#he's grumpy

You were in a room that looked exactly like the torture chamber he was in, though you weren’t strapped down to a table. Instead you were bound with your hands over your head, your arms pulled high over your head. Your skin was pallid, your arms pulling against the bonds holding you in place. Your eyes were wild, looking at every pyode amedha as they prepared for whatever they were going to subject you to. 

Kid ground his teeth – normally it was he who they were milling about, like the insects he knew they were. He flexed his remaining hand, trying to remain calm. Kid was fairly certain he knew what was going to happen, though you weren’t used to the experience like he was. 

They were going to torture you.

The easiest way for Kid’s Hish nature to take control and drive him into hyper aggression would be to harm his mate. He guessed that was the ultimate goal of forcing him to mate you, given the large needle poised at the gland between his neck and shoulder. They would harm you, he would get angry, they would extract his gland secretion and use it to enhance their soldiers or whatever the cowards wanted it for. 

They had removed your shift, leaving you in similar undergarments to the ones he’d seen before. Your breasts and delicious cunt were barely covered, the guards leering over your body. His bile rose – they would be the first to die when he escaped his bondage. Kid took a deep breath and centered himself. He would need to remain in control if he wanted to ensure he did not enter his berserk state.

Kid knew what was at stake, he couldn’t give lowly oomans the very nature of his people. He would have to remain calm, refrain from going berserk. Kid suspected they wouldn’t kill you, they needed you for more than just today’s extraction. He would have to tolerate you being harmed before him and remain in his right mind – the secrets of his people depended on it. Kid was resolute in his desires, ready to keep himself from reacting to your pain.

Until you made eye contact with him. 

You had turned in your bonds until you were facing the transparent window, your large human eyes catching his own. Kid’s breath hitched as he kept his mandibles from flaring. Your pupils were dilated, your skin running with your own sweat. Your fingers were gripping the rope holding you so tightly that your knuckles were white. The guards left the room one by one until it was just you in the room, awaiting whatever sick torture the oomans would inflict upon one of their own.

You were scared.

And not the normal scared he had seen from you over many days. No, you were frightened and seeking him for comfort and protection. Kid felt himself getting angry already, his muscles bulging with the need to defend you. 

He wanted to spit on the ground in frustration. How could you be scared already? Nothing had even happened yet. A worthy Yautja mate would not be afraid of nothing. You were always scared of something, you needed to control your reactions. You looked to him as a source of strength, even though a true Yautja mate would look first within. And yet Kid did not break eye contact, allowing himself to watch over you from afar. You seemed to gain some measure of reassurance from him as well, even going so far as to give him a nod. Good mate, he thought before banishing it from his mind.

A sound in your room had you twisting to see behind you, your limbs shaking moments after. A guard was slowly walking towards you, lightly flicking his gloved palm with a thin whip, another curled at his hip. You averted your eyes as you trembled, jumping every time the whip made contact with the guard’s hand. He was laughing and saying something to you, but you didn’t respond. Kid ground his teeth as he again tried to remain focused. The guard came over to the wall and pushed a button on your side, his voice now coming through to Kid.

“And let’s make sure that your mate can hear all the lovely sounds you make, hm?” the guard said, looking at Kid. 

“We wouldn’t want him to miss a moment of the show.”

Your POV

You tensed as Captain Shiryu walked around you in a slow circle, the end of the smaller whip now trailing against the floor. You hadn’t missed the bigger bullwhip coiled on his hip, nor the sword strapped to his back. You’d never met Captain Shiryu before, but he was known for his ruthlessness and cruelty among the slaves. Your skin prickled as he walked around you, the acrid smell of his cigar smoke filling the room. Even as you looked away from Kid, you could feel his eyes on you. 

“It’s too bad something so sweet was given to something so savage,” he said, tipping your face up with two fingers. The mating bite Kid gave you was tingling, making you press your lips together. You were sure Captain Shiryu didn’t want an answer – you’d been a slave long enough to know you weren’t valued for your voice.

