Raph’s hand or be beaten down enough to get krangified himself. Why bother making that statement if he didn’t 100% believe it?

As far as the Krang see it, they are the strongest beings in existence. Only the strong deserve to live. By assimilating other lifeforms, they’re gifting them the strength of the Krang, essentially granting them the right to life. There’s a reason Uno described their goals as a “crusade.” If any other Krang had been around to hear him say he was “saving” earth, they’d have agreed wholeheartedly.

(The “I am a gift!” –line would’ve elicited some eyerolls, though. Not that he’d have cared – as far as he’s concerned he’s just stating the facts, but anyway.)

—What we saw of Earth’s invasion – both in the snippet of the future and present-day events – was far, far more violent and cruel than how Krang invasions typically go. (Example: At one point Casey mentions a “Krang labor camp.” Which, considering they have the ability to krangify whoever/WHATever they want, the Krang shouldn’t logically have a need for a labor camp. They made one anyway.) This is for two reasons:

First, there were only three true Krang doing the invading. We see mechsuits marching around in the future, sure, but we don’t actually see any Krang inside them. This is because it’s just empty tech the sibs built to enforce their will/probably just to deal with the tech Donnie built to combat them. Since the sibs couldn’t rely on numbers to take out their enemies cleanly, they had to utilize brute-force and make things messy.

Second, Uno says, and I quote: “The people of this planet will pay for what they’ve done to me.” The assimilation of earth was personal. He (+his siblings, I can only imagine) were fucking pissed, and putting the hurt on the creatures who took down his entire species was just as much the goal as conquering them was.

—Absolutely none of the chemicals that help determine humans’ emotions can be found in any of the Krang. As such, certain earthling emotional responses are literally beyond their comprehension when they’re functioning how they’re supposed to. They don’t feel anxiety, for example. They can feel fear, but there needs to be immediate danger present for them to get to that point. Which, considering their whole “strength is the end-all-be-all; the weak can get fucked” mentality, isn’t exactly something they would openly indulge in anyway, but you get it. In fact, most emotional responses besides all-out rage are considered the Krang equivalent of going clinically insane in their society. 

(Like with humans who’ve been driven insane, these responses are usually brought on by trauma.)

—Bouncing off of this, they’re mostly incapable of feeling empathy or compassion. Not entirely, granted, but it’s essentially only towards members of the little packs they’ll form amongst themselves, and even then there’s limits. Frankly, if they start to exhibit too much of either, they’d be placed into the same “insane” classification above. Too much empathy/compassion will inevitably endanger the Krangs’ collective mission, so more often than not offenders are put down rather quickly.

Note: I really need to emphasize that instances of the above (Krang feeling empathy or compassion/displaying extreme emotional responses that aren’t rage) are not ever a “ooh this individual from an Always Evil species saw the light and now they’re a good guy!” –situation. Krang who end up like this tend to be extremely erratic, and not particularly lucid. Their brains are not functioning the way they’re supposed to if they gain access to this spectrum of emotions, and it’s abundantly obvious. When I say these things qualify them as being insane, I mean it. 

—Krang do actually place importance on familial bonds, it’s just that said bonds aren’t usually based on any kind of genetic connection. Krang “siblings,” for example, are overwhelmingly not related in the slightest, and are completely family of choice. The deciding factors between becoming siblings versus just being comrades is that in addition to just being a pragmatic alliance, they actually like each other.

—It’s genetically impossible for Krangs to become inbred or suffer any kind of defects based on the relations of their parents, which plays a part in them not really needing to keep track of who they share genetic material with. (Krang tend to scatter and not really interact with any of their wombmates after being born - think fish or bugs.) Hilariously, though, mating with their chosen siblings is just as much of a taboo for them as sleeping with genetic siblings is for humans. Most would be utterly disgusted at the very suggestion. There is very little in common between human and Krang morality, but that’s one of the few places they overlap.

—Romantic connections are much rarer than the sibling packs they form, but not unheard of. Generally speaking, Krang usually just pair off with the most pragmatic match available during their mating period, and then don’t care if they never see each other again. But it’s perfectly possible for them to form a bond with one partner in particular, integrate them into whatever group they may currently be a part of, and then default to them during the mating period.

(The Krang: The only species where “You’re my default” is actually an incredibly romantic thing to say to your partner.)

—The Krang are hermaphrodites, capable of either inseminating or becoming pregnant depending on the situation. There are differences between males and females, just none involving reproductive organs: Females have heightened reflexes, males have a thicker hide (females have eight layers of skin, males have twelve). Baby Krang, being born fully cognizant (if much smaller and maybe a bit more naive than the adults), need to decide what their sex is the second they pop out, and are then responsible for producing the proper chemicals until they hit puberty to ensure their chosen sex. 

(Note: Attempting to produce all the chemicals to try to get the benefits of both sexes will result in the Krang-equivalent of an autoimmune disease. This is highly unrecommended for this reason.)

—Tying in with the above, Krangs’ collective idea of “gender” boils down to like. Stats basically. Did you opt for speed or durability? Masculinity and femininity are completely foreign (and useless) concepts to them.

—The Krang mating process is a combination of several animals I’ve read about. They all have a hectocotylus tentacle (the middle one on their right sides, if you’re wondering), which one partner will remove and present to the mate they’ve decided will carry the new Krang. The babies gestate (Krang will carry between about 50-70 palm-sized spawn at a time), and then when the time is right the kids will eat their way out of their parent. Krang are a lot spongier than most species, so unless things go horribly wrong they’ll survive giving birth, but it’s every bit as agonizing as you’d expect it to be.

—When mating, it's the Krang who’s deemed the stronger of the pair who gets the privilege of carrying the children, considering how violent the birthing process is. Which like, that’s rough buddy, but eh I mean tradeoff they’re also the only ones who actually get any kind of pleasure from the process? Krangs’ hectocotylus tentacles are numb (and y’know. Not attached to the owners body by that point in the event) so it’s not like the ones donating are having any fun...

—There’s four different kinds of Krang within the species: Makers, Interrogators, Assimilators, and Footsoldiers, all categorized by the unique abilities they do or don’t have. 

Makers are known for their ability to infuse the essence/power of the Krang into things. Think the flawless synchronization the three Krang we see have with their mechsuits, or hell – the Dark Armor. All made by maker-Krang.

Interrogators are characterized by their ability to literally burrow into people’s minds to collect information. We all saw how that worked. 

Assimilators are the ones capturing things in meat vines and turning them into mindless zombies for the Krang cause. They differ from Makers in that, while their control is fairly superficial, all things considered, they can take control of near anything. It’s ultimately irrelevant whether they're controlling a living person or an inanimate object (like a friggin train, as we saw in the movie), but their powers are noticeably more effective on living organisms. Makers, though their connection/control of what they infuse Krang energy to is close to absolute, can only do this with nonliving items. Which then drain the lifeforce/essence/souls of any non-Krang lifeforms who were unfortunate/stupid enough to try to control them.

Footsoldiers are defined by the fact that they don’t have any special abilities. Two’s a Footsoldier, and this is actually why she’s so fuckin feral with “no character development.” It was either prove she was strong by constantly being the craziest motherfucker in the room, or slip down to the bottom of the barrel.

—Despite what you might think based on the clear lines being drawn amongst “types,” there’s no caste system in place. They value strength above all else, which could come from any type. (It’s just that unfortunately for Two, it’s a lot harder for Footsoldiers to prove their strength than the other three.)

—It’s not uncommon for Krang to keep “pets” of some of the species they assimilate. They can grow just as attached to their pets as they would towards any of their siblings/defaults, it’s just that unfortunately everything said pet used to be before getting Krangified tends to get wiped clean. If Leo hadn’t shown up to rescue him, Raph had been on his way to becoming Uno’s new pet.

—Two words: Environmental mimicry.

Prior to being infected by the Krang parasite, utrom were an aquatic species (amphibious technically, but semantics). They had a number of things in common with a variety of earthen cephalopods, octopi in particular. Octopi are really, really good at blending in with their environments, and can do everything from changing color to changing their texture. Utrom had a similar ability. Not so much to blend in with their physical environments, granted (though they could do that too), but blending in with other species. In short, they can shapeshift without a cloaking brooch. 

This is very much a forgotten skill amongst the Krang, or at the very least no living Krang knows of it. Which, yeah, sample size of three, but the point stands. Krang are infinitely more aggressive than utrom were, and as such tend to (literally) tackle problems/adversaries head-on. They’ve had no need to disguise themselves for millennia, so over the years they collectively forgot they even could. Still, it remains something within the scope of their abilities, even if they never make use of it.

—Krang secrete mucus when stressed. Leo refers to the Krang as “slimeballs” in the movie, they're not actually all that slimy. Because looking at it from a biological standpoint, the reason why creatures are “slimy” (think amphibians and worms), is because their skin needs to be wet for them to absorb oxygen. The Krang, being aliens, might not even need oxygen, or if they do I question whether they’d process it the same as earth creatures. So there wouldn’t really be a need for them to be slimy 24/7. Instead, it's reserved for situations where they're in some form of distress. It makes them more difficult to grab in a potentially deadly situation, see, since Krang are most likely to feel stressed when faced with someone stronger who has murder on their mind.

[stromuprisahat]

Slightly incoherent The Witcher S02 rant

(Finished and posted two years later with no Starbucks involved...)

They’re trying so hard to be The Next Game of Thrones, they’re erasing everything that makes The Witcher special. Things are changed unnecessarily, *new* *original* storylines added- much simpler and inferior to source material.

There’s a lack of ~variety~ of dangers. Different kinds, different degrees... It’s all life-threatening, fatal. The writers forgot some things can be dangerous only thanks to specific circumstances. Leshy in the woods can be just that- monster living in witchers’ keep’s backyard, not some weird parasite trying to murder or transform all the witchers.

Another trend I've noticed is "No rest for the heroes.". Characters aren't allowed to have a place and/or time to develop without preasure. The most peaceful part of Ciri's story got turned into parade of incompetent, inconsiderate idiots. It’s the same issue I had with first season of Shadow and Bone, where MC's studies and integration into new enviroment got struck out. Both were lacking "action". Both got cut short and re-written to be more "eventful". In both cases the story AND characters suffered. Characters aren’t developed, they become changed. Netflix seems to have a pattern, and- considering second season of S&B- doesn’t learn from its previous terrible results.

Another huge issue is pacing. The whole season feels like it happened in a week, when Blood of Elves took more than a season of the year.

“I know someone...” As it turned out, we all do.

When we’re at things I hate, there’s the trend of connecting EVERYTHING. You have a minor part to fill? Give it to one of already existing characters to make their path more eventful and memorable. What happened to random soldier, corpse no. 54 or anonymous inkeeper in shithole MC’s just passing through? You don't constantly cross ways with the same three people! Make the world real by houndreds of faces you'll never see again! It’s like the creators didn’t notice this is a TV show, not a video game, where you have to animate every different feature, so more NPC with the same faces are to be expected.

I also dislike the trend of giving some storylines to one-off side characters or making new things up just to make them important enough to keep them around (Istredd, Dara, Stregobor). Why can't you accept some people appear, fuck up your life and you never see them again? Are they pushed to keep some actors around?

