Archivists note to the reader: It seems you are viewing this item in the human language English. For this reason names have been transliterated, units have been converted, and the content has been ontologically translated. Apologies for any inconsistencies.
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Ziet rounded the corner of the shuttle carefully, the human and the second deathworlder following close behind. The shuttle was only to be docked for a little under sixty minutes, left empty for less than fifteen, and unguarded for a mere seven.
There! The cockpit hatch! She reached a tendril toward the handle, but before she could open it the door opened by itself, revealing a short, but defiantly menacing individual holding a nasty looking weapon. Ziet froze in horror, before speaking frantically, the normal perfection of her grammar lost to the urgency of the moment.
“Kakia! Please just let us go, you’ll never need to see me again.”
The individuals mouth stretched into a wide, unnatural imitation of a human’s grin.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old,’ she spat out the word, “friend. Ziet, the highly esteemed logistics technician, how are you? And what are you doing with the recently escaped, and even more recently declared dead prisoners?”
She focused her weapon at Ziet. On a human’s face a grin can be cheery. In the rest of the universe that grin is taunting, threatening, menacing.
“Please just let us go, please. Please?”
“With the price on their head? With the human ambassador to the GA right here? Why, that would be treason.”
She leaned in close, close enough that the puff of breath that accompanied each word ruffed the fur on Ziet’s face.
“And you, my wonderful, treasonous colleague, here, at my mercy?”
The grin stretched wider, more teeth appearing, ivory white. The words came exaggerated, theatrical.
“It was self defense. She attacked me with the deathworlders. She committed treason.”
Ziet recognized the weapon, specifically the three white dots on the side, and her blood ran cold.
“You’re right about one thing Ziet.”
Her grip tightened on the trigger.
“I’ll never have to see you again.”
The human lunged for the weapon, but no race in the universe was that fast. Ziet felt an impact against her chest, and then a horrible anticipation, like the moment between an injury, and the inevitable agony it would cause. No! Please no! Then malice, pure hatred, flooded through her from the point of impact, coursing through her veins, attacking every nerve and cell in her body. She felt the thaumutic energy in her system recoil, and than start to fight the attacker, but the attacker was sly, and as each pulse of power attacked it was converted, joining the ever-growing tide of hatred and pain. Her body decided that it wasn’t going to win this fight, and instead chose to jettison the power through whatever route necessary.
The human watched in horror as his friend was shot by the attacker, this Kakia person. Ziet’s eyes went out for a moment as the latent entropic energy was called inwards for the battle, and than shone with the power of a spotlight as pure energy was dumped en mass. This wasn’t fast enough however, and more and more energy poured out. It started to leak from her mouth, then nostrils, and then it started to leak through her skin as thousands of amps of power were discharged. The entire volatus was shining with the brilliance of the sun, and nobody in the entire shuttle could see anything but white.
Just as quickly as the light had started it stopped, and the volatus fell to the floor like a spent battery. Kakia uncovered her eyes, and grinned at the human, raising the weapon for a second shot, but the human was already charging. She fired and fired, but had only time to learn one thing before the human’s vengeful body slammed into her own.
Humans don’t use magic.
Ziet felt the weight of several jumpsuits rapped around her. She knew they were jumpsuits because of the wafting smell of Squalus detergent, the brand used to wash clothing inside the personnel wing of the spaceport. There was a gentle tap on her cloak, over her left shoulder. She felt another. Tap. Tap. Tap. Then hand shook her, and she obligingly opened her eyes. There was the human, crouched before her, eyes locked on her face. The eyes were leaking, clear fluid running over the human’s flat face, and dripping off his nose and chin. Behind the human lay the crumpled form of Kakia, a rivulet of dark fluid leaking from the corner of one eye. The human had bound her with another jumpsuit, so presumably she had survived her first encounter with a deathworlder.
“Ziet? Can you hear me?”
The human was still looking at her, and she noticed now that his breathing was erratic, and saw proper fear in those alien eyes.
“I can”
The human’s mouth turned into a grin, a grin that spoke to intense relief, as well as to the effort the human was putting into not showing teeth.
