u/KitCarbon

First

Rena was sleeping. Or rather, trying. Firstly, her legs and lower stomach were thoroughly bruised and ached, secondly the reason for the bruising, namely that a -boy- landed on her while she was reading. And thirdly and most honestly, she was a hormonal mess. If she was a human teenager, she would be a sweaty mess only capable of thinking about the opposite sex. As it was, she was a dry mess only capable of thinking of the opposite sex.

Boys this, men that. Her mind just wouldn’t shut up. no matter what she tried, reading, showering, watching her favorite shows. Nothing helped. So instead of sleeping she was fantasizing about saying goodbye to her bachelorette days.

Perhaps she was a lucky winner of a ‘Meet your favorite celebrity.’ raffle. Lewis. Yeah, then when finally in front of him at a café, or one of those meet and greet stages, she makes a fool of herself, in a quirky way of course, but instead of shying away he talks to her. Really talks to her. The time limit expires but they keep talking. And when his agent comes to take him away, he invites her to dinner! Oh yeah… then when meeting again the conversation is even better and he invites her to his fancy hotel. When she gets there on thing leads to another and he leans in for a kiss… no that’s not right. Maybe they go to the spa where the towel around his waist gets caught on something while he is walking and… no, not that either, just skip ahead. He is waiting for her on the bed. The first and second wives have approved of her addition, and all that is left is for her to make it official and give him a daughter. She climbs on the bed, aaand this is not working. It’s not even that she is disinterested, it’s more like she is slightly grossed out. Like when one of her sisters made her try one of those smelly fried tuber slices.

Now she was becoming concerned. Lewis was her celebrity crush for, well, forever. And just now she was finding out she wanted something else? No, it couldn’t be, right?

She switched him out with some of her other favorite men, imagining the same scenarios again. Same results, disinterested at best and slightly grossed out at worst. So she tried again, and again changing faces every time. Still no difference.

Was the problem that she actually… wanted something… else…?

Hesitantly she thought of a random woman.

NOPE.  That was a mistake.

She gagged. Not even close. Now she felt dirty. Shuddering slightly, she got up to take another shower in the hopes of calming herself down and hopefully forgetting what she had just willingly imagined.

She wouldn’t forget. And the memory would periodically return at random to make her cringe.

---

Amina was waking from an amazing dream right out of Goddess Of War. Power armor, scantily clad men, glory and gore, just the way it should be.

Opening one eye she saw Kiki shaking her. The little red and tan Khob calling her name quietly.

“Amina, Amina wake up.”

Glaring with her open eye she whispered back. “What is it now?”

Kiki blinked “Are you awake?”

“… No.”

“Oh. Uh, well, can you come with Kiki? Kiki and some of the other girls are having a dispute and were hoping you could solve it for us. Please?”

“Why me?” she groaned, already lamenting the loss of sleep this would cause.

“Well, uh… yesterday that boy, right? He’s yours and well… we need your opinion on something.”

That got her attention. Sitting up, she eyed the khob with a frown. “What are you on about this time? And for the record He isn’t ‘mine’ he just appeared in my room.”

Kiki looked bewildered for a moment “Is that what happened? Kiki thou… well, uh. Um. Anyways can you settle our dispute for us since you are up anyways?” she gave Amina her best puppy eyes.

Amina glanced at the clock next to her bed: almost morning. Sighing she pinched the bridge of her muzzle. “Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with.”

Kiki bounced up and down as Amina got out of bed. “We are gathered in Kiki’s bunk.”

“Uh huh.” Amina followed the excited Khob out of her room and down the hall to Kiki’s. When she stepped inside, she found two more of her Khob classmates standing around Vexa’s twin sister, Nixis.

“Kiki brought Amina.” Her guide announced upon entry.

“Great now we have another one to share with.” Someone said

“You wish. It’s mine and I am not letting it out of my sight.” Nixis spat.

“It’s four of us against you.”

“That’s still unfair for you.”

Amina’s head swung left and right as she tried to make sense of just what was going on.

“Don’t be a crooked tail.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. I don’t want to, but I’ll tell everyone. Then what will you do?”

“Hah. You don’t scare me y-“

“Hang on!” Amina interjected. “Just what is going on?”

All eyes turned to her. “Did Kiki not tell you?” asked on of the other Khobs this one blue and green

“No.”

“Oh, Uh. Kiki, tell her.”

“Okay.” Kiki responded.

“Yesterday when that boy showed up, he fell over the railing, Elisya grabbed his shirt, but it ripped.”

Ok, not really her problem Amina thought, a ripped shirt that wasn’t even hers wasn’t something she normally worried about. She was about to check out and go back to bed to catch whatever was left before morning when Kiki finished talking.