“Maybe when we are done with him, we can find some other uses for you,” he said with a savage grin, gripping your jaw. He blew his smoke in your face before slapping your cheek hard enough to turn your face. You picked your head back up and found Kid staring at you through the glass. You looked down to the floor, trying not to cry before Shiryu struck you. 

“Up, girl. Make sure he sees,” Shiryu said with a grin, using the butt of the whip to pick your chin back up. Your eyes again locked with Kid’s, no expression visible on his face. He gave you a curt nod, perhaps trying to bolster your courage. You gulped, your lower lip trembling. The whip cracked in the air as Shiryu did a few practice strikes with the smaller whip, your shoulders hiking higher with every sound. Despite being a slave for many years, you’d never been whipped before, always trying your hardest to avoid the brutal correction.

“I’ll start you off nice and easy, work our way up. I’m not even gonna make you count, isn’t that kind of me?” Shiryu said behind you. You didn’t have time to respond before he struck you, the whip hitting your skin for the first time. You yelped and gritted your teeth, trying not to call out any further. You knew Kid detested you for your weakness, you didn’t want to give him another reason to find you wanting. 

“That’s good, he’s getting agitated. Let’s move along, see how much it takes,” was all you heard before your skin felt like it was on fire. The whip was small but painful, striking you with expert precision. Shiryu whipped you a few more times in succession, each strike crisscrossing where the others had been. You screamed for the first time with the last whip strike, your sixth thus far. 

The first strike had you thinking you could bear it, but your confidence was flagging with each stroke. The pain was compounding, building until you couldn’t bear it anymore. You looked up and found Kid staring at you, his yellow eyes focusing only on yours. He was breathing heavily, the guards already holding their batons and guns at the ready.

“Now, let’s see if we can really get him going,” Shiryu smirked. You heard clacking steps behind you and the sound of something else being unfurled. A few loud cracks in the air told you Shiryu had taken out the bullwhip you’d seen earlier. This was no snapping light sound – each crack of the whip sounded like lightning in the sky. You heard a battle cry from Kid, but that only made Shiryu laugh harder.

The whip struck your back without warning, your body lurching forwards with the force of the blow. It took your mind a second to process, before you twisted in your bonds, a scream ripped from your throat. You’d never felt pain like this, not once in your life. It felt like your skin was being torn in half, like you’d never be whole again.Your breaths came in short bursts as black dots started swimming in your vision. You felt something dripping down your legs and saw red dripping onto the floor. Another strike had you screaming as your legs gave out from under you, leaving you dangling from the rope. 

“Good, good. Look how he fights for you,” you heard distantly. Your head was forcibly yanked upwards, your body slack against your bonds. You focused your eyes and saw Kid, his muscles straining against his bonds as he attempted to get himself free. There were several guards around him, watching screens and preparing to extract something from him with syringes. Was Kid larger than he’d been before? The bonds holding him to the table were strained to their maximum, smaller than you remembered across his body. His seastone collar looked like it was close to snapping as Kid’s neck bulged over it. Shiryu grunted and let go of your head, letting it loll downwards. Tears fell down your cheeks both from the pain of the whip and the shame of being an inferior mate. 

“Again!” Shiryu gloated, bringing the whip down onto you once more. You wailed louder than you ever had in your life, your back feeling like it was breaking. Blood was dripping down your legs in rivulets from where your skin had split. There was yelling and crunching sounds coming from Kid’s room but you couldn't look at him right now, you couldn’t bear having him see you like this. 

“Mhm. Your filthy Predator is upset at how we’ve been playing,” Shiryu laughed, walking in front of you to stare into the window. You could see his pants tenting in the front as he turned and ran his whip gently over your neck.

“Your skin is so lovely like this, ripped and bleeding. I hope I can keep going a while longer, that disgusting Yautja seems to be doing what they need.” You continued to keep your eyes averted, not wanting to see them torturing Kid. 