“You ok?”
The Volatus pondered this question. She felt gutted. Every ounce of strength had left her body. She couldn’t even feel the slightest scrap of power in her system. Her head hurt, terribly, and nothing came to relieve the pain. But she was ‘ok’.
“I’m ok”
She winced at the grammar.
“Sorry, I am going to be fine.”
“I’m glad. You scared us. I was so worried”
“Where are we?”
“Flying. He says he can.” The human pointed a limb toward the second deathworlder sitting in the cockpit across the room. “We leave the air five minutes. In five minutes, sorry”
The volatus felt a wry happiness settle over her, despite the fatigue that overwhelmed her The human’s grammar was improving. The human reached beside him and produced the weapon Kakia had shot them with.
“What’s this?”
Ziet didn’t need to study the weapon to answer the question.
“It’s a malice gun, made by Simplicity. It’s like a computer virus.”
The human gestured to himself.
“I’m ok”
“It works by converting the thaumutic energy in your system, and I don’t think humans have any.”
“Oh”
They waited in silence for a moment.
The other deathworlder, the one piloting the shuttle, grunted a single word, the only word it had learnt of galactic common so far.
“Hey!”
The bio-luminescence on its arms lit up, and the human watched the flickering pattern closely, before saying a single word.
“Space!’
The volatus glanced towards the cabin window, and saw the blue curve of her home shrinking. Soon it would be a full circle against a black canvas, painted with thousands of stars. Then it would faded away into the distance completely.
She was free.
Ao3 Discord
Coothin burst into Human Sara's quarters, smacking the light tapper with xis upper left arm as soon as xe entered. "Human Sara! I know you enjoy seeing the new aliens and you are missing this arrival! The other humans are very exci--" "nnnhhggg shhh. Shhh." Human Sara remained in her sleeping-bay, arm pulled over her eyes. "No time for one of your 'naps'!" Xe reached out and tugged gently on Human Sara's arm with two of xis. "The other humans say they look like a cross between 'faeries' and 'jellyfish' and you must see them and also show me photos of those creatures!" Human Sara pulled herself to the edge of the sleeping bay and -- Coothin leapt backward as the human's stomach acid erupted onto the floor. Xe slammed the emergency button on xis communicator. It wasn't xis medical emergency button (unless xe had been splashed and it was even now burning through xis coverings), but xe couldn't reach Human Sara to press hers. The emergency system located xim and started blaring nearby alarms. Human Sara was keening now, an angry, pained moan as she curled into a a ball and clutched her pillow around her head.
Medics arrived equipped for the wrong species, and started to call for other supplies, when another human-who-hadn't-gone-to-the-new-species-docking came out of his room, squinting and covering his mouth like he, too, might eject acid. "Turn it off. Turn it OFF!" he demanded. The medics were already here, and disobeying an angry and insistent human seemed unwise. The alarms were turned off. The human slumped sweatily against his door frame. Those with acute hearing, if they hadn't been deafened by the alarms, could hear groans from elsewhere in the warren of human housing. "A bunch of us have migraines. Please fuck off. quietly. quietly fuck off," he mumbled, having apparently spent himself with his brief shouts. "What caused this? Do we need to quarantine the human sector??" It wouldn't be the first time. New rules had to keep being added about things the humans had to be screened for when returning from planetside.
"mi'en dlar kweshen." Coothin's translator could not parse the human's slurring and transmitted it directly, but the medics had more powerful systems for this sort of scenario. "no kwarteen. debrief la'er. Shhh..." He faded, staggering back into his quarters. ... A handful of medics-of-various-species and a handful of humans who had recovered first sat (or equivalent-ed) around a table. The humans did most of the talking among themselves. "Is there something we all ate?" "I didn't eat breakfast, I woke up too late for [religious seasonal meal, details sent to handheld]," said a woman whose garment extended over the top of her head. A strongly built human rolled his eyes. "Well I didn't eat dinner." He sat up straight, smug. "Intermittent fasting, you know." Several of the other humans rolled their eyes. "Okay, not food. Stress? I know me and Sara are doing some high-stress work, is everyone else's stuff going off the rails?" The alien medics looked at each other. What rails?