“Now Nixis is hoarding it and wont share.”

Amina almost gave herself whiplash with how fast her head swung around to stare at Kiki.

“WHAT!” everyone winced at the sudden increase in volume. Snapping her head back to stare at Nixis Amina almost shouted. “Why would you need to hoard a torn sleeve?”

“I, I, uh… I, um.” Her bravado now faltering in the face of a much larger woman Nixis’s ears flattened.

One of the Khob’s filled in the rest.

“She’s smelling it. She says it smells amazing but won’t share.”

“Yeah. I want to smell it too.” Chimed in a second

The other two nodded voicing the same sentiment.

Amina gaped.

Nope. Nopity, nope, nope. No. she was not going to deal with these weirdos this early in the morning. She walked up to Nixis, glaring down at her, she extended an open hand. “Give it to me.”

Now completely cowed the Feli grudgingly produced a ripped piece of fabric from behind her.

Amina Glared at the Four fools in the room who were all now wilting under her gaze. “I am telling the captain. And none of you are getting a whiff of this.” With that she stuffed the rag in her waistband and returned to her room, ignoring the hushed war of words that started as soon as her back was turned.

Once inside her own room she pulled out the rag and was about to throw it in the trash. Stopping herself she wondered if the boy might want it back.

“Hmmmm.” Better safe than sorry. She stuffed it under her bed, determining to return it to its owner in the morning. With her civic duty concluded she flopped back onto her bed and tried to get a little more sleep before her alarm went off.

She wouldn’t get any.

---

August woke up, greeted by the same sight as before. Maybe he had imagined the terror in the dark. ‘Please let it be so’ he thought. He would comfort himself with that delusion until he felt the bandages on his head.

Crap.

 It was real. Was he ‘Pregnant’ now? His stress level shot through the roof. A frantic beeping started from somewhere in the room. Leaping out of bed his face collided with a nearly invisible barrier with a satisfying thunk. Letting out a yelp he grabbed his offended nose, his eyes watering. Blinking the tears away he saw that winged woman from before, the odd beeping emanating from a tablet in one of her lab coat’s oversized pockets.

She was gesticulating in a placating manner and speaking rapidly. Obviously she was saying ‘Please calm down, you are okay, I am doctor Physician, I am here to help, please calm down.’ Or something.  Unfortunately, he was stressed out of his mind, having woken up for the third time in this nightmare.

He pounded a fist against the faint blue shimmer that was his cell wall.

“Let me out of here! Let me out! Can you understand me?!”  he pointed at himself, did a finger walk, then pointed at the still open door from his escape earlier. “Me, out, now.”

The little blue woman seemed to get the idea, but she clasped her hands together and shook her head saying something else while bowing slightly in a remorseful gesture.

Figures.

He was probably **‘**infected’ by one of those parasites now and was as good as dead anyways. Hanging his head he sat back on the bed, backed up to the wall, and started tearing up as he hugged his legs.

---

Cistene was getting hit hard in the feels. Clearly he wanted to get out, but he didn’t seem to understand that he was in more danger outside the med-bay than inside it.

After patching up the back of his head last night she had elected to stay with him till morning. And even then, when he woke up the remote monitor she had put on him gave her nothing but bad news.

He was extremely stressed, with the bouts of anxiety coming in waves coupled with a release of that combat stim in response. It really was some scary stuff. From her med pad she could see his blood pressure increase, his eyes dilating, even his reaction time seemed to become faster. And despite all that, he looked broken. Sitting on the bed like an unfortunate soul who had just lost something precious.

Tearing her thoughts away from such a depressing thought she pulled out her communicator and sent an alert to the captain, letting her know that he was awake again.

It was a good thing that Jenna was behind her when Xinia called them in the middle of the night. The look Jenna gave the engineer when she asked what she was doing with the boy late at night and mostly undressed may have killed a lesser woman. Fortunately, the broken keypads on the inside of the isolation room painted a clear picture: The young man had escaped and wandered the ship while the rest of them slept. Or in the case of Vexa watching a raunchy soap opera instead of the security feed. Stupid girl. Cistene shuddered at the thought of what went down on the bridge last night when Jenna dropped by to “Check on things.”

From what Xinia had told them the boy had just fallen over when he saw her. Though she believed her friend and colleague, why exactly he had fainted was still a mystery.

Though she didn’t show it, her Xinia was rattled by the experience. After she made sure he was alright, she went back to work instead of sleeping. Though she tried to be discreet Cistene could still faintly make out the sounds of mechanical maintenance coming from the engine room when she passed by later in the night.

