Hell Hath No Fury

by ImperialKatwala

Summary:

... Like a parent torn from their child.

Most people know not to mess with humans. Unfortunately, there are a few brave or stupid people that ignore common sense and mess with them anyway. Phil and Wilbur get swept up in this nonsense, then have to navigate the fallout without getting attached to the humans they encounter (They fail, spectacularly, but at least they tried).

Notes:

A fun little twist to the typical SBI space au formula :)

Chapter 1: Phil (Father)

"Phiiiiiilllll!"

"What?" Phil called, looking up from the machinery in his hands.

Wilbur trilled dramatically from the doorway of the bridge, crossing the room just to drape himself over Phil's shoulders. "We're out of chorus fruit."

Phil ruffled his neck feathers in amused exasperation. "We'll get some on the next planet we stop at, Wil, no need to make a fuss over it."

"Phil I'm going to die!" Wilbur wailed, sliding with a pathetic flutter of wings onto the floor. Oh, he was in a mood, alright then. "First we ran out of those honey cakes, and now chorus fruit! Are you going to let your own son die? Cruel and heartless father?"

"You're not gonna die because we're out of sweets," Phil chuckled, batting him gently with one wing.

Wilbur pouted. "You're just saying that because we still have those candies you love."

"I still have some because I ration them," Phil pointed out. As tempting as it was to eat all of them at once, he was careful with them for this exact reason.

Wilbur made a sad, longing little peep.

... Phil was admittedly a little sad the chorus fruit was gone. He sighed, then stood from his little workbench and crossed over to the starmap on the far wall. "I suppose we have a few other things we need to pick up."

Wilbur chirped happily, jumping to his feet and hurrying over to the starmap too. "Phil, have I mentioned recently that I love you?"

"No," Phil said with a warm flick of his ear feathers, glancing over the nearby planets, "and I know you're just saying that because you're getting your way. But I also know you mean it, and I love you too."

His son flicked his feathers too, excited and happy. "So what are we picking up?"

"I'll need to check the list." Phil selected a nearby planet - Vars 2L7, a decently sized trading outpost - and quickly redirected the ship's autopilot. "Can you ask Techno if there's anything he wants us to pick up for him?"

Wilbur nodded and took out his data pad, pulling up his messages and tapping away at them.

Technoblade was only a part-time member of their crew. His smaller ship, the Blitz, could dock directly to theirs, so he could come and go as he wished. As one of the best bounty hunters out there, he often left for jobs, bringing back money or supplies or trinkets to give Phil and Wilbur. Sometimes they joined him, usually they didn't. Techno preferred it that way. At the moment, he had been out on a job for about a month, galactic standard.

"He said he wants jerky," Wilbur reported, not looking up from his data pad. "And he should be done with his job in the next few days, if everything goes well."

Phil trilled softly in happy acknowledgement, taking out his own data pad and looking through the notes he'd made on their supplies. Some more parts, some more basic ration staples... nothing out of the ordinary. They were out of borels, though. "Tell him I'm buying him borels, too."

"Oh, so you'll buy him borels when he doesn't even ask for them, but you won't buy me honey cakes until I whine at you?" Wilbur grumbled, but the gentle ruffling of neck feathers said he was just teasing.

"Techno wouldn't ask for a bandage if he was bleeding out," Phil reminded him. "And the day he admits to liking anything but the two of us and his dog is the day the universe ends."

Borels were, though he would never admit it, Techno's favorite fruit. They had originated on Nether, Techno's home planet, and Phil suspected that his friend liked them so much partially due to nostalgia and partially due to the color. Piglins did tend to have a weakness for gold.

Borels were also very tasty, and Phil was definitely planning to eat some of the ones he bought. Not until Techno got back, though. Locking eyes with his friend and ruffling his feathers in a gentle taunt as he bit into a borel was half the fun.

Wilbur had chosen a good time to pester Phil into a shopping trip - they were quite close to their destination, relatively speaking, so the trip to Vars 2L7 only took them a day or so. Phil was about halfway sure Wilbur had planned it that way. His chick could be devious when he put his mind to it.

Phil landed the ship in a relatively untouched area, just for some privacy, and they flew into the main trading hub to stretch their wings a bit.

"Standard rules," Phil told his son as they landed just outside town. "Let me know when you have everything you need, meet here when we're done, the shopping list is in our shared data files, be polite, don't go with strangers, watch and listen to as much as you can."

"I know, Phil," Wilbur said with a fond ruffle of feathers. "It's not like I've done this a hundred times before, or anything."

Phil absently straightened an errant feather on Wilbur's wing. "I know, I know, I just want to be safe. I love you."

"Love you too, see you soon!" Wilbur took off into town with a happy flick of his feathers.

Phil followed at a slower pace, happy to take in the scenery rather than rush. His time traveling through space had taught him to appreciate the different types of architecture and technology and cultures he came into contact with, and the last time he had been to this planet was when Wilbur was still a fledgeling, according to the ship's logs. It wouldn't hurt to look around for a bit.

Finding supplies was easy, once he focused on it. He checked items off the shared list as he bought them, and Wilbur did the same from somewhere else in the city, which eased the faint, instinctive worry of not knowing where he was. It felt like a silent, tiny check-in as each item was marked off the list.

(Phil marked off "Frivolous purchase - Phil" when he spotted a book about different types of music that he thought Wilbur might like, and added a "x2" when he saw a small gold chain that would look nice on Techno.

Techno messaged him a few minutes later, a quick "Stop spending all our money, old man, I'm tracking the shopping file."

"Never," he messaged back with a warm feather flick. He was the captain, he was allowed to spoil his flock sometimes. And it felt good, knowing that Techno was there too, as much as he could be from several galaxies away, watching items being checked off one by one.)

Eventually, he got a call from Wilbur.

"I've got everything I need!" he chirped, and Phil heard the murmur of people and the hum of a door closing from the other end of the line. "And some good gossip, too."

"Oh?" Phil asked, weaving out of the group of stalls he'd been looking at and heading for the main gate.

Wilbur's voice dipped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Apparently there's been word of a human a few planets over, just a few days ago."

Phil chirped in surprise. "A human? They're sure?"

"They seem pretty sure."

Humans were the newest players on the galactic stage. They were a new race, barely able to travel outside their own solar system, but scientists and other, less savory people had been quick to try and study them from a safe distance. What they found horrified the majority of the universe.

According to the rumors, humans were unstoppable killing machines. They ate anything they could find, they were strong enough to rip limbs off with their bare hands if they felt threatened enough, and most concerning of all, no matter what you did to them, they just would not die. One scientist spoke in horrified awe of the human who had amputated their own arm to escape a rock fall, and another shared a story of a human who walked for miles on a broken leg to get medical help. Traffickers shared whispered stories of whole ships taken down by a single human.

Phil didn't put too much stock in rumors, usually, but Techno had been hired several months back to take down a ring of traffickers. They had captured three humans, and apparently, that's all it had taken. Techno had told Phil, quietly, when Wilbur was asleep, about the carnage left behind, how hard it was to even find a body to identify. He had almost sounded scared.

Phil believed the rumors a little more after that.

"Well, if it was a few planets over, we should be fine," Phil mused, keeping his wings tucked against his back as he maneuvered through the crowd. "Are you at the entrance?"

"Yep, I think I see you!"

A hand was raised in the air, waving enthusiastically.

Phil trilled in amusement and waved back, hurrying over to Wilbur. "Ready to go?"

"Mm-hmm!" Wilbur chirped, enthusiastic as always after he got to deal with a crowd. If distant, lonely planets and half-forgotten stories were Phil's element, people were Wilbur's. He loved people, and they loved him right back, which occasionally created the amusing image of Technoblade, who was taller and broader than both of them, heavily scarred, and a well-known bounty hunter, hiding behind Wilbur, a lanky elytron barely out of adolescence, whenever they encountered a crowd.

Phil led the way back to the ship, taking a moment to just enjoy the feeling of flying. That's one thing he missed on the stretches between planets - flying in a ship was fine, but nothing was better than the wind in his wings and the ground far below him. He circled the ship twice before landing.

"Come on, old man," Wilbur teased, waiting for him on the open ramp to the ship. "I know you need to stretch or you'll crumble to dust, but I thought you didn't want to stop here for too long?"

Phil cuffed him lightly over the head with a wing, swallowing back an amused chirp. "Shut, you little terror. Always take advantage of space to fly when you're traveling, we've been over this."

"Yeah, yeah, I still think -"

Later, Phil wouldn't be able to say what caught his attention. Maybe a small sound or something in the corner of his eye, he wasn't sure, but whatever it was drew enough of his attention that he saw the tiny silver shape whistle toward them, and he managed to shove Wilbur out of the way.

There was a sting as the little silver needle buried itself in his arm, and then a rapid feeling of numbness, and then he was on the floor.

Wilbur screeched in alarm, somewhere outside his vision, and there was another whistling noise and a soft thud.

Phil felt a surge of panic as he realized he couldn't even make a sound to check if his chick was alright. He was completely paralyzed.

There was some shuffling, and then their attackers came into view, and Phil's blood ran cold. They were dreamons.

Dreamons were widely considered one of the most ruthless species in the universe. Their hive mind made coordination across thousands of planets easy, and they tended to be wary of, if not actively hostile toward anyone outside that hive mind, meaning literally everyone that wasn't a dreamon. Their reputation was second only to the humans'.

But why they had targeted two elytrons who posed no threat to them, Phil had no idea.

The dreamons chittered back and forth as they dragged Phil away from the ship, and he could only guess by the sounds that they were doing the same with Wilbur. They weren't saying anything important enough for the translator Phil wore to pick up, so he assumed they were mostly talking through the hive mind, and the chitters were the equivalent of chirping. Little acknowledgements.

What he wouldn't give to be able to chirp right now.

The dreamons dragged them into a small ship - it looked like a landing pod - and started tying them up. It was old fashioned, just some sort of cord, but it made Phil a lot more panicked than regular restraints would have, which he supposed was the point.

A few minutes later, as the pod began to take off, Phil started to get some feeling back in his fingers and toes. He immediately began chirping, small, distressed sounds, listening anxiously for a response.

After a moment, a weak chirp answered back, and Phil relaxed a little. At least his chick was okay.

One of the dreamons smacked him over the head, growling a warning. "Shut up."

Phil shut up.

The flight wasn't long - their ship was probably circling the planet - and they docked quickly and without fuss. More dreamons scurried into the pod and dragged Phil and Wilbur out. They stumbled, since their feet and wings were tied, though Phil noted through the rising panic that Wilbur was wearing more typical restraints: wing cuffs, ankle cuffs, wrist cuffs. Interesting.

The dreamons hissed in amusement, then prodded them forward. Phil had a dreamon on each of his arms, basically carrying him, which only contributed to the growing feeling of trapped trapped can't escape escape escape need to escape get out get off me escape escape escape.

There was a scream from ahead - a harsh, angry sound - and a loud thud.

"What was that?" Wilbur whispered, seemingly without realizing he'd spoken.

The amused hisses grew louder.

"It's agitated," one of the dreamons clicked. "Needs food. Or entertainment, or both. We're trying both."

Phil was about to ask what it was when a door slid open and he saw for himself, the question dying on his tongue.

A creature Phil had never seen before slammed into the door of a holding cell, snarling in rage. It was bipedal, with long brown hair, soft skin, and the teeth of a carnivore, and it redoubled its efforts to escape as soon as it saw them, screaming in a language Phil didn't know.

Based on every description he'd ever heard, this had to be a human.

"Found it a few days ago," one of the dreamons hissed. "Female, we think, and very strong. We've never captured a human before, so this should be interesting."

Wilbur peeped softly in alarm. Phil was too stunned and confused and panicked to do much of anything.

And then they were shoving him toward the human's cell, and Wilbur was being pulled away from him and the door was opening and the cord was being pulled tighter and he couldn't move, where was his chick -

And then he was shoved forward, landing hard on the ground, and the door to the human's cell slid closed behind him.

The human leapt over him, slamming her shoulder into the door yet again, screaming in rage.

Phil couldn't breathe. He was going to die here, he was going to die and he couldn't move and he couldn't see Wilbur, was he safe, was he next? Humans were strong enough to easily snap an elytron's bones, and this one was angry enough - and maybe hungry enough - to actually do it, and maybe she wouldn't stop with Phil.

He started flailing, as much as he could manage in the ropes, trying to stifle the terrified peeps pouring out of his mouth, trying to get out get out get out get out -

The human stepped back from the door, snorting angrily, then turned to him.

A muffled, anguished little chirp came from somewhere else in the block of holding cells. Wilbur.

Everything was too much too much he was going to die he didn't want to die he had to get out he had to protect Wilbur he hoped it would be fast -

The human slowly knelt down next to him. She said something quietly, and very carefully reached out a hand.

Phil felt all the fight go out of him and went limp. Terrified as he was, there was nothing he could do. He just had to lie there and wait.

"Dad!!!" Wilbur screamed.

Her hand went to his wing, and his breath hitched. No, not the wings first, anything but the wings -

She hummed quietly, and reached out her other hand too, and - she was touching the rope. What was she -

The rope went slack.

Phil's wing snapped out on instinct, and it caught the human right in the face. She leaned back with a yelp of pain, and Phil caught a glimpse of bright red blood between her fingers as she scooted away from him. He scrambled awkwardly backward, pressing himself against the wall, peeping in horrified apology.

She was... surprisingly calm, given that he'd just injured her. Instead of attacking him, or snarling at him, or anything, she just sat there, pinching her nose to stop the bleeding, leaning slightly forward and breathing slowly through her mouth.

"Dad," Wilbur keened, and Phil could barely hear him through the walls. "Dad I don't want you to die, I don't -"

Phil glanced around; Wilbur was in a cell directly across the hallway, where he would be able to see everything that happened. His heart lurched as he realized the dreamons planned to make Wilbur watch as the human ate him. He chirped back a shaky reassurance.

The human made a quiet sound, and when he looked back over, she was glancing between him and Wilbur, brow furrowed. She looked angry, and his feathers began to fluff up in alarm.

As soon as she glanced back at him, the anger softened, and she said something in a quiet voice, then very slowly began to move over toward him.

