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marlynnofmany · 5 months

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Arboreal Species

We had plenty of options for ways to keep occupied while waiting for the client to show up and collect his delivery. Several of the crew were playing card games with the captain, using a delivery crate as a table, and she was beating the pants off all of them. (Though none of these particular aliens wore pants. You know what I mean.) Some of the others waited inside the ship, declaring boredom with this particular patch of exotic wilderness.

The rest chatted with crew from the ship that had arrived after us, which was also delivering cargo for the same late-to-arrive local. They had plenty to complain about. They also had food to share, and a decent chance that it would be edible by those they shared it with.

While Alien Food Roulette was always exciting, I’d found a much better option.

“Hey, they tell me your species climbs things,” the stranger from the other ship had said, long snout curling into a smile. She looked like a mix of 3/4 baboon and 1/4 crocodile.

“They’re right!” I replied easily. There weren’t many climbing opportunities on our little courier ship, and I was curious where this was going.

The alien pointed at a huge tree on the edge of the landing pad, which boasted smooth orange bark with branches every couple feet. “I’m gonna go climb that. Care to join me?”

“Would I ever!” I said, already heading toward it. I called back over my shoulder, “If you guys need me, I’ll be up a tree!”

Captain Sunlight didn’t even look away from the game, just waving distractedly, her scaly face intent on whatever play Mur had just made. He was chuckling about it and rubbing his tentacles together in a way that was probably a bluff. As soon as I looked away, he made a noise that said the good captain had just wrecked his clever plan. Trrili hissed with laughter.

None of them cared that I was about to climb to a dangerous height. None thought this was out of character in the slightest, and all of them were missing out on an excellent climbing experience.

It was a great tree. The bark was smooth but not slippery, reminding me of a madrone tree from back home, just without the flaky outer layer. And it didn’t feel as cold. If anything, it was warm as we scampered skyward, almost as if the tree welcomed a good climb by people who’d appreciate it.

The alien stopped, picking a branch to sit on and leaning back against another. “Now that is a nice view.”

I had to agree. “It is!” I found my own convenient pair of branches, draping my arms over the top one and finding a nice footrest on a third. “Everybody down there doesn’t know what they’re missing.” The forest around the landing pad was bright with oranges and yellows, the kind of vivid colors that I associated with autumn, but which could have been year-round here. Rolling hills lined the horizon, with a river sparkling merrily in the distance. The only straight line was the road. It made a nice counterpoint to all the gentler natural shapes.

My new friend cupped a hand to her snout unnecessarily. “Hey, everybody down there! You should come see this view!”

To no one’s surprise, she got a chorus of “no thanks.”

I shook my head. “Such a shame. They’re missing out on all the knowledge that comes from above, too. Hey, Paint!” I yelled down to the crewmate who had just dropped a box of round things. “One rolled under the ramp, and two are over in the grass!” I pointed them out.

A distant “Thank you!” reached my ears.

The alien nodded. “Wisdom of the heights indeed. What else can we see, that those on the ground can’t?”

We spent a good few minutes pointing things out to each other and swapping stories. Apparently her people were called the Farsights, for exactly this reason.

“Oh, motion on the road!” she declared, squinting into the distance. “Looks like somebody’s in a rush to be a little less late.”

“Well that ship has launched,” I said, following her eyes. “Nice thought, though. Say, is that one car or two?”

The Farsight didn’t answer immediately, which made me worry a little. Then she said “Uh oh,” which made me worry a lot.

“Uh oh what?”

She stood up on the branch and bellowed, “INCOMING! Client’s being chased by hostile fauna!”

“Oh jeez.” Now I could see it too: something large and antlered galloping after the little surface skimmer. Both were headed straight toward our landing pad.

Chaos erupted down below as we slid off our perches and scrambled downward. The bark was still friendly-smooth.

“I think that creature eats these!” my friend said, bounding out toward the end of a branch to shake loose a bundle of round seedpod things. “I’ve seen them before!”

“Will that matter?” I asked, slowing. “It looks pretty mad!”

“Can’t hurt!”

I couldn’t argue that. There were more than a few seedpods waiting on my path down, all of which came loose with a little judicious bouncing of the branches. When I hit the ground, it was in a sea of baseball-shaped plant bits.

