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“Lotor!”
“Prince Lotor—!”
The voices broke through the crowd of released Advisors and Admirals, and he was accosted by his two Generals before he even saw them.
“Lotor, we have a problem—”
“Teensy little issue, sir—”
“Stop.” He snaps.
Zethrid and Ezor shut their mouths into screwy expressions.
He eyed the other Galra around them, unsure if any of their gazes were drawn back to the three.
“Not here.”
“But—”
“No.” He narrowed his eyes at Ezor. “Follow me.”
The conference room he had just vacated was thankfully empty now and he locked the manual override on the door to keep it that way.
“I just spent five vargas with almost the entire Imperial board of directors trying to convince them to draft an annulment on my father’s mandate to purge Altean existence,” He inhaled. “So this bad news better not be what I think it is.”
Ezor and Zethrid seem to be holding their breaths. Ezor breaks first.
“We lost her.”
Something bottoms out from his shoulders to his feet.
“Try again.”
“No, honestly, we did, we’ve been looking for almost the entire time you’ve—”
“Momentarily!” Zethrid cuts her off, literally and physically, hand over the smaller General’s mouth. “It’s only been a little while, but ehhh, she’s gone.”
“Gone.” He repeats. “You lost an Altean.” He paused for the two to cringe. “Aboard the capitol flagship of the Galra Empire.”
“Well…”
“When you put it like that…”
“Where is Acxa?”
“With the ship, in case she comes back.”
“Narti?”
“Checking the entire docking bay.”
He doesn’t panic. Not that he can. Panicking would be a waste of the time he doesn’t have. Because the worst thing that could happen would be that she gets murdered. And that is a bigger waste.
“I’m sure no one will...” Ezor tries.
Lotor folds a hand to his elbow and taps a claw on his chin, considering her with an unimpressed look. “Yes, I’m sure my little speech today gave everyone on board this wretched place a change of heart against our species natural born enemy.”
Ezor rolled her lip into her teeth and shrugged.
He sighed. Shifting blame wouldn’t do. It’s an Altean. No one is equipped for such a task.
“How are we gonna—?” Zethrid’s hands go up but she doesn’t get to finish the thought, Lotor is already gesturing at them.
“Give me whatever you two have that might be shiny.”
“Shiny?” Ezor shoved her hands about her armor and procures one of her Galra blades.
“Shinier.” He huffs.
“I got nothing.” She shrugs.
“Zethrid?” His hand moves to the taller woman.
Zethrid pulls at her ammo belt and unclips a pulse bomb. The silver casing gleams in the sub lights of the room. She hesitates.
“ Zethrid .” He lifts his chin. His fingers beckon again.
“I only have one left.”
“I will buy you a million more if you are so inclined but we just do not have the time for sentiment.”
She growls but drops the heavy thing into his hands.
He clicks open the small demolition, pulling a wire and shaking out the energy cell inside before tossing it back to Zethrid.
“Uh, what?” Ezor’s brow shoots up.
“Awww, now it’s useless.” Zethrid groaned.
“On the contrary,” He held up the silver metal casing of the pulse bomb and watched the light catch it. “Now it’s useful.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s go.”
They more or less run to his cruiser, or they do in between passing by other Galra soldiers and Generals. And he nearly leaves the others in the dust, passing by Narti’s blank expression and raised arms of resignation at the docking bay, when he sprints up the ramp and into the ship.
Acxa jumps altogether when he rips open the hatch into the central command, turning with wide eyes.
“Prince—?”
“Have you seen her?”
“N-no, I’ve been making rounds—”
“What’s all this?”
Acxa comes to his side as he stops at his pilot’s chair.
“That.” Her voice wavers listlessly. “Is how we found the ship this morning.”
He walks slowly forward, reaching a hand to grasp one of the twisting branches sprouting from the metal of his armrest. Green through gunmetal gray, the entire chair is covered in leaves and winding foliage. As if he’d abandoned his cruiser in the middle of a jungle planet and not docked it on the capitol space station.
“What do you mean the ship?” He asks, turning to her.
She shrugs. Behind her the rest of the General’s fall in, Zethrid and Ezor grasping their knees and panting while Narti just shakes her head.
Lotor looks back at the chair, kneeling beside it to brush his hands against the grass growing from the plated flooring. It holds against his intrusion, even with no soil for its roots. As if it’s coming from the metal itself.
“If we wait any longer, our ship will look like the smuggler’s ship that we found her on,” Acxa warned.
“If she isn’t already gone.” Ezor sighed.
He stands, eyes following the trail of grass as it trickles from his pilot’s chair up the walls of the cockpit, along the viewports, and into the lifts to the lower decks.
“She couldn’t have left.” He mused. “She seemed frightened of people.”
“Women you mean.” Zethrid chuckles.
He shows her his unamused look from over his shoulder.
“Everyone grab something shiny and spread out.”
“Shiny?
“Something that catches light or sparkles.” He reiterates, ignoring Narti’s subtle scratching of her head. “And seal all the exits. Even the lower hatches.”
“Sir.”
They do as he says and follow his lead. If he had time to appreciate his General’s he would. Especially when he passes by them in the halls and ramparts of the cruiser, diligently raising metallic thermostats, a can of armor polish, some empty heat blaster clips, and a gold coin, all shouting variations of, ‘Little lady!” “Here, here, Altean!” or “Come out wherever you are, you nasty little siren!”
