Reflections on the Hypothetical [fanfic] (DISCO INFERNO)

[Michael]

I REGRET NOTHING

famous last words

I wonder what Arioch thinks of this?

[Razor One]

o_O

You people need to go a few more times 'round the net. That barely tickled the odd-meter, let alone the BRAIN BLEACH NAO meter.

[Absalom]

o_O

You people need to go a few more times 'round the net. That barely tickled the odd-meter, let alone the BRAIN BLEACH NAO meter.

And for 4chan it's even more tame than on the average site.

[Solemn]

More or less immediately after Arioch posted an odd little factoid about the autogenerated version of Loroi Trade, I began writing what I hoped would shape up to be a short, funny little joke of a story.

I failed that task in all possible ways; unable to keep it short, unable to make it funny, unable even to make it a story (it still lacks a dramatic climax and an ending), and I abandoned that work sometime around mid-September of 2012, deleting the old copies of the document in the certainty that I would never return to it and nobody would want to read it. However, when I write I usually save multiple copies of every revision of my work, spread across my laptop and desktop systems with the transferred files usually remaining undeleted on the flash drives used to move them around as well. So every now and then I will find, say, a copy of an early version of a horror story that I wrote years ago taking up space in a long forgotten corner of one of my file systems.

I recently came across a saved copy of this fanfic which I had missed during my deletion spree, and decided to give it a read-through.

To my surprise, I didn't quite hate it. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from happy with it, but occasionally I found a passage or two which I thought actually worked pretty well. For the sake of those few small moments I have decided to share the surviving version of my largely unfunny failed fanfic with my fellow Outsider fans.

My practice when I write things is usually to write notes, plans, and ideas at the end of the document, so that I don't have to sort through multiple files to find things like plot outlines, notes on characters, or the passage swap space (every now and then I find myself reordering sentences and paragraphs, or excising a portion of the text from a certain location and later finding a spot where that same text, mildly altered, would work better; it is rare for me to actually delete a grammatically correct sentence or paragraph until the work is actually completed, at which point the notes and passage swap space become worthless and are excised from the final version). I tend to forget things, so the end-document notes are a real help when I have left a work idle for more than, say, two or three days. From the outline, population of the passage swap space, and miscellaneous notes at the end of this particular document, I judge this story to be about 70% complete. However, I feel no inclination whatsoever to actually continue or complete it.

This work is presented as-is, incomplete and inchoate, with no warranties, no guarantees, and no refunds. If after reading it you find you want those hours of your life back, you were warned.




Prologue

SpoilerShow

Fireblade had struggled with herself since they made landfall.

Standing again on Seren had awakened a thousand dormant memories. Not all of them bad, but all of them made painful by those which were.

She had striven to retain control ever since she first was charged with escorting the alien back to her former homeworld.

It was not a struggle she was winning, but one she was duty-bound to fight regardless.

Few even of her fellow Loroi could perceive the intensity of Fireblade's inner war. The occasional burst of night terrors had been expected, of course, and so she slept alone each passing cycle... just as she had all those years ago, with no comrade to guard her as she lay dreaming, no ally to stand watch that she could rest secure. Her dreams were fraught with terror and anxiety and she would wake at the slightest sound, her every instinct primed to kill whatever carapaced monster or war machine might have interrupted her troubled slumber. These times frayed her nerves, and more minds than her own were strained by her nocturnal visions.

Even some of her waking sights had been twisted into flashes of horror, by quirk of memory or association. She could not bear the crushing weight of her memories for much longer. Not alone. But the shame of needing to unburden herself, and the intimacy of such an unburdening through telepathic means, would both be very great. She could not simply commune with Beryl, not if she wished to retain some measure of the dignity and privacy she had spent long years cultivating after the rescue of Seren.

This alien had shown interest in her history, her personality, her self. Every time he did so, he, unaware of himself, opened another door in Fireblade's mind that she had spent years bolting shut. Perhaps, though, if she could make him understand even a small portion of herself, then they would both be better off; though her burden would be no lighter, at least a portion of it would be shared in a way, and she would no longer be so terribly alone. Though she was growing increasingly willing to do so, she had not responded to his interest. This was not out of hauteur on her part; there are things that cannot be described even in the intimacy of sanzai, much less through speech, and far less through speech relayed by an interpreter like Beryl, who constantly moderates her words, seeking the friendliest and softest way to say each thing. Coddling the alien as if he were a male--well, a real male. But there is no nice, soft, or friendly way to speak of the Fall of Seren and speak truly. So even if there are any words that can hold such truth, none of Beryl's soft, civil verbal coddling could ever make the alien understand. Beryl would be of no help as an intermediary, could only hinder Fireblade, and would herself not understand Fireblade's intent. If words need be used to bring the alien into truer comprehension, then Fireblade knew that they would need to be her own words. Though she would rather face a thousand foes in honest combat, this was something that Fireblade needed to do herself.

Fireblade resolved to make the alien understand. But she would have to change their surroundings to do so; she could no more make him understand the Wrack of Seren in brightly lit and comfortable quarters than she herself could have understood his people's strange ways in those days when she had known nothing but the harsh crucible of war, the stony ground her only bed and death her trusted companion. The old ways would only make sense in the old lands, far from the comforts and complications that make them seem so alien. It would be only a brief journey to her old territory, and it was there, in those lands that remained shrouded in darkness beyond the boundaries of their tenuously rebuilt civilization, that she could make the old days make sense to him.

She would choose her ground carefully. Seren and Fireblade both had borne many scars, and it would be unwise to probe those that had struck too deep, lest unhealed wounds burst open anew. She would not willingly tread again amongst those now long-gutted ruins where the Enemy's works had turned the water to poison and where no living thing would ever grow again; once she had sought shelter in such a waste, only to find herself in an unpeopled desolation worse than any wilderness, where everywhere the absence of life was called to attention by the signs of former settlement. But there were subtler desolations left as well, where the indelible taint was not a poison of water, earth, or sky, but of the spirit. She had seen vales of bones where the Enemy had dumped thousands of those who could no longer threaten them; it would not be well to stand again on grounds stained blue by the dead and dying, where the air had been heavy with the charnel scent of plasma-seared flesh and the sounds of mortal agony. Nor would she ever again willingly set eyes on that site where the homes of good Loroi once stood, where her own family had built for themselves a life on a foundation of hope during years of prosperity, where the Enemy had burned them al...

It would not be well to go there. It would not be well to go to many, many places.

But west of that scarred land the hills rose wild and there were valleys with deep woods that no axe had ever cut. There were dark narrow glens where the trees sloped fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickled without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. Past the higher slopes hid a small lake with shores ancient and rocky, where once she had found comfort and solace in isolation.

There were swimming creatures, both beautiful and edible, in those waters, and some scarce game in the woods beyond the shore. The freshwater brooklets had slaked her thirst as the plant and animal life sated her hunger. The treelines had shielded her from aerial observation and the unsteady ground made the Enemy's forces unwilling to venture into that region without good reason; reason she never gave, for she knew well how to hide signs of her presence from them.

