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STAR DATE: 5120
LOCATION: 50 cycles outside of the Jellyfish Nebula
“Look I don’t see why it’s such a big deal that we can’t keep the artifact.” Ravi protested from his seat at the navigator’s station, his hair which was a pale, almost white, lavender at the roots and gradually seeped into a nearly black violet and was tied back into a messy ponytail at the top of his head. Two long elegant black pointed horns protruded from either side of his forehead and arched up in two small elegant onyx crescents. He frowned as he held a small golden statuette of a strange hairy creature with a strange hat of sorts on it’s head, large eyes inset with orange gemstones that seemed to stare into the soul accompanied by an equally unnerving open mouthed smile of it’s beak-like mouth.
Upon it’s body was a strange garment, almost like a large shirt with a strange symbol that looked like a badly drawn horse head with it’s mane flowing in the wind. It also wore short pants and upon it’s feet, strange bladed shoes and in one hand a strangely curved stick that was flat on one end. On the base it was mounted to, there was a small plate of metal that stated in large letters G-R-I-T-T-Y and so far the ship’s computer, R.O.V.I.X came up empty on any meaning to the word.
“It’s kinda cute in a strange way y’know and it’s not like the owners would miss it. I bet it would fetch a good price if we traded it too.” The man rambled as he turned the object around in his hands.
“The answer is no. That thing is creepy as hell and if it were up to me I would jettison it from the airlock in a heartbeat.” Hakyeon stated firmly from his seat at the front of the ship, not looking up from the elaborate macramé tapestry that his slender fingers deftly knotted together.
He was the captain of the Starlight, a patched together antique of a ship which he won in a bet in some backwater bar in the My-DOL planetary system; the crew he found along the way, or rather they found him.
Ravi and Taekwoon were picked up in a bar on the planet Groovlin, he still had no memory of what exactly took place that night, but waking up on the ship sorer than he had ever been in his life, covered in hickeys, bites and scratches, sandwiched between the two men, there was little that could be left to the imagination of what exactly had taken place.
Next was Ken, who of which the trio had found in quite a bind, literally. The talkative Tengu had managed to get on the wrong side of the sentient tree species which inhabited the planet. When they found him he had been bound spread eagle by vines at his wrists and ankles; he had apparently been sodomized by several of the trees judging by the amount of sticky, fluid filled leaf sleeves that littered the ground around him. They freed him and made an escape, without the bounty they came for but with a valuable crewmate.
Hongbin was next, he was a handsome, dimple cheeked young man, fully human like Hakyeon, much to the captain’s relief. Not that he didn’t like the others, but he did miss having someone who he could relate to and had hoped that would have been Hongbin. It wasn’t the case.
Hyuk was the last to join their crew.
They had stopped for fuel and when they came back they found the horned youth sitting in the second gunner’s chair picking his long black nails with a knife and never questioned why and how he managed to come aboard the ship, too scared that he would murder them in their sleep.
They were a ragtag group of misfits and most days Hakyeon regretted his choice to not continue his life as an officer in the Space Forces. Today happened to be one of those days.
“Unfortunately that isn’t going to happen since SOMEONE spent the rest of the credits from the last heist on a shady hotel, which I don’t even want to know what you did there, and a useless piece of garbage, leaving us without any credits for food or fuel.” Hakyeon chided as he put down his macramé and turned around and glared at the purple haired navigator. “We’re selling it at the next space port and that is final.”
A beep from R.O.V.I.X sounded and Hakeyon sighed as he set his hobby aside and turned to face the wide panel of colorful lights, dials and buttons.
“Oh come on Hakyeon~ It could be our ship’s mascot or good luck charm or something…” Ravi protested as a pale, lanky arm reached over his shoulder and plucked the statuette deftly out of his hands. “Hey! That’s mine Leo give it back!”
“Captain Hakyeon said no, so it’s no.” The owner of the arm, Taekwoon said in a quiet voice. He was lanky with long wavy pitch black hair tied back at the nape of his neck, pale skin, and sharp dark eyes that made him seem perpetually ready to kill whoever he happened to look at, quite the opposite of his shy demeanor. What set him apart from the others were the two fuzzy pointed black ears that crested the top of his head and the long, sleek, furred black tail that trailed behind him, a cat boy for lack of a better term.
“Stop giving him a hard time or I will revoke all intimate privileges for the next thirty cycles.” He stated quietly but with an assurance that he would go through with the threat as he looked at the statuette with a blank disinterested face before he put in one of the compartments. He leveled his thin, dark eyes at the purpled haired Ravi and anyone else would have shrunk at assumed glare but the navigator simply pouted back at him.