Wilbur chirped in terrified alarm.

The human paused just before she reached him, murmuring softly, then carefully reached out again. Phil let her, deciding that if she hadn't killed him yet, she might not for a little while. Once again, instead of snapping bones or digging into skin, she carefully pulled away the cords, keeping her face well away from his wings this time.

Phil pulled away the rest of the cords himself, doing a quick rouse to rid himself of the phantom weight. Then he offered the human a small flick of his ear feathers and a quiet "Thank you."

Her lips curled up - not a threat display, he was pretty sure, there were no teeth - and she said something else to him.

"My translator isn't working for you," Phil told her. "So you probably can't understand me either. But... I don't think you're going to hurt me."

"Dad?" Wilbur called anxiously.

"I'm okay!" Phil called back, speaking as loud as he dared with the human right there. He didn't want to startle her, even if she wasn't acting aggressively yet. "I'm alright, don't worry."

Wilbur let out a shaky little chirp. "Dad, what are we gonna do?"

"We'll figure it out." For a moment, Phil thought about Techno - off on some distant planet, watching the shopping list, thinking that everything was okay - and wished his friend were there so badly it ached. Techno would have a plan.

Unfortunately, Phil didn't get time to try and think of a plan himself, because the door to the holding cell block slid open with a quiet whir.

They were out of time.

Chapter 2: Kristin (Protector), Phil (Father)

Kristin was having a bad week.

Okay, understatement of the century, she was having a horrific week.

It had started out well enough; she and her adoptive son, Tommy, had gone to a lake for the weekend, just the two of them. Their first night, they had roasted marshmallows and told stories and watched the sun set over the water. It had been really nice.

And then they'd gotten kidnapped by aliens.

They'd been shoved into that stupid cell together, and Kristin had done her best to protect Tommy. She nearly took one of the aliens' bony little fingers off before they showed off their cattle prod technology, and even then, she hadn't let them near her boy. Not without a fight.

Of course, then they had tried to take her boy away, and they had both fought so hard to stay together that the aliens shot them with these weird little paralyzing darts. She'd been forced to lie there, helpless, while they took Tommy away from her.

She couldn't get the sound of him being dragged away out of her head.

She didn't know what they had done to him, or where they were keeping him, or anything. She didn't even know if he was still alive.

So instead of letting her brain spiral into nightmare scenarios, she focused on trying to get out. Shouting at the aliens and slamming her shoulder against the door probably wouldn't do anything in the long run, but it made her feel better.

Then, after a while, the far door slid open.

Kristin slammed into the cell door again. "WHERE IS HE?? WHERE IS MY SON??"

The aliens didn't respond, of course. She couldn't understand them, they probably couldn't understand her. But they knew what she wanted, she knew they did.

Then she noticed the people with wings.

There were two of them. One was younger, with fluffy brown... hair? Feathers? Maybe both? There were metal bands on his wrists and ankles and wings, sort of like futuristic handcuffs. The other one looked older, with jet black wings, except he was tied up with some kind of rope instead of the fancy handcuffs. They both looked about ready to pass out with fear, which was fair, alien abductions were scary.

Though these two were aliens as well, so... hm. Regular abduction, then?

The aliens started dragging the bird people over to her cell, and she realized with a jolt that they were actually planning on shoving the bird people into the cell with her. That was odd, because there were at least three other cells in this little block, but this meant the door to hers would be opening, so she wasn't complaining.

The aliens pulled the ropes tighter around the older bird person, pulled the younger one away - ignoring his wailing caw - and hit the button to open the door.

Kristin lunged for the door as soon as it opened, but the aliens forced her back with the threat of their cattle prod things, and the bird man was shoved into the cell. As soon as he was in, the aliens backed off and shut the door again.

Completely ignoring her new cellmate for the moment, she darted over and slammed her shoulder into the door again. "TELL ME WHERE HE IS!! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HIM??"

There was no reply. The aliens just left, hissing and clicking among themselves, leaving Kristin with a bird man in her cell and another bird person across the hall.

She growled in frustration, banging on the door with her fist one more time before turning to her new cellmate.

He was struggling against the ropes, and making a soft, heartwrenching peeping noise. He looked for all the world like a panicked bird caught in a net.

"Okay," Kristin breathed, kneeling down next to him. "Okay, I'm gonna try to get this off you, alright?"

He didn't reply - she hadn't really been expecting him to - but as soon as she reached out a hand, he stopped making noise and stopped struggling. He just laid there, wide-eyed, breaths coming a little quicker than she'd like. She had never seen anyone look so scared.

The bird person across the hall made a terrified screeching noise.

Taking a deep breath, Kristin carefully reached out to grab the rope on the bird man's wing. As soon as she made contact, his breathing stuttered a little, so she worked as quickly as she could to get one of the knots undone.

She smiled as it came loose, but then the bird man's wing snapped out and hit her right in the face. Pain flared in her nose, and she scooted backward, feeling blood start to drip down her face. The bird man scrambled back too, as much as he could, starting to peep again. He was shaking a little, too.

Kristin had never had a nose bleed before, but Tommy had had plenty, so she knew what to do. She pinched her nose shut, leaned forward slightly, and took deep, steady breaths through her mouth until the bleeding slowed down.

She looked up when she heard the bird people chirping to each other.

The one across the hall looked so young and so fragile and so scared, and the one in her cell seemed to be trying to reassure him, despite how scared he was himself.

... Wait.

Kristin looked back and forth between them, frowning as she realized what was happening. This was another parent and child pair. This was another family that had been forcibly split up, except these two apparently couldn't fight as hard as she and Tommy could. Or maybe they regarded the aliens as a bigger threat than she did, who knew.

When she looked back to the bird man, she noticed his feathers were ruffled, and he was staring at her. Probably scared by her expression. She forced herself to relax, murmuring "Sorry, I'm just mad someone else has to go through this."

He was still tied up. She hesitated, then very slowly made her way over to him, pausing just out of arm's reach. "Is this okay? Are you going to hit me again?"

He just blinked at her, though he didn't look quite as scared as he had last time. She decided to take that as a win and very carefully reached out to untie the rest of the ropes, making sure to keep her face away from his wings.

As soon as he was free, the bird man shook out all of his feathers like a dog shaking off water, then cooed quietly at her, his head feathers flicking.

She smiled. "You're welcome."

He made a series of bird-like noises, which she was pretty sure were supposed to be words, if she could understand him.

The kid in the other cell chirped again, and the two had a little bird conversation back and forth. They were still scared, obviously, and upset, but at least the bird man didn't seem scared of her anymore. That was progress.

The main door on the far wall whirred and slid open.

The bird man instantly puffed up in alarm, scrambling away from the side of the cell with the door on it as the aliens scuttled into the cell block, clicking and hissing. The kid across the hall did the same, shrinking into a corner.

A pure, white-hot rage began to burn in Kristin's chest. How dare they do this to another parent and their child. How dare they.

The aliens came over to her cell, chittering.

The bird man stepped just a little bit closer to her, wings held up and out just a little, like a bird trying to look bigger than it was. She couldn't tell if he was protecting her or looking for protection. Maybe both.

"I'm going to get us out of here," she told him, amazed at how calm she sounded. The rage bubbled just underneath her skin, ready to be used. She was not going to allow these things to hurt anyone else.

The door to the cell opened.

Kristin sprinted forward.

One of the aliens jabbed at her with their cattle prod thing, but she just grabbed it with a snarl of rage. The agony of the electricity washed over her, but she gritted her teeth and yanked, pulling it out of the alien's hand.

The aliens hissed in alarm, and the bird people chirped in something close to shock.

Kristin had no idea how to turn the thing on, but she knew how to use a baseball bat, and without electricity, that's essentially what the cattle prod was. So she just ran forward and cracked the thing against an alien's skull as hard as she could. It collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. The others raised their own cattle prods, but Kristin took them down easily with blows to the head and the collarbone and the knees. These aliens seemed pretty flimsy.

When all of the aliens in the room were unmoving or just weakly twitching, Kristin turned back to the bird man in her cell. He was staring at her with some mixture of terror and awe. She grinned and handed him the cattle prod, then pointed to the cell across the hall. "Go get him out."

Hesitantly, the bird man took the cattle prod and stepped out of the cell, feathers still ruffled.

Kristin took another cattle prod from a fallen alien, then started to head toward the door.

A chirp stopped her. The bird man held up the cattle prod she'd given him and flicked a switch on the handle, causing electricity to hum up the length of the metal. Then he switched it off again.

Kristin copied him, grinning as she successfully turned it on and off again, and nodded a thank you before running out the door. She had to get to the rest of the aliens before someone raised an alarm and made this harder.

 

---

 

The human ran out of the room, leaving Phil with an energy baton, several wounded or dead dreamons, and a lot of questions. She had been gentle with him, helping him get untied and giving him something to protect himself with, but she hadn't even hesitated before slamming a baton into a dreamon's head. Not to mention grabbing the baton while it was shocking her just so she could get her hands on a weapon, even though he'd had to show her how it worked.

Unstoppable indeed.

Phil shook himself out of his thoughts and ran over to Wilbur's cell, quickly locating and pressing the button to open the door.

Wilbur let out a long, shaky trill as Phil ran in and pulled him out of the cell. "Dad -"

"I've got you," he murmured, smoothing down some of Wilbur's neck feathers. "It's okay, I've got you."

"I thought you were gonna die," Wilbur keened.

Phil chirped softly at him, still adjusting and smoothing feathers, then turned to the dreamons on the floor. A quick search revealed a key for Wilbur's restraints, and he quickly freed his chick, then wrapped his wings around him.

Wilbur clung to him, shaking, in a way he hadn't in a long time. Every so often, he made soft little peeps and chirps, and Phil responded gently and reassuringly to each one. In the distance, he heard the cries of dreamons and the human shouting and the hum of electricity, but right now, his son needed him. The human had left him here to take care of Wilbur, so that's what he was going to do.

Eventually, Wilbur pulled away, looking a little bit calmer. "We need to get out of here."

"We do," Phil agreed, getting a better grip on the energy baton and taking Wilbur's hand. "Let's go find the human."

Wilbur squawked in alarm, his feathers fluffing back up. "What?? No, we need to get off this ship as fast as possible while she's distracted!!"

Phil paused, turning back to his chick and gently squeezing his hand. "Wilbur. If she wanted to hurt us, she would have done it when I was tied up alone in her cell. Right now, she's our best bet at getting out of here alive. Okay?"

"But -" Wilbur cut himself off with another chirp, his wings twitching in agitation. "Can't we just use her as a distraction and leave? Do we - Dad, I don't want you to die. I almost lost you once today, I can't..."

"Tell you what," Phil said gently, rubbing his thumb along Wilbur's knuckles. "We'll go find the human, but we won't go up to her right away. If we see any sign she's planning to hurt us, we can make a break for it and try to reach one of the pods. Otherwise, we'll all work together to get out of here. How does that sound?"

Wilbur thought for a long moment, his feathers still ruffled, then nodded slowly. "Alright. We can do that."

Phil led the way out of the cell block, still holding his chick's hand. There were... a concerning amount of dreamon bodies scattered around the hallways as they made their way further into the ship, and Phil thought he saw bite marks on a few, but he didn't stop to check, and he certainly didn't let Wilbur stop to check. His son was spooked enough as it was, and rightfully so; he didn't need anything else to worry about.

They ran into three dreamons in total. Phil turned the voltage on the energy baton all the way up, and felt a vicious sort of satisfaction as he copied the human's tactics and took them out with little difficulty.

The trail of bodies - dead or unconscious, Phil had no idea, and to be honest he didn't really care - eventually led them to the bridge. As they cautiously looked inside, they saw the human leaning over one of the computer terminals, visibly frustrated.

Oh, Phil realized. She couldn't read it. She couldn't use it if she couldn't read it. He stepped fully into the room.

"Dad!" Wilbur hissed, tugging him back, but the human had already noticed them.

Her hand went immediately for her energy baton, but as she looked up at them, she made a soft sound of recognition and some of the tension left her shoulders.

Phil tucked his wings in just a little, to show he didn't mean her any harm, and slowly walked over to the terminal, making a friendly little chirp right back at her.

Her lips curled up again, but straightened almost immediately back out as she turned to the terminal, saying something in her language that sounded... frustrated? Scared, or angry, maybe? Maybe a little sad.

With a quiet hum, Phil reached over and tapped a few buttons on the terminal, pulling up the ship's data files. They were lucky all dreamon ships were designed the same way; he'd been in a few before, under better circumstances, so he had a general idea of where to look for things.

The human's whole face lit up, and she turned to Phil with raw, desperate hope in her eyes.

"What do you need?" Phil asked her, glancing between the human and the terminal. "What are you looking for?"

"Dad..." Wilbur started, sounding worried. "I don't like this."

The human hesitated for a moment. Then she pointed to Wilbur, who immediately flinched back, then to Phil. Her hand went back and forth between them a few times as she said something in Human.

Phil copied her, gesturing to the two of them. "Okay, both of us, got it."

The human pointed to herself, then made a vague, frustrated gesture at the terminal.

It took a second, but Phil's wings fluttered slightly as he realized what she was saying. "Oh. Oh, there was someone with you!"

"Two of them?" Wilbur muttered from behind him. "One was enough."

Under normal circumstances, Phil would have gently smacked him with a wing for a comment like that, or told him to behave, or something like that. In this case, though, he let it slide and turned back to the terminal. Records of prisoners taken were easy enough to find, since they had been updated recently, and he quickly flicked past the records of himself and Wilbur (the fact that they had been entered into a system to keep track of prisoners and specimens made his skin crawl). The human's file was a little bigger, but he quickly made his way through that one, too. The next file was really the one to catch the human's attention.

She made a quiet little sound, her hand twitching toward the screen as though she wanted to reach through it to the picture of the human it displayed.

Phil glanced through the data. Recently transferred, male, adolescent -

Adolescent.

The human's comparison of herself and this mystery human to him and Wilbur suddenly made a lot more sense. As did her anger.

"Wilbur," Phil said quietly, forcing his feathers to lay flat. "Do you have a data chip on you?"

Reluctantly, Wilbur handed him one. "There isn't too much space on it."