There she had known rest unlike any she had ever felt before, where the lapping waves sang to her a soft lullaby and where the uneven and rocky ground, so far removed from any settlement, had never known the heavy tread of hardtroops. She did not stay there for long at any time, nor was it at the center of her long-ranging wanderings, but to those shores she oft returned for what measure of healing and solace she could find in her world, torn apart and ravaged though it was.

That place, beyond the horrors of the blasted heaths of the old settlements but also beyond the light and comfort of civilization, would be good for the imagination. And perhaps, she felt, it might even bring restful dreams at night as once it had, free of the night terrors which haunted her so cruelly in the present.

Yes, she decided, it was by those healing waters that she would find peace and the alien would find his answers to questions both asked and unasked.

Melancholia

SpoilerShow

Alex paced in his quarters.

The Loroi had kept him in considerable comfort since he arrived on Seren, but his mind was troubled by the burden of a responsibility which no other human had ever held. He was further troubled by the same feelings which had made his dreams so... interesting of late. The recent spate of hyperspace-induced night terrors had served as an inspiration for his subconscious, which had decided to take the main themes of his jump nightmares and run with them. Sleep brought few comforts to his uneasy mind.

Alex was, in a word, restless.

Normally on these sorts of nights he would call on Beryl for conversation, but tonight she had some other duty to perform. She'd return tomorrow, but he wanted to talk with her tonight. It wasn't about the conversation itself, but the comfort of familiarity, limited though it might be.

At this point, he was willing settle for a chat with Fireblade.

Well, maybe not Fireblade.

Alex sighed. He knew that griping about the way things were wasn't going to make him any less anxious. He'd just have to try to force himself to relax. Back on Earth he might have gotten some warm milk and a decent book, but the Loroi would be unable to provide either.

Still, he could at least do something. As abominable as Loroi food was, at least he had access to potable water. An ice-cold glass of pure water might not help him sleep, but at least the physical task of acquisition would take his mind off of things, if only for a few minutes. He reflected on how fortunate he was that the Loroi had no equivalent to the municipal fluoridation of his native California; he did not know if a Loroi version of fluoridation would be unpleasant to humans, but he had no intention of finding out.

Alex left his bedroom and made a line for his suite's drinking water, nodding to the soldiers standing guard immediately outside his door. But as he made his way back, he paused. The two Loroi, Fireblade and Highcloud, appeared wrapped in intense telepathic discussion. Usually when the Loroi engaged in casual sanzai it was all but unnoticeable; here, Fireblade at least appeared to be concentrating more heavily on the conversation than on anything else.

He struggled inwardly with his desire to ask what they were talking about. Knowing the Loroi in question, he would likely receive only stony silence from Fireblade, but Highcloud might be willing to tell him something. Still, it would be awfully rude to interrupt what was apparently an important and possibly private matter for the two of them. Alex restrained himself. Barely.

His curiosity became irrepressible the moment the Loroi broke for their conversation and approached him.

"Hey, what's going on here?"

Highcloud began to respond, but to Alex's shock she was waved off by Fireblade, who, for the first time in Alex's memory--possibly for the first time in anyone's memory--began to speak.

Such was Alex's surprise at her sudden elocution that he barely even heard her words, much less understand them. Her voice itself had been strange to his ears. Medical technology had rendered almost all varieties of deafness essentially a treatable condition amongst humans, so Alex had no apt comparison for the labored, faltering and slow manner of her speech, but her atonal and somewhat slurred enunciation made it clear that she was unpracticed. Alex was certain that she had not actually said what he thought she had said; perhaps he misheard due to his own surprise, or due to the unusual qualities of her voice. Even though he was by now used to Loroi speech patterns, she still seemed unusually terse and strangely accented, as though she had been articulating her phonemes based on rough description of the techniques involved rather than with the ease or experience demonstrated by even the most laconic of the other warriors. Was it any wonder he had misheard her?

She made Stillstorm's clipped and harsh speech seem positively effusive in comparison.

He asked her to repeat herself because he had not understood.

This earned him a snarl from the Teidar Pallan. Alex took a startled back as she glowered darkly and her lips were pulled back in a subtle curl. He knew little of her anger at this point, but he knew enough to fear, and he saw that Highcloud--whose senses and knowledge offered her deeper insight than his own--had firmly gripped her rifle's handle. Alex could have sworn he heard the Teidar growling.

Beryl's moderating influence was absent, Fireblade was angry, Highcloud was alarmed, and the two warriors had been saying something, probably something very important, that he had missed.

Tonight obviously was not going to be his night.

Before the situation could escalate further, Highcloud interceded.

"Be at ease, Captain Jardin. Fireblade only said that, if you are willing, she would like to show you her penis."

Ah.

So he hadn't misheard her.

That was certainly... uh...

Something.

"Captain Jardin, your words do not make sense."

Alex realized he must have been thinking out loud again. He hoped at least that it had been in English.

Highcloud and Fireblade exchanged a look, and Fireblade's face fell slightly, but she and Highcloud returned their gazes to Alex. Highcloud continued. "If you want me to accompany the two of you, I would be obliged to do so."

"Uhm..." Alex vocalized aimlessly while his mind whirred.

He had been teaching Beryl English during many of his restive nights. Her vocabulary had grown exponentially and Alex was nothing short of amazed at her prodigious aptitude for the subject. He had sometimes noticed her carefully enunciating English words to her fellow Loroi while they shared those odd, silent conversations of theirs; doubtless she had been passing English idioms and human mannerisms on to her fellow Loroi, perhaps in the hope of better allowing them to understand him when his Trade slipped.

He could not specifically recall teaching her any words related to genitalia or sexuality (he had felt distinctly uncomfortable whenever he sensed the subject approaching, and avoided it as best he could), but he could not rule out the possibility either. The nature of their nocturnal English lessons, used largely as a passtime to exhaust himself while somnolent oblivion laid just out of reach, meant that he was often somewhat muddled during their sessions (Beryl would often remind him that she had already mastered a certain quirk of grammar and pronunciation), and remembering them in detail after he had slept was all but impossible.

On the other hand, he knew that he and the Loroi were conversing in Trade, and that subjects which the Loroi had culturally specific attitudes towards tended to have Loroi-specific terms attached to them, unheard in Standard Trade. "Penis" could easily be some nonstandard Loroi Trade term used to refer to a subject with significant and specific cultural value for the Loroi; he knew that they placed a great deal of emphasis on certain subjects of their environs, approaching spirituality.

But Fireblade had said exactly what he would expect if she really meant…

"Captain. I want you. At my penis."

Alex strained himself to parse the word's meaning. Fireblade's accent and pronunciation were so awkward that he could not grasp her tone the way he had learned to grasp Beryl's. Her expression certainly looked sincere. Her features had assumed that almost pleading look that he had only seen her wear once or twice before. But with her temperament, at once mercurial and volcanic, he could not possibly guess at what was afoot, and it might be dangerous to try. Highcloud was as stratospherically distant, cold and impassive as her namesake would warrant; he could find no clues in her indifferent expression.

