#Put my own spin on the species- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uhohwhathaveidone · 1 year

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Nah cause what if Sebastian x slytherin reader right where your helping in him in his quests but you get attacked and reader gets knocked out and he’s mad n protective

"I've only had reader for a few day bit if anything happens to them i will curse everyone in this room and then myself"

My Knight (S.S)

I hate spiders. That's a lie, I just don't like them if they're too close. Love peacock spiders though. So cute. Based off that alone, we're dealing with that one quest with the spiders. So, there's a warning for you, also I haven't been able to play the game still, my pc is still refusing, so do I know what's going on? No. Did I call the giant spider the BroodMother while only thinking about that horrible darkspawn from Dragon Age? Yes. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, I'm posting rather early so I might start on another request tonight. <3

You sucked in a breath as you shouted another spell at the spiders that surrounded you, desperate to keep them away. You glanced over to Sebastian, who was shouting his own spells at the spiders. You quickly cast a protection spell as you sprinted over, kicking a smaller spider away from Sebastian’s legs. “They keep coming! What are we supposed to do?” You shouted, throwing Stupefy at a spider that jumped at you. Sebastian shouted, bumping into your back, causing you to stumble. You turned to him, trying to see what had happened, when your eyes widened.

A giant spider crawled from a hole in the side of the cave, its long legs towering over you while causing the ground to tremble beneath you. Its eyes shined red as it slowly crawled over to you, letting out a screech that made your eardrums rattle. “It’s the Brood Mother! I think that’s what they call her?” Sebastian shouted, grabbing onto your arm, and pulling you towards him. You watched as the smaller spiders scurried away, afraid of their giant counterpart. You readied your wand as you watched her, narrowing your gaze as you looked for a weak point. Without warning she ran at you, nearly knocking you into a wall with her leg. You threw spell after spell at her, a mix of red and yellow emitting from your wand. Sebastian had gotten separated from you, attacking the giant spider from the other side of the cave.

You didn’t have many spells at your disposal, so you turned to using spells to throw the giant rocks around you, knocking out one of her legs. You watched as she spun around, trying to pick a target, and you quickly shouted to Sebastian as you dodged an attack. “Go for her legs!” “Got it!” You continued to dodge attacks and cast spells at the spider, quietly begging for her to go down, as your arms got tired. You watched as Sebastian threw a decent-sized rock with his wand, hitting her in the head and sending hundreds of broken stones into her eyes, causing her to flail and spin in panic. You felt victory hover in the air as you sent another stone flying, hitting her in the head once again. She let out a final screech as she tumbled to the ground, legs going limp around her as she hit the stone.

You breathed a sigh of relief as you looked over to Sebastian, who let out a triumphant cheer as he tried to catch his breath. You put your wand into your robe as you made your way over to him, stepping over rocks that broke off in your fight. You smiled as you reached him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?” Sebastian nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah. But I think spiders just made it to the top of the Bugs I Hate list.” You chuckled as you shook your head. “Spiders aren’t technically bugs, though. They’re like their own species.” You joked, watching as Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Whatever they are, I don’t like them in the slightest anymore.”

“Does this mean that next time you see a spider, you’re going to ask me to kill it for you?” Sebastian scoffed, crossing his arms as he turned away from you, looking at some of the rocks that surrounded him. “Of course not. Just, don’t ask me to take care of one if its bigger than a Sovereign.” You laughed, noting the fact and looking around the cave. “Come look at this,” Sebastian said, waving his hand to you as you walked over. He held one of the stones in his hand, its surface shining in the soft light of a nearby torch. You leaned closer, examining the stone, as Sebastian watched you, a light blush creeping to his cheeks at the closeness. “It looks like quartz. Could this have been an old mine?” You asked, looking up at Sebastian as you leaned away, fixing your posture. Sebastian shrugged as he began to explain just how quartz mines worked to you. You listened, of course, no longer paying attention to your surroundings.

Behind you, the giant legs of the spider twitched, slowly retracting to her body as she regained consciousness. Slowly, she used her front legs to move some rocks away from her eyes, rolling onto the ground. Your ears perked as you heard the rocks make contact with the ground, the hair on the back of your neck standing up and making you uneasy. You watched Sebastian as he continued to talk, glancing around you. The spider, now free of sharp stones, stood up, looking where the two of you stood. “It’s a wonder why so many old works of art weren’t taken down and recycled, could have used them, pity.” Sebastian said, tossing the stone back onto the ground. Alerted, the spider trained her eyes on you, preparing an attack. You looked over your shoulder to where you had left the spider, eyes widening as you realized your mistake. “What do you think about it all? Would it still-“ You cut Sebastian off as you grabbed the collar of his robe, yelling for him to move as you used the remaining strength you had left to pull him from where he was standing, sending him to the ground behind you as you watched the spider slam into the wall, right where he was originally standing.

Sebastian let out a shriek as he watched the spider, one that he thought was dead, shake its head as it retracted from the wall. You quickly reached for your wand, casting a shield charm as a leg slammed down in front of you. “I thought we killed the thing?” Sebastian shouted, scrambling to his feet and pulling out his own wand. You shook your head, sending off a spell at its eyes. “Stupid! How did I not realize!” You shouted at yourself as you spun and grabbed Sebastian, running. “It was so obvious!” You continued, “She didn’t die like the other spiders, remember?” Sebastian nodded, trying to cast another spell at the spider. “This time, we fight until she’s on her back and curled up!”

You gasped for air as you kept up your attack, throwing rock after rock at the spider as Sebastian unleashed his own onslaught. You struck one of its eyes with another rock, running to Sebastian as the spider spun once again. You ran faster as you saw one of its legs rise, beginning to bring it down, its target Sebastian. You yelled his name as you reached for him, casting a spell to push him back as the spider’s leg made contact, sending you flying back. Sebastian shouted your name, watching as you tumbled across the stones and finally coming to halt, your wand tossed beside you. There was no way to reach you as the spider continued its own attack, its sharp legs making dents in the stone below it. Sebastian was hit with an idea, and he quickly shouted at the spider, running around it. He found a boulder that had been split in half, and he raised his wand and sent it flying at the spider, slicing through one of its legs.

“Accio!” Sebastian brought the leg towards him as he shouted for the spider’s attention. Both him and the spider were angered beyond reasoning, and the spider let out another screech as it stood taller, ready to tear into Sebastian, who only stood there. He smiled, watching as the spider straightened its legs, exposing the underside of its abdomen. Without hesitation, Sebastian launched the leg back to its owner, its sharp tip burrowing into the stiff exoskeleton, sending the spider to rear up as it screeched in pain, eventually falling backwards and twitching. Sebastian watched as it slowly died, making sure that it stayed dead, before turning to where you still laid, unmoving.

“Y/n!” He breathed as he dropped to your side, turning you onto your back. His eyes widened as he held your head up, blood slowly trickling down into the small puddle that had formed under you. “No, come on! You can’t let a bug take you out!” He shouted, his shaking hands reaching for his wand as he racked his brain for a spell to heal your wound. The faint sound of scurrying legs sounded from the hall you walked through to get to where you were now, a small group of spiders quickly making their way over. “Not now, not now.” Sebastian whispered, tapping the wand to his head. Quickly, his eyes widened as a spell came to mind, and he quickly flipped his want and whispered “Episkey”. The gash on your head began to heal itself, the blood vanishing from your face and the ground. You were still out, however, and Sebastian lifted you from the group and brought you to the side of the cave, leaning you against its wall and standing in front of you, wand raised as the small spiders moved into the room.

A few moments later the final spider rolled over, legs curling in as it died. Sebastian let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he looked around in case there were any more hiding around. You squinted, glancing around. Your head throbbed slightly as you brought your hand up, brushing against where the gash had been. You squinted as you looked at Sebastian’s silhouette, his shoulders raising and dropping quickly as he sucked in air. You smiled, looking around at the dead spiders. “Keep breathing like that,” you started, sitting yourself up more, “You’ll probably drop like those spiders.” Sebastian turned to you, a sigh of relief leaving him as he dropped his knee to take a look at you. “You’d find that funny, wouldn’t you?” You nodded, smiling. Sebastian grabbed your face, turning it to check your head. His calloused hand rested under your chin, gently moving your head around. “How’s your head, then?” He asked, letting you go. You shrugged, feeling the dull throb as it slowly faded. “I’m fine, thanks to you I suppose?” Sebastian smiled as he nodded, standing up and offering his hand.

You looked over to where the mother laid, her legs retracted to her body as rigor mortis set in. You raised your eyebrows in surprise as you noticed one of its legs missing, finding it protruding from her body. You looked at Sebastian, surprised yet impressed as he shrugged. “Couldn’t let her take you out before I did.” You scoffed, slowly walking towards the spider. Sebastian quickly grabbed your sleeve as he pulled you away, shaking his head. “Look, I’m sure I can kill a giant bug. No need to double check.” You chuckled as you shook your head, opening your mouth. “No, don’t even! I’m going to call it a bug if I want to.” You closed your mouth, choosing to smile instead. You looked around for your wand, realizing that it wasn’t in your hand. Sebastian cleared his throat to get your attention, and you turned to see him holding your wand in his hand. You sighed, walking over and reaching for the wand, only for Sebastian to hold it above your head and out of reach. You frowned, narrowing your gaze as you glared at Sebastian. “I do believe I deserve something in return?” You shook your head as you leaned closer to Sebastian, placing a small kiss on his cheek and then snatching your wand from his hand.

Sebastian stood there, shocked, as you fixed your robes. “Whatever would I do without you, my dear Knight?” Sebastian stuttered, quickly fixing his hair as his cheeks heated up. “Probably not get attacked by giant spiders, for one.” You nodded, placing your wand into your pocket. “Although,” Sebastian started, slowly walking over to you. “I don’t think a cheeky kiss is enough for the trauma I went through to protect you.” You chuckled, pretending to be deep in thought. “Of course, a killer of spiders should be given a better reward.” With that, you quickly leaned against Sebastian again, this time placing a soft kiss to his lips and walking towards the hall, turning back and waiting for Sebastian. He quickly followed you, slightly whining. “Are you even going to ask me how I did it?” “I figured you’d tell me on the walk back, you can never stay quiet about these things.” “I find that rude, but I suppose I’ll tell you.”

#sebastian sallow fluff #sebastian sallow imagine #sebastian sallow x you #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow #hogwarts legacy #harry potter imagine #fluff #slight angst #sebastian sallow angst #hogwarts legacy imagine

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attorneys-against-court-violence · 2 months

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Taka post because I cannot stop spinning that bird in my brain like a deli chicken. Kept spoilers to a minimum where I could - this list only focuses on Taka with minimal detail elsewhere, though minor spoilers for Case 6-4!

Taka is based on a type of bird in the genus Accipiter. This encompasses 49 species of hawk, but Taka himself is most likely a Eurasian Sparrowhawk or Goshawk due to the franchise originally taking place in Japan (note the similar markings & patterns on their feathers!)