"That's alright." Phil plugged the chip into the terminal, quickly copying over the younger human's data. After a moment of hesitation, he copied the older human's data as well, just in case. Then he put the chip in his pocket, deleted every file and folder he could find, and turned to the other two. "It looks like he was transferred off the ship."

The human hesitated, glancing off toward the hallways.

Phil shook his head, pointing out at the expanse of space beyond the front of the ship. "He's out there."

She murmured something in Human, looking out to the stars like she might actually see him. The hope in her eyes dimmed, and she almost seemed to shrink as the weight of what had happened hit her.

"Hey." Phil hesitated, then very lightly put a hand on her shoulder. "It'll be okay. We can help you find him."

The human didn't reply. She didn't even look away from the window. She just put a hand on top of Phil's and squeezed it gently.

"We should go," Wilbur said quietly.

Phil thought for a second. Then he reached up and carefully took his translator out of his ear.

"What are you doing," Wilbur hissed, glancing nervously at the human.

Phil ignored him and held the little device out to the human. "Here."

She turned to look at it, blinking. Her eyes were weirdly wet-looking.

Slowly, so she had time to see what he was doing and stop him if she wanted, Phil set the translator in her ear. It adjusted automatically, like it was supposed to, and she made a strange face as it did.

Phil chuckled. "It feels a bit weird, doesn't it?"

The human jolted in surprise, staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. Then she started speaking rapidly in Human.

"Woah, woah, slow down," Phil told her, fluttering his wings slightly. "I can't understand you. The translator only works for languages it's programmed for, and Human isn't one of them."

She nodded, but still seemed a little on edge.

Phil flicked an ear feather at her. "We can help you find who you're looking for. Your chick, I'm guessing?"

The human hesitated, then nodded again.

Wilbur trilled uneasily in the back of his throat.

Phil nodded back. "Right. I'm Phil, this is Wilbur. If we can get back to our ship, we can get started looking." He held out a hand to her, which seemed to surprise her. It surprised him too, honestly, but he wasn't really afraid of her anymore. He just wanted to help.

The human's lips curled up again, and she took his hand with a nod.

Phil hoped he wouldn't regret this.

Notes:

Mumza gets to go a little bit feral, as a treat :)

Also, pog for a little bit of communication! One-sided, yes, but they're both pretty sure they won't be attacked now!

Chapter 3: Kristin (Mother), Techno (Friend)

So, the bird people were nice.

The little device they had given her sat strangely in Kristin's ear, like a metal earplug, but she would probably get used to it in a few hours, assuming they didn't want it back. The older one - Phil, the first alien she had properly met was named Phil - hadn't asked for it or taken it, though, so she was under the cautious assumption that she could keep it, at least for now.

It let her understand them, and that was relieving on a level she didn't have the mental capacity to unpack at the moment.

"We'll need to take one of their landing pods," Phil told her, leading the way down the hall. "Our ship isn't far from here, it's just down on the surface."

"Is this your home planet?" Kristin asked absently, more to voice her thoughts than to get an answer. "Or are you just traveling? Maybe on vacation, like Tommy and I were."

The feathers on Phil's neck ruffled slightly, though she was fairly sure it wasn't a sign of fear this time. "I hope you weren't expecting a response to whatever that was?"

She chuckled quietly and shook her head. That was really all she had the energy for; as easy as it was to take down one of the aliens, taking down a whole ship of them was exhausting, once the adrenaline wore off.

Phil nodded back at her, and they kept going.

Kristin recognized the pods Phil led them to; these were the smaller ships the aliens had first captured them in. She forced down the little prickle of apprehension at the sight of them and followed Phil and - what was his name - Wilbur into one of the pods.

Phil examined the controls for a few seconds, then started flipping switches. He glanced over his shoulder at her and said "Hey, could you disable the other pods? There should be two more."

"Um." Kristin hesitated, looking around at the complicated mess of switches and levers and lights. "How?"

Thankfully, he noticed her hesitation and figured out what the cause was. "Just... I don't know, turn on your energy baton and slam it into the control panel. That should fry everything."

That was honestly so much less complicated than she was expecting. Kristin nodded and hurried over to one of the other pods, flicking on her cattle prod baseball bat energy baton thing as she went. The control panel blinked quietly at her.

She didn't hit it as hard as she possibly could - she didn't want to break her only weapon. But she hit it decently hard, and the electricity from the baton hummed through the circuits and wires, making everything spark and dim. She definitely broke it.

She did the same to the other pod, with a similar result, then hurried back to the pod Phil was getting ready.

It wasn't that she didn't trust them not to leave without her, but... you know. Strange aliens, and all that. Getting abducted had maybe made her a little bit paranoid.

Luckily, they seemed to be waiting for her. Phil chirped at her as she came back, his ear feathers flicking. The earpiece didn't translate it, but it sounded sort of like a hello, a general acknowledgement. Wilbur was sitting on one of the pod's benches, his wings tucked in tight.

"Go ahead and sit down," Phil told her, flicking a few more switches. The door to the pod slid shut.

Kristin nodded and went over to the benches. She sat across from Wilbur, giving him a tiny smile and a wave.

He didn't really react, other than a small ruffle of his feathers. He was just... staring.

"You know I'm not going to hurt you, right?" she said softly.

Wilbur's feathers ruffled a little more at the sound of her voice.

Okay, so still scared of her, then. She nodded, folding her hands carefully in her lap and turning to watch Phil at the controls rather than look at Wilbur.

In her peripheral, she saw Wilbur's wings twitch, but it looked like he relaxed just slightly.

"Hang on," Phil warned them, and the pod shook slightly as it lifted off.

He was good at this, Kristin noted, but she almost instantly got distracted by the view out the front of the pod.

Below them stretched the curve of an alien planet. Blue and pink and green, but the wrong shade. Kristin didn't even know there could be a wrong shade of green. It was huge and wild and beautiful, and she watched, enraptured, as Phil steered them expertly down to the surface.

It wasn't a long flight, really, only a few minutes. They landed with only a slight bump, and Phil and Wilbur hurried out of the pod as soon as the door hissed open.

Kristin followed more slowly, hanging nervously onto the doorframe.

It was an alien planet.

On some level, she had known that this wasn't Earth. But the plants were the wrong color, and the clouds were the wrong shape, and the air tasted wrong. It was strange and terrifying and almost intoxicating.

For some reason, taking a small, tentative step felt like a bigger deal than being abducted; she stepped cautiously out of the pod and onto the surface of a different planet. A soft, overwhelmed little giggle bubbled out of her mouth.

Phil warbled, something that wasn't translated, but it sounded sort of fond. She looked up to see him watching her, his wings more relaxed than she'd seen them. His ear feathers were flicking.

She smiled, feeling a little off-balance, but this was... this was okay. She wasn't alone in this, at least.

Phil and Wilbur led the way to another ship, parked in a clearing nearby. It was significantly bigger than the pod, but smaller than the ship they'd been locked up on.

"This is our ship," Phil explained, his feathers ruffling a little as he tapped a panel on the outside. After a moment, there was a hiss, and a door opened. "We'll need to get off the planet as soon as possible, just to keep the dreamons off our primaries, but it'll be a quick trip, I think."

"Why?" Wilbur asked quietly.

"We need to talk to Techno." Phil led the way into the ship, closing the door behind them once all three of them were on board.

Kristin frowned. "Techno?"

Phil blinked at her. "Techno? Is that what you're confused about?"

She nodded.

"Techno's an occasional part of our crew, and one of my very good friends. He's a bounty hunter."

Oh. Kristin found herself taking a half step forward, a little breathless with hope. "He can find Tommy?"

"If anyone can find your chick, Techno can," Phil assured her, leading her deeper into the ship.

Kristin followed, feeling the adrenaline finally start to drain out of her. This morning she had been totally helpless, and now she had a way to travel, allies, a translator, hope. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"I think that was a thank you," Phil chuckled, his ear feathers twitching. "It's not a problem, really. It's the least we can do."

 

---

 

Techno had been having a pretty good day. He'd finished his latest job and was taking some time to relax, and he'd even gotten to watch the shopping list as Phil and Wilbur restocked. It was nice, having some small measure of connection with his crew. Not that he'd ever tell them that.

He bantered with Phil over text for a little bit, then switched his data pad over to a collection of folk tales he'd picked up on-planet. Reading was one of his favorite pastimes, though he would never admit it. He had a reputation to maintain.

The quiet sound of claws on metal drew him out of the stories. He noticed that a good amount of time had passed, judging by the position of the suns, as he turned to what had drawn his attention.

A mass of white fur and fangs and claws padded happily into the room, tail wagging. Its muzzle was stained slightly with blood.

"Hey, Floof," Techno murmured, reaching out and scratching the animal behind the ears. "Did you finish your dinner?"

Floof huffed happily, his tail wagging harder.

"Good, good. I should probably get some dinner too, shouldn't I?" Techno stood, stretching so that his back cracked. Phil hated that noise, so he usually only did it in his own ship.

A request for a video call pinged on his control panel.

Techno frowned, leaning over to flick a few switches and check the caller. It was Phil. That was odd, they'd just texted earlier. He accepted the call and sat back down as Phil's holographic image flickered to life.

Techno frowned as he took in the ruffled feathers, the slightly pale cast to Phil's skin, the halfheartedly flicking ear feathers. "What's wrong?"

Phil chuckled in the way he did to deflect. "Why would something be wrong? Can't I just want to talk to you?"

"We did talk. Earlier this cycle," Techno reminded him. "And you're deflectin'. What's up?"

Phil hesitated, and oh, that was worrying. "Okay, just.... we're okay, first of all. No one's hurt."

"Phil, what happened?" Techno asked, his voice sharpening with a sudden spike of fear. His mind started jumping to all sorts of terrible scenarios - pirates, an earthquake, Wilbur getting sick -

"... We were sort of... kidnapped. Briefly."

Techno froze. "... Kidnapped? By who?"

Phil winced. "Dreamons?"

Oh. Oh, that was so much worse than Techno had been thinking okay he needed to get to Phil immediately -

"Tech. Techno, I see those pinned ears, you need to breathe, mate."

He was, he was, but his sounder had been kidnapped and he'd been light years away watching the list update -

Floof whined, nosing at his hand.

Okay. The next breath came a little easier as Techno sank his hand into Floof's fur. "... What happened, exactly? How'd you get out?"

"You're not gonna like any of this," Phil admitted quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Just tell me," Techno said at the same volume.

Phil nodded, his wings rustling slightly. "We finished shopping, got back to the ship, and got captured. They brought us to their ship, and Wilbur got cuffed and put in a holding cell, but they tied me up and threw me in a cell with... with a human."

A human?

Techno couldn't decide whether to laugh or have a panic attack. "... What?"

"She was..." Phil hesitated, his feathers ruffling in a way Techno didn't see very often. "... You were right, about humans. She took out the whole ship by herself."

The whole ship. One human, taking down a whole ship. Techno had almost thought those stories were exaggerations.

"She lost her chick, Techno."

That jolted Techno out of his train of thought. "... Her chick?"

Phil nodded. "His name is..." He hesitated, then made a sound that definitely wasn't elytrian. It sounded sort of like tah-mee, and Techno guessed there wasn't supposed to be that much trill in it. "I think. The human language is complicated. But I told her we could help her find him, since she got us away from the dreamons."

"Phil -"

"A chick, Techno," Phil reminded him, his neck feathers puffing up just a bit. "A chick at the mercy of dreamons. How kind do you think they'll be to him?"

Techno's grip on Floof's fur tightened ever so slightly. Void and fire. "Fine. Where are you? I'll come meet up with you."

"Arelis V. I thought it might be a good idea to get away from the dreamon ship, even if there's no one left in it."

Techno nodded, leaning over to input coordinates. "I'll be there in a few days."

"Thank you, Techno." Phil's voice was soft and sincere. "Really."

Techno shrugged. "Don't mention it, old man. I'll see you soon. Don't get kidnapped again."

"I won't, I promise."

The call ended, and Techno finished inputting those coordinates.

This was going to be one long, terrifying headache, wasn't it?

Chapter 4: Kristin (Friend), Techno (Family)

Kristin wasn't exactly sure of her standing with Phil and Wilbur yet.

Sure, Phil was nice. He hadn't taken his translator back (in fact he'd cheerfully informed her they had extras), and he'd given her an only slightly dusty room when she'd started swaying from the adrenaline crash.

"We don't usually get visitors," he told her, wings ruffled just a little. "Just Techno, really, and he's got his own ship. But there's nest materials in here, and let us know if you need anything."

Kristin laughed quietly. "I'll do my best."

Phil's ear feathers went flick-flick-flick. "Right. Language barrier. We'll play charades, then, if something comes up."

There wasn't... a bed, per se, when she stepped into the room. It was more of a large floor cushion and a large pile of blankets. Nest materials, Phil had called them.

Right. Birds.

Kristin piled the blankets into some sort of shape and promptly passed out.

The fact that she woke up feeling well-rested, not drugged, and not injured spoke volumes about the two bird people currently hosting her.

She vaguely remembered hearing Phil mention a kitchen, so she wandered out of the room and down the hall.

"Good morning," Phil called from a room as she passed by. He was sitting at a table, holding a mug of something, with an empty plate in front of him.

Kristin cautiously came to sit at the table too. "Good morning."

"Did you sleep well?"

Kristin nodded. "Yes, I did."

Phil's ear feathers flicked. "Yes?"

"Yes," she said again. Language barriers were annoying.

Phil's ear feathers kept flicking as he tapped a tablet on the table next to him. "Again, please?"

"... Yes," Kristin repeated slowly.

"Congratulations, I can now understand one word of your language," Phil said with a chirp.

... Oh.

Oh.

"You programmed in the word for yes?" she guessed, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

"The translator works using a database," Phil explained, holding up the tablet for her to see. There was a huge list of words in a language she didn't recognize. "I added your word for yes to it. It'll be slow, but I think we can get a working vocabulary by the time Techno gets here."

She nodded excitedly. "Yes, yes!"

Phil warbled a laugh. "What's your word for no?"

"No."

He tapped the tablet a few more times, then nodded. "Alright, two down, a lot more to go."