His own bait, the empty pulse bomb, is raised high above his head as he squeezes between the pipes of the lower levels on the cruiser.
It’s covered in grass.
Almost everything is, actually.
Fuana seems to shoot out in patches across the entire spaceship. It twists off the floors, the walls, doors, even the terminals in the mess hall. But it seems to get worse the lower he goes.
It gets hotter and warmer as he ventures into the engine rooms, where their energy terminals hum and vibrate the walls around it. The green is lusher here, the leaves larger, like ferns or ivy, growing entangled and oppressive. It looks more like a forest canopy than a piece of Galra engineering.
“Lotor, is that you?”
He reaches the end of what would be the engine room, a circular dome housing the hot and humming repulser drive, and finds Acxa, wiping the sweat from her brow in a massive patch of greenery.
“Look.” She says, pointing her thermostat at the field around her feet. “Flowers.”
“Indeed.”
Blooms. Reds, yellows, pinks, blues, whites— a flurry of color like paints spattered across every surface. Flowers, growing tall and various and crawling up the walls and metal of his engine.
Acxa waved the thermostat in the air. “Maybe she’s here?”
“Hm.” He wondered, looking around the blocks and pipes, crossing the field.
“You call her.”
“Me?”
“Zethrid has a point and you know it.” Acxa eyed him. “She’s Altean. She likes men.”
“Hm.” He frowned unhappily, but raised his arm once more and called. “Little thing, are you down here?”
They followed the mish-mash of flowers into the crevice of the thrumming engine.
“I have a present for you.” He called again, before straining to listen.
Acxa leaned past him, pointing. “There.”
He looks up, following her arm to the higher pipes, where the ivy and ferns all curl into a hammock of sorts, a bushel of fanning green. Like palm leaves.
It moves.
Acxa crowds around him. “Call her again.” She whispers.
“Come and get the present I brought for you.” He says, feeling silly and ignoring it as soon as he sees movement again.
Acxa shoves her thermostat in his hands.
“Two presents, actually.”
And then they see white.
A long white lock of hair falling over the leaves.
They both seem to sigh in utter relief.
When he calls, it’s with a tired exhale of contentment.
“Come now, I can’t wait here all quintent.”
A long, bare leg drops from the haven of the engine pipes and greenery. Brown skin and warm-toned, another leg follows.
And then the entire length of a naked woman, sun-kissed and dewey, slides delicately down from high to the soft grass below.
Lotor keeps his eyes strictly on the face that comes into view, and the clouds of white locks that follow it.
Acxa has her hand over her eyes.
“There you are.”
She doesn’t come any closer, sinking low on the grass and seemingly reveling in the flowers there. The Altean simply sits, as if she hadn’t been missing all quintent, pulling her hair over her shoulder and running her hands in it with lazy-lidded eyes staring at him curiously, like it was the most normal thing in the universe.
“Were you sleeping in the engine?” He asked, looking back up at the spot before stepping forward to kneel before her.
She says nothing, blue and pink blinking at him.
“Perhaps the warmth?” Acxa lowers beside him, cocking her head. “That cell had been as hot as a summer quintent when we pulled her out of it.”
“Perhaps.” He wonders.
She looks languid, shoulders drawn but spine relaxed, like Narti’s cat after a nap. Her hands run about the grass when they leave her hair, letting it fall to cover her breast as she produces a bright yellow blossom between them.
Lotor and Acxa lean to watch as the flower unfurls, growing to the apex of its life from seed to a sapling, to bloom all in milliseconds. It seems to glow as it does. Or she does. Her hands and fingers lit with a sunlight shine that shimmers up the bronze of her skin.
Lotor trails his gaze over her shoulders and collarbone, up the length of her delicate neck to the bright of her eyes, where white sparkles like fractals in water.
“So…” Acxa whispers. He can feel her eyes on him as he stares at the creature in front of him. “This is what your mother looked like?”
Flashes of dead grey and withered skin skim through his mind. With blind eyes and a shroud of cold cloth about a pale face.
“No.”
He reaches gently across the grass to touch a finger to the warm hand above the new flower.
“She was like the drawings. The stories.” He answered quietly. “A witch my father slew once he broke from her spell.”
The hand turns over in his and a soft noise breaks from her wet lips, a smile meeting his gaze.
She pulls close and weaves her fingers in his.
“I don’t understand.” Acxa shakes her head. “How can that be right if this is also an Altean? Are we both under a spell? Seeing what she wants us to see?”
“I don’t believe so.” He shakes his head. He pulls gently and she leans in, following him, smiling and fluttering lashes as she curls her bare body around where he sits. “Supposedly they cannot seduce more than one person at a time.”
“Because if this is what Zarkon saw when he went mad…”
Lotor raises his other hand to touch a claw to a delicate chin.
She closes her eyes and leans into the touch. Cat-like again, she rubs her cheek into his fingers and heat spreads from her skin to his soul. He swallows, feeling a shiver go through his body.
“Then how can he be blamed?”
They keep a closer eye on her.
Or as much as they can, without seeming lecherous.
“What if we try getting her one of those fractal dresses those Talmassian floozies wear, you know, in the backwater red-light planets?”
“They aren't floozies, Zethrid,” Ezor crosses her arms. “They’re sex workers.”
Zethrid shrugs. “Aren’t Alteans?”
“No.” He says with exasperation, pulling a white strand from her face and drawing it over her ear.
It took her quite some time to be coerced from the engine room, but the retinue of shiny toys and trinkets seemed to do the trick. Her pile of ‘goodies’ set beside them in his pilot’s chair.
