THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

You gawk at him. Erskin? Is the captain of the Sunslammer? Tall Erskin. With a nice prosthetic, and no vampire bites among his horribly attractive scar collection. The longer he laughs at you, the bluer your face gets. Finally you grab an object off a nearby table -- an unsatisfyingly light plastic toy -- and whip it at his dumb head as hard as you can.

 

"Ow!" You get a sharp block piece pinged off your horn and do your best to pull yourself together. "Alright, alright— pffheehee—alright. Okay." You straighten up and dash tears out of your eyes. You look poor Bel up and down, taking in his height and his soft face and his absolutely unfortunate gangly build and tiny horns he's got little eensy horns— nearly lose your composure again, and have to bite your lip hard and stare at the wall for a few moments.

"Is he going to have to grow up all over again?" you ask Galley, your voice a little strangled. "Please say yes."

 

"Apparently," you say with great dignity, "the reality -- thingy -- the warp shenanigans brought me to a parallel reality. I'm nine sweeps old." Next perigee. "In my reality, Galley is eleven. And you're eight."

 

"I— oh." Well, that sucks just about all the humor out of the situation. "You're not de-aged, you're—you're swapped?" You look to Galley, worried. "Where'd our Bel go?"

"Swapped," Galley says. "Probably."

"Probably," you repeat. You pace into the hallway and back. "Here, so, where'd you come from, pupa? Alternia? Is Bel stranded on the home planet now?"

"Or lost," Galley says, and you snarl, "NO."

The Helmsman cringes into himself and you immediately regret your volume. "Sorry. Sorry. Not your fault." You pace to the hallway and back twice, running your hands through your stupid shaggy hair and over your horns, trying to get ahold of your anxiety. It feels like you just got him and you keep almost losing him, it's not fair. Nothing in your whole bloody life is fair, but this feels particularly terrible.

"Well, he's not liable to pass himself off as any sort of adolescent, but he's bright enough to think of something. I expect he'll be alright until we fix this," you finally decree. You look to the small new Kadros. "He will, won't he?" You sound perhaps a little more uncertain than is properly captainly.

 

"If he's me," you say with unfeigned confidence. "Of course, he'll have eight-sweeps-old you in tow. That'll slow him down. You're a catastrophe."

You really shouldn't flirt with your other self's rival, but... wait. "Uh, you are rivals, right?"

 

"I'm not a catastrophe, I'm your captain," you shoot back, squaring off with him the way you always do when he challenges you. The pupa hardly comes up to your jaw, which makes aggressive looming significantly less tricky to pull off than usual.

"You can be both," Galley points out.

"Shut it," you smile. "I'm your captain too."

"For now, Captain Catastrophe," Galley says. "You'll slip up one of these days." He makes finger guns at you and you laugh a little, absurdly relieved for a bit of normalcy, even if it's just more crude threats from a piece of hardware with a personality disorder.

"And yes, we're rivals here," you say. "I suppose you give my counterpart just as much lip?"

 

"How should I know how much lip Commander Me gives you?" you retort. "I drag my Erskin relentlessly, yes. He's worth it. I don't know about you." You jut your chin aggressively. You can't help it. He's just so... tall.

 

Well that is just completely adorable. You barely restrain the urge to chuck him provokingly under his chin.

"I suppose you'll just have to find out, if you're stuck here for awhile." You lean back and run your hand through your hair again. "How... long do you think that'll be, Galley?"

Galley makes an uncomfortable noise. "We're already out of the area and en route to our next assignment, captain. If we can blow them off and go dragging around here with kid Kadros hanging off me, hoping for the same thing to happen in reverse, maybe... a few days?"

You curse. The next assignment is dragging a dozen dropships of fresh Ruffianihilators from the training station near here to battlefront Sixteen Nine Twelve, codename Cake And Kittens. It's a fast burn with no time to waste and you can't exactly just say 'no, get yourselves there' to a move order like that.

"Carting the ruffianihilators will take— what, four, six days?"

"Only three to get back here, though. We can get Doumah to fix our schedule for next week."

"Alright. Do it. Summarize the situation and end him all your logs of the event, too— where you were, speed, everything. Forward it to Sigmah and— hm, Hardtack off in engineering, while you're at it. Eyes-only. We can sit down tomorrow and try to work out how to reverse the situation in one go, I expect."

"Do it yourself, I'm not your sexy secretary," Galley says, but it's perfunctory.

"Galley, you look like a goblin that ate a skeleton the wrong way around, you are no one's sexy secretary. My orders stand, Helmsman."

He flips you off but complies immediately.

"Thank you," you say, graciously.

You turn back to itty Bel. "Well, so, there you are, you're stuck with us for about a week, I should think. I hope you didn't have a busy social schedule back on the pupa planet?" You are just a little mocking, but then again, he did state intentions to give you a hard time. You can't be blamed for looking forward to seeing the wee grubling try.