The books are mostly following Geralt’s and Ciri’s story, but not exclusively. Show offers a chance to add more background politics, wider picture. Instead they bait us with well-known, already beloved characters that get reduced to something they’re not. I’ve made a separate post about Francesca Findababair, but they didn’t treat Philippa any better. Instead of a badass, crucial for the plot, the intelligence behind Redanian Intelligence, she’s just an owl. Dijkstra’s messanger to keep in touch with some sad little elf kid.

Voleth Mier disaster

There isn’t more genric evil creature in fantasy than “demon”. Then they call it “Mother of Evil”? She’s feeding on fear? I’m starting to suspect someone in the writing room has some serious mommy issues. ... and no imagination.

Apparently Blood of Elves without a final boss fight is too boring to adapt faithfully. There’s no time to increase the stakes gradually. Every season needs to end with a BANG!

Shared dreams? Why is there the need to connect everything even more to make it MORE important and SPECIAL and INTERESTING?

Vesemir and the rest of Kaer Morons

Why the fuck is Coën Wolf, not Griffin? Remember how I talked about unnecessary changes? Why bother keeping names, when everything else is different?

Eskel didn’t deserve this shit. The writers are counting on our pre-existing knowledge of his relationship with Geralt, so his death has at least some impact. Zero effort on their part, merely one (1) flashback. The Wolf funeral is plain stupid, while supposed to look "cool". a.) There isn't many witchers, they tend to die on the Path. b.) I'm sure the mutations just make the witchers tastier. No side effects. c.) Eskel was a fucking tree. Did the wolves just use him as a fancy chewing toy?

Lambs is a dick, but a dick, who loves his family. Not a bully picking on young traumatized girls.

Vesemir’s probably the second worst, considering the whole mischaracterization mess. They’ve changed friendly grandpa into "Let us use Ciri to make more witchers". Not OOC at all.

The writers also kinda missed the whole point of only four witchers living in the gigantic keep, but never mind that...

Why do they bother looking for new stories, when they just grind it into homogenic crap corresponding with The Pattern™?

Since when are witchers training in temples? (So much for neutrality...) And where's the chubby Slavic panímáma? Melitele's tample was about healing and herbs, not magic, that's Yennefer's storyline. Yes, it matters. It completely changes the perspective.

Since there’s no emotional build-up for anything, creators went for low-haging fruit. But Roach had to die for more reasons. Aside from the obvious (Horses aren’t immortal and we can’t kill the bard.), it’s the perfect way to get Geralt on gorgeous black Friesian. Y'no, because other horses are never so cool. And the Hero™ can't ride just some chestnut these days... Don't get me wrong, I love Friesians since I was a child, but this trend is beyond annoying.

Why change 14th of the hill? That’s Triss’ storyline and passing it on Yennefer served absolutely nothing.

Then we have Rience, who is for some reason super powerful- not only he doesn't have a problem drawing from fire, he can teleport to witcher's keep? Place full of magic, the very same one that's hard to find and he's never been to? Compare with game!plot, where Lambert’s dimetrium bombs messed with Yennefer’s magic enough for her not to be able to call someone.

There should be a list of banned words, or words and phrases that are often overused: power, protect, save, curse(d), fault, ~ needs you. ~I~ need you., Together. *meaningful pause*, You can fight this., glowy eyes = evil, suicidal self-sacrifice, not perfect but real, family, I beliiiiieve in you., force, darkness...

Sorry, but using a quote from one of the strongest moments of Blood of Elves in completely different situation will NOT give you extra points. Quite contrary. This is how you ruin one of he best parts of the books- by holding a sword to your SO's (who's been through some serious shit) neck.

Honorable mention of Emhyr var AnotherDumbVillain, for publicly proclaiming Ciri’s his daughter ...now the whole Nilfgaard knows what he wants. Stupid and the easiest way to let his enemies’ spies know just HOW much is she valuable.

Things I liked about this season: Tris and Ciri's meeting, Vereena, Yenneskíer chemistry

If there’s one thing second season of The Witcher taught me, it’s “Keep your expectations low, you’re gonna be let down anyway.”.

[vivis3ct0r]

what is ur favourite crustacean and why :)

I’m so glad you asked >:)

I can’t choose one, so here are a few of my favorites in no particular order

1. Sapphirina

Also known as the “Sea Sapphire”, this is a tiny parasitic copepod that has reflective crystal plates inside of its cells. When not reflecting light, these guys are transparent

2. Any isopod ever

I love both aquatic and land dwelling ones!! These guys are adorable and silly and they look so friendly. Specifically interesting is the tongue-eating louse, a parasite that enters fish through the gills and severs the blood flow to its tongue, causing it to fall off. The isopod will then take the place of the fish’s tongue…. weirdos

3. Fairy shrimp

These little guys live all over the world in different biomes, including deserts, vernal pools, icy mountain lakes, and incredibly salty lakes as well. They do not have a carapace and they swim upside down. These are also interesting, but mostly I just like them because they’re so cute ^_^

4. Phronima

Semi-parasitic, these tiny amphipods live all over the world. The females will hollow out a Salp (a gelatinous invertebrate) by eating it, then she will crawl inside of it and lay eggs, staying inside of the salp and using it like a little mobile home. This creature also inspired the Xenomorphs from Alien!!

5. Triops

Triops (meaning three eyes) are also known as Tadpole Shrimp or Dinosaur Shrimp. These guys are found on every continent except for antarctica in freshwater vernal pools, and live for about three months. They reproduce mostly asexually, and their eggs can survive for up to 20 years outside of water, enduring both freezing temperatures and drought. When hatched, they feed on Fairy Shrimp! Contrary to their name, they only have two real eyes. Their third eye is not actually a fully functional eye, but rather a simple light sensor.

6. Pontella

These are not very well studied, but they are copepods that have three (THREE!!!) lenses in each eye!!! Their eyes see very sharp images because they do not experience spherical aberration (optical blurring) :D

My favorite large categories of crustacean have to be lobsters and shrimp, but I think that basically every crustacean is adorable and perfect….. they are precious to me :3

(pics in order, 1&2: sea sapphire, 3: marine isopod, 4: tongue-eating louse, 5: fairy shrimp, 6&7: phronima, 8&9: triops, 10: female and male pontella)

[myrmica]

Whats your favourite bug? :O!! and why?

OH MAN. i think it comes down to either mantises or parasitoid wasps...

mantises are obviously very charismatic creatures and i am not immune. everything they do is cute and full of personality. they've got pseudopupils for coincidentally human-readible expression, and arms, and busy little mouths... i relate to the way they tilt their heads and stare at you, and groom themselves (all bugs do this cutely), and rock back and forth to appear as a leaf would. i also love the fact that they're closely related to cockroaches. you can really see the resemblence if you look for it, but it's hard to guess if you aren't told because the popular conceptions of the two are very different.

here is a modest collection of mantises i have had the pleasure of personal acquaintance with. some of them i raised myself when i was a teenager:

my favorite ones in particular are idolomantis, for being an absurd animal, and vespamantoida wherleyi for being a wasp mimic! just as all kinds of things independently evolve mantis-type claws for their sleek utility, mantises occasionally decide to be someone else entirely...

SPEAKING of wasps. there are a lot of incredibly striking and flashy parasitoid wasps with memorable gimmicks, like dear old ichneumon, or the emerald cockroach wasp:

but the thing that really gets me about parasitoid wasps is the sheer number, and what they reveal about the ubiquity of parasitism as a strategy. to quote wikipedia, it is estimated that there are more species in (the ichneumon) family than there are species of birds and mammals combined. it's been suggested before (though not necessarily proven) that parasitoid wasps are the most speciose animal on the planet, despite having gone wildly underrecognized for most of entomological history.

that's because most of them are miniscule and mysterious. as parasites, they spend a notable portion of their lives hiding inside of other things, and to hide inside of something else, you have to be small. really small. the smallest, in fact. amoeba sized!

and let's say, hypothetically, that for every unique insect, at least one unique parasite evolves to match... well, even the parasitoid wasps have their own, smaller parasitoid wasps.

i'm so compelled by parasitism in large part because of the emotion it evokes in a human audience, how easily people borrow it as a metaphor for our relationships and social dynamics, and then project that emotional signifigance back onto parasitic animals; the parasitic wasp is confounded too with the perception of wasps as scary, dangerous, or pests. and yet, unseen, these things are everywhere! a huge (small) part of the world.

[unpleasant-ghoul]

Oh, hey, look! A post by me that's not about some video game!

I don't normally post shit that's still in progress. But I like the creature and i want to share because I might never finish it (kinda complex for my current skill. Might get too frustrated by the idea/ability difference and drop. happens often)

So, here. Here is it and the whole process of how such things came to be.

This is a pseudocentaur. Those things started for me a long time ago, and it's gonna be a lot to read, so I, ever-merciful, will hide the rest under a spoiler. Here:

So. A few years ago i was reading about Nuckelavee, started sketching, ended up with this:

You can tell from the human-for-scale interacting with it, that even then it had some vague shadow of being more than just a random monster. Not quite a character, but has a potential of getting there. You can also see that that version involved no actual horses, merely a vaguely equine thing that was truly the part of the pseudocentaur. And it was fucking massive.

For a few years it remained forgotten. Then a couple months ago I found it again and decided that I like it! It's neat! But it needs some love and also some actual thought put into it.

And so I started thinking on how's and why's and also on the matter of "does this have to be so big, when my love of things that are fucking ginormous has already led me to an ever-growing number of dragon OC's with absolute MINIMUM height at shoulders being 5. Fucking. Meters?"

So after thinking for some time and drawing for some time I got this page:

(as you can see, size of the creature reduced. Greatly. Also, has actual horse now)

And a much better idea of what the fuck we even have here. And I will share that idea with you whether you want it or not. I'm in a sharing mood. Suffer.

So!

Pseudocentaurs as they are now are parasitic creatures! They infect horses (other animals of similar size can be used, but results vary. Smaller beings can be infected, but don't survive full transformation. It can be used as a way of healing in a pinch, as long as the larva is killed just as the body finished repairing the pre-existing damage before going through the whole "neck splitting open" thing). But they're sapient and generally not evil, so they tend to have standards.

Most, unless there's no choice, prefer dying or even freshly dead hosts, since a dying one gets to continue living, even if it looks gruesome, and a dead one is, well, dead. So nobody's robbed of a whole potential life of Being A Normal Horse. In the case with dead hosts, pseudocentaur takes full control over the body, while with a living host it's usually basically an idealized, fairytale version of riding... Except without ever separating again. I say usually because they're as varied as humans. Some, despite it being frowned upon, take over perfectly healthy animals and essentially pilot them around without any regard for their own wishes.

On the matter of anatomy: the host's original mouth essentially disappears. You can see that: it's just an upper jaw, no tongue, no nothing. The head is not for eating anymore, just breathing (that mass on the horse head's close-up? Extended trachea!) and providing most of the auditory information, as the parasite's hearing is not all that great. And keeping an eye out for danger. Four is better than two! Especially with, again, a living host that can spot things on its own rather than being a fancy horse-shaped periscope.