She smiled at him, rolling her pulse bomb in her hands and twisting it in the light as she curls her legs into his lap. The only other seemingly non-negotiable terms of keeping her complacent.
He considers her as she tries to braid her hair around the bomb, the empty thermostat already retrofitted into a makeshift bracelet.
Zethrid also watches, but with a more somber expression.
“Naked or not naked, we need to figure out what to do with her.” Ezor points out. “She’s potentially dangerous I mean… isn’t she?”
That is the question of the varga. It had been since they’d found her stowed in that smuggler’s ring of illegal substances and treasures, caged up like an animal and ready for whatever black market that could make a profit of the only Altean anyone had seen in thousands and thousands of decaphoebs.
“Maybe.” He mused, but his preconceptions of Alteans had already been nearly destroyed..
“Sooner or later she’s gonna eat us,” Zethrid said, looking convinced. “She’s gonna open that pretty mouth of hers and seduce us into madness, then kill us and drink our blood.”
They all watch Zethrid gesture snapping a neck and drinking said blood.
He nearly rolls his eyes.
“I don’t think she even talks.” Acxa pointed out. “She hasn’t said anything since she woke up.”
“And even the stories don’t say anything about them into talking you into... it .” Ezor laughs and then gestures wildly toward Lotor and the girl. “I mean, I don’t think they need to, if they all just walk around naked as she does!”
He has to shift his legs beneath her as she leans back to watch Ezor laugh, stretching her long bare legs as she does so and sliding them on his arms.
“If that’s the way they are, why aren’t you walking around naked, boss?” Zethrid grins.
“Oh, please.” Lotor wrangles himself from her, but she just twists on him, sitting up and pressing her breasts to his chest to get a closer look at his Generals as they laugh, loud and boisterous. “Hng—”
But they continue laughing and it’s hard not to feel embarrassed with a naked woman wriggling in his lap like a girl.
Especially when the movement is numbing his legs but heating his hips and burning his throat—damn physiology.
“Stop.” His claws flex and he grabs her hips, stilling her completely. He means the command for his Generals, but she stops too, knees folding to brace herself.
He threads his arms under her legs and sits her more comfortably on his own knee, and not his… well.
He needed fewer problems, not more of them.
He tries to ignore the giant sparkling blue and pink eyes staring at him as he glares at his crew.
“We need to get out of the capital first. But I cannot leave in the middle of discussions I started without causing suspicion.”
“If you get the annulment on that shoot-to-kill law, we won’t have to leave.”
He looks at Acxa with a forlorn expression. “You trust our people more than I do. Annulment or none, they will either want her for the spoil of it, as the smugglers did or as a novelty... like my father.”
“Okay so… taking her somewhere else is the priority.”
“Yes.” He sighed.
Something is playing at his hair.
When he looks down he sees deft hands quickly braiding the tresses past his shoulder.
Something tight squeezes in his heart, even as he tries to pull the lock away from her.
“...but preferably after I am given leave to venture back out to the fringe sectors.” He continued. His General’s are all staring dubiously as he tugs hair from her that she tugs back. “Stop it.”
She glares something fierce at him.
Lotor reminds himself that Alteans should not be considered cute, under any circumstances, lest he wants to be eaten. Even if that was turning out to be some sort of lie.
“Shall we scout for planets that might suit her… containment?” Acxa wonders.
“Yes.” He’s lost the war with his hair, though, she’s forgone the bit at his shoulders to raise herself high enough to capture the bang falling in front of his face. He ignores the bare breasts grazing his cheek. “And perhaps that might give us some time to… do studies.”
“Studies,” Ezor repeats with brows high.
“Yes.” He nods, closing his eyes and wrapping an arm around a naked waist to pull her body forcefully from his proximity. He can feel flowers growing from his head.
“Suuuuure.”
Zethrid starts laughing again.
Some things prove easier than others.
As it turns out, they don’t really have to worry about her escaping. She does, in fact, seem frightened by people. Especially the females, often shrinking away, or pulling from each of the Generals when they try to stop her from turning the vents into botany projects or try and offer her food.
It’s a pretty damning evidence of what they already know of Alteans, especially in comparison to the utterly… risqué way she seems to plaster herself upon Lotor when he enters the ship, winding her arms about his shoulders or nuzzling her cheeks into his thigh as he sits in his chair and she plays on the floor.
And speaking of food…
“It’s sunlight.” He says, brows drawn, standing with Narti.
The silent Galra’s head tilts at the same time as her cat’s does.
It’s not lost on him that he’s bookended by two mutes. Narti on his right and the Altean, across the room, sitting on their navigational holo-table, basking in the sun with eyes closed.
They watch as the woman, the creature, seems to… glow. Spots of light particles enhanced by her very presence float about her. Like glowing insects or star particles across a nebula.
It’s a daily routine. At least it appears to be, according to the following quintents of his observations. A photosynthesis effect that appears to freshen the vibrancy of her skin, the length of her hair, and even a small cut she gets when playing too haphazardly with a polished (shiny) dagger.
They keep the gifts on the safer side, despite the revelation.
It’s a process.
Stuck in the flagship, they can only learn and accommodate in secret, as to not draw any suspicion they're harboring an Altean.
Which is… hard and slightly inconvenient.
Well. The nakedness. The nakedness is inconvenient.
“Come on, girlie, stay still!!”
