This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KyleKKent on 2025-08-11 20:24:53+00:00.
Under A Pastel Hood
There is little warning, a slight amount of purple dust flickering in front of a light as repair crews rush around to assess potential damage. The enemy craft had been utterly destroyed but had somehow let off a shot that had impacted The Articulation’s Hull.
Nerves were jangling. This was the day of reckoning, the galaxy had ocme for them, the dread makers possibly leading the charge and what peace they had known would now have to be paid back in blood. It was a harrowing thought.
Repair crews are armed just in case, but scans show nothing. Nothing but a strange few particulates too small to actually see, the larges cluster is vaguely visible as a mote of purple dust.
Then wind blasts down the hallway in two different directions, one hot and dry, pushing hard and fast as a storm of dust and sand follows it. The other cool and damp as a rush of water forces out. The repair crews fall back and take defensive positions.
Out of the dust a figure slowly emerges. Jangling and clattering every so with every step. A massive woven cloak of grasses around his person, an enormous coil rifle covered in moss rattling ever so slightly against a bandoleer of custom rounds, knives and several small tools. A featureless wooden mask is hanging from his two horns that reveal only glowing green eyes on the man’s face.
As the first figure emerges another rises from the water, his dark hair wetted back and tight to his skull to show a handsome Apuk face, a young face very similar to a figure of terror and legend, but with a story of his own as he rises up upon the muzzle of an enormous creature too huge to fit within the ship itself, but somehow also within it. Within the water upon the ship, even though it is barely deep enough to wet one’s toes. He is bare of chest to reveal the enormous gills across his torso that suggests his proudly mixed breeding.
“Greetings Vishanyan! I am Dare’Char Crushclaw! The Leviathan Lord! My ride today is Little Rudy! She bites yachts in half!” Dare’Char announces grandly and with a huge smile. The gigantic, scaly thing he’s riding on rises up until he’s only up to his ankles in the toe deep water and reveals a bump next to Dare’Char that opens into an enormous reptilian eye. On the other side the other Apuk raises his mask and scans the area, his eyes stopping on the cloaked and hidden figures that The Lush Forest Seeds are illuminating for him as clearly as the noonday sun.
“Afternoon. I’m The Dustshot, Arden’Karm.” He says before lowering the mask again. “You all attacked my homeworld. I would like to know why.”
“Okay, okay, calm down you two. Love the drama and the theatrics. Top notch there. But I need to speak now.” Harold says as he’s suddenly between the hot and dry, then he staggers and tumbles directly into the thin layer of water that he completely falls into and then resurfaces. “Okay, that’s not fair. You connected this right into Serbow’s Oceans.”
“Need a hand?” Dare’Char asks him as Harold uses Axiom to stand on the water and climbs up out of the literal ocean spilled on the floor but not overfilling it.
“When the excitement’s over you can tell me how you pulled this, but beyond that I’m fine. Good job.” Harold says with a thumbs up. He then looks around and waves to the invisible girls levelling weapons at him and then faces the nearest camera and looks right into it. “Now, I’m here because you had a sudden and very strange change of behaviour, one that greatly concerned me. A sudden automated recall order to an elite forward stasis sleep team? Right as you get an enormous endorsement that universally benefits your species and would let you politically dodge so many of your problems that it beggers belief? Someone’s doing something stupid and your species is in such a delicate state that you need help. Now, I can technically preserve the Vishanyan by myself with just Velocity as my bride, but that would take hundreds of years to get some kind of numbers and thousands to get some decent genetic diversity. So I’d rather not to be the father of the Vishanyan Returned, let’s work with the Vishanyan as they are shall we? Or does papa need to spank?”
“Ho! Ho! Ho! Holy Shit!” Arden’Karm exclaims as he breaks down laughing. “Sweet Fire Human! I thought you were going to be diplomatic!”
“I am being diplomatic!” Harold protests as Arden’Karm laughs again, taking off his mask to rub at his eyes to clear the tears of sheer amusement as he struggles to even stand.
“Maybe big dick diplomatic!”