He would have to try to grasp what she was about based upon what little he knew of her character, rather than her diction; asking for clarification once had already been alarming, asking a second time might be suicidal.

She and he had never gotten on, he thought. They had been tense ever since he had first awoken in Tempest's medical facility, a moment that seemed as though it had been many long years ago. Things had escalated somewhat since then, additional contact producing new tensions and adding new wrinkles to old ones. In particular he remembered the Loroi Tea Incident...

"Give me a second, please."

Alexander considered his position. He was the ambassador of the human race, and he certainly couldn't afford to make any missteps on the diplomatic front, but he had no idea what would constitute a misstep in this situation. He would have to trust his instincts and his own judgment.

Another man may have made a different decision. A fearless explorer like Carl Hamilton might have rushed at the chance to encounter the unknown. An endless font of enthusiasm and curiosity like Ellen Kirkland might have eagerly leapt at the opportunity to gain a more intimate understanding of the Loroi. An actual diplomat, one of the many bureaucrats aboard the Prahbu, might have chosen to humor the frequently hostile Loroi.

But Alexander Jardin was, by instinct, inclination, talent and education, a tactician. His first, best proficiency lay in the analysis of a subject in terms of risk and positional advantage. His best judgment would be limited to his own aptitudes; trying to guess at what a Carl Hamilton or a real diplomat or even an Ellen Kirkland would do in his stead could only impede his reasoning.

Before him stood Fireblade, whose animosity had smouldered for the entire time they had been acquainted. She had chosen to confront him about... something, her... "penis," at a time when Beryl, the closest thing he had to an ally here, was absent. When questioned about the matter, she responded with hostility, though that was really to be expected regardless of her initial intentions. Highcloud was a fairly typical warrior. Laconic, diligent, and sincere, but frequently inscrutable, and duty-bound to her commanding officer to an extent far beyond the bounds of human military discipline. The admittedly low-key conflicts between Alex and Fireblade had never met any sort of final resolution, and their underlying animosity lingered still in their shaky, truceless ceasefire. After a few incidents in the Academy that had earned him some disciplinary marks in his permanent record, he learned that sometimes, it might be wiser to avoid an oncoming prank war rather than roll with it, but he might not have much choice in this case.

So here he had a known hostile, though that hostility had so far been limited to mild and petty affairs. They were on ground alien to him but familiar to her, and she sought to direct him to another ground even more to her favor. She was initiating contact of an unknown variety, with all possible tactical and strategic advantages leveraged against him.

Alex knew a losing battle when he saw it.

Though hubris urged him to accept and try to seize control of the situation despite his disadvantages, reason forced him to acknowledge that Fireblade had gotten in more than a few licks of her own during their previous low-level sparring, and was not to be underestimated. His pride had been further tempered by Beryl, whose agile and tireless mind swiftly mastered every subject he brought before her; even in chess, a domain where he had once thought himself all but invincible, he was increasingly straining himself. Though he still won far more games than he lost, his margin was decreasing--and Beryl had only known the game of kings for a very short time, she should hardly have been able to win any games at all. Alex sometimes suspected that Beryl might have some telepathic advantage against him--perhaps she could read some of his thoughts after all, or perhaps she was able to consult other Loroi for advice--but he was at least mature enough to recognize that this was his wounded pride talking, and not reason. He consoled himself with the fact that she had said that for his part, he was doing very well at learning and playing Loroi strategy games, though that was small consolation indeed when he learned that the traditional primary technique involved in most such games was to probe the opposing player's mind telepathically and that immediate on-table strategy had been a secondary concern for most of the players he had squared off against.

No, Alex was increasingly faced with the realization that, really, he was not always going to have the upper hand. He'd realized the truth of some of Ellen's barbs, that he had always acted as though he was sure to be the smartest person in the room even though that was not necessarily the case. This newer, humbler Alex might have some wisdom he had not previously held, but he lacked a certain measure of the insouciant bravura of his previous self, founded as it was on absolute confidence. The bravado of his sworn oath to destroy those who had so easily crushed the Bellarmine rang hollow in his memory, aware as he now was of the true scale of the war, and this doubtless contributed greatly to his troubled nights.

His emotions might have demanded that he play along with Fireblade, but he knew himself well enough to control those sentiments. He knew that at least half of it was because he was actually hoping that she'd try something, so he would have an excuse to reignite their quarrels, childish though that behavior might be. He also knew that much of the remainder was simply that he was bored, and that doing something just because you're bored and think you can get away with it is how you earn disciplinary measures, not honors; not appropriate behavior for a young space cadet or a junior ensign, and most certainly not appropriate behavior for an official ambassador.

But he walked along a knife's edge here; to flatly refuse could be as disastrous as playing too far into whatever the red-haired one had planned. He needed to create a polite way out, even though he still struggled with the Loroi conceptions of polite action and, honestly, even among humans, he had never been a master of the art of conversation.

He could see that Fireblade was becoming impatient. Or anxious. Possibly dyspeptic. Sometimes it is hard to tell, especially with someone you don't know and have never held a single conversation with.

He remembered that the Loroi considered lying to be horrifically impolite. But he also knew that the Loroi consider a host of things impolite, and it was more than likely that they would never catch him in this particular lie.

"Normally, I'd be perfectly willing to... uh... see your penis. But I'm exhausted tonight. I'm going to sleep now. We can talk about this again later."

Alex removed himself as respectfully as he could, turned the lights off in his bedroom, and--knowing he was monitored at all times--laid down and shut his eyes, pretending that rest would take him soon.

After an hour or so spent maintaining this pretense, sleep finally came to Alex, bringing with it all the usual horrors.

Thus he did not hear the sounds of anguish that rose outside his door. Or perhaps he did, but found that they blended seamlessly into the cries that tore through his mind throughout his own oneiric suffering.

Ira

SpoilerShow

Fireblade realized that it was probably her own fault.

She realized this as soon as she had become angry.

She had tried to check herself. Honestly, she had. She knew as soon as she had resolved to open her heart to the alien that he would most likely reject it, and not necessarily out of spite. A lack of comprehension, or a somewhat justifiable apprehension, would suffice.

She had tried, even in that moment, to see things through his eyes. This was no simple matter; without the gift of sanzai, she could not even say for sure how his actual, literal eyes saw the world.

Fireblade tried to make allowances for him as best she could. She had constantly striven her hardest to be as courteous and respectful towards this creature as her civilized compatriots required.

That was not an easy endeavor. For his own part, the alien had seemed almost to revel in antagonizing all and sundry, smirking at their annoyance whenever he stepped just too far beyond their tolerance.

Testing them. That's what Beryl had once said about his behavior. That he was studying them, poking at them, prodding them just to see what happened. Beryl had seemed entirely too pleased at the thought; Fireblade merely found it disturbing.