Her communicator buzzed.

“Captain.” She greeted.

“How is he?”

“He won’t die any time soon… But he Is extremely stressed; I don’t even need the Med-patch to tell me that.”

Jenna sighed “Well good news is we will be making Nest Station in a few hours.”

Cistene was surprised to hear that. Last she had heard they were still a day out.

“We are a little early.” She remarked.

“This insanity has gone on for too long already. It’s worth pushing the engines a little to get Him on his way home sooner. When we make dock you and me are taking him to Nest security and getting this whole thing sorted out immediately.”

“Ill be in the Med-bay. Just let me know when we leave.”

“I will.”

Last Next

First

August groggily opened his eyes. He felt like he just had a bad case of heartburn, and add to that he was pretty thirsty. Swallowing what little saliva that was in his mouth, his brain began to reboot in earnest. Where was he again? In a flash, the memories of the past day came to the front of his mind. Right. Spaceship, Aliens, future and he was possibly food… or something. Blinking the fog of sleep from his eyes, he took a look at his surroundings.

He was in what looked like a cozy hospital bed, one with plenty of padding and sheets that felt amazing on his skin. The room was decently sized, having space for some sterile-looking cabinetry on one end and some wheeled gadgets neatly lined up on the other. Between was his bed complete with a rectangular halo suspended above that looked a bit like one of those old 360 shower curtain hangers that would go around a tub, only more advanced looking. The dim lighting and lack of other people in the room indicated that it was nighttime, or whatever the equivalent on a spaceship would be. Past the foot of his bed, he could make out the entrance. A fairly standard sci-fi sliding bulkhead door with matching keypad off to one side

Oh, goodie. Just what he wanted to see. Trapped in a smallish room with nowhere to run if and when the ‘aliens’ came back for him. Idly he mused that he might get probed. Deciding he would rather not be subjected to… that, he made up his mind to escape his prison before his fears had a chance to manifest.

Quietly hopping out of bed he found himself in a sort of sleeveless hospital gown that went just below his knees. Mercifully this one was fully closed in the back, but still he shivered slightly as a cool breeze went up the bottom and chilled his delicate bits. Mission update: Escape the room AND find some proper clothing. Trying not to be weirded out by his decidedly feminine attire he set about examining the door and related keypad.

Having no luck with the solid door, he went to the keypad. Grasping the protrusion, he started testing its strength pulling gently this way and that, attempting to determine where it was mounted from. It had a little give, so he pulled harder.

CRACK.

He had pulled the face right off. Looking left and right as if someone had heard him he waited a tense moment before resting his eyes on his handy work.

Wires. Lots of wires and what looked like chips or breakers.

“Oh yeah. It’s all coming together.”

With a final look around to ensure no one was watching, he began pulling out wires and chips/breakers waiting a moment after each pull to see if it did anything.

With a sudden faint hiss the door opened up, almost scaring August to death. Luckily no one was on the other side. Instead, there was a very short hallway and another door. The walls on either side were lined with stubby conical protrusions with a lens topping them off. Cameras or some sort of laser doohickey.

Thinking better of just walking through, he went back to the bed and grabbed a pillow. Standing in the threshold of the first doorway he lazily threw it at the second door. It sailed through the air and hit the door with a thud before ultimately falling to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

August waited a moment just in case there was some delayed death ray. Nothing did happen though, and with a shrug he walked up to the second keypad to repeat what he did to the first.

CRACK.

Hiss.

He was free. Well, sort of.

Meanwhile on the bridge:

Vexa was the only woman on the bridge, the black and white Feli having drawn the short straw for night security duty earlier that day.

While security was not in her job description, a small crew like the one on the Rapacity meant everyone had some flexibility in what tasks they would need to fill. For cargo specialist Vexa, that meant whiling away the hours normally reserved for sleep watching for any irregularities in or around the ship all from a comfy chair on the bridge.

The first hour had gone by without incident as she faithfully kept watch. The second had taken twice as long as the first, and by the third she was checking her communicator semi regularly. Now at hour four she was engrossed in her favorite soap opera: Blood Is Thicker. One she favored (predictably) for its racy plots and its large and diverse male cast of varying species and ages.

fidgeting on the security chair with her legs propped up on the console she was supposed to be watching; she was completely oblivious to the blinking red light on said console warning of a containment system failure in the med bay.

Huh, It really was ‘nighttime’ or whatever it was called on a star ship. After exploring the rest of what was undoubtedly a medical wing, August was now making his way down a long wide hallway, stopping to see if any of the doors off to the sides were open. None were, which was why he was now trying each one he came across.