She laughed, something light and hopeful and happy, like she hadn't felt since the aliens had caught them. It felt really, really good.

Communication. She hadn't realized quite how much she'd missed it.

They put a few more words into the database, then Phil got her some breakfast. It was some kind of ration bar, which tasted sort of like sawdust, but Phil said with his wings tucking in slightly against his back that it was one of the few things they had on board they were certain wouldn't poison her. A few tests could rule out more potential toxins, and she would hopefully be able to eat more.

"Of course, we won't force you to do anything," Phil said quickly, face feathers flaring. "I know you probably don't want to be poked and prodded any more, so if you don't want to -"

Kristin hummed quietly, interrupting his nervous rambling. She held up her hands, moving them further apart and closer together with her best questioning look.

"They'll be short and noninvasive," Phil promised. "Just a little bit of blood drawn, probably asking you about allergies and common human toxins. We'll have to wait until Techno gets here - all the equipment for it is on his ship - but, um, is that something you'd be okay with?"

She smiled and nodded. "Yes." It was sweet of him to make sure she was okay with it, even though it would make all of their lives significantly easier.

Phil's wings relaxed, shaking out slightly into what looked like a more comfortable position. "Okay, great, I'll let Techno know."

There was a soft little rustle from the doorway, and a quiet chirp.

Kirstin turned to see Wilbur standing in the doorway, wings puffed up, stiff as a board.

Ah, there was her reason for being uncertain here.

"Wilbur," Phil said warmly, flicking his ear feathers, but he was ignored as Wilbur cautiously edged along the wall toward the pantry.

Kristin turned back to the table and took another bite of her sawdust bar. Wilbur had seemed more comfortable when she wasn't watching him, so she would mind her business and eat her breakfast and engage on his terms.

Phil sighed and stood, walking over to have a murmured conversation with Wilbur. There was a lot of angry hissing - literally, Wilbur made a soft little hissing sound - and gesturing, and Phil seemed to get more and more frustrated as the conversation went on.

Okay, she didn't need to be here for this. Kristin ate the last bit of the ration bar, put the wrapper in her pocket, and quietly left the room.

She hadn't really been paying much attention to the layout of the ship last night - or at least before she passed out, she had no idea what time that equated to - so she just wandered, trying to get a sense of where everything was.

Her room was easy to find again, and she also easily found the bridge of the ship. It was huge, and gave her a fantastic view of where they were. The ship was orbiting a different planet, almost completely covered with ocean, and according to Phil it was far enough away from the first planet that the aliens who abducted her would have a hard time finding them again. So that was nice.

There were several more rooms that she could vaguely guess the purpose of - storage, a rec room. She found a section of the ship that looked sort of like an airlock crossed with those collapsible tunnels they used to board planes. Maybe a docking area?

She was wandering past the rec room again when she heard it.

Music.

Kristin peeked inside and saw Wilbur sitting on a stool, playing some sort of string instrument and trilling. It sounded sort of like humming.

The song was familiar, in some ways, and unfamiliar in others. The notes were lilting and sad and longing. It was lovely, and Kristin leaned against the doorframe to listen.

Wilbur's ear feathers pricked up, and his wings puffed up in alarm as soon as he saw her, the song cutting off abruptly.

Okay, they couldn't keep doing this. Kristin edged cautiously inside the room, keeping her hands up in an 'I won't hurt you' gesture, and sat down just inside the doorway. She thought for just a moment, then hummed the last few notes he'd been singing.

Wilbur cocked his head to one side, some of the fear giving way to interest. He trilled a few more notes.

Stifling a smile, Kristin copied them.

There was a slow, tentative flick of his ear feathers as he kept going, moving into what sounded like the chorus of his song.

They went back and forth for a minute, and then Wilbur started quietly singing.

"You know it takes a lot to move me." His voice was soft and tentative, but full of emotion. It was clear how talented of a musician he was.

Kristin smiled properly this time and repeated it. "You know it takes a lot to move me."

"So if you figure it out, tell me."

"So if you figure it out, tell me."

Wilbur stopped singing, then, just playing notes on his instrument. After a few seconds, he sighed. "It's not finished yet."

"You're writing it," Kristin realized, her smile widening. "It sounds incredible, Wilbur."

"... Dad said you were adding a few human words to the database," Wilbur told her, his gaze firmly on his instrument and his wings tucking in tight. "He showed me what they were. Did you... Do you like the song?"

"Yes," Kristin told him warmly.

Flick-flick-flick. "O-oh. Oh, that's... That's good."

Kristin rested her elbows on her knees and put her chin in her hands, beaming at him.

"You... want to hear more?" Wilbur guessed slowly, his wings relaxing just a little.

"Yes!"

His ear feathers flicked again, more readily than before, and he started picking out a different tune on his instrument. "Okay then, um, this one isn't done either, but..." He cleared his throat and began to sing. "I think this time I'm dying, I'm not melodramatic, I'm just pragmatic beyond any reasoning..."

Kristin settled in to listen, happy that she could finally connect with Wilbur over something. She didn't want him to be scared of her, and learning that he was an excellent musician was just a bonus.

(Neither of them noticed Phil just outside the doorway, leaving with flicking feathers as quietly as he could, incredibly happy that they were bonding.)

 

---

 

The trip to Arelis V was far too slow for Techno's taste.

A human. No matter how often Phil assured him she was friendly - and it was often, since Techno called him to check in more than once a cycle - the thought of a human on the same ship as his sounder sat uneasily in Techno's gut. There were a few times where he had to stop what he was doing and pet Floof for a while to make his brain stop creating horrible scenarios where Phil and Wilbur died and he didn't find out until he boarded their ship.

(He probably wouldn't be taking on any bounties for a while, but that didn't matter right now. All that mattered was making sure his sounder was alright.)

Finally, finally, after cycles of travel, the ocean planet came into view. Techno let out a sigh of relief, pinging Phil for coordinates. They came through quickly, and he immediately steered for them.

Some of the tension that he hadn't been able to shake loosened slightly at the sight of Phil's old, beat-up ship. It, more than any planet had ever been, was home, and steering the Blitz over to dock with it was as familiar as his own name.

Floof huffed excitedly, his tail wagging, as they waited for the airlock to properly seal and equalize pressure. Techno buried a hand in his pet's thick fur, making sure he wouldn't dart out as soon as the door opened.

The door hissed and swung open on mechanical hinges, and Floof barked in excitement. He always missed the others just as much as Techno did.

"Calm," Techno commanded, and let him go.

Floof did a little wriggle and bounded into the larger ship, just barely holding back from running.

Techno followed, making sure his blaster was in its holster. Just in case.

But there, waiting for him just on the other side of the airlock -

"Techno!" Phil called, his wings fluffed up and his ear feathers flicking uncontrollably.

"Phil!" Techno ignored the paranoia hissing that this might be a trap, a set-up, and ran forward to pull his closest friend into a hug. He hugged Phil as tightly as he could with how fragile elytron bones tended to be, but he'd perfected the amount of pressure over the years he'd spent with Phil.

And Phil hugged him right back, uncaring of pressure, wrapping his wings around Techno with a warm little warble.

For a moment they just stood there, like they did every time Techno came home, just happy to see each other safe.

Then Techno pulled back, gently turning Phil's head from side to side and inspecting him with worried little snorts. "You're alright? You're not hurt anywhere, you don't feel dizzy?"

"No, no, I'm alright," Phil assured him, feathers flicking wildly. "It's good to see you, mate. Your trip went well?"

Techno nodded, giving up on his inspection to just nose at Phil's hair and breathe in the smell of sounder. "Yeah, no problems."

"Are you two done?" Wilbur demanded from his spot on the floor. He had Floof in his lap and was giving him head scratches, but he raised an eyebrow at Techno.

Techno chuffed at him and pulled him up, giving him a hug as well. "Good to see you too, runt."

"I'm taller than Dad!" Wilbur complained.

"Still the youngest," Techno hummed, rocking him back and forth a little in a way he knew Wilbur loved. Then he started inspecting the youngest member of the sounder for injuries, too. "Are you okay?"

Wilbur hesitated for a moment, obviously thinking it over, then gave him a little shrug. "I'm alright, yeah. It was scary, but... you know, it's over now, so I'll be okay."

Hm. Not ideal, but about the best Techno could hope for.

There was a shuffling sound from behind them, and Techno turned, ears pricked.

... The human.

She was smaller than he had expected, with long hair and soft skin. No armor or fangs in sight. She didn't look dangerous; in fact she looked rather hesitant, lingering with a hand on the wall instead of walking over.

Phil made a noise that sounded like trix-tin. "This is Techno, the friend I told you about."

The human crept slightly forward. She said something in her language, and like Phil had mentioned in their check-ins, Techno found he could understand a few words. "Hello. Help?"

"I guess," Techno agreed. "You're lookin' for your shoat, right?"

She nodded and made the tah-mee noise, except it sounded a lot more natural coming from her. It was more... grounded, almost, and her pronunciation was closer to toh-mee.

"That his name?"

She nodded again.

"Human names are hard," Wilbur informed Techno. He'd gotten a hold of Floof again at some point. "We've been saying Tom, that's pretty close, and Dad's been using Trixtin for her."

The human made a little vocalized huffing sound, and said a hissing sort of kriss-tin word. Presumably that was her name.

"... I'll be honest, I'm gonna butcher that if I try it," Techno admitted. "Trixtin it is. Just got somethin' to say first."

He walked over to her - and oh, she was even shorter than Phil, were all humans this tiny? - and loomed a little, ignoring Phil's hiss of warning. "Dreamons are dangerous. The scourge of the galaxy, some call them. You and your shoat, as well as me and my sounder, will be in a lot of danger the second you try to break him out of anywhere controlled by dreamons. We might fail. Are you willin' to risk that?"

The human, who had taken a step back as he approached, paused, her face unreadable. Then she set her jaw, and there. There was the true danger of humans. She looked at him with raw, fierce determination, a protective fire in her eyes, and said "Yes."

Humans were more like piglins than he'd realized. Techno nodded, grunting a little affirmation of respect earned, and turned toward the bridge. "Then I'll find him. Phil, tell me what you've got."

Phil hurried after him, feathers ruffled, quietly demanding what that had been about, but Techno brushed him off with a promise of an explanation later on.

Now all he had to do was find the kid.

Notes:

Bonding :D Techno loves his sounder and we love him for it. And wooo, time to go find the boy!!!

Chapter 5: Tommy (Captive), Tubbo (Friend)

Thomas Innit was a big man. The biggest man ever, in fact, according to both him and his mum if he asked her, so it was definitely true.

So, as the biggest man to ever exist, he was definitely not scared of any aliens.

Not even when they dragged him away from his mum and he couldn’t even scream.

It was fine, though, they hadn’t hurt him. They’d taken him to a smaller ship and shoved him in a cage and given him some sort of mush for food, but they hadn’t hurt him. Much. Just a few small zaps with the taser stick things, nothing he couldn’t handle.

It was only really late at night, when none of the aliens were around and the ship lights turned down, that he let himself curl up in the corner of the cage and miss his mum. She would know what to do. She would protect him.

But she wasn’t here, so Tommy would have to protect himself until she was.

She was going to come find him, after all. His mum wouldn’t leave him. She’d promised, back when she first adopted him, that she wouldn’t ever leave.

(He tried not to think about the fact that she might not have a choice.)

They kept him in the cage for several days, according to the pattern of light and dark on the ship, and Tommy was incredibly sick of it. The cage was barely tall enough for him to stand up, and pacing was really boring. He’d started counting how many times he could circle the cage, just for something to do. It was awful.

So when they brought out an alien forklift thing to move the cage, he was a little bit happy. At least there was something new to look at.

The forklift carried him off of the ship and onto the surface of a planet. Tommy gawked a little bit at the red plants and the greenish sky and the bat bird things he saw in the plants that were probably trees, but the awe of it was cut off a little abruptly as he saw where they were taking him.

It was a camp, sort of. There were a lot of tents, or at least that’s what they looked like, and a lot of clustered cages. About the size of Tommy’s, actually. There were a lot of things about Tommy’s size inside them, too.

Tommy just about choked as he realized that those were a bunch of aliens in cages and he was about to be an alien in a cage right along with them.

Sure enough, the forklift brought him over to a cluster of cages and set him down next to a cage with two aliens in it. One of them was really thin and really tall - taller than Tommy, even, which normally wouldn’t be fair but right now just made him wince with sympathy - with skin that was half black and half white. The other one was small and really fluffy, and they had antennas and weird sort-of bug eyes. They also had bug wings, but those were folded back pretty tightly. Both of them flinched away when they saw Tommy and huddled in the far corner of their cage.

That was fair. Tommy wasn’t happy to be close to them either, so he went to the far corner of his cage, too.

It was a lot less boring out here. Aliens of all shapes and sizes were walking around, and Tommy leaned against the bars and watched, trying to wrap his brain around all of this. A few days ago he’d been at the lake with his mum, and now he was in a cage on a planet no other human had ever been on. It was so big and scary and lonely when he thought about it like that, though, so he tried to ignore that particular idea.

The tall alien made a little vwooping sound, and Tommy was distracted enough that he just copied the sound without thinking. As soon as his brain caught up, he glanced over at the other cage to make sure he hadn’t accidentally made them mad.

They were both staring at him, wide eyed. The smaller one was all puffed up like a startled cat.

After a moment, the tall one tentatively made another vwoop sort of noise.

Tommy copied them again. This one was a little harder - maybe the shape of his tongue or something, he didn’t know - but his attempt sounded pretty similar.

The two aliens exchanged glances, and then the shorter one hummed at him.

Oh, good, an easy one. Tommy hummed back. Then, carefully, he hummed a little tune of his own.

The short one hummed the tune back.

Tommy gave them a hesitant little smile. Maybe these two weren’t so bad after all. They were trapped too, so they probably weren’t wrongins like the rest of the aliens.

He went back to people watching for a while. Or, well, alien watching, he supposed. He could see a lot of the aliens that had kidnapped him, and the other aliens seemed kind of nervous around them.

