Spelunking
Sep. 17th, 2011 06:40 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
niyazi-a.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vectorIDW
Drift/tentacular alien silicate creature, Perceptor
Sticky, tactile, tentacles, possibly a weeeeeee bit of dub con at the beginning.
My penance for the very dark tentacle fic.
Drift pounded down the ravine, chasing the Decepticon scout. Another Autobot, perhaps, would have settled for the mech haring off from the perimeter, but that wasn’t how Drift worked.
He rounded a corner in the gully, and slammed to a halt. No trail. A few decanometers in front of him the ravine narrowed to a split too small for anything to fit. Frag. The spy had eluded him? He felt his optics narrow, stung pride prickling through his frame. Losing his edge? No.
Drift’s optics raked along the walls of the ravine, scanning for footholds, scrapes that might mark where a mech had scrambled up. No, he thought, even as he scanned, the spy hadn’t had that much of a lead on him. He would have seen something, heard chips of stone, dislodged, skittering down the stone walls.Then, where?
A disgruntled growl built in his vocalizer, turning back.
There. From this angle he could see that a jut of stone in the narrow pathway blocked a high black mouth of a cave. Right. Cute, spy. But it wasn’t going to work.
Drift sidled to the narrow entrance, one sword sliding from its scabbard, a whisper of steel. His optics cycled to lowlight, peering into the depths, audio straining.
Movement. He’d swear it. Rustling, shifting, a gentle surreptitious scrape on stone. Nice try.
Drift slipped in, swinging into the shadow. His feet were almost silent as he moved, fine grey dust a thick cushion under his ridged footplates. The cave was some echo chamber, it seemed, ricocheting dripping sounds, and a sussurus scrape that seemed to come from…everywhere. Drift’s optics scanned, taking in large masses of grey stalactites, twisted and tendrilled, massing around the sharp, clear points of quartz. Soft lumps of stone hulked on the ground, between other masses of crystal.
Drift picked his way into the cave, the entrance becoming a bite of brightness at his back, before being blocked by a mass of the grey stone. Better, he thought, not to be silhouetted against it.
The crystal seemed almost to hum as he passed by, his sensors tuned high, straining for any tell of where the Decepticon spy had hidden himself.
His foot struck one of the crystal projections, ringing out a high, clear tone that seemed to ripple and spread, caught, and split into harmony by the other crystals.
A shiver ran through Drift’s frame, the resonances singing through him. He shook it off, optics flicking from side to side, searching for the spy he knew had to be here. He stepped further in, wary, tense.
A brush against his hip, cool and wet. He twitched, whirling. No. It was only one of the grey stalactites. He must have bumped it. Or…no. Maybe it just dripped, between his scabbard and pelvic frame. Imagining things, Drift, he told himself, tightening his grip on the sword. There’s an enemy in here already: don’t try to make up new ones.
Another step in, slowly, his knee actuators firing in short controlled action, inching forward, lowering his weight slowly onto the footplate.
And this time, a heavy pressure against his back, along the Great Sword. Not a drip, not his imagination. He spun, the powdery ground squeaking underfoot, in time to see one of the grey stalactites withdrawing, the end skimming down a seam in his backplate.
What…the…?
He swung around, sword aiming for the grey limb. The sword got snatched from his grip, another grey tendril wrapping around it, tugging it from his grasp. Drift snarled, the sound echoing around the space, and suddenly the entire cave seemed to come alive, the grey stalactites all shaking themselves from some torpor, twisting and reaching toward him.
A trap, he thought, spinning toward the entrance…wherever it had gone. The stalactites’ motion had changed the landmarks, and he’d been spun around. Frag.
He pushed forward, determined to break through. The stalactites grabbed at him, snatching at his shoulder armor, hooking under his chin. Drift found himself lifted, into the range of more of the grey, heavy limbs, that twined over his legs, his arms, threading between his fingers.
He snarled, thrashing, his heelplate striking one of the crystal projections, sending another wave of sound cascading through the space. The tendrils swarmed, as if intrigued, sliding and slipping, leaving cool trails along his armor.
Drift bucked, his helm striking the base of one of the things, blanking, for a klik or two, the view of the ground—now quite a bit away. Two of the grey limbs wrapped around his helm, like a cushion, one squeezing at the long projecting finial.
“Let…go of me!” he snapped, trying to sound authoritative, trying to sound as if he expected the…fraggin’ cave or whatever it was to actually listen to him.
It didn’t, more and more of the grey things found him. Drift braced for some attack, but all they seemed to do was slide over his armor, swiftly finding the seams. Smaller tendrils slid under the armor, probing the underlying cables. He shivered, feeling the gentle prickling as the touches drew off some of the static charge in his own systems. The crystals among the grey limbs began glowing, pulsing excitedly.