You couldn’t take another round of whipping, you couldn’t – your mind blanked as Shiryu wlaked further away, swinging his whip in anticipation of striking you again. You braced yourself as much as you could, your bare feet sliding against the floor, now slippery with your blood. You tensed as he swung the whip in the air, the slicing sound preparing you for what would come seconds later.

“Agai-AUGHGHHHH” Your head jerked up at the sound of glass shattering all around you, like a bomb was going off. Looking up, you saw Kid’s hand wrapped around Shiryu’s face, crushing his skull. Kid easily picked Shiryu off the floor, suspending him in the air by sheer force alone. Shiryu’s hands were uselessly clawing at Kid’s forearm, his feet scrabbling in the air. You froze as Kid’s hand contracted fully, pieces of brain oozing out of his now closed fist. Kid threw Shiryu’s dead body against the wall like it was a rag doll, the sickening squelch of his body making you want to throw up.

Kid turned to you, stomping uncaringly over the glass shards now all over the ground. You stared at him, but the Kid you were used to seeing was gone. There was only an animal left inside him, no sense of cognition or even that he recognized you. Kid was massive, much larger than his normal huge size. He towered over you, his muscles rippling, veins bulging as you tried to cower before him. You had no doubt that you would be next after Shiryu to meet you end by his hands.

You gulped and tried to cringe away as his hand extended towards you, Shiryu’s blood still dripping down his arm. But he only broke the rope holding your hands overhead, catching you before you fell on the floor. He set you down gently, careful of your torn back. You crumpled on the floor, unable to bear your own weight any longer. Kid crouched down in front of you, his fingers splaying across the vicious bite he’d given you a few days prior. You looked up at him and he grunted only one word.

“Stay.”

Kid POV

The pyode amedha had successfully wrought their own destruction. Kid barely had any memory of what had happened after you’d been whipped. He remembered the feeling of his berserker state rising as you were struck by the smaller whip, but by the time the larger whip struck you, his mind was blank. Whatever restraints they had on him weren’t enough to keep him still as his strength and size surged in order to defend and protect you. He remembered freeing you, but nothing much beyond that. Clearly, he’d gone on a rampage and slaughtered the other pyode amedhas at the base.

He hadn’t ever been that lost to the hish before, not even close. One moment he was straining against his bonds, the next he was crushing a pyode amedha skull between his fingers. It was said that mates could never harm one another, but given how easily oomans died, he wasn’t sure that was true. You were so easily injured and harmed, it wouldn’t be out of the question that you were hurt accidentally or by another pyode amedha. 

Even now, he wasn’t quite sure how it had come to pass that he’d freed his Commanders and killed everyone in the compound. Not that he cared how the pyode amedha died, but he did wish he could remember slaughtering some of them. It was always a pleasant memory to think over during quiet times, but he supposed the number of corpses would have to do.

Kid also did not remember how his seastone collar had come off, though perhaps one of his Commanders had helped him with it. As he thought, short memory came to mind of Kid beating someone to death with it, which made him chuckle. Either way, he was pleased to have his Devil Fruit ability back. Kid stretched out the fingers of his metal hand, noting the blood that coated the iron. His thoughts turned to you as he wondered if you would delight in his metal arm or consider it weakness. Kid grunted, pulling on his locs for a moment. He had finally come to, and found himself with his Commanders in one of the rooms of the destroyed base.

“We have located our ship, Heat and Wire are loading it with supplies,” Killer said, clapping his Captain on the shoulder. “Then we can set sail back to our island.” Kid looked up at his first mate, now with a scarred left arm. He grunted and stood up, blood and guts all over his arms and legs.

“I have to collect my –  the ooman female,” Kid stated. Killer said nothing but Kid felt the weight of the look Killer gave him. He would have to tell his Commanders the truth about who you were to him soon, he couldn’t hide it forever. 

