THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

You deflate. "Oh. I'm sorry. Reggie is a good dad and I know you love him very much. I wouldn't joke about that. My you still has him, if that's any help."

 

You try to smile. "My you has her, as it happens, or, that is to say, you and your moirail found her. A shark bit my leg off when I was fairly young, you see, and when I came to without Reggie— it was the logical assumption, you know, that I had been orphaned. But when Pancho transferred over here she brought a breeding pair of lusii over and all their chicks, and it was a bit of a surprise all around. Her name's Itsy now, I mean, not your moirail, the lusus in question. She isn't really my lusus anymore, though. She's got a lot of biological charges to take care of, and anyway it's been ages."

You steer the cart through the nicer parts of your ship as you go, the high-traffic, densely marked corridors. There's no harm in showing the place off to best effect.

 

"So Reggie and Loggan got together in your reality as well," you muse, a bit absently, distracted by the sights. Is this what a working Fleet ship is like? It's a lot less military than you expected. A lot more cheerful and messy. "But in mine it happened recently. They've only had one... cub? Pup? Chick? And the silly thing imprinted on me. I call him Fluffcheep because that's what he is. Other Me is going to have to figure out how to diplomatically decline all kinds of bitter, chewy bugs. Fluffcheep likes to Provide but he's pants at it." You throw a hopeful, sideways glance at him. "So Pancho's around, then?"

 

"You're not subtle, pupa," you tell him. What he is is adorable. "Yes, Pancho's been transferred over recently from some sort of tedious combat situation she didn't care for, and she's been doing a bang-up job of keeping me in once piece. I quite appreciate it. She hasn't texted me back yet, so I suppose she's still taking care of other business at the party. It was extremely handsome and enthusiastic business, last I saw of it, but I'm sure she'll be bye to have a good laugh at you soon enough."

You reach out and give one of Bel's short, branchless horns a little tug. You can't help yourself anymore. They are precious.

 

You smack his hand away and dig your fingers into his waist, aiming for the ticklish spot and not the gills (which would be an unfun kind of painful). Then you freeze, realizing what you're doing. "Riiiight. That's gonna be awkward."

 

"Crashing a cart into a wall tends to be," you say, gently shoving the kid back into his side of the vehicle. "I'm ever so slightly too cargoed for distraction right now. I say, do you drink? Is that something juveniles do?"

 

"Some more than others. Me, not so much. It makes me weepy. Why is there a party? Is there an occasion, or is the Fleet more fun than we on Alternia were led to believe?"

 

"Haha, that's what the Commander thought, too. I mean, weeping, and all. We're having a wake, we just sent off a clown ship and they killed seventeen of us. We took out one hundred and thirty, I believe, and they should have a good think on proper docking behavior henceforth, but with Ironfist, who the hell even knows. Still, you can't let the ghosts sink in, it's best to clean up while the deaths are all fresh. Psychopomps and exorcists are nearly impossible to requisition for a ship like this." You chew your lip. "Stars, I hope our absence doesn't complicate the send-off of the dead subjugglators. I hate clowns, it would be just like that sorry lot to keep making trouble."

 

"I hate ghosts," you counter, "they're worse than clowns. Wait -- Galley was dancing on cosmic broken glass while you were having a wake for revenge-culled clowns? And Commander Me distracted him? Please tell me about the head injury large Bel sustained to make him like that, because I'm not pants-on-head stupid."

 

"You're very bright, Kadros, but you're also a terminal romantic, and not half as sensible as you like to pretend," you point out. "For your red quadrants, you'd put your pants on your head and do a little dance in front of the Empress herself."

 

You try to come up with a counterargument, but you honestly can't. "Okay, I concede that. If he was in trouble -- was he in trouble? Well, anyway, the point is, I hate ghosts and I don't want to go to a ghost party, especially one where everyone is going to laugh at me for being five sweeps too young."

You realize belatedly that this will probably make him want to take you there even more, but you're too frazzled to psychologize at your own familiar Erskin, let alone this boneriffically commanding one.

"Anyway," you grumble, as if it's a debate point, "I'd do an underpants dance in front of the Empress for my black quadrant too."

 

That makes you smile at him, genuinely warmed. "Well, alright then. I look forward to it."

You arrive at Kadros's front door, by now painted up in cheerful blues with his name and sign. Several of his closer acquaintances have come along and chalked a variety of unflattering descriptors him all over it. The door handle now reads IF YOU'RE SEXUALLY TRANSGRESSIVE YANK THIS PRONG in probably Lainey's handwriting.

"This is you," you say, unnecessarily, and let him in to his— other his's?— hive. Once inside you head straight for his mealblock and raid the fridge for cold meats and pretentious beers.

 

You stand in the lounge block and survey the place, and give a decisive nod. "Yes. It is." You run your fingers lightly along the spines of a shelf of books. "God, is that all I managed to save? I don't suppose Commander Me happened to tell you what happened to all the rest of it."

 

You wander over and peer at the collection. "It looks like a lot of books to me," you say honestly. "I'd never have thought you had even more. Here, are you hungry?" You hang on to your plate of delicious uncooked meats and offer him the plate of over-processed bullshit that he usually likes. Sometimes Bel tries to argue that 'steamed' or 'spiced' does not count as over-processed. Sometimes you put a carrot slice down his shirt.

 

"Oh god yes." You have to swallow spit to keep from drooling as you take the plate of -- you don't even know what it is, microwave pasta or something, you'd turn your nose up at it if you were home but after camping food and bugs it's heaven. You devour half of it before you can stop long enough to thank thim.

 

You guide the kid to his diningblock table with a hand on his lower back, then sit beside him and steal individual noodles until he's nettled enough to sieze one of your cuts of grubsteak. Ir's companionable, and you always did like feeding people.

"Not much of a hunter, are you?" you tease him. "With camping, and all. You're underfed!"

 

He has to thump your back when a noodle goes down the wrong way; you're laughing even as you cough. "Not much of a hunter!" Once the laughing and coughing both ease off, you shake your head, still grinning, and try to explain: "My you is always giving me grief for hunting and fishing to get meat, instead of to show off. He doesn't think it's 'sporting' to shoot something, you have to punch it in the face, apparently." Another headshake. "Anyway, where we are there isn't anything edible to hunt. We keep meaning to go get some real food but then we end up fighting or... otherwise distracted, and we don't. That's why I'm starving right now."

There's also the thing where you had no appetite because you were upset, but you're not going to get into that whole drama with this Erskin.

 

"Punching things in the face is always sporting," you say. "Though I agree that shooting things in the face has a certain efficiency." You rest the cool, wet base of your pilfered homebrew bottle against his cheek. "Pow!"

 

You flinch away, as he no doubt intended. Then you retaliate by flicking a cheese-sauce-covered piece of pasta at his forehead, where it sticks wetly. "Bam," you reply, with -- though you don't know it -- nearly the bland aplomb adult-you would've managed.

 

You laugh at him again, wiping the noodle off and eating it. He's so small! When he acts like himself it only gets more endearingly absurd.

"I am slain, mighty hunter," you say indulgently, then try to stick a noodle down his shirt.