But the humans shook their heads. "Hormones? ...Ladies, at least?" More head-shaking. "Any changes to the cleaning chemicals?" They turned to the medics, who were not in charge of the cleaning robots but did have access to which chemicals were being used where. The medics answered in the negative.
"Everyone good on water? Though I dunno why we'd all get dehydrated at once. No atmospheric water emergencies, right?"
Again, something the medics kept track of. Or would find out about quickly as sick crewmates turned up. "No, atmospheric humidity constant. Well, up a little, in some sectors, for the Dre'mls, the new ones? They require higher humidity and less pressure so maintenance spent most of the day running reclaimers on null gasses, the ones that no-one breathes, so needs are still met but the percentages are all --"
"Wait, wait wait wait" -- humans were talking over eachother and the one with the garment banged her palm on the table to shush everyone. "There's been a drop in atmospheric pressure? Over some hours?"
None of the medic species liked the way the humans all had their eyes trained on them. "...yes? The Dre'mls are delicate--"
The humans tossed up their hands, some of them shouting. "Next time just vent it, oh my [human deity]. The sudden drop will make us all miserable for a few minutes, but we handle that going on and off planetside all the time. Don't drop it over HOURS; that means a storm is coming and it'll knock a bunch of us on our ass."
"... oh. That is... unique. It's rare for a species to sense it at all, if it's within survival parameters. If we encounter a species that requires higher pressure, should we --" "I think it matters less, but err on the side of caution and do it fast, yes."
"We will report this to maintenance and add it to the human files. Thank you all for your time; you may go." And it was added to the human files, under "health risks", that causing a fast pressure drop would cause widespread brief pain, but a slow pressure drop would cause concentrated, disabling pain for hours or days. It was also put under the secret "Arguments that species is secretly/unwittingly a hive mind despite denials" file.
Humans are weird
Hey there demons, it's ya Boi. I have no thoughts, head empty but that brings me to my point. How much of social media is just mindless thoughts? Like really why do we do this, do aliens do this? Just randomly talk about anything to complete strangers. Would they find it weird? Find out thoughts weird? Just imagine the senario, trying to show an alien your phone and then bringing up the topic of social media.
Alien: So you just say things and people listen?
Human: well yes but only certain things, like funny shit or fun ideas. No one likes to listen to the stupid things we read
Alien: then why read it if it's bad? Why not ignore it or not look?
Human: well some people just have the need to argue and we like to watch, it's funny to laugh at stupid people. But we mainly just look at cat videos, here look at this one-
Alien: You watch those willingly?! They are royalty where I am from!! You should pay money for this!!!
Human in a quiet voice:….. I fucking knew it.
You are now Zoruggs children
I didn’t know how best to phrase this, and I definitely didn’t write this with the express purpose to romanticize mental health issues; this is just my own experience with the thing
tw: burnout
On Earth, it would be a Friday.
If Nora was back home, it would be 6:22 PM.
She sat back down at her desk, stretching.
-x-
Vullox was conducting their regular End Of Week check-in. They stopped outside Nora’s door.
Inside was silent, but that was regular for this human. She had called herself a “homebody” once, they had remembered. They opened the door.
Now that Vullox was inside, they could hear a faint scratching noise. Human-Nora, they saw, was at the desk. They called to her.
No response.
Vullox made it halfway through the room when they slowed to a confused stop.
Nora was slumped at the desk, her head resting on the wood, her red pen scratching against the journal.
Vullox wondered briefly how Human-Nora could even be writing at all without being able to see the page. They came closer, almost hesitantly.
Nora’s eyes did not so much as move. They were half-open, staring blankly at a point near the door. Her breaths made a few strands of her black hair quiver over her mouth, but she did not notice - or she did not care. Her entire body was completely still—except her hand.
(There was a human word for this they had read somewhere - something relating to felines, Vullox thought.)
A mounting dread growing in them, they looked at the page.
Things that I do just to take stock because I’m so
grad school full time
WORKING full time
dealt with a nice guy I think??