Taka's cry is most similar to a Red-tailed Hawk. You might recognise it's call from film and other popular media! It's iconic screech is often dubbed over a Bald Eagle (which don't sound nearly as hardcore - look them both up if you have the time!)

Takagari - the practice of falconry in Japan - was a popular sport amongst samurai. Simon Blackquill being the "Twisted Samurai" he is, his owning of a hawk only cements the ye-olde samurai vibes.

His localised name, Taka, is literally the Japanese word for hawk.

His original Japanese name, Gin, could either be a play on a Japanese word for a piercing ringing noise or a Japanese word for the metal silver. It's romanised form is also only one letter away from his owner's first name, Jin.

Taka lives in the courthouse according to Simon Blackquill. He appears to make his home in Courtroom No. 4, where every trial Blackquill is present for takes place. The one exception is the second trial in Case 5-4, which takes place in Courtroom No. 5.

Coutroom No. 4 is also the room where Wocky Kitaki's trial was held in Case 4-2. Taka obviously did not make an appearance there, however, implying he either minds his business when Blackquill isn't present or only made a home there when Blackquill returned to prosecute in the following year.

Across all of Dual Destinies, Taka has attacked Apollo Justice, Phineas Filch, Phoenix Wright, Athena Cykes, Aristotle Means, and Bobby Fulbright. He has used the Judge as a perch on multiple occassions.

Taka emotes along with Blackquill in their animations; he's surprised when Blackquill slams the desk with one hand, chuckles to himself when Blackquill laughs, and threatheningly leans towards people he and Blackquill are upset at.

Blackquill shows open affection towards Taka, petting him during trials with a loving expression on his face & stating that Taka is as human in spirit as himself or anyone else.

Case 5-DLC implies that Bobby Fulbright is responsible for caring for Taka while Simon Blackquill is in prison. Blackquill goes so far as to make a phone call to "Fool Bright" to ensure he feeds Taka.

Several lawyer characters have "reading" poses where they hold a sheet of paper in front of themselves. Taka holds Blackquill's papers for him in his "reading" poses due to his shackles limiting what he can do with his arms.

Taka is intelligent enough to purchase items from a store and return them; in Case 6-4, Blackquill gives him money to buy camel buns in order to chase a potential lead during the trial.

Taka has made an appearance in-game in 6 cases; 5-2, 5-3, 5-4, 5-5, 5-DLC, and 6-4. The only trial in Dual Destinies he and his owner are absent from is 5-1. He is never seen during investigation sequences.

An audiodrama set during Dual Destinies confirms that Athena Cykes can hear emotions from Taka's calls, but they are not as clear as human emotions.

The same audio drama demonstrated Taka's intelligence again, with him trying to point the WAA lawyers to a crucial piece of evidence for his master's trial & playing along as "the Plummed Punisher" for a skit they put together to retrieve it.

#ace attorney #taka ace attorney #simon blackquill #i love this bird so much #''screw it let's give our prosecutor a living breathing animal with talons and a temper''#even when they already let him slash at people with his bare hands #ridiculous avian. he's perfect.

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wheredidhiseyebrowsgo · 2 months

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Omg omg omg I almost missed the ask box being open! First of all though: thank you ever so much for all your hard work.

My question is this: I really like Mpreg fics. And I remember reading one where Derek thought Stiles rejected him and the baby. Only Stiles didn't even know male werewolves could get pregnant. I can find fics with this trope where it's Stiles who is pregnant but not the other way around

I think so!

Naps are nature’s way of reminding you that life is nice by FicLogia

(1/1 I 3,033 I General)

Melissa puts the patient chart away and comes closer to the omega. “It’s normal to change your mind. Especially for someone in your position.” Young, unmated, barely graduated. The omega ob-gyn has seen it one too many times.

Derek shakes his head, runs a hand over the arc of his belly, relishing the feel of it, a quiet sigh escaping his lips. “I want this baby. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“Then why? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Little Dash Of Pink by AsagiStilinski

(1/1 I 4,790 I Teen)

Derek always thought those stories he heard about male pregnancies in his family were just old wives' tales and bad jokes

Suddenly, that's no longer true, and he's not too sure how to tell his husband

ay it out loud, love by pineneedlepants

(4/? I 29,137 I Teen)

When Derek first finds out, it's a rainy thursday that reflects his mood perfectly. He's been oddly dizzy lately, with bouts of nausea that don't make any sense to him, and he's pretty sure he's never slept as much as he is now, not even as a carefree teenager. He thumps his forehead gently against the table top, willing the water he drank not five minutes ago to stay down. He's rubbing his head on the wooden surface when he hears it.

There's a soft thump thu-thump coming from somewhere near him. He lifts his head slowly, as not to make the world spin and tries to concentrate where the soft beat is coming from. Because it couldn't possibly be -

Derek cannot be -

With growing horror, he directs his eyes downwards, to his slightly softened belly. His hands have stilled on his skin, trembling lightly. The soft thump thu-thump comes again, and again, and again, the sound getting louder with each soft flutter, until the pulse matches Derek's own. It's almost mesmerizing, a beautiful cadence that flutters in and out of rhythm of Derek's own heartbeat. --

Or the one where there's a misunderstanding of the century, a little angst, a surprise baby and a deliriously happy ending.

A Legend of a Lonely Boy by bunnymaccool

(1/1 I 42,991 I Explicit)

Peter Hale managed to climb his way back up from death only long enough to do one, terrible, horrible thing. It was enough to accomplish his goal. To leave a legacy. Two months after killing his uncle for the second time, Derek is feeling sick and weak, heavy in his own body. What Deaton is telling him should be impossible... but...

There is a werewolf legend. About unmated alpha who desperately desired to have heirs, so he studied the moon and the stars in such great depth that he discovered a secret. On the night of the full moon, when the stars aligned just so … he could plant his pups into whatever body he desired. Regardless of species, regardless of gender.

The danger is this ... werewolves are not meant to carry pups alone. They need someone to guide them, love them, protect them during this time of vulnerability. A partner. A mate. But Derek Hale has none of these things. He has no one. If he and his pup are going to survive, he may just have to follow the ridiculous suggestion Deaton puts forth. The completely annoying, loud-mouthed, pain in his ass suggestion that makes Derek want to rip someone's throat out. With his teeth.

Through the Dark by WriteByNight

(11/35 I 93,401 I Explicit)

Stiles is down on his luck and out of money, just trying to finish his last year of college. Out of ideas, he goes to donate his sperm and meets Derek Hale, who is looking for a surrogate to carry his and his infertile girlfriend's baby. Stiles is instantly attracted to the alpha werewolf, but pushes his feelings to the side in order to fulfill Derek's dream for children.

Derek and Stiles grow close, but try to deny the feelings growing for one another because as soon as the pregnancy is over Stiles will have to give the baby over to Derek and Braeden, and walk out of their lives. However, the closer he gets to his due date, the harder it is to come to terms that he'll have to let go of the man he's come to love.

#teen wolf #sterek #stiles stilinski #derek hale #rape #mpreg #anon

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pillowspace · 6 months

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Sort of a dumb hypothetical I've been spinning my wheels about, but how might have things gone differently if Moon or Eclipse was the injured god Y/N found? That'd might change some lore stuff to explain how and why, I was just thinking about it after the new chapter and meeting Eclipse and wondered what a role-swap would be like

Moon would depend on some things. Is it Sun who's banished from the Mortal Realm, or is Moon still the one banished? Let's say he is still banished. That adds an extra layer of panic, because he has ended up in the realm he's not allowed to be in with no memory of how he got there, and he's frightened that if he does go back home, he'll be severely punished or possibly even killed by the higher gods when they find out. He is filled with anxiety after he wakes up, but also...

He missed this.

He looks around the woods with familiar awe, fascinated by the Mortal Realm's wilderness.

There is an issue here though. If Moon doesn't know what realm travel object got him here, then... he doesn't know how to get back on his own. It certainly wasn't his own pendant, it doesn't work. Moon is hostile towards Y/N at first, but once he tones it down, he convinces Y/N to send a prayer out for Sun to find him. Aaand that's how you could've gotten both blorbos in only the first act.

Let's move onto Eclipse now. Eclipseee... uhhh. For reasons, being trapped in the Mortal Realm could literally kill him, so I'm going to remove a rule to make this work. He is MASSIVE, with legs as tall as you are. He is not getting in your cart, and you wouldn't be able to lift him anyway. So instead, you go home, and return with health supplies. With how ABSOLUTELY STRANGE his body is, uou're unsure if it even helps, but you try to help him right there in the woods. After that, you go into town and pay to borrow a carriage so that you can get him safe into the indoors of your shed. You unfortunately do just have to lie down blankets on the floor and lie him there, as you don't have much else to offer. When he wakes up... now this may be a shock, but he does not threaten you. Not at all. He has gone through too much at the hands of other gods to be frightened by a species he never had much respect for anyway. You are terrified by his presence, but he is grateful, and does you no harm. You know how Sun is stubbornly trying to keep the life debt just a regular debt? Yeah, Eclipse doesn't do that. He immediately seals it into a life debt, pretty much having you own him. This is BIZARRE to you, but Eclipse has been so lonely that he'll literally take company in the form of a life debt, something that any other god would be horrified by. It's honestly a little sad. You refuse to use this life debt, but that's fine. All Eclipse wants is for you to keep him, and I am unsure if he'd even want to return home. There is something important back home, which puts him at a dilemma, but... this one bit of comfort... maybe it's more worth it to stay. TLDR: something is a little wrong with Eclipse

But let's put this into the other angle. Let's put the rules back into a canon state of things. The longer he stays in the Mortal Realm, the sicker and more in agony he becomes. You have to try your hardest to find the realm travel object he used before it's too late. There comes a point where he can no longer even stand, and while you regrettably have to take a break, you mutter reassurances to him that he basks in. If you do get the object to him in time, he'll take it, hesitate, then ask if you'd like to go with him.

There is a bit of lore that contradicts with all of this by the way, so that detail's being ignored. I'm putting us in an AU

#ask #celestial sundown au #[csd au variant]

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shirecorn · 1 year

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What’s your favourite mlp species? Have you got any thoughts on kirins/niriks?

Request ponies, species, etc I havent done here

I am both a creature and character designer, so I have a lot of thoughts about MLP world!

Paradoxically, the non-pony species interest me less than the actual ponies, because they are all really solid and well done designs. There's not a lot I would reinterpret tbh, and drawing them would just be taking what they have and making them realistic.

The non-pony creatures tend to be more detailed because they are generally cameos and don't need to be animated doing nearly as much as ponies do.

Compilations by AndoAnimalia on deviantart

The kirins are really lovely designs! I love the ankle tufts, and how the stripes on the horns glow when using magic. Really nice creature design here.

The Nirik part was a little boring, and the plot/conflict was not sophisticated enough for my tastes. But it is a show for young children, not biology majors. Lots of room for worldbuilding and headcannoning lore to flesh it out, but I prefer something I can completely rewrite. The kirin lore was fine and I'm fine leaving it as-is.

Another good one is breezies.