One alien stopped in front of a cage several meters away from Tommy. A second alien said something in a weird gurgley language, and the first alien responded with some whooshing sounds. Some flat disk sort of things changed hands, and the second alien opened the cage. The armor-plated alien inside was forced out, their hands were tied up, and the first alien led them away.

Tommy very suddenly felt like he was about to throw up as he realized what sort of place this was. He wondered in a vague, hysterical sort of way whether that would make the aliens more or less interested in him.

The tall alien made a soft little chk-chk-vrrrr-chk noise.

Tommy copied it as best he could, wedging himself into the corner closest to them. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the empty cage.

Zzzzz, went the smaller one, and they stuck their hand between the bars of their cage.

Tommy was a big man. But he was also very alone and very scared and he wanted his mum, so he carefully reached out of his own cage and took the alien’s hand.

Their grip was very light, and they squeezed his hand very gently with another buzz.

He very gently squeezed back and tried to copy them.

The tall alien cautiously put a hand on top of theirs, vwooping.

Tommy vwooped back, then laughed just a little. “Thanks.”

T-hh-ks, the tall alien tried.

“Is that what I sound like to you?” Tommy asked with another little laugh. “You’re not very good at English, big man.”

As they sat there, Tommy glanced around at the cages and the tents and the aliens milling around them. He thought about how easily these two nice aliens could be ripped away, both from him and from each other, and the fact that the three of them were in the same boat as everyone else here. That they were being kept in cages like animals.

And he got angry.

“We’re getting out of here,” Tommy told the two aliens, tightening his grip just a little. “I’m gonna get us out, I promise.”

He just had to think of a plan. Tommy Big Man Innit didn’t go back on his word.

 

---

 

Honestly, Tubbo had no idea how things could get much worse.

He and Ranboo were together, at least, even though their translators had been taken so they couldn’t understand each other (and Tubbo was cursing himself now for never bothering to learn more than a few words of Ender). They were in a cage being sold at the black market, though, so being together wasn’t guaranteed to last.

Another cage was brought over next to theirs, and Tubbo didn’t even notice what was in it until Ranboo stiffened.

A human. Small and armorless and soft, but the horror story of the known universe. It was shorter than Ranboo, but not by much, and it was looking right at them.

Ranboo pulled both of them into the far corner of the cage, a choked warble rumbling softly in his chest. He was stiff as a board, and Tubbo knew he was terrified even without looking at his face. He was terrified too, honestly.

The human moved to the far corner of its cage, too, and turned its attention away from them to look out at the buyers and sellers running around.

Tubbo wondered what fear looked like on a human. It didn’t look tense or angry, anyway, it was just leaning against the bars and watching.

Ranboo made a soft little vwoop noise, a reassurance in Ender, Tubbo was pretty sure.

Both of them jumped when the human copied the sound.

After a moment, it seemed to realize what it had done, and it turned to look at them, eyes wide.

There was a moment where they all just stared.

Then, tentatively, Ranboo said “Hello” in Ender.

Again, the human copied him. It was a little stilted, not as even or flowing as Tubbo was used to from his friend, but it was recognizable.

Tubbo and Ranboo exchanged glances, and Tubbo gave the human his own “Hello.”

It was startling to hear an apian “Hello” echoed back at him, in a slightly higher pitch.

The human hesitated for a moment, then hummed something that didn’t really make sense. Tubbo got the feeling it didn’t really understand what it was saying, but the sound was a familiar sort of cadence, so Tubbo echoed it back.

The human’s lips curled up, and its shoulders relaxed, just a bit. It turned back to the people hurrying around outside its cage.

Tubbo leaned back against Ranboo, feeling a little bit less scared. The human didn’t seem all bad. He turned his attention outside too, just for something to do.

He watched as a nearby shulk was purchased and dragged away. Terrible for the shulk, and a harsh reminder for the rest of them, but it was to be expected in this scenario. That’s why they were here, after all.

A soft noise drew his attention back to the human.

Oh. That’s what fear on a human looked like. Wide eyes and tense limbs and a very slight shake in the hands. Its gaze was locked onto the shulk’s cage, as though it hadn’t realized what was happening until that moment.

Tubbo realized with a pang that maybe it hadn’t.

He nudged Ranboo, pointing at the human and glancing meaningfully between them.

Ranboo seemed to realize what was happening quickly, thank the sky, because he rested a hand on the bars of the cage and made a soft sound of it’s alright I’m here it’ll be okay.

The human made a sad little attempt at replicating the noise, still staring at the empty cage as he scooted over to the corner closest to them.

He looked young, maybe as old as Tubbo and Ranboo. And he looked scared.

Tubbo made a decision. He stuck his hand through the bars and said “Hey, it’s okay.”

After a beat of hesitation, the human reached out and laid his hand on top of Tubbo’s.

“There we go,” Tubbo said, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“There we go,” the human echoed, squeezing back just as carefully.

Ranboo vwooped quietly and set his hand on top of theirs.

The human vwooped back, then made a little huffing vocalization, and he started to talk in his language. It was a more solid sound than Ender, deeper and harsher, but it wasn’t unpleasant to listen to.

Ranboo experimentally echoed him.

The human huffed again and said something else. He relaxed a little, glancing around again at the cages and the dreamons patrolling. His grip tightened, just a little, and Tubbo watched as his expression hardened. He said something quietly, his tone sharp and determined. He’d just made some sort of decision.

Tubbo held his hand for a little longer, until it looked like he’d calmed down a little, then pulled back into his own cage with an apologetic hum. They didn’t want to let the dreamons know they’d formed any sort of bond.

The human seemed to get the hint, because he just wrapped his arms around his knees, leaning against the bars.

Tubbo sighed, looking up at Ranboo. “I wish I could talk to you right now.”

Ranboo warbled softly, running a hand through Tubbo’s ruff of fur. Probably saying something similar.

Tubbo didn’t know, though, and that hurt more than he had thought it would.

They were mostly avoided for the rest of the cycle. Potential buyers avoided their area, partially due to the dreamons and partially due to the human. Tubbo had seen a few of them staring from a distance. By tomorrow, though, they would be acclimated, and they would be over to buy.

It was hard to sleep that night. Ranboo helped, his softly glowing eyes a reminder that he was there, and watching, and alive. The human’s quiet breathing as he curled up on the floor of his cage helped a little too. A reminder that they weren’t totally alone. But Tubbo still only managed a few fitful hours, waking when the planet’s sun began to peek over the horizon.

The dreamons came by, then, handing each prisoner their ration of food mush.

Tubbo hated food mush. But it was the only thing he got, so when he was handed his portion, he choked it down and imagined nectar and honey. It didn’t really help, but it was the best he could do.

The human poked at his own mush with a soft sound of disgust, and he and Tubbo shared a nod of mutual distaste for the stuff before he began eating.

“I wish I had a data pad,” Tubbo sighed, leaning back against Ranboo. “I’m really good with those, you know. I could… I don’t know, I could probably do something to help us get out of here.”

The human mimicked a few words, then started talking in his own language. He moved his hands a lot as he spoke, Tubbo noticed; he wasn’t sure if that was part of their language or just an individual preference. He couldn’t ask, of course, but it was something to think about to keep himself occupied.

Ranboo threaded his tail through the bars to tap lightly against the human’s leg. The human rested his hand lightly over the tuft of it, not stroking or pinning it, just touching.

This certainly wasn’t a place where Tubbo had been planning to make friends, but hey, it was something.

The quiet only lasted for so long, though. After a while, potential buyers began to wander among the cages. A few of the other people in their view were sold off.

And then they saw the human.

What followed was some sort of bidding war Tubbo could barely follow. Different people were bidding what had to be ridiculous amounts of currency, and slowly they stopped bidding, wandering away in defeat, until it was down to two. Tubbo couldn’t even pay attention to what race they were, he was just watching, gripping Ranboo’s hand as tightly as he dared. He just felt a sort of helpless anger watching his new friend - scared and young like he was, and kind despite the stories - be sold like an interesting artifact.

One of them won. Tubbo didn’t care which one it was. He was dressed like he had money to burn, and that was all Tubbo cared about. A rich idiot who bought people.

The human looked small and fragile and scared as they opened the cage. He actually whimpered, cowering away as the dreamons brandished energy batons.

A soft, angry buzzing sound filled their cage, and it took Tubbo a moment to realize it was coming from him.

The human glanced back at them for just a moment. His lips curled upward, and the fear vanished from his eyes. And then he lunged.

Tubbo watched with a sort of sickened awe as the human fought. He had been so gentle with Tubbo and Ranboo, but now he lunged forward and sank his teeth into the nearest dreamon. He bit and scratched and screamed loud enough that Tubbo’s ears hurt a little, and even when the dreamons began attacking him with energy batons, he just didn’t stop.

He wrestled a set of keys away from the dreamons and tossed them at Tubbo and Ranboo’s cage, then went back to snarling and biting and yanking bones out of sockets.

Tubbo lunged forward, scooping up the keys and unlocking the cage as fast as he could. As soon as the door was open, he turned to Ranboo, unlocking the cuff on his ankle that prevented him from teleporting.

Ranboo kicked the cuff away and took the keys, tilting his head toward the human with a vwoop. Then, with a puff of purple particles, he vanished. Tubbo saw him reappear at the door of the next cage, already sorting through keys.

With his partner out of the way and the door open, Tubbo flexed his fingers and ran at the nearest dreamon, ramming the poisoned stingers hidden in his knuckles into its shoulder.

The dreamon started twitching in moments, slumping to the ground, and Tubbo gave it a vicious kick to the ribs to make sure it stayed down even when the poison wore off.

"There are more of them coming!’ he warned the human, running over to help give him some breathing room.

The human was already breathing harder. He obviously wasn’t used to this, but he was still fighting as viciously as he had at the beginning, so Tubbo supposed that was okay. They just… had to fight off every dreamon in this camp, probably. Stupid hive minds.

There was a loud screech, and over where he had last seen Ranboo, Tubbo saw a felis leap onto a dreamon’s head, claws flashing.

Apparently they wouldn’t need to win this alone, Tubbo realized with a little surge of hope, sinking his stingers into another dreamon. Everyone else here was as angry as they were.

Screams began echoing around the camp as the dreamons closed in and everyone else began to run. A lot of people left their “merchandise” behind, and as more and more people were freed, more and more people started fighting and unlocking cages. A blazeborn was released at some point, and Tubbo saw flames starting to flicker around some of the tents.

The dreamons surrounding them began to pause. Then, one by one, they began to leave the area. They were retreating.

By that time, though, the prisoners had formed a mob, and started to destroy the rest of the camp.

Ranboo appeared next to them in a flurry of particles, staggering with exhaustion.

“How many times have you teleported today??” Tubbo hissed, reaching out to steady him. Ranboo wasn’t pure enderian, so teleporting too much tired him out extremely quickly.

The human ducked under Ranboo’s other arm without hesitation, helping to support him despite the height difference. He was more help than Tubbo, at least.

Tubbo scanned the nearby area, and his gaze landed on a nearby hover bike. “There. Help me get him over there.”

Working together, he and the human steered Ranboo through the chaos as quickly as possible. The two of them got on the bike while Tubbo fiddled with wires.

The human made an anxious sound, glancing around at the mob.

“I know, I know, I’ve almost - there!” Tubbo struck two wires together, they sparked, and the bike roared to life. He quickly hopped on and revved the engine.

A few particularly belligerent people tried to stop them, but Tubbo had speed and power on his side, and he managed to avoid them.

The human was screaming, and Tubbo couldn’t tell if he was terrified or excited, but either way, they made it to the edge of the camp and Tubbo gunned it.

They’d made it, he realized with a slightly hysterical little buzz, steering them toward a distant treeline. They were free.

Notes:

At last, the boy appears!! With the rest of benchtrio, no less :D

Chapter 6: Techno (Hunter), Kristin (Mother)

Techno was very lucky to have a crewmate like Phil. The elytron had been smart enough to take records from the dreamon ship before escaping, so all Techno had to do was sift through them to find the information he wanted.

“They really wrote down everythin’,” he murmured absently, flicking through the data. “Appearance, presumed gender, estimated age, height, weight… You said they had you in this system too?”

Phil nodded, his feathers puffed up just a little. “Yeah. It was creepy, I deleted those. I deleted everything I could find, actually. I want them to have as little information in that system as possible.”

“Normally I’d agree with you, but in this case it’s makin’ my job real easy.” Techno followed a few linked files - one broken, one not what he wanted, and there. The packing slips for a standard dreamon cargo ship. Disgusting, to have a packing slip for a living being, but again, very useful. “Got it.”

“You’ve got him?” Phil asked, feathers flicking.

Techno nodded, scanning the slips. “Yep. Looks like he was taken to… Oh, Arza II, I know that planet. Particularly nasty black market stop.”

Phil went to the starmap and started entering coordinates. “Do you have a plan on how to find him?”

“I can probably work out where on the planet they took him,” Techno mused. He’d been around Arza II enough to know the main sites, anyway, it was just a matter of narrowing it down. “We need to act fast, though. Takin’ him to Arza II probably means they plan to sell him, and that’ll make him a lot harder to find.”

“Sell him??” Phil hissed, all of his feathers puffing up in alarm and anger.

Techno nodded grimly. “When I say black market, I mean the really shady stuff. Whatever happens, we’re puttin’ a stop to that, at least in that one spot.”

“… Do you think we’ll get there in time?”

And that was the question, wasn’t it? If the kid was sold, he could be taken anywhere in the galaxy. They would have to track him down all over again. And for something as rare as a human, the bidding would happen sooner rather than later. Techno just shrugged a little helplessly. “I don’t know, Phil. I’m good enough that I can find him eventually no matter what happens, but… I don’t know. There’s too many variables to say anythin’ for sure.”

There was a soft knock on the bridge doorway.

Phil turned, feathers settling. “Trixtin.”

Sure enough, there she was, hovering in the doorway a little hesitantly. She brightened when she saw the active starmap. “Tom?”

“They’re takin’ him to Arza II.” Techno glanced at Phil, practically begging him to take over. He wasn’t good at this part.

Thank the void, Phil took mercy on him and walked over to put a hand on her arm and say something softly.

She made a sound like she’d been punched in the gut.