“Hold the sleeve open while I push her arm through!”
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Lotor hears the struggle before he sees it, entering the cruiser’s barracks with wide eyes and his tablet falling forgotten at his side.
Zethrid has the naked beauty caught around the waist, pulling her to a sit on the ground as Ezor holds a flight suit in the air above them like some sort of dark cloud of doom, angling at the head of white hair like trying to catch a fly in a trap.
It’s Acxa who's moving wildly, fighting the girl’s silent, but very furious, refusal to slide into the fabric, arms struggling against the top and trying to snake past all their grips.
Surprisingly, they seem to have at least gotten trousers on the girl.
“Stop, just, let me—please little lady—” Acxa pleads.
“Just shove her in it!”
“Yeah, shove her in, she’ll love that.”
“What’s happening here?”
His voice makes the entire room freeze in an almost comical fashion.
And then she breaks before the rest of his Generals do, yanking so furiously from Zethrid’s grip her uniform slacks slide to her thighs.
She runs them the rest of the way off as she reaches Lotor.
“There go the damn pants.” Ezor drops the shirt to the ground.
“How did you even manage them in the first place?” He wonders, arm already out to allow the girl easy access to his side. It’s instinctual by now, a troubling sign. Her arms weave up his chest, hands burrowing into the crooks of his armor regardless.
“She was asleep,” Zethrid explains. “We figured we could try and get it all on before she woke.”
“A valiant attempt but a predictable failure.” He nodded, trying not to look down as he felt a bare foot slide along the back of his calf.
He didn’t think he’d ever been so… touched, in all his life.
Not sure he’d ever had this much affection either.
“Bring us good news from the archives?” Acxa asked. She sounded a bit desperate. Stressed maybe. He sympathized with her.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” He waved the tablet at her and she put her arms out, catching his throw. “Let’s head to the command deck, I want to launch before Father realizes I just broke into his personal diaries.”
“Oh, no kidding!?” Ezor’s eyes went large and excited. “How did you get into his terminal?”
“I took a page out of our new friend’s book here and went up through the engine room.” He said, bending slightly to curl hands around the crook of the Altean’s knees and pull her into his arms. The immediate largeness of her reactive smile was too endearing to draw attention too.
They didn’t crack open the stolen records until they were at least a whole sector away from the center of the Galra Empire.
And when they finally did, Lotor immediately regretted not being alone for it.
“T-that’s Zarkon!?” Ezor near yelled, hands slamming down on the table’s surface, leaning far in to stare at the holo of his father, young, fresh-faced, with a smile and clean red armor.
“This has gotta be fake.” Zethrid was shaking her head. Narti put her hand through the holograph and waved it as if it see if it was real. “That’s an actor.”
“Are you alright Prince Lotor?” Acxa all but whispered.
It was hard to take his eyes off the excitement his own father’s gaze seemed to hold.
He looked more…
He looked conscious. Real. Not the beastly, almost artificial, cold monster he knew his father to be.
What had happened to him? How could such a drastic difference even be plausible when Lotor himself had lived almost as long and not been… changed. Twisted. Corrupted.
He wanted to feel angry, or maybe he thought he would, watching the once lively, happy, looking Zarkon talk into the recording with everything an Emperor, a father, should be. Instead, he was just empty. Hollow. An echo of too much abandon and neglect to wish for anything.
Waste. It was just a waste of what could have been.
Something soft brushed along his chin and lips.
He caught a hand, looking down at The Altean standing at his chest, eyes saturated with such brilliant colors, and wet, gleaming water.
His finger drew over the line of her lashes, catching the tear there and finally answering Acxa but staring at her. “I’m fine.”
Empathetic? He wondered.
“Try the files, not the recordings,” He commanded, turning from her but weaving her fingers with his. “Look for anything during his expeditions before the Zafendi Age.”
“Does “The Altean Compendium I-IV” work?” Ezor asked over her shoulder, smirking wide and clicking through the screens to draw up the documents.
Everyone stared.
“Quite.” Lotor swallowed.
The entire gang draws close to the console, even the girl, who preoccupies herself with the bright color shifting of the actual holo-projection, fascinated by the light it cast and trying to touch it with her fingers.
“They aren’t mythical creatures at all,” Acxa says. “They were studied. Researched….Bred.” She ends lamely, as they scroll down the document.
The deck goes a little somber.
“Looks like Zethrid was right about the sex work.” Ezor sighed. Zethrid groaned like she wasn’t happy about it.
They weren’t wrong. The detail the ‘research’ went into about the look of Alteans seemed… lavish. The word ‘beautiful’ and all its synonyms seemed to appear in every other sentence. Their main use upon discovery seemed… for recreation.
His stomach tightened uncomfortably.
“That seemed to be the attempt.” He nodded, leaning past the girl in front of him to point at the holo’s text. “ ‘Creatures prove excellent for transport due to their natural abilities to recreate their own habitat, but the lack of sunlight in space travel caused fatalities .’”
“Fatalities,” Acxa repeated, glancing at him before looking down.
He followed her gaze to the Altean, unable to help himself from brushing a hand through her white curls as he considered her.
“I don’t get it!” Zethrid threw up her hands. “Where’s the murder? The eating? The seducing Galra men into bed and pulling their heads off!?”
The Altean sank away from Zethrid’s outburst, turning her cheek into his chest.
“Well, according to this they were the ones doing the seducing and… murder.” Ezor tried to make it sound light-hearted but ended up just cringing.