I love them they look so stupid. Their wings are over the top but perfectly designed to sell the "piece of lint in the wind" delicateness they have.

as for my favorite creature?

Bug momma

I really love changelings and love how edgy they are.

The reformed changelings are decent but I would have designed them differently. I may take a crack at them later on if I feel the need. I feel like they should either be pony-adjacent (with manes at the very least) or further removed from ponies. this middle ground is kind of like having a bug monster alien that just happens to be bipedal, with humanoid shoulders, arms, and hands for no evolutionary reason (the reason is practical effects and putting a dude in a costume but shhh)

all this is about creatures though, and its very important to talk about character design whenever we discuss creatures. A character's personality should be the quickest read about them, rather than their biology. If something is too complex, the personality gets lost because you have to spend your details adding ankle tufts and articulated fingers.

The mane six, and basically all other ponies, use the same base puppet, and each unique part needs its own turnaround. Every prop and hairdo and eye shape needs to be understood from every possible angle because these are main characters and they need to be be able to turn, spin, and do karate without the animators having to make up the back of applejack's hat every time she faces away from the camera.

Having the same body means animators know how to draw both rarity and rainbow dash from a back 3/4 view with one hoof raised. So from a technical standpoint, simple is best.

Even in big budget productions, where every character has a different body with different close and face shapes, main characters are simplified so that the audience can quickly read pose and expression without getting lost in complex clothing designs or face makeup. Reading poses and expressions quickly is very important to understand and empathize with the character before they've moved to the next pose. You need to understand the emotion the character is feeling and the action they are doing in a split second.

you start to get more complicated and an entity becomes less of a character and more of scenery because it has so much detail its harder to read the emotions from one frame to the next.

There's a reason he doesn't wear his funny hat for the duration of the movie! It's much easier to read his emotions without it. Adding lots of detail and weird props is something designers do a lot when introducing a character if they want to make that character feel mysterious or "other" because its harder to relate when your brain is stuck on the details. also masks just do that by nature of being masks.

where was I going with this

My little pony g4 has great creature and character design.

If it were high budget, major studio with All The Money, there might be more variety in character proportions, and more distinction between the different pony species. But its a puppet animated show that was always meant to make marketable designs to be turned into toys. We just get lucky when there's a good story to tell along the way

#ramble machine #ask #shire screams

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monstersandmaw · 2 years

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Male ‘yautja inspired’ alien x gender neutral reader - Part Six (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

___

Note the rating change please. 18 + only.

Content: a bit more lore, some angst, some fluff, and some wet and messy alien sex :) Wordcount: 6027

Catch up here: Part One (sfw), Part Two (sfw), Part Three (sfw), Part Four (sfw, Part Five (sfw)

___

The atmosphere in the camp became charged after that in a way it hadn’t been before, and you felt a little nauseous. That probably had less to do with not having eaten in hours, and more to do with the fact that Croc was staring at you as if he’d just had an epiphany of the very worst kind. Perhaps the significance of Red showing you his face went deeper than you’d first thought. Perhaps Croc had never expected him to do it, but whatever the reason, the usually jovial and lighthearted alien was behaving like someone had just walked over his grave.

Red had disappeared inside the ship again, and you couldn’t help feeling like you’d put a foot wrong in the dark somewhere, stumbling and falling and still waiting to hit the ground. It didn’t help that there was a near-constant churning in your gut anyway about the fact that only the next day you were going to have to leave, and you would probably never see either of them again.

After busying yourself with digging out the last sachet of dehydrated macaroni cheese from your pack for supper, you boiled some water on the healthy little campfire, and ate alone while the two remaining squad-mates finished preparing for the arrival of their rescue party in absolute silence. The bickering had ceased, and they stacked the boxes without making a sound. It was eerie and you truly felt like an intruder for the first time since Red had charged at you out of the trees.

With the final day looming over you on the coming dawn, you still wanted to ask them a few more questions about their home worlds and their species, and their hunt across the universe that had led them to Earth, but you weren’t sure how to broach the topic now.

Luckily, as dark fell and they joined you beside the warmth and light of the fire, they began to talk about it without prompting, and the conversation flowed quietly, if not always smoothly, while they ate their own rations.

When you’d all finished eating, Big Red leaned over and removed his mask again, and he held it out to you. In the firelight, Red’s colouring looked all the more dramatic, and his mandibles clicked at you into a shy little smile which you returned as you took the mask from him and let your fingers play absently around the smooth rim where metal met bone. Croc watched the exchange intently, looking from his friend’s face to yours and back again, and for once, Big Red’s behaviour went completely without commentary.

Over the next few hours, they showed you more clips of their capital city on Prime and of the training barracks where they’d met as younglings. You were also shown clips of their third, fallen team-mate and your heart ached for them, wishing you could have met him too.

Carefully, you asked about the kinds of things they normally ate, and even what their music was like, and they showed you a steady stream of information that began to make your head spin after a while.

You also saw what the environments of their birthplaces and the nearby cities were like, ranging from Croc’s wild, jungle home in the treetops, lush as the deepest remaining areas of the Amazon on Earth, to the vast, multi-level mega-city that formed the capital of Secundus, where most of the population of the planet lived in a sprawling metropolis that covered an entire third of the planet’s surface. Only Big Red’s traditionalist clan chose to exist out in the middle of nowhere in the harsh, gritty sands of the far-reaching deserts.

After that, he showed you the various beasts that lived in the dunes and rocky outcrops: lizards the size of elephants that spewed acid like a fire hose when threatened; winged reptiles like pterodactyls that soared on the desert thermals for miles at a time without flapping a wing; tiny, adorable, fluffy creatures that looked like hamsters but had three eyes and long beaks; a horrific, black, eldtrich-looking creature that actually turned out to be an entire colony of smaller insects all intertwined that made you want to be sick just thinking about it; and a terrifying sand worm the size of a London Underground train with a mouth like a tunnel-boring machine, but which was apparently very docile and only ate the flowers of one particular, cactus-like plant.

You could see why Croc had called Big Red’s kind ‘tough’ though. Simply to exist out there, they had to be virtually un-killable to begin with.

“Why do you think Croc has to wear so much armour normally?” Big Red grinned when you said as much. You took the opportunity to remove the mask again for the time being and hold it in your lap to give yourself a break from the relentless stream of images and information. He didn’t ask for it back. He didn’t look directly at you most of the time either, and you wondered how bad his eyesight really was, but you felt his full attention on you nonetheless.

“I just thought you were an exhibitionist, Red” you quipped back, and Croc finally cracked a wide-mawed smile. In fact, you’d only seen Croc with a single pauldron on in addition to the armoured ‘loincloth’ that they both wore, but you weren’t about to argue.

“Oh, there’s lots of stuff that wants to kill us in the jungle too,” Croc assured you with a wicked glint in his eyes, and Red groaned, apparently knowing where this was leading already. “Remember when you stayed with my clan and ate that —” he cut off into a series of clicks for a fruit that apparently didn’t have a direct translation “— and your neck and face swelled up like a weather balloon for a week?”

You didn’t mean to laugh, but it snuck out anyway, and Big Red just shook his head. “Never going to let me forget that, are you?” he muttered. “That was the last time I ever ate something that you gave me without knowing what it was first.”

Croc nearly fell off his crate from laughing as he tried to describe Red’s swollen face to you with his little mandibles poking out of it, so Red kindly helped him along by simply reaching over and shoving him in the centre of his chest.

Croc landed flat on his back in the dirt with his legs in the air, still laughing like a drain, and you felt the odd tension of the day finally pop and shatter. Still miming a head like a beach ball at you and chortling, Croc picked himself up again and resumed his seat.

Red sighed though and turned more serious again as he looked around at the silhouettes of the pine trees against the clear night sky. “Are your people sending soldiers here for us?” he asked. “Do they know we crashed?” Despite the sudden moment of jollity, he was obviously still in the mindset of ‘ship’s captain’; responsible for Croc’s safety and the integrity of his tattered mission, and he must have felt vulnerable, grounded on a strange planet with no real defences.

You shook your head. “Not yet. At least, not that they told me,” you amended, just in case. They were unlikely to send anyone — given the reams of forms you’d signed agreeing to go out alone, unsupported, with no guarantee of rescue and with every chance you might never return. Quite what the fuck you’d been thinking at the time was still a marvel to you, but it was a gamble that had paid off against all odds. They must have been rubbing their hands together with glee when an untrained linguist had signed away a comfortable life in the archives to go bushwhacking for them in search of aliens, but you weren’t ashamed to admit that the financial rewards had definitely been the deciding factor at the time.

Although Big Red relaxed a fraction, you still suspected that the two of them would continue to keep watch in shifts that night.

“They sent me first because I’m not exactly a threat to you, and they wanted to learn about you. So far, your kind has only shot when shot at first, so…” They both picked up the subtext that sending in someone non-threatening had been the plan all along, and they nodded. “You’ve managed to learn so much about us when we still know next to nothing about you. They’ll probably send a team here once I get back to investigate and salvage, but —”

“—there will be nothing to find but a crater,” Croc grinned. “Our commander will obliterate what we cannot take with us.”

Your eyes went wide at that, but it did make sense. “Fair enough. Are they still on course to get here tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Big Red said. “They will arrive around sunset.”

You intended to be well on your way by then, but the thought of leaving these two physically hurt, like something inside you was shearing off. “How many are coming for you?”

“Another team like us,” Red said. “Three. They were on their way to make a study of your southern hemisphere to look for locations that the enemy may be hiding in, but they have been diverted to collect us first.”

Croc said something to Big Red in their language, and you got the feeling they were a bit dejected.

You looked from one to the other of them for a moment. “Are you guys… in trouble?”

Red snorted. “Yes. We shamed ourselves by allowing inferior human weaponry to bring us down. Our commander… she is most displeased.”

She.

You remembered what he’d said about females, and your next question just bubbled out of you. “Red, show me what the females of your species look like?”

Croc crowed out a laugh and elbowed Red in the ribs. He then took Red’s mask from your hands and planted it straight onto your face like it was a custard pie before you could do so much as blink.

“Assho—” you began without sting, but never got to finish the insult.

A second later, the helmet sent a new signal directly to your brain, and it created the illusion of standing at the intersection of an alien building complex, or perhaps a ship, with dark walls, dim white lighting, and a shiny black floor. It took you a couple of seconds to register that you were actually also staring up at a creature that was perhaps nine or ten feet tall.

She looked more like Croc than Red, with the same greenish-brown and cream colouring and spines across her face and around her eyes, but she was… massive. She wore a solid chest plate which seemed to be composed of the same dark metal as the inside of Red’s mask, and the same kind of armoured loincloth that Big Red and Croc both wore, with additional, articulated tassets over her hips and muscular thighs. She had a high, flaring crest that was a bit like a triceratops’ where Croc’s was much smaller, and she also bore an array of wave-like spikes that rippled back over her entire skull almost like flames where Croc’s head was largely smooth save for the dark, needle-like spines. Her shiny, greenish-black ‘dreads’ were each as thick as your forearm and fell to the middle of her back.