Now, how does this thing EAT? Not with the parasite's mouth! That one's just for speaking. Not all even choose to have it at all. Instead, there is a circular, fanged, maw at the joint of the host and parasite's bodies. Food (and the body is repurposed for an omnivorous diet during the transformation) has to be shoved in there with the parasite's own hands (or with someone else's. It's not rude to scrape leftovers off your plate and right into your pseudocentaur friend's waiting maw). It's not the most convenient way to eat, but it is how it is. Do it or starve.

Beyond the splitting neck, the loss of jaw, the development of the maw, and the whole "you're an omnivore, Harry" thing, there can sometimes be no changes at all, or there can be some relatively subtle (compared to everything else) stuff: keratinous plating growing on legs, sometimes lengthening of the tail. Might lose some/all fur, might not.

Pseudocentaurs reproduce through two methods: true reproduction, making a whole NEW pseudocentaur is, well. You probably guessed. Two pseuds with living hosts of opposite sexes... Yea. Results in what at first is a normal foal, but bears the pseudocentaur larva in it and transforms after the horse is more or less adult. Those born pseuds are much more in tune with their hosts and, as I've said already, are fully NEW beings. New personality, no experience, they learn as they go. Like children! Except much cuter.

The other, and more common way, is releasing a "fly" made of one's own flesh to seek a new host. The resulting "new" pseudocentaur will have the original's exact personality and same memories up to the point of separation. It can be done voluntarily, or happen on its own if the current body is too damaged. If done voluntarily, the original continues to exist, so it's basically two separate instances of the same dude, just using different hosts and being in different places.

So, there ya have it. Pseudocentaurs. Base inspiration, as mentioned at the start, is the Nuckelavee, additional inspirations for the recent changes were Necromorphs and Illithids.

[akitoscorpio]

Dead of Winter Pt 6

It had started off as interrogations, Axl kept trying to grill Bogdan for any information he could, he learned about the several scattered factions, divided by political ideals or even just other off-worlders who were trying to "tame" this wild world.

In time it turned from interrogations into conversations, the change was so subtle that Axl didn't even notice the difference, he had come to enjoy his conversations with his "Prisoner".

Eventually Axl started letting Bogdan walk freely around the base as they chatted, shared meals together, and eventually built a new barracks.

"If your planning on becoming some grand corporate overseer here, your going to need to bring in new people, living alone out here with nothing but those bots is going to drive you insane." Axl would tell him.

Axl couldn't help but agree with him.

Their beliefs could not be any more different, not that Axl honestly cared, he wasn't sure the company was still around at this point.

Axl learned that for as long as he'd be alive, or as long as his parents parents have walked this frozen rock, that it had been trapped in this perpetual ice age

Bogdan didn't actually know how, let alone why, the Planet froze over. It was just always like this, there were myths, or dare he said legends, that the planet was once warm and beautiful. but those days had long since ended.

Axl wondered if this was because of the Parasites...

When it was dark late one evening in the frozen landscape Axl and Bog called home. Stage creatures showed up to attack the base, their was only two of them, but Axl froze up seeing them, twisted mockeries of Baseliners who's limbs had been replace with twisted ripping blades.

"Skies above what the hell are those things?" Bogdan shouted into the security moniter

"We can figure that out later, get ready to take them out" Axl said, not just to him but to his defense Mechs

One of them was destroyed by the base defenses but the other had managed to destroy two of the defensive turrets before it was taken down by the second turret exploding in it's face, and that was not even fatally.

What had truly alarmed Axl when he did a field examination of the bodies was the age, one of them was almost 400 years old. meaning that it was centuries older than when he first set said to this planet.

"We clearly need a vacation" Axl said

"I need some Angel's Grace" Bog replied

"What is that?" Axl asked as Bogdan sweapt

"I'm a Nephilim, as you can see, it's a drug we need to take frequently or, well we kinda die?" Bog replied

Axl looked shocked to say the least, how could any Xenotype have that kind of blatant flaw in it's creation. but he didn't want his new friend to drop dead on him.

"I'll look into creating a drug lab to produce some for you, can you grow whatever we need to make it?" Axl asked

"Yeah of course, thanks" Bog said.

Axl got to work, Truthfully Axl also wanted the drug lab to help him research just what the hell those monsters were and if they had somehow tied back to the parasites he had seen on that man from before.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Describe the strangest animal in the universe.

I don't think I can answer this question. Animals are complex and surprising, but the universe is so much more complicated than that! I could go on forever with weird stuff in physics / cosmology, or just about any other field of science you care to name. For instance:

"The strangest thing in biological evolution is not a case where something has evolved from an organism into another one (which happens all the time), but instead is the appearance of two identical species, each descended from the same ancestor — which nevertheless do totally different things." [source] "Now there seems no reason why natural selection should produce large numbers of extremely similar species, except perhaps if they were all parasites of some sort, living off other creatures without contributing anything useful themselves." [Source, commenting on a New York Times article)

Or take a look at these critters:

[Image source: x.]

These organisms all have very specialized ecological niches; for example, many of them only grow during certain phases of life cycles, such as when a seashell pulsates its mantis shrimp larva inside it, or when beans sprouts open up to become tomatoes. But we know next to nothing about how they work internally – we really have no idea what's going on down there in those tissues. And yet they seem to exist for reasons that aren't obvious based solely upon our understanding of their superficial behavior. In fact, given their apparent lack of complexity, it might even be argued that evolution had little use for giving them their peculiar features beyond whatever utility they provide within specific contexts. So . . . yeah . . . strange

[the-ethereal-god]

Since @parasite-core asked, I'll tell a bit about my OCs just like I said in the last post.

Kyaran Yaziegat might be the 1st or 2nd OC here that I created. She's a dark elf, that just like every other of her race, lives in Umbrahylion. All elves don't gain many muscles in general (tho it doesn't mean they're not strong) but she's is a monster indeed. Even at a young age, around 108, she's undoubtedly one of the strongest. The fact that her family is the "leader" of the town they live, and since she already did amazingly well at some Biannual Fighting Event, the Queen personally spoke with her already and got some interest over her.

A little bit about her and her family now. Her family is the most known on their town, and over the years also in other towns too, even in different caves. Not only because they're the "leader" (I'm not finding the best word to describe this lol), but also because the Yaziegats are known for the men being amazing warriors and the women amazing makers of fine jewerly and maybe clothes too. And as you can see, Kyaran broke that thing that tradition that has going on for over six generations once she asked her brothers to train her to be so good like them. Her parentsz basically mother who really disliked that, tried to not let it happen but Kyaran is really an arrogant bitch and didn't care about it. Dark elves are prideful, but she is over the top. She doesn't plan much attacks to other creatures not totally because she's stupid but because she believes she doesn't need it, since she's really strong. And she's right about it tho, she's really a monster when fighting. I have more plans for her, this is more like the "beginning".

I first created Arcane Naethyra (she/they) like "what if I was a fantasy creature?" and that's is why she is mostly an healer that also knows some magic, because I don't see myself being a fighter. I changed them over the time but never the base. Arcane is a (supposedly only) wood elf from Shelnöre, the capital of Leen Alora. And Naethyra are the Royal Family, which the current queen is their mother, Faline Naethyra, and they have five siblings. Tho she doesn't live there anymore. Some years ago, Arcane managed to run away without no one noticing, some people think she just disappeared, others think she's dead by now.

Arcane is the 3rd oldest, and before she had any younger sibling, Faline started to be a bit more rigid with her. Arcane was confused and a bit sad at first, but had hope that she was only being like that because she was the youngest, and so had more to learn. It reached a point where they became really happy when Faline announced she was pregnant: which meant, in some years Arcane wouldn't be the youngest and so her mother wouldn't be so stiff with her. It didn't really happen tho. Faline had later more two kids, twins, and she was always worst to Arcane, sometimes just with little stuff but Arcane always noticed that. Tired of living there and not being interested in possibly becoming heir some day, she ran away. Now she probably uses a fake name in some places, tho I don't have one for now lol.

Murtagh is still an OC I have to work more.. I did with everyone but yh. He is nothing inspired on Murtagh from IC btw hehe. (Don't blame me, I just didn't had inspo before to have so many OCs and I needed inspo. And now I can't let go of his name, I love it a lot). But anyways, Murtagh is an half-elf. His mother was the elf, and she never really knew she was pregnant of an half-elf and not elf (because you know, she had fun with an human but later with her bf elf too lol). Both her and the bf were kinda pissed to have an half-elf child, usually both humans and elf don't totally like them. The mother managed to find the actual parent, the dad, and left the newborn at his house the sooner she could. I don't have much about him sadly, I still need ideas. But his parent is sadly a bad man, and is somehow related to when Kyaran was locked in a dungeon. People tend to think he's mean because he's pretty introverted and is used to live on his own, but he's actually really nice and will help others with no strong big reason to do so. He travels quite a lot around too, but sometimes just stays at Guhan (the human kingdom) really.

I have more fantasy OCs I can talk about, but now for last is Knox Blackwood, also one that isn't so developed as Kyaran or Arcane but I still like him a lot. He's a human born somewhere in Guhan, his childhood was really bad since his father was awful to him and his mother never really did anything about it (she didn't know everything his father did but still). He got away from home maybe at the age of 15yrs old, somehow found some work to get money (tho he also stole money and jewerly mostly too) and some day he found a pirate that got him on the crew (yh I still need to think way more about this, but I want this idea). He stayed on that crew and liked almost everyone there, but some day it was attacked by witches, and almost everyone died. (I'm not sure if he was the only survivor, but probably yes. This is a bit too "clichê" imo but since I want something else to happen before he's in another crew, I'm thinking literally now after this attack it makes sense for that thing to happen, and so maybe everyone else would die really). But anyways, he hates witches. And years later he gets a ship on his own, and starts meeting new people and then he has his crew.

Nowadays his crew (I need to find a name for the crew/ship) is one of the most known on the pirate islands (that also need a name lol). People tend to think he's a bit of a joker maybe, but due to the way he acts, it becomes way easier for him to prank others and get what he wants because he's actually pretty smart. He's crew also calls him "smart fox" or "cunning", I think that's pretty explanatory. He could do almost anything to help his friends, and will almost always prefer to get a solution to a problem that isn't fighting. Random but not so random, he doesn't like that much physical touch, and might or might not get even more anxious if he's feeling stressed and someone tells him stuff like "Everything is fine".

I wrote more than what I expect but well, good luck reading that all haha

[benevolentcalamity]

Code: S.O.S (Xenomorph x Female!Reader) [1/2]

I actually wrote this already but deleted it so it never made it to be a published post. So have the (hopefully good) rewrite of what’s essentially Alien: Blackout!

This isn’t connected to Rescue Mission, just wanted to get used to writing Xenomorphs. This is what the people want yo.

CURTAINS!

You must have been crying since forever.

You failed them. Every single one of them.