Idk, I’m just sick of him at this point
blocked him yeah he got annoying I can’t express it
Reeling I guess from it
ESSAYS????!!!! WHY
WORKING
WAKING UP EARLY
LIKE EVERY FREAKING DAY I
DON’T
WANT IT
GOING THRU MY ESSAY OUTL
Here the words stopped, and Vullox looked at the pen.
They stepped back. Tried calling her name again, but the word seemed to die out. Their scales bristled and stuck out on all edges - the feelings of confusion and dread.
Human-Nora didn’t need to look at what she was writing. But it wasn’t muscle memory, as Human-Dalton had explained to them.
No, it was simply the fact that Human-Nora wasn’t writing anything at all.
The red pen moved up and down the page in short, irregular lines—sometimes dragging, sometimes in a quick burst. Occasionally, she would lift up the pen and tap at the page, before resuming. The page seemed to sink in on the most numerous of the red lines, so dense was the ink there. It was some strange, unknown language - or just no language at all.
Very suddenly, Vullox remembered the human word they were searching for as they stared at the pen, as they stared at her unblinking eyes and slumped form.
Catatonic.
Scales rustling, they walked quickly out of the room and to the one on its left.
-x-
Human-Sascha flung open the door in response to Vullox’s frantic calling. “What.”
She sounded so thoroughly annoyed that Vullox briefly reconsidered asking her for help.
“It is Human-Nora,” they responded quickly. “I went to go to her room for her check-in - I think there is—something—something wrong with her.” Vullox’s scales rustled and clicked constantly, a sign of fear on their home planet Vulmien.
“Is she alright?” Sascha asked as she shut the door behind her. Her voice was no longer annoyed - rather, it held a considerable amount of urgency.
She stepped through Nora’s open door and stopped for a few seconds. Nora was still at her desk, eyes glassy and pen scratching lifelessly. Vullox now could absorb the sight in full, and it rooted them to the spot.
Slowly Sascha made her way over to the desk and laid a hand on Nora’s back. She surveyed the writing in the journal and gently began rubbing Nora’s back, murmuring words that Vullox’s translator could just barely pick up:
“What makes you think you can’t do it?”
She murmured this a few times over, each with a pause between the sentence, each with some variation — as if she was having a conversation with Human-Nora’s brain.
The pen scratched on, still in the same irregular rhythm. Nora lay still, breathing through her mouth. The few strands of hair that lay in front of her mouth quivered with a severe regularity that (strangely) unsettled Vollux even though they knew normal human breathing patterns were set to a tempo.
The pen slowed—at least, there seemed to be more pauses between the lines and taps Human-Nora was creating.
Slowly, the pen grinded to a halt, wobbling on its tip. A few more taps.
The pen fell onto the messy page with Nora’s hand covering it. Her eyes closed and opened, and she blinked a few times. She stirred slightly, her back shifting. Her breathing grew deeper, inhales sharper, almost as if it itself was sentient.
Vullox reflected that it was rather like... watching someone coming back to life.
It took even more time for her to push herself up into a normal sitting position. She leaned into Sascha’s arms, sniffled, and a guttural sound escaped her, quite unlike her regular voice.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. Vullox was struck by how much like a child she sounded - a child apologizing to their mother.
“You’re alright,” Sascha murmured into the girl’s hair. “You’re back here now.”
Nora sniffled again. “I don’t wanna… do complex thinking.” She brought a hand up to her face and wiped something on her jeans; she had been crying while in her previous state.
She continued, still in the same child-like tone. “I just wanna… be a cat… and think of cat things… all the time…”
Sascha hid a smile, patting Nora’s arm rhythmically. “Which cat would you like to be?”
“A really fluffy one. Like that Minuet cat, with the fluffy tail.” Nora’s mouth twitched a little. “I’m not even… a cat person. I like dogs. Small dogs.”
“Come.” Sascha wrapped an arm around Nora and led her to the bed. “Come. Rest now. You’ve done a lot for the day.”
Nora curled into herself, beneath the blue blankets, until all that was visible of her were messy tufts of hair sticking up onto the pillow.