He waited for things to turn—for the thing to start prying at his armor, or for the light feathery touches to turn to pain, exploiting the sensitive areas it had found.
It never happened.
The thing—he realized—was feeding on him, taking the excess charge from his body. They licked along the armor seams, where static charge pooled, and hunted for joints, flicking over capacitors. It didn’t hurt, and after a quick check, Drift realized that it wasn’t actually doing any damage—his own powercell wasn’t being drained, just the latent charge from his running systems. And it felt…almost good.
He cycled an uneven vent of air, forcing himself to relax. The tendrils lapped at him, flicking, teasing exploring his armor—the white heavy chassis, the finer black armor of his waist, the long dark sweeps of his thighs, the points of his footplates. It was like being caressed all over, over and under the armor. No one touched Drift this way. He’d had lovers—per se—but nothing like this long, gentle sweeping touch, multiplied by dozens, instinctively knowing, seeking out, where electrons had pooled. Even Wing, at his most solicitous…it hadn’t been like this.
A grey limb probed between his thighs, sensing the heat of his activating interface systems. Drift moaned, parting his thighs, letting the not-stone slide its velvety texture along his armor, teasing at the interface hatch. The moan hummed through the air, echoed in the crystals, his sound of hesitant desire magnifying, rippling at his own sensornet.
Smaller tendrils slid around his legs, squirming into the gaps, probing the heat under the interface hatch until it released. Drift felt the smaller things creep over the brushed steel, cool and slick and wet. His spike surged behind the housing, wanting the same attention, touches, the rest of his frame was getting, entirely blind, numb to the idea of the strangeness, the alienness of the whole thing, merely wanting.
The spike housing snapped aside, the spike jutting out, slick and warm and hungering. A grey tentacle surrounded it, encircling the base, squeezing gently. Drift groaned, trying, and failing, to get some sort of leverage, to thrust his aching spike into friction, but the limbs that held him stretched and shifted, absorbing the movement. He heard a high whine of desire from his own vocalizer—the sound shifting, prisming through the crystals and singing back at him, as though the whole cave, this creature, was echoing his want.
A squeeze against his spike, and a small prickle of electricity over the nodes, and then another, the tentacle spiraling around the shaft, small electrical charges building along the nodes, even as the other tendrils licked and teased along his armor, sliding down the sensitive channel under his Great Sword, tugging at his scabbards.
He shouted, electricity shocking through his frame, his EM field crackling blue-white, as the overload snapped through him, the silver transfluid jetting onto the floor beneath him. The tentacles stilled, for a klik, as if startled, before twining around him, lapping at the charge that shimmered over him.
Drift quivered, sound rocketing still around the small cavern, barely feeling his valve’s cover coaxed to retract until he sensed the cool, wet presence of one of the tentacles probing around the rim. He twitched away for a moment. The other tentacle still fast around his spike gave another gentle squeeze, and he found himself sagging into the limbs, the cold semi-stone exploring the heat of his valve. It poked inside, bulging and thinning as it worked its way up the channel. Drift gasped, thighs shuddering against the holding tentacles, as the thing probed the top of his valve, flicking over the ceiling node. His calipers trilled down over the alien, cold presence, sending shocks of sharp pleasure through him.
Another tendril squirmed for entrance, and another, pushing against the rim, spreading the valve lining, stretched taut. Drift shivered, the things inside him stilling for a long moment, his valve calipers retracting, stuffed, full.
A long, sweeping stroke of one of the dry limbs, powdery-gentle, down his back, along one thigh, another stroking along his helm. He vented air, hot in the coolness of the cave, warm gusts over the limbs that enwrapped him. Which he should be fighting, should be feeling as a threat, but they were not attacking, only touching.
And then the things inside him started moving, slowly squirming, bulging and bunching. He gasped, feeling the shifting movement, the pressure, inside him, and the slow, steady squeeze of the other one around his spike. The other tentacles feathered over him, down his back, into his joints, between his fingers, tickling at the soles of his footplates. It was some exquisite torment, hovering and holding him at the edge. Charge raced through his circuitry, friction-raised from the limbs, flaring from his aroused interface systems, and each sound he made, each moan, each whimper, was magnified, split into harmony and reflected back through his systems, vibrating the small harmonic microprocessors in his joints, washing over his EM field in a light tide of sonic ecstasy.
And the thing held him there, quivering, twitching on the very brink of overload, pausing when he got too close, to siphon off the charge, bringing him back from the verge, and then building toward it again, with delicate licks along his seams, shifting squeezes on his interface equipment.
It was maddening. It was almost agonizing. It was exquisite.
His body ached for release. He could almost feel the transfluid scalding down the channel, or the sweet burst of electrolytic fluid from his valve, but the thing held him off.