In a mission meant simply to be a ‘find and retrieve’ rescue mission, you and the crew - you're just acting second in command, or were - went out to find the ship The Ambassador for emergency crew extraction. The exact message was an S.O.S, stating an unknown threat on the ship. They didn’t know what exactly this threat was, nor did they seem to want to. All they wanted was to, and you quote, “Get the hell off this bitch.”

To make it short, it turns out that two of the rescued astronauts were infested with some sort of parasite. When those parasites emerged, your captain, Weiss, crushed one under his heel in reflex. The other sadly got away - and that was just yesterday. Since then the ship’s been on lockdown. It’s a good size one, belonging to some of the best in the company, so this is viable.

So why are you here, pulling yourself together at your captain’s desk?

Well... The one parasite that made it grew up faster than anticipated. You’re genuinely not sure what happened, only that you woke up to Weiss shoving you into a locker. You remember he told you to be quiet, and then nothing from him.

... He was dead. You just knew it.

When there was a lull in the noise, you crept out of the locker, darting between different covers until you made it here.

So now you’re here, in a locked room, staring at a camera system you’ve never worked with until now. While you’ve learned how to flip between cameras on the different monitors you don’t know it like Weiss did. Not a notebook of directions, not even a Microsoft Word sort of program to direct you on how to use it. Suppose Weiss was counting on coming back.

Swallowing, you straighten your back, flipping through cameras with trembling fingers.

Finally, after moments more like eternity, you find the creature.

It’s black and towering, something that can’t possibly be real. Only having seen such beasts in those comics you saw in minute peeks at the bookstore, you can only wonder, if for a moment, that maybe it’s one giant prank. But then you recall Weiss, recall the blood reeking from the vents, and finally you’re snapped back to reality.

This thing killed everyone, down to the strongest people you know. Whether it knows you’re still alive is beyond you, but once you start taking action against it is when the real show begins.

... 

You swallow, a bead of sweat falling onto your sleeve.

“I’m going to die here...” You mutter. “... But I have to try.”

Managing to figure out the system, you find an option to send out a distress signal. If someone responds to it, you’ll be able to hear it - by some miracle someone will come by. Deciding it’s now or never you press it, and to your relief there’s no blaring of alarms to set anything off, just an icon blinking on a smaller monitor.

Setting your lips in a firm line, you keep your eyes on the creature. Resolute acceptance of death isn’t fueling you, but the basic instinct to survive. If you want to live, you have to act. If you don’t act, you will die. So if you want to make it back home, act.

“Ok, let’s do this...”

---

Just like the crying earlier, you’re not sure how long you’ve been at this.

As predicted, the moment you set off an alarm and trapped the creature, it knew that something else was in here with it. Despite not knowing the full extent of its abilities or capabilities - you don’t even know what it’s called - you’re willing to throw what you have out to keep it occupied long enough to get out of here. Comms are still open, and the distress signal is going strong, so this will continue until a ship comes and gets you, or one of you drops dead.

You aren’t strong, and you’re not brave. Matter of fact becoming an astronaut of any kind was better than anything that posed genuine danger. If anything you wanted to do something that’d get you somewhere, even if it was in outer space.

Quite honestly, you’d prefer being on the moon than in here.

“That’s some bullshit, [Name].” You can hear Weiss’s voice in your head. “A minute of bouncing on your damn head and you’ll be begging to be back here.”

It’s one way to keep something else than the fear in your head.

Blinking, you notice something... off-

“Where is it?” You about fly upright, flipping through the cameras. “Shit, shit, shit-! Where are you?!”

Frantically looking between the monitors, your ears are open wide just as your eyes, fearful adrenaline sharpening your senses and hands. With laser precision you’re pressing the buttons you need to, eventually noticing the motion trigger in one of the overlays.

That’s the Medical Bay - directly down the hall. Hurriedly you find that camera, seeing the creature creeping towards the exit. A quick jab, and you overload and close the door to the bay. In response you swear you can hear it scream through the walls, the vents... It’s reverberating in your head and it’s not even right next to you or anything.

Swallowing, you take a deep breath. “Crisis averted... But I have to be more careful.”

Of course your confidence is up a little considering you’ve made it this long, but you’re still jumping at your own shadow from time to time. Every movement still means death is incoming, and your clock is running low. Fuck, you’re not even sure if you can make it without risking a trip to scrounge for food and drink. It’s something you never thought about.

Wiping some sweat from your brow you take a moment to survey the other cameras. If you can cut the power in certain places, you can likely limit this thing’s visibility and give you some safety... But you also need to consider you might not have that luxury. Even if it can’t see in the dark, you can’t solely depend on that to keep you safe. Sending it somewhere would buy you some time while you meander in the dark.

Then again, is there a point to being in the dark if it’s somewhere else?

“If I can lure it over to the maintenance bay, I should be able to get to the canteen,” You murmur. “I can get some water and something to survive on until a ship comes.” You hope it lasts that long.

Deciding to take the risk, you find the maintenance bay security overlay. With a quick tap of a button it sets off some steam in the corner- ... Oh yea, the maintenance bay also deals with hot water. Oops. Hurriedly setting it to max before tapping it closed again you check on the medical bay - just as the creature hops up into the vents.

Oh that’s... that’s the opposite of good. If it can get into the vents, then...

You shake your head. No, no. It’s fine. I just need to be really careful and mind the vents... Let’s see...

For security and safety reasons there is indeed a camera overlay in the vent system. It’s moreso to make sure the maintenance guy is unharmed and doing his job, but also to see if there’s anything else to be aware of before calling said maintenance guy. You never understood the logic behind it, but it is saving your ass right now - your heart just doesn’t know it yet.

You glance above you, eventually noticing a vent right behind you on the ceiling. “... That’s just perfect...”

If Weiss were here, you’d have so many questions...

Checking the maintenance bay cameras, you about swoon when the creature lands in there. Now’s your chance-!

Getting up, you scurry over to the door, disabling the emergency override lock system. Swallowing, you about hold your breath as you creep down the hallway. It’s quiet - deathly quiet. With light steps you cut corners and keep looking back and around. At any point it could get back in the vents and track you down, so you have to be quick but also mindful.

Blinking, you turn the corner and swoon at a pair of lights, red and blue, at the far wall. “Bingo.” Closing in, you make out that damn Pepsi logo, beside it the bright red snack thing, because that was needed in space. (Davidson, the engineer, liked joking that it was like being in college, given it screamed redundancy.)

Reaching, you find your keys - more habitual than convenient - and unlock both machines. Opening them you find some bottles of water, some protein bars, chocolate, and other non-noisy things. Putting them in your pockets snug as a bug, you turn and scurry back down the halls.

This is genuine madness, possibly buffoonery as well. But if one thing’s going to give you away, you’d rather it be your own stupidity than your empty stomach. Practicality’s also at work, considering you stayed away from the chips and soda, appealing as it was. You can’t afford being careless. Though, when you make it home alive you will have the biggest coke of your life and the juiciest steak money can buy-

thump, thump

“Shit...” It’s in the vents. “Ok, double time.”

Deciding to get a bit more ballsy you quicken your light steps, at this point realizing how close you are to detection. As the thumping continues, seeming to reach into your brain, you eventually find the office-

A particularly loud thump, followed by a thud and then a hiss, just a good distance behind you. Whirling around, you-

... There it is. With a flick of its tail it looks around, back to you. Swallowing you back into the office, trying not to loudly slam your hand into the emergency override as the door closes. When the red light symbolizing the lock lights up you sigh in relief, rushing to the monitors and finding your office overlay.

Hell yeah. You press the button to close the vent. “This is gonna mess with the temperature, so I can’t leave it long... But that should give me some breathing room.”

Swallowing, you retie your hair in a ponytail, checking comms.

Your heart leaps, seeing a blip on the monitor. Holding down the communicator button, you lean in towards the mic.

“Hello? Is anyone there? This is [Name] [Last Name], acting second-in-command of The Far Reach. If anyone can hear this, please respond immediately!”

[inkykeiji]

break my heart in two, but when it heals it beats for you

character: zenin naoya

genre: smut + angst

notes: aaaaah this is my lil submission for the sewer’s soulmate syndrome collab (and my first collab ever waaah!!!) it’s a curseless soulmate AU with the tiniest hint of the zenin’s being a prominent crime family. please please heed the warnings!! | title credit: back to you by selena gomez

warnings: 18+ minors do not interact, incest (reader and naoya are half siblings), mentioned death of a family member (mother), naoya being his misogynistic self, excessive use of the word ‘Daddy’ to refer to their biological father, one (1) instance of physical abuse, size kink/size difference, mentioned relationship between a university student (reader) and their TA, infidelity, one (1) mention of Daddy being yakuza, age difference, spanking done by reader’s biological father, toxic relationships, minimal prep, rough sex, a hint of degradation

words: 9.5k

synopsis:

Except the torture doesn’t stop, even when you’re gone, because he’s assaulted with thoughts of you the very moment you leave—what you’re doing, who you’re with, if he plagues your mind as much as you plague his—you’re like a fucking sickness, a parasite that burrows deep between the folds and tissues of his brain, infecting it, and he’s hopeless to find a cure.

It’s a few days after his twenty-ninth birthday, the night you appear—unannounced, uninvited, and an absolute fucking mess—falling into his father’s arms the moment he opens the door, fingers curling in the material of his cashmere button up and tugging as powerful sobs rip through your entire body, violent tremors following.

It’s fucking disgusting, the way his father reacts. Naoya watches the entire thing unfold from the shadows of the living room, nose wrinkled in distaste, features twisted in aversion and saturated in abhorrence.

Because his father lets you cling to him like a child—a grown woman, gripping a seventy-one year old man like a sniveling little girl—as he manages to scoop you up into his arms, collapsing onto his favourite armchair with you in his lap, hushing you gently as he rocks you back and forth, large hands stroking your shuddering back as you nuzzle your puffy, snot-stained face into his chest, wailing out Daddy!

It’s the first time Naoya’s ever seen his father behave in such a way, revolt churning his stomach as he observes the quite frankly unfamiliar man in front of him. It makes him fucking sick to watch, acidic bile rising in his throat until it stings the back of his tongue, face souring as he swallows it back down.

And you can’t even manage to force words through your stuttering breathing and hiccupped little sobs, unable to explain the situation at all without being overwhelmed by another fresh wave of tears, crashing over your body as you fall back into the sanctuary of his father’s arms, face buried in his neck, now soiled with spit and salt water.

“Naoya,” his father calls, voice curt and stern and demanding, snapping Naoya’s gaze to his own in an instant. “A glass of water, please?”

Naoya scoffs, narrowing his eyes. “What the fuck do I look like to you? The help?”

And Naoya’s no stranger to the level gaze his father fixes him with, has seen that same look etched into his father’s face more times than he can count, eyebrows pinched and mouth pressed in a firm, fine line, chest rising as he inhales slowly, calmly, deeply, then exhales through flared nostrils.

“You look like a good big brother who’s on his way to get his baby sister some water,”

Ah, right, that’s who you are—the bastard, Daddy’s little mistake, an ugly, irreversible stain on their family’s prestigious name.

“That bitch is not my sister,” he grumbles as he stomps from the room and towards the kitchen to fetch you a drink, huffing under his breath about being treated like a fucking woman, yet obeying his father’s orders nonetheless.

