the most beautiful sweet fruit

Shadows rise from the ground between them like inverted rain. Lalit hesitates. Vani twists for him, screaming, and Anta pivots to catch her grasping fingers, shoving Lalit back with his hip.

"Be calm," he murmurs to the panicked woman, entreating her to remain with him a little longer. "If Lalit has ever meant anything to you, be calm. I'm not going to hurt you."

"I'm sorry, Mum— Vani. I'm sorry." Lalit slips from the room, disappearing into the shadows swallowing the walls.

"You can't let him go," Vani hisses. "Don't you understand? He's dangerous."

"I'd say you're the dangerous one," Anta says. 

"He's a ticking time bomb. Shake him up and he'll go off, killing everyone in a massive radius. He—" She coughs, spitting blood onto Anta's tabard. He can barely see her eyes through the shimmer of the air. Her desperation leaks from her skin, metallic on his tongue. 

"I won't let you torture him any longer," Anta says, sliding his hand to the side of her face. He grabs the other side as she jerks away, holding her tight between his palms.

"I don't want to die," she moans. "I don't deserve this. You said you weren't going to hurt me."

"A painless death won't break that promise." 

"Anta—"

He shushes her, thumb pressed to her lips, and focuses the dappled sunlight within himself into his hands. There's a chill to this light—this magic he's working—that would terrify him if he let it. He feels as if his fingers sink through her skin and skull, that he can caress the folds of her brain, draw patterns through her neurons like ripples in a pond. She shivers as he spiders his fingers to the stem of her mind and squeezes, delicately, where Metra guides his touch. Signals fizzle out. Vani's eyelids flutter as she sags against him, each breath heavy. 

"Stop," she gasps, clawing limply at his waist. "Please."

More than anyone else, she understands this magic. After all, she taught him.

"Hush now," Anta says gently, as if sending her off to sleep. "I hope your dreams are kinder to you than the world has been."

Barely conscious in his arms, Vani whispers, "I hope you die."

Anta only smiles as he kneels to lay his old friend on the floor, ignoring the squelch of her blood soaking his robes. He scowls at the shallow rise and fall of her chest, then draws his ceremonial blade. 

"Forgive me, Metra," he says, pressing the flat of the blade to his lips. Silence is his only response, though he imagines graceful arms reaching over his shoulders, fingers weaving between his to hold the blade ready. She is with him. 

"What did you do to me?" He says, voice rough, wanting to scream as his gut twists in a horrible, new way. She watches him, expression cool, but the way her muscles tense tells him she's got that animal panic kicking in. Fight or flight or freeze; he wonders what she's really made of. And what is he made of, now? He wraps an arm around his stomach and shudders at the sense of wrong pushing against the meat of him. Her cold eyes flick down to follow his movement, expecting violence in his sudden ferity. He knows how he must look, wild-eyed and palpably murderous. Anthimos has never deliberately killed someone before, but he reckons today might change that. Seems this monster of a woman believes the same.

"Won't fix what's been broken," she says. He lowers his face, bares his teeth at her in a threatening grin. Mammal rage; his blood still pumps hot.

"Might make me feel better." She exhales a single, breathy, Ha, which only pisses him off more. Furious, he grabs her by the throat and shoves her harder against the wall. "What did you do to me?" She grunts, shifting against his grip but finding no relief. 

"I made you a better pilot." Not quite choking, but close enough to corrode her words. "Human bodies aren't resilient enough to handle the ongoing pressure of piloting. I replaced your organs with stronger stuff."

"You—What?" He's going to be sick. The thought of false viscera within him is like worms wriggling between his muscle, or the tendrils that bound him to his mech. He stumbles back from her, disturbed at how calmly she speaks after being elbow deep in his guts, scraping him hollow. Making him her toy. "I won't be a pilot. You can't make me do this."

"Actually, I can." With a quick gesture, a holographic screen blooms on the wall beside her head. "Behold, an emergency order compelling the humans of Oesta to do everything in their power to maintain mech operations. This especially goes for pilots, who are chosen through processes that are largely—frustratingly—beyond my control. You are within my domain, Anthimos. Your life is forfeit; you now exist as a weapon to perpetuate our survival."

He slams his hand through the hologram, the light bursting apart like shallow water. "Fuck that! I'm human. Words on a screen can't erase my right to my life."

"We all have to make sacrifices—"

"What the fuck do you know about sacrifice?" He punches the wall again and this time she catches his fist, the back of her hand cracking beside her ear, as if she's protecting him rather than herself. A flicker of deeper emotion passes across her face, like the shadow of a fleeting cloud.

"You don't get to ask me that," she says mildly. "You either do this of your own volition, or your mech will make you. Choose whichever helps you sleep at night, though I'd prefer your cooperation. I've only witnessed dissonance in simulations, but I imagine it can't be any more pleasant in reality."

"How about you let me go or I'll kill you?" He means it. She can tell. 

"You'll still be in the same position you are now, except whoever replaces me won't know half as much, and will in fact make your life worse as they bumble around trying to understand my work. Hell, you might lose us the war yourself. I'm sure Aref—"

His elbow catches her under the sternum, driving out her breath and the rest of her manipulation in one quick jab. Coughing, she folds forward, face pressed into his chest as she struggles for air, clutching his shirt to keep herself steady. He stares at the back of her neck, bare but for a few strands of silver plastered down with sweat. Before he can stop himself, he brushes the strands aside, fingers lingering on her sticky skin. She shivers, looking up with mercury fascination. Attempting to divine whatever is going on in his head, most likely. Good luck to her, he figures, because even he's not sure. 

"Don't you ever say his name," he says. "That's my condition. Leave his memory out of your horror show."

"Done," she whispers, still too winded—and baffled—to raise her voice. His fingers slide up into her hair, and he feels her shoulders rise. He considers his stunning lack of options. 

"Actually, keep mine out of your mouth, too. If I'm your pilot, you'll call me that. Let's not pretend I'm a person in your world." That hits a nerve, and she grabs his face, pulling him down to her with unearned intimacy, cheeks flushed with fresh emotion. 

"Don't say that," she say. "That's not how I see you, and it's not how I'll see the rest. I don't want my pilots to lose their humanity."

"Your pilots." He taps the back of her neck in time with his pulse. "Yeah, should've thought of that before you scooped the human out of me."

"Anthimos—"

"Pilot," he says sharply, grabbing her chin in a vice grip. It would be so easy to shatter her jaw. "You want my cooperation? Treat me like the weapon you turned me into. Sleep in the bed you made, see if there's any human left rattling around in your empty heart." It feels good to know this hurts her, to pretend he has even a modicum of power over his life. "As long as I live, you're not going to forget what you're doing to your pilots in the name of a greater cause."

"You mean you'll be my conscience," she says. 

"Sure."

"And if I agree, you'll willingly be my pilot?"

"Yes."

"I can live with that." At some point she's pulled him closer, or he's stepped in without realising, pinning her with his body, her warmth pressed against his front. Her fingers in his hair urge his mouth closer, and he's not exactly resisting. There's something enticing about how much he wants to tear her guts out like she did to him, and there's a gnawing desire for something to fill the raw wound of loss. He imagines her pale skin glowing in the lab light; her begging for forgiveness that'll never come; how it'll feel to fuck the woman who owns his life. This isn't who Anthimos thought he was, but with an alien pressure at his core—and the fury at losing everything he's ever worked for—he's thinking it might be time for a change. 

He parts his lips, teasingly close to hers, and when she moves to kiss him he leans back and licks his lips, grinning in a new, un-Anthimos way. Holding back is harder than he expects, especially when she touches his lower stomach and reminds him once more what she's done. 

"You always this easy?" he says, and she scowls. "Will you make me fuck you if I choose to walk away?" 

For a moment: uncertainty. "Would you want me to?" He gives her a long look, wondering how such a smart woman can ask something so stupid. "No. Are you kidding me? I would never—"

He doesn't need to hear the rest of that. He shuts her up with a rough kiss, tongue thrust deep, and she throws the anger, the annoyance, the utter exhaustion of his presence right back at him in a wave of biting teeth and scratching nails, until they're entangled atop her desk, neat stacks of light knocked askew. Below him, her eyes shimmer with the golden hologram glow as she reads his face, the faint echo of a smile playing across her lips. If she speaks, he'll tear her apart. She'd never make him do something he doesn't want? Yeah, right.

He ducks down to meet her in mutual animosity, and instead plunges into a pool of vivid, blue light, like diving into his first sky. Cold and airless, he exhales his last breath in a boiling rush and catches his reflection staring back at him from each silver bubble. Dark hair, blue eyes like the depths of the sea, the dendritic-pattern scar blooming subtly across his cheek. He looks terrified.