“That’s a low blow Leo, you know that my kind need to be intimate with others to not die.” He muttered and reached up to pull the dark haired cat boy into his lap and nuzzled his pale neck, much to his lover’s displeasure.
Hakyeon rolled his eyes and flipped on the intercom. “This is Hakeyon, we’re coming up on our destination and will be dropping out of hyperspace shortly. Please secure everything and strap yourselves in.” he said.
“Roger that! Captain” A loud voice sounded over the intercom before the owner of the voice showed appeared in the cockpit. Ken was a tall man with a long nose, pointed ears and hair made up of blue green iridescent feathers that was pushed back from his face and gave him a cool and chic look. He took one look at Leo and Ravi and made a show of being grossed out at their typical display of public affection.
“Oh my god! Get a room you two! There is a child present!”
“I’m hardly a child bird brain.” Hongbin hissed from the other side of the cockpit as he continued to stare at the animations on the screen before him, pressing a combination of buttons in accordance with actions on the monitor. “I’ve seen them do worse.”
“Oh? You seem like a child to me Binnie with how you play those games all day and night.” The feather-haired man mused with a sly grin as he changed his trajectory and pulled one of the headphones off of the younger’s ear. “Come onnn I wanna plaaaay~!!! Give me a turn Hongbinnie!!” he whined and reached to steal the controller in the other’s hands.
“Go away Ken! I’m in the middle of a boss fight!!” Hongbin growled as tried to shrug the older man off of him and keep the handheld device from the man. “You’re gonna make me lose!”
“Awww come on~ just one round!”
“Get off! You wanna die?!”
“And he tells us to get a room.” Ravi commented offhandedly with a smirk as he reached out with his foot and planted it on communicator’s prominent ass and shoved him forward with a laugh. This in turn caused Ken to bump into Hongbin and thus cause the younger to lose his grip on his gaming device and allowed for his character to get slayed and the game over screen to appear.
“Oh shit… I’m so sorry Binnie, I swear I didn’t do that on purpose! Ravi pushed me!” Ken pleaded as the younger man quietly removed his headset and grabbed set the gaming device and set it down then turned towards the older, murder written upon his face. “I-I’ll sing to you! Yeah, I’ll sing and it’ll be great!”
“Hongbin. If you’re going to murder Jaehwan then please do so in the cargo hold. I don’t want blood all over the cockpit.” Hakyeon warned sharply.
“Yes mom.” The younger replied as he slowly stood up and grabbed the feather-haired communications officer by the back of his jumpsuit and dragged him down into the underbelly of the ship along with his cries and pleas for help from his fellow crewmates.
Quiet enveloped the cockpit before Leo dislodged himself from Ravi’s hold and floated towards the door in which Ken and Hongbin disappeared through.
“I’ll go stop them.” He sighed then passed through the door without another word.
“Good, last thing I need is a messy cargo hold and to go through the headache of putting out ads for a gunner and communications operator.” Hakyeon sighed as he pressed a few more buttons and grasped the yoke as he counted down and braced as the dropped out of hyperspace.
~*~*~
The open air bazaar was bustling when the crew of the Starlight arrived, the many pinked haired moustachioed men and women fluttered about the various stalls, haggling prices and quality of items.
“Alright, I am going to go sell this monstrosity.” Hakyeon said as he turned around to face the rest of his crew. “Taekwoon, DO NOT let Ravi buy anything. In fact, why don’t you two go find a place where we can get some food and lodging.” He stressed.
“Understood Captain.” The tall cat-eared man answered quietly as he subtly grasped his purple haired boyfriend’s hand and squeezed it hard enough to make him wince.
“Come on Hakyeon! There’s gotta be some good stuff here, like look at this place! I wonder if they have a brothel…” Ravi tried and let out a yelp as Taekwoon bristled visibly and squeezed his hand again. “Okay okay, fine! Geeze, you and Hakyeon are no fun at all.” He sighed as he trudged after Taekwoon as they headed off to find a cantina or something. Hakyeon watched the two go then turned to the rest of the crew.
“We need fuel for the ship and rations, if you can… hey! Where are you going?” he asked as Hyuk began to walk off towards the stalls.
“I ran out of charges on the last mission so I might as well look and see if they have a weapons’ shop or anything like that.” The horned young man stated, “Don’t worry ma’, I wont spend anything if I don’t need it.”