•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Vishanyan Loyalists)•-•-•
“What is he even doing? How!? Why? What!?” Admiral Bombard demands before the entire room tenses as their number suddenly and unexpectedly increase.
“Calm down! Stay Calm Admiral! Reinforcements have arrived!” Bringer of Enemy Torment states snapping a salute even as a very pale and frankly adorable Nagasha boy slithers behind her. She’s dressed in a civilian skirt and blouse, but has a clear shield belt on and her weapons.
“... You’re a little under-dressed Commander. Good to see you regardless. I can see that your time in The Wider Galaxy has treated you well.” Admiral Longitude states in a stunned tone.
“Unusually so ma’am. The worst of it was all self inflicted, anticipating a doom that never comes is a special kind of torture.” Torment says. “... I’m in an administrative role at the moment ma’am, they have me as the communication link with additional, non-Vishanyan reinforcements. I have a family of elite Bounty Hunter Specialists, primarily Sonir, Numerous Undaunted Soldiers, Sorcerers of several stripes and the big one. The Primal Wimparas. All of them are waiting for my say so to join us here.”
“And Subject Mirror is a distraction. He and his two friends there are an irresistible Comedy Routine drawing away all enemy reinforcements and attention.”
“Correct. Ma’am, what kind and where would you like your reinforcements?” Torment asks.
“This is going to be delicate, so first thing’s first, you need all information on what’s going on.” Admiral Longitude states. “Admirals Bleed, Destiny and Signal have launched a Coup, but are clearly dis-unified and rushed. We have already captured Signal and determined that her motivations are due to a paranoia spiral slowly consuming her until she snapped. We still need to find the motivations of Destiny and Bleed, but we have one head of three of this mess already in custody.”
“Capture or Kill ma’am?”
“Capture. They’re still Vishanyan.”
“There’s more ma’am.”
“I’m sure.”
“The exposure of the Vishanyan means that our grace period since attacking The Apuk is up. They’re coming. However we have an opportunity to avoid open war. Favours are being called in, the galaxy is boiling around us and we have a few lifelines to pull from. But we need to at the very least use The Undaunted one in regards to The Apuk.”
“Explain.”
“The Undaunted will explain, I haven’t got the full situation, but we have some time. Time we need to use to deal with the coup now.”
“Then we better get moving. What assets are your teams bringing?”
“The Bounty Hunters are experts in bringing in targets alive despite numerous defences, The Undaunted are professional Soldiers, but they are will be willing to use lethal force. However if they can get into a defensive position it won’t be possible to get them out of it. The Sorcerers are already coating the interior of the Arkships with teleportation beacons they can see out of but are nearly undetectable themselves.”
“Alright then. We have no way to contain or conceal ourselves further, so now that we’re seen we must move with grace on such a level that if our dread makers are still watching then they will know better than to try to claim us as their property. This way Torment, if you’re truly in contact with these forces then we can and will be having you organize things. But first we need to divide the methods of movement and access throughout the Arkships in order to pin down and contain the rebels.
•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Vishanyan Rebels)•-•-•
She stares with her eyes twitching at the sight of them. The amount of Alien Men on the Arkship Articulation was growing. To say nothing of the gigantic THING with a maw so massive it literally couldn’t fit more than a peeking eye into the traditionally wide corridors of the vessel. Four girls could walk shoulder to shoulder in there and not brush up against each other. But that thing was just waiting, just... in there.
The cameras directly above that water had been zooming in and seeing... more swimming below where that giant monster was. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alone. And if it tried to force it’s way in then... the ship wouldn’t survive.
Somehow the one calling himself Dustshot is just as bad. After he had recovered from his hilarity he thought to regain his dignity by conjuring some kind of hunting bird out of nowhere and was just absently stroking the animal as if it was a rational thing to do. Other animals are slowly appearing around him to make a small menagerie of small and so very adorable looking little things.
The fact that several scompi had bounced out of their holes to investigate things and were quickly apparently becoming friends in a scene as picturesque and adorable as the camera feed of the circling horrors down below the water on the opposite is terrifying and foreboding.
Or how the fact that Harold has set up a...
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