Her skin was a mottled cream and olive green, and her mouth stretched wide with scorn as she regarded the camera that had recorded the footage, presumably worn by Big Red at the time. Around her pale throat was wrapped a kind of decorated metal gorget — something between a cuff necklace and a piece of armour — and she had wide, metal bands around her ‘dreads’ in the same, ribbed style as the neck-piece.

“Holy shit,” you breathed, and then Croc himself came into the background of the shot. It was strange to see him with two arms, and he had none of the easy, jocund swagger to which you had grown accustomed over the last couple of days. He was deferential to the female without being obsequious, and he exposed his throat to her before turning to go, presumably at whatever order she had just clicked in his direction. Her voice was deeper than either of theirs, and from what you could see of her arm and thigh muscles around her armour, she was probably strong enough and powerful enough to crush Red’s skull with one hand.

Croc left the shot, but Big Red didn’t seem in a hurry to change what he was showing you, so you sat there and let it play out.

Another male with a mottled brown and cream pattern approached her and her whole demeanour changed.

She went from almost aggressively tense to something soft and doting, and she crooned quietly as the unknown male came to a halt in front of her and bowed his head. She lowered hers to touch the crowns of their sloping skulls together. She then stroked the palm of her massive, clawed hand affectionately down his thick mane of ‘dreads’ and he shivered openly and purred. He raised his face a little and they kissed their mandibles together. You’d witnessed Croc and Red do that briefly, but this had a lingering intimacy that their exchange had not.

“That,” came Red’s voice from somewhere beyond the vision, “Is a mated pair.”

“Oh,” you breathed.

When he’d talked about a bond, you hadn’t thought too much more about it, but it was obvious that there was something tangibly different between these two.

Before you could watch any more, you began to feel a little strange from the way the mask was interacting directly with your brain, and Croc chittered something to his friend. Red crooned, and then removed the mask gently from your face to set it back over his own. “Enough for tonight,” he said quietly.

A moment later, you yawned, and Croc did the same.

Amused by the fact that the vast physical differences between your two species did not apparently extend to yawns being contagious, you both grinned, and you made to stand up. Exhaustion from the strain of a four day hike and the stress of finding their ship crashed and Croc injured, and subsequently learning more about them in two days than any human had discovered in five years, as well as using the mask for so long, all washed over you and you swayed on your feet, the world blurring.

Big Red, still seated beside the fire, caught you reflexively with a firm hand to your lower back and you looked down at him, smiling. He did not remove his hand for a long moment.

“Thanks.”

Croc clicked something at him, and he nodded in acknowledgement before turning to look up at you again. “You may sleep in my quarters again if it is more comfortable than your tent,” he said. “I’ll take first watch, but I will join you later, if I may.”

You blinked. “You’re offering me your room again and then asking if it’s ok to share it? It’s your room, Red.”

“But you may use it, and I do not have to be there.”

“No, I’d… I’d like it if you joined me when your shift on watch is done.”

Croc sighed. “Goodnight,” he said, and then added something a little sterner to Big Red, who exhaled and nodded, but otherwise didn’t reply.

With a frown at the odd, terse interaction, you went to fetch your stuff from your tent.

When you returned, Big Red rose from his little crate and said, “I will help you into the room. If you need to get out, you should be able to pull on the doors, but you might want to leave a box between them to keep them open, just in case.”

You agreed heartily, not wanting to get trapped alone in a small metal box with no way out until one of them came for you.

You stared appreciatively at his body as he hauled the metal door up and let you step through. Once you were inside, he shunted a nearby metal crate into the open maw with his foot to keep the doors from falling shut again. “It is… not too cold for you like this?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine. I can use my sleeping bag like an extra blanket. Thank you, Red. I’ll see you later.”

“I will try not to wake you,” he said, and stalked off into the night without another word.

Hours later, you woke as the blanket and sleeping bag atop you were both lifted up and Red slid in beside you. This time you felt no fear or fleeting panic on waking.

Big Red set his mask down on the floor beside the mattress with a soft clunk and pulled up the covers again. With a deep, satisfied rumble, he slotted into place around your back like you’d been made to fit together, and he pulled you close against his chest in a single tug of his left hand.

His mandibles brushed the crown of your head as he spoke quietly to you in the pitch dark. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured and adjusted the sleeping bag up around your neck to keep the warmth in.

“Why do you need to keep watch?” you asked sleepily. “What are you afraid of? Surely not humans…”

“Humans and animals may present a nuisance,” he said, “But it is the enemy we watch for.”

A frisson of fear shot through you like a bolt of electricity and you jerked your head up. It was only his quick reactions that kept him from getting headbutted in his delicate mandibles. “You mean… They’re out here?”

“They… have a habit of finding us. They enjoy the hunt.” He crooned and purred softly, and the sound of it calmed your heartbeat just a fraction. “But Croc is on watch now,£ he said with another nuzzle against your head, “And we have seen no sign of them since we got here. We will keep you safe. Go back to sleep.”

“Right,” you exhaled weakly, and tried to settle while your imagination insisted on conjuring images of that black carapace slinking between tall pine trees somewhere in the valley below or along the ridge line above the crash site, and you heard again the rabid snarl that had accompanied the footage.

Sleep was reluctant to take you that night, and you lay there a long time with Red’s steady, slightly wheezy breath fanning across your ear and the weight of his arm around your waist.

“You are troubled,” he said after the silence had stretched.

You sighed. “I… I don’t want to go tomorrow, I guess,” you mumbled, and tilted your head down a little to let your lips brush against the hard, smooth skin of his bicep beneath your cheek. He returned the gesture with a delicate touch of his mandibles against your hair. He seemed to like raking the tusks at the end of them across your scalp, though you couldn't imagine that a mouthful of hair was any fun.

His fingers splayed wide across your stomach and he rumbled a long, low-frequency moan behind you.

“Red?”

“Yes?”

“What is it?”

“I… I have grown… attached to you,” he admitted with obvious reluctance.

You smiled and something inside you ached again. “Is that what Croc was warning you about earlier?”

Big Red nodded. “Yes. He is right, but I do not… I do not wish to part with you tomorrow.”

You turned within the confines of his embrace to face him and skimmed your hand up his chest, over his textured throat, and up to his mandibles which were now flexed wide. A little line of drool caught your fingertip and you used it to skate delicately over the thin membrane between his mandibles. He let out another low-frequency rumble that you felt in your chest, and his torso heaved. He rolled completely onto his back and let you explore his face in the dark.

“Are these sensitive?” you asked as you traced your fingertip along his top right mandible, along to the wickedly sharp little tusk at the tip, testing the point with the pad of your finger until it almost broke the skin, and then down the stretching membrane to the lower one that twitched and quivered beneath your touch.

“Yes,” he gasped.

“Very?”

“Very.”

“Mmm, interesting.”

Then, still lying on your left side, facing him, you ran the fingertips of your right hand carefully up between his eyes, over all those fascinating ripples and ridges, around his deep eye sockets, and then over his elongated skull to the ridge that protected the roots of his ‘dreads’. Gingerly, knowing they were sensitive as well, you gathered a small handful of them together in your fingers and then, recalling how the mated pair had interacted, slid your hand down the entire length of the ‘braids’ from root to tip.

Red reacted beautifully.

He arched his back right off the mattress, hissed, let out a long series of rapid-fire clicks that dissolved into a gutteral growl, and then collapsed back down, panting. He gasped your name and fumbled for you with his right hand. His claws caught your thigh and you hummed as he gripped you desperately hard, as if he needed somewhere to anchor himself.

“Show me how to make you feel good, Red,” you breathed. “Show me.”

He paused, and then reached out to his other side with his left hand. A second later, the dim, blueish light of the lantern flared to life and cast his incredible body into stark relief. He shoved back the covers and kicked them off. In the small, warm, sheltered space of his quarters, you didn’t need them. He unclipped the armoured loincloth and lifted his hips enough to discard it, revealing that his body below was ridged like sections of cooling lava all the way down between his legs, with a slight mound which you took to be a sheath of some kind.

“Here,” he said, and took your hand as you sat upright on your left hip to get a better look at him, propping your weight on your left hand. He guided your touch down between his legs and you let your middle finger run around the vertical seam in his body that was growing more noticeable with each heaving breath he took.

You glanced up at his face and saw that his mandibles were opening and closing slowly, drool just beginning to stretch between the tusks as he got more worked up, and his eyes had rolled shut. You knew he could still see you though through his heat-sensing abilities. While still looking at his face, you dragged your right, middle fingertip along the line of the seam and discovered that it was puffy now, and a little slick. “Like that?” you whispered and he gasped and nodded. “You’re beautiful, Red.”

At that, he bucked again, and your finger slid a little way inside the slit. Red gave a muted bellow and you paused. Beneath your finger you felt the silky, hot walls of his inner sheath clench and contract, and then, swelling as he grew more aroused, you discovered his cock. Ridged, hard, and slick, it began to slide from the protection of the sheath, and the more you teased it, the harder and more desperate he got.

In minutes, he was shaking bodily.

His breath wheezed and rasped, the delicate membrane between his mandibles fluttering when he flexed them. His thighs trembled and his claws raked furrows into the mattress that would never be repaired. He bucked and writhed beneath your touch and then, when you pushed deeper into his sheath and ran forefinger and thumb at the same time around the very base of his cock in a teasing, mirrored motion til you gripped him there at the hot, silky root, he let out a rabid litany of growls and snarls and clicking purrs that went straight to your core.

“You’re so beautiful,” you said again and he keened, head thrown back, thin ‘dreads’ spread out in a wide fan around his head. “And so wet…”

With your left hand, you reached for his ‘dreads’ without withdrawing your right from his sheath, and ran your left hand down the closest section of ‘braids’. Again, Red roared and jerked. With the motion, his cock slipped free of his sheath and bounced against his hard abs, leaking everywhere.

Closing your hand around it again, you gripped him and worked his ridged shaft and he whimpered, curling his torso inwards a little as you swirled your thumb underneath the topmost ridge. A spurt of liquid dribbled from his tip, rolling down over your knuckles, and dripped onto his stomach. “You’re so messy, Red,” you breathed, and then another thought occurred to you. Probably a little late, you asked, “Is this… safe? I mean… given what your blood does to humans…”

He nodded. “It’s only… Only our blood that—” he cut off into another growl and series of clicks.

You tightened your grip and he moaned again, one leg kicking out idly. “Watch those claws,” you warned.

“I’m sorry. This is… It’s so… It’s so much,” he cried.

Looking down at the delicate, pinkish flesh of his swollen, slick sheath, you realised that with the kind of talons and claws his kind had, there was little chance anyone had ever done this to him before, and the sheer intimacy of the gesture struck you to the core.

When you used both hands, one to work his shaft and the other to stimulate the soft walls of his sheath, he almost sat upright. His eyes opened wide in the semi-dark and his mouth flared, and you thought he was going to come, but he didn’t. He rocked back and forth a few times, his cock leaking clear fluid everywhere, and then he slumped back down, panting. It was like you were milking him, and he seemed to love it.