“Alright, don’t start any trouble. I don’t need another incident like what happened on Tatsumaki.” Hakyeon warned, he earned a drawn out dismissive “Riiiiiiight” in return and reached up to pinch his nose bridge. Teenagers.
“Then Hongbin will you….”
Hongbin was already gone, his auburn headed form disappearing around the corner of a particularly flashy stall and the captain sighed.
“Don’t worry Hakyeon, I’ll scope out the rations and see what we need, I saw a cart that had some interesting looking foods hanging from it.” Ken chirped helpfully.
“NO!” Hakyeon interjected quickly then composed himself “I mean… thank you for the help Ken but I’ll… get the rations, you…. See if there are any bounties that can be claimed while we’re here.” He offered instead, not trusting the avian and his food choices, not after he bought a crate of giant grubs as food, stating they were on sale and that the vendor assured him that they were fine for eating.
Needless to say being awakened by the sound of Ravi’s screeching in fear as several of the insects erupted into smaller versions of themselves and caused them to have to jettison the entire refrigerator unit and purchase a new one at the nearest space port and the entire ship fumigated before he would step foot on it again was something Hakyeon never wanted to repeat.
“Alright! I can do that!” he chirped happily and with a twirl of his skirts he headed off to find information.
With a sigh the captain rubbed at his temples and took a deep breath as he too headed off into the market.
~*~*~
“ARRRRGH! I can’t believe that no one would buy this ugly piece of shit!” Hakyeon bemoaned as slumped over the table. The G.R.I.T.T.Y statue stood in the middle of the table in the local cantina, the light glinting off it’s golden shell, orange jeweled eyes staring at the anguished captain. “This is all your fault Wonsik!”
The purple haired horned man frowned as he leaned back in his chair, a hand idly stroking Leo’s long hair as he napped against the younger’s shoulder, a few angry red marks on the pale skin visible just inside the loose collar of the feline’s jacket, telling that he and the incubi had had some fun of their own earlier.
“Hey now, I didn’t buy it randomly y’know!” Ravi snapped. “I saw on the reward net one night that there was a big reward for finding one of these and returning it to it’s owners. Like this is an ancient artifact of these people and like finding a genuine one, which I did have authenticated by the way, in such good condition was rare and would be double what the knockoffs go for.” Ravi informed “You should be grateful that I even picked up the damn thing, this’ll cover our expenses for the next 200 cycles!”
“Why didn’t you say that before, you horned thorn in my ass?” Hakyeon’s muffled voice sounded as he sat up and glared at the navigator.
“Well…” Ravi said and hesitated with a nervous smile. “The thing is… the race that made this were nearly wiped out five thousand cycles ago when an asteroid bumped into their planet and the remainders have basically been scattered around the universe, and there weren’t many records so like, tracking them is next to impossible.”
The captain leveled a gaze at his navigator then let out another groan as he grabbed his drink and downed whatever was left and laid his head back down on the table, he had no energy left to fight the other and contemplated his life actions that lead him up to this point. Why didn’t he listen to his mother and stay in the space forces??
“Excuuuuuse me?” A loud and colorful voice sounded, somewhere between a goose honk and a fog horn. “I hate to bother you, but would that by chance be a Gritty you have there?”
Hakyeon’s eyebrow twitched. “Yeah.. who wants to know?” He growled as he looked up and froze as he noticed that he was bathed in shadow and that the rest of his crew were staring at whatever was behind him in various states of unease, horror, utter confusion, curiosity and in wonsik’s case, arousal. He could practically feel the lust oozing from the man as his boyfriend was visibly bristled and confused at whatever the thing one, ears folded back flat against his head.
Slowly the captain swallowed and turned around only to be greeted by a towering orange furry behemoth, it’s wide orange eyes and unnervingly wide beak-like grin staring down at him. It was an exact likeness of the statuette right down to the badly drawn horse with the wind blowing it’s made symbol emblazoned on it’s tunic. He swallowed thickly as a cold sweat formed upon his brow.
“I have searched the universe far and wide for the artifacts of my people and I would gladly take it off your hands.” The creature boomed jovially.
“And of course reward the finders of such a prize, five hundred thousand credits.”
Hakyeon’s jaw dropped as he heard the reward price and in one action grabbed the statuette and all but threw it at the imposing orange creature.
“Here! Take it, it’s yours!!” he said a bit too enthusiastically.