The rest of the crew was scrambling to move crates and dash into the ships for anything weaponlike. A handful of beefy individuals from the other crew lined up to stare the thing down as it approached, and my ship’s biggest and scariest hurried to join them. Trrili claimed a place in front with her black-and-red carapace gleaming in the sun, pincher arms spread wide. She left space for the skimmer to zip past, but only just.

I grabbed seedpods, making a basket with my shirt. “Will we need these? Is it going to stop?”

“Beats me!” said my new friend. She grabbed an armload and ran. “Let’s find out!”

I raced after. We joined the lineup just before the gigantic whatever-it-was skidded to a halt, rearing to paw the air and roar thunderously. The guy in the skimmer was trying to park behind our ship. The various scary aliens yelled back at the huge moose-rhino.

“How well can you throw?” asked my friend, not waiting for an answer. She dumped her armload and started chucking seedpods.

“Pretty well!” I didn’t bother dropping mine, just grabbing them one by one from my shirt basket and aiming for the head.

I didn’t count how many of those direct shots were me, but I’m going to say most of them. The pods burst into squishy fruit with a solid core, doing a great job of annoying the creature as well as coating it with presumably-tasty purple goo.

Its forefeet hit the ground with a teeth-rattling thud. It roared some more, but half-heartedly, like it was just trying to save face at this point.

My friend the Farsight had run out of seedpods, so I gave her some of mine. While our crewmates did their best threat displays, we pelted the dangerous beastie with fruit until it turned to lope in the other direction. I made sure to throw a few on the road near it, in case it felt like picking up a bite to eat on the way. It didn’t, but I did see a tongue lick out as it turned its back on us.

Belatedly, Kavlae and Eggskin skidded out of our ship with stun guns at the same time as a couple people from the other — was that a rocket launcher or a flare gun? — none of which turned out to be necessary.

“Take that and eat it!” crowed the Farsight.

“Yeah!” I agreed. “It’s probably delicious!”

“It probably is, actually,” she said as the congratulations started to pour in.

I picked up a seedpod I’d dropped and sniffed it. “Smells a bit like kumquat.”

Captain Sunlight, busy trying to coax the client out of his vehicle, yelled across the landing pad, “Don’t eat that until Eggskin runs it through the medscanner!”

“Aw, really?” I complained, perfectly in synch with my new friend.

“Yes really!” She shook her lizardy head. I couldn’t make out her muttering from here, but I could guess it was about omnivorous habits, self-preservation instincts, absurd treeclimbing species, or all of the above.

The Farsight said, “If these are safe, I’m taking some back with me.”

“Even if they’re not, the seeds would make good souvenirs,” I pointed out, pulling at the pod where it had separated. “Look how perfectly round they are.”

“Oh yeah, those are nice.”

Trrili stalked past with a haughty tilt to her antennae. “You two get along far too well.”

“Like two seeds in a pod!” the Farsight quipped.

That made me smile. “Hey, my people say that too!”

We had plenty to talk about while everybody else handled the actual delivery we were there for. Eventually Eggskin did check the thing with a medscanner. It tasted like sour kumquat. The seeds cleaned up nicely.

And most importantly, my new friend had family with a whole enclave at the next space station my ship was planning to visit. And they had a climbing structure three stories high. I couldn’t wait.

The rest of the crew thought that sounded pointless and dangerous, of course, but none of them had ancestors who danced through the tree branches, so clearly they have no taste.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!

#my writing #The Token Human #humans are weird #haso #humans are space orcs #humans are space monkeys #treeclimbing #hfy #humans can climb #humans can throw #kindred species #eiad #yes it's the same species from that comic ages ago #I figure it's about time there was an appearance in the stories #they're fun

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creatore-is-an-amarena-addict · 10 months

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HUMANS ARE SPACE ORCS: TREAT OF EXTERMINATION

Alien: sorry to interrup... whatever you're doing... but what exactly are "mosquitoes"?

Human: *stops trying to lick elbow* you mean mosquitoes? Oh those are a species of insects with an itchy bite that suck your blood when you are distracted

Alien: wait WHAT? you mean that there is a creature that would suck the blood out of you?!

Human: yea i don't think there is human that has never been bitten by one

Alien: you mean that having your blood, the fluid that keeps you alive, sucked by an insect is a COMPLITELY COMMON experience for a human?!

Human: pretty much

Alien: how do you survive that? From what i understoad humans die if they lose too much blood

Human: that's true, but mosquitoes are actualy really small and take an insignificant amount of blood, what is really annoying is that their bite is itchy

Alien: oh, that doesn't seam like that much of a pro-

Human: but you could also get infected with a likely fatal parasite

Alien: WHAT?!