“We did not disturb her. She is where you left her,” Killer informed him. Well, at least he knew you were alive. A floating memory came of him telling you to remain in the room. Kid had been trying to protect you by telling you to stay there, trying to mitigate the chances of you getting killed by either him or his Commanders.

Kid got up and went back to the room where he’d watched you get whipped. You had borne the pain rather well for a weakling, he thought, not screaming until your skin tore under the lash. Kid quickly found the room, the door ripped off the hinges and spattered with blood and other viscera. There was the dead body of the pyode amedha who had whipped you, his head crushed. Kid grunted and kicked it once more, he vaguely remembered slaughtering the unworthy worm.

Scanning the room, he found you huddled in the corner, trembling harder with each step he took towards you. Your small body was covered in blood, not all your own. Your wounds were still oozing, he’d have to take care of that as well. Your tiny hands were covering your face as he approached, tears leaking in between your fingers.

“Ooman,” Kid said, stopping in front of you. You didn’t look up at him, your gaze fixed on the floor. Kid grew impatient for you to comply, though he supposed he hadn’t actually asked you to do anything yet. 

“Ooman, let’s go,” he ordered, crossing his arms. You didn’t respond, just shook harder like a leaf blowing in the wind. He crouched down next to you – perhaps you were injured beyond just the whip marks? Kid looked over your quickly but found no other sources of injury.

“What is wrong with you? Why do you not move?” Kid demanded. He reached out towards you with his hand, which made you duck your head. You covered your head with your arms, like you were scared he was going to – ah. You were afraid you would be killed like he had the others. Kid almost flared his mandibles, how could you think so low of him? No Yautja would ever harm their mate, not even in a hish rage.

Perhaps you did not know the way of mates, Kid thought. He was bound to protect you and care for you, no matter how weak you were. Kid softened his stance, his finger stroking the soft skin of your arms. He was trying to gentle himself for you, he hoped you would understand that.

“I will not slaughter you like I have these other pyode amedha. You alone remain alive here of the oomans. If I had wanted to kill you, I would have done so already,” Kid assured you. Your eyes opened wide as you stared at him, no more comforted than you were earlier. Kid sighed, he needed more work on his ability to calm you. Already your ragged breathing was interfering with his own, making him want to soothe you and cater to your emotional nature. Kid tried once more.

“Lil-ka, I will not harm you. I have avenged you, killed all those who wronged you in the past. Is that not so?” he asked, his voice as soft as someone like him could make it. You stared for another moment before giving a minute nod. 

“Let us depart this place,” Kid suggested, standing up and offering you his hand. You licked your lips and swallowed thickly, perhaps weighing your odds as you looked behind him. 

“Unfortunately, you have no other choice than to join with my crew. We are mates now, and that cannot be reversed,” Kid muttered, as much to you as to himself. “Fate has bound us, and we cannot undo what has already been done.” You looked him over, before extending your small hand and putting it in his own. Kid stood up, pulling you to your feet slowly. You wavered, perhaps from the blood loss or perhaps from shock. Either way, Kid picked you up, mindful of your still injured back, his hands above and below your injuries.

“We are leaving.”

Shortly thereafter, you, Kid, and his Commanders were all sailing away from the island and back towards Yautja Prime. Kid was standing on the deck, watching the ship slice neatly through the water. Wire had somehow found their old ship, the one they had been using before they had been captured. It was loaded with shitty Ooman supplies, but those were better than nothing. There were to be a few weeks at sea as they sailed to their home island, but it would allow them to rest and reconnect with one another.

There was no better feeling than the wind in the sails, his Commanders at his side, and the world at his feet. Heat had used his newly given abilities to set the buildings on fire, which was an excellent finishing touch. There would be nothing left of the labs, only a warning to pyode amedha not to war with the Yautja lest they come to the same ending. 