“Thank youuuu~! This is a good day for the followers of GRITTY.” It boomed and shifted the strangely curved staff it held in one hand to hold with it’s arm and reached into it’s shorts and shifted around for a few minutes before pulling a crusty pouch from the depths of the black shorts it wore and held it out to Hakyeon whose expression went from joy to a hesitant cringe as he reluctantly reached out to take the sack and held it with both hands. He forced a grin as he looked up at the creature.
“No, thank you.” He ground out mechanically, not wanting to think about the sack and where it had been on this creature. The orange behemoth then took up it’s staff and with a curtsy turned and trundled off. Once it was out of sight Hakeyon flipped the sack onto the table and let out a distressed sound as he quickly got up to go bathe himself, feeling incredibly unclean by the whole ordeal.
The remaining occupants of the table looked at the sack and Taekwoon’s demeanor relaxed as he slowly leaned up to sniff curiously at the bag before he let out a hiss in disgust as he shot back, moving his seat a good foot away from the table as he downed both his beverage and Ken’s, earning a protest from the avian.
Silence enveloped the table for a moment before Hongbin spoke up. “Everyone else witnessed what just happened right? It wasn’t just a fever dream where a towering orange, hairy nightmare showed up and traded credits for the statue?” he asked as Hyuk reached forward and grabbed the sack to inspect the contents, Ken leaning over to peer over Hyuk’s shoulder, curious as to what was inside as well.
“No, that was definitely a thing.” The Avian stated as hyuk stuck his hand in the bag and fished around and pulled out a fist full of credit chips. “Turns out Wonsik was right for once…”
At that moment the unusually quiet, black horned, purple haired incubus slammed his hands on the table and scooted his chair back.
“I’m gonna fuck it!” he declared brazenly earning several wide eyed stares from his comrades.
“Over my dead body you are!” Taekwoon stated firmly as he reached for his lover who dodged his hand and danced away with a cheeky yet lust filled grin.
“I’ll see you guys later!” he waved and ducked out the same door which the orange follower of Gritty disappeared through.
“WONSIK YOU ARE DEAD TO ME IF YOU SLEEP WITH THAT DISGUSTING THING!” Taekwoon screeched as he slammed his hands on the table and knocked his chair over, causing the whole tavern to turn to stare at him. “Fuck!” He cursed as he quickly chased after the purple haired navigator.
The quiet lingered a few moments after Taekwoon exited the building then the chatter resumed and the remaining three crewmates sat blinking in silence.
“Ten credits he kills Wonsik.” Hongbin says, his eyes still on the doorway that their crewmates disappeared through.
“Twenty that he tears him limb from limb.” Hyuk says as he resumes rummaging through the sack.
“Fifty that he joins them.” Ken wagers as he summons one of the servers for another round of drinks.
“Deal!” the other two chime in unison.
~*~*~
Hakyeon yawned as he stretched his arms and walked into the galley of the Starlight for a cup of much needed coffee, the stress from the previous day erased after a long sleep and not having to worry about their financial situation for a while As the machine filled his mug he looked over and saw Hyuk, Hongbin and Ken huddled together in the corner booth deep in discussion in hushed voices that the captain could not make out.
The machine beeped to alert him that his drink was ready and he strode over towards the table where the others sat.
“Hey guys, what are you discussing so seriously over here? I hope it’s not a plan to form a coup and take the ship for a joy ride again.” He mused as he sipped his drink.
“No, we’re debating on whether or not Ravi fucking that orange thing would be considered bestiality or interspecies erotica.” Hongbin informed helpfully and gestured towards Ken. “he says that it would be bestiality since the orange thing doesn’t have a soul, while Hyuk and I think it would be interspecies erotica due to it being a sentient being. Would you like to join in?”
Hakyeon choked on his mouthful of coffee and sent the rest spraying across the room as he wiped his mouth and practically fell onto the bench seat. “WHAT THE FUCK DID I MISS?!”
“You missed a fantastic evening is what!” Wonsik practically sang as he waltzed into the room to grab a mug for coffee, Taekwoon looking worse for wear slinking in behind him and slid into a spot beside Hakyeon and clung to the man.
“Everything okay Leo?” Hakyeon asked as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders and stroked his arm comfortingly, concern in his voice at the man’s listless state, as if his soul had left his body.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He murmured quietly. Ken whooped loudly and both Hongbin and Hyuk groaned loudly in disappointment as they reached into their pockets to pull out credit chips.
“PAY UP! FIFTY CREDITS EACH!”
Hakyeon opened his mouth to ask what the bet was on, but judging from Wonsik’s cheerfulness and Taekwoon’s listlessness he quickly shut it. Some things were better left unknown.