But this had not felt like a test. It would not have tested Beryl, who was entirely inured to the vexations of interaction with the alien. His insistence on speech, his open disdain and impertinence towards Loroi, his basic strangeness, none of these aversely affected the Listel Tozet. Nor would Beryl have invested herself so wholly into her proposition. None of the other Loroi would have cared so much about something so simple as a single alien's reaction to her attempt to come to an understanding. None of the other Loroi would even have a reason to seek understanding or harmony with an alien in the first place.

But Fireblade was not like the other Loroi.

Typical Loroi warriors had lived and grown swaddled in one another's company, facing trials crafted by millenia of custom and law for the purpose of making them warriors, and making for them a high place in a warrior's civilization. There was a ceremony and tradition to their years of initiation, and there is comfort in ritual even if the ritual is a trial by fire and iron. A young warband would struggle, and struggle mightily, but their struggles had clear purpose, offered great reward, and would not be bourne alone. Though a young warrior initiate's band of fellows could expect to face hardship, they would expect to face it together.

Fireblade had not known such civilized luxuries.

She was Loroi to the core, but she was to other Loroi as the ordinary warrior was to the human. She was an old Loroi; very, very old. Though she had seen only three eightyears and one, she was in a way among the oldest Loroi in all of space. A Loroi from an era long gone, forgotten in all but the dimmest of myths and legends.

Between the days when the Void consumed the Ancestors and the Sister Worlds had sundered, and the rise of the Early Menelos Period, there was a Reign of Chaos, when petty kingdoms rose and fell across Deinar as water rises into and falls from the clouds. A thousandscore legends walked the myriad lands of Deinar in those days, and some tattered but much-loved remnants of their fame and glory live on in fragments of memory precious to the Listel. In those days, before the caste system had made stable the fundament of civilization, when fortunes would rise and fall in the time between the beats of a heart and the flick of a blade, when cities would stand in peace for the space of a night or an eightyear or a lifetime only to be torn to ruin in the savagery of war, when the only lasting laws were of the unequivocating rule of sword and psionic might, a hundred-score Fireblades had carved for themselves realms and adventures beyond imagining. To the ancient heroes and legends of that time, Fireblade would have been quite familiar. Wild-haired, flashing-eyed, sword in hand, a survivor, a reaver, a slayer, of vast dark melancholies and bright quickburning mirth, set to tread the jeweled thrones of Deinar beneath her sandaled feet.

Not for her were the strange and supercilious ways of the cultured warrior; her might had not been tempered by the discipline of a harsh society, but by the raw and horrific rigors of survival in a burned and broken land in which all of that society's strength had failed. She had reaved and ruined her way through a world where she would sometimes go for many months without so much as the sight of azure skin; and those few Loroi she did meet were often mad and wild. Perhaps madness and violence were what it took to survive in a mad and violent world, in which all that remained of settlement and civilization was under the control of a vile and apparently unconquerable foe; by the end of it, she had certainly been as mad and wild as any wounded beast.

For those years she had killed and burned and maimed the Enemy as she could, and lesser enemies as she needed to; for it was not always from the slain of the Enemy that she had reaved, nor had all those she had reaved from been slain when they had met. In the shattered remnants of a ruined world, a dying people can become as terrible a foe to one another as any stranger, their very tenacity to cling to life spelling death for all their kind. She had never killed without cause, but cause had never been in short supply. Horror and death were everywhere, and some reflection of this can be seen in the eyes and minds of every single one of the survivors of Seren. But Fireblade had been an outlander and a barbarian even among them, with no hope nor home nor band nor clan nor clade to call her own.

She had not even had a name.

Nor need of one.

All of this had Seren reawakened in her. All of this and more, and worse.

It was no wonder to her that they feared her. She could walk among these domesticated and sophisticated Loroi; she could converse with them, eat their foods, wear their clothes, learn their ways, even lead them in battle. But she and they and all others who had eyes to see would know that she was not one of them, could never be one of them. Her spirit burned with a deeper fire, an unquenchable wildfire that threatened to consume all it touched.

She had known that she could not expect the human to understand; that was, after all, why she had wanted to take him to her lake in the first place. So that she could make him see, make him understand, make him hear her and know some small measure of what she had felt. She knew that it would not unburden herself, not completely, but she had hoped to at least no longer be so terribly isolated in her burden.

She had offered him some small measure of her soul and he acted as though she had tried to take his.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't right.

She was not even angry at him, as little help as that was to her. Her anger had been at all of it, the entire situation, elements of which both did and did not involve him. She had no intention of taking out her anger on him or anyone else, though his fear was understandable. Because she knew herself well enough to understand why others fear her, she forgave him, and forgave Highcloud's startled fright as well; she knew she could never be like Stillstorm.

Stillstorm was the apotheosis of the civilized warrior. Her wrath was a tempered steel blade; an implement, one which empowered the wielder proportionate to her skill, and Stillstorm's was a very skilled hand indeed. Her vehemence could be worked for years, folded and woven upon itself over and over again, processed and purified and alloyed and sharpened as need be, worked and reworked, and come out stronger than before, compounded and reforged as a sterner and sharper tool for days or weeks or even years before the strike. Her ire would be as cold as the darkness between the stars or as hot as the skin of the sun as the need came. It was Stillstorm's essential nature to command; the moment she walked into a room it became her room and all within it bent to her will, the moment she laid eyes on a foe they became her foe and all rival claims on their blood would fade to insignificance, and the moment she felt anger, it was her anger, to wield or withhold as she saw fit. It was misleading to think of Stillstorm as becoming angry, because it was not Stillstorm that changed to match anger, but anger that became something more in her hands, refined and reforged into a weapon that was utterly her own. It served her well and struck her foes as she willed. Stillstorm was the master of her fury, no matter its force.

Not so Fireblade.

Fireblade's rage was of a more primal nature. Not a carefully honed implement but an unrestrained whirlwind, the unstoppable frenzy of a mad demigod. Her inner fire was unmasterable and dangerous even to its own host, much less her friends or allies. The sort of volcanic ferocity that could, in the ancient times, have leveled towns and conquered thrones and won for her fame and power and wealth and males and glory. But in this civilized age, when power flowed not from individual potential for violence, but from the massed ties of commerce, industry, and pre-established social bonds enforced by soldiers armed not with individual prowess but the powers of technology, an age where individual might held less potential than the intangibles of law and wealth and webs of obligation, she was a liability. A throwback to a way that did not work anymore, a world whose time had passed.

But though she understood all that had happened, it had torn savagely at her heart.

This was not the first time her heart had been torn asunder. Nor the worst. Nor even would it be the last.

But that did little to comfort her that night.

Only a short time after the alien excused himself, so too did Fireblade take her own leave, as Highcloud radioed for the replacement shift. For convenience's sake she had been given quarters in the same building that served as the alien's current abode, and for the sake of all the Loroi around her, her quarters had been private. Nobody else would need to suffer her nightmares, not here, where living quarters were not so limited as aboard a warship and where comfort was as high a concern as any.

