Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Lime Green Headphones

The world around them was alight with colors. Flares of purple, pink, and red light arced into the sky and then swung low down low over the crowd to coast over their heads. The people and aliens were only silhouettes against lights, dazzling Sunny as they made their way with the crowd towards some unknown point. Though she could see over everyone's heads, it was difficult to see where they were heading.

This is one of the things she liked about being aboard a human ship, she was always the tallest, back home she had never been the tallest. Even in a room full of adolescents, it was a tossup if she would be able to see over them all. Sunny had always been the smallest in her family, and of her unit. She had stopped growing very early after hitting adolescence, a fact that annoyed her greatly, and brought a lot of teasing from the other Drev.

Comparatively, she had what humans might call a "baby face" everyone always thought she was several years younger than she actually was. It had made trying to find a mate impossible, despite her brightly colored carapace, metallic blue and purple, which was highly desirable, the height sort of negated that. Instead, she had tried to impress with her prowess in war, which included her sheer power, tactical ability, and proficiency with weapons. However, the war with the humans had put a stopper on many of her plans, and now here she was, the biggest, strongest and tallest..... well comparatively with bruit force anyway.

She looked down at Captain Vir and Krill, Captain Vir pulling Krill by the arm as the strange little insectoid floated behind him. Captain Vir was a good warrior, he had injured Sunny once using a sharp rock, Krill was squishable, but he was also ridiculously smart, and a surgeon, so she supposed he wasn't all that bad.

As they made their way through the crowd, Sunny could see everyone staring at them. There were a lot of humans here, so she knew it wasn't because of Vir, like it usually was, it was definitely for her. Though the lights dazzled her eyes and shadows pooled on their faces, she could see contempt. It was an easy human expression to read, she had a hard time telling the difference between happy faces, but angry faces were easy to pick out.

They were growing close to their location, when they were stopped by a group of burly looking humans. Two of them were a good inch taller than Vir, though she still dwarfed them by at least a head, and maybe a half.

They glared at Sunny, but Vir got between them as she prepared herself for a fight.

Three against one hardly seemed fair to Sunny, in the Captain's favor of course.

"What the F*** is that THING doing here." The man snarled.

"Move aside." Another growled

Vir crossed his arms, "No, she's a member of my crew. Try hurting her and I hurt you.

Sunny took a step forward, but was stopped by Krill placing one of his limbs on her leg holding her back. She looked down, and he held up one of his legs to stop her shaking his head. She reluctantly held back, watching as the humans fanned out to surround the Captain.

One of the men spat on the ground at Vir's feet, "Traitor, you bring one of those things onto a HUMAN colony, after what they did. People died in that war, people were ripped in half. That thing probably DID."

Vir kept his arms crossed and squared up to the man until they were chest to chest, Sunny knew what that meant, that was a dominance move.

"I know what they did, I was in the ninth fire team when they killed all of my men." He reached down and tapped his metal leg, "And I was a member of operation Steel-Eye, so don't F***ing tell me what I already know or what I can and can't do. Now BACK OFF!"

The man seemed quite surprised and took a step back. Captain Vir shouldered past him knocking the man back a step, "Come on Sunny, Krill, let's go."