Earth - Tentacle Breeding Ground Ch. 02

"Wh-huh?" Sarah said in confusion. Zoey put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head, saying,

"It's from a video game."

"Ah."

Sarah wasn't too familiar with the game in question, but she definitely agreed that the woman looked like something out of a fantasy story. Beyond just having light blue skin, she also had long, white hair, two eyes that were slightly larger than a human's, ears with two pointed ends, and flat nostrils instead of a nose.

The fact that she clearly had mammaries (or what Sarah assumed to be breasts) made her question all that she thought she knew about evolution and the common ancestry of humans. Her most striking features, however, were her extremely long white eyebrows that curled up in the air like antennae. At a glance she would be mistaken for a gorgeous, graceful human woman, but she was, without a doubt, an alien.

"Good thing she's at least able to breathe our air." Sarah sighed. "Who knows what might have happened otherwise after we took off her helmet."

"I knew something was different about her when she tried to speak to me after I saved her," Steven said. "I didn't recognize the language."

"After YOU saved HER?" Zoey gave him an incredulous look. "You do realize we were watching the whole thing on the monitors, right?"

"It was all a blur, honestly." He shrugged.

"What were you even thinking!? You could have been captured! Did you even think about how that would affect us? Affect me!?"

"Listen, when I hear someone in trouble, it's my instinct to go help."

"Mhm." Zoey eyed him over skeptically. "I assume I know what 'instincts' you are referring to. So it's just a coincidence that she happens to be a total babe?"

"I can't control the winds of fate. We're all just slaves to destiny..." Steven said wistfully while giving his sister a dramatic look. She punched him in the arm.

"If you ever do something like that again, you're going to WISH they had taken you away." She glared at him and shoved a spoonful of spinach into her mouth. "Blughh... I'll never get used to this..." She mournfully swallowed the offending green mush. She gulped down the rest of her bottled water as if trying to drown herself to avoid having to eat any more vegetables.

"Hey, careful with how much of that you drink," Adam cautioned. "As Steven confirmed earlier, our water barrels are running pretty low due to the lack of rain. We need to be a bit more frugal in our water usage for the time being."

"Ah, right..." Zoey said sheepishly.

"Don't worry so much," said Steven, trying to reassure his sister. "It looked like some rain clouds were finally rolling in overhead just as I was getting back. We'll be able to replenish our water reserves in no time!"

The rest of the group didn't seem too sure, however, and they continued to eat in silence for a few more minutes until Adam once again broke the awkward silence.

"So..." He spoke slowly. "What about... alien viruses and stuff? Shouldn't we be quarantining her or something?"

"Mnn, thash a common mishconshepshun," Zoey said through a mouthful of greens while shaking her head. She took a labored gulp and continued. "Bacteria and viruses that evolved on Earth alongside humans are able to infect us for that exact reason. Pathogenesis requires that the bacteria or virus be able to interface with the host's cells, which is the product of millions of years of coevolution. Furthermore -"

"Ok, let me stop you right there," Steven groaned, putting his hand up to his sister's blabbering mouth. "We get it. You're smart. It's good to know we're safe from killer alien diseases, at least."

"Zoey's right," Sarah agreed. "However... this... alien, for lack of a better name, does share a surprising amount of features with us. So it may be too early to assume that their biology is completely different from ours."

"We actually refer to ourselves as 'Bellus.'"

All four of the humans in the room swiveled in their seats to face the kitchen entryway. Adam barely seemed to notice that he knocked over his open bottle of water. Standing behind them all was the alien woman, who was now very much awake. Her large, almond shaped eyes had a buttery yellow hue to them and white irises in the center.

Her eyes scanned the room calmly, giving off the impression that she was sizing them all up. The alien didn't seem concerned at all, likely because she believed that she could take them all in a fight. Based on the footage from before, Sarah had no doubt that this belief was well founded.

"Forgive me for intruding on this communal calorie ingestion," the 'bellus' continued. "But we must be swift. I believe we share a common enemy in the Krinis and time grows short for us to act." She looked out at them all expectantly. No one said a word as they simply stared at the alien nonplussed.

"Y-you can speak English...?" Steven finally mustered up the courage to ask. "But back then you..."

"Did not have this," she replied. She tossed him something, which he caught out of the air.

"My phone!" Steven exclaimed. "I thought I lost this forever!"