Beryl would be back tomorrow. Her opportunity had been missed.

As sleep crept upon her, anger and sorrow roiled through her being as her dashed hopes and once-forgotten memories skirmished across the borders of her conscious and unconscious mind. She had not known such tumultuous emotions for a number of years.

Soon she was lost to them.

Soon after that, her mind began to scream.

It was fortunate indeed that so large a portion of the building had been dedicated to the human, and so only a small number of Loroi occupied his immediate vicinity. For so anguished was that psionic cry that a number of Loroi on the two adjacent storeys joined it, wailing misery with both voice and mind throughout the night.

Invidia

SpoilerShow

Beryl had been rapt in attention as Highcloud gave her report.

Of course, the Listel was usually rapt in her attentions. When she devoted any of her attention to a subject, you could be sure that she had devoted all of it, considering it from every conceivable angle and in every plausible way. Highcloud took her leave and Beryl ruminated in peace.

She had the feeling that Highcloud had not given her all of the information needed to understand Fireblade's actions, but this had seemed to be because Highcloud herself did not have that information. Fireblade had always been something of a figure of awe to the Listel Tozet. Because of this awe, and because of the Teidar Pallan's natural disposition, their relationship--while amicable--was a bit more distant than it might have been. Thus, even Beryl--better acquainted with Fireblade than perhaps any other living being--crumpled inwardly at the possibility of angering the Unsheathed. And there were Fireblade's feelings to consider as well. Fireblade always got so... touchy whenever anything about Seren came up. It would be best not to pry.

Fireblade, of course, would need a larger empty radius set about her sleeping quarters; she hadn't screamed like that for many years. Returning to Seren must be getting to her. Or perhaps the human acts as some sort of psionic or emotional activator through some process too strange to even begin analyzing. Or maybe... maybe it's just getting close to the time when someone would have to... deal with Fireblade.

Beryl sighed to herself. She'd always known that something like that might end up happening to the poor girl. When you take people who've already broken, and you put them right up next to the breaking point again and again and again, really, what do you expect?

Well, unless something a bit more drastic happened, she certainly wasn't going to recommend terminating Fireblade. After all, she was her friend.

No, got to give that job to some unfortunate subordinate. Can't leave my name on a data trail which a certain unstoppable death dealer with a penchant for surviving against all odds might find.

Beryl refused to allow herself to be amused at her own joke, noted her own poor taste in even thinking such a thing, and then giggled a bit anyways.

After that momentary lapse, Beryl swiftly regained her mental focus. She had many matters to attend to, and not all of them had to do with recent developments. She had risen to the challenge of her additional responsibilities with alacrity, but she still paid a price in terms of time and energy.

There was just so much to learn and see and do.

Beryl had just come back from a gruelling series of debriefing sessions, with Listel, Mizol, and Torrai representatives. She had scarcely enough mental energy left to play a round of the human's simplistic wargame with him, much less manage him and a distraught Teidar.

She was honored by her assignment, but she needed some respite from her labors. She was becoming... "cranky," the human had called it. Yes. An ugly yet unimpressive word, perfect for the aggregation of petty annoyance and mild aggression she felt. Unpleasant, but without any sense of drama or gravitas.

Of course, so much of the human language is ugly and unimpressive that it is difficult to say if this word achieves the effect deliberately, Beryl thought snidely.

That wasn't like her, she realized. Normally she positively reveled in humanity's otherness, and learning their language had been an absolute joy for her.

Between that thought and the earlier one about Fireblade, she realized she'd been having unusually frequent, unwarranted and disrespectful thoughts about subjects she normally regarded with great fondness.

She really was cranky, to such a degree that it might adversely affect her work.

Well, she might as well slay a flight of Arekka with a single volley.

Fireblade had wanted to go to a lake, Alex had stated his willingness to do so at the time, and she needed some measure of relaxation as well.

A change of scenery would be pleasant for all of them.

Thus decided, Beryl set to work planning the details of their excursion.

The fact that Seren was still healing limited her choice of location. Much of the world was so devastated that even looking at the tortured landscape and ravaged biosphere, rather than alleviating the group's tension, would only renew it. The Enemy truly were a hideous and vile force, striking out not only at their foes, but at the intrinsic beauty of their own worlds. They did not merely subdue planets, they violated them. To kill a foe is one thing, but to reduce the beauty of the universe for no other reason than that it can be done? It's unconscionable. If the Enemy were ever to find Captain Jardin's Terra, a world described as a place of peace and beauty, full of wise and cultured males and, less interestingly, females, it would doubtless be as though that wondrous place had never been. And for what? For metals, which the Enemy already had in plethoric supply? For radioactives? Punishment for the inhabitants?

The sheer joy of indelibly scarring a world beyond recognition?

Ugh. Even looking at a map of this place was beginning to anger her. Beryl felt another twinge of pity for Fireblade, for whom such things must be a far more personal matter.

The restoration of Seren's ecology would take a long time yet; many necessary projects and prerequisites could not even commence until the war had ended and more resources could be dedicated to the cause. Captain Jardin had said that humans had some... "domestic tech" that the Loroi might find interesting. Having been confined to their homeworld for so long with so large a population, and with so many resultant problems, they had apparently come up with solutions to ecological issues that the Loroi had barely even faced by the time of their own interstellar colonization period. If it were truly possible for humaniti to salve such grievously wounded worlds, then almost any price would be worth paying for their friendship.

There were a number of small and inconsequential lakes, which Beryl rejected casually, and a number of artificial lakes which were little more than the unhealed wounds of orbital bombardment, which she rejected angrily. She entertained the notion of simply asking Fireblade which lake she had intended to take the Captain to, but she dismissed the idea. Fireblade had many positive qualities, but a high capacity for social forethought was not among them. She was unlikely to have picked an ideal location for the observation of the human. She may even have chosen an unsafe environment.

Eventually, she settled on a choice, and presented it to Captain Jardin.

His reaction was not quite what she had expected.

"You want us to go to, ah, see the biggest penis on Seren."

"The largest natural penis, Captain. Several significantly larger penises were formed in the aftermath of the Enemy's bombardment and capture of the world, but I did not think that they would be appropriate."

His eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment, which Beryl took as an indication that he was tuning out external stimuli, and thus most likely considering her offer.

"We would be able to do more than simply see the penis, Captain. It is open to the public, so we would be able to go to the penis itself. In my judgment this public openness will not become problematic; the population of Seren is still very low, and few individuals are likely to be taking recreation at the penis. We would be able to, essentially, relax and do as we will with the penis; to play with it and get wet..."

From his expression it seemed as though she was losing him here. She frowned. She did not wish to upset him, but she had rather gotten her own hopes up on the matter...

"...and besides, I have been told that Fireblade wanted to do something like this earlier. It would do well to humor her. She is... unhappy here."