Phil kept talking in that same quiet tone, his wing curling slightly around her, and oh. Huh. That was a little friendlier than Techno had been expecting, given how long ago they’d met. It seemed to work, though, because Trixtin just leaned her forehead against his shoulder for a moment, her breath shuddering, then straightened and walked over to examine the data Techno was looking through. Her expression was determined, but her eyes…

“Are your eyes okay?” Techno asked, suddenly a little worried. He’d never seen Phil or Wilbur’s eyes get watery like that.

“Yes,” she said quietly, very obviously lying but just as obviously wanting him to leave it alone. “Tom?”

“We’re workin’ on a plan,” Techno assured her, dismissing the dreamon data and pulling up an image of Arza II. He took a moment to highlight the four most likely trading sites. “They’ll probably have him in one of these locations. When we’re closer, we can try and narrow it down more. In the meantime, I’ll work on methods of approach for each of them, and we can pick the best one once we get there.”

Trixtin frowned, pointing to the four highlighted points. “Why?”

“I’ve scouted this planet before.” Techno had really enjoyed those jobs. They had been particularly satisfying. “These are some of the most common spots for trade. Lots of open space for ships to land, but out of the way enough that they won’t be immediately spotted if someone were to pass the planet. It’s possible they found a more out of the way spot, but I doubt it.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then straightened and slammed one fist into her opposite palm, saying something in her language that didn’t translate. The look she levelled at the image of the planet was downright murderous.

Techno was pretty sure he got the idea, and he nodded, baring his tusks a little to return the sentiment. “Yeah. We’re gonna level that place after we find your kid.”

“Yes,” Trixtin agreed, baring her teeth right back.

Ah. Humans were carnivores. Right.

“We should get there in a cycle or so,” Techno told her, dismissing the image and standing up. “In the meantime, want to work out what we’ve got on board that you can eat?”

 

---

 

It took them an hour or so to figure out what on the ship was poisonous for Kristin and what wasn’t. Phil and Techno both seemed a little surprised when she told them humans needed both plants and meat in their diet and showed them her molars, but they had given her a gold apple-like fruit to munch on - a borel, Phil had called it - and worked out a meal plan. They also made plans to stop by another planet to restock once they had Tommy.

God, Tommy.

Kristin had kept it together for the discussion about food, forcing thoughts of her son to one side. But once she had been left to her own devices, she had gone back to her room and proceeded to quietly break down.

Her son, her boy, was being sold on the black market like an animal. He could be hurt. It was likely that he would be hurt. He might be sold before they could find him, or there could be an accident, or -

She buried her face in one of the blankets and sobbed.

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Trixtin?” Phil’s voice filtered through the metal. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she called back, but her voice cracked in the middle of the word.

There was a brief pause. Then Phil quietly asked “Can I come in?”

Kristin hesitated. She hadn’t met him all that long ago, but at the same time… she didn’t really want to be alone right now. “… Yes.”

The door slid open, and Phil stepped inside, closing the door carefully behind him. He tilted his head to one side, trilling softly at her in what she tentatively identified as worry.

She buried her face back in the blanket.

“This has to be terrible for you,” Phil said quietly, and she heard the click of talons as he walked over and knelt down next to her nest. “I’m so sorry it’s happening.”

Kristin let out a wet, bitter little laugh.

There was a very light touch to her shoulder, which became slightly firmer when she didn’t shrug him off. “Yeah, I know that’s not very comforting.”

It wasn’t. But it was something, and he was here, trying to help, which meant a lot. She reached up and took his hand, squeezing it lightly.

After a beat, he squeezed back. “Okay, this - okay.”

“I miss him,” Kristin whispered. “I feel like I failed him, and I’m so scared for what might happen. You said that Techno’s a good bounty hunter, but all I have is your word on that. I don’t… Phil, I don’t know what to do.”

“… Okay, uh…” Phil made a little warbly hum sound. “Stop me if I got this wrong, but… You’re probably scared, right?”

Kristin nodded.

“Okay. That’s understandable, I was scared when Wilbur was in danger too. I’d be more concerned if you weren’t scared, honestly.”

“You’re a good dad,” Kristin murmured. She had seen Phil and Wilbur interacting, the absent ruffling hair and straightening feathers, the genuine warmth.

Phil gave her hand a very gentle little squeeze. “And I’m guessing you’re feeling sort of… out of the thermals, right?”

Kristin turned to properly look at him, frowning in confusion.

“Um… Not in your element?” Phil tried. “Floundering, sort of? Overwhelmed?”

Ah, right, bird. The expression did make sense when she really thought about it. She nodded.

Phil paused for a moment, reaching out with his free hand to very lightly brush at her cheek. “… Why is your face wet?”

Kristin pulled back, just a little, to wipe her eyes. “Sorry, I - sorry.”

“No, no, it’s… I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

He looked so sincere. Not quite the way a human would, but she’d gotten sort of used to the way he and Wilbur expressed emotion. She could see the worry and the sympathy and the hesitance.

Kristin felt more tears prick at her eyes and blinked them away, sniffling.

“Oh,” Phil breathed, his feathers ruffling. “Oh, that’s - is it an emotional response?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice at the moment.

Phil nodded back, a little jerky, like a bird bobbing. “Okay. So it’s normal, you’re not hurt or anything. That’s good. Is… Is there something I can do?”

Kristin thought for a second. She could really use a hug, actually, but… is that something elytrons did? She didn’t want to do anything that would make Phil uncomfortable or upset.

Phil just sat there patiently, his hand still in hers. He gave her time to think and didn’t press for an answer.

For some reason, that made Kristin want to cry even more, so she decided to just go for it. Moving slowly, so Phil could back off if he wanted to, she leaned forward to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his collarbone.

“Oh - oh, okay, uh. Hi. Okay. This - mhm.” Phil was a little stiff, but he very cautiously put his arms around her too, and after a moment, she heard the soft rustle of feathers as his wings wrapped around them both.

“I miss him so much it hurts,” Kristin sobbed, and it was strange, feeling so alone and so seen all at once. Phil was here, and he cared, but no matter what she said, she couldn’t make him understand. Not really.

God she missed her boy.

A soft, rumbly warble started up in Phil’s chest, and after a moment of hesitation, he started very carefully running his - claws, talons? - through her hair. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find him, I promise.”

She hugged him just a little bit tighter and laughed quietly. “I’m holding you to that.”

They stayed there for a while. Phil kept making the sound and carding carefully through her hair, and she just focused on trying to calm down. She could hear his heartbeat - faster than a human’s, but steady and calming nonetheless.

There was a knock on the door. “Dad? Are you in there?”

Phil sat bolt upright and puffed up like a startled cat. “Wilbur! Yeah, uh, what’s - what is it?”

“… Everything okay in there?”

“Yes, everything’s fine!” Phil was still ruffled, and he kept glancing between Kristin and the door.

Kristin carefully sat up, wiping away the remaining tears on her face. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s time for dinner,” Wilbur told them. “Come get food.”

Phil nodded several times, standing up and holding out a hand to Kristin. “Are you hungry?”

She took another deep breath, let it out slowly, then accepted his help up. “Yeah.”

Phil kept one wing curled partially around her as they left her room. It felt like an arm around her shoulders, almost, and it was comforting to know that no matter what happened, someone on this ship really, truly cared.

Notes:

Fun fact, elytrons only hug their flock members! This is an entire scene of Phil trying to remind himself that this probably isn't supposed to be flirting :)

Chapter 7: Kristin (Mother), Tommy (Survivor)

They were close. Probably about half an hour out, by Kristin’s guesstimation, based on what she’d learned of alien time conversion. She could see the planet in front of them now; it was large enough in the windshield of the ship that she could watch it from the doorway of the bridge.

The other three were bustling around getting ready. Techno had up his picture of the planet’s surface again, and he was debating with Phil which site they should try out first. Wilbur was testing different gadgets, flicking them on and off and turning them over a few times, then putting them in a bag.

Kristin just hovered in the doorway. She didn’t have a role here, at least not yet, and she didn’t understand how alien technology worked well enough to feel qualified to help. She wasn’t sure she could focus on a task right now anyway, not with Tommy so close.

She heard the sound of nails clicking against metal, and turned to see Techno’s… dog? padding up to her. It was mostly like a dog, just with very sharp teeth and too much fluffy white fur and bones that didn’t move quite right for a dog. But it seemed friendly, and its tail was wagging, so she held out a hand for it to sniff.

It nosed at her hand for a moment, then ducked so that her hand was on its head.

“Okay, okay,” Kristin told it quietly, smiling despite herself as she scratched behind its ears. Its fur was really soft.

Techno glanced up at them and nodded when he saw the dog(?). “That’s Floof. I don’t know if the two of you were properly introduced.”

Kristin bit back a snort of laughter, despite the circumstances. “Floof?”

“I can’t understand you and therefore will take that reaction as praise of my namin’ skills,” Techno said loftily, turning back to his pictures of the planet.

“Floof is a terrible name for a bounty hunter’s dog,” Wilbur piped up with flicking ear feathers. “You should have called him something like Skullcrusher.”

Techno and Phil both turned to stare at him.

“… Skullcrusher,” Techno repeated slowly.

Wilbur nodded, his feathers flicking faster. Kristin was reminded, for a split second, of Tommy, and how he always doubled down when confronted too. “You’ve got to admit, it’s cooler than Floof.”

Techno glanced over at Floof, who was happily sitting with a wagging tail while Kristin scratched under his chin. “He’s fluffy, Wilbur. Floof is a perfectly understandable and serviceable name.”

“But not an amazing name,” Wilbur pressed, setting down his bag of electronics so he could move his hands as he talked.

“Hunter or something might be better,” Phil mused without turning around.

Techno turned to Phil, and Kristin couldn’t read his body language as well as she could Phil and Wilbur’s, but the mock betrayal was blatant enough that even she could see it. “Phil that is the worst name. Why.”

Phil’s ear feathers flicked, and he shot a glance over at Kristin.

They were doing this for her, she realized. They were trying to lighten the mood and calm her down. The realization made her smile; she’d gotten incredibly lucky to end up with these three.

Wilbur opened his mouth, ready to continue the silly little argument, when something on the ship’s control panel pinged.

Techno’s expression immediately shifted back into seriousness as he turned back to the screens in front of him. After a moment, though, he huffed. “… Phil.”

“What’s up, mate?” Phil asked, walking over to look over his shoulder. As he studied the image, his wings started to slowly fluff up. “… Oh.”

“What’s oh?” Wilbur asked in mild concern.

Techno waved him over. “Trixtin, you come look too.”

Kristin frowned, hurrying over to look at the screen over Phil’s shoulder.

There was a section of the planet highlighted, one of the landing spots Techno had been considering. Off to one side, the image was zoomed in, showing some thin ribbon of grey on the planet’s surface.

Smoke.

“Something’s burning down there,” she realized, and suddenly it was difficult to breathe.

“Trixtin!”

There were hands on her shoulders, but she couldn’t stop staring at the tiny trail of smoke. Her boy was down there. Her son was down there.

Then, suddenly, her view of the screen was cut off by black feathers, and Phil was there, gently turning her face toward him. “Hey. You need to breathe, Trixtin. It’s gonna be okay.”

“You can’t know that,” she choked out, because they didn’t know where the smoke was coming from, or if they were already too late, or anything. All she knew was that Tommy could be in danger.

“It will. We’ll make it okay,” Phil insisted, and he curled his other wing in around her very slightly. Like a hug, or a safe place to hide. “Listen. He’s valuable to them, so no matter what, they’ll keep him safe. And we’re already prepared for him being off planet by now, right? So it’ll work out.”

Kristin took a deep breath in, held it for a moment, then exhaled slowly, trying to shake some of the tension out of her hands. Phil did have a point, and panicking wouldn’t help Tommy. She had to stay calm. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Phil folded his wings back in and turned to Techno. “What do we do?”

“We go in,” Techno decided, and he was giving Phil a funny sort of look.

Wilbur’s neck feathers were all ruffled as he looked back and forth between Phil and Kristin. “… Dad?”

“Later,” Phil told him, turning back to the screen. His wings were puffed up oddly. “We stick to the same plan, then? We go in, you check it out, we get the chick out of there as fast as possible?”

Techno nodded. “Yep. Brace yourselves, I’m speedin’ us up a bit. I want to get there quickly.”

Kristin took another deep breath, staring out the windshield at the planet, which was growing steadily bigger. “Hang in there, sweetheart, we’re coming.”

 

---

 

The aliens were weird.

Good weird, Tommy was pretty sure, but weird. Maybe he should have expected that, though, since he met them while they were all locked in cages.

The tall one - Ranboo, apparently - had managed to steal a metal earplug thing that he called a translator. It made things easier. Not great, but easier.

Tubbo (the bee one) knew a few words of Ranboo’s language, and Ranboo knew a few words of Tubbo’s, but neither of them could understand Tommy, and neither of them were very good at actually making the sounds. Their best strategy so far was for Tommy to try and learn the bare essentials of both languages, since he was the best at copying sounds.

Right now, though, Tommy wasn’t trying to learn how to communicate with his new friends, he was scouting the area around their campsite.

They had set up camp in the forest Tubbo had steered them into, and the hover bike thing they’d stolen had some rations stored in it, but their priority was finding food and water. That was Tommy’s job, since neither of the aliens knew what he could eat, and Ranboo couldn’t be near water. Besides, he was the sturdiest of the three of them. Big Man Tommy could handle exploring an alien planet, no problem.

(Sometimes, the weird texture of the leaves and weird shape of the trees and the weird taste of the air made him feel like he couldn’t breathe, and he missed his mum so badly it ached, but he couldn’t think about that right now. He had a job to do.)

He ducked under a partially fallen log, then paused.

That sounded like running water.

Tommy ran toward the sound, doing his best to avoid the extra-tangled roots all over the forest floor, and yes, that looked like a river! It was flowing, clear liquid, at least. He kind of wanted to taste it, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew better than to just put alien maybe-water straight into his mouth.

He followed the river upstream a little bit, trying to see where it came from, and was pleasantly surprised when he found it bubbling up from a crack in the ground. Springs were good to drink from, he was pretty sure, they had less bacteria or something.