Lotor continues scrolling.
There’s a lot of technical talk of fauna generation. That photosynthesis which was studied in microscopes and experimented on for mass production; to no success.
Breeding, also, seemed to fail. Either because catching Alteans, agile, magical, and quite shy as they were, proved too much of a hassle. Or because the actual act of breeding for… sport and luxury didn’t agree with them.
“Imprinting.” Acxa said, standing straight. “Like kath hounds or talla birds?”
Lotor continued reading, catching up on the paragraph she seemed to spot before he did.
“Whoa, so they aren’t even harpy women obsessed with sex?”
“No.” Lotor read on. “They imprint once, apparently. Monogamously.”
“And then they rip their heads off?”
“No. They mate for affection.”
Love. The document said, love.
He felt a twist in his flight suit and looked down at a curled fist in the fabric.
She was smiling at him. Soft and bright. Pink and blue and peach and bronze.
He swallowed, looking away quickly and ignoring the burn in his ears.
“So that means Lotor’s mom…” Ezor trailed, making an attempt not to stare straight at him.
“No.” Memories of a withered, grey-skinned thing, locked away in a dark room, came back to him. As did his father’s words of being cursed. Tricked. That his mother had been a witch who’d spelled him. Had turned him against his own Empire.
Starved. He understood that now.
She’d been starved. Locked away in the darkness once the Empire turned his father against her.
It was a little too much to think of right now. But the implications of the research, the woman, right there, in front of him, no more harmful than a misplaced plant, were pretty self-explanatory.
“Well at least we know she isn’t going to hurt us.” Ezor shrugged, dropping the sensitive topic and waving a hand at the Altean.
“No, but we could very well be hurting her .” He waved a hand to snap the documents and files away, shutting off the holo back to their navigational map. “We need to prioritize finding a suitable home for her.”
“So, we’re zookeepers now?” Ezor’s brows rose.
He ignored her.
“I want a list of potential sectors and their subsequent planets. Preferably with a breathable atmosphere and terrain that closely matches...well, that.” He nodded, motioning down at the mossy grass and tiny blooms she’d seemed to idly create along the side of the holo-terminal.
“Right away sir.”
Her hair fell across her bare shoulder and she smiled at him, aware of the sudden attention. He made a point not to smile back, claws curling into his fist.
“Move her from the lower decks to the guest quarters, where we might pass sunlight toward those destinations.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t be more careful? Even just a little?” Ezor asked. “I mean, there’s still a lot of stuff we don’t know.”
“I doubt that even if she did have some access to harmful magic, it’s not as if she wants anything from any of you.” He chuckled.
They all looked at each other with dubious expressions. Even Narti’s blank face still looked wary.
Acxa was the one who pinned him with a stare.
“But what about you?”
Lotor closed his eyes, ignoring the fingers weaving through his, and the hips sliding against his thighs.
“I’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t.
As it turns out, staying, traveling and sleeping on board the cruiser was very different than simply visiting it as he had back on the flagship.
That was apparent even in the first night, when he awoke to the hot, uncomfortable heat pressing upon his back, only to nearly jump out of his skin when he found the naked Altean asleep at his side, arms entangled about his chest.
“Come now, little thing, let’s not—” He’d tried. He truly had.
He’d even slid out of the bed to pick her up (strategically) and walk her back down the hall and to her own rooms.
He woke up in the morning to pink and blue, and a happy smile.
And, well, other physical problems.
“This isn’t going to work.” He whispered to her groggily, eyes peeled to watch her shift and snuggle into his sheets to make a point that she disagreed.
His stomach flexed against itself and his thighs ached. He groaned.
Her affection didn’t stop at night.
She often trailed around him on the daily, regardless if he would sit and pilot with Acxa for a few vargas, check the gunnery with Zethrid, or go through the initial guesses for habitat spots with Narti and Ezor.
She’d either sit in his lap with her hands in his hair, fight soundlessly with Zethrid by stealing any shiny piece of equipment she could see, or preoccupy herself with turning their archive room into a jungle.
She was at his side near constantly, and her proximity was becoming like a second skin. A heat that weaved into his suit, his locks, his fingers. And then at night, after a varga of coaxing her from his arms into her own bed, she’d sneak into his quarters, climb in his sheets, and slide her body against his.
So he gave up the fight on that one. Mostly.
“If you’re going to stay here you can’t be exposed.” He told her over his shoulder, standing at his closet and leaning on the turnstile to find something, anything, to put her in.
She perked up from the bed, standing up on her knees, breasts squeezed between her arms and lips parted with interest and curiosity.
Lotor averted his eyes, humming loudly, neck almost entirely damp at the sight.
“Try this.” He ripped the extra tunic from the shelf, snapping it out in the air before sitting beside her, opening the neckline and pulling it over her head.
Maybe he’d caught her off guard, or maybe it was trust, but she allowed him the action, looking down at the fabric as it rolled over her body.
“There, that’s not so bad?” He reasoned.
She seemed to consider it, hands wrinkling it up to her nose and inhaling. Her eyes closed. She sighed. A noise that was mellow and drawn out.
Her closed lashes blinked back at him and her knees drew her closer, all but crawling into his lap and pushing the fabric at his own nose.
“Oh, yes?” He wondered, smiling awkwardly, unsure of her intention. He smelled anyway, finding only his own pheromones and sonic cleansing. “You like it?”
She was nodding, laughing almost, before sighing once more into the tunic.