Feeling a shiver, Kid looked down at his feet, where you were huddled against the bitter winds. You had barely moved since he had placed you there, instead opting to silently watch his Commanders with wide eyes as they prepared to leave the island. You shivered again, your hands rubbing up and down your arms for warmth.

Kid took his heavy red coat from his shoulders and wrapped it around you to protect you from catching cold. It had been one of his first trophies, taken from a worthy opponent he had killed in battle. Thankfully, it had been left on their ship and not sullied by ooman hands. You wrapped it around yourself, making yourself smaller than you already were as you huddled into it. Kid hissed, you really were a weakling. 

“Go below the deck, Ooman. It is too cold for you here,” Kid grunted, motioning with his finger towards the door that led to the lower levels. You nodded but didn’t speak, still silent as you obeyed him without question. His coat dragged on the ground as you began to walk away but he didn’t remove it from you. He had killed the last ooman who had dirtied his jacket but right now he was more concerned that you didn’t die of the weather.

“Go to my quarters, it is the largest cabin at the end of the hall. Rest there,” he continued after a moment. You mutely nodded again before shuffling in the direction he’d pointed to you. Kid watched you move slowly across the deck, his flesh fingers twitching in their need to pick you up and take you to his room, ensuring you were tucked away safely. His nature was driving him to care for you, but he was stopped by his mind. 

Yes, he had enjoyed mating you, of that there was no doubt. Even now his cock hardened in his loincloth as he thought of the times he’d taken you, your breathy moans, your soft skin, your complete devotion to him. But that meant nothing in the face of reality, of being tied to you for the rest of his days. 

What would his Commanders think? It was a mark of shame for such a strong Yautja as himself to be mated to such a weakling. Surely they would not accept you or him as mates, despite the bond taking hold. Kid was silent as Killer joined him on the deck, standing next to one another and facing the fast approaching night. 

“She bears your claiming bite,” Killer remarked after some time. Kid grunted.

“Pucking pyode amedha. They gassed us until I had no other choice. This weakling was forced upon me,” he scoffed, even as he wondered if you were sleeping in his bed. Killer said nothing.

“It is a mark of shame to have a mate like her,” Kid continued. Waves crashed against the side of the ship, the sound filling the air as Kid awaited judgement by his closest companion. 

“I will claim her too,” Killer stated. Kid blinked, unsure he heard his first mate correctly.

“What?” Kid ground out after a moment, clenching his fist. His immediate reaction was of jealousy, though his cock stirred with the thoughts of sharing you with his first mate. How would you react to two warriors within your bed? Would you be as submissive and pliant for Killer as you were for him? Would you mewl for Killer just as sweetly? Perhaps you could take both of them within your smaller body, it was said ooman females could do such things…Kid refocused as Killer continued talking.

“I will claim her with your permission. She can have more than one mate. Like you say, she’s weak and needs protection. This will ensure we are properly attending to her,” Killer said with a short nod. 

“She is unworthy of such an honor,” Kid bit out, metal swirling around him. Kid took another breath, the metal clanging to the ground as he centered himself. Killer shrugged.

“Without her we would still be in bondage. It was her pain that activated your Hish nature fully, allowing you to free yourself and then us. She was brought to us by fate, and we must cherish such a gift. Perhaps Heat and Wire will claim her as well. We can all enjoy her delights,” Killer continued. Kid remained silent, unsure what he had done to deserve such a loyal crew. He had been sure that they would revolt against him, removing him from his post as Captain for taking such an honorless mate. Kid had nothing to say, no way to show his respect and admiration for his first mate.

“I am responsible for your arm. The shame is mine to bear,” Kid replied after a few minutes of silence.

“It is an honor to serve under you, Kid,” Killer said simply into the growing night. Killer stood a few more minutes before turning and heading below deck. 

“Shall I check on your mate?” Killer asked, holding the door open. Kid pushed off the ledge and stomped over to where Killer was.