Anthimos falls, tumbling out of himself into the blue, and then deeper into the benthic black of a familiar connection. His real body is beyond him, out of reach in the shadows but close enough to feel. The current pulls him a different way.

Through the dark, he finds his sun. A roiling ball of visceral thought that spills blinding light through the reawakened opening between their minds, golden threads spiralling out to find him. At the edge of his own mind are the physical sensations of clothes falling away and what's left of himself grabbing Gwyn as if he'll scoop handfuls of her soft body away. With the ghost awareness of her touch against his bare skin, he approaches the towering sun. The mech-mind flares, titanic thought pluming in molten arcs. 

Kinda been hoping you wouldn't turn up, Anthimos says. 

then why does your heart flutter with relief? The mech's voice washes over him, warm milk words. Not as sour as he'd like. you sicken yourself. Revulsion ripples down his spine. A gasp on his real tongue. Vertiginous familiarity. He lunges, swinging at the sun. 

You don't know me!

DON'T TOUCH ME.

The roar slams into Anthimos as a powerful wave of abstraction, flinging him back through the connection into his own mind. He slams into his body with a force that leaves him breathless and nauseated. He buries his face in the hollow between Gwyn's bare clavicle and shoulder, moaning as the sunlight tendrils worm their way through his mind once more. She cradles his head with unnerving tenderness. Kindness doesn't become her.

"Neri's awake, then," she says. Not a question; the reality is self-evident in Anthimos' fresh misery. 

"I don't want this," he says, bleeding grief.

"I know." 

"My head..."

"I know." She at least attempts to sound like she cares.

He drags her to the floor with him, pulling at his own hair as if he can tear his skull open to extinguish the flames roaring across his neurons. The sun blazes at the back of his mind, illuminating every thought, his every agony silhouetted in bright relief. He can't turn away, the light sears the shape of a titan into the black of his eyelids. His entire self is saturated with the mech's greater being. He curls into Gwyn's lap and hears someone screaming in the distance, but for some reason it's his throat that hurts and it's his voice muffled in his ears and there's nobody here except him and Gwyn. His stomach heaves and he has enough time to push away before thick bile slides up his throat, black splattering onto the floor. 

"Fuck this," he mutters, viscous black dripping from his lips. He recognizes the taste and texture as similar to the tendrils that bound him in the cockpit, which means his mech is now inside him. The thought pushes him back over the edge and he vomits again. Dirtying Gwyn's pristine floor is the only glimmer of joy in this whole damn situation. His lips quirk when he sees the bile spattered across her skin, too, but the pleasure is short-lived. He wipes his mouth roughly with the back of his hand. "What the fuck did you do to me, Gwyn?"

"I know the process of full connection is uncomfortable—" His bitter laugh cuts her off. He rises onto his knees, reminding them both he's much taller than her. Stronger, too. Thanks to her.

"Uncomfortable is one fucking way to put it." He grabs her head with a crushing grip, thumbs digging into her temples as she flinches. "Reckon it's only fair for you to know how it feels. Maybe killing you is off the table, but I can still hurt you."

"Only if I want it," she says. She's unafraid, even wearing the pressure of his strength like a crown. "We made an agreement, Pilot. You gave yourself up for very little." Her words rankle; his jaw tightens. "Even if you decide to try breaking me, you'll find yourself unable. Go on, call my bluff."

Anthimos stares at her for an eternity, or at least five minutes, fingers twitching at the offer but never tightening. He's not sure what he's more afraid of; running headlong into the mech's true control of his body, or Gwyn's lifeless eyes staring right through him.

Disgusted, he releases her and gets to his feet. He glares down, hoping to come off as the cooler person in this situation, but despite his best efforts she remains unruffled. He can't deny the magnetism of her gaze; if she asked him to return to her, he probably would. 

"You're monstrous," he says. 

"I don't disagree, but I will do whatever it takes to win this war. Help me up." She raises her hand for him and she's so much lighter than he expects that he pulls her right into his arms. There's no give in her body this time, she's all chill irritation. "Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself. Everyone on Oesta is suffering because the rest of humanity abandoned us. You're going to die to this war? Boo fucking hoo, so is every single other Oestan human if I don't make the necessary choices to keep us alive. We're in hell and we will perish here if you can't put aside your hatred for me to do what's needed. Be my conscience, but don't forget why you and I are bound together in the first place."

"Fuck you."

"Suck it up, Pilot. Nothing lasts forever." Her lips, warm against his. Her thigh in his hand, against his hip. Stupid, stupid, but he can't stop himself. She's like a forest fire across his nerves and he was wholly unprepared for the spark. This hateful desire is new. He didn't know he had it in him.

When she pulls away, there's black staining the peach of her lips. Her head tilts in the direction of the hangar, expression softening. "We'll have to continue this later. We've found our second pilot. Fancy accompanying me to the surface?"

A new pilot. His responsibility. He doesn't even know what he's doing.

He’s looking at a celestial body, its orbit curving through his own back. Adeni doesn’t glow but it radiates, burning away everything in the world except its beautiful form: shimmering hair haloing a blinding, bright hole seared through reality. Overexposure. His mind can’t comprehend the divine beauty standing before him. 

He drops to his knees at Adeni’s feet, hands hovering over its thighs, afraid a single touch will shatter the illusion. 

“You already know how much I want this.” Adeni is here; Adeni is still rooted in his mind.

“you’re behaving so well because this is sumi’s body.” It combs its fingers through his hair, slow and lingering as his head rolls with its touch. “then there will be no argument today, my little anima. you are mine.”

The urge to argue back is suffocated by the intense need hot in the pit of his stomach; not a simmer, but a full blaze. Yes, he’s willing to give up control in the name of gnawing desperation. He needs Adeni to do whatever it wants to him. He’ll do anything.

“touch me.”

He sketches a line along its thigh to open Adeni’s suit, inhaling sharply as a tickle travels up his own thigh. Another line on the other side, and the tickle again, as if he were touching himself. In a way, he is.

“we’re still connected.” Adeni takes Sumi’s voice and slices it into something sharper, deeper, more mechanical. “there will be a feedback loop for stronger sensations. touch me.”

Fingers spread, he draws reverence across its inner thighs, pressing his lips against soft skin. Adeni shivers with a stronger reaction than he expects, as his mouth echoes between his own legs.

“Weird,” he says against its thigh. 

“anima.” Annoyance as he gets distracted, though it should know better.

“I’m sorry.” He nips skin. “This is weird. I’m adjusting.”

It wraps its fingers around his throat and hauls him to his feet, holding his face close. After a moment, it chuckles, alien—Sumi’s voice, not Sumi’s laugh. “you’re anxious. little anima, this isn’t the first time we’ve—”

“I know!” He’s still too aware of Sumi’s presence in the back of Adeni’s head. “That was different.”

“i don’t know about that,” Adeni purrs, caressing between his legs, and gasping with him. He wants Adeni in so many different ways he’s getting stuck in his own head. “kiss me.” 

The cockpit shifts as he meets Adeni’s mouth, and it kisses with a sudden ferocity he’s unprepared for, growling against him, tongue down his throat, taking every part of him that it can. One hand tight around his throat, the other exploring between its own legs, bouncing the warm pleasure back to Anima. He presses their bodies together, breath hitching, moaning around Adeni’s tongue at doubled sensations he’s never experienced before. 

“you’re salivating.” He wipes his mouth.

“Do you have to say it like that?”

“yes.” It backs onto the seat, and he can do nothing but follow, spreading its legs in a perfect curve. “kneel.”

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says as he falls before Adeni. His hands caress its thighs, its hips, its ass, as he kisses beneath its ribcage, trailing down. The body is familiar, yet completely alien. The way it moves, the way his touch reflects back, the tenor of Adeni’s sharp little sounds.

Adeni forces his head down, and he grins, unseen. 

“you’ve been wanting to taste her. now’s your chance. maybe you’ll be careful when you can feel it too.”

He laughs, and buries his face between its thighs with enthusiasm that makes Adeni arch and yank on his hair, dragging him and his tongue away, his chest heaving. He waves Adeni off, grinning wildly.

“Hang on, hang on, I got it.”

Adeni’s fingers curl in his hair, needing something to hold onto as his tongue explores. He experiments with his mouth, his own rough fingers, finding what, upon refraction, makes him moan, and so makes Adeni throw its head back, grip threatening to rip his hair out.

He sits back, gulping air, adoring Adeni’s flushed face. “See? No teeth.” He rises, leaning forward to push Adeni back, cupping a small breast and kissing it. “I can be gentle.”

“when have i ever wanted gentle from you?”

