You and Your Human: Part 6
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
You gently peel your human away from you, limb by limb. It makes a soft whining noise.
"I am sorry," you say, edging away from your human. "I need to go."
Your human seems to collect itself, nodding firmly. "Right. Sorry."
"Captain?" the pilot calls. "You really should come look at this."
You wish you could stay. Your human is breathing heavily, and it looks tense as it shifts along the ground, as if any wrong movement might make it fall over and shatter. But this, whatever it is, is important.
You follow your pilot up to the bridge, where your engineer and scientist are both standing. They nod as you approach. You note vaguely that it is funny, how easy it is to pick up on human quirks.
"We got a messsssssage a few minutesss ago," your engineer explains. Her Pyricese is getting very good. "It is the same word... wordsss?"
"Do you mean phrase?"
"Yes. The same phrase, over and over. Many languages, but same phrase, I think."
"What is it?" you say. There is no voice echoing through the bridge, so your engineer must have shut off the message for now. Unless perhaps the message written, and sent through the controls. You can't really say.
"Do you have a human?" the Sirviles quotes. "That is all."
You stiffen, thinking over all the sentients you have encountered so far. Could one of them have figured out your secret, your human?
Or maybe it is someone you haven't met before. After all, your former customers would know what language you speak.
So. Who is this, and what does it want with a human?
"Do you want me to answer their hail?" the engineer asks.
"Yes, thank you," you say. "Please do."
The big screen that usually shows nothing but blank space and the flicker of stars lights up. A human appears on the screen.
It looks young, probably around the same age as your human, if you had to guess. Its hair is the color of dirty sand, and it is wearing a gray shirt that is definitely too big for it.
Its eyes meet yours, and he says, in pitch-perfect Pyricese, "Do you have a human?"
It starts to repeat it in another pronoun variant, but you hold up a hand and it stops. "I am captain of this vessel, and use she/her pronouns," you say in your native tongue, all lilts and rolls. "What are your pronouns, and what do you want with us?"
The human says nothing.
You frown. "My name is Rhy'cd," you say. You had not gotten the impression that names were of much importance to humans, considering your human's behavior, but perhaps it was simply an anomaly. "Please state your intentions."
The human stayed quiet for a moment longer and then repeated, "Do you have a human?"
You stare. "... that's the only sentence in Pyricese you know, isn't it?"
"Do you have a--"
"Yeah, yeah," you wave your hand and the human stops talking. With a sigh, you switch languages. "Do you speak English?"
The human startles. "Yes, I do. Why do you speak English?"
"I have an personal interest in languages," you reply, which is not technically inaccurate.
"Do you have a human?" the human says again, falling back on its weird catchphrase. You try very hard to focus on the words and not just the way this humans speaks. It is different then your human, faster and smoother, with more heavily accented vowels. A dialect, perhaps? Or could English be this human's second language? The books had implied that Earth was a multi-lingual planet...
"Well?' the human demands, shocking you out of your thoughts. Your ears shoot up, and your fur bristles.
"Why do you want a human?" you ask.
The human does something with its lips, like a smile, but not all the way. "Let's just say... I have a personal interest."
Snarky little-- "I will not give up a member of my crew," you say. "Not without a reason."
The human points at you. "Aha! You do have a human!"
Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. You try to pull yourself together and deliver some kind of eloquent plea to continue diplomatic talks but what comes out of your mouth is instead, "It wants to be here!"
The human's face shuts down. Completely. You aren't all that good at reading human facial expressions at the best of times(void, you have trouble with it among your own species) but right now you are getting nothing. Except the eyes. Those are filled with cold hard anger. You shiver.
You know humans are predators. But this is the first time you've ever really felt it.
"Wait," you say. "We can talk about this--"
"Will you give me my human?"
... you've had a bad day. You've been a little stressed ever since you woke up, and you really haven't been sleeping enough ever since you started cramming for your human's surprise, and now you're in the middle of a direct confrontation and you're a prey animal, damnit! You aren't meant for this.
And all these things, piled one on top of the other, are slowly wearing down your restraint and making it so that--
Well. When you hear that possessive adjective, your instincts scream.
"Mine."
The human nods, stiffly. "Right then." The screen turns off.
You sink into your chair, wrapping yourself in your tail. No one says anything.
Your engineer is the one to finally break the silence. "Captain? They're charging weapons."
That little tidbit breaks you out of your haze of instincts and failure. Your claws retract and reveal again, scraping against metal. You take a deep breath.
"Pull up the star charts," you order your scientist.
"But--"
"Pull them up!"
"Yes, Captain!"
The screen changed, a sea of empty black appearing. You must have stumbled your way into a dead zone. Damnit. Out of the corner of your eye, you see your engineer frantically fiddling with the controls. The shields around the ship glow brighter, blocking out the first volley of attack. The human's ship pauses, waiting to see what you do. They must not have much ammunition.
"Expand," you order.
There's a slight pause as your engineer taps frantically at the controls before the screen expands wider. You search the void, sharp eyes scanning every inch and-- there!
"My pilot," you say. "Set a course for the star."
There's a flash of bright light, and as your pilot springs to action, feathers rustling, you turn to see your scientist flickering anxiously.
"Can't--danger-- star-- fire,"
"I'm sorry," you say as gently as you can, as the ship hums and starts flying. "We don't really have a choice."
Your scientist growls.
"Captain?" your pilot says. Their voice is ever so slightly higher-pitched than normal, indicating a hint of hysteria, but they seem to be holding together well. "The other ship is following us."
"Are they charging weapons?"
Your engineer snorts. "At this speed? In that ship? No."
