Apocalypse How

When: After killing the Arachdok.

Robashah had helped kill the Arachdok for her Seymour, but she wasn't happy about it. “Seymour! I cannot believe we did that!”
“Why not?” Said Seymour, who happened to be feeling quite heroic.
“Because the Arachdok protects us from the Dernhaphasar! I told you!”

Seymour thought back...

<snip>"We leave our men as offering on the stone outside the Arachdok's cave. Arachdok likes fat juicy handsome ones. We look after Arachdok so it protects us from the Dernhaphasar."
But he wasn't taking it in. He smiled stupidly at the breathtakingly comely girl.
"Oh, Seymour." She held his hand. "I do not want to feed you to Arachdok. I want to keep you." </snip>

Smeg. She had. “Oh. Yes. Sorry I... wasn't in my right mind at the time.”
A guilty expression rippled across Roboshah's face.
Niples put a hand to his head, brain still not fully in order. He was, however, focused enough to be formal. “I'm... sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused, Ms. Shah.” He cast his gaze elsewhere.
Roboshah was crestfallen at both his tone and his choice of words. “'Ms. Shah'? Seymour, what has happened to 'Shelly'?”
He looked back. Her true form was now apparent to his rapidly recovering mind. “Ms. Shah, I didn't know...” He swept his hand to indicate her shape “... what you were, then.”
Roboshah's skin turned pale. When she next spoke, her voice was very small. “But, Mister Seymour, you knew who I was...”
Seymour sniffed as if she'd just suggested he eat fish fingers instead of caviar.
“I'm afraid things could never work between us. A Pleasure GELF and an ambassador... I'm sorry.”
Her head dropped. “... And you call us pigs... Good bye, Mister Seymour.”
With that, she walked slowly off into the forest.
Phil and Alex were supporting the now conscious but weak Jay. They exchanged pained glances above his bowed head.
The GELF leader, Jagara, swivelled Seymour to face her. “You utter fools! The Dernhaphasar must be the ones causing these...” She lifted her hands in a dramatic gesture “... rumblings. Now Arachdok is dead, they will try to destroy Belhaphasar. They are hateful and stupid. They will think nothing of harming not only Belhaphasar, but the entire landsphere, merely to hurt us.”
“Landsphere?” Enquired Phil. “Oh, you mean 'planet'.”
“Yes. They have talked of a new weapon which harnesses the power of the sphere-core itself. We begged them not to use such unstable technology. We could only control them by the threat of Arachdok snatching their young from their beds. Now they have no Arachdok to fear, they will use it.”
“You threatened them with a giant, child-stealing, spider?” Alex asked.
“It was the only way...”
“Nice.”
Seymour shook himself mentally and managed to retain his air of polite formality, muttered though it was. “Well we can't have you blown up on our account. You and your ladies must come aboard the Blue Dwarf with us, of course.”
Alex noticed that Seymour’s gaze trailed to the path Shelly had taken into the forest, though he had no clue as to what the man was thinking.
He was glad his own GELFs had only been after one thing: plumpening him up for their own selfish reasons. Hah, yeah, thank Gods they weren't interested in him as a person! That would've suck-
Wait... Huh.

<snip>"We'll drop them off at the nearest S-3 planet. Its the least we could do." Jay responded. </snip>

–

Back on the Dwarf.

Alex sat in the canteen, feet up on a table, nursing a cup of Bedge Brew (as he'd come to think of extra strong tea) reflecting on the previous week's shenanigans.
Last night, on Seymour's instruction, he'd helped house the Belhaphasarians, or sexpigs, or Kissmammal 3000s – whatever – in a large cargo bay which was currently serving as a refugee centre until they found them a suitable new home. While constructing the partitions with Bedge's help, he'd listened to the... creatures'... chatter, asked a couple of questions, and been able to make sense of a few things. 'Course, old habits died hard so some of them had tried tempting him into sex with them, which – though he'd found himself in several steamy embraces - he'd managed to resist. The knowledge that the incredible ebony skinned beauty in front of you was, in reality, an intelligent porcine sex toy was a helpful libido dampener (“dampener” because, surprisingly, it wasn't a cure, just an assistance).