“I am simply the best at surviving in alien forests,” he said happily to no one in particular, then hurried back toward the campsite.

The hover bike had run out of fuel as Tubbo steered it through the forest, so they were using it as one of the walls for a little leaf tent. Tubbo poked his head out from their tiny shelter with a curious buzz as Tommy ran back into their camp.

“I found water!” Tommy announced proudly, pointing off in the direction of the spring. After a moment, he remembered that Tubbo couldn’t understand him, and he mimed drinking something.

Tubbo copied the gesture with an excited buzz.

“Come on, come on!” Tommy grabbed Tubbo’s hand and dragged him - gently - out of the tent.

Luckily, Tubbo didn’t mind being pulled around, and Tommy tugged him back through the woods to the spring.

Tubbo started buzzing happily as soon as he saw it, flitting around with humming wings. He scooped a little bit up in a container, swirled it around, and waved his antennae at it, then took a sip.

“Well?” Tommy asked, trying not to be too worried about his friend drinking weird alien water.

Tubbo buzzed in a way that Tommy had learned meant good.

“Pog, gimme some!”

Once they’d had all the water they wanted, they carried a whole container of water back to the campsite, and only spilled a tiny bit! Tommy set it down proudly next to the tent, and Tubbo carefully secured a lid onto it so it wouldn’t hurt Ranboo.

Speaking of Ranboo, he ducked back into camp with an armful of flowers and weird-looking fruits, warbling a hello.

“Ayup,” Tommy greeted him with a wave. He pointed to the container. “We found water!”

Ranboo trilled, taking a tiny step away from it.

Tubbo hopped up and helped Ranboo set down his findings. Then he happily started munching away on a bright blue flower.

“That’s weird, innit?” Tommy asked, wrinkling his nose.

Tubbo flicked his antennae at him in what was… probably an equivalent gesture.

Ranboo nudged some sort of purple fruit closer to Tommy with a little chirp.

Tommy picked it up and turned it around in his hands. It was bumpy, sort of like an avocado, or a lemon. But when he dug his fingernail into it, the skin was pretty thin, so he just shrugged and took a bite. The taste was sort of bitter and sweet and minty all at once, and for some reason, the odd taste made his heart ache.

It was so different.

Every day since he’d first been in space, there had been something that punched him in the face with how different from Earth it was, and how far away from home and how alone he was. Looks like it was weird alien fruit today.

Still. They didn’t have a lot of food out here, so he and Ranboo ate the fruit, Tubbo ate his flowers, and they all piled into the tiny leaf tent to conserve body heat during the night.

Tommy glanced out at the stars and thought about his mum. He hoped she was okay.

Notes:

Techno and Wilbur: Wait a minute was that flirting

Phil, sweating: No It Was Not now let's go find Tom

Chapter 8: Kristin (Hunter), Tommy (Friend), Kristin (Mother)

Notes:

There's some descriptions of dead bodies in this chapter! It isn't super graphic, but be careful if that's something that bothers you.

Techno wanted them to stay on the ship.

It was dark, he said, and no trading would be happening at night anyway, and the source of the smoke seemed to be fairly contained. So they should wait until morning.

Kristin understood his reasoning. She also thought that was a stupid idea.

Her son was out there, she was so close, but now she just had to sit here and wait for morning. It was unbelievably frustrating.

She wandered the ship for a while, straightening whatever she could find to keep her hands busy, and eventually she ended up just grabbing a blanket out of her little nest, wrapping it around her shoulders, and sitting on the floor of the rec room. It had a lovely view of the smoke trail drifting up into the sky.

Kristin just… stared at it. Such a small thing, and on Earth, she might not even have questioned it. She would have probably assumed it was from a bonfire. It could even be a bonfire here, on an alien planet a billion miles from home. But it could be anything. It could mean that Tommy was hurt, or worse.

And all she could do was stare.

“Hey.”

She glanced briefly up at Phil, then looked back at the smoke.

The elytrian crossed the room and sat next to her, his feathers fluffing up slightly. “Thought I might find you in here.”

Kristin hummed quietly, but didn’t really respond.

“… I know waiting is hard.” One wing curved up to rest gently against her back. “But trust me, Techno knows what he’s doing. He’ll be out there first thing in the morning, and he’ll find Tom. I promise.”

Kristin leaned over to rest her head on Phil’s shoulder. She wondered briefly when he had become such a safe person for her, when his presence had started feeling so comforting, but then she decided it didn’t really matter. He was here, and he cared, and that was enough for her to feel a little less like a spring coiled too tightly.

Phil started carefully running his talons through her hair again. “Get some rest. You’ll need it for tomorrow.”

And he was right. No matter how much she wanted to keep watching the smoke, just in case something changed, she really would need some rest. Kristin reluctantly closed her eyes, telling herself it was just for a minute.

She woke to the sky looking lighter, the wing around her gone, and something soft under her head.

Kristin sat up, blinking away sleep. Sure enough, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, and the smoke trail had nearly vanished.

She looked down at her makeshift pillow and saw a familiar piece of green fabric. Phil’s coat. He must have left it for her after she fell asleep.

That was an incredibly sweet gesture, and it made her heart twist in a way she hadn’t felt in a while. There was, however, absolutely no time to unpack that feeling right now, since she had a son to rescue.

Kristin picked up the coat and hurried to the bridge, where the other three were making what looked like final preparations.

" - goin’ alone," Techno was saying as she walked in. “We have no idea what’s happenin’, so until we have more information, it’s too dangerous for you to come with me.”

He was going alone?

“I’m going with you,” Kristin said firmly. There was no way she was staying behind now.

They all started a bit and turned to her; apparently they hadn’t noticed she was there.

“You’re stayin’ here until I can figure out the situation,” Techno corrected her.

Hell no. Kristin took a deep breath, walked over to hand Phil his coat, then got right up in Techno’s personal space. It didn’t matter if he could fully understand her or not, he knew what she wanted. “I’ve been patient. I waited until you got here, I waited overnight, but I am going with you, because it has been long enough since I last knew my son was okay.”

“Let her go, Tech,” Phil said gently. “You can keep her out of sight if you need to, and you haven’t tracked humans very much. She might be able to help.”

Techno gave Phil a look that Kristin couldn’t decipher. “… You’re willin’ to risk her safety?”

“I’m willing to let her make her own choices,” Phil said calmly, but his neck feathers were ruffled.

Techno stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Fine.” He turned to Kristin and bared his teeth - it looked like a grin, but she was almost certain that wasn’t what it was. “You need to listen to me at all times, understand?”

She nodded. Whatever it took to get out there.

He made a clicking sound, and Floof came out from under the console desk thing, coming to heel like a fluffy white shadow.

“Let’s go, then.” Techno shouldered the bag Wilbur had packed yesterday and led the way off the ship.

Kristin followed, picking up her energy baton as they left, just so she had some sort of defense.

“Stay behind me and stay quiet, alright?” Techno told her, moving toward the faint ribbon of smoke in the sky. “We don’t know what’s happenin’ there yet, it could be dangerous for you. Especially if any dreamons see you.”

“Okay,” Kristin agreed, trying to hide the sudden spike of fear at the reminder of the dreamons. Then the fear sharpened to anger; they were the ones who had her son. They should be afraid of her.

They crested a small hill, and suddenly the source of the smoke was visible.

There used to be some sort of campsite here. There were the smouldering remnants of tents, and cages standing wide open, some tipped on their sides.

Nothing moved.

“Floof.” Techno clicked again, pointing to Kristin, then the campsite. “Seek.”

Floof hurried over to sniff Kristin’s hand and leg, then darted off.

Techno led the way into the campsite, slowly, ears pricked for any sign of danger.

Kristin looked around at the devastation they walked through. She saw the bodies of many, many different species of aliens scattered here and there, some burned, some not. One had vicious claw marks to the torso. One was pinned under a cage. One was covered in electrical burns. Idly, she wondered if that was what had caused the fire to start.

Floof barked.

“He’s found somethin’,” Techno said grimly, leading the way more quickly through the wreckage.

The dog was standing in the middle of a huge pile of dead dreamons. There was no rhyme or reason to their injuries, except that Kristin recognized it.

It was the desperate, untrained strength of a human.

“Tommy,” she whispered, moving forward to get a look at a bite mark in one of the dreamons’ arms. Sure enough, that was a human tooth pattern. She bit down a slightly hysterical giggle at the thought that he’d always been a bit of a biter.

Techno was examining the bodies as well, and he hummed thoughtfully as he looked over a few of the injuries. “Apian stinger. If I had to guess, Tom started all this, then let some of the others out, then they all started fighting.”

That did sound like Tommy.

“How do we find him?” Kristin asked, looking around at the rest of the camp. There was so much wreckage to look through.

Techno clicked at Floof again. “Hunt.”

As Floof started sniffing around again, Techno took out one of the devices Wilbur had packed and started glancing around with it, following Floof’s progress. He snorted as Floof barked again. “Well, well. He’s smart.”

“What?” Kristin demanded. She didn’t see anything particularly special about the area Floof had found.

Techno handed her the device. “Take a look.”

There on the screen was a soft yellow line. It started where Floof was standing, his tail wagging slightly, and led out of the camp, toward a distant treeline.

“He stole a hover bike,” Techno explained, nodding toward the woods. “Looks like he steered for cover.”

Kristin made a decision.

She started to sprint.

Techno cursed behind her, and Floof barked, but she ignored both of them. She knew where her son was, now, and she wasn’t about to let him slip away this time. Not when she was so close. So she headed for the woods and prayed that she wasn’t too late.

 

---

 

Tommy was getting a headache from this.

Tubbo and Ranboo were trying to hold a conversation with him, a very complicated conversation, with only one translator that didn’t translate what Tommy was saying. He was about ready to slam his forehead into the side of the hover bike.

“We can’t stay here,” Tubbo said firmly. “It isn’t sustainable long term.”

Tommy nodded slowly; that did make sense. Despite the source of water he’d found, the fruit wouldn’t last forever, and if there was a winter on this planet, they wouldn’t last very long in it.

“But we don’t know this planet, we don’t know if there are any settlements, we don’t know anything,” Ranboo pointed out, and that was a good point too.

Tommy handed the translator over to Tubbo, and Ranboo repeated what he’d just said.

Tubbo gave him the translator and started to buzz at him, getting more and more agitated.

The two of them started just passing the translator back and forth, and soon Tommy had no idea what was going on, but he was used to that by now. He just let himself zone out a little bit.

" - om -!"

Tommy sat bolt upright, ignoring the questioning sounds from his friends. What was that?

It had been very faint, but he could have sworn…

" - om - y!"

He knew that voice.

He knew that voice.

Tommy was up and running before he could even think about it. His friends were making sounds behind him but he didn’t care.

“Tommy!”

“MUM!”

 

---

 

" - um!"

“TOMMY!” Kristin screamed again, running even faster because that was her boy, that was him, he’d heard her - “TOMMY!”

“Mum!”

She stumbled over a root, but caught herself and kept running. She was too close to be stopped by a twisted ankle. “TOMMY!”

“MUM!”

She ran into a clearing, and then -

There he was.

His hair a tangled mess, his clothes scratched up with a big damp patch on his sleeve, dark circles under his eyes. The most incredible sight she’d ever seen.

“Tommy,” she breathed, and she was running, and he was running, and he collided with her so hard she fell backward onto the ground of an alien forest, but she didn’t care.

“Mum,” Tommy wailed, hugging her right enough to make her ribs ache.

She hugged him back just as tightly, pressing kisses to every inch of his head that she could reach. “Tommy, Tommy, you’re okay, I’ve got you -”

Tommy just buried his face in her shirt and sobbed.

That was okay, though. That was more than okay. Kristin was crying too, relief and joy and a release of all the tension she had been carrying ever since she’d lost him.

“I’ve got you, I’m right here,” she whispered into his hair, over and over. “I found you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I - I tried to - I was brave and -” Tommy hiccupped, hugging her just a little tighter.

“You were so brave,” she agreed with a wet little laugh. “My brave boy. You did such a good job, Tommy. I’m so proud of you.”

Tommy let out another sob.

There was a rustle behind her, and quiet hoof steps, and Tommy went rigid, glancing up over her shoulder.

“This him?” Techno asked quietly.

“Yes, this is Tommy,” Kristin confirmed, pressing another kiss to Tommy’s head. “Tommy, this is Techno, he helped me find you.”

“… He understands us?” Tommy asked softly, that now-familiar desire for understanding in his eyes.

Kristin hummed. “A little bit. We’re working on it.”

More rustling, this time from Tommy’s side of the clearing, and two aliens stepped cautiously into view. Or, more accurately, one stepped into view carrying the other, who was struggling and buzzing angrily, something about “put me down, I can take her.”

Tommy glanced up at them, wiping his eyes. “I found some good aliens too.”

“Did you?” Kristin asked, taking in the two of them. The buzzing one was small and fluffy, and the other one was tall and half black, half white, their tail twitching anxiously behind them. They looked young. She let her expression soften, and offered them a quiet “Hello.”

The smaller one buzzed several colorful threats at her.

Techno stepped forward, then, seemingly uncaring of the way the tall one flinched back. “She can understand you, you know. She’s got a translator.”

The smaller one went still, suddenly looking slightly afraid.

“That’s Tubbo,” Tommy whispered to Kristin. “The big one is Ranboo.”

“… Who is she?” Tubbo asked after a moment.

“Tom’s her shoat,” Techno explained with a shrug. “I’ve been helpin’ her find him.”

“You’re Technoblade,” Ranboo whispered, his eyes widening. “The bounty hunter.”

Techno inclined his head. “I am.”

“… You know him?” Tubbo asked slowly, glancing back and forth between Ranboo and Techno as Ranboo started to shake.

Kristin shifted Tommy carefully off of her lap, standing and taking his hand. “Techno?”

Techno turned to her with a quiet, questioning noise.

“Can you please tell them thank you for helping Tommy?”

He nodded and turned back to the other two aliens. “She says thank you for helpin’ Tom. She’s been worried about him.”

Kristin laughed, letting go of Tommy’s hand just so she could wrap an arm around him and pull him close. He automatically put his arms around her, too, and it felt like a puzzle piece sliding back into place. Her son, back where he was supposed to be, safe after everything.