Each time you ran your finger around the base of his cock, he let out a beautiful, musical clicking sound. “I wish I knew what you were saying,” you said after a while. “I wish I could understand you.”

Either he didn’t hear or didn’t want you to know, because he didn’t translate. Perhaps he couldn’t.

You’d never seen yourself as particularly talented in bed. You’d had partners before, and none of them had openly complained to your face or anything, but the way Red was responding to you in waves of incoherent ecstasy was more arousing for you than sex with a human had ever been.

“I want you, Red,” you breathed as your brain finally caught up to what your body was feeling, and your own arousal hit you in a colossal wave.

“Close,” Red said, and you eased off on the pressure on his shaft. The mess he was making had covered his lower abdomen until it glistened, and still more leaked from his sheath. He could slide right inside you, you realised, and the thought sent another white bolt of desire right through you.

You let go of him long enough to undress, with Red helping you out of your top and immediately bringing his mandibles to your bare shoulder. He moaned luxuriantly when he scraped the tips of his tusks across your skin, and you gasped when his forked tongue licked out to taste you. He manoeuvred himself behind you while you knelt, and you felt his cock slide between your legs, slick and hard and beautifully ridged.

“Ohhhh, Red,” you groaned, pitching forwards onto your hands and knees. “Oh god that’s good. Yes… Please…”

“Inside?” he asked and you nodded, reaching back to take hold of his cock and guide him. “Carefully.”

His slick, blunt tip nudged against your entrance and you tensed a little, but he shuddered and gripped you with his clawed hands, holding you still while you adjusted to just that much of him. His tip spurted a little inside you and you pushed back against him. God it felt good.

“Please Red, please…”

He slid a little further in, chittering and crooning and clicking in your ear all the while, an when he pressed you gently down to lie on your stomach, you spread your legs to give him complete access to you.

With the new angle, he adjusted your hips a little with his hands, and then sank slowly, decadently, into you, right the way to the hilt.

As one, you both let out a long groan and just stayed there, breathing steadily while you adjusted to the stretch of his gorgeous cock and he to the heat of your body. He bowed his head forwards over you and kissed a short way down your back, circling his forked tongue over your spine and raking his four, tusked mandibles across your skin until you were shivering and begging him to move.

He picked up your hips in his hands and withdrew almost to the tip before rolling deep into you in a steady, careful movement. His ridges felt delicious against your entrance with every slide in and out, and his tip caught you in just the right place at the apex of each thrust. With every stroke he increased the pace just a little, and as he loomed over you, you felt little spots of drool hit your skin and imagined his mandibles flaring wide with pleasure.

This was it. You’d never be able to have sex with a human again. It felt far too good.

When he found a rhythm that had you both grunting and gasping, he changed the angle a little and you lit up all over with a shout and a curse. “There!” you cried, scrabbling for something to hold onto with your hands as pleasure ripped through you. “Oh fuck, Red, there… like that… just like that… oh god… I’m going to come.”

Red’s rhythm stuttered a little at that, but he picked up the pace again and pounded relentlessly into you. He was quite literally holding your hips up off the mattress like you weighed nothing at all.

“Want to feel you come too, Red,” you choked. “Please…?”

“Close,” he grunted, adding a little extra force to each thrust and making stars burst across your vision in the dark. “I’m going to…” he hissed, barely able to speak around the purring and the clicking coming from his throat. “Now,” he said, and his hips drove into you one final time, right to the hilt so that his pelvis was pressed flush against you while his cock pulsed deep inside you.

With a bellow that made your ears ring, he emptied himself into you.

The convulsions that swept through him knocked you over the edge and you came too beneath him, untouched and twitching and gasping as he continued to fill you. His claws dug into your hips and he held you mercilessly in place while he came and came.

With his cock still twitching inside you and his hips still rocking against yours, he leaned forwards and closed his jaws around the back of your neck. He didn’t break the skin, but you felt his teeth dig into you as well while he held you steady beneath him and rode out the final waves of his colossal orgasm.

You’d never been so full, or felt so needed.

Eventually, Red stilled and slumped atop you, careful not to crush you. His cock was still buried inside you and you both lay there, breathing hard in the dark for a long time. Occasionally his mandibles caressed you, but mostly he just lay there, spent and holding you. When you gave a soft mewl of discomfort, he did move, withdrawing slowly and pausing when you winced a little.

The rush of come that spilled out of you when he finally withdrew all the way was the most obscene thing you’d ever experienced. To your surprise, Red trailed his fingers through it, playing with it as he pushed the flat of his thumb against your entrance, apparently fascinated by the sight of his come on your skin.

“Gonna need to clean up,” you mumbled, rolling over and gasping at the slick slide of your thighs over one another. “God, Red, you came so hard.”

You were far too leaden-legged to stagger across the room to your backpack and get out the wipes from the top section, but Red obliged and tenderly cleaned you. The process of touching you everywhere and taking care of you seemed to get him worked up all over again because when you opened your exhausted eyes while you lay on your back and he knelt between your legs, you found that his cock was hard and leaking again, though he seemed content enough to ignore it in favour of your comfort. When you expressed quiet surprise at his stamina, he twitched his mandibles into his shy smile.

“You make me like that,” he said. “I will not… I mean… if you are tired…” he added awkwardly.

“Come on me?” you whispered, and he rumbled a pleased groan.

Still kneeling like a supplicant, he took his cock in his hand and worked himself slowly to start with. The slick sounds of his pleasure filled the small room and despite your tiredness, you found yourself turned on again by the sight of him. “I can smell you,” he hissed, opening his mandibles wide. “I can taste you…”

“Come on me, Red.”

At that, he looked down at you with reverence, gasped, grunted, pitched forwards onto one hand, and then started to come all over his fingers in thick, pale spurts. He directed his release over your stomach, but a moment later his knees went out from under him with a small gasp of surprise from the force of it, and he ground his cock against you instead, all the while still coming.

Red’s second orgasm lasted just as long as the first, and seemed just as intense, but eventually he went still and he buried his face near your neck, inhaling the scent of your skin while you let your fingertips draw idle patterns over the cracks and textures of his leathery shoulders. Occasionally you stroked down the length of one of his ‘dreads’ and he would whimper and rock his hips, grinding his slick, softening cock into the hollow of your hip. The mess between you was nowhere near as much this time though, but he still used up a fair few wipes to clean you off again.

The mattress was ruined. It was partly from his destructive claws but mostly because of the mess that had spilled out of you, so when you expressed distaste at the idea of sleeping on it, he spread your sleeping bag onto the floor and lifted you onto it, one arm under your knees and the other around your shoulders.

He dragged the blanket down and pulled it over himself with uncharacteristically clumsy movements, and then pulled you — sleeping bag and all — right up against his chest and began to purr like a big cat.

“You ok?” you asked, not knowing the protocol for his kind after apparently mind-blowing sex.

He nodded.

“You need anything?”

He shook his head and held you even tighter.

“You should rest,” he said thickly. His breathing evened out only a few minutes later, and it wasn’t long before you joined him in the deepest sleep you’d ever experienced.

When you woke in the morning, the lantern was still glowing dimly and Red was somehow wrapped even more determinedly around you, and you wondered how long you could get away with lying there before either Croc disturbed you or the rescue team arrived.

___

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captainmera · 7 months

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Mera, Captain, Laddie, Chap, Chum, You Majestical Swede I am living for your IBWR lore on vampires. I love tidbits on biology and quirks of fictional species, especially when it's given more unusual and creative twists. My investment in your comic has begun to peak, I am precariously standing at the edge of a new hyperfixation and you are daring to push me in with your art and lore. l'II be looking forward to seeing Ollie's lil quirks and other bits of the charming world that lives in your head. Also feasting on your TOH bits, as a lore enthusiast your rambles are so very enjoyable and your connection board is so relatable. A bit curious what hexsquad would be like in the world of IBWR or what peculiars/witches/regulars they'd be. So very glad I clambered onto this ship of yours and get to see some of the bits and bobs going on in your brain- I adore the way you think. Sorry if this was a bit long, I hope you're doing well and will feel better, whatever it may be from <3

*squeaky scream* thank you anon! ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )‧º·˚ <333333

I am having a lot of fun making my story! BWR is only in the baby phases! There's so much fun about this world and it's people, culture and history, that I'm so excited to share with everyone who reads!! :'D <3

IBWR has everything I personally enjoy in a story! This means a lot to me, it's my passion project (and hyperfixation of my own creation) for a reason.

Here's a doodle of Oliver and his buddy Sebastian :)

As for who the hexsquad would be in IBWR! HMMM! :D

HEXSQUAD IBWR AU:

Luz would be someone with a weak fylgja who wants to be a witch anyway! And she'd join a coven to try pursue it. For her, I think her story would be about learning that magic isn't as beautiful as she had hoped, and joins another coven that doesn't do the traditional ways of things. Or perhaps she starts her own.. ;)

Hunter would be a werewolf! :D A beast-type peculiar.

Gus and Willow would be Fae-types. Gus a spriggan, Willow a fairy.

Green fairies "flaws" are envy, I think I could make that work for her! Otherwise I'd put her as a red fairy, the flaw would then be rage. Willow's "fairy gift" would be plants and working with gardening.

Amity would be a regular, I think. Perhaps a wealthy girl who finds herself quietly rebelling against her parents by going with her older siblings to women's rights activism stuff! Possibly that's where she meets Luz! :O

Gus being a Spriggan would mean he's a natural showman, as they're known for their mischievous nature and charisma. I think he'd work in a music hall! :D

Vee would be a fae-type too! But she would be a Huldra/Nymph (skogsrå in swedish). Meaning she can shapeshift into people still! So that fits best.

For IBWR, I take a lot of folklore and put a spin on them with my own interpretations! :)

I like playing with the idea that the folklore and fairy tales are based in half-truths. It's a lot of fun and I've put a lot of thought into it so that they make sense into the world I've built. :D

#ibwr #in blood we rise #ibwr hexsquad au

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beatificwrites · 1 year

Text

—CASUALTY

pairing: din djarin x transmasc!reader

a/n: my apologies for such a late upload! i’ve been tired ;( also realized i made this way longer than it had to be, but oh well! i tried to take my own spin on the request!

REQUESTED BY @rottedmolarx

content: sci-fi related violence, injury, mild cursing

word count: 2.2k

premise: you and din stumble into some trouble on a bounty hunt and you get seriously hurt near the chest area. din needs to help patch you up, but he has yet to find out whatever it is that you’re hiding.

Din had been out since morning returning a favor to a friend who had helped you guys out once. You knew the work involved capturing a creature of some kind and the effort would be long and strenuous.

It was dark out and you waited patiently in front of the opening with Grogu in your embrace.

The sound of the crest’s doors opening made the young one coo in your arms. He stretched his little arms out, signaling for you to put him down; someone was excited to see their father.

You smiled and carefully placed the little one down before Din came through the opening. Almost immediately, Grogu was at his feet.