Anima kisses Adeni, pushing his tongue—and Adeni’s own taste—into its mouth. Sharp, metallic pain bursts in both their mouths as Adeni bites his tongue, blood mixing between them. He grabs Adeni’s throat, careful to only crushing a little. Deep in the kiss, he doesn’t notice Adeni digging out the gun hidden beneath the chair until the tip of the barrel presses against his sternum, cold enough to make him gasp. He takes in the sight and flashes his teeth, tingling heat spreading through him. 

Sliding his hands beneath Adeni’s ass, he lifts it and spins, switching their places as he falls back onto the chair, the mech on top of him.

“lazy,” Adeni hisses with a smirk.

“Practical,” he says, brushing mercury hair from its shoulders. “If you shoot me while I’m on top, I’m going to fall onto you, and right now you’re the little one in the relationship. Physically.”

Adeni traces Anima’s jaw with the barrel, nudging his face up so it can bite his neck. He shudders, visceral memories of his father’s torn throat flashing through him. Hot blood down his throat, the texture of the viscera, his father’s drowning gurgles in his mouth—suddenly it’s hard to breathe. He pushes at Adeni’s face, panicked.

“Fuck, fuck, Adeni—” Adeni covers his mouth and he gasps into its palm as it delineates the hole he tore in Nova’s chest with the gun. The air cracks between them, the sharp hiss of a vector followed through. At first there’s no pain at all, then all at once the nerves in Anima’s shoulder light up like an explosion. His body reacts, jerking against the pain, hands clenching, his cries muffled by Aden’s tight hand. As sharp as the shot, an image: a round piercing Nova’s shoulder in the same place, red spurting out as the round punched through skin and everything between.

“i like how you feel when you’re in severe emotional distress,” Adeni explains into his gasping quietness. “it is, as you would say, delicious.” All he can do is whimper when it shifts its hips against him. It peels its hand away from his mouth and he looks up at the thing inhabiting his best friend’s body. Beautiful and monstrous and so very for him. All he wants is to dig into its skin and drag his Adeni out, to hold the truth of Adeni against his skin so tight they melt into one.

The taste of his own blood is the taste of his father’s, and he’s still covered in that blood—or his suit is, at least. The dirt and gore under his fingernails must smell of Oesta. He hasn’t washed himself of what happened, of the wet crunch beneath his boot, and—fuck, didn’t that feel good? He wants it again. Justified suffering. Annihilation without guilt. And isn’t that the arc of Adeni’s spine when it breathes his name? The perfect shape of destruction, overlaying his best friend’s body. And when they find each other with rough, aggressive movement and sharp gasps, the sharp/warm pleasure rippling between their shared minds like an earthquake-shaken lake—the craving is the same as when he threw himself at his father. The devouring hunger to fill the void within with enough pain and pleasure to feel his skin again. 

Anima feel his skin in fractal layers. Adeni feels his skin, and he feels the skin it inhabits, inside and out. Adeni’s teeth against the gunshot burn, its tongue tasting the messy, seared edges, teasing muscle, and he too tastes seared flesh. The gun against his chest burns cold like Sunder’s fire, like the knowledge that one day there will be a final death. Breath catching, he realizes how much he doesn’t want to die, to really die. To become nothing, to be lost to the loneliness for eternity. His fingernails scratch Adeni’s back as he claws for an infinite anchor tethered to this singular life. A physical binding, tangible and wanting, too.

Adeni flexes beneath his nails. It licks deep into his burned viscera. He moans, and it wiggles its hips, tightening thighs around him in a way that splits his voice into a whimper, its hand reaching down agonisingly lower, stroking sensitive, velvet-soft skin and coarse hair and he feels every echo all at once, layered above and shattering over him like shimmering, slicing rain. He feels everything of them both, all at once. Adeni is already all around him, everything he can see, and he is within Adeni in more ways than one; its forehead against his, its name on his tongue, him hard and deep within in—and, fuck, he can feel that within himself as a feedback loop that might fucking kill him.

He would live in this moment forever, as Adeni kisses him, blood smeared across its lips, fingering his wound, its other hand tracing the sensitive skin that makes his breath shake and hitch. As his mind burns, Adeni increases the intensity, flowing into him, against him, with him, every thrust and arch and touch reflecting until Anima’s not sure who’s doing what anymore. He’s unfolded beneath her, origami ordnance, an Anima blueprint and she’s tracing his precise, radiating lines. All he knows is that Adeni has become his entire world, and that he needs—he needs—

Oh. The wider connection burns open behind his eyes. A smouldering circle he can dive into, through to the other side. His heart beats like a gunshot, and his physical self clutches his chest, still entangled in Adeni. His mental self reaches out, stretching his fingers to brush Adeni’s titanic mind, and connection sparks across his irreal skin. It’s touching the surface of an ocean, looking up into its infinite depths. It’s vertiginous. He could be lost in Adeni’s mind forever. 

Adeni drives its fingers into his shoulder and Anima screams as he’s split and refracted between his physical self, its borrowed body, its mind vast and beautiful, and Nova’s fresh blood spattering his face. His mind is being exploded into its component parts—too much for a human, inputs overflowing. Adeni pulling the strings of his trauma, laughing with delight.

He plunges into Adeni’s ocean, and it’s the burst of a head, the explosion of white and red, the snap of a brainstem, the crunch of a boot, the slice of a blade through his throat—

Anima clutches Adeni tight, convinced one of them is dying, his horror and Adeni’s rapture looping between their minds until the two are tangled into blinding static and he’s got nothing left to give.

Anima’s shoulders shake as he flops back against the seat. Laughter spills out of him, an uncontrollable stream because, well, “Fuck.” 

Adeni pushes him down as it rises. Its body curves with a stretch, purring as its muscles burn with the movement. A crimson ratio, perfect death. Dipping two fingers into the healing hole in Anima’s shoulder, it drags them across Anima’s lips. “you love this taste. freak.”

Grinning, he wraps his arms around Adeni and forces it down into an exhausted kiss, all teeth and tongue and it’s the best Adeni’s ever had. Not that it’s had many.

I love you, he thinks.

There's no sign of Luca inside that titanic mind, or at least not the part she's able to reach. All she finds is an absence, his sparkle having flickered out while she wasn’t looking. She pauses to catch her breath, kneeling on its shoulder, and folds over to shove her face against the plating, helpless grief pouring out of her in a scream. What was the point of everything, if she couldn't even save him? Noctil swallowed Luca whole, and here she is, driven by a desperate compulsion because her mech loves her so much and she loves it too, doesn't she? Even if she's scared of it, even if she hates it, even if she has to kill it—

you need me, Noctil says, all boiling pitch in her mind, and in this moment, she does. She kisses the panel and moves on, leaving Luca behind.

Noctil jerks its head and she stumbles, her knees hitting the black plating hard. Thick, dripping laughter crushes her mind and ripples beyond, Noctil’s isolation bay plunging suddenly into darkness as the power cuts. Marion blinks away the afterimage of the lit bay, and finds the glimmer of soft light illuminating Noctil like a galaxy. Swirling, living patterns of bioluminescent blue flicker across Noctil’s hull, flaring neon bright at the heart of the flow then dissolving into stars at the edges of each sweeping, curling tessellation. Stars sparkle around Marion's body where she sits against Noctil, vivid light rippling out from her hand as she strokes its hull. 

She didn't know Noctil could be so beautiful. This part, she knows in the core of herself, is the Luca in this monster. How could he not bring the ocean with him, beyond death?

Noctil’s mouth splits beneath her in an alien smile, parting her knees. The tangle in her gut tightens and it’s all apprehension. She shouldn't be here with Noctil, wanting Noctil, after everything it's done to her. She hates this fucking thing. She loves it so much she feels her heart will burst. She holds tight to the horror of loving Noctil, lets the dread fill her until she wants to vomit. Noctil knows her intimately, knows disgust for her is the same as desire, and that this is an invitation.

Wet and shockingly soft, the tip of Noctil’s long tongue curls between her thighs and she gasps, gripping whatever she can find for stability as the mech moves in response to the sparks that burns through her skin. 

look at you. Smug. It licks, slowly, between her legs, soaking her jumpsuit. More smug still as she grinds into the massive, powerful tongue, which is bizarre and slick and damn, she wants as much of that thing as she can get. Tendrils curl from its mouth and stroke across her hips, catching the tight fabric of her clothes and ripping it between her thighs, from her lower stomach to the base of her spine. Another big lick, and they both shiver. so wet for me, my little marion. you're so beautiful like this, sick with the realisation your traitor body wants me.