It turns out, Naoya learns, that your mother has passed away, leaving his poor bastard of a baby sister all alone in the world, with nowhere to go—and you’ve come here to ask for shelter and food, just until you get on your feet.

It’s fucking pathetic, as far as Naoya’s concerned, shaking his head in condescending disbelief with a cruel snort. It’s almost difficult to believe that you, undoubtedly the family disgrace; you, with your dirty blood and the dishonour you haul around everywhere with you, have the balls to come crawling to his father begging for support. You’re an adult, for Christ’s sake, and you should act like one, should be out scouring the earth for some equally pathetic man to serve like you ought to, like you would have, if you knew your place. Maybe then, Naoya would have a shred of respect for you.

Maybe.  

“How selfish. Daddy already pays for your tuition, why should he provide you with housing, too? Are you really that incompetent? Can’t do a thing for yourself, huh?”

Your head whips around to face him, almost as if you’re startled by his presence, by his voice addressing you directly, a sharp gasp falling from your lips the moment your eyes meet.

It’s the first time you’ve actually looked at him since you’ve arrived, the first time your gaze has connected with his, eyes bloodshot and gleaming as crystal tears stream down your cheeks, excess water clinging to spidery lashes, clumped together in spikes.

God, you’re beautiful.

It kicks him right in the motherfucking chest, hard enough that he stumbles back a few feet into the stone fireplace, a hand gripping the mantle for stability while his body caves in on itself. A spear of agony sears through his body, slicing clean through all of his vital organs as you choke out an apology punctuated with an honorific, head shaking in jerky little motions as your tongue struggles to form words to explain yourself.

And he’s never felt anything like it in his entire life, skin feeling as though it’s been set ablaze from the inside, thick black smoke filling is lungs as he wheezes on an inhale, strangled by it.

“Naoya,” his father snaps, eyes wide and scorching. “Leave.”

Each step away from the living room feels heavier than the last, as if his blood’s been replaced by lead, by rapidly drying concrete, rendering him incapable of lifting his feet from the floor, dragging them against the tile until it’s fucking painful, calves and thighs tingling as if the blood flow’s been entirely obstructed, muscles quivering and exhausted.

“It’s okay,” he can hear his father’s faint voice soothing you, each of your sniffles feeling like a sharp little thorn straight to his heart, each of your tiny I’m sorry’s carving out a vacant, phantom wound in his chest. “Shh, it’s alright, Daddy’s here, Daddy’s got you,”

“Pathetic,” Naoya spits to the empty hallway, though the word wavers, catching a little in his throat, letters scraping the gummy walls as he forces them from his mouth, leaving scalding little blisters in its wake.

It’s then that Naoya decides he hates you; standing motionless in the dark  hallway, feet inexplicably bolted to the floor and chest burning with some unknown emotion, a fire that blazes and rages, flares and thrashes, with each of your hitched little apologies, his teeth clenched together so tightly he’s surprised they don’t crack.

But it’s only after your sobs have calmed, father having reduced them to soft sniffles and half-hiccups through tender words and sweet affirmations, only after Naoya knows that you’ll be staying here for the night—that you’ll be safe—that he regains control over his limbs, that he rips his cement-filled feet from the floor and trudges towards his bedroom, scalding inferno dulled to simmering coals and faint flickering cinders.

He doesn’t think about it—isn’t going to think about it, refuses to waste his time or energy on such absurdity, refuses to allow his father’s preposterous decisions and ridiculous sentiments soak up space in his consciousness.

And he absolutely refuses to think about is the way your sudden presence punched a sharp gasp from his chest, the way he suddenly feels incomplete, like something’s missing, now that you aren’t within arms-reach, the way that he lost control over his entire body for the first time in his fucking life, in that hallway, just a few moments ago.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

His father—your father—falls in love with you almost immediately; having only met you briefly a few times before this, despite sending your mother multiple cheques every month for over twenty years.

It’s truly deplorable, positively sickening to watch the way his eyes light up when you come skipping into the living room after your afternoon university classes, dropping a fat, almost obscene kiss to Daddy’s cheek before plopping down on his lap as you chatter on about your day—about what you learned in lecture today, about the essay you got back (top of your class, of course), about your cute TA with the white hair and crystal eyes who always seems to conjure a bashful expression the moment you mention his name.

Naoya watches the entire thing unfold day after day, a deep sneer etched into his face, jaw clenched so hard it begins to ache, light eyes glaring daggers in your direction.

Something akin to jealousy, a creature with glowing emerald eyes and gnashing teeth and razor claws that slash and tear at the pit of his belly, roars and rattles the ribs that keep it caged within his chest, gnawing on the bones every time his—your—father makes you giggle, your eyes sparkling with adoration as you gaze at him; every time lithe fingers brush hair back from your face or a large palm settles on the crown of you head, petting you gently; every time you nuzzle into his neck, curling up comfortably—perfectly—in Daddy’s big, strong arms that keep you protected from all of the bad, from all of the evils of this world, from him, the big brother that loathes you.

It’s unsettling, almost sad in a sense, seeing his father fall from grace, observing the way you decay his persona so quickly, eating away at it like corrosive acid, rotting him from the inside out; the way he morphs from one of the most powerful and feared Yakuza bosses into soft, sticky, sweet putty in your hands the moment you appear; the way your presence shatters his tough, hard exterior and renders him gentle and tender—gentler and tenderer than he’s ever behaved with Naoya or any of his older brothers.

He can’t fucking stand to watch it, despises every single thing about it, positively detests the inexplicable, uncontrollable sensations that thrash and thunder inside of him, an unusual mixture of envy and melancholy, of wrath and desire, combined to create something toxic, something hazardous, something uncontainable that erodes his senses and mind, leaking into his bloodstream and poisoning his thoughts.

Because his gaze stays glued to you the moment you enter a room, like he’s bewitched by you, cursed by you the way his father has become, unable to rip his eyes from your form until you exit.

Except the torture doesn’t stop, even when you’re gone, because he’s assaulted with thoughts of you the moment you leave—what you’re doing, who you’re with, if he plagues your mind as much as you plague his—you’re like a fucking sickness, a parasite that burrows deep between the folds and tissues of his brain, infecting it, and he’s hopeless to find a cure.

And the worst part, the worst part is that he hasn’t a clue why. He doesn’t know why he feels the way he does, why you evoke such strong emotions—emotions he’s never felt before, emotions he doesn’t have a name for—or why, suddenly, everything feels wrong, off, whenever you’re not around.

It’s fucking annoying. Those tiny, raised bumps on the inside of his wrist—shaped in the form of a zodiac constellation, a mark everyone is born with, a mark that supposedly hints at your soulmate—burn and tingle as he meditates on these notions, blunt nails scratching viciously at his skin.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

Daddy grants you permission to stay at the estate for as long as you’d like, because of course he does, a victim to the spell you’ve cast. He even gives you your own room, helps you pick out furniture and takes you shopping for new clothes. You promise to do your share around the house—pinky swear—and, to Naoya’s immense dissatisfaction, you don’t disappoint.

No. Instead, you excel.

Those pretty little words weren’t empty promises—you begin cooking all of the meals, taking on the task to do the dishes entirely by yourself, tending to the house and the garden outside, even going as far to aid the help in their daily cleaning routines, until Daddy tells you it isn’t necessary.

And you manage to capture almost everyone’s hearts through your deeds and duties, through your kind and compassionate nature, through your being attentive and, for the most part, obedient—but most important of all, being family oriented.

You do the laundry when it needs to be done. You keep the house spotless and the kitchen sparkling. You learn everyone’s favourite dishes and then dedicate hours upon hours to perfecting them.

Naoya observes you throughout it all, sharp eyes following your movements, watching as you expertly tend to everyone’s needs, almost as if you know what they’ll require before they do.

You’d be perfect wife material, if you weren’t his sister—he catches the thought as it drifts through his mind—a sentiment that’s almost involuntary, unthinking in nature— and strangles it with his bare hands, stomps on it until it’s nothing but dust.

Because what’s more infuriating than anything else is that you are a good woman, a perfect woman, a woman who—for the most part—understands her place and duty in the household; or, at least, you did, before Daddy began spoiling you rotten.

It earns you the nickname princess from your favourite nii-san, hissed through gritted teeth with narrowed eyes and scrunched up noses, drenched in condescension and sprinkled with artificial icing sugar—a nickname Daddy irritatingly and affectionately adopts, extracting all of the patronization Naoya had imbued it with and stuffing it full of love.

You aren’t invincible, though, no matter how precious you are, how sweet your voice becomes when you bat your eyelashes and fix a pout on your lips, how much Daddy is barely able to deny you.

Because Daddy’s incessant spoiling does eventually bite him in the ass, just like Naoya knew it would.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

“But Daddy,” you whine, wearing your prettiest pout and cutest puppy-dog eyes, lethal weapons that are nearly foolproof, your most cherished expressions that grant you almost everything you want. “It’ll just be for a little, I promise! Just a drink or two!”

“I said no—”

“But everyone’s going! Even my professors will be there; I’m expected to show up!” Voice rising in pitch, your arms cross over your chest as eyebrows knit deeply and a lip juts out further, looking about two seconds away from stomping your foot.

Naoya would be amused, really, to see a grown woman acting like a petulant fucking child over some inconsequential party being thrown by the department, if he didn’t feel like his heart was ripping itself to pieces with your teary expression and soft half-sniffles, with the knowledge that, if you attend, you’ll be with him.

“You have an exam tomorrow,” Daddy reminds you in a sigh, dipping his head to scrutinize you over the rim of his reading glasses. “Are they not all required to write the same exam as well?”

“Well, they are, but—”

“But they didn’t spend their study break out gallivanting with their TA, did they?”

Your eyes widen for a second, shocked by the words leaving your father’s mouth, but the expression is gone in an instant, morphed into incredulousness, eyes rolling as your tongue tuts in disbelief.

“Please, we were studying,”

The chuckle that escapes your father’s lips is anything but warm; it’s cruel and condescending, a sharp slap to the face, your bottom lip beginning to tremble as he snaps his book shut, the sound echoing throughout the living room.

“You must think me a real fool,” he’s almost snickering as he throws his glasses on the coffee table, grunting a little as he stands from his armchair and raises himself to his full height, towering over you. “Do you think Daddy’s stupid?”

“What? No, of course not—”  

“Then why are you lying to him?”

“I-I’m not—”

“And you’re doing it again?”

Head shaking in jerky, quivering movements, your lips open and close, emitting nothing more but little squeaks of breath as you try to backtrack, managing to stammer out an apology.

“It’s a little late for that,” your father’s saying sternly, a large hand curling around your bicep as he yanks you towards him, beginning to haul you down the hall. “Good girls do not lie to their fathers,”

Naoya sits tense and coiled in his father’s armchair, a symphony of your cries mingled with harsh slaps of Daddy’s calloused palm against your smooth skin carrying throughout the house, and he swallows thickly, past the lump that’s lodged itself in the column of his throat, past the bitter acid rising in his chest, past the irregular thumping of his heart against his ribs.