“Nice to see you too, buddy.” he chuckled, tiredly through the modulator.

At once, he picked him up and you watched the adorable father and son moment.

You found their relationship to be the absolute cutest! Din was not related to the young one in any way, however that didn’t stop him from traveling and escaping to the ends of the galaxy just to protect him.

In the time that you’ve spent with Grogu, you’ve grown to feel the exact same way.

Bounty hunting for a living while also having to take care of a small child together had caused tensions to rise between the two of you. The odd family dynamic had made them bound to happen.

You would catch him stealing glances at you and even finding ways to brush up against you or put his hands on you. For instance, you passing him tools and him grabbing them from your hands and letting his fingers linger for a split second before moving on.

It wasn’t too much out of the ordinary for you to ever question, but you liked his touch.

You would stare too, though you never noticed he could see you.

You had even grown close enough for him to reveal his real name. It made you feel guilty for hiding a part of yourself, but you knew everything had to be done at its own pace.

Your eyes were laid on the mandalorian since the day you two met, but you kept to yourself. You two just completed jobs together, nothing more.

You couldn’t stop yourself from admiring him anyhow. His prowess, his strength, his monotone yet charming voice, his surprisingly humorous personality, his…quite literally everything had you thinking about him nonstop.

Not only did you admire him in those ways, but you also wished you could be a bit like him. You wished you could possess the same amount of coolness he carried.

Those two thoughts were meant to stay hidden though. You shook your head slightly as to shake away the feelings and not get caught awkwardly, staring at Din.

He looked up through his helmet and nodded as a way of greeting you. You gave him a soft smile and he carried the child to the cockpit before taking a seat in his chair. Grogu moved onto his lap, cooed again, then snuggled ever so gently into his armor. You wondered how the small one could find the beskar so comfortable.

“Got us another bounty. Hoth. This one covers weeks worth of fuel and food. You up for it?” the mandalorian asked as he turned to face the monitors and look up said bounty.

The bright, luminous screen appeared suddenly over the control panel.

You sat in the co-pilot seat and closely analyzed the bounty. She was not of human race and appeared to be of some alien species you’ve never seen before; and you’ve seen a lot.

You examined her stats and noticed there was no reason given as to why she was wanted. You figured she was affiliated with some sith lord or something.

“Yeah, what do you say we head out tomorrow?“ you asked, turning to face him.

“Alright, first thing in the morning.” he sighed as he agreed.

“You should definitely get some rest first. You’ve had a long day.” you noticed how tired he looked, even through the beskar.

“Can you really tell?” he asked incredulously.

“Oh, please. Your two sighs away from passing out.” you joked, but you both knew it was true.

“Well, you had to watch over Grogu all day. I’m sure you’re tired. Someone has to get us to Hoth.” he countered.

“Din, I may be a little tired, but I don’t mind getting us there. Like I said, you need to get some rest.” you insisted.

“Do you even know how to get us to hyperspace?” he asked in an unsure tone.

“Yes, I can manage just fine. Now go to sleep.” you ordered.

He eyed you once more, “are you sure?”

“How hard can it be?” you shrugged as you shooed him out of his seat.

Din had no choice, but to obey and he put the child to sleep before falling soundly asleep in his small cot.

༶•┈┈୨୧┈┈•༶

Only hours later, Din was awakened by Grogu’s loud cries and the crest's violent, turbulent shakes.

He immediately got out of the cot and reached for the child. He frantically searched for you before remembering you were still flying the ship.

“What’s going on?!” he shouted over the blaring alarms.

“These starcruisers started blasting us out of nowhere! I’ve been fighting them off and trying to get us to Hoth! It's not that far now!" you shouted back.

Din pressed a few buttons on the control panel, then flipped a switch that finally ended the noisy alarms.

You were struggling to keep the cruisers off and fly at the same time. Din quickly placed the child on the co-pilot seat, then took control of the huge blaster and aimed steadily as the cruisers flew in front.

"Just get us there! I got these two!" he yelled, then fired a few shots to the back of the first cruiser.

You tried to focus amidst the chaos, but with every blast the crest took, the more your worry grew and the more your concentration broke.

"We're taking too many hits!" you shouted hectically.

"We're fine!" he shouted back, not wanting to face the fact that the crest was most definitely done for.

Lucky enough, you were nearing Hoth's exosphere and Din managed to fire one final blast to the first cruiser's pilot.

The second pilot, however, remained hovering nearby and followed the crest as you dove headfirst into the planet.

The immense turbulence you faced now was nothing compared to the potent shakes you guys were experiencing just a few moments prior. You were sure you were going to crash. The crest was in horrible condition.

You tried to steer as much as you could, but to no avail. You simply let go and mindlessly, reached for Grogu and Din, so you could tightly embrace them while bracing for impact.

The crest was subjected to a harsh landing on Hoth and you three flew out of your seats.

You fell to the ground from the impact to your head and though in much pain, you smiled in relief once you noticed the child was not hurt; you held onto him pretty tight.

Din was groaning in pain beside you. He turned his head to make sure you both were okay.

"You alright?" he asked, weakly.

"Sort of, just hit my head pretty hard." you managed to respond.

He took a pause before stating, "That pilot followed us here. Bet he crashed too and is lurking around."

"I'll go." you sighed as you tried to get up, but Din placed his hand on your shoulder.

"Uh-ughn, you stay here." Din was quick to oppose.

For some odd reason, he couldn’t help the feeling of wanting to protect you even though you had put yourself in danger many times before.

"You don't look so hot, either." you scoffed, then slowly got up anyway.

Grogu cooed at your feet, and you pet his head before helping Din stand.

"Let's both get him." he said, and you couldn't agree more.

You left Grogu inside, so he wouldn't have to face the cold weather.

You gathered all the muscle strength you could while Din walked as if he felt no pain at all.

Freezing bits of snow hit your face as you two trudged through the worsening blizzard.

It was difficult to see anything; only close obstacles were in view.

Din led the way and you followed close behind, scanning for a wrecked starcruiser.

You had begun to question whether or not the pilot had really survived the fall or not. You and Din had trudged for about 3 miles already.

Suddenly, a round of blasts were fired and you took a solid hit straight to the chest. You fell onto the thick snow and Din yelled for you.

You winced in immense pain. You tried to feel for the burning flesh, but you felt almost paralyzed.

The mandalorian turned his back and surged forward before adeptly unloading his blaster and firing at the cruiser.

He heard a grunt, then trudged forward a bit to see if he was down.

“You..will never get away with the child.” the pilot breathed out.

“I already have.” Din simply said as he fired a final blow.

At once, he picked you up and trudged as fast as he could back to the crest. He was worried sick.

Your eyes were shutting as he carried you back.

He placed you on the floor of the cockpit and went to go grab the bacta spray. He came back and was ready to take off your cloak and top.

Your eyes widened before blurting out, “I’m good! I’ll apply the spray myself, Din!”

He was confused. You were injured and you always allowed him to treat you.

“You’re hurt. Let me do it.” he proceeded to lift your undershirt, but you moved his hand away.

“It’s small wound, it barely even grazed me! Now let me do it.” you excused yourself.

“It’s gonna be hard to wrap the wound yourself.” he brought up.

Shit. This is it. you thought. There’s no other way.

“Fine.” you sighed as you gave up.

Din took off your cloak first, then slowly removed your undershirt. You watched as he noticed your binder, but to your surprise he didn’t comment.

He understood now and wanted to respect your privacy.

“Here. Apply the bacta yourself, then turn around so I can patch you up.” he finally says and hands you the bacta bottle.

Your brows furrowed as you took the spray reluctantly.

“You’re not going to question me? After all this time you’ve known me?” you asked, stunned.

“You don’t have to explain to me anything if you don’t want to.” he answered, reassuringly.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it?” he asked with furrowed brows, though you could not see.

You remained silent and slowly turned to apply the bacta yourself.

“Could you help me remove it?.”

Din complied and took off your binder for you. His hands were gloved yet his touch was still soft.

You sprayed the bacta onto your fingers and lightly massaged it on the wound. You winced as you did so.

Afterwards, Din wrapped the gauze gently around your chest and you whispered, “thank you.”

You turned back around and put your cloak on once again.

You noticed he was staring, so you spoke again, “I was not born a man and I’m sorry for not being truthful.”

Din titled his head to the side before saying, “You have nothing to be sorry for. I admire you even more for your bravery.”

You looked up at him and smiled.

“The mandalorian admires me?” you jokingly asked.

“Yes, he does.” he chuckled. “Unfortunately, he admires a strong fighter who for some reason can’t properly fly a ship.”

You rolled your eyes at him and exclaimed, “Dank ferrik, it was those cruisers’ fault, not mine!”

He let out a chuckle again and you laughed too.

“So, you admire me?”

“Your nature and determination are what I like the most.” he complimented you.

He moved from kneeling to sitting beside you on the floor.

“Without your company, I don’t know how I would’ve survived these past few months.” he confessed.

“But, you’re doing most of the saving.” you said, puzzled.

“You and Grogu saved me from a life of loneliness, c'yarika."

You smiled at the nickname, though you had no idea what it meant.

"I'm assuming that's mand'oa? What does it mean?" you asked.

"It means...darling." he replied, and your heart swelled.

"I can't believe you just called me that. Say it again." you giggled.

"C'yarika?" he wondered.

"Hmm, I like it." you admitted.

You looked into his visor for a second before placing your hand on the side of his helmet. The beskar felt cold in your grasp.

"Thank you for accepting me the way I am." you began.

"I wasn't sure if I could disclose this part of myself. The galaxy can be a cruel place."

"I see you no different than before. I like you just as you are." he confessed once more.

Before you knew it, Din had pressed his helmet so he could lift it up a bit. Only the lower half of his face could be seen.

You moved your hand and placed it on his jaw. You leaned carefully to kiss his rough lips.

He moved in and you both took in the blissful moment as your lips connected.

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randomfoggytiger · 8 months

Text

The X-Files: Son of Egypt

First fic of all time (barring dabbles in my younger years off the internet that don't count.)

All credit goes to @television-overload's intriguing idea-- Samantha adopts and raises William Mulder-Scully (post here)-- with a Prince of Egypt-esque twist~.