 

"Jam-packed," you lie, "but I guess my double will have to take care of it. Just out of curiosity... exactly how tall are we talking here?"

It'd be nice to know what you've got to look forward to.

Also you're getting kind of jealous of other-you. His Erskin is like... competent and stuff. It's really upsettingly sexy.

 

"Maybe a few inches," you say, waving a hand to indicate. Galley laughs at you.

"Maybe a few feet," he hoots. "You come up to Bel's elbow."

"Oh I do not! I'm at least at his shoulder," you protest, drawing yourself up.

"When you hop," Galley grins.

"I'd like to see you hop," you tell him. "Out an airlock."

"Highbloods first," Galley says, waving grandly at the door. "Seriously, fuck off now. I'm done." You flip him off, smiling. Now that the terrifying parts of this particular misfortune are over with, you're rather feeling all the party drinks, and it inclines you towards being gracious to your subordinates.

"Well, alright, come on then, small Bel. Let's take you back to your quarters, you can't go to the party like this. Good day, Galley."

"Step on a lego," Galley says, and then shouts in triumph when you do precisely that on your way out, a psionically-positioned corner jabbing right into the arch of your bare foot. You swear loudly and at length, and Galley's door closes on his horridly gleeful ugly face.

You whack a fist against his door out of spite, then lean against it to rub your poor foot.

"Cheeky bastard acts as if I've plenty of extra feet to spare," you grumble to small Bel, playing at deep hurt.

 

You miss his performance, busy looking back over your shoulder at the just-closed door. "He grew up really hot," you muse. Then you look at Erskin and grin. "You grew up really hot. If Commander Me insults your face he's lying. You're at least half again as gorgeous as younger-you. You can't possibly be a tenth as obnoxious, though. You didn't throw a wiggler tantrum about the lego." This is unfair to your Erskin probably, but hey, being unfair to Erskin is sort of your job.

You have not yet wrapped your head around the idea that you're stuck here for a week at the very least, or that some huge, successfully militarized version of you is probably facing your Erskin and not used to his randomness and self-destruction. What if he...? No. You can't believe any version of you would do any version of Erskin a real harm.

You miss your Galley so much right now. And you're terrified to ask about Pancho for fear this version doesn't like you, or died, or never even existed -- but hell if you're going to let it show.

 

"I'm as gorgeous as I am gracious. Helmsman Galgal is a species of bog leech and you're absolutely mad for liking him in any reality, let alone two." You pull your phone out and send a text to Lainey and Pancho:

FG: Weird Blip Feeling was Kadros getting himself Swapped between Realitys somhow. We are borroring an Adolesent Version for a week or so. Shuld work out fine. Taking him back to his hive now.

You snap a quick candid picture of small Bel and text that as well.

 

Vaguely offended, you retaliate by showing him the picture of you and his younger self you took just yesternight, all rumpled and fucked-out, sprawling across the seats of your rental aircar.

 

"Oh," you say. "I say. Is that me?" You take the phone away and examine it rather than stoop down to see. It is you, how bizarre. "And I'm eight, you said? Fuck, I look so well-fed, when'd you find me? Seven or so? I must never have gone to the desert."

 

"We're in the desert right now," you protest, not understanding. "Well, we're in my aircar in the picture, but the car's in the desert. We're camping."

 

"Camping!" you repeat, startled and amused. "Well, I do suppose I'd like nature in any universe, though it's hard to imagine liking nature all that much at age eight. Nature could basically blow me, at age eight. I was rather stuck in a desert from about eight to ten, you know. Not a good time. Not a fun place. Stunted my growth a bit." You wave an airy hand, as if to say well, what can you do? "But that was all sweeps ago now, and what nature I've installed around here is perfectly nice."

You give the phone back and lead the way to your cart.

 

"Stuck?" You're incredulous. "You? Stuck?" The idea of Erskin being stuck anywhere rather offends you. "You went everywhere. You never stop bragging about it. It's tiresome. What do you mean, stuck?"

 

That sends an unexpected pang through you. "I pestered Glb'golyb and she sent me away," you say, a bit more shortly than you'd meant to. "When the Emissary tells you to leave, you leave, and the desert happened to be what was at the dead center of the continent I'd come ashore on, so it was there I stayed until Ascension. I would imagine that growing up with you was—is?—significantly more entertaining." You give him a wry smile. "Though perhaps even more of a trial, eh? You seem like rather a tough one to keep in line, in any universe."

 

"I hope so," you grin. "Why did you pester the Ur-Lusus, that was a dumb thing to do. Was it just to say you'd done it? You're always -- my you is always telling me stories of harrassing some gigantic beast or other. You courted me by throwing a moose at my head," you add fondly.

 

"I lost my lusus. Get in." You open the door to the cart for him, chin high and shoulders very straight. It's one thing to bare your old wounds to... an equal, a peer, and quite another thing to admit them to a grinning adolescent with nub horns and puppy paws.