The Hierarchy of Now and Forever Ch. 05

"How do I look?" she buzzed in the elegant, musical Hylano version of Terran.

John reached up to tug at his collar, which felt quite tight, a fact rendered only slightly perplexing by his shirtless state. "I, ah, forgot Hylano women are so...fetching."

"Big titty mantis babes, you mean?"

"Well, yes, but I was trying to be more classy about it," John murmured, his eyes drinking in her body. He slid his hands down to his own hips, drawing back a bit so that he could lift one knee, then the other. His dick sprang free, bobbing slightly as he licked his lips slowly. He didn't need to work hard to be aroused by the gleaming elegance of a Hylano female - but the nervous excitement in the back of his mind only worked to make him more aroused. He didn't know what their conception of dragons was. What would he end up looking like when Pixie wiggled her fingers and let her powers to control and shift perceptions go.

He frowned, slightly. The fact she could so readily change how he saw the world was a little alarming, now that he thought about it. And now that he had thought about it, he wondered why it had taken him this long to even think that thought. Was that itself some trick of her powers? Or was it just that the merger felt so natural, so easy, like he had been waiting for it his whole life and hadn't known it? Pixie, who had lifted her hand, dropped it, looking at him with concern.

"Oh," she said.

"Oh what?" John asked.

"I just realized that too," she said. "Uh, I promise, I won't change your perception without your permission." She put her long, elegant fingered palms against his chest, sliding one to cover his heart. The thumping in his chest felt all the more present with her hand pressing to him. She sat up, them laid a curved cheek-mandible against his pecs, her antennas tickling his nose like dandilions being brushed against his face. John screwed up his face, trying to not giggle, squirm or sneeze. His hand reached up and he brushed her antenna back, letting them lay flat against her head as she spoke. "I really don't uhhhgnnh!"

She twitched, quivered, then gasped - and John was about to ask her if she had been hurt when her antennas bopped back up and slapped his nose and lips again. John made a face, then sniffed and almost sneezed as something tickled the back of his nose. He drew back, his hands on her shoulders as Pixie remained faintly wobbly - her compound eyes glittering, her mandibles opened in the Hylano version of a slack jawed face of orgasmic pleasure. Ahegao, he believed the term was. His hands cupped her green cheeks, pushing her mandibles back together.

"Pixie?" he asked.

"A-Antenna are erogenous zones..." she whispered.

"Oh," John said, blinking - a little nonplussed. He let himself grin. "They also tickle."

"Mmm." Her eyes glittered as she tilted her head, letting her antennas bob to the side. "A-Anyway, uh, I really don't want to mess with how you see the world. The very idea feels abhorrnt. Like...kissing your sister." She paused. "Like, my sister, not your sister. Do you have a sister?"

"Only child," John said, amused.

"Dang," Pixie said, then clicked her mandibles. "But, like, I want you to trust me. And I want me to trust me. Remember, I am only a few days old."

"I prefer not too, honestly," John admitted, grinning at her wryly. "You, for one, make a far better babe than baby."

"Aww!" She clicked her mandibles, her antenna twitching eagerly. "Anyway! You promised me a dragon! Come on! Dragon it up!" She paused. "Oh, right." She snapped her fingers. "I hope you like transformation sequences." She said, as John drew his hands back, looking down at them. They seemed completely human.

"I don't even know what-" John started, then gasped as he felt a strange heat growing inside of his body. His bones ached and throbbed - but they ached and throbbed in the same way his manhood did when he was truly, deeply aroused. It wasn't painful, it wasn't irritating. It was more...focusing. Like he couldn't bear to draw his attention away from it, even as his chest began to itch. He reached up, panting softly as his fingernails scraped at his skin - and to his shock, his skin began to peel away. Rather than bloody red sores beneath, though, there was instead a flash of brilliant emerald green. His bones ached harder and he groaned, stretching his head forward - and he felt his spine crack and begin to stretch upwards. The ache above his buttocks grew more intense and he felt a pressure against his skin, which burst as a thick, stubby tail began to grow from himself. His hands scratched more eagerly, spreading away from his chest, peeling huge dry clumps of skin away. No gore. Just more gleaming scales, bright and shining in the ship lights. His fingernails sharpened, hardened, and his shoulders bunched as he felt more pressure.