Will Van de Kamp couldn’t remember how old he was (and couldn’t begin to take a guess now) or even what he'd said when his mother’s wistful, yearning look stopped him in the middle of a protest. “Your father said that to me, too,” she’d murmured, before quickly walking them away from the conversation. It was then he understood: Samantha Van de Kamp was his mother, Carl Andrew Van de Kamp was his brother, but the man he called “dad” was not his father.

~~~~~

He had just turned twenty-two when Will was finally allowed to join the raids.

Their base's Consortium quarters had been quiet, eagerly quiet as the Van de Kamp men represented their request. Will may have felt aged in his soul-- a cobweb weighed down with dust and filth and dead parts-- but he was young in their eyes; and against this fading generation, who had seen wars and brokered peace before their species was extinguished, Will had to prove he could handle the great risk, the heavy responsibility, the implied future work this one task would set him up for. That was easily done as he parroted back their secrets-- a young boy with a quick mind and a listening ear could learn a lot, particularly when firmly transplanted from his childhood farm into the middle of a Syndicate compound. And a boy who could turn that threat of exposure into a boon for his lords and masters was a gift to be cultivated and groomed. He was approved. In passing, a few half-remarks (“Perhaps he should have been left on the farm. To know so much of our inner workings and with so much history--”, “It was necessary. There was no other way to keep Mulder from--”) snagged at his mind, vaguely recognizing a few names and situations mentioned before; but his attention was caught by Van de Kamp’s reassuring grip and a few curious members striding over to weigh him in the balance for themselves. Later.

Later came sooner than expected.

The raid had been going smoothly. It wasn’t even a raid, Will discovered, but a routine drive-by meant to intimidate a specific helper or informant: a preening “you’re still in checkmate” boast. Elevated desperation reeked from their current victim, choking Will as thickly as Van de Kamp and Henderson’s ruthless satisfaction did. The interrogation ended badly: Henderson was knocked aside and Van de Kamp warned away from his charge by the muzzle of Henderson’s gun. Will Van de Kamp had his own weapon out and aimed at the man’s chest before he could become a hostage; but Will could not pull the trigger. The background noise faded out as both opponents faced each other, equal fear in their eyes. Then the man jerked the gun away, swiftly putting a bullet in his own skull.

Another half-remark haunted Will’s footsteps from the scene. “Can’t change a Mulder,” Henderson hissed under his breath, hand wrapped around his twisted fingers.

~~~~~

The Consortium appreciated the concept of genius but withdrew from his own. Bad blood on all sides, Will assumed; the dark, overcasting shadow of his late grandfather providing contrast to the spark of his intelligence. Eidetic memory was a negative in this den of bloated jackals, gluttoned as they were on easy power and declaring victories when they hadn't even fought wars (though against whom or what no one could point to.)

When Van de Kamp had told the family they were moving permanently on-base, everyone had assumed it was because Andrew had caught the Syndicate's attention. Cunning was prized by a group who had to lick their own wounds one too many times; and Will’s older brother had it in spades. It was ridiculously easy for him to spin anything to his advantage with everyone except Will-- the two brothers knew each other too well for those games to be ended between them in anything other than a fight, a good laugh, and another adventure. Andrew's harsher struggles trying to live up to his grandfather's legacy in the Consortium was harshly contrasted by Will's greater negligence in the name of freedom; and both brothers grew closer and further away as the group's requirements necessarily pushed and pulled at their relationship. There was love, Will knew; but suspicions this intense could only be dealt with alone.

“What’s eating at you? We all don’t take that first shot, it doesn’t mean--”

“Teach me to hack in, not get caught.”

Another tussle, another patch up, another bargain.

Will only gained fringes of information from slipping into those dangerous territories (most of the information having been kept offline since an incident in 1995, he gleaned); but two important pieces were worth the risk: former Special Agent Fox W. Mulder (recently exonerated) had continually entangled himself in Syndicate business while on a madcap search for his sister; and that sister was Samantha Mulder. Samantha Mulder, Samantha Van de Kamp.

He had to find those files.

~~~~~

It took longer than Will was willing to admit to recall where Van de Kamp stored his important documents, cds, and drives. Nocturnal adventures were not unusual for him, even with a mother who quaked with worry and a father who quietly guided him back to his room any time after 10 PM. With the tiniest flashlight he could find in one hand (being invisible was an essential skill to survive when surrounded by betrayals layered with suspicions) and a phone in the other, Will picked his way through the attic, recognizing various names or codes from his notes. Eyes growing strained in the darkness, he finally found a promising box: folder piles, papers filed together, pictures, notes… the X-Files. Or copies of them.

Will flipped around, brusquely set aside, and grabbed for stack after stack until he found his mother’s file. Although she was younger in this photo than any in the house, they still reassuringly shared the same nose (pinched at the bridge, widening out at the tip.) For a brief moment he wondered what his uncle’s nose looked like; but the word “Found” arrested his attention. Everything froze with him in shock, coming back to life only after he sputtered on a choked, belated gasp. Closed… found… 2000… died…starlight. Died.

He clutched as many files and cds as he could; then a box of them; then set everything aside, shaking, as he ruthlessly sorted between importance and paramount importance. Remaining undetected was the goal: it wouldn’t matter how much evidence he collected if he were caught.

~~~~~

Uncle Fox, Will discovered, was a fascinatingly transparent opponent to the Syndicate. He'd never hidden his motives or intentions, often defying the shaved-down FBI report regulations to get "the Truth" out-- conferences, interviews, even an odd media appearance (Cops was one of the notes he underlined.) The smaller, more humanizing details of his life were gathered through safer searches, having been expunged from the Consortium record for their unimportance. Special Agent Fox Mulder (Uncle Mulder) was always accompanied by his partner, Special Agent Dana Scully. And, fittingly he assumed, when Will saw them both for the first time it was together: his uncle’s wide smile and her serious frown captured on-site of one of their cases.

Former Special Agent Dana Scully was still being monitored by her enemies (likely a more indirect way to monitor her former partner): now a doctor at an Our Lady’s Sorrow hospital, her hair was longer and her face relatively unchanged, if the newest articles about her work were to be believed. It was a short leap from those articles to the sensationalism rags about her past, and an even shorter distance from that to tumbling into revelation after revelation: exoneration in 2008, fleeing the law with her partner in 2002… and adopting-out her son, also in 2002. William Mulder-Scully.

The thought flitted and was brushed aside; then slammed back with ringing clarity. Will scrambled for baby Mulder-Scully’s birthday and breathed a sigh: he was born in 2001. Five years too young to be himself, but a cousin nonetheless. He hoped wherever the boy was that it was far from where he was.

But “Closed… found… 2000… died.” wouldn’t leave his mind. Samantha Mulder was buried in North Carolina with a Teena Mulder; and, to Will’s shock, was briefly joined by Uncle Mulder himself for three months. The files he had on hand confirmed the public report, which left him shaken and reeling.

Closed… found.. 2000… died…. Resurrected?

And if closed, found, 2000, died, resurrected was a possibility, then there was an equal chance that born, adopted, given a new identity could be true as well.

A frantic, thorough, and looping search confirmed it: the Will Van De Kamp born to Samantha Van de Kamp existed only after William Mulder-Scully was adopted out. Thinking back, Will couldn’t personally prove his existence after his alleged birth in 1996. The life they lived had never allowed for natural curiosity or too many questions with silence so easily bought and paid for. Until now, he assumed “the work” was dangerous and fearfully weighty, something to be talked of obliquely or not at all. Now he wondered what sort of kingdom he and Andrew were being raised for.

~~~~~

Clones and hybrids and tortured children and harvested women and broken men.

That was their empire.

His mother, a tool of the Project. Carted out against her knowledge and against her will for her father’s (her creator's) means and goals, paraded before a brother she thought she had and married to a man that may or may not know she was inhuman. A string of children lost and born and dead before Andrew survived to carry on her creator's legacy. Complicit in the lie of Will's birth and parentage.

His brother, a tool of the Project. Elevated as its prince, honed to a weapon, and all-but-in-writing handed the keys of the Conspiracy. Immune before immunity was no longer required. Cunningly grasping for that power and for Will, unable to keep both but refusing to lax his grip all the same.

The Project: fruitless lies upon lies that saved no one, having merely benefitted from two opposing alien factions’ war and stalemate. Bullies left with too much aimless power and ashes at their feet.

Will knew he needed to leave. Soon. Immediately.

~~~~~

Andrew was furious Will was leaving without warning and almost without a goodbye. Their ensuing fight was left unresolved-- perhaps forever-- with the punctuating slam and screech of an angry driver venting his pain on the road. Will wondered if his family was doomed to be continually torn apart; and if Andrew would ever start or never stop looking for him.

His mother, Samantha, simply stared, silent tears marking the many years she'd chosen ignorance over truth. A soft then more desperate hug said everything for her; and she quietly slipped into the backroom, giving him time to grab what he needed and leave.

Van de Kamp barged in before Will left, breathless with pain. He, too, was silent; and he, too, allowed his son to leave.

Will knew all three wouldn’t betray him; but how much of that was motivated by love, loyalty, or a twisted sense of duty he couldn’t say.

~~~~~

Doctor Dana Scully was easy to locate but harder to follow, the Consortium’s search for him making it nearly impossible at first. Her frown was still serious and her hair was still long, but her spark was gone. He could only watch this new mother from afar, drifting in her wake-- hungry as she ate, parched as she drank, exhausted as she slept. He couldn’t approach her, the bereft ache in his last mother’s eyes always on his mind, foiling his best attempts to forget. Perhaps former Special Agent Dana Scully and he were not meant to be, or perhaps meeting her in person would turn her from a figment into flesh. Until he could be certain, he waited.

Former Special Agent Fox Mulder was nowhere to be found.

It was a week before Dana Scully led the way to her second home, a ramshackle abandoned house in the sticks. Will knew about this property, even came to scout it out once; but it looked dead from the road, and he’d hurried back to his previous task. By now, he should have learned that appearances are deceiving.

He left his car in the woods, slinking up the porch easily by crouching under the tall grass. The house was still dead-- no hum from the power, no creaking of the pipes, and no shuffling from the steps inside. Half remarks, easy to recognize from a lifetime of training, trickled outside; and Will inched closer to catch them.

Dana Scully’s voice-- harder to hear from where Will was positioned-- was softer than he’d imagined, especially when contrasted with the solemn expression that settled perpetually on her face. “...out here… this house… alone.”

“Well, you know me, Scully,” Special Agent Fox Mulder’s (Uncle Fox, Mulder, Father's) voice rang out, falsely cheerful. “You predicted how this’d go years ago.”

Will caught a mournful murmur.

“‘Catatonic schizophrenia’, I believe you called it.”

“Mulder.” He heard that loud and clear: no nonsense endearment. Amused and trying not to be.

“Though I think our story ended better than theirs. Though not by much.”

Although Dana Scully’s (Scully's) heels clicked close, Will could tell she was only drawing closer to Agent Mulder (Mulder.) There was a long, deep silence, a few deep reassuring breaths, and what sounded like affectionate ruffling.

“You’ll find your way back, Mulder. I believe that.”

Retreating from this intimate moment between two sad, broken people, Will felt fifteen years old for the first time in his false twenty-two.

~~~~~

Will didn’t leave Mulder’s house. He spent the next week or two losing track of time in the rhythm of Mulder’s world: quiet except for the wind moving through the trees, the grass, or slamming up against the lifeless windows. Food was easy to forget when he subsisted on various nonperishables; and the hours were whittled away plowing through various copies of unredacted files. Low profile didn’t seem to have existed in Mulder and Scully’s orbit, with more and more press and eyewitness accounts to corroborate or validate the various outlandish claims they’d both signed their names to.