He chuckled, grabbing at her hips to seat her properly with on and willing his heart not to squeeze too tight at the sight of her reveling in his scent.
It lasted a few dobashes before she yanked the thing off once more.
She continued to simply pout and hug it tight to her chest everytime he tried to put it back on.
“Well if you do not wear anything, you cannot sleep here!” He warned.
She did anyway.
After the first movement of their travel out of Imperial regulated space, he found her in his bed every night, his room practically a botanist’s apothecarium, and his body more tense and heated than he ever experienced it before.
“Are you in heat?” Zethrid asked at breakfast.
Acxa almost spit out her drink.
Eating one handed whilst his ‘little thing’ attempted to slide shiny wrench bolts onto his other hand to match his daisy bracelets, he barely muffled his response.
“What do you think?”
Ezor started laughing.
The first planet they visited was instantly written off.
“Bounty hunters. How do you miss that?” Acxa asked as she walked on his other side out of the main station.
“Hey! It’s green, isn’t it? It’s breathable!” Ezor pointed out, looking up at the wide blue sky and foliage above them.
Lotor glanced at a few more disreputable looking space-faring types move past them.
“Uninhabited is just as crucial.”
They would have to go further.
However, before leaving, he did take her out before they left, the Altean.
At dawn, he snuck her from the ramps of the cruiser to a quiet clearing, so she could feel the sun on her skin.
She spent the morning like something out of a fairy book, dusting her hands over trees and making them shine, making them glow, and erupting the world around her in fauna and blossoms. They grew in her palms, through her hair, about her feet.
Lotor sat and watched. Thinking of his mother, thinking of himself, thinking of how beautiful she truly, actually was.
Eventually, she settled at his feet, with her head in his lap. And for all her promiscuous curves, he was still able to enjoy the quiet contentment of it. The simple joy of her smile in his fingers and the peace she seemed to exude.
“You are rather special.” He whispered to her.
Her eyes found him, wide and happy.
Her skin flushed a rosy pink through her cheeks.
His heart tightened.
They continued visiting planets, though they took turns checking them out and babysitting the Altean.
A movement more saw a better camaraderie with her and the other Generals.
Acxa seemed to break the shyness first when Lotor appeared on deck and found her with a flower crown of her own about her ears. It was bright purples and hot reds.
“T-this—this isn’t—” Acxa’s hands shot up to the flowers, pulling hurriedly. “I-I was just, she—she seemed preoccupied and I thought you could use the break.”
He hid his chuckle in his fist.
Zethrid seemed to find her calling by bringing boxes of polished tools and empty recording chips to the girl, earning happy clapping and bursts of glowing particles as thank you’s. It was as endearing as it was convenient, and Lotor took a certain amount of pleasure of sending off his missives while watching the two fashion necklaces.
Ezor earned her own favor when she insisted that she’d never seen very many flowers, and would like to see all different kinds in the cargo hold. A musing she stated loudly and often enough to entrap the Altean to spending most of her magics on that part of the ship, and thankfully, not their terminals.
A trap at first, it was not lost on him that Ezor would spend her time before bed making sure that particular room was well watered, spruced up, and not tampered with by anyone.
And Narti.
Well.
Narti was the one who found her clothes.
A dress, in particular.
After their sixth planet visit being a bust due to higher population, they were launched out of the atmosphere where Narti entered the command deck with hands trailing in the longest dress he'd ever seen.
From his lap, she’d nearly ripped from her seat, grabbing at the fabric and pulling it away from Narti with a forceful excitement he’d not seen from the Altean either.
“Where the heck did you get that!” Zethrid asked. When Narti waved her arms in specific gestures, Zethrid just shook her head. “Who'd've thought they had nice enough markets for that.”
“She’s putting it on.” Acxa deadpanned her disbelief.
They all watched as she did indeed, opt for the clothing.
To be fair, it was a little… translucent. And wispy. Pinks and purple hues in gradients down expensive gauzy panels that danced about her legs. A great cloud of glitter and gems that seemed to make her seem more ethereal than before as if it were possible.
“You just got clothes that are also shiny. ” Ezor crossed her arms. “It’s so genius it’s stupid.”
She came back to his lap like some sort of princess. A proud smile on her face, brushing at her hair and sitting delicately, her beaded dress clinked along his armor.
“Well done.” He thanked, caressing a finger along her cheek. “It’s not as.. Opaque as one might want,”
Narti shrugged, already turning back to her own console.
“But it will do.”
It didn’t help sleep though.
She still insisted on being bare for that.
“Darling, please,” He heaved, grasping plush, heated, dimpled little hips and pulling them very much away from his own. “Sleep now.”
When he opened his eyes it was to her furious little glare.
“You have to give me some sort of slack, little thing,” He pleaded. It was almost hard to speak. His tongue was warm and seeped with water. Ready to bite, to kiss, to… something. His thighs pulsed.
He groaned.
She slid her arms to his chest when he turned on his back, and then those little hips were back, angling up on his thighs.
A leg dropped between his.
Her knee pressed into his sheathed cock.
“P-Please!” He gasped. His arm rose quickly, body hot, languid, stretching against his will from the sensation. His knuckles rapped on the wall above him. “Hng.”
Her hands dove into the shallows of his collarbone, fingers gripping his still so she could slide her knees over to sit on his hips.
She was all smiles, all wide eyes, and excitement and he just couldn’t bear it much longer.