"Oh god!" John moaned, his voice nearly orgasmic as he felt wings burst from his back, his lips stretching as his face elongated with a soft click as his transformation completed. His feet stretched and grew long and arched, his knees popped to become digitigrade, and his tail burst from his back, sweeping let and right. The last bits of his skin fell away, revealing more green scales - ranging from so dark they were almost black to so light that they were nearly yellow, caressing his muscular body as close as his skin had before. His maw was full of sharp teeth and his wings were leathery, batlike. Stretching behind him and flexing as his clawed hands planted to either side of Pixie's shoulders.

She clicked her mandibles and clapped her hands together. "Ee! You're a perfect dragon!"

John tried to speak through his panting. "This is very similar to an Earth dragon, you know?"

"Yeah, the Hylano got the mythological concept from you after first contact," Pixie murmured. "From a historical image board, I believe."

John blinked down at her, his nictitating membranes flicking over eyes he was sure were slitted. Then he looked down to see that his cock had not only gotten significantly larger, but it had also become both knotted...and joined by a second, slightly smaller cock. The two dripped with eagerness, self lubricating and slippery as if they had been oiled. He lifted his head to Pixie's face. She giggled, and clicked her mandibles again.

"A very fun image board!" Pixie said. "Now, I think-"

John grinned and grabbed onto her hips, cutting her off.

"You said you wanted a dragon, Princess," he crooned, trying to get into character for her. It was remarkably easy. He felt so...strong. Energy pulsed through his veins. His tail lashed from side to side as Pixie's mandibles clacked shut. "You got a dragon."

"Eep!" Pixie squeaked.

Then he tossed her up into the air and flipped her around with the same motion. The slender, winged mantis-girl landed on her hands and knees, her rump thrust into the air. Due to a remarkable display of convergent evolution, her chitin's rump was as rounded and toothsome as a model from Earth - and between those hard, sharp thighs was soft, rubbery flesh - and there, gleaming and dripping with arousal, was a dark green-black pair of pussy lips that looked so damn inviting that it was all John could do to not croon.

"I-I'll never surrender to your dark whims!" Pixie squeaked, glancing over her shoulder. "N-nhhghh!" She groaned as his scaled hand grabbed her by the base of her antenna, his other gripping her shoulder, pinning her down. He stroked her antenna up and down as if he was massaging a cock - and as he did so, her hips bucked and twitched. Thick, juicy, glowing green girlcum slithered down her thighs, puddling onto the bed as she groaned against the mattress. "Nngh! Take me, fuck me, claim me for your dark whims, oh gods, yes! Yes! Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"

John chuckled. "You know, in a proper roleplay, you should-"

"Fuuuuuuuuuck meeeee!" She whined.

"-really try and..." He stroked her antenna faster now. If it were possible for compound eyes to roll back into one's skull, he was pretty sure Pixie's would have at that point. "...hold out longer."

"Hghngnnnngh!" she groaned, inarticulately as her spine curved so hard and fierce that she managed to press her belly to the bed while pushing her ass insistantly up. The thin line of green girlcum spurting from her sex was strong enough to carry the distance and soak both of his dicks and his balls as she squirted in bliss. John chuckled, releasing her antenna - making her mewl in animal want. Insectoid want, actually.

"Taking note for any future Hylano diplomatic..." His dicks pressed against her ass and her cunt with the same easy motion of his hips. He thrust deep - his members spreading her as she tightened around both of him at once, the double sensation so intense that he let out a snarling groan, thin lines of smoke spurting from his nostrils. "...efforts!"

"H-Hah!" Pixie gasped, her hands reaching up to grab the headboard as she braced herself. She needed it too. John had gotten uesd to the fact that, since this was mostly in his head, sustained by nerve impulses and psychic powers...he didn't need to be gentle. Or hold back. Or. Anything, really! So, he grabbed onto both of her hips with a powerful pressure and the began to thrust into his dream girl with impacts powerful enough to fold her in half. Her hips jiggled and her chitin clicked and clacked as the whole bed swayed with every powerful thrust of his draconic hemipeen, his scaled balls clapping against her thighs. Pixie managed words, despite that.

They were...emphatic.