So, it turned out the Belhaphasarian GELFs had been engaged in war with the Dernhaphasar for many years. Originally one faction, they had split when the Dernhaphasar insisted they all become subterranean. The light loving Belhaphasar refused and they'd become estranged, separate, and eventually, as is sadly so often the way with apparently intelligent species who hold different beliefs, enemies.
The Dernhaphasar were also Pleasure GELFs but of a slightly different variety. They'd been purposely created with a screw loose, for those with darker fantasies. They were bad tempered, reckless and violent. They'd gone underground claiming they could only tolerate small doses of sunlight because the rays caused their all-important genitals to wither and die. They were, quite frankly, two ears short of a rampant rabbit.
As for the Arachdok, it was a failed experiment – in warfare, not pleasure in this instance – which had been dumped on the planet along with the unwanted GELFS. It was loyal to the Belhaphasarians as long as they fed it. A formidable ally, it had killed and eaten many a Dernhaphasar warrior. And ate all the menfolk proffered it's way, with glee. It enjoyed the taste of both manflesh and womanflesh but preferred the energy it got from the higher levels of testosterone in the male GELFs.This was fine with the female Belhaphasar, as in their rapidly developing society the “menfolk” were the weaker sex. There was little difference between menfolk and womenfolk, but the tiny differences were enough for arrogance and privilege to seep into their public consciousness. The Belhaphasarian females were extremely sexist and generally had little regard for, what they deemed were, weak, pretty males. They had a derogatory term for particularly masculine males, “Rachlechs”, which basically meant “Arachdok food”. This term was common, until their menfolk had run out.

The Belhaphasarians had been luring passing male travellers to satisfy their spider-weapon ever since, but visitors were few and far between, which is why they'd been so pleased to receive the Boyz from the Blue. It was a chance to keep the Arachdok on their side, and also to ensure the continuation of their species if they took the males' seed too. They didn't realise that humans and Belhaphasarians could not successfully mate, but then they'd never been the brightest GELFs in the factory. (Phi had run some tests on the GELFs and told the boys this blessed information.) Alex was relieved, he didn't know how he would've felt about being a GELF-daddy! He wondered briefly if Phil's biology was compatible...

As for their apparent hypnosis, initially the boys had simply been under the spell of lust alone – lust of course being a powerful stupefier - but the moment they'd accepted food from the women, they were done for, they'd been under the influence of, even more powerful, narcotic plants.
Ah. So that's why I was such an asshole on the planet. Alex told himself, conveniently forgetting that his first three GELF fraternisations had been before dinner.

Despite the close shave with the giant spider, an' all that, Alex actually felt pretty good. Mind-control plants aside, he'd not smoked, consumed alcohol, taken drugs or inhaled anything weird for a week, and he'd eaten a lot of nutritious food. Spending time in a natural atmosphere had done him good too. He'd loved being out of the ship's recycled air and on the fresh, open planet. It was just a shame that he'd been too full, and too “hostagey”, to explore. He sighed, in a contented, rested way, which felt a lot nicer than his usual sigh of frustrated exhaustion.

'Course, he had been a little disgusted on first discovering that he was shagging pigs, not beautiful women, but if he was honest with himself, well, he'd probably had sex with worse things. Like that robot on Zecklamon 7...
On top of this, he found that he was actually happy to be home, back on Bluey. He stretched and yawned.

Justin, now liberated from his watch, came and plonked himself down next to Alex.
Alex felt one of the frustrated sighs forming.

“Hey Solvers.”
“Don't call me that.”
Justin pulled a faux affronted face. “Sorry 'Lexie.”
Alex laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes, determined not to let Justin ruin his current serenity. “Or that.”
Justin tutted. He cast his eyes over the other man, slight smirk playing on his lips, and snickered. “You look... well.”
“What do you want, Pancake?”

But before he could answer, a gigantic force blasted the ship.
Alex nearly fell off his chair. “What the smeg was that? I thought we were far enough out...”
“Must've been bigger than we thought...”

Holly's voice boomed across the intercom. “Sorry about that everyone, nothing to worry about, we're just surfing some end of the world waves.” There was a pause. “Cowabunga.” He added.

Justin nodded. “... The apocalypse.”
“So... did we cause it, or not?” Alex frowned, trying to work it out.
Justin shrugged “Guess it depends on how you look at it. Future Jacky probably knows.”
Alex was about to ask about Future Jacky when Holly piped up again “Message from Seymour Niples: All personnel are to go about their activities as usual. We have sustained no damage and have successfully avoided a paradox. 'Pparently.”

“Well, that's good news, innit?” Buoyed by the happy information, Justin thought he'd risk an irritating prod of Alex's formerly tight, currently softer, belly, which was tempting him by bulging slightly under its grey t shirt.
-PROD-
There was a pause as Alex's gaze swivelled to meet his, it was soon underlined by a mouth-only smile. The eyes held something else.

–

As he observed Pancake pelt, screaming, down the corridor, followed closely by a furious kettle-wielding Solvay, Phil smiled. It was nice that things were getting back to normal.

Justin disappeared round a corner yelping “At least I can spell 'apocalypse'!”
“You little mother fu-” And Solvay disappeared around it too.

Well, as normal as they got, aboard the awakened 'Dwarf.

---