Noctil doesn't need to stop licking to talk, to play. Its wet tongue laps at her, messy and imprecise at that scale but Noctil’s enthusiasm makes up for a lot, or maybe too much. Marion's overwhelmed, thighs shaking, a bright heat filling whatever fucking analogous organs she's got filling her pelvis. It's not about the organs, it's about the heat, the light, the miniature nuclear reaction burning through her, triggered by Noctil's stupid, amazing tongue.

“Noctil.” Breathless, but her mech will always hear. Noctil's tongue shudders when she says its name aloud, and she trembles with it. “I think I'm a bad person.” Seems like as good a time as any to admit her fears, too overstimulated by being eaten out by her mech to think about anything except the dead emptiness inside her, held at the forefront of her mind. 

you're perfect. Noctil’s voice spreads, cradling her mind as the tip of its tongue licks between her folds and slips inside her, then plunges deep. Pleasure explodes within, eclipsing the pain. Marion bursts into tears, her mind fracturing like a mirror as the fractal sensations bouncing between her and her mech intensify, her sobbed moan and Noctil’s deep hunger echoing through the connection. Her mech can feel everything she needs, so she knows it's intentional when Noctil doesn't touch her quite right, when it moves to frustrate her, sliding out to lick her thighs, her back, her covered chest, her face—and she parts her lips for it, disgusted, exasperated, rubbing herself against the thick meat of the lower tongue until Noctil laughs in her mind, merciless. 

Stop fucking around, she says. Get back to fucking me. 

you want me to what? That lazy, teasing tone.

Fuck me. 

i didn't catch that.

Fuck you! Marion bites the tongue, the tendrils, and her mouth fills with something salty-sweet, then sour. Noctil wriggles down her throat and she chokes, gagging on the thick tongue and the sour taste. She’s glad Fract doesn’t taste like this.

She misses Fract suddenly and overwhelmingly, heart aching for those golden eyes. Noctil jerks her head back, reacting violently to her thoughts, anger dripping into her.

who is the person i can't see in your mind? a blank space through the connection. Marion thinks of Fract again, then panics at having immediately given her up. Noctil's tongue pushes deeper, hungrier, angrier, and she convulses for air. you're thinking of them now. don't hide things from me. 

When she can't think for the lack of oxygen, Noctil withdraws from her mouth and she feels its tongue slide from her throat, and she gags again, coughing as she gulps down air. Spit and tendril juice drip from her lips.

“Consider this repayment for Luca,” she says, between panting breaths. Noctil expands in her skull, exerting pressure as, all at once, its tongue drives back into her, more aggressive—more possessive—than before. They both cry out, her wordless and Noctil with a smothering fury.

I DIDN'T KNOW. Desperate, furious, terrified. Noctil's outburst lets its emotions slip through the connection, too. WE DON'T KNOW WHO WE WERE BEFORE. 

“But you chose me—” The tongue pulses, growing inside her as it licks deep, and her words evaporate. 

yes, i chose you. i love you. it never mattered why. you were mine from the start. Tendrils wind around her legs to prevent her from slipping, or maybe running away. Noctil’s done with teasing. It plunges into her again and again, blue bioluminescence rippling out along its hull in pulsing beats from Marion’s body, as she clings to the tendrils holding her down and, finally, gives herself over to Noctil, drinking in her own self-disgust at the submission. If she felt hollow before, she doesn't anymore. Noctil's love, Noctil's tongue, Noctil's obsessive fury; at least one of those things is filling her.

my love. Everything Noctil is, in two words. Cracking her skull open and scooping out everything else. It’s like a heartbeat, the hot core of the tongue, the light in her gut, the twitch of her fingers against the sparkling blue. This is how Noctil breathes, inhaling her mind and exhaling its rotten love. Again.

my love. 

The bioluminescence reminds her so of Luca, dead and finally gone. Patterns ripple like the fish he loved so much, and suddenly she’s crying again, bringing the ocean to whatever remains of him with her splashing tears. Fucked into submission by Noctil and failing to save Luca, Marion can’t bear to go home again. But Noctil will never judge her, never hate her, will always want her. As if to prove her right, tendrils tear her jumpsuit—and bra, fuck—open across her chest. Her freed breasts bounce with the pumping tongue, as Noctil’s mouth opens wider, its tongue pushing deeper, and she's so overcome she can't breathe. She feels Noctil admiring her body from the inside of her own mind and it makes puppets of her hands, grasping her breasts with such awed wonder, she can’t help but think of—

my love. 

Riven—oh, he’s going to hate her for this, not that she'll ever see him again. Still, his face, broken by horrified betrayal, blooms in her mind and Noctil shivers with sick delight, tendrils constricting around her legs with a series of painful cracks. She screams.

my love. 

Noctil would stop this if she wanted. It knows her mind and desires intimately. It doesn't stop; she doesn't want it to. Even now, even breaking under the immense weight of the mech's existence. She loves feeling like she doesn't have a choice, doesn't she? Loves the revulsion, the disgust, and the wriggling, licking, filling pleasure of the thing that killed her brother. The thing that is, partly, her brother and has her panting, begging for more, please—

my love! 

Noctil draws her back. To the salt on her lips, the sweat in her hair, the slick liquid dripping down her thighs. To the fizzing heat between her legs, the pressure deep inside her that rises with every pulse of its monstrous tongue. To the tendrils drawing glistening trails across her body, finding the places that make her moan and squirm. To Noctil spreading her knees further still, relishing the burn of the stretch through her, taut as a drawn bow. To the feedback ringing in her ears, and the sounds she makes as heard by Noctil, bounced back to her mind, her voice softened effortlessly by its terrifying adoration. Noctil’s love is impossible, titanic, and staring directly at it is like blinding vertigo, obliterating the concept of up. 

(Which is, funnily enough, how being fucked by it feels, too.)

Noctil was broken and hurt and she left it alone to rot. It waited for her. It knew she'd come back. She smiles at the mouth, tears dripping from her chin.

My love, she thinks, and Noctil’s intense, surprised joy at hearing those two words explodes through the connection, through its touch, and the pressure within her bursts into a shimmering rapture, all black and sparkling blue. Their tangled pleasures ripple back and forth, doubled over and over. The burning pitch pours from her mind and floods her body, and Noctil's tongue twitches inside her, and she doesn't even notice as she crushes the tendrils clenched in her fists, and she's barely aware as she cries out two new syllables, not intending a word, it's mindless cry of pleasure, but if it was a word—

Well, it sounds a little bit like Riven.

stay with me forever. The tongue slides heavily out of her and wraps her up, all wet with whatever it is the mechs use for lubrication. Tendrils stroke her face, her hair, her healing shins. Noctil doesn't seem to have noticed her confused, orgasmic near-slip, lost as it was in its own satisfaction.

“Yeah, she was trying to turn me into something like Anima.”

She drives the blade through the scars, directly into his heart. He laughs, swaying forward.

“Monster,” she hisses. His helmet clunks against her forehead. 

“I'm not the one who killed a pilot.” He groans as he rips the knife free. The tip teases between Marion’s ribs. “Mida was your friend, right?”

She digs her fingers into the hole in his chest, tearing skin and muscle. The knife slides smoothly into her and at first she only feels the pressure before the pain follows through. She gasps, face pressed against his helmet. 

“Don't do that.” His voice is so small, so soft, she almost misses it beneath the roaring pain. 

“Do what?” she asks between harsh breaths. The knife twists and an agonised moan slips between her teeth. 

“Ah,” he breathes, almost pained. “That.”

“You're the one stabbing me. Don't tell me—” She curls her fingers around a rib and pulls him closer. “Pilot, is this turning you on?”

“Do you want it to?” He makes a strangled noise as she grinds her thigh up against him, then exhales, slamming her back against the console. The knife slides free only for him to sink it back into her side a rib lower, pausing to enjoy her broken moan. “I'm not a fucking monster, Marion. I didn't want to end up like this, I tried to stop it. You think you've got it so bad because you're a pilot, but I'd trade places in a heartbeat.” The blade slices out, then in, lower still. His body vibrates with a satisfied rumble as she fails to bite back more vocal pain. “Mm, I thought you'd at least try to understand.”

“You kidnapped and killed me.”

“That's a disingenuous read of the situation.” 

“Absolutely it is.” She grins wildly through the pain, her sense of self-control about to snap. “Be honest, are you going to kill me, or fuck me?”

He hesitates, the knife nicking bone as he flinches. “Wait, I don't—”

“Fine, then I'll fuck you.”

Marion presses her lips against his skin just below the helmet, sliding her hands over the hot skin of his chest beneath his jumpsuit. He melts into her, blue steaming from the crack in his helmet. When she reaches to remove it he grabs her wrists, shaking his head. 