Vullox watched Human-Sascha swipe through Human-Nora’s phone and set it down on the little table near the bed just as a man’s voice began to speak from it:
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much…”
-x-
Sascha led a highly-confused Vullox out of Nora’s room and gently shut the door behind her.
“She put too much on herself,” she said quietly. “She’s suffering from burnout, so I put her to sleep with some Harry Potter. It’s always been comforting to her whenever she was sick, so I figured this would call for that.”
“But - what is - what about the… red markings in her journal?”
Sascha nodded. “She was initially trying to take stock of everything—trying to see what she had to do so she wouldn’t go on worrying for longer than she needs to. I guess… it turned into a vent, and then it got too much for her. So she just broke down.”
“So… this - this burnout… it does this to her? This strong of a reaction? She seemed quite… catatonic when I first found her.”
Sascha sighed. “This time was particularly strong. But other times she just vents it in her journal, or to someone. She’s not too confident in herself either, so those words that I kept repeating seem to help her.”
There was a pause.
“Thank you. For calling me.” Sascha's eyebrows were drawn with worry, but they cleared quickly.
There were good reasons, Vullox knew, that the two friends had requested to be put next to each other on the ship.
This had to be the strongest one yet.
If this post gets 100 notes i will tell my crush i love her
I keep seeing all these things about siblings and how most siblings tend to make weird noises at eachother to greet eachother so now I'm wondering how an alien would react to that cause for me personally me and my brother call eachother by name but in the most voice Crack way possible or we just scream at eachother.
Brother: *screeches name as loud as possible*
Sister: *hears brothers calls and looks toward sound to make sure it was brother*
Alien with sister: is someone dying? You heard that awful sound too right?
Sister: yeah I heard it. Don't worry though it's nothing bad. *screeches back at brother*
Brother: *makes random noise*
Alien: are you sure everything is okay? I'm pretty sure the guide said that humans are in pain or scared when they scream or yell like that
Sister: yeah I'm sure. Just give me a minute *walks out of room to go see brother*
Sister: *comes back flipping brother off through the door*
Alien: *visibly confused* why are you trying to insult your familial? That hand gesture means something very rude so why do it to your family?
Sister: *still looking at brother and flipping him off* oh its fine. We do this all the time. We just give eachother the middle finger until one gives up
Zorugg cares for all of you, regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity or color.
You are all her children
It seems like you guys liked the space orcs post-
Alien *over coms*: Your ship is pinpointed, and you are targeted, you can stop or we may have to use excessive force to dock.
Humans *over coms*: We will file a police report! This will not go unknown. If you dock without permission, we might put this on your permanent record
Aliens : All it takes is one shot and your entire system goes now, red-tape is of no concern!
Humans : Who told you that?- It doesn’t matter. According to A-B5.6 we will be notifying you of our departure
Aliens : Humans, silly ones. So worried about red-tape.
Aliens: *Shoot a missile to the thrusters*
Humans: *Ship slows down to a halt*
*The Alien’s ship docks on the human ship*
*In the Alien ship*
Alien Commander: Why isn’t the dock opening? I demand answers!
A1: Well- I think I know the issue-
Alien Commander: Well, what are you waiting for! Lead me to the issue
A2: *Leads him to a wide glass panel overlooking the human ship*
The shields of the flicker from light blue to a dark blue with white text overlaid.
System.S0x073SXE has crashed
Overriding SYSTEM account
Device DIV0348.637.dock(1.94) has stopped
Device DIV0845378.637.Athrust(6.27) has stopped
Device DIV03458.637.Bthrust(7.24) has stopped
Restarting System. S0x073SXE.bUP.Athurst
Restarting System. S0x073SXE.bUP.Bthrust
The dock, thruster A and B fall away from the humans ship
2 new thrusters the show up were thruster A and B show up with yellow paint and green text saying “Backup Thruster”
Alien *over coms*: What happened?
Humans *over coms*: Have you every heard of modularity, the power to throw away part as we see fit! We can remove up 95% of our ship and it will still work just fine! However, one hit to any part of yours you render you unable to perform!
Aliens : *…* Why haven’t we thought about this before?