Because he doesn’t know why your wails and squeals of Daddy! M’sorry! Daddy! make his cock throb and his chest ache—ache with longing, with want and desire, with jealousy—doesn’t know why he finds himself fucking his fist to those memories that same night, mind fixated on the quick glance he had caught through the sliver of the open door when he couldn’t stand it anymore, when he had to sneak down the hallway just to make sure everything was alright, images of you thrown over father’s knees, bare ass spanked raw materializing in his head.

Or maybe he does know. Maybe he refuses to admit it. Maybe he just pretends he doesn’t, because he wishes he didn’t.

Still, you always get off fucking easy, as far as Naoya’s concerned. He’s never witnessed his father allow any woman to talk back to him with such horrid disrespect, to whine and plead and roll their eyes without a backhand so heavy, so hard it knocks them to the floor.

And yet, you receive a few measly spanks to your ass—a punishment that’s more embarrassing than anything else, terribly unfit for a grown woman—and get sent to your room for the rest of the night.  

“She truly is Daddy’s Little Girl,” his mother had snarled after one particular punishment, features curled up in an unattractive sneer.

Naoya can’t help but begrudgingly agree.

      ✰          ✰          ✰

“Oh, lighten up,” one of his brothers nudges his foot with the toe of his slipper before collapsing next to him one abnormally cold evening in early October, interrupting Naoya’s nightly routine of glaring at you, cuddled up into Daddy’s side as you watch a show. “Just because you aren’t Daddy’s favourite anymore doesn’t mean you have to skulk around looking like you just ate a whole lemon,”

“What’re you on about,” Naoya seethes through clenched teeth, glancing at his older brother through the corner of his eye.

“You know,” he responds airily with a knowing smirk, nodding his head in your direction. “She’s taken your place, huh? Or is that not what’s upsetting you?”

And that hurts—it hurts, because he used to be Daddy’s favourite, Daddy’s youngest—the baby—Daddy’s spoiled brat. He’s used to being the center of Daddy’s attention, used to being the object of his praise, used to being the golden child, the prized child, the destined son nurtured and conditioned to take over the Family Business once his father retires.

Light eyes roll back in his skull as he tsks in disapproval, shaking his head and clearing his throat to rid the tremble from his voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,”

“Mm, I think I know more than you believe,”

The words are spoken in a murmur, only loud enough for the two of them to hear, but Naoya’s gaze snaps back to his face immediately as he calls your name, gently pulling you from the hushed conversation you were having with Daddy, full of giggles and murmurs, nonchalantly asking, “When’s your birthday?”

No.

No, Naoya wants to hiss at his pathetic excuse of a brother, large hands curling into quivering fists, nails biting into the fleshy heels of his palms as teeth grit, forcefully swallowing back down the two letter refutation.

No-no-no-no-no, he doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t need to know, throat constricting as you inhale to speak, chirpily responding.

Blood turns to thick ice in his veins when he hears your birth date, when he realizes those raised little bumps he was born with on the inside of his wrist match your zodiac sign. Heavy dread, black and poisonous and akin to thick disappointment, sinks in his chest, latching onto the floor of his stomach and spreading quickly, sticky as it engulfs all of his surrounding organs, coating them in acidic pollution.

He’s up and out of his seat before his brother has even finished asking you his next question, stumbling out of the room on unsteady legs, nearly tripping over his own ankles in his haste to get away from you, to escape.

He doesn’t want to know what the bumps on your inner wrist are, tells himself that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t care, that this is all bullshit anyway, century-old myths created by the dreamers and the sentimentalists. It isn’t like the prospect hadn’t already crossed his mind—drifting through a sick orgasmic haze after fucking his fist to the memory of you—the potential that you may be his ‘soulmate’, a cruel trick played on him by the gods. Except…

Except it isn’t real. It isn’t real. There’s no science backing it up, nothing to concretely prove that the zodiac constellation embedded in his skin has anything to do with his ‘soulmate’—or anyone else’s. It’s just a legend, an old wives tale made up for the romantics and nothing else.

In his alacrity to resist it, he turns fucking ruthless in his verbal assault, but nothing seems to deter you; it barely seems to phase you at all, carrying on your tasks or your cute little babbling as if he hadn’t just insulted you.

Because you’re incessant, almost desperate to gain his approval, continuing to treat him like a god—doing more for him than you do for anyone else, including Daddy—regardless of how many how many expletives and offensive sentiments he hurls at you.

And eventually, he goes a little too far.

    ✰          ✰          ✰ 

The night before Halloween is dark and dreary, thick grey clouds stuffed with rain that continuously drizzles over the estate, brutal winds whipping the tiny droplets against the windowpanes, tiny specks and splatters of water decorating the glass, rearranging themselves every time the wind throws another smattering of rain towards them.

You skip into the living room, full of bashful giggles and muted squeals as Daddy fawns over you, awestricken as he murmurs about how beautiful his princess looks.

His princess.  

Naoya’s not quite sure what you’re supposed to be, nor does he care, tearing his gaze from your scantily clad form before his brain can even register what the costume is, before blood can rush to his cock, before he can witness the shy little smile on your lips and the pretty way your eyes glitter as you twirl for Daddy.

No, the only thing Naoya cares about is the fact that the dress of your costume is way too short to be considered decent, fluffy petticoat barely covering your ass, fanning out to reveal the edges of dainty pink lace clinging to the supple flesh of your ass as you twist and turn.

And he hasn’t a clue what you’re chattering on about, isn’t listening, can’t hear anything over the roar of blood rushing in his ears as he stands from his seat and stomps towards you, strong, callous voice cutting off your excited babbling as he glowers expectantly at his father.

“Jesus Christ, Daddy, you aren’t actually going to let her go out in that, are you?”

“Why?” you ask before your father can respond, genuinely confused, head tilting cutely. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it?” he repeats incredulously, thick eyelashes fluttering as he blinks several times, eyebrows raising and huffing out a sarcastic laugh in disbelief. “Are you joking?”

Your head shakes slowly, a frown beginning to materialize on your lips as your eyebrows knit.

“It’s entirely inappropriate,” he scoffs, enunciating his words slowly, like you’re stupid.

You stare up at him cautiously, bottom lip jutting out in a pout so deep your chin puckers. “But nii-san, it’s Halloween—”

“Oh? And what are you going as, a slut?”

A little strangled gasp of Naoya-nii! hitches in your throat, your entire expression crumpling at his disapproval, hands running over the costume in an almost protective manner, smoothing it down.

“N-No, I’m—”

“I don’t care,” he hisses. “There’s no way you’re leaving the house in that—go change. Now.”

The direct order surprises you, shock saturating your features before resentment begins to bleed through. Blinking hard, you force the tears from your eyes, expression hardening and shoulders rolling back, spine straightening.

“No.”

“What did you just say to me?”

“Is there something wrong with your hearing? I said no,”

That sharp, self-assured smile drops from his face in an instant, face screwing up from such defiance, such disrespect. “Excuse me?”

Shivers skitter up your spine, tiny spikes of ice chasing them, but you refuse to back down, even though your voice is beginning to quiver.

“Y-You’re not Daddy! You don’t get to tell me what to do, I don’t care if you’re older!”

And just like that, the sharp smile is back, stretched abnormally wide across his lips—like it had been cut, carved, into his handsome face—uncanny and inhuman as his eyes glint with malevolence, words flowing from his mouth slowly, calmly, almost serenely, as he prowls towards you.

“You’re right—I’m not Daddy, because I would never let a woman speak to me the way he allows you to speak to him, you ungrateful little brat,”

A large hand, decorated with chunky, glittering gold rings, cuts through the air, striking you across the cheek with such force you stumble backwards from the impact, nearly tripping over your own feet only to have Daddy wrap a strong arm around your waist, catching you with ease and pulling you to his chest.

And it’s intense, so intense it kicks the breath right from your chest, barreling up your throat where you choke on it as it tangles with a sharp yelp. Hands fly to clutch your cheek immediately, throbbing thorns of pain shooting through the side of your face.

Daddy’s yelling, but it all sounds muddled, muffled, like your deep underwater and he’s shouting from above the surface, despite the fact that you’re clinging to him, pressed up so tightly against his side you can feel the vibrations of his voice in his body.

Naoya-nii isn’t saying anything, hand dropped limply to his side, pretty gold adorning his fingers coated in gleaming crimson. He isn’t even looking at Daddy—no, his gorgeous light eyes are focused on you, on the sticky scarlet leaking from the wounds his rings left when they collided with your cheek and the glistening tears shielding your eyes.

And for once, he has nothing to say, no sarcastic remarks or cynical little comments, voice evaporating in his throat as his chest burns, scathed with regret, remorse, repentance—all unwarranted, undeserved, unnecessary. Because—because you earned that slap for being so fucking disrespectful; you needed it, were practically begging him to put you back in your place, back where you belong: below him, behind him, and never beside him.

Because no matter how cute you are, how sweet and precious and good, none of it permits you to speak to him in such a manner, to act as though you’re equal.

So why has this inexplicable agony taken root at his core? Why does he feel like his heart is mutilating itself, tearing itself to shreds, with each of your pitiful little whimpers? Why does he feel the overwhelming urge to make it better, to make your pretty tears and precious sobs stop?

Inevitable anger surges through his veins—furious at you, for eliciting such bothersome emotions; furious at himself, for being so weak, so vulnerable, and allowing such pathetic sentiments to take over, to rob him of his control, of his autonomy.

And despite everything, all of his rage and loathing and confusion, his hand buzzes from it, from the sensation of touching your soft skin for the very first time, even in such a brutal and malicious manner, and instantly, he craves more.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

You don’t speak to him after that. You stop making his favourite meals, stop asking him about his day and then uninvitedly reciting your own in that cute, excited chatter that is so distinctly you, stop doing all of those extra little chores—washing his clothes and changing his sheets and scrubbing his bathroom until it sparkles. You put an end to everything.

And he fucking misses it.

He shouldn’t, but he does.

It’s painful to admit, but he can’t ignore it, notices your lack of presence almost immediately, that gaping void spreading, growing, as it roars in protest, claiming more and more of his body every day, like some sort of inky disease that only your presence seems to calm, to cure.

It fucking sucks. It fucking sucks, because he can’t stop it, regardless of how hard he tries, an impossible ailment he can’t void himself of. It fucking sucks, because you’re eating him up, consuming his very soul, devouring him from the inside out without even sparing him a goddamn glance—and you don’t even know it.

And it’s getting exhausting, putting up this front all the time, fighting against the intense feelings you swirl around in his chest, in his cock, without a hope, without a chance in hell. Fighting for nothing, because he knows he’ll never win. Fighting for nothing, because he isn’t sure he wants to anymore.

They’re unruly, voracious and rabid, tearing up his chest, his lungs and his heart and his throat, with sharp piercing claws and becoming increasingly difficult to overlook, to disregard.