"Fuck! Yes! Ah! My dragon god! Yes! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fhuckkkk! Oh god, god, yes, yes, ah! I'm cum...I'm cumming, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" She moaned desperately, her mandibles opening wide as her antennas twitched to their full extension. Her fingers gripped the headboard so hard that if her knuckles had been able too, they'd have turned white. Her sex tightened around his lower dick, while her anus gripped his upper dick like a desperate, needy hand. Her mandibles opened even wider as she pushed her hips back and her juices splashed against his thighs, dripping down his balls, puddling against his knees as John simply reveled in the heavy, hearty plap plap plap slap of balls to thighs.

"You're my princess now," John growled.

"Yes! I'm your princess now! Yes! Ah! Oh god!" Pixie moaned.

The communicator chose the worst possible moment in the universe to blip loudly. John snatched it - noticing, barely, that it actually drifted to his hand before he quite reached it, allowing him to grab it without moving or shifting from his position behind the beautiful psuedo-Hylano. He put it to his ear and growled into it. "Yeah?"

"Captain, this is Lt. Sheyshan," Shey's voice came over the line. "We're almost too Sigma Draconis and a mass bubble is approaching us. We believe they're going to attempt to pull us out of the SOF."

"Understood," John said, panting. "Be there in in a second."

"Very good. Enjoy yourself, Captain," Shey said, then the line clicked off. John, who had not paused in his thrusting, tossed the wrist com aside, grinning ferally down at Pixie, who had pressed her face into the pillow. Her hips twitched and she moaned.

"Want me to finish you off?" she asked, her voice ragged.

"Sure, I-" John started, ready to begin thrusting without even trying to hold back. Before he could move, a spark of white, hot, blazing pleasure exploded in the center of his mind. It swept through his body with the thunderous crack of a nuclear bomb going off, and with about the same raw power. His balls tightened and he threw his head back, roaring as bliss exploded through him and he came. And came. And came. And came. The pleasure crested, ebbed, then flowed back against him like a tidal wave as he roared a second time - and felt his seed gushing around the twin dicks he had buried deep inside of his woman. Pixie moaned again and again, while white light seemed to blank out everything. John slid back, then shook his head - blinking slowly.

The white haze cleared and he saw Pixie, laying on her side, her compound eyes glassy. Her buttocks and her cunt oozed with thick, thick white cum, flowing down her thighs like small rivers. Even more cum splashed her face, her breasts, her back, her belly, her sides. It was as if he had just spurted over her like a firehose. Even her tummy was slightly swelling, as if she had already become pregnant - but as he watched, she put her hand on her belly, mewling as it started to shrink, and yet more cum dripped from her ass, splashing onto the bed. Her head rolled to the side and her mandibles clacked loudly.

"I forgot," she said, sounding dazed. "Dragons cum a lot."

John nodded.

"Can you give us a shower before we head to the bridge?"

"Do you think that's cum that's actually dripping from me?" Pixie grinned.

Between blinks, John was nude, but clean, and once more looked and felt human. Pixie was already dressed and sitting up, her cheeks flushed and her hair mussed. John sniffed and she still smelled like a week of sex, condensed into one horny little antenna'd cutie. She grinned, sheepishly.

"Hey, I'm psychic, not miracle worker," Pixie muttered.

***

When John reached the bridge of the Excalibur, he was dressed and prepared to focus once more. He strode onto the bridge to find that the rest of his officers were all readied and at their posts. He nodded to Lt. Sheyshan. "Shey, what are we looking at here?"

"Relatively small mass shadow," she said. "They're in Tier 2, far enough above us we can't get a good resolution on sensors, but I have no reason to think they're not the trade station's picket fleet."

"How big is relatively small?" John asked, taking his seat in his command chair, strapping in as Pixie shrank to the size of...well, a pixie and settled onto his shoulder. Triana, who had her dossier of Totality ships on display and was running their mass levels through the battle computer, turned back to face him. She looked a bit pensive, but not grim.

"At most, we're looking at a single ship of the same size, or two to three smaller ships. If they're Paw, we may be looking at modified Pallas class frigates or, maybe, a Tiger class heavy cruiser." She drummed her fingers on the console. "Kat may be able to tell more, I'm sending this data down to her."

"You know what I'm wondering about?" Albert asked as he adjusted their course - when their mass and the approaching picket's mass intersected, they were going to be pulled out of the SOF near the edge of the Sigma Draconis system. Albert, like any pilot worth his salt, was picking a place with some astro-navigational dangers. In this case, he was going to try and drop them near ring system of a subjovian gas giant at the edge of Sigma Draconis.

"Hmm?" Eugene asked.