"Ah." The human paused and considered for a moment. "So, uh, you Loroi like penises, then?"

"Very much, Captain. They hold a special significance in Loroi culture, aesthetics, and ancient conceptions of spirituality."

Even by his normal standards he was employing those curious, meaningless speech fragments quite a bit. Not for the first time, Beryl wondered if, contrary to his explanations on the matter, they held some subtle meaning, perhaps something hidden even from the human's conscious perception. He seemed flustered; perhaps they were a subtle human social equivalent to a distress signal?

Perhaps she was intimidating him. It would only be natural for him to be afraid of her, after all, though she had worked long and hard to dispel any such response.

He did not look afraid or intimidated, though. He looked as though he were on the verge of laughter, but with some other force or emotion forcing it down.

Anxiety, perhaps? A so-called "nervous laugh" had been known to Loroi in stressful situations, but that did not make much sense in this particular context.

Perhaps humans are just weird.

Hardly scientific, she thought to herself. Might as well think things fall down 'just because, I dunno.'

"Uh, yes. Sure. Why not. Show me your huge penis."

Beryl's excitement rose.

Their trip would take the better part of three hours by atmospheric shuttle. Upon hearing this during their embarkation, the human shifted in his seat until he apparently found a comfortable position, and began to sleep. This was somewhat disappointing to Beryl, who had wished to converse with him about human culture and history during the trip. Still, Beryl remained exuberant. The human had behaved so oddly, even by his standards, that she could not help but think that lakes must have some real significance for him and for his people. His reaction to the question had been bizarre; what would his interaction with the waters be like? She felt positively giddy. There were a thousand myths and legends that came to her mind about creatures that looked like Loroi, but whose true nature was revealed by the waters; vampiric monsters that could not cross moving rivers, revenants of times and memories past that rose from and submerged into lakes and bogs, spirits of fog taking on Loroi guise. There were milder myths as well, of course; hidden pools where male water-sprites frolicked, to the delight of some hero fortunate enough to come upon them... Beryl pushed such notions from her mind. She was only taking the male to a lake to study his natural reaction, it wasn't like she was going to strip his clothes off and push him in just to see how his body would glisten. She had a job to focus on, and practical purposes in mind. Few of these legends were directly Listel memory-fragments, more having come through secondary or tertiary sources, but here she might find evidence of some kernel of truth to the myths.

Fireblade had been morose for their entire trip, and refused to entertain any of Beryl's hypotheses with returned sanzai. The closest she came to articulating a response was a sort of low, buzzing psionic hum of vague displeasure.

This was not sufficient to deter Beryl from her attempts to engage her friend with her speculations.

In addition to her one-sided attempts at friendly banter, Beryl took the opportunity to plan with her escorts, covering every conceivable range of circumstances accounting for all probable and several highly improbable reactions on the human's part. The Soroin officers, Icefall and Highcloud, argued back and forth with Beryl about the best ways to non-lethally restrain him or aid him under a variety of conditions, from the plausible, such as if he had trouble swimming, through the highly unlikely, such as the water awakening hidden telepathic potential in the human, to the entirely impossible, such as if the human's skin were to ignite like sulfur despite having been thoroughly chemically tested and very well understood even shortly after his arrival on the Tempest.

At long last they set down and debarked. Their landing was still several miles from their destination, a fact which apparently took Captain Jardin by surprise as Beryl roused him; Beryl wondered inwardly if he had expected them to land on the lake itself, or to have built a landing site along the shore and marred the primeval vista of the lake and surrounding woodland. With the Loroi carrying the burden of their daily supplies of food and water, the party trekked on foot through miles of winding paths.

Beryl seized the opportunity to converse with the human. She initiated by pointing out interesting features of the landscape, flora, and fauna, and explaining their significance, be it scientific, historical, or cultural. She idly chattered about unimportant matters, such as the trees that had been planted and tended here descended from species whose wood had furnished the ancient war-fleets of the Sister Worlds, the living rocks whose presence indicated some long-past geological upheaval in the region, the animals whose spoor was particularly important in propagating the flora, the ferns whose yellow-rimmed leaves he should avoid touching because prior analysis had indicated they would be toxic to him. But despite the effervescence of this discourse, she kept her own intentions firmly in mind. She had not come here just to enjoy ambling through sylvan paths--no matter how pleasant the thought--nor to supply information to the human, but to acquire information from him.

Beryl deftly maneuvered from speaking about the sights around them to asking about the human's impressions, and of his own people's ways and worlds. What plants and creatures they had found useful, what features of land and water their ancestors had flocked to or found significant.

While the human knew Trade quite well, and had a decent understanding of a variety of subjects, there were always matters where he was reticent to hold forth. In some such instances, Beryl could mark it down as a matter of cultural differences; she would not press him further on human sexuality after noting his discomfort with the subject. In others, he was understandably ignorant; he had not lived on all of the six worlds his people claimed, and could not describe each in Listel-memory detail, though he knew some simple matters such as their approximate population and the order in which they were colonized. In others still, his reluctance likely had to do with his duty to his people; try though she might, she could not wring from him a very detailed snapshot of their military capabilities. But it was often hard to tell which subjects brought about reluctance in which category. For instance, was he unwilling to describe human intoxicants because he feared his Loroi hosts might try to administer some to him without his knowledge, or because he was ignorant of the proper Trade terms or chemistry involved? When speaking with the human, not only would she be presented with puzzles, but the puzzles had themselves often been hidden in other puzzles. It was simultaneously exhilarating and tiresome.

So Beryl braced herself for a perplexing response when, at long last, she addressed the matter at hand.

"Tell me, Captain Jardin. How does your culture normally regard a penis? Do your people have any unusual associations with the penis? And what sort of treatment do penises receive from your people on your own world? Do you use your penises for any special purposes? Are Earth penises thought of as primarily functional, recreational, or aesthetic?"

The human paused and seemed to collect himself before he replied. "Yeah, uh, about that. There's something I've been trying to ask for a while now. What's penis? What does penis mean to the Loroi?"

As with many of his questions, Beryl needed to employ some basic critical analysis of the question itself before she could formulate an answer. This was hardly the greatest mystery the human had presented her with, but she still was set slightly off balance and needed a few moments to properly formulate her response.

The human's Trade vocabulary was extensive, but not perfect. It was conceivable that he had not learned all common-use geographical terms. He might simply be asking for the denotation of the word.

However, that seemed unlikely. If he had not known what the term itself meant, he would have more than likely asked before now, or been able to work it out from usage and context, as he had so many other Trade words.

It was more likely that this was a simple, grammatically clumsy echo of her own preceding questions.

She realized that the human would indeed need to know the standards against which his people's customs and perceptions were being compared to answer such questions.

Yes, logically, the best fit was that he was requesting an explication of connotation, not denotation.