Still, he’s too stubborn, too proud, to give in, to give up, even though the thing living inside him grows stronger every day, even though he knows that one day, it will overpower him.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

It’s windy—the estate quiet as the wind howls softly through the dense pines outside and ruffles them—the night it finally does, the night it takes over entirely, bursting through the barriers he keeps rebuilding and repairing around his soul and his sanity, writhing inside him when he hears soft sobs, muffled by the wood of your bedroom door, just past three in the morning.

It possesses him, like some sort of eternal spirit sinking deep into his bones and sewing itself into his soul, revoking his control over his body as a sudden, intense need to comfort you, to find out what’s wrong and make it all better, courses through his veins, entirely unaware of his actions as he pushes past the door and into your room.

“Naoya-nii?”

It’s the first time you’ve spoken to him, the first time you’ve even looked at him, since he struck you.

And he aches to apologize, I’m sorry’s and I shouldn’t have done that’s blistering his throat as they linger, just behind the back of his tongue.

But his pride outweighs them by a hair, despite how much his chest stings with the need to make things better, to make things right, for a reason unbeknownst to him. It’s just a sense—vague in meaning but strong in feeling—that longs for reconciliation, that’s desperate to rid your pretty face from the permanent scowl his presence etches into it.

That’s the first time he creeps into your room, the first time he loses his autonomy to the thing inside of him as he takes you into his arms and comforts you, the first time he allows you to cum from grinding on his cock.

Except it becomes a habit, an addiction, a nightly routine, cravings becoming stronger and stronger with each passing night. And for a brief span of time, it’s enough to appease the creature, the short nights spent with you in his arms, body trembling against his as you whimper out his name and his honorific, tangling on your tongue.

Because it feels right. It feels righter than anything in his life ever has, uncharacteristically gentle hands guiding your hips as they rock against his, soaked cunt gliding over the flannel of his pajama pants with ease as you huff out the prettiest little mewls into his neck.

It feels right only when he’s here with you, alone with you. Suddenly, it’s like everything makes sense again, like the world is in colour again, like the planet balanced again. He can no longer deny this feeling, this ache deep at the very pit of his soul that throbs and stings and burns mercilessly without your presence. You’re the only thing that can heal it, that can quell it, that can complete it.

So he gives in. It’s just for the nights, he promises himself, vows never to allow such sentiments to trickle into the daytime, to save it for when the sun sinks beneath the horizon, pledges never to permit these nightly escapades to advance from anything more than dry humping, nothing further than your cum on his fingers and your thighs stained with sticky cream.

But eventually, that isn’t enough, either.

And he was stupid to think it would be.

    ✰          ✰          ✰

The harsh slap of Testoni loafers against stone echoes out among the immaculately landscaped front yard, bouncing off thin tree trunks and being absorbed by tall, thick shrubs. Silver light, cast by the haloed moon hanging high in the clear navy sky, illuminates the garden, the foliage faded and washed out, painted by the moonbeams. Somewhere in the distance, the gentle trickle of water mingles with Naoya’s harsh breaths, cellphone gripped tightly in one fist as he paces back and forth like a rabid dog, small rocks popping under his feet.

It’s late. It’s too late—you were supposed to be home hours ago. Naoya’s tried calling—seven times, now, his phone buzzing in his palm to warn him of a low battery—but you haven’t picked up once. But that isn’t new, nor is it unusual; you rarely answer his calls while you’re out with Satoru.

So, really, this shouldn’t be cause for alarm. It shouldn’t.

Except he knows the man you’re out with, knows what you’re doing with him, and he can’t get it out of his fucking head, assaulted with fabricated images of you trapped under a large man with ivory hair and crystal eyes, back arching in ecstasy, his name leaving your lips in the prettiest gasps, in the way Naoya’s name leaves your lips during his habitual sneaking into your room in the middle of the night.

He’s terrified it’s going to drive him insane, eyes pricking and throat burning as his nose twitches with the threat of tears, eyelids shut so tightly his whole face scrunches up, tense and crumpled every time a new wave of contrived memories of you cumming all over that asshole’s cock crash over his mind.

Copper stings his tongue as sharp front teeth nibble at the raw cuticles surrounding his nailbed, face puckering at the taste and ripping his thumb, glistening with saliva, from his mouth.

This is pathetic, goddamn it! It shouldn’t even matter who you’re with and what you’re doing with them, shouldn’t be any of Naoya’s concern at all whether you’re safe or not, shouldn’t fucking hurt nearly as much as it does, a heavy ache that weighs on his chest more and more and more as each second ticks by, ribs caving in and splintering under the force, snapping into sharp spikes that puncture his lungs and make it painful to breathe.

“This is such a waste of fucking time, I don’t even—” he’s muttering to himself when you step out of Satoru’s car, his internal monologue beginning to leak from his head out his lips, your presence immediately cutting it off as his head snaps up, light eyes paler than normal, practically glowing in the moonlight.

A startled little whimper pries its way past your lips when you see him, stomping towards you with a heaving chest and a growl ripping from his throat.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he’s seething as a large hand seizes your arm, wrapping around your bicep and yanking, bring your face closer to his. “Huh? Do you know what fucking time it is?”

Frenzied eyes search your face, wild and erratic in their movements, sharply zeroing in on the tiny galaxies of swirling lilac and cobalt peppered with little pinpricks of scarlet that’ve been sucked into the flesh of your neck.

He chokes on something—a gasp or a snarl or a sob, maybe a mixture of all three, you aren’t entirely sure—pearly teeth gnashing together. “You’re a little slut,” he spits the word out like venom, harsh and biting as it whizzes past your cheek, slicing into your skin.

“That’s it, that’s all—that’s all you’re fucking good for,” his grip tightens with each word that flows from his mouth. “At least you’ve picked a rich man to sell your pussy to, at least you aren’t a total idiot, just like your mother, huh?”

“What is your problem?” little hands claw at the fingers latched around you, finally breaking free from him, ripping your limb from his grasp with such vigor you nearly fall on your ass, teetering backwards on unsteady feet. “You know, just because you can’t own up and face your feelings, doesn’t mean you get to take it out on me. This,” you gesture between the two of you. “Isn’t my fault.”

“This?” he spits, face screwing up in scorn. “There is no this,”

“Oh my God,” eyes rolling, you shake your head, exhaling a dubious laugh. “Shut up. There’s no one here—you can be real with me, I’m not gonna tell anyone,” you snark, arms crossing over your chest as you level your gaze with him.

He glares back at you, sharp jaw rhythmically clenching and unclenching with the grinding of his molars, large hands balled into tight, trembling fists on either side of his body.

“You know there’s something here, between us, within us, even if you refuse to admit it,” you continue after a beat of silence, voice softening.

His whole form is beginning to quiver and he jerkily shakes his head, exhaling harshly. You think he may be crying, but in the faint moonlight it’s hard to be sure.

Holding your wrist up, you swallow thickly, glancing at those little bumps embedded in your skin, watching the tiny shadows that form when your arm twists. “I have your sign,” your voice is quiet as you look back at him, flashing the inside of your wrist to him. “And I know you have mine,”

A cynical smirk spreads across his lips, but it looks more like a grimace, like a flimsy mask desperately attempting to cover something else, tongue tutting in disbelief. “Yeah, and there’s millions of people in this world with any given sign. It’s all bullshit—it could be anyone,”

“It could be anyone,” you agree, nodding. “But it isn’t.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do! I know you feel it too! Christ, why are you so—so adamant on denying this, even when it’s just the two of us? What’s the point?”

“You’re my fucking sister, that’s the point. This is inappropriate, it’s wrong,”

“If it’s so wrong, then why do you sneak into my bedroom every night? Why do you let me cum on your fingers? Why do you fuck my thighs?” your footsteps speed up, jogging a little to catch up to him. “Huh? Huh? No answer? Or do you know the answer, and you’re too afraid to say it?”

“I don’t know!” he explodes, whirling around on you and trapping you against the brick, palms laid flat against the wall. “Alright? I don’t fucking know why I do those things. They make me feel sick afterwards, but I…”

But I can’t stop.

But I need you.

But I love you.

Chests heave with harsh exhales that mingle and echo in the garden, your eyes studying his face intently, in a way that makes him feel naked, exposed, makes him want to turn and hide from you.

“I’m not asking—” you start, words catching in your throat and blinking hard to clear rapidly welling tears from your eyes. Your voice is softer, more fragile and weak, when you speak again. “You don’t have to marry me, for Christ’s sake. I just—I just want you to—I need to know you feel it too,”

“Why?” he hisses, acidic envy bubbling in his chest, beginning to erode his resolve, walls crumbling to rubble. “What is there to know? You already have him,”

“But I’d rather have you,” the words materialize on your tongue before you even know what you’re saying, earnest eyes boring into his.

“God, don’t—” eyelids shut tightly, lithe fingers tangling in blonde hair and tugging. “Don’t say shit like that,”

He can feel them, those three little words thrashing in his chest, desperate to claw up his throat and spill from his lips, but he grits his teeth and swallows them back down, letters lodging and forming a painful lump.

And you notice. You notice, because you’ve studied him extensively, have learned to read him—his mannerisms, expressions, behaviours—well.

And you’ve just found his weakness.

“Do you want to know what I think of when he fucks me?” you ask, eyes searching his face in an almost frenzied manner, breath accelerating as you quickly push the words from your lips, worried if you don’t speak fast enough, if you don’t vocalize these sentiments now, you’ll lose him again. “It’s you. It’s always you. I’ve tried—I’ve tried to think of someone else, of anyone else, but you just…you just won’t leave my brain! It’s like a—a sickness, or something. Like a chronic illness, and it’s only getting worse,”

A strangled growl rattles in his chest as he tears himself away from you, fists violently rubbing at his eyes.

He knows. He knows, because he’s tried the same thing, attempted to desperately forget you, to disintegrate the weird feelings you endlessly evoke in his chest by losing himself in women night after night, often multiple women at once, drowning himself in their moans and gasps and soft bodies to no avail.

“There’s no cure,”

He doesn’t even mean to say it, words slipping from his lips unconsciously as he gets tangled in his thoughts, flipping through the countless memories of faceless women of all shapes and sizes, faceless woman that somehow always mange to morph into you.

“No,” you respond, shaking your head. “There isn’t. But at least I’m trying!”

He spins around, gleaming eyes flashing, brimming with bewilderment, features falling in surprise for just a moment before they harden again, varnished in offense.

“What’re you talking about,” he seethes, eyebrows furrowing deeply as his eyes narrow into sharp slits, scrutinizing, analyzing, dissecting.

“I-I’d rather have you, yes, and he’ll—no one will ever compare, will ever even come close to how much I—” you cut yourself off, swallowing the thought, then clearing your throat and beginning again. “At least I’m trying to find someone, though. At least I’m trying to find just a shred of what I feel for you, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, alone and miserable,”

“Oh,” he laughs humorlessly, a callous little sound that viciously tears from his chest, that scrapes his throat and comes out strangled, full of incredulity. “You don’t think I’ve tried? You don’t think I’ve tried endlessly to forget you? To cleanse you from my mind? To move the fuck on from something that had never begun in the first place? You’ve imprinted yourself in the tissues of my fucking brain in a matter of months. It’s tiring. It’s hopeless,”

His voice breaks on the last word, some of the merciless heat fading from his features as he glares at you, eyes almost pleading for you to understand.