The star map comes down, and you see the star quickly approaching. Your ship slows down/
"Shall I stop the ship?" your pilot asks. "We're going to hit the star."
You nod. "That's the point. Keep going."
You fly into the star. Instantly, the ship starts shaking.
"Shields are down!" your engineer yells. "Shields are down!"
"The other ship has stopped following us!" your pilot says.
There is another flash of bright light and your scientist is gone. You look around, but can't see it anywhere.
"Captain?" your engineer says. "The shields are... coming back up. 10 percent... 20 percent... 30 percent... 40 percent... holding steady at 40 percent!"
You peer at the screen. "My scientist?" you say, feeling stupid. "Is that you?"
A shining face appears and nods at you before vanishing, presumably back into the wiring.
Your engineer coughs. "Captain. We are safe for now, but this ship was not made to enter stars. We will need to do repairs before we can continue safely."
You nod numbly. Your ears are low. You think you might be in shock. Or no.
Adrenaline crash, my old friend.
"Captain?" your engineer says. "What do you want me to do?"
Your head feels floaty. "The other ship isn't coming after us."
"That is correct."
You stand up, and wave a paw at everyone. "You all can... do whatever you want then. I'm going to go find my human."
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okay so its time for my thesis. i have so much to fucking say about last night.
first. the outfits. never has there been a funnier band on earth. they took an obvious cash grab and made a total mockery of it but in a way that took effort. it was so purposeful. who else out there is gonna dress as a geriatric decaying version of their past selves, especially if that version of yourself is what the industry sees as your prime even when you were truly at your lowest?
mikeyways outfit specifically. the blood. he wore that because revenge era almost killed him. he felt like, at that time, it should have killed him. like he shouldnt have been given the opportunity to mock his past at all. meanwhile the other three copied the looks down to the smallest details (see: bat belt buckle, armbands, rays fucking teased hair) because while they were struggling too, they didnt feel as if the situation were a death sentence in the same way mikey did.
i also want to note that i think perhaps these outfits had a lot to do with straying away from the current aesthetics due to the public reaction. we saw how they were treated at the other festivals they played. i know this look was planned and intentional but i think it could have been a big relief for all of them to not have to try and live up to the thing they were making a joke out of.
the crowd. i was actually shocked how dead they were. i thought a LOT of people were going to wwwy just to see mcr but i guess i was wrong. they put so much effort into their setlist, their outfits, their performance, their stage presence, and not a peep from the crowd the whole time. at the end they got one little half assed cheer, and it was only from the half of the crowd that didnt leave after wttbp. we all know people leave after that one at a lot of mcr shows but the crowd was literally half the size afterward. like why did you bother coming if youre gonna be miserable about it. people at barricade too, if youre having a bad time leave and let the people who want to be there watch the show.
the setlist. obviously it was intended to only be the hits, because its literally wwwy. i was happy that they threw in boy division and the two vampires because honestly i cant really consider them "hits". good songs of course, but it was obvious nobody cared for them much because the already dead crowd was even quieter while they were playing them. personally i would have loved to see them pull a deep cut out of their ass and see how the crowd reacted to that.
the money gun. god there are so many layers of irony to it. during vampire money makes it funny sure but just the fact that they had access to a confetti gun at this megafestival and chose to stuff it with fake thousand dollar bills. they fucking dragged the organizers so hard.
i love that they were aware of what they were participating in. as far as i know every other band that played was normal about it and treated it like any other gig, when really it deserved what mcr did. the festival was poorly organized, insanely overpriced, and could have potentially been dangerous if law enforcement didnt step on and force them to cancel yesterday. which they did not inform the bands of, btw. you know the organizers and venue care strictly about how much profit it brings in, not anyone's feelings or safety. mcr knew that. they knew what these people wanted from them and they essentially told them to eat shit. i have never loved a band so much in my life.
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So I was triggered hard today;
For a little bit of background, I was raised in my young years (pre-k—majority of 4th grade) in an evangelical Christian school, and I particularly remember the brand called, Abeka.
I talk about it all the time IRL, but sometimes I have people looking as if I was over exaggerating about the terrible curriculum, and the propaganda teachings. So, I decided to look up the brand on YouTube—and sure enough, I was fucking right—In fact, it was fucking worse than I thought!
It took me an hour to vent to my husband and I have been traumatized by my past education and struggling because I never learned problem solving skills, nor basic science until fourth grade and I was even held back in 2nd grade because of my ‘poor reading skills’ (I was fucking dyslexic) and was older than everyone else and made fun of for it. And I know, I know, people have had it much much worse than me, I am completely aware—but being a kid with ADD (inattentive ADHD) and dyslexia, I struggled sooo much until I was in late high school and college. I thought I was just stupid, I had such a hard time with school and not realizing I was neuro divergent.
Sometimes I think I am over with all of this, but then I watch something like a video about Abeka, or anything about Christian cults, and I’m back in elementary school thinking I was I had MR (I not saying that to be offensive, I actually thought I had MR).
Being gaslit and told that you’d do better if you just “worked harder” or “just focus a little more” or “just take your medication” is so fucking hurtful. And I really have a hard time moving on.
I’m 29 now and I hate that I still cry about things that happened when I was a child. But it’s unfortunately a part of me, and sometimes I really wish it wasn’t. I wish I was just emotionally stable and had a normal fucking childhood.
Anyways, TL;DR version:
Evangelical Christianity schools are fucking bullshit and harmful to children, full of gaslighting and propaganda, and can make people permanently scarred. Fuck that bullshit. Fuck Abeka, ACE, or any other pseudoscience or cults. FUCK THEM.
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