"To many Loroi cultures, penises have long been respected as holding great power. Penises are givers of life, and as such play a variety of roles in Loroi culture and myth with spiritual and superstitious contexts. Penises are often seen as holding healing powers, as they are the source of waters necessary for life. It was said that the great hero Tiltopar was healed of a dozen mortal wounds by washing herself with the blessed waters of an enchanted penis, to name but one legend. They also have strong seasonal associations, and associations of fertility and vitality. Because penises pass water to their environs, and because they both give life and hold life, they are sometimes considered sources, sometimes as domains, and sometimes as thresholds, holding power of transition and transformation and mystery. As such, penises are venerated by numerous Loroi cultures and through numerous customs to this day, in ways that depend largely on the Loroi culture in question. The penis we are visiting today has been venerated by being healed of the contamination it suffered from during the Umiak occupation. From the veneration of this great penis, the harmony of the entire region has been restored."

By the time Beryl had finished her speech, they had cleared the edge of the treeline. Ahead of them lay a vast expanse of placid water, stretched so far she could almost believe it a docile sea rather than a lake, with the opposite shore not even an outline on the horizon.

Beryl studied the human's face very carefully as she said "And here it is. The vastest natural penis on all of Seren." Her left hand swept towards the awe-inspiring vista.

The human's eyes followed her gesture. His eyes narrowed at first, and then an expression of surprise overcame his features. Perhaps it was some instinctive reaction to large bodies of water; Beryl knew that he was not Loroi, and might regard such waters in an entirely alien way. Perhaps it was a sudden realization; Beryl made a note to herself to study his interactions with Fireblade in more detail, as he might have had some sudden insight that would show him the previous night's events in a different light. Perhaps it was simply the beauty of the scene.

If the human was indeed struck by the beauty of the moment, he was not the only one. Beryl found herself moved as few Loroi had ever been moved, though it would be very hard for a Loroi to explain exactly why. For though the Loroi hold nature in great esteem and the sight of waters had stirred many a Loroi poet's heart, few would express the beauty that stirred Beryl at that moment. The scintillating waves, the crisp arboreal fragrance of the air, the gentle slope of the ground towards the water, the soft sounds of the world around them, these things all contributed to that moment's charm, but first and foremost it had felt beautiful to her because it had made him smile.

Because she had made him smile.

He positively beamed.

She had not seen him so happy at any moment since they had first met.

Beryl felt as though her heart would melt.

The human's smile slowly broke into a mellow laugh, and he continued to laugh even as he removed the majority of his clothing and plunged into the water.

Apologies to Jim Francis, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard.

[bunnyboy]

Brawo. Before I start reading I thought that anything is good enough, but that was best I had to read on long time!
I could kiss you, then Fireblade, Beryl, Alex and Fireblade again!

[Victor_D]

I failed that task in all possible ways; unable to keep it short, unable to make it funny, unable even to make it a story (it still lacks a dramatic climax and an ending), and I abandoned that work sometime around mid-September of 2012, deleting the old copies of the document in the certainty that I would never return to it and nobody would want to read it. However, when I write I usually save multiple copies of every revision of my work, spread across my laptop and desktop systems with the transferred files usually remaining undeleted on the flash drives used to move them around as well. So every now and then I will find, say, a copy of an early version of a horror story that I wrote years ago taking up space in a long forgotten corner of one of my file systems.

I recently came across a saved copy of this fanfic which I had missed during my deletion spree, and decided to give it a read-through.

To my surprise, I didn't quite hate it. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from happy with it, but occasionally I found a passage or two which I thought actually worked pretty well. For the sake of those few small moments I have decided to share the surviving version of my largely unfunny failed fanfic with my fellow Outsider fans.

My practice when I write things is usually to write notes, plans, and ideas at the end of the document, so that I don't have to sort through multiple files to find things like plot outlines, notes on characters, or the passage swap space (every now and then I find myself reordering sentences and paragraphs, or excising a portion of the text from a certain location and later finding a spot where that same text, mildly altered, would work better; it is rare for me to actually delete a grammatically correct sentence or paragraph until the work is actually completed, at which point the notes and passage swap space become worthless and are excised from the final version). I tend to forget things, so the end-document notes are a real help when I have left a work idle for more than, say, two or three days. From the outline, population of the passage swap space, and miscellaneous notes at the end of this particular document, I judge this story to be about 70% complete. However, I feel no inclination whatsoever to actually continue or complete it.

This work is presented as-is, incomplete and inchoate, with no warranties, no guarantees, and no refunds. If after reading it you find you want those hours of your life back, you were warned.

I quite liked it myself. Too bad you won't finish it

[Hālian]

I want those minutes of my life back so I can read it again

[Imbrooge]

That is gold right there, oh my god I couldn't stop laughing. I had to stop for a little while when Alex's point of view came up cause that was so funny.

[Suederwind]

Really nice to read I hope you finish it some time in the future.

[fredgiblet]

Firstly N-N-N-N-NECROPOST-POST-post-post

Not sure how well this came out, it's been kicking around in my head for a bit.

SpoilerShow

Beryl peeked around the corner and spotted Alex sitting in front of her quarters, as he apparently had been for most of the past day. She cursed herself again for letting things come to this and turned to Fireblade <Thank you for coming with me, I don’t think you’ll be needed but all the same it’s better to have you here.> Fireblade responded with nothing but a feeling of amusement. Beryl frowned at her and beckoned her forward, then stepped around the corner and moved towards Alex. She hoped her face was calmer than her head was. She had deliberately avoided Alex for almost 16 days now, since the surprise departure of a sizable portion of the officers left her with an 18+ hour per day workload. She could handle the workload, but she couldn’t take care of Alex’s…needs…at the same time. She had tried to have him diverted but it seemed he had figured that out, she had stayed in Thornstaff’s quarters last night to avoid him, but he was now refusing to accept requests for help from the rest of the crew, so she had to handle him.

As Beryl stepped into the corridor Alex turned to watch her. He knew she would be coming sooner or later, she wouldn’t shunt a confrontation off on someone else. “This is all your fault” Alex said to himself “If you hadn’t let her continue believing that you two were pair-bonded and now you needed sex all the time this wouldn’t be an issue” Alex suppressed a sigh “Yes well it wasn’t actually a PROBLEM until now.” He thought. He studied Beryl as she approached, she looked like she hadn’t slept for days, which if you averaged the last couple weeks was close enough to accurate, she was a little disheveled and looked like she was short a shower or two in the last couple days, but all that did was make him want to give her a hug and try to ease her stress as best he could. He hoped he could manage this talk without angering or embarrassing her.