He wondered if this had been the beginning of their tragic end. If some Galra sod had been subject to an affection he just couldn’t hold back from. As if their beauty in itself wasn’t enough to drive some mad.
His hands found her hips once more, but he didn’t move her. She was hot and heavy on him. And his thighs shivered, wanting to buck up at her like this was a prelude to some rut.
“You should stop.” He warned, closing his eyes in a near pain at the thrilling shiver running through his spine when her playful little fingers pulled at his ear and caressed his cheek.
He felt her lower, felt her breasts pressed between them as she laid, fully, on top of him.
Her hair slid from her bare back to tickle his cheek. Or maybe his hands had knocked it away when he’d dragged his fingers up the delicious expanse of her.
There was a raw, needy, pathetic sound rumbling from his mouth he couldn’t stop and it made his words sound much more lecherous then he’d hoped.
“I do not want to hurt you, not like this.”
Hands pulled at his jaw until he was angled down at her. Her nose bumped his.
When he opened his eyes, he found her close, breathing in his exhale, with watery eyes and a soft, perfect little smile.
“Please.”
She kissed him.
It was instantly too much.
She was above him, in him, warming him from the outside in. He could feel her toes drag along his calf, and her breasts expand in her inhale. His teeth split in a gasp, and her tongue was there to take advantage, body shivering in his hands as she closed her eyes.
And glowed.
Her markings, the little Altean pink beneath her eyes, turned white. Luminescent.
He watched, frozen, even as his body ached and burned, hands about his chest and neck and ears and hair.
It lit up his room, like starlight in space. Or sunlight in darkness.
And then it faded, as her eyes opened and her lips pulled away from him.
Leaving him cold and longing.
And.
Oh.
Oh. No.
She’d—
He sat up altogether in a rush that had her looking jolted as he gathered her into his lap and pulled her face into his hands.
“Did you just imprint on me?” He begged, heaving a quake from his desire to focus. Fury. She’d just—
“I want you.”
His heart seemed to stop in his throat. Thick and heavy.
“You…” It was a whisper.
Her eyes were inescapable. As was her kiss.
And her voice. Her voice.
“I want to be yours as you are mine.”
He chokes on nothing, a strangle of noise is his only response. She talks with unmoving lips, but it’s light and full. And he’s overwhelmed.
No one else is though.
“What do you mean she talks?” Zethrid drops the crate of supplies to give him a proper disbelieving glare.
“You cannot hear her?” He asks, pulling the little hand in his to bring her in front of him.
His Generals wait, paused in their activities to turn toward them.
After a few moments, Acxa breaks off her nutrient bar and shakes her head.
“She’s not talking.” Ezor points out.
He rubs his brow before leaning forward to whisper at her ear. “Come, now, you can show them. Why don’t we start with something simple?”
“You sure you didn’t get spelled or something?” Ezor asks, leaning over her chair.
But he keeps his eyes on her. “Like what you said last night. Your name.”
“She has a name?”
“Allura.”
“Yes, see—” He turns, gesturing at her, “Surely that was clear?”
It’s silent.
Narti scratches her head.
His shoulders fall.
“I heard nothing.”
“Did something happen last night?”
“Are you sure your okay?”
Lotor closes his eyes.
Hands slide up his arm.
“I only want for you.”
Well. That answers that then.
He opened his eyes to stare at her and finds nothing but more of that warmth. That peace.
He sighs.
“I’m afraid she’s managed to reach an imprint if I’m not mistaken.”
It’s silent again.
If only until Ezor starts laughing.
It actually makes things incredibly more convenient, if it’s an inconvenience itself.
“Stay.”
“I have to check the planet Allura, you must stay with Ezor.” He reasons, pulling a lock behind her ear and flicking her lobe. “I will return shortly.”
“I do not want to garden, I want to make pretty things. ” She insists, hands still grasping a little desperately at his armor.
Lotor hums. “Ezor, come with us, Zethrid you stay.”
“Awwwww!” Zethrid whines. She passes her gun to Ezor who smirks, hoisting it on her shoulder. “I was hoping to maybe find more stragglers to shoot here.”
“With any hope it will be uninhabited and our final destination.” Acxa points out. “You shouldn’t be missing anything.”
“Stay here. Zethrid will keep you company.” He hushes through her pouting. “I will be back to take you to see the sun before we launch once more.”
“Together?”
“Of course.” He’s aware he sounds like he’s talking to no one, but she seems reassured enough to let him go.
She waits on the ramps of the cruiser as he leaves with the others. And something pulls at him even when he can’t see her anymore.
The planet itself seems… off.
“Not this one.” He says after a few vargas of scouting.
“Well, at least we didn’t waste any more time I guess,” Ezor says through the comm. “Narti and I will meet back up with you at the ship. Looking forward to seeing if she made me a bracelet this time.”
Standing on a cliffside looking down at a landscape of green terrain and a winding river, Acxa approaches him with a wary look.
“Lotor…” She begins, before turning to look with him. “You will have to pick one of them sooner or later.”
He says nothing.
There’s something heavy in his throat that sinks in his stomach.
“We cannot keep looking for places forever.”
It’s not as if that’s what he wants to do but…
“This one's for you and this one's for you, this one's for Narti.”
“Narti, I think that one is for you.” Ezor points and the General hurries over, dipping her head forward so Allura can drop the chain of orange lilies and energy bullets onto her.
They’re seated on the floor of the deck later that quintent, with Allura sharing gifts of her waiting.