"Yes, apologies. I procured this during our earlier battle. Though primitive, I was able to operate it well enough to gain at least a basic understanding of your species and planet." She wore an expression that Sarah swore was a smug grin, but it was hard to know for sure. "I will admit, I was worried you all spoke in rhyme like on your device there. I am glad to know that you do not seem to behave this way normally."

"What...?" Steven scratched his head. "Oh...! You must have listened to my music! I've got good taste, right?"

"I have not had a chance to sample your kind's cuisine. It hardly seems palatable." She gave a side-eyed glance at Zoey, who still had a soggy spinach leaf dangling from her stupefied mouth. "I take it by your inexpressive faces that your planet has yet to achieve interstellar contact. I imagine that my presence must be quite shocking, then, but I would expect the Krinis to be even more so."

"Krinis..." Sarah finally found her words. "You've said that a couple of times now... what is that?" The alien looked at Sarah as if she were a pitiful child. Sarah was getting a little tired of her apparent superiority complex, even if it was arguably justified.

"The ones consuming your planet," she replied. "The parasites who leech off of your reproductive systems. They are the Krinis. They devastated my world and are now on the verge of claiming yours. Or maybe you did not notice?"

"Yeah we 'noticed,'" Adam said with a huff. "Maybe you didn't notice yourself, but we saved your life - so maybe at least thank us, miss alien?" She looked over at him with an evaluating gaze, blinking a few times before giving a small smile.

"Forgive me. I am not yet accustomed to your social mores." She put her hands up to her eyebrow-antennae in a sort of salute. "You may call this one A'luhr. It is the closest approximation to your human vocal sounds. Thank you for assisting and healing me, though the battle was lost."

"You can call me Adam. This is my place."

"Impressive," said A'luhr, not looking particularly impressed.

"S-Steven!" Seven stuttered, with a hint of a blush.

"I'm Zoey." Said his sister as she finished the food in her mouth with a look of embarrassment.

"My name is Sarah Cassidy," Sarah declared, standing and walking towards A'luhr. "I-I have so many questions to ask you... about... everything! But to start, what did you mean when you said 'our time grows short'?"

"Based on how much time seems to have elapsed since they first invaded your planet, it would be unsurprising if the new Krinis Queen were to hatch soon."

"Queen? Like a hive?" Sarah asked. A'luhr sighed and leaned against the doorframe.

"It seems you have discovered less than I had anticipated," she said in an exasperated voice. "Allow me to explain the perilous situation we are all in."

***

Over the course of the next half hour, A'luhr conveyed what she knew about the tentacle aliens, which apparently were called the Krinis. The group asked questions here and there, but they got the gist of it pretty quickly. These parasitic beings were unable to reliably reproduce on their own, as their fertility rates were extremely low. To make up for this, they assimilated the local dominant sexual species and turned them into their mindless breeding slaves - often employing powerful chemical excretions to directly stimulate their prey's pleasure centers.

The wombs and reproductive juices of their captives would be used to birth more of their kind and provide sustenance to the youth. Once enough of these life-giving liquids were harvested from their slaves, a queen would be born, who would leave the nest and head out to other planets to parasitize and repeat the process.

Apparently the matriarch was capable of faster-than-light speeds, though A'luhr admitted she was not clear on how a mere organism could achieve this - but luckily it seemed this was a trait unique to the queen. A'luhr had managed to escape from the nests on her own planet and followed the new queen using her own vessel, arriving on Earth shortly after the Krinis first invaded.

"This... this is all quite a lot to take in..." Sarah croaked. "So basically these... 'Krinis' impregnate our women and consume the semen of our men in order to further their species?"

"Correct," A'luhr affirmed.

"If grabbing as many people as possible is in their best interest, why don't they just keep using those big balloon units?" Steven asked.

"Ah, you must mean the Kri-vesus," A'luhr replied. "I do not know much about them, as my own knowledge is based on my observations from when my own planet was invaded, but I believe it is because they require too much energy to keep active. The Krinis are a subterranean species and do not enjoy the light of the stars. The young queen sends the Kri-vesus as a first wave of attack on a new planet to collect as many slaves as possible before they must be retired. With the plentiful captives, they can create drones to go and hunt for more prey, as the drones use the bodily fluids of the slaves inside of them to maintain their energy."