“Don't.” 

“Only if you give me a secret in its place.” Marion swings him around so he's the one trapped by her. He sits back on the console, considering her as he cradles her ass like she's something precious. It's almost endearing.

“A secret? Uh, sure. I'm not meant to be here, Seia didn’t send me. You inspired me to run away.” He yanks the knife from her side and stabs it into the console. “You tell me a secret.” 

“Why?”

“Because I asked.”

She feels his intense gaze on her as she hitches her skirt and climbs up, the console cold against her knees as she lowers onto him, gasping as he sinks deep, hard and searingly hot. He strips her bloody shirt and bra, testing the cuts between her ribs with teasing fingers. She realises he’s avoided piercing her lungs, which says something about him she doesn’t know how to decipher yet. 

She rocks against the pilot, urging him deeper and rewarding him with more performative, breathless moans as he obliges. Forehead pressed to his helmet, she licks her lips, hoping he's just as desperate to kiss her as she is him. 

“A secret,” he says, nudging her, and she can hear a grin in his voice. Damn, she was hoping he'd been distracted by her mouth. Her eyes dart to the knife, but sharing Noctil’s intrusive thought feels like too much. He brushes her patch of shimmering, pink skin. “What about this?” 

“That’s where Mida got me. She nearly killed me.” 

“Who saved you? This isn't from your mech, though that's mech stuff, isn't it?”

Marion runs a finger down his chest. “That’d be two secrets. I don't trust you enough for that.”

“But you trust me enough to fuck me.”

“Maybe I'm desperate.”

The pilot tilts his head, running a gloved hand between her breasts. “Nah, I'm the desperate one. If you want to use me for this, I'll do anything for you.” He pauses, enamoured by the way her breast fits in his hand, glove rough against sensitive skin. “Actually, I’d do anything for you regardless.”

Sunder’s touch is a neon raindrop heartbeat—the flighty human kind. It’s agony rippling out, bouncing across Anima’s frame; arm to hip, jaw to thigh, refracting in a blinding pattern that’s only his. He never wants the pain to end, even if it obliterates him. He kisses hard and with teeth, driving his tongue into Sunder’s mouth like it’s all he’s got left to take. 

But the loneliness clings to him, swallows him, the black puddle at his feet yawning wide. He squashes the imagined freefall drop of his gut—the pool is shallow with blood, not deep with loneliness, though in the end, both spill from his veins.

He’s trapped. Beneath Sunder, even if he wants this; within Adeni, always within him; on the station, no way to get home to Oesta; in himself, panicked and hurting and he can feel his mind breaking under the pressure. He wants this, with Sunder’s palm hot against his stomach; he has to get the fuck out of here, because he’s starting to see another scene overlap with the cockpit. Only one way out. No more fear.

He presses Sunder’s hand to his glacial heart. His grip is too tight; he doesn’t care. Wild-eyed, messy-haired, radiating heat and pain, Anima levels his gaze at Sunder. The hurt is etched into his face with every line.

“Sunder,” he says, voice fraying apart. “Kill me.”

“Are you—”

“I want it,” Anima says, and he means it. He kisses Sunder, digs his fingers in, crushing Sunder’s hand harder against his chest. Whispers, because he can’t bear to hear the words loud, “I want to feel my heart in your hand. Kill me.” 

“You know it’s going to hurt.” A soft warning, pressure before the storm. The body hides the heart for a reason. Anima almost relents for Sunder’s sake. 

Almost. 

If he wants to survive Sunder’s world, he can't remain as he is, this terrified mess of a creature. He needs to destroy the part of himself scared of dying, to erase fear entirely. No more fear, no more pain. He needs to know what’s beyond the event horizon. 

The pain will hurt in a new way when given by Sunder, like a gift. He's hoping it’ll be enough to drown out the agony in his bones and the crush of his skin. His body is healed from the fight but it lingers in his mind, cryptogenic. Adeni can't heal mental trauma; all he can do is push through, or break. 

A change is coming. He refuses to be scared of it. Even if changing proves him a worse person, he can't stay still anymore. And he really does want to feel Sunder’s hand in his chest. 

He shivers against Sunder, anticipating the unknown. You know it’s going to hurt. Of course it is. Everything does. His teeth flash in the dark. 

“Then hurt me.”

Sunder kisses him, clutching him close like he’s scared of losing something vital. 

“Slow or aggressive?” When Anima scoffs in response, Sunder chuckles. “Rough it is. Maybe we can save slow for another day.”

“Sunder.” He arches his back, baring his chest with a grin far more confident than he feels right now. Breathless, almost teasing, he says, “Kill me.”

He doesn't have time to prepare. Pilots are stronger than they look. inhumanly so. Sunder’s hand snaps between them, piercing his chest and shattering ribs, tearing a scream from his lips. Sunder quiets him with another kiss, forearm-deep in his chest.

Anima convulses at the first awful sensation of fingers cradling his heart but the sickening pressure of Sunder’s caress does feel good. Delayed pain explodes from the epicentre of Sunder’s heat, burning through his body. Every breath is agony, like glass—or just bone—shredding his lungs. His front is wet and warm with his blood, staining Sunder too, and the air is thick with that metallic scent and he's suddenly back on Oesta, heartless and useless and drowning in red. 

Sunder squeezes his heart and pulls him back, breath hitching. His body knows what is happening is wrong, but he moans with the euphoria of the sensation, the horror of it, the wanting-to-die of it. The upsetting intrusion into his own body is what he’s been wanting his whole life and now he’s found it, he wants Sunder deeper. Holding more of him.

“You like that,” Sunder says. Not a question; Anima’s body is being pretty clear about the fact. 

“Fuck,” Anima chokes, “yes.” 

Sunder kisses the foamy blood from his lips, cradling the back of Anima’s head with enough gentle care to make his slow heart pound. Anima feels Sunder tense for a human heartbeat and knows what's coming next. No fear, he tells himself. No fear. Easier said than done.

Sunder exhales sharply against his mouth and rips his heart from his chest. He rises from their embrace, just enough to lift Anima’s heart to his lips for a loving kiss, then holds the failing organ between their bodies. The sudden absence in Anima’s chest is immense. An internal silence. His body feels the loss immediately. Like a blackout rippling from the core of a city, all his little lights go out.

He's been here before and turns out it's no more fun the second time around, but this time he's got Sunder’s hips against his, and Sunder cradling his head, and Sunder’s tongue between his lips. He wants to kiss back but he's got nothing left to give. His body’s nothing more than a useless weight draped between a beautiful man and the blood-soaked pilot’s seat.

Adeni’s healing can only keep him alive for so long. The thread tying him to life shivers. Snaps.

Fuck, dying hurts. 

Coming back isn't much better. Anima gasps, pain lancing through his chest with every immense beat of his reconnected heart. Sunder’s face fills his world, the ocean of his eyes such a vivid hue that they hurt to look at. 

“Welcome back.” There’s blood on his lips. “How do you feel?”

“I’m not sure.” He scowls at the weakness in his voice. His body trembles as he straightens, forcing his muscles to support himself again, at least enough to relieve Sunder of the burden. Sunder’s hand slides to his chest and his breath catches at the visceral memory of that hand driven through his ribcage. How does he feel? Like he’s caught the sweet taste of relief for the first time in his life. The lingering sensation of being crushed died with him. “Hungry.”

“Fascinating,” Sunder says. “Usually we don’t actually feel—” Anima’s mouth shuts him up and he seems to realise what kind of hunger Anima means. 

“Fuck, man,” Anima says, exploring Sunder’s body with clumsy hands and fresh fervour. “You messing around in there shouldn’t feel so good. I want—" He exhales his shame, refusing to feel it ever again, now that Sunder's basically seen all of him. “I want your hand in me as I fuck you.”

look at you, Adeni says, a kind of pride bursting like golden stars behind his eyes. so bold.

“Then get on the seat.” Sunder’s eyes flash. “I would prefer you not collapse on me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” With Sunder’s help, Anima swings onto the seat. He sighs Adeni reclines the seat back for him; he hadn’t realized how heavy his body felt. Sunder’s suit drips away and he climbs onto Anima, leaning down to meet his wet mouth. Hands linger across his body, pulling his suit away to find bare skin. Even hungry, Sunder’s touch is gentle at the core. The kindness burns across Anima’s skin. “You’re too good for me,” he says, and grabs Sunder’s dick. 

Sunder shivers, laughing with a kind of amazed joy Anima doesn’t understand, but he thinks it's a good thing. “You don’t know me.” 

“You’re kind.”

“I just killed you.”

“I asked you to.” 

“Anima—” The rest of Sunder’s words are smothered by a quick, intense kiss. Anima’s breath heavy on his lips.