It also gave him time to think. Losing his family was concrete and understandable even if it was gut-wrenching and grueling. But to have stripped him of his identity, of so large a factor as his age, was as baffling as it was appalling. Will had lived through each milestone, had graduated, had taken other secondary education classes and courses; and now he was left to second-guess everything he thought he knew. Tutelage tempered with lies under the Syndicate could mean anything: how effectively was he taught? Did he even graduate? Likely not, since a fifteen year old brain could not fit the knowledge required for a twenty-two year old collegiate. Had the Consortium fallen so far that they were sloughing off a piecemeal education on their next generation, not caring if they learned so much as they obeyed? If so, the whole structure would collapse within a generation; but then, what structure did they have left to uphold? The selfish men who bought and sold for power were dying out, and the next generation might be willing to take what they could from the scraps. But then why--

And underneath all of those thoughts was the one Will was trying to isolate from but kept finding over and over in the files, typed up plainly in Dana Scully’s neat sentences: “...if it’s only by knowing where he’s been that he can hope to understand where he’s going, then I fear Agent Mulder may lose his course; and the truths he’s seeking from his childhood will continue to evade him, driving him more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit.”

~~~~~

Mulder stepped out of the treeline, gun in hand.

Will realized, as he stared at this man chiseled by regrets and promises, that he had been disappointed in his father a week or more ago. He’d wanted to respect him, had even thought he loved him in a way; but had still withdrawn from the concreteness of his father's weakness, just as his father had. The Mulder standing before him was every inch the former Special Agent Fox Mulder he'd read about: danger in his stance, fire and fairness in his eyes. He’d never met Fox Mulder, but Will was glad to have him back.

Mulder stopped his string of succinct commands when his eyes fell on the files, breath catching as he looked erratically from one copy to the next before flying back up to Will’s face. There was fear in his eyes-- good fear, alive fear-- and his words caught a few times before he asked, “William?”

Fox Mulder, Mulder. Dana Scully, Scully. Will Van de Kamp, William Mulder-Scully. He could live with that.

There wasn't anything to say, so William did what Samantha Mulder had taught him, letting his smile say everything for him. Mulder's face split into the exact same, wide-open beam: he, too, had taught William in his absence. And William knew-- he just knew-- that Scully had passed on her ability to read the layers of emotions dancing across his father's neutral expression. And he could live with that, too.

William watched his father's smile slip as he swallowed back crashing emotions. "I tried looking for you, years ago. When you were a baby. And later, when...." Mulder paused, miserable in his failures.

There was only one thing left to say. "You did."

~~~~~

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @television-overload for coming up with the original idea and for naming Will's older brother. ;)))

Thank you to @ghostbustermelanieking and @o6666666 for creating short, beautiful AU fics that ultimately helped me flesh out the format for this one.

Thank you (in no particular order) @baronessblixen, @welsharcher, @agent-troi, @dd-is-my-guiltypleasure, @suitablyaggrieved, @pianogirlxf, @samucabd, @herdingcats12, @cecilysass, @amplifyme, @slippinmickeys, @enigmaticdrblockhead, @annablume, @spidey-is-tired, @two-microscopes, @spidey-is-tired, @mariaann, @chavisory, @medicaldoctordana, @ibringyouasong89, @cyb3rpeach, @mindibindi, @two-birds-alone-together, @invidiosa, @jessahmewren, @living-in-unreality, @mollybecameanengineer, @tossingmyglossymane, @demon-fetal-harvest, @settle-down-frohike, @storybycorey, @thescullyphile, @scullys-scalpel, @perpetually-weirdening, @teenie-xf, @captainsugarcane, @frogsmulder, @paperheartsarts, @unremarkablehouse, @cutemothman, @my-spookybunnies, @lindz-dude, @sonictacocat, @freckleslikestars, @kiivitaja, @today-in-fic and more for always being willing to engage with my work (and enjoying when I engage in yours.)

Thank you to every single one of the fic writers out there. Your work nudged me gently along to this point; and without your leaps I wouldn't be making these steps.

And thank you to each and everyone of my mutuals and lurkers-- keep on keepin' on~!

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

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fatkish · 1 month

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Of course, you can put a spin on my cat quirk user ♡

(Alright, just wanted to make sure.)

(Trigger warning: human and animal trafficking mentioned, also mentions of drugging someone)

Aizawa x Jaguar Reader

(The reader in this story is an actual Jaguar with a quirk that allows them to transform into a human)

Reader is a Jaguar who was naturally born with a human transformation quirk. They grew up in the Amazon jungle with their mother who was a normal Jaguar. The reader learned to hunt and was taught everything they needed in order to be a successful apex predator by their mother

The reader has human level intelligence due to their quirk.

One day, villains from Brazil found out about the reader. They eventually tranquillized and captured the reader, smuggling them into Japan were the villains planned to sell the reader in a black market auction

When the reader had woken up halfway through the shipping to Japan, they realized that their best chance of survival was to wait for the villains to let their guard down, then the reader could have a better chance of escaping. When the smugglers realized that the reader was awake they drugged them again, putting the reader back to sleep

Meanwhile in Japan, Detective Tsukauchi and the police had been tracking two of the main villains in charge of the auctions and running them. The police were planning a raid on the building the night of the auction. The people running it were notorious for human trafficking, the sale and trafficking of parts of or whole endangered animal species, kidnapping, etc.

Detective Tsukauchi was the lead investigator and asked Aizawa as well as Midnight to help in the raid. Midnight’s primary role was to help subdue the criminals as well as protect the heroes and police from any dangerous animals that might be found

On the night of the auction the reader wakes up inside a metal cage with a shock collar on their neck. They’re hidden beneath the stage in the storage area, surrounded by various cages with other humans and some animals

The humans all seemed to be young and mostly female, the reader could sense the fear that belonged to the humans in the cages. The humans also were wearing the strange collar that was around their own neck

The humans outside the cages all had white masks covering their faces. One of these people was walking around going to each cage and putting their hands on the humans heads. Once the person had come to them the reader snarled at them but was rewarded with a powerful shock running through their body.

The human placed their hands an the reader’s head, after feeling a weird tingling sensation, the human retracted their hands. The human then told the reader that they had better do whatever they are told, if they don’t listen, they will be shocked. With the effects of the drugs still wearing off, the reader didn’t question how they could suddenly understand what the human’s language.

Suddenly a loud voice is heard from above as the auction begins. After a few minutes, cages are wheeled over to a platform that lifts things onto the stage through the floor.

After the last cage before them is brought up, the human from earlier commands the reader to change into their human form. Not listening to the commands, the reader is shocked again when the human presses a rectangular object.

After that the reader transforms and a hook attached to a long pole is connected to their collar as they are led onto the lift

Outside the heroes and police are setting up and getting into position to start the raid. All entrances and exits have been surrounded. Once Tsukauchi has made sure everything and everyone was in place and ready, he gave the order to cut the buildings power supply thus signaling the start of the raid

As the heroes begin to enter the building and start taking out the buyers, auctioneers and other participants, the reader, having been sold to a wealthy businessman with a cat-girl fetish, is being led to one of the back rooms when the power goes out

Since the system that was controlling the collars was being powered by the building’s electrical system, once the power was shut off, the collars unlocked and deactivated

Realizing that this is their best chance at escaping, the reader transforms into their original form and attacks the nearest person in a mask. Using their natural predatory night vision, as well as their hunting skills, the reader slinks through the hall avoiding as many people as possible using the darkness to their advantage

After passing by a hall filled with a purple fog, the reader turns the corner and finds themselves back at the stage where a human with strange glowing red eyes protected by some strange yellow covering, is fighting the humans in white masks

This human had some strange long grey appendage? No, tool? They were using it to capture the humans and fight them. This human also smelled different than the humans in masks

Distracted by their predatory analyzation of the human, they didn’t notice that the human had defeated all of the other humans present. When the human suddenly turned their attention and focus onto them.

The human stared at the reader for a moment before removing the yellow eye coverings. Quickly retrieving something from its waist, the human tilted their head back, dropping some kind of liquid into its eyes.

The human, after a few blinks, stares the reader in the eyes as the human’s mane raises and its eyes glow red. Seeing this as some kind of human threatening display, the reader snarls as they bear their fangs and crouch into position to pounce onto the human if necessary

After a few seconds the human lowered its mane as its eyes stopped glowing. The human raised its front paw and told the reader that they are not a threat and that they are not going to hurt them. The human didn’t seem to have any sort of fear and was obviously not a prey but they were still wary of the reader.

Suddenly another human called out and was running up behind the human, before either human could react, the reader pounced onto the new human, believing them to be a threat. Sinking their claws into the human’s shoulders and about to go for the head, Aizawa shouts no, in distress.

Realizing that the human was upset by them attacking the other human, the reader turns to look at Aizawa as they get off of the police officer.

After checking on the officer’s condition and making sure they were okay, Aizawa turns to the reader after realizing that they stopped their attack after he told them to

Carefully approaching the reader, Aizawa asks them if they can understand what he’s saying and to lift their front paw if they can. The reader lifts their paw and afterwards slowly approaches Aizawa. Before the reader can get to close a purple fog surrounds them as a loud sound is made as they feel a sharp pain in their hind leg. Before they can turn and attack the human the reader falls asleep

After dealing with the clean up and arresting the criminals, Tsukauchi approaches Aizawa with a file containing a list of the items being sold. When looking at the file, Tsukauchi points out the reader’s information.

When Aizawa confirms that the listed information is true, that being that the reader is actually an animal with a quirk, Aizawa asks Tsukauchi what would be done with the reader.

Tsukauchi tells him that there really isn’t much he can do about what would happen to the reader, but that the reader would either be handed over to scientists or placed in a zoo or research sanctuary.

Aizawa decides that the reader would probably be subjected to experiments and would be forced to undergo extensive and invasive tests, he calls Nedzu and tells him about the reader

When the reader wakes up, they are laying on a pile of blankets with bandages wrapped around the top of their left hind leg. Looking around they are met by a white rodent.

The rodent introduces himself as Nedzu, he explains to the reader what happened and what their current situation is. He explains that humans are not used to seeing animals with abilities like theirs. He tells the reader that humans are likely to experiment on animals like them since they are different.

Nedzu tells them that since they are capable of understanding humans, that the reader’s best course of action is to learn to live like a human and understand human society. He tells the reader that he can help them and give them the opportunity to become what humans call a hero

After much discussion mainly on Nedzu’s part, the reader agrees to live at UA. Aizawa, being the one who found them, is put in charge of the reader and is made their handler/guardian

Aizawa teaches the reader what they need to know and how society works. While Aizawa teaches, the reader either sleeps or patrols the grounds. At night, when Aizawa is on patrol, the reader follows him as his sidekick.

Power loader creates a special suit for the reader to wear made of the reader’s own fur, that way they are not naked when they transform. The reader is officially a member of the Aizawa family

Hope you enjoyed this

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #aizawa x reader #mha aizawa #aizawa shouta #x cat reader #mha #bnha #aizawa sensei #bnha aizawa #mha pro heroes #bnha pro heroes

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