Alex stands still as Beryl approaches. He stands so that she could walk past him to her quarters if she wanted to, but she would have to walk within inches of him to do it. When she reached arms distance from him she stopped and studied him for a moment. Alex broke the silence “You’ve been avoiding me.” A simple statement with as little accusation as he could put in it. She looked away and then back and said “I have.” He took a deep breath and then said “I think I know why, but I’d rather hear it from you.” She hesitated and then said “I’ve been working too much to spend as much time as you need…mating, I’m sorry but I can’t handle you and the work that needs to be done at the same time.” She bit her lip and then continued “I thought about getting one of the others to take my place, but I can’t really ask them to do that.” Alex smiled slightly and then said “It’s not your fault, it’s mine, I knew that you had a misconception about my needs and I let you continue to believe that, for reasons that should be obvious.” He shook his head “If you remember when we met for the second time you asked about the needs of human males, I said then that we could long periods without sex and it’s the truth, once we got together you seemed to believe that that had been changed by our relationship, but it hasn’t.” He chuckled and then continued “I’m not going to fall apart, go crazy or start wildly [humping] everything in sight if I don’t get to have sex with you regularly.” He paused and his face lost it’s smile “I MAY however go crazy or fall apart if I don’t get to see you, talk to you, or maybe touch you for a long time” he let his voice soften and he slowly reached forward and took her hand as he said that, she twitched at his touch, then let him squeeze her hand and returned it after a pause.

Beryl was confused, annoyed and relieved at the same time. “So you haven’t been camping in front of my door to mate then?” she asked bringing her free hand up to rub her eyes, she was suddenly far more tired than she had been a moment ago. “No” he said “In your state I would decline if you offered, you need sleep. I’m here to clear this up and to do what I’ve been trying to do for the last two [weeks], find out if there’s anything I can do to help.” He tightened his grip on her hand and smiled again. “Maybe you have some work that my primitive, hormone-flooded [monkey] brain can manage to comprehend, or maybe I can give you a massage, or even get you a snack or a drink. Anything to help.” She had begun shaking her head while he listed off options, then stopped abruptly when he mentioned a drink. She looked up at him and said “Talon mentioned she was going to make some Chisila tea in the aft mess hall, I don’t relish the thought of making my way all the way back there, but it’s the last of the Chisila on board for the foreseeable future.” Alex cut her off and said “I’ll get some for you.” He put his free hand on her shoulder “I…I love you. I haven’t said it because I didn’t want to scare you, it’s a little scary for me to admit it given our situation, but I think it’s time” he said softly “I’ll be here when you get back to a regular schedule, I’ll be here whenever you need me, wherever you go. All you need to do is ask.” Then he released her and turned to walk away, Beryl stared after him until he stepped into a cross corridor and then she shook her head. <Damn him> she said to Fireblade who responded <?> Beryl moved to her door and keyed it open <Leave it to him to make me WANT to stay up mating regardless of what’s going on tomorrow.> She let out an angry grunt. Fireblade laughed and turned to leave <It’s your own fault, you could have turned him down, if you had I’d be the one getting to spend sleepless night with him though.> she sent a mental smirk. Beryl let an artificial flare of anger come through the link and said <He’s MINE! They’re monogamous anyway, so you can’t have him!> Fireblade chuckled again <He did say they shared sometimes…> she trailed off as she left Beryl’s range leaving her mentally spluttering in mock anger.

[fredgiblet]

Not enough for a single comment in 23 hours? Fine, have another:

SpoilerShow

Alex stared out at the smoking ruin that was the Umiak homeworld. He admired his handiwork…well…partially anyway, it had been a smoking ruin when he arrived because of the Umiak themselves, but he had made it smokier and ruinier. That much he could take credit for. The shattered remains of an Umiak supercap breached the atmosphere and began it’s soon-to-be-ground-shattering death dive, leaving only one more unaccounted for if their intelligence was correct.

Alex’s danger sense tingled and he turned slowly to see a half-circle of Loroi surrounding him on the platform on the command deck of the Tempest. Fireblade, Beryl, Talon, Tempo, Swiftleaf, Diamond and Greywind herself were all staring at him. Alex backed away until he hit the command console and looked for an exit. They had left him none. Tempo stepped forward and said “Alexander Jardin, we must speak with you.” Alex nodded and tried to calm himself enough to talk. Tempo looked at the gathered women and continued “You have given unmistakable, and ADMITTED, signs that you wish to mate with all of us and we have each indicated our willingness to reciprocate, yet even now you seek to avoid us. We must insist you explain yourself so that we can move forward from this impasse.” The rest of the women nodded and leveled piercing gazes at him. Alex stuttered and then said “I just can’t choose. I’m sorry but I like you all and I can’t decide who to be with.” At that statement the women looked at each and obviously conferred for a bit then Beryl suddenly smiled and laughed. “Alex, you don’t NEED to choose!” She exclaimed “We aren’t human, we don’t care if you mate with other females.” The rest of the Loroi seemed surprised that this needed to be pointed out, but they nodded in agreement. Alex felt a rush of relief, his knees weakened and he barely managed to keep himself from showing his emotion. “Really? Even…all of you?” he asked. They looked between each other and shrugged “Why not?” Talon said “It’s not like we’ll all have time for you every day anyway.” Alex smiled and chuckled “OK then, I wish I’d have known that earlier, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble.” The women all murmured in agreement. Greywind stepped forward and said “Well since that is settled we can move forward. I understand your stamina leaves something to be desired, so I think that having you with one of us per day at most will be the best option” the others all nodded their assent “As the highest ranking person here I will of course take the first turn.” Beryl stepped forward “Wait, I was the one we made friends with him first, I’ve been with him since the beginning, I think that deserves special privilege.”

The conversation shifted to sanzai and the women in front of him quickly became embroiled in a seemingly white-hot argument. Alex slowly crept to the side a look of horror growing on his face as his life flashed before his eyes. He had almost made it off the central platform, Beryl had Fireblade in a headlock and Greywind was swinging at Tempo with the ceremonial scepter she had on hand. Alex was fascinated by the melee erupting and caught sight of Stillstorm with her head in her hands sitting in a corner in the back of the deck when a hand touched his shoulder lightly. He snapped around and leapt back a few inches, barely keeping himself from crying out before he saw Cloud. Her face was shocked by his reaction, but when he calmed down she smiled slightly. She nervously looked at the fight behind him then offered her hand to him. He stared for a moment then said softly “You too?” her smile faded a little and she shrugged. Alex glanced back, Fireblade had Greywind in a Full Nelson with Beryl clinging to her legs, Talon was trying weakly to punch Tempo in the gut but was inhibited by Tempo having her in a Figure 4 leglock. Alex turned back to Cloud, shrugged and said “lead the way.” She smiled broadly as he took her hand and she pulled him off the command deck to a chorus of swearing from the oblivious combatants.

[Charlie]

22 Hours 52 Minutes.

And you'll never know if it was a cunning psychological tick of mine to cause umbrage with you leading to a chain of events wherein another was posted, or my internet which may have been acting erratically.

[fredgiblet]

Hah! Jokes on YOU! I was planning to post the other one anyway!

[Absalom]

I like the bit with Stillstorm best. You can't tell if she's aghast or amused, and thus can't help imagining that it's both.

[saint of m]

Well you have a tallent of conveying both humor and sorrow into your work. Nice job.

[ed_montague]

I remember this! Hi guys!