Human: yea they carry some real nasty parasites, that's why them and parasites kill so many peoples in less developed countries.

Alien: wait so are you telling me that a single minuscle insect that can suck your blood whitout you noticing can infect you with a mortal parasite or illness?!

Humans: they also shit and piss on your skin witch further irritates the bite.

Alien: That's terribles! Humans had to deal with this for hundreds of generations?!

Humans: yea but over the years we found ways to cure most of the viruses they carry but the parasites are still a problem so we found a more permanent solution

Alien: oh that's inspiring, you humans usualy ignore this kind of problem after you resolve the bigger issue, what did you do? Perhaps did you ingeneer the human race to be less desirable to those creatures? Or, or you made a special repellent with a 100% rate of success? Or a special vaccine that creates a special film around your body to protect you from the bit-

Human: we exterminated them

Alien: i should have expected that

Human: at least we tried, but then we realized that would impact the ecosistem greatly so we are just back to spraying them to death whenever we get bitten

Alien: That's... That's weirdly considerated for your species standard... im gonna hope you did the same with the parasites

Human: oh no those one are basicaly extinct

Alien: normaly i would be bafled about how you made an entire species go extinct but from what i understoad those species where hazard to human health so i understand the decision this time

Human: nah i can assure you we did this only becouse they where annoying and painfull to deal with, health hazards or not.

Alien: ok so you decided to punish an entire species with total extinction just becouse they where annoying your population?!

Human: don't be silly we just eradicated the 3 main species that attack humans, also we constantly deal with creatures that we put under treat of extinction, that's kinda what we do with things we consider "ugly" or "annoying" like most bugs or small animals

Alien: *becomes the alien version of pale from fear* thank you for your time... *goes away to warn the galaxy of the human habit of extermination creatures*

#humans are space orcs #my first human are space orcs post #a yes the treat of exterminating an entire species over a sligth annoyance #writing #writer things #humans are terrifying #mosquito #mosquitos are annoying af #so we kill them with fire #fun fact most human parasites are basicaly extinct #future where human parasites are totaly extinct #pardon my english #i made a lot of google serches to do this #more than i thought i would #i may have gotten carried away

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amazingspider-z · 4 months

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Continuing to be back on my bullshit, I'm rounding out the year with the next installment of my Blue Beetle au nonsense or.

AKA @wazzappp 's Blue Beetle headcanons give me life and I'm yoinking them because. Everyone deserves a little body horror. As a treat.

(Well. Except for Oo'Li, by virtue of being the type of alien (yk more or less) that the scarabs are using for that sweet sweet basic DNA template)

Anyway, following my timeline of Jaime ending up with his second 'upgrade' after the reboot re: Khaji Da's last ditch effort to keep him from smashing into the ground of terminal velocity, Xiomara and Roma end up more buggified after their altercation with the Crimson Scarab in issue...2? I think, when their powers get drained, in the same vein of their scarabs getting inventive with ways for their hosts to defend themselves in power drain scenarios.

In keeping with their power-sets/specialities, Roma ends up with a scorpion-esque tail (yes ik that's not an insect but if she can manifest tentacles Im saying it counts) and retractable claws, while Xiomara has fully armored hands/gauntlets and extra insectoid legs

#jaime reyes #oo'li a'barr #roma lopez #xiomara erazo #reachling au #it took me almost a. month and fighting for my life against art block (and ok. being distracted by ghost rider) but i made it #kicking and screaming but i made it #yeah idk why i added fancy dress even tho. i lost steam soo fast its just. some social/public event about the Horizon idk #anyway roma and xiomara might have escaped reachification but buggification leaves no prisoners #speaking of which. technically ig the Horizon are fairly alien-y for. a protagonist alien species (<so has to be bc of the Reach) but #can always be more :)#it is. soo obvious i started using references 4/5 the way into this but. whatever its fine #and ok. the teasing between oo'li and jaime did get me #....it might just bc bc i made jaime like. 1/3 reach and i think the hypothetical interplay would be fun #the cultural barriers! the flipping of it being his humanity that's new to oo'li vs the uh. everything else hes got going on #its about the vibes (<aroace and yet again leaning into relationships as a thought experiment maybe but. whatever)#also she's taller than him and yk. thats always fun

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