“… You’re welcome,” Tubbo said hesitantly. “… How can you understand her?”

“We’ve been workin’ on addin’ human to our translator database,” Techno explained.

“Oh, wait, wait, hang on -” Tubbo took a translator out of his ear and gave it to Ranboo, leaning in close to whisper to him. Whatever he said calmed the taller alien down at least a little bit, because he at least stopped shaking.

Kristin smiled at Tommy, giving him a kiss on the forehead just because she could. “Come on, we should get back to the ship.”

“You have a ship?”

“Phil has a ship that he’s letting me stay on,” Kristin corrected, turning and leading him back toward the ruined campsite. “You’ll get to meet him and his son Wilbur, they’re both nice.”

“Wait, wait -” Tommy turned back to look at his two friends, his brow furrowed. “Can Tubbo and Ranboo come?”

Kristin hummed thoughtfully, turning to Techno. She pointed at the other two aliens, then toward the ship, tilting her head in a question.

Techno let out a long, long sigh. “Fine. You two don’t have anywhere to go, right?”

“No sir,” Ranboo said timidly.

“Come on, then, we’ll at least get you off planet.” Techno turned and started heading for the ship, clicking for Floof, who slipped out from behind the trees with hardly a sound.

Tommy gasped softly. “A dog?”

“His name is Floof,” Kristin told him, feeling nearly ready to cry again. That was her Tommy - he had such a soft spot for animals.

“I’m gonna be your new best friend,” Tommy whispered, staring at Floof with stars in his eyes.

Kristin pressed another kiss to his hair. She had Tommy back, they were helping his friends, and he was still himself. She hadn’t been too late.

Nothing could possibly go wrong now.

Notes:

They got their boy!!!!! He's here!!!!!!

We're past most of the angst, I think, time for some Bonding :D

Chapter 9: Kristin (Mother), Wilbur (Conspirator)

Kristin should have known that where Tommy goes, chaos follows. So naturally something went wrong.

It was… It was fixable. She was almost certain. Hopefully.

Wilbur and Tommy had decided that they were mortal enemies.

The younger elytrian had taken one look at Tommy, puffed up like a startled cat, and started hissing. Tommy had hissed right back, then started cursing him out, which made Wilbur start yelling too, and Kristin and Phil had to drag off their respective children so they could calm down. This resulted in them immediately declaring that they hated each other and refusing to spend more than a few minutes in the same space.

Tommy also didn’t like Phil, but a few days of observation had shown that that only became a problem when he got too close to Kristin, so. An issue for later.

“I promise he isn’t that bad,” she told a sulky Tommy, who was currently curled up in their nest with his head in her lap.

“He’s a wrongun!” Tommy insisted. “One of the worst men! He hissed at me!”

Kristin sighed. “You did hiss at him too, Tommy.”

“Only after he hissed at me!”

“He doesn’t… really like new people.”

Tommy huffed. “Well, neither do I. He’s terrible and I hate him.”

Kristin ran a hand gently through Tommy’s hair. “Could you at least give him a chance?”

“No.”

This was hard for him, Kristin reminded herself, taking a breath before she responded. He had been hurt and carted around like an animal and stirred up a mob, then survived practically alone in the woods with no way to communicate properly with his new friends. He hadn’t had the chances and the hope that she had.

(And something in her ached that she had been safe when he hadn’t. She would give anything to have taken his place, but she would settle for trying to help where she could now that he was back with her.)

“Why don’t you like him, Tommy?” she asked softly. When he opened his mouth to respond, she added “Really, not because of the hissing. What’s going on?”

“He’s -” Tommy started, then paused. He thought for a few seconds, then said quietly, “I just… don’t really like aliens, mum.”

Kristin kept carding a hand through his hair, gently untangling all the knots she could find. “You like Ranboo and Tubbo.”

“They’re different.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Tommy was quiet for even longer this time. Just as Kristin was about to accept that he wouldn’t answer, he softly admitted “They’re like me.”

Oh.

They had been in cages right next to Tommy. They had helped him get out, they had all struggled to communicate and survive together. He had none of that bond with the crew that Kristin had come to know.

That made sense. A lot of sense, which made everything more complicated, because it would be very difficult to fix. Kristin sighed again, scratching very lightly at her son’s scalp. “I know this is hard, Tommy. Believe me, I know. But… please, for me, just… give them a chance. They may not be like you, but they’re like me. And if I thought you were in any kind of danger here, I would never have let them get you on board. I promise.”

“I know,” Tommy mumbled. “It’s… I have nightmares a lot. And it’s hard to remember that they’re safe.”

Kristin’s heart broke all over again. She got nightmares too, of course, but Tommy shouldn’t have to deal with that. “I wish I could help, sweetheart.”

“I know.”

She took just a moment to savor her son being here, then offered “Do you want to go find Floof? I bet he’s around somewhere.”

Tommy’s face lit up like a sunrise. “You think? I’ve almost got the hang of that one command Techno does -” He made a sort of barking, huffing sound, which the translator turned into something like “sit.”

“I got some translation on that one!” Kristin praised, ruffling his hair. “You’re doing really well with that, I’m proud of you.”

“It’s just mimicking,” Tommy said with a roll of his eyes, but he was smiling as he sat up.

Kristin smiled back, leaning forward to give him a kiss on the nose. “You’re learning a new language, sweetheart, that’s not just mimicking.”

“I’m learning like two words of another language, mum!”

“My boy the bilingual,” she cooed, reaching out to lightly ruffle his hair again.

Tommy waved her away lightheartedly and hurried out of the room. She heard him copying Techno’s clicking as he ran off down the hallway.

With not much else to do, Kristin started reorganizing the nest. Some of the blankets had gotten shoved out of place during the night, and they’d been further disturbed by Tommy’s hasty exit. Phil had been kind enough after Tommy’s initial rescue to give her more materials for it, so there were quite a few blankets to tidy now.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Trixtin?”

Kristin looked up from her straightening, a smile on her face. “Come in!”

The door slid open and Phil walked in, ear feathers flicking gently. He came over and knelt next to the nest. “How did it go?”

“It went well, I think,” Kristin told him. She turned back to the nest as she talked, tucking another blanket back into place. “The problem isn’t Wilbur, really, it’s more… How do I put this, um… He doesn’t know the three of you like he knows his friends, so…”

“So he feels threatened by us,” Phil finished with a soft little warble. When she nodded confirmation, his wings fluttered just a little. “That does make sense. Wilbur opened up a little too, and he’s feeling pretty much the same way.”

Kristin turned to blink at him. “What do you mean?”

Phil sat back a little, diverting his gaze up toward the ceiling. “We don’t get many reports of humans out here, and the ones we do get… Well, let’s just say there’s a reason I panicked so badly when we were in that cell together. Plus, it’s the eyes, I think.”

“The eyes?”

Phil glanced back down at her, a clear eyelid flicking over one of his eyes. Blue, just a few shades darker than Tommy’s. “The color of them, anyway. Tom’s eyes are bright blue, that’s a very elytrian color. It’s what startled Wilbur into hissing in the first place.”

“So,” Kristin summarized with a sigh, “both of our boys have good reason for being wary of each other.”

“Unfortunately,” Phil agreed, his wings drooping.

She groaned, burying her head in her hands. “Why is this so complicated, Phil?”

“… I don’t think we’ve got that word in the database yet, I’m guessing… hard, or difficult?”

Kristin shrugged. “Close enough.”

“Being a parent is hard, and this is a complicated situation,” Phil pointed out, carefully scooting closer to the nest and wrapping one wing around her shoulders. “Honestly, after everything they’ve been through, I’d be more concerned if they were both completely fine.”

“Doesn’t help that we’ve both been hurt too, does it?” Kristin asked, glancing up at him through her fingers.

Phil’s ear feathers flicked slightly. “No, it really doesn’t.”

Kristin hesitated for a moment, then reached out and took Phil’s hand, giving it a light squeeze. “Thank you for this. For everything, really, but - you’re always here to help me get my head straight, and that means a lot. Thank you.”

All of Phil’s feathers puffed up slightly. “Oh, uh - you’re - you’re welcome. It’s no problem, really, it’s the least I can do -”

He was so sweet. She ran a thumb over his knuckles without really thinking, and chuckled quietly at the way his neck feathers ruffled. “You don’t have to do anything for us, but you do anyway. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pay you back for that.”

“I… don’t think I quite got all of that, but… I get the idea.” Phil very gently squeezed her hand back. “It’s my job as captain to make sure everyone on board is alright. That includes you and Tom, for as long as you want to stay.”

Kristin hesitated. She hadn’t really thought about leaving - she’d been too preoccupied with finding Tommy, then with his spat with Wilbur. “… How long would we be welcome?”

Phil’s ear feathers flicked, and he let out a soft, gentle warble. “Forever, if you’d like.”

“That’s a big promise, captain,” Kristin pointed out, her heart doing a little flutter in her chest.

“Well. Not when it’s you.”

 

---

 

Wilbur was having an absolutely terrible time.

He could reasonably say he liked Trixtin, at this point. She was nice, as dangerous as she was, and being able to talk to her meant he wasn’t as afraid of her as he was at the start. Before, there had been no way to tell if she was being threatening or not, and now there was.

But seeing Tom for the first time had been… a bit of a shock, to say the least.

The door to the ship had opened, and the eyes that had met Wilbur’s were so elytrian but also so weird and wrong in a very primal way that he had freaked out a little bit. Tom freaking out right back had riled him up even more.

Was it a bit childish to be afraid of a chick? Maybe. But Wilbur stood by the fact that Tom could rip his arm clean off of his body, probably hated him enough to do it, and was a terrible, irritating child besides. So Wilbur definitely hated him.

That’s why he was walking toward the humans’ room. Definitely to declare that he hated Tom. Not at all because his dad was sad that he and Tom didn’t get along and Wilbur was begrudgingly willing to try one last time.

He was admittedly quite confused to see Tom out in the hallway, crouched by the door.

“What are you -” he started, but Tom instantly turned and started frantically gesturing for quiet.

… Okay, that was intriguing enough that Wilbur would go along with it. He tucked in his wings and crept down the hallway to kneel next to Tom, repeating in a much quieter voice “What are you doing?”

“Our parents are in there,” Tom whispered, pointing to the room. “Listen!”

Sure enough, the door was cracked ever so slightly, and Wilbur could hear two voices from inside.

" - so? What makes me so special?" Trixtin asked in a tone Wilbur hadn’t heard from her before.

“Well,” his dad replied in - that was a flirting tone, that was definitely flirting - “where do I start? You’re kind, you’re brave -”

“Oh, I don’t think I’m -”

“You are. You protected Wilbur and me, you put yourself in danger to protect Tom… I think you’re very brave.”

Trixtin made a soft little noise that sounded… Wilbur hesitantly labeled it amused. It sounded sort of like a quiet version of the other amused sounds she made.

Tom was squinting through the small gap, and he leaned back with his whole face scrunched up. He turned to Wilbur to whisper “They’re holding hands!”

Wilbur stood and twitched his wing in a ‘come with me’ gesture. “Come on. We shouldn’t let them see us.”

Tom reluctantly followed him down the corridor and into the rec room.

“Okay,” Wilbur said as soon as the door closed behind them. “So we can agree that was definitely flirting, right?”

“Definitely,” Tom agreed with another scrunched expression. “They were sitting there and holding hands and your dad had his wing around my mum -”

“He had his wing around her??”

“Yes!”

Wilbur groaned, his wings fluttering behind him. “Okay, yeah, definitely flirting. Look, I know we hate each other -”

“You’re a wrongun,” Tom agreed solemnly, whatever that word meant.

“I - sure, whatever, the point is, we need to decide if we’re okay with this.”

Tom blinked at him. “… What do you mean?”

“We need to form a pact,” Wilbur told him, and maybe it was a bit dramatic, but Phil always said that was his specialty. “Either we do anything we can to stop… whatever they’re doing, or we become the best flightmates ever.”

“… The best what?”

Wilbur tilted his head to one side. “Flightmates. We help them get together.”

“Ohhhh, you mean wingmen!”

“Wing what?”

Tom waved a hand around. “Just - okay, so either we stop them or get them together, yeah?”

Wilbur nodded, letting the semantics argument drop. “Right.”

Tom’s lips curled down a little as he stared at the floor. “… Mum looks… happy, around your dad. She smiles a lot.”

Wilbur wasn’t sure what a smile was, but he nodded again, recognizing the sentiment. “Dad seems happier, too. He always makes excuses to go talk to her or spend time with her.”

“… Mum’s never had anybody like that before,” Tom said quietly, his gaze still locked onto the floor. It was hard to read his body language without any feathers or wings, but he seemed a little bit sad. “It’s always just been me and her, ever since she -”

He said a word that didn’t translate.

“… What does that mean?” Wilbur asked. With the context of the word, it sounded important.

“It means she wasn’t there when I was born, I had a different mum then, but now I have this one,” Tom explained, and his shifting weight said he was uncomfortable. “But - you know, it’s just been the two of us. I’ve never… I’ve never seen her like this before, not with anyone.”

Wilbur slowly walked over to sit on a nearby stool. “… Can I tell you a secret?”

Tom tilted his head in a surprisingly elytrian way. “… Yeah.”

“I’ve never seen Phil like this either. He doesn’t usually flirt with people, or at least not seriously.” Wilbur glanced at the doorway, thinking about the gentle tone and kind words. “… I think he really means this.”

“Okay,” Tom said with a sigh.

“Okay?”

Tom gave him a firm nod. “Okay. If they’re happy together, then we get them together.”

Wilbur hesitated for one more moment, then nodded back. “Fine. We’re agreed, then.”

Tom held out his hand. “Shake on it.”

“… What?”

“Just - give me your hand.”

Hesitantly, Wilbur held out his hand. Tom took it and shook it up and down a few times, then stepped back.

“Now it’s a deal,” he said with satisfaction in his voice.

Humans and their odd behaviors. Wilbur didn’t think he would ever really understand them, and right now, he wasn’t going to try. This tentative truce was plenty for the time being.

Now they just had to figure out how to get their parents together.