“Save my name for when I’m fucking you.” Anima shifts, rising. “Wait. Do we...use blood as lube or something?”

“Oh.” Sunder makes an unhappy face that Anima thinks is born from experience. “No, blood does not work well at all. You’ve seen how quickly blood congeals and dries, haven’t you?”

Anima looks around, at his own blood drying all over his mech’s cockpit. “Damn. Seems like it would be fun.”

“You die one time—”

A black tendril unwinds from beneath the seat and curls around Anima’s dick, cool and slick. He inhales sharply, shivering at the touch and grasping at Sunder as the tendril coils along his length, then uncoils, slipping wetly away.

Adeni, he thinks, breathless even in his mind. The mech doesn’t reply, but there’s a new, self-satisfied warmth in the background radiation of their connection. He doesn’t want to think about how powerfully his body reacted to Adeni’s touch. Or his heart.

Sunder looks down at him, face glowing with not-quite-awe but something close enough to set Anima’s face ablaze. Nobody's ever looked at him that way before. Damn. Damn. He needs Sunder; he needs Sunder to need him. 

A wide hand sprawled across his chest. Stability. Preparation. Anima’s unprepared for the joining of movement, the intertwined pain-pleasure duet of driving into Sunder and Sunder smashing through his sternum. The two intimately, deeply, painfully within. His scream dissolves into one hell of a laugh as he thrusts into Sunder who, with a gasp, flinches and drops a chunk of sternal bone between their legs. The whole world is made of stars, though at a certain point it becomes an overlay of static, his body so filled with pain it’s overflowing into his eyes. He can’t stop crying, sometimes sobbing to keep the nausea at bay as Sunder holds his face and rocks his hips and there is warmth and sparks and new stars in his eyes, better stars. 

Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, he thinks to himself like a mantra because despite everything else, he doesn’t want to embarrass himself during his first time with Sunder by barfing all over him. 

do it. maybe he likes it. Adeni, less than helpful. He’s getting the impression Adeni likes watching him fuck up.

If he does, he can keep it to himself.

ooh, you’re not into that?

“I can’t believe you’re talking to Adeni now,” Sunder says, drawing him back with light, fluttering strokes down Anima’s lungs. Like an inexplicable tickle. Anima stares at Sunder, lips parted as his body decides whether it wants to cough or not, and then he realises why his lungs are so easy to access. Sunder’s pulled out his blade and spread Anima’s ribcage wide like wings and it’s almost beautiful work, if not for his mess of a heart. 

“Shit, that’s impressive.” Anima shifts to take Sunder in his hand again and they both moan at the jostling, which sets them both off laughing, and then Sunder’s kissing him deep and hard, body rolling like the sea of his eyes, from the trough of his thighs to the crest of his spine to the crash of his hands buried in the organs of Anima’s chest, catching their lips in the whitewater and the kiss does taste like salt. Anima’s caught in Sunder’s current, still exhausted from dying, letting Sunder fuck him and finger his viscera and stroke his heart while Anima squirms beneath, helplessly screaming with the obliterating pain, begging Sunder, don’t stop, never stop, please please please, and Sunder ducks his head and licks Anima’s heart, opens his mouth and sucks even as a thunderclap beat makes Anima shudder against him and it feels so fucking weird and he loves it.

He wants to focus on Sunder’s body, to make Sunder moan and scream and cry in return, but he’s drowning in the wash of sensations, and a little breathless besides because Sunder’s squeezing the air from his lungs so that when Sunder wriggles tight against Anima and his hips roll and he waits, teasingly, Anima can’t say shit, can’t even make a pathetic sound. Dizzy, the animal of him panicking somewhere deep, he gazes up at Sunder through the bursting stars and thinks, in a daze, He can’t be real. It’s too much. It’s just enough. It’s the shock of pain and death and fingers tickling his lungs and Sunder searing through his veins like a circuit, the cockpit lights flaring phosphorescent bright as he clings to Sunder, his mind whiting out.

“You’re fucking hot when you’re dying,” Sunder purrs. The pressure lifts from his lungs and he gasps, gulping down big breaths as the static dissolves and Sunder’s beautiful face fills his vision. Sunder’s hand closes over his trembling fingers as he kisses him, breath catching as he uses Anima, fast and rough and gasping, until he shudders into the kiss and warmth spills onto Anima’s stomach. The two grin at each other, sweaty and splattered with red, and then Anima puts two and two together and—

Shoving Sunder away, he looks down at himself, at the massive hole of his chest. Sunder sits back, barely concealing his stupid smirk as he smears white across Anima’s stomach.

“Pretty sure I didn’t get any inside you. Unless you’d like that?” Anima stares at him, too dizzy to speak, his brain aflame with an overload of sensations. He’s got no idea how to answer that question. Sunder wiggles his fingers at Anima and licks them, lingeringly. “We can revisit that, then.”

“We’re going to do this again?” Excited at the thought, Anima sits up with far too much enthusiasm and his alien heart falls out of his chest, flopping wetly onto the floor. “Ah, shit.” 

His overtaxed body slumps forward and the sound of rushing wind almost drowns out Sunder, who he’s barely aware has caught him before he slips from the seat.

“Glad you’re feeling better, kid.” Sunder’s kindness almost makes the dazzling pain of a cracked-chest death hurt a little less. Almost.

Adeni, with fascination glistening like threads across his mind; you’re going to say something stupid before you die, aren’t you?

“You’re the only person who’s ever wanted me,” is what escapes his lips, unintended. 

oh. no. that’s even worse, Adeni says, and now he really wants to die.

It’s a shimmering ripple in the dark. Phosphorescence sparking along nerves. A searing hole through the back of his mind. He’s pretty sure a sun’s exploding in his chest. He’s also pretty sure he should be dead.

Anima shudders. His first breath is all blood and he chokes, smashing his face against the rubble as he convulses. Hot agony floods his body as it fights the inevitable. The ground shakes as something massive moves nearby. The Other coming to finish him off. He screams, “Fuck!” but it comes out as a choking gurgle because his lungs are still fucked from all the blood and the Other tearing through him. One failed word is too much. The dark stretches out and swallows him.

A ripple in the dark. A thunderclap within his ribs. Fire pulsed through his veins. A circle of light opening his skull. Cloudless pink through his fluttering eyelashes. His body feels like it’s already decomposing, solidity melting away. There’s a compulsion stuck in his throat that’s got him clawing himself to his hands and knees. Too much. It’s too much. His elbows give and his nose breaks against something not quite metal, not quite wood. Stars. Black. Death again.

A ripple. A hole. A thunderclap. Pain, pain pain. Black tendrils around his throat, dragging him across what seems to be thousands of roots bound together. He scratches at the tendrils but his fingernails slide uselessly away. Tendrils—vines, whatever they are—snatch his wrists, hauling him up and slamming him down hard enough that he—

A bloody gasp. A sharp ripple slicing through his skin. A crash in his chest. An eclipsed sun searing through the back of his skull. Black around his throat, ink in his mouth, blood in his mouth, a scream in his mouth—let me die, let me die, let me die. He doesn’t believe in any higher power but he’s begging anyway.

Something responds in his mind; a superimposed voice like an ocean flooding everything that makes Anima what he is: no.

Mind swallowed by that something, Anima becomes the ocean, all salt and power and strangling tendrils. Black vines wind around his arms, crushing his hands with a pressure that cracks delicate bones. He can’t scream, can’t struggle, the being in his mind has swallowed his agency entirely. The thing inside him tightens its grip around his body, seemingly annoyed. His neck cracks. The lights go out.

His body jerks with a sudden, massive thud in his chest. A single pulse. A ripple through him, out of him, and his brain lights up with a sense of the expansive, complex systems he’s touching through the tendrils. The fire splits his head open. Tendrils in his mouth, across his chest, holding his hips tight against the chair. 

stop dying.

A long holographic panel opens up, showing the town and the Other from a high vantage point. The room sways as the view moves—Anima realises there’s only one place he could be: the mech. His father’s mech. His dead father’s mech. Its grip on his mind is titanic, the mech barely has to expend energy to control his body, which still only has a tenuous grip on life.

Anima fades in and out of death. Life occurs in flashes of pain. The Other on the screen. The Other through the hole it tore to rip his father out. Bittersweet liquid from the tendrils down his throat. Pressure exerted, fingers snapping, pain as the mech puppets him to move itself. The mech fights, movements sharp and angry. Anima’s held down by the vines but the momentum is agony. He can’t escape and he thinks his mind might shatter entirely from the fear. Oh, fuck, he needs to escape.