Because you’re the only one that can.

You’ve been in this together the entire time, right from the start, from the moment you walked through that front door.

And he’s been resisting it, fighting against it, against himself, all while the current only becomes stronger, only continues to grow in strength and size, and he’s motherfucking exhausted at this point, sick of battling some invisible force he was convinced didn’t even exist, sick of waging a war he will forever be destined to lose.

You’ve broken that wall, shattered it to dust, destroyed all of his weapons of defense and robbed him of his sovereignty, and now it’s all pouring form his mouth, an endless, uncontrollable stream of confessions, of thoughts and desires, of agony and misery.

“But it doesn’t even fucking matter, because I love you. I love you and I fucking hate you for it. And I’ve been trying, alright? I’ve tried not to, I’ve tried every single trick in the fucking book to stop it, to get over you, to forget you—and none of it has ever fucking worked, not even for a second. I don’t want you; I—I don’t want to be, but I’m in love with you,”

It looks as though your breathing has ceased, chest halting in its rapid movements, body gone still, static, stagnant. Your silence is deafening, has his ears ringing and his heart pounding, thrashing against his ribs as it aimlessly attempts to crawl through the cage, to present itself to you, bloody and beating and all yours. It’s all yours—take it, kill it, end its suffering.

“And there’s nothing—”

Surging forward, your lips crash into his, body following as it smacks against his own, effectively cutting him off. Naoya freezes, eyes wide and breathing stopped, entire body turned to ice, rigid and tense, but you are not deterred, arms winding around his neck as fingers thread through the gold and ink at the base of his skull.

“I love you, too,” you mumble into the kiss, refusing to break contact for even a second, lips brushing his as you speak. “I love you so much,”

The confession—an admission he already knew, deep down in his very bones, an admission he can no longer ignore, now that you’ve said it—snaps him out of his trance, and something switches, something breaks. Because then he’s kissing you back, tongue forcing its way through your lips to assault your own as calloused hands find purchase on your hips, squeezing your flesh hard enough that you yelp.

He chuckles against your lips, and then he’s pushing forward, forcing you to walk backwards, too fast for you to keep up, his legs longer than yours, body bigger than yours, stronger than yours.

Even with all of his shoving, you still aren’t moving quick enough for him, clumsy and stumbling over your own feet, whimpering hushed apologies into his mouth, a response to the growls that rumble in his chest each time you trip, your pitiful little sorry!’s consistently being cut off by his tongue.

Large hands hoist you up without breaking the kiss, mouth still attempting to devour you whole, to suck up your very soul, and your legs automatically wrap around his waist, latching onto him.

Either of your bedrooms are too far, and he can’t take it, he can’t wait—not with the way your fingers are tangling in his shirt and tugging, the way needy little whines are hitching in your throat, the way you’re squirming in his grasp, trying to grind against his half-hard cock.

You’re fucking desperate, but so is he, thigh whacking off the edge of the wooden coffee table as he blindly staggers towards the kitchen, tongue hungrily dragging against yours while he does so.

The cold marble stings your skin as he deposits you onto the nearest countertop, hips wedged between your thighs keeping them spread.

Little fingers immediately go for his belt, nonsensical whimpers sounding in the back of your throat as you fumble and struggle, hooking your fingers through his beltloops and pulling.

“Eager girl,” he chastises, a little breathless as nimble fingers find the soaked lace at the apex of your thighs, pushing it to the side. “Nii-san has to prep you first,”

“No,” you whine, pitched high and much too loud. “M’wet enough. Want you, want you now, nii-san, please, just give it to me, been waiting so long, please,”

The words are slurred together as they tumble from your lips, infused with a potent lust that casts a dense haze over your mind, rendering you capable of only focusing on what you need.

Light eyes dart up, holding yours through fanned lashes for a moment, as if they’re searching for any hesitancy, before his lips form the most genuine smile he’s ever given you.

“Yeah?” he huffs out, finally breaking your stare to watch his hands undo his belt, continuing to speak as he shoves his jeans down his thighs and frees his cock. “You think you can take it?”

“Yes, nii-san,” you nearly mewl, gazing at him with blown, glazed eyes and a cute pout. “Please, give it to me, I-I want it, please,”

His gaze finally flicks up, that sincere smile stretched wider across his face, a playful glint in his eye, voice void of any of its usual derision. “You want what? Hmm, baby? Come on, nii-san wants to hear you say it,”

A low whimper leaves your throat and you shift on the countertop, as if trying to wiggle closer to him. “Your cock, nii-san, want your cock, please-please-please, gimme-gimme-gimme,”

It sounds as though you’re close to tears, voice cracking and thick with desire, Naoya’s cock twitching in his palm in response to the sound, and, God, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that, absolutely adores it when you beg, thinks you sound so pretty when you’re pleading for him.

“You’re a greedy little girl, you know that?” he pants while he pushes in, a muffled yelp prying past your lips. “Shh, hush now, nii-san will give you what you need,”

The stretch is incredible, cute little cunt throbbing around his thick cock as it struggles to adjust to the sudden intrusion, feeling as though he’s going to tear you into two, leaving stinging micro-fissures in the delicate flesh.

Yet despite the burn, the ache that settles deep in your core, that feels like he’s splitting you in half, a satisfied moan leaves your lips, head falling forward and resting against his broad shoulder, fingers curling in the cotton that adorns his torso and pulling him closer, closer, closer.

Because, finally, you feel whole, more whole than you’ve ever felt in your entire life, satisfying an inexplicable desire buried at the crux of your very soul, something you didn’t even realize you were missing until you finally had it.

“S’not enough,” you mumble into him, nuzzling your face against him like a cat. “Need more, nii-san, need more,”

“You really are a selfish little fucking brat,” he grunts as fingers flex on your hips, tips digging into the pliant flesh and gripping, singeing his name into your skin in rapidly blossoming indigo and ultramarine.

“Nii-san was going to try and be nice,” the words, strained and husky, spill from plush lips as his hips begin to thrust, slow and hard, winding back as they draw the force to ram forward, slamming a cry from your chest as his cockhead pounds against your cervix. “But you’re too impatient for that, aren’t you?”

It’s a fucking lie; his self-control had been hanging by a thread, barely restraining the primal need to wildly buck into you, but you just snapped it, just tore the last of his treasured discipline to fucking shreds with nothing more than a few words.

The pace is ruthless, your head bouncing off the cabinets with each powerful snap of his hips, an endless stream of cries pouring from your lips, one hand curling around the edge of the counter as the other grips his shoulder, nails burying themselves in the hard muscle through the thin cotton of his shirt. Sharp bones carve a spot just for him, made for him, between your legs, into the tender flesh of your inner thighs.

“You’re mine, you hear me?” he pants out, eyes so bright they’re practically glowing. “Mine.”

“Yours!” you gasp out, head nodding in sloppy little movements against his shoulder as you fall forward, wrapping your arms around him and squeezing. “Yours, yours, yours,”

Everything feels hazy, almost dreamlike in a sense, vision blurring over with a thick shield of tears that you can’t quite explain, his name and the honorific becoming muddled on your tongue, fusing into one as you wail it out, clinging to him in a way that’s almost possessive.

“Nii-san’s here,” he promises you, voice hoarse. “Nii-san’s yours, too,”

“Mine,” the arms thrown around his neck tighten, fingers tangling in soft gold and wrinkled cotton. “Mine, mine, mine—”

“Mine,” he echoes, hips never faltering even as you wind your body around his, large hands keeping your hips still as he fucks into you. “And only mine—”  

“Forever and ever and ever—”

“You belong to me, were made for me, put on this earth for me,”

Words of confirmation are escaping from your lips, you’re absolutely sure of it, can feel them vibrating up your throat as you speak them—but it’s so much, too much, all of the feelings swirling around in your chest, sending spikes of pleasure and thorns of pain shooting through your veins as they clash together. A sudden wooziness settles over you, brain fogging over as he becomes the only thing you can think of, the only thing you want to think of, nonsensical babbling still slipping from between parted lips in hitched puffs of breath.

“So full,” you nearly sob, one of Naoya’s hands tangling in the hair at the back of your skull and yanking, pulling your face from the sanctuary of his neck and exposing your expressions to his scrutinizing eyes, devouring the beautiful tears streaking your cheeks, the contorting of your features as pleasure washes over them. “M’so full, nii-san, it’s so much,”

“Yeah? Better than he could ever stuff you?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you’re wailing out, affirmations falling from your lips with each brutal piston of his hips. “More, need more,”

Because it’s like an addiction, an innate need for more of him, for all of him, ravenous and unquenchable, that’s always existed within you, that his cock stretching you out, filling you up, has only just awakened.

His aura is positively intoxicating, overwhelming your senses and becoming all you can see, all you can hear, all you can smell, taste, touch. His taste lingers on your tongue, faint notes of minty pine and sharp nicotine dancing with your tastebuds; his touch brands itself into you, bruises and bitemarks carving his name into soft skin; his scent assaults you, envelops you, overpowers everything else as it wraps you in a shackled embrace of expensive aftershave and cedar wood.

A growl tears from his chest, so rough that it vibrates throughout his entire body, and his pace quickens, cock plunging into you and an incredible speed, dragging against that one spot that has you nearly screaming, that has your eyes rolling back and your little hole fluttering around him as a blistering fire sparks to life in the pit of your belly.

You can feel it, furling in on itself with each vicious rut of his hips, each relentless bang of his cockhead against your cervix, a concentrated ball of scathing heat pulsing, quaking in your stomach as it curls tighter and tighter and tighter with each plunge forward—until it bursts, a fiery explosion that buzzes through your veins as your cunt clenches, gushing on his cock as he praises you—yeah, that’s it, make a mess on nii-san—entire body coiling from the sheer strength.

“Tell me,” he keens almost desperately, voice pulling you from the clutches of post-orgasm unconsciousness, hips stuttering for a moment before he regains his finesse. “Tell me how badly you need it,”

And you don’t need to be told what, pleads pouring from your mouth in an instant, before your brain can even comprehend what you’re saying, an instinctual reaction to his command. “Need your cum, nii-san, need you to full me up, fill my tummy with it, stuff me full of it, need it so bad, nii-san, please gimme your cum, please, please,”

The words are all jumbled together, thick with tears and wet with saliva and imbued with delirium, quivering and breaking as your body trembles from overstimulation.

“Fuck,” he chokes on the curse, hips stilling, pressed flush against your ass as his cock throbs, filling you with spurt after spurt of thick cum, a broken whine catching in his throat as endless words spill from yours, peppered with the sweetest moans—yes, nii-san, thank you, nii-san, fill me up, fill my body with it, my brain with it, I need it, I need it.

And he does, pumps you full of so much that it begins leaking out from your abused little hole—still stuffed with him—and down his cock.

And it’s then—after he has filled you up, with your precious little cunt still pulsing around his length, whimpering out his honorific as you hold onto him, voice raw and wrecked and cracking with residual tears—then that Naoya’s sure you were meant for him, made for him, perfectly tailored to him; he knows you were, his very own gift from the gods.