"Why'd the Totality make the Paw the battle thralls and not the Yip?" he asked, turning to face the rest of them. "I mean, we all know cats are bastards-"

"I heard that!" Kat's voice came from the console. John shot Albert a look, and Albert lifted his hands up.

"Bastards parenthesis complimentary close parenthesis," he said into the console.

"Damn straight!"

"But the Yip? They're a lot more prone to fighting as a unit rather than running off solo, right? Which you want for a navy and all." he said. "I mean, I get why the Lop, sadly, got the Pleasure Slave role." He made a face. "Considering, well..." He trailed off, while Triana snorted.

"Have you ever tried to get a day's work out of a cat?" she asked, playfully. "If Kat wasn't as into machines as she is, do you think we'd get a single shift out of here?" She paused. "Complimentary."

"Nah, that's just true," Kat said, with equanimity. "Like, c'mon, who the fuck works if you don't have too?"

"The Yip, you can get to work in a factory. The Lob...uh...well..." Triana coughed. "So, that just leaves the Paw, if you want to break up the Yip-Paw-Lob unity and make them into three distinct species."

"Grim, but it tracks," John said, rubbing his chin. "ETA on our intersection?"

"Right about..." Albert lifted his hand. "Now."

The ship shuddered as they shunted upwards, through tier after tier of the Space Opera Field, emerging with a blazing flare of Cerenkov radiation into the orbit of Sigma Draconis' largest gas giant. A glittering ring of ice asteroids swept out before them as three similar pinpricks appeared and the three Paw frigates emerged from Tier Two of the SOF. The Pallas class was well named, and well suited, to this region of space: To make them as inexpensively as possible, the Paw took asteroids, hollowed them out, and then filled them with their engines and studded them with sensor antennas and weapon arrays that made them look like asteroids that had grown a thick, downy coat of fur. From a distance, with their arrays retracted, they looked quite a lot like rocks.

These three fanned out into a triangular formation as Shey put her finger to her earpiece. "We're being hailed, Captain."

"Do you have the obfuscation programs online?" John asked.

"Yes, every image we're sending to them will be doctored. They'll be seeing this," Shey said, turning her console screen to show John an image of him as a Kruul, surrounded by other Kruul bridge crew officers - and he had to admit, all of his bridge officers re-imagined as that burly, hideous race was not exactly the most encouraging thing in the universe. Despite that, he gave a smile to Shey, then turned back to the front screen.

"Patch them through," he said.

The screen flickered and he saw his first Paw that wasn't Kat.

She was a broad shouldered, muscular woman with olive brown skin, silver gray hair, curved at ears, and whisker tattoos that marked out her cheeks with fierce, tiger-striped lines. She wore a furry bikini, thong and boots - magnetic soles built into the false pads of the fluffy, cat-like things. Her gauntlets were huge and paw shaped as well, covered with the same silvery fur as the rest of her attire. Her body, and good god she exposed much of it, was seamed with scars ranging from parallel claw marks to puckered gunshot wounds. Her breasts were larger than John's head, perky enough to stand proudly despite their heft, and her features were that of a dangerous predator: Sharp eyed, attentive and fierce. She seemed to be mature enough to be a cougar rather than a kitten - and her voice backed that up as she purred.

"Mrrwell, what do we have here...a little pack of K-rrrr-uul in our region of space!" she said, her voice full of trilling purrs as she lifted one of her paw-clad hands to brush her silvery hair back. "Normally, our fellow Battle Thralls tell us when their ugly kin are sniffing around - but here you are, sneaking in through the back door like a pack of sorry dogs. So, why don't you tell me what you're doing here before we splash your ugly little kitbash into space dust!"

"Name first," John growled. He was careful to not pitch his voice down too much or try and sound extra gravely, as that was what the computer was for. The alteration program must have worked because the Paw captain sniff.

"I am Captain Tygress Starchaser, Captain of the Paw Slave Armada Waa-7, which is why you should begin to be more polite to me, Krull, or else my glaring will decide to sharpen our claws on you..." She mimed a claw swipe with her hand - and silvery daggers the length of kitchen knives burst from her gauntlet before retracting.

"I am Domineer Trudd," John said, flatly. "We are a trade ship from the Kruul Maliceocracy. As much as it pains me to not torture a little kitten like you, I must request instead freedom to approach Trade-1 and unload our hold." He glared at her.