These doors did not have the same type of keypad as the ones in the medical wing did, instead they had a simple button to the side that either blinked red when pushed, denying entry, or in the case of the latest door; green.

Hiss.

Oh, good. This one was apparently unlocked.

Checking his surroundings one more time, the coast was clear. Peering into the now open doorway he saw the unmistakable signs of heavy machinery and dangling chains paired with the quiet rhythmic pulsing of an engine.

It didn’t seem like anyone was inside. Another quick glance down either side of the hall to make sure he wasn’t being watched, and he walked in, the door automatically closing behind him.

Entering this room might have been a mistake. It was even darker in here than the hall he was just in, though that may have something to do with the dark coloration of everything in here, as opposed to the mostly white walls and ceilings in the hall and medical rooms.

Even so he trudged on, checking high and low in the hopes of finding a weapon or an escape pod or… well he didn’t know exactly.

His exploration was going well until he rounded a corner and came face to chest with a shape he definitely recognized. And much like the final moments of a particularly evil business executive he let out a pathetic wheeze.

Earlier:

Xinia was concluding her nightly rounds in Engine Room B when she got it into her head that she should bunk here tonight. Sure, she had a room where most of her possessions were, but she also had little section of the engine room reserved for herself, complete with a hammock and small projector. She even had a mini fridge with some caffeinated drinks in it. Now sold on the idea she resumed her work with a slight pep in her step. On nights like tonight, she felt like life was at its peak. The promise of a warm comfy place to sleep, with a nice drink and the option of playing a game or watching something was almost enough to be called perfect. If only there was a man waiting for her, someone who smelled nice that she could use like a blanket while watching one of her favorite movies, then it really would be prefect.

Heh, Fat chance of that ever happening.

 Ignoring that last sour note she hurriedly finished the last of her rounds.

Walking over to her little corner she stripped out of her coveralls and shoes, tossing them to the side she was left in just her underwear. Now in her most comfortable state she hopped into her hammock and turned on the projector. Deciding she was too tired to play any games tonight she began lazily waving her hand to scroll through the assortment of shows, movies, and recorded TV that had been saved through the years. Settling on one, she selected the file and reached down to the mini fridge with her tail snagging a drink while the movie started.

Three hours later she was passed out, the projector having shut itself off without any further input when the film ended, and more than a few fresh cans littered below.

She would have continued in this state until morning, if not for the sounds of rummaging waking her up.

Jerking a little she regained consciousness, checking her communicator she confirmed that it was still nighttime. So why then did she hear someone in the room with her? Did they forget something in here and come back for it?

Better go see who it was and what they wanted before they started making a mess of her workstation. Sliding out of her makeshift cocoon she made her way towards the sounds. Normally she would have just called out to see who it was, but tonight she was slightly wasted and couldn’t be bothered to think rationally.

Stopping just short of whoever was in the room she let out a yawn. Unfortunately, this was exactly the moment August came around the corner.

The sight of a boy rounding the corner caused her yawn to hitch, giving the young man a clear view of a Dzedin with her mouth wide open, more or less staring right at him.

The sound he made sent the wrong kind of shivers up her spine.

After a full day of stress he couldn’t take any more. If he was thinking straight or had a longer moment to process what he was seeing he would have noticed the bra the woman in front of him was wearing, or the fact that movies were not real, or even that she had a normal tongue. But no. all August saw was a nightmarish figure of chitin in front of him; mouth open wide, fangs on display, ready to deliver the killing blow. That was when his body called it quits. First his balance went, followed by his hearing and lastly his sight. In short. He fainted.

Before Xinia could react, the boy had fallen backwards stiff as a board, his eyes visibly rolling back in their sockets. She let out a choked gasp of her own when she saw his head bounce off the floor.

Rushing to pick him up she noted two different scents in the air.

One was slightly metallic like Trytite, and the other smelled really, really good. Even as she picked his limp body up to check his vitals, she couldn’t deny that she was suddenly and inexplicably ‘in the mood’. Fortunately panic quickly won out over hornyness, prompted by the concerning amount of bright red blood oozing out a gash on the back of his head.

Xinia hurriedly scooped the boy up and made for the medical bay. She could call the captain and doctor from one of the terminals there.

Cistene was sleeping when her communicator blared to life.

“Cistene! I need you in the med bay NOW! H- he, fell, and now he is bleeding. Oh, goddess that’s a lot of blood. It’s not stopping.”

Literally flying out of bed she threw on whatever clothing was nearby before making the second mad sprint to the med bay in less than a day. and not just her but Jenna, Kyrie and Sasha were all on the same chat line and also making their way to Medical.

And going through all their heads was the same thought.

“Not again.”

LastNext