"You mean the Takers?" Adam asked. "The ones with the people stuck inside them?"

"Yes. The ones that attacked me while I attempted to access your local reserves of starfire," A'luhr sighed regretfully.

"Starfire?" Zoey, who had been looking more and more depressed by the minute, perked up at the interesting name.

"Hmm..." A'luhr's eyebrows curled as if in thought. "I do not know its name in your tongue. It is a mineral not found on the Krinis' home planet. When ignited with flame, it creates a light of pure, blinding brilliance that reduces their cells to ash. It is their only true weakness, that I know of, at least."

"What about those?" Steven gestured towards the two grenade-like orbs resting on A'luhr's hip. "They seemed to blast those freaks pretty well." Sarah had to agree, remembering how they had reduced the seemingly unstoppable Takers to helpless piles of writhing tentacles.

"These simply emit a high-frequency sound that temporarily disrupts the drones' connections to the queen." A'luhr ran her fingers over them. "It does not last long and each one is single-use. Hardly a solution with any sort of finality. Regrettably, I only have these two left after I lost my ship."

"Y-your ship!?" Adam suddenly jumped from his seat, causing the rest of the group to flinch in surprise. "What do you mean 'lost'!? You mean you LOST alien technology that is capable of FTL speeds!? Studying that would revolutionize humanity!" He ran his hand through his beard in frustration.

"Unfortunately, I was still exiting cryosleep when my vessel entered your planet's atmosphere." A'luhr replied in an annoyed voice. "I landed in the water. Did you know your planet is mostly water? Ridiculous. Needless to say, my spacecraft was not designed to be a submersible. I barely managed to get out and swim to the nearby shore before it sank down."

Adam seemed on the verge of tears. She shifted her weight uncertainly, clearly not expecting this sort of reaction.

"It... it could be saved, I suspect." She comforted him. "But we need to focus on saving your species first, or else there will not be any humanity left to revolutionize."

"Why do you care about us so much?" Steven asked. "Why come all the way out here just to help a bunch of primitive humans?"

"Revenge." She answered coldly, her ethereal eyes narrowing. "And to stop their plague-like spread once and for all."

"Fair enough." Steven gulped.

"So, how do you propose we go about defeating these things, then?" Sarah interjected. "You mentioned something called 'starfire'? Can you elaborate?"

"I already explained it to you," A'luhr sighed. "It is a mineral that glows brightly when put to flame. I am not sure how else to describe it. My sensor - now broken, by the way..." She held up a fractured device on her wrist and gave an apologetic look to Adam, who seemed about ready to pull his scruffy whiskers out. "My sensor showed a modest collection of the material in that nearby facility. Unfortunately, I was not expecting the entrances to already be covered in the Krinis's domain... and, well, you know the rest."

Sarah racked her brains trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. A mineral that burned brightly? She thought back to the flare gun she had used. Steven proved that it wasn't the light itself that harmed the tentacles, and it didn't seem to be heat either. Was it perhaps the compounds inside of the flare that had the effect...? She wasn't a chemist, but she knew enough about chemical reactions to realize what A'luhr was referring to. It was one of the main ingredients in flares.

"Magnesium." Sarah breathed, feeling as if a curtain had been lifted from her eyes. "Or magnesium-oxide, to be more precise. A'luhr - am I saying that right? A'luhr, your scanner tool must have picked up the traces of magnesium that our university keeps in the chemistry lab storage!"

"It sounds like you are familiar with starfire, then." A'luhr nodded approvingly. "Or, 'magnesium' as you call it. Also, yes."

"Mm?" Sarah was confused.

"Yes, you pronounced my name correctly."

"O-oh!" Sarah smiled bashfully.

"However, knowing of the starfire and having it in our hands are two different things. I am reluctant to return to that building as the Krinis no doubt have it marked now."

"Damn..." Adam kicked the wall. "Well how in the hell are we supposed to get a bunch of magnesium now, then?"

"We may not need 'a bunch'," A'luhr replied. "We only need one good hit on the new, gestating queen. If you have any available, it may be enough."

"Well, unfortunately magnesium wasn't on my shopping list when I was putting together this shelter," Adam groaned.

"What do you even use it for?" Zoey asked, curious as always.

"Flares, for one," Sarah explained. "It's what makes them so bright and glow for as long as they do. But unless you have more flares kicking around...?" She looked hopefully at Adam who just shook his head. "I thought so..." She sighed.