Zethrid has earrings made of spark plugs and tulips from her furry fins that she compares to Acxa’s similar bracelet.
He watches them from sliding doors, considering with a pain so tightly wound in his chest it hurts to swallow.
It would be impossible.
And reckless.
A danger not only to him and his Generals but to her, too. The exact thing he’d been wanting to avoid.
“Allura.” He calls from the door.
She looks up from the floor, where a rose blooms in her fingers she hands to Ezor.
“Shall we?”
She smiles.
The forests of this planet, Arus, are vast and lush.
Allura seems to take to it instantly.
She’s all laughs almost as soon as her bare feet hit the grass.
Her dress looks wet with water drops or rain with the way it glistens as she runs, hurrying from place to place, stopping only to make sure he was following her.
And he does, through boughs and clearings, into softer foliage and heavier glens, like following a fairy into its domain. He drags his fingers through the flowers she creates along trees, feeling a heat there similar to how her hands feel in his, or how her body is against him when they sleep.
“Why me?” He asks suddenly, unable to help himself as they slow into a shaded canopy of trees.
She stops, circling about, rings of junipers blooming at her feet.
Her eyes find him with curiosity.
“You’re very pretty.”
He wants to laugh for some reason. It’s not an answer he expects, and it should be silly. But he’s never been called beautiful, so instead, he simply frowns and blinks fast against a burning nose and a heavy heart.
"You’re gentle.”
Another surprise.
She’s come back. Close enough now that he can reach across and brush a thumb against her lips. He does. It’s warm.
“You are no witch.” He says, more to himself than to her. It’s him who needs to hear it anyway. “She was in love with him.”
“I’m in love with you.”
His whole body tenses and relaxes and tenses again like he can’t control it. He can’t find his heartbeat or air for his lungs.
“Allura, ” He says in a shaky exhale only she can hear. As he can only hear her. “You might as well cast a spell saying that.”
His cheeks burn.
Her eyes widen with white burning like glitter through her pink and blue iris.
Something harsh yanks at him pulls him close.
His hands trail up her sides, ruffling her hair until he cups her cheeks.
This time he kisses her.
This time he imprints.
He knows it even before the heat from her fills him from top to bottom, before her mouth opens and his own heat, that Galra heat, is back full force and he finds himself pressing her into a tree, finds her knees sliding up his leg and her arms burying into his hair.
“Mine.” She says. Feels. Even if it’s his hands that pin her hips against his. Even if it’s his teeth sliding a trail of wet from her mouth to her neck. Like he’s just another present he’d given her. Another shiny trinket she’s claimed.
And he her, apparently.
His cheeks are still hot, and in the shade, they still glow.
So he kisses her again, hurried, teeth bumping hers and catching the tiny gasp he causes when his claws split open the gauzy dress to that bare body he’d already become terribly familiar with.
It might be the sun, or it might be them, or her; but she’s hot to the touch, a burning that makes his tongue fill with arousal and his sheath release him with preliminary excitement.
He groans into her neck, digging a claw into the grooves of wood behind her.
He doesn’t see the flowers burst from his fingers until after he has her.
And he does.
Right there.
Lazy and quick and reckless and wonderful, in sunlight and peace, he lets the dress fall to the grass as slides her up on his propped knee, gnashing his teeth together in her neck as he smells that floral scent of her skin turn heady.
Thick.
Wet.
As bare as she is, her little fingers trying to work at his armor, he pulls her away from it and shakes his head.
He has no patience for anything but her. Now.
So they work his pants instead, and Lotor watches her cheeks puff with excitement as she bites her lip, staring. It’s excruciating, Her affection, her obvious want, her love— it’s too much.
Maybe that’s the reason he nearly yells as she grabs him from sheath to tip, her hot little hands immediately thick in lubrication and fury — the mixing smell of him on her, already—
“Allura, little thing, it’s too much.” He shakes, hands pushing into the tree until they begin to sink. Him to his knees and her to his lap, his cock caught between them in her grip.
“Mine.”
Fury.
It’s her who wriggles her hips to his, pressing the head of him to the entrance of her, because he can’t breathe. He can only gather her in his arms and shiver, panting like an animal as she slides onto him and says ‘Mine, mine, mine,’
And he takes her that way, lost and thoughtless, rolling over waves of pleasure with markings burning into his cheeks and his body in bliss. He flexes with each thrust, only for that tight, terribly soft friction to start all over again.
And he fucks—fury— has —makes love to her.
“I love you.” He says. Or doesn’t say.
And she laughs, with him inside her, happy, smiling.
“I love you too.”
So they stay.
In a way.
They break the cruiser into its individual ships, leaving the largest part of it docked on Arus.
And him.
“I mean, I guess it’s more or less a nice place, I just—” Ezor is throwing her arms up in the air. “If I knew we were looking for a headquarters for us too I would have picked the one with the market!”
“The ship is gonna end up looking like the one we found, isn’t it?” Zethrid wonders, watching as Allura seems to already be turning the thing into a makeshift greenhouse.
“Yeah, but this time it’s voluntary.” Ezor chuckles.
“I suppose none of us particularly liked the capitol…” Acxa says out loud.
He smiles down at her at his side.
“Thank you.” He means it to all of them. “Everyone.”
They all seem to wave him off.
“Whatever!”
“Sir.”
“We couldn’t just leave the little siren by her lonesome!”
He laughs, this time fully and happily.
The had seemed to have found a suitable home in more ways than one.