Finally, it granted him release, when he’d begged, the words stretching out, twisting into a shape of raw lust, the notes themselves tingling through him, and his systems tipped over into a rampant overload that blanked his systems, spinning him into a hard, blissful shutdown.
Epilogue
“We found you,” Perceptor said, quietly, “at the mouth of what looked like a cave.”
Drift nodded, his body aching, sore and sated. They’d gotten him cycles ago, as the rising sun had just crested the lip of the ravine. He’d looked back, as they lifted him, into the dark cave, seeing the crystals sparkling with light. “I’m fine.”
Perceptor gave a brusque nod, acknowledging without agreeing. “You had rebooted.”
Drift nodded. “Fraggin’ spy got away.” And…everything in between? Yeah, he was just going to gloss over that for now.
“Not for long,” Perceptor muttered, running a hand worriedly over Drift’s chassis.
Drift squirmed away. “I’m fine.” Really. Just a little…worn out. His valve still tingled pleasurably from the memory. The whole thing had been a little weird, but he’d run his own diagnostics and it seemed all the thing had wanted was the energy of his electrical discharge.
“Drift.”
“I’m fine,” Drift repeated, stubbornly. He pushed off the medical berth. Really. He’d just gotten…really well fragged. Hardly in need of a medical exam. Much less all this fuss. His feet hit the ground, he reached for his Great Sword. And doubled over, at the sudden burst of electricity in his valve.
“Drift!” An edge in Perceptor’s tone, and Drift knew he wasn’t going to stonewall his way out of this one. Drift slumped back on the berth’s edge, scowling as Perceptor lifted the hand Drift had laid over his interface hatch. “Open.”
Drift released the hatch, muttering some dark imprecation he knew Perceptor wouldn’t listen to, anyway. Perceptor squatted down, shoving one of Drift’s thighs out of the way. Any other time, and Drift would have risked some off-color joke about someone walking in on them.
“You have…something in your valve.” Perceptor looked up, optic blinking, confused.
Drift squirmed, plates heating. “I…what?”
Perceptor reached and Drift gasped, feeling a warm wriggle inside him as the…thing protested. His hands clutched at the edges of the berth, as Perceptor withdrew what looked at first like a crystalline chunk and then a long, slick grey mass.
“Some…silicate life form,” Perceptor murmured, reticle optic whirring. “The crystalline structure is a piezoelectric source as well as a storage matrix.” He looked up. “How did you…acquire it?”
“It…. Uh.” The sole grey stone tentacle flipped and flopped around, feeling blindly up his leg for the warmth of the valve. It bunched and stretched, long and thin, short and thick, squirming with a slightly-too-familiar movement that caused his valve calipers to twitch. It brushed the valve’s rim, a gentle, intimate lick that told its own story. He tried to pull away, pressing his thighs together. He was no xenobiology expert, but even he could recognize a seeding initiative. Cave-bound life form--how else did it spread and survive? See? Just nature. Just biology. Nothing, uh, nothing kinky or weird about it. He steeled himself. “So I was chasing the spy last night….”
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 10:57 pm (UTC)I loved the non-sexual way the tentacles worked, siphoning off the excess electrical charge to live. Very inspiring~
And yay for teaching the masses (or at least me) about piezoelectricity!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 10:59 pm (UTC)Wow! That is a real word. Which makes it all even hotter :)
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Date: 2011-09-18 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 12:24 am (UTC)Such nice tentacles! Spelunking, indeed *sporfle*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:34 pm (UTC)...I think too much about this. o-O
no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:50 am (UTC)Excellent story. The epilogue was the icing on a very hot cake. Bravo!
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Date: 2011-09-18 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 06:27 am (UTC)Um, yes. Woo!
Also, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHA! Perceptor's new pet!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 08:20 pm (UTC)Hmm! Maybe they're altruistic and colonial like slime molds! There could be threads and colonies of them throughout that mountain range, or even through most of the upper levels of the crust, depending...on, well, rather a lot of things, yes. They might be collectively sapient.
The harmonic crystal element is intriguing! Are they part of the creature or its garden? Or both, sure. Or a symbiotic species. Maybe the crystals groove on the sounds, converting vibrations to energy, in addition to the stray bits of charge they could pick up. Growth could simply be by budding. And maybe they're friable enough sometimes bits get vibrated off or the tentacles knock against them, which starts a new seed crystal. Hmm. Or are they storing the charge and I missed that amid the hotness? Aheh, yes I did. Maybe they're metamaterial crystals and the piezoelectric effects are only part of the story. Of course once you get into metamaterials things can get significantly weird in a hurry. Heee! :D
And I see by your reply to Playswithworms that you do in fact have all the biology worked out, so... Yeah. ^_^;;;
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Date: 2011-09-18 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-09-19 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 08:00 pm (UTC)