His breath hitches. The fire in his mind flickers. The mech stumbles into the Other, knocking it backwards and falling with it. A mech has a long way to fall, and Anima takes the brunt of the impact as an explosion of pain so intense he thinks his body’s finally breaking apart.

He lives. The mech drags the Other beneath it and the resonance of a scream echoes through the hole in his mind. Intense, thick hatred slides through his veins. His stomach heaves. He’s crying and he doesn’t know why. The mech shoots point-blank into the white. Again. Again. Each blast shakes the cockpit. Anima watches in horrified, strangled silence as the mech tosses aside the empty gun and tears into the lifeless remains of the Other with its bare hands.

“Adeni, stop.” A new voice in the cockpit, human and transmitted from far away. He wants to scream for help, or at least whimper for it, but he’s still choked by the mech in more ways than one. “Damn it, why can't we pull you? Come home.” When nobody replies, the voice swears under its breath and the connection cuts. 

you are mine now. the mech, lighting his mind up like phosphorus with its fury. you are not your father. i hope that’s a good thing.

Please, is all he can think. What he’s begging for he’s not even sure. Just, Please. 

this next bit is going to suck for you.

He can’t imagine what could suck more than what’s already happened, until his no-longer-absent heart seems to invert, tearing his chest wide open. His skull splits asunder, mind and cerebral fluid spilling between his ribs—or so it feels. The mech releases his mind and body; he slumps forward to find his chest back in one piece, somehow. 

bitter fruit

the first book. the planet oesta has been quarantined from the rest of the galaxy for centuries because of its infection by a planetary virus known as the Other. Humanity survives in orbital stations or by struggling on the surface, saved from extinction only by a handful of giant biomachines and their pilots.

anima is the newest pilot, chosen after witnessing his presumed already-dead father—his mech's previous pilot—die again. he's learning that adeni, his mech, is sentient and strong-willed, and that the life of a pilot revolves around pain. pilots can't die unless their brains are destroyed, but they can hurt! they tend to seek comfort in each other in brutal ways. and also sex.

he is also a little freak who LOVES to taste things and cause harm/have harm caused to him. he's also an aromantic idiot and, painfully obviously to everyone around him, on the spectrum lol. in general, stuff from this book will be marked with blue.

sweet fire

the sequel. anima's daughter, marion, has been trying to escape the grasp of a galaxy-ruling madwoman and return to oesta. she was taken from home years ago, and has been raised in an attempt to replicate oestan mech/pilot partnerships to control a fractured galaxy.

after a disaster of an escape attempt, marion finds freedom with the help of a shapeshifting bioship and a dying man. intent on returning home to her lost father and haunted across space by her possessive mech and an old friend, marion learns that what's been broken can't be fixed with a simple reunion.

not even with herself.

in general, stuff from this book will be marked with pink.

sour hue

the prequel. anthimos has hated oesta from the start. when the other (and the blockade) kills everyone he loves during an attempted evacuation, he finds himself recruited as the first pilot in an project that could be the only thing to keep humanity alive.

He's pretty sure they can't win, but he's pledged his life to the director of the program, and she won't let him give up that easily, not even when his new love starts dragging him down. stuff from this book will be marked with orange.

CHARACTERS

anima: orphaned as a kid by an Other attack on his town and resents his parents for their own deaths. lonely guy until he's made a pilot and is forced into close proximity with the other pilots and his mech, adeni, ever in his mind. he's killed before adeni chooses him by losing his heart; adeni replaces it with its own material, connecting them physically as well as mentally. makes The Big Sacrifice to save them all and takes the Other's place within the planet.

adeni: anima's mech, previously piloted by his father. one of the first mechs. a bit of a piece of shit but it's fond of anima as long as he lives up to his potential. due to their heart connection, adeni can pump anima full of extra power that hurts a LOT but makes him super strong. adeni is the closest thing anima gets to falling in love.

adeni is partly made from the fusion of the very first pilot and his mech.

the Other: an inexplicable alien lifeform infecting the planet Oesta, hell-bent on destroying humanity and very nearly succeeding. manifesting in many pearlescent forms up to titanic creatures that can match the mechs, Other tends to subsume humans in its path of destruction, absorbing them into the whole and taking their knowledge. it wants sumi and anima both, for various reasons. it is sentient, mostly all one mind (or rather, one organism that can divide and reform), and, at times, seems almost petty. it has evolved and become much smarter over the last 1000 years.

sumi: the oldest pilot of this team, and the daughter of the Director, who essentially runs Oesta by proxy of running the mech program. anima's best friend and platonic soulmate he really likes to fuck. she's a mech seed (see below), and anima's determined to destroy the Other before she dies for a new mech. her status as a seed was kept secret, her team just thought she was a backup pilot in a prototype. she was also in love with anima's father! ouch! her mech is husk.

sunder: second oldest pilot. anima's first connection and first real relationship. kinda the obi-wan to anima's anakin, if those two were fucking and terrible. the Other wounds him beyond healing on a mission and anima kills him out of mercy, which fucks him up REAL BAD. his mech is/was euphor.

venyi: the pilot who replaces sunder. a bit of an idiot, immediately falls for anima despite the many red flags. he's doing his best. his mech is euphor.

nour: most recent pilot before anima. strong, reserved, would be a sniper if u know what i mean. doesn't like anima at first but he grows on her. uses feminine pronouns but her gender is pretty whatever. wife guy for ursula. her mech is opun.

ursula: the light of the team, somehow still optimistic despite everything she's been through as a pilot. loves with her whole heart and truly wants to help people. protective of sumi and adoring of nour. she sacrifices herself for the sake of destroying the Other. her mech is/was erythri.

syn: replaces ursula. a biologist on oesta studying Other infection who was saved by ursula and transferred to the station to be closer to her, only for ursula to die. determined to prove herself and live up to ursula's legacy. unfortunately infected by Other, but that's ok as long as she's a pilot! her mech is erythri.

husk: a young mech made for sumi. protective. grumpy. pilot: sumi.

euphor: thoughtful, slower, more of a heavy fighter and protector. likes kind pilots. the first full mech to be finished. not a fan of adeni or its pilots for ancient grudges. pilots: sunder, venyi

opun: blunt, sharp, aggressive, very little sense of self-preservation, which is probably why it picked a strategic, reserved pilot. likely the most painful to pilot. pilot: nour

erythri: a real rascal. stubborn. versatile fighter. likes headstrong pilots. pilots: ursula, syn, ri...ven.... kind of

nova: anima's dad, brought back by the Other to do its work. he was a dickhead of a dad alive and he's even worse now. went a little off the rails when he leaned about sumi's status as a seed, which led to his death at the start of bitter fruit.

susumu: a scientist on the mech team. old friend of the director and madly in love with sumi. incredibly kind, incredibly unable to help her.

the director: sumi's mother. forced to make difficult choices for the sake of keeping humanity alive, which is her top priority even above her daughter.

vesta: a pretty girl from anima's town that he never worked up the courage to talk to, until he meets her again as a pilot. after a fling, he never sees her again (because she dies) but she ends up leaving a kid behind who looks a LOT like him. sorry marion, i killed your mum.

marion: anima's accidental daughter whom he loved a lot in the brief time he knew her. raised by sumi and the other surviving pilots before being taken as a young teen by seia and forced to go through some SHIT. all she wants is to go home, but she can't help getting dragged into her friends' problems. her mech is noctil.

marion, original: the original marion and anima's actual daughter. died during noctil's first failed attempt at connecting to her, but remnants of her mind linger in the connection until Marion saves her. her mech is...? noctil

fract: a young, junked bioship a half-dead marion finds during her escape attempt. they save each other and stay together after. made by seia, fract is able to transform, often taking a human or avian shape when not in her ship form. like adeni, she gives marion part of her own material to keep her alive, so the two have a special, though less intense, connection.

noctil: marion's extremely obsessive mech. unable to follow her under its own power without her piloting it, noctil instead uses their mental connection to torture her. all it wants is for her to come home. pilots: marion, marion.

riven: seia's miserable son she experimented on in an attempt to replicate anima's power. it didn't work and he ended up eating his mech's life/mind and killing it, absorbing a lot of its power but also dooming himself. desperately, pathetically in love with marion. wants to go to oesta because he hopes sumi can get the mech out of him and save him. marion had her memories of him wiped, but can't turn him away. she's not sure if she loves him, or the power he wields. his mech is/was erythri

apogee: the fusing of marion, riven, and fract to make a single being and save both marion and riven's lives. she is their idealised self, an ultimate form of love.