They all seemed lost in thought for a little while, trying to figure out some sort of way to safely get back into the university.

"...Would fireworks have magnesium in them...?" Steven suddenly asked with a glint in his eyes.

"Sure." Adam shrugged. "But I don't have those either. I didn't build this place with celebrations in mind."

"I have some." Steven suddenly began to fill with an excited energy. "In- in my backpack! The one I dropped in the street when we first got here!"

"THAT'S what you were carrying in there!?" Zoey shrieked. "Why did you even HAVE fireworks!? They're ILLEGAL this time of year... I'm pretty sure...!"

"Hey, get off my case! I bought them back in July and planned to set them off for my 500k subscribers mark on my channel. I figured I'd bring them along as flares or distractions or something. I dunno. I had other stuff in there too! Jeez!" Steven crossed his arms defensively.

"A good thought." Sarah nodded. "But they're probably no-good now. After sitting out in the elements for a couple months, surely they've gotten wet and destroyed." Adam began to pace back and forth, a look of realization on his face.

"I'm not so sure about that..." He mused. "The rain barrels have been emptying ever since day one. I don't think we've actually had any rain at all in the time since the invasion started. Right?"

"Y-yeah...!" Zoey squealed. "I don't think we've had any rain! It could still be dry out there!"

"These... 'fireworks' sound promising." A'luhr pondered, her eyebrows twitching with a mind of their own. "I believe you said you noticed incoming precipitation earlier, however? Apologies, but I eavesdropped for a short while before making my presence known."

"Fuck!" Steven swore, jumping to his feet. "She's right! It looked like we were going to get rain today!"

"How far away was that backpack?" Adam hurriedly asked.

"Only about a block or two!" Sarah replied, also standing. "If we hurry, we can get there before it starts to pour!"

"Is that really worth going back out there for?" Zoey asked nervously. "The Takers are still wandering around, I'm sure."

"That's why we have these bad boys!" Steven shouted, running up to A'luhr and gesturing towards her two round weapons. She seemed surprised by his sudden advance and quickly grabbed him in a chokehold, smothering his face between her other two round weapons. He was shaken by this but didn't seem to mind, much to Zoey's look of disdain.

"Apologies." A'luhr said, releasing him. "Do not approach me without warning. It is a reflex." Steven took a moment before stepping away from her generous bosom and rubbing his neck.

"We can get away from the Takers with those things, though, right?" Steven croaked.

"Yes, but I only have two left."

"Then let's make them count," Sarah said, already moving towards the door with a look of determination on her face.

***

"There it is!" Steven whispered to the rest of the group. Sarah and A'luhr came to a stop behind him and peered out from behind a parked car towards where he was pointing. Sure enough, a large black backpack could be seen on the side of the road, covered in a layer of hard orange ichor.

"This is a problem." A'luhr spoke in a concerned tone. "We are going to need to break through the shell covering your storage unit. It will be loud. It will attract nearby Krinis drones." The group had been careful to watch both the streets and the skies for drones.

So far they seemed to be in the clear, but the dragonfly-looking ones were fast and stealthy, so they stayed vigilant. The weakness of the dragonflies, or the Kri-penna, as A'luhr called them (Sarah preferred 'dragonfly'), was that they had no captive host inside their bodies from which to draw energy. As such, they had to quickly go back and forth between the nest and their hunting grounds in order to stay energized. With the skies clear, now was the group's best chance.

As Sarah looked up to confirm that there were no buzzing creatures above them, she felt a drop of water hit her cheek. She began to equate the dark clouds closing in above to hands circling their necks. She knew they had to take action NOW.

"Can't we just use your weapons if a Taker comes to investigate?" Steven asked hopefully.

"No." A'luhr's eyebrows shivered. "It will not stop them for long enough. Or, at least, it would be a very big gamble."

"What if..." Sarah gulped. "What if we had some sort of... of distraction...?"

"What are you suggesting?" A'luhr turned to her in surprise.

"J-just... I could... you know... get the attention of any of the Takers that come our way...?" Sarah could feel heat rising in her face.

"What!?" Steven hissed. "You know what those things do, right!? Besides, who's to say that they will only go after you and not us as well?" This is a dumb plan!" A couple more raindrops pattered to the pavement next to them.