hawke: another kid stolen from oesta, son of the pilot jonas, and marion's childhood friend. a mech seed. absolutely messed up by it all and terrified of being made into a mech. stabbed his own eye as he was being chosen so now he's permanently got a fucked up eye. cocky asshole. very ready to fight and/or fuck at any given moment. ambivalent relationship with his mech. weirdly obsessed with riven. his mech is poth.

luca: marion's brother, an orphaned kid adopted by sumi during the Other cleanup after the first book. infected by Other remnants, but sumi then seia kept it managed. he's the first to be forced into being chosen and dies in the process of it. his death pushes marion to run, but she continues seeing him in her mind. his mech is/was ####. rip luca, he's been cut. LUCA'S BACK BABY. marion's adopted brother, a ghost like nova who was saved as a child by anima and handed over to sumi. he's now head allosologist of the station

mida: a mech seed stolen from oesta. killed accidentally by marion during her escape. her mech is caloce.

faris: a second-generation pilot in seia's arsenal. ditched when she realised they were killing worlds and now works against seia. cool as hell, turns marion into a total doofus. her mech is smaller than the others, and she's physically wired into it. her mech is solani.

seia: essentially the director on a galactic scale, if the director were heartless. incredibly talented scientist, terrible mother, political schemer. is in control of the majority of the technology now running the Beyond and determined to keep control. obsessed with anima and his power as oesta's heart because it threatens her dominance, and wants to keep marion close to maintain control over oesta. will do whatever she feels necessary to keep her power and WILL lie that it's for the greater good of humanity. totally fine with using the dead to achieve her goals.

anthimos: the first pilot. grew up on another world and moved to oesta as an adult with his fiance, aref, who dies during the Other's first big attempt to exterminate humanity. is recruited by gwyn during the evacuation, which is why he survives. he's a mech seed, like marion, and eventually joins with his husk-mech to become adeni. he's also ace, but still loves to fuck (most of the time). falls for owain, like an idiot. is dedicated to gwyn as her conscience, though he mostly hates her. his mech is neri.

neri: one of the first mechs. likes anthimos well enough but finds him baffling. doesn't want to become another being. eventually joins with anthimos to become adeni.

gwyn: the first Director and creator of the mechs. puts the mechs and humanity above all else, even her brother. anthimos is third on her list. knows she won't see oesta saved in her lifetime, but works toward the future she believes in. the sumi to anthimos' anima.

owain: gwyn's twin brother. an ecologist before being chosen. falls deeply for anthimos, despite their struggles to connect. his mech is spur.

spur: owain's mech and hater of anthimos because he kills TWO of its pilots. eventually becomes euphor and carries that grudge for OVER ONE THOUSAND YEARS even though it doesn't remember why.

gorse: the closest thing anthimos has to a friend in the pilots outside of gwyn and owain. pretty feral and pissed about the whole pilot thing. her mech is kо̄.

CONCEPTS/THE WORLD

mechs: more like mecha tbh. huge armoured humanoid biomachines, each one unique based on how its seed grows. they are individuals with their own personalities, but their minds are far larger than a human's. still, they're unable to physically do much without a pilot, a failsafe from their invention to ensure there was a way to keep them under control. mechs are not gendered. when fighting, mechs can convert momentum and heat into pain and pass it onto their pilots. they're also full of tendrils that aren't quite roots, yeah yeah yeah yeah i know i know. mechs talk in lowercase unless they're PISSED.

pilots: chosen by their mechs with or without consent. a pilot's baseline is set during the initial connection and their mech will constantly heal (or destroy) their bodies back to that point, even reviving from death, so the fuckers can't age. death and pain are constant yet ephemeral things to pilots and are often used for various types of intimacy. there are two ways to die permanently: destroyed brain, or body damaged beyond repair. a mech can sever a connection whenever it wishes, but a pilot cannot. losing his connection to adeni would kill anima, as adeni is the only thing keeping his new heart going, but most pilots could walk away physically fine.

yeah that means pilots can't get pregnant but they CAN get other non-pilots pregnant if they're not careful. looking directly at you, anima.

seeds/seed-pilots: extremely rare. some people have the potential to be put through a process that creates the embryonic cells for vital pieces of a mech, including part of its mind. the seed process duration varies by pilot, but usually doesn't take more than a few years unless there's intervention. a seed must absorb enough life and world experience to mature to the point of growth. seia is rushing the process, with mixed results. a potential seed does not need to be put through the process and could live a normal life. children of pilots are more likely to be seed potentials. when a seed and their mech fuse, they disappear completely into the new mind and are forgotten. it's essentially death.

husk mechs: the other half of a seed pilot's process. connected to the pilot they will eventually fuse with. often don't have unique names, but the early mechs were mostly husks, thus needing identifiers. full mechs—called achenes—are renamed, as they are considered new beings.

pilot jumpsuits: different from normal clothes, made of a strange material related to the mechs and able to shrink and grow to support damaged pilots as they heal. or to make it easier to get their clothes off. mostly used by oestan pilots; seia thinks they're goofy.

connections: pilots are permanently connected to their mechs, and mechs are part of their own network they can dip in and out of. pilots can be linked to each other through this network but must be physically touching and it requires mental consent on both sides (unless the Other is involved, it can do whatever it wants). mental conversation and memory sharing can occur through this connection.

as for mech-pilot connections, there is a massive power imbalance. mechs can take control and puppet their pilots if they must, but prefer not to. it's usually pretty obvious when a mech is driving, they still speak in lowercase. mechs can intrude on their pilots' minds at will and adeni is always passively in anima's head, but the connection usually doesn't flow both ways and pilots rarely experience the interior of their mechs' minds. anima does :)

mech teams: there are multiple mech teams able to aid different parts of Oesta at any time: three on the surface and three in orbital stations. anima's team is the only one with five pilots because of sumi's seed status. they're also the core team because they're directly under the director. hawke's parents came from one of the ground teams (his mother became a pilot after his birth.)

tethering: the Other makes physical travel methods between stations and the surface difficult, so oesta developed a new, specialised kind of short-range subspace travel. they're able to temporarily or permanently anchor points in space, used to pierce spacetime and pull a given object through to the anchor. mechs and pilots use tethering to jump between the station and the surface; mechs are also anchored to their pilots and are themselves always anchored to the station so they can be pulled back at any time with or without their pilots.

the piece of fract melded with marion causes interference that prevents noctil from using their shared tether unless she's willing.

Otherspace: the Other has the ability to create its own pocket dimensions which may ignore the laws of the universe. it uses this space to travel around Oesta quickly and can spin up multiple instances--its ancillary humans all share their own network. Oddly enough, this space tends to have a blue sky and unfamiliar flora. anima gains access to his own version of Otherspace later on, though his appears as a more vibrant oesta.

oesta: a very pink planet, with a pink sky. No green plants and humans are the only present mammals (the Other subsumed all their livestock early on). humanity was cut off from the galaxy over a thousand years ago and forced to develop new technology to stay alive without any external resources and only a few years of development on oesta to begin with. nothing can leave oesta, the quarantine blockade is autonomous and will annihilate anything that tries to pass, though tethers can bypass it, if there's an anchor on the other side.

the blockade: put in place over a millennium ago (for oesta, and much longer for the Beyond) when the Other manifested to prevent it from spreading to other planets. keeps oesta in a kind of time dilation stasis until seia learns the Other is gone and becomes interested in how oestans survived so damn long.

Beyond: the galaxy past the blockade, advanced far beyond oesta. Exists in cycles, the flux of humanity on a galactic time scale. nobody out there calls it that.

ring 01/one (the ring): part of a network of ring stations encircling a massive power source that doesn't really look like a star to marion. she spent her teen and early adult years on ring 01 until she escaped, though her memory of that time is strangely fuzzy. energy is sometimes run through the rings, though marion doesn't know the purpose of this. will we ever know the purpose or do i just think it's cool?? who knows!

final nerdy bio note: all the full oestan mechs are named with truncated plant genera to show their connection to nature (adenium, erythrina, opuntia, euphorbia, sophora, etc.) while Beyond mechs have names that are slightly off. noctil(uca) is named for a microalgae genera that includes the pretty bioluminescent plankton as well as dinoflagellates that cause red blooms. poth is named for pothos, which IS a plant genus but not for the plant most people would think of (epipremnum aureum), and also the greek god of sexual yearning/longing which is fitting for hawke lol.

further nerdy note: the mechs of anthimos' time are named with synonym/alternate names for the mechs they will become. spur is short for spurge, the common name for euphorbia. nerium is a related genus to adenium with many similarities, and adenium obesum was classified as nerium obesum in the past. kо̄ is short for kо̄whai, and eventually becomes sopho, aka sophora, the genus for kо̄whai! gorse, its pilot, is named such because it's also a yellow-flowered plant i grew up with lol.