• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Day in the Life: Rescue from the Depths

"He could be contagious," The tigress stated flatly, "He should be contained and kept apart from the other Daqin until this cure is applied."

"Maybe she's right!" Jun said in the virtuality, "Take Wen, go away somewhere else. Leave them to deal with this Aoi Si mind stuff? Then we could speak with the empress... about other things... I don't want to seem ungrateful but we were promised some rewards... and I'm super excited about not having to get shot at. I mean, I'm sure you don't like getting shot at either Hoshiko but you're much better at it than me."

Jun was starting to rant a bit, but she was so close to getting what she wanted! Just having to stand here while everyone talked about Wen's head was killing her!
 
"This young man?" the empress raised an eyebrow at the new tigress. "You make it sound like he's got an STD - OoOooOoooO!" She playfully pretended to be a ghost. However, the glint of malice hadn't quite gone away. Not yet. Grasping Wen's arm, she began to lead him into her personal laboratory. "Go ahead and lay down," she gestured to the operating platform, its sterile padding clearly fitted to his form, indentations for his horns included.

"Mother, shouldn't you elaborate a little first?" Hoshiko skeptically began. A shielded tube ascended out from the floor, its layers drawing back to reveal a gorgeous ruby with a beautiful glow. It almost seemed to shimmer, even when their sensors said it wasn't.

"Oh yes! It's a very simple plan!" their mother-empress giddily began. Mechanical arms descended and stripped away her dress, and just as quickly, donned her in a surgical suit. "According to Aos Si documentation and our own experiments, the catalyst or agent behind magic is supposed to be centralized in a stone found near the heart, but Wen is different." In their virtuality, the empress's avatar swapped over to a schoolteacher's outfit with a Confucian twist that Confucius would have disapproved of. "As you can see, it's scattered all throughout his nervous system," she began to elaborate, pointing to the chart with her grass reed. "So, by inserting this into his chest, right next to his heart, it'll all be drawn out of his head," Empress Zhuli explained, the reed idly tapping the diagram of Wen's lower horn instead.

In meatspace, it was clear that she was well gearing up for a chest surgery for Wen, tools and robotic arms descending into position.

"Ara, this is all so new. Has anyone heard of this before?" Sakamoto coyly hid behind a fan of her feathers.
 
"I don't have any human friends," Jun said, "So its not like I know anyone who's going to get an STD... or do you mean the glowing thing? Looks like a high hardness rock but I don't want to speculate on what gives it the red color. Aluminum Oxide maybe if it weren't glowing... probably some Aoi Si trinket? Catonite? Artificially made? The natural stuff tends to trend more orange than red and is usually barely visible or flaky. It uh won't explode or anything will it? I mean... crystals tend not to explode but also last time we saw something like this it was in a Unicorn shooting exploding beams at us."

The Tigress wasn't one to question the Mother Empress. She remained suited, and never let the Empress get too far from her. She seemed constantly on edge, her hand on the hilt of her sword, her legs tensed as if ready to leap between the Empress and Wen.

Certainly this kind of activity could be delegated to someone else? Wasn't the Empress too important to be conducting dangerous tests with weird crystals and unstable Daqin?

There was also the Princess Koyama who still might try something. The Tigress had to be on alert there too, her attention splitting between Wen and Koyama. If either of them tried something she'd be the first to intercept.
 
"Comfortable?" the Empress asked Wen. Her soft, gentle hands pushed the bull down onto the padded surface and uncovered his chest, just as the mechanical limbs touched his skin and hissed, local anesthesia ridding him of pain. "Good, I still want to know what you'll feel, though it should not be pain." Flicking her eyes over to Dai however, she couldn't help but give the equine woman a smile. "No medical inquiries?"

"And if you haven't figured yet Xian, your job is to watch, question and learn," she idly added in their virtuality. "Zuǒshǒu and Yòushǒu are here, after all."

"I'm more curious though, what is that Aos'Si thinking? What does she know about this?" she pondered aloud, restraints clasping into place over the bull. Standing by Wen's side, the mechanical limbs were an extension of her own body, his skin ticklishly parting painlessly as thin mechanical tendrils slid under his sternum. "Does she know what would happen, if the creature that donated this stone was subservient to us?" the Empress's smile elongated and narrowed as the gorgeous gem slipped into Wen, and was drawn to the apex of his heart like a magnet.

Wen was on the surface of that accursed planet again. Only now, he could see, hear and smell the sounds and scents, but they were faintly muddled, like a memory. But the sound of hoof-like feet against the forest ground was unmistakable. Like their misadventure before, he could feel the creature looming over him from behind. But when he wheeled around, it simply stood there. Waiting, its two sharp horns glistened as it snorted once through its ventricles. Black carapace calmly closed up, it resembled a bug mimicking something else. In this case, a black horse with a horn on either side of its head. But this serenity didn't last long. Leaves rustled, and it spun, charging at the noise and knocking the Aos Si to the ground.

"Nonononono!" Turning around, and making to desperately crawl away, the Bicorn saw and reared back! Only to tear away her pants. "HELP WEN! HEl - !"

The lance's perfect aim was seared into Wen's mind.

"Xiǎo Niú (小牛)?" The Empress raised an eyebrow with concern. The operation was over as quickly as it had begun, and Zhuli had already sealed the incision site closed. "Hm." Pausing for a moment, she soon snapped her fingers. "Ah, this young man is laying helpless before so many women!" Hearing this, Sakamoto quickly caught on and leaned in to whisper.

"Ara-ara, what are we going to do to him?" she asked, hot breath tickling his ear.
 
Last edited:
"Secure Isolation and Medical Evaluation for a week while we determine if he's a danger to the Empire." The Tigress, Xian, Replied. Her family name would certainly sound familiar. It was that of the White Tiger General, the one who lead the charge to free the Mother-Empress on Earth, and icon of Daqin military supremacy. While she wasn't a princess, she certainly had family in high places.

Xiam Guaxi would finally move into the virtuality proper. The Tigress would be wearing her uniform, the tight fitting black and red Daqin bodysuit was designed to show off Daqin physical superiority and she certainly looked like she had the muscle to cut someone in half with the sword on her hip. Her orange and black hair was arranged in a twin-tail, with certainly betrayed that she was perhaps a bit younger than the rest of those assembled here.

"Are we certain his condition is not contagious?" She asked, "Or that we could repeat this cure again if we would need to?"


-


"Oh no... she's just like Wen." Jun thought outloud, sharing her communications only with Hoshiko, Koyama, Wen, Wu, Dai, and Sakamoto, "... Hey... uh, should we warn your mom that flirting with Wen like this could cause space ghosts to take over his body?"

Jun would summon another one of Hoshiko's Old War 2 guns in the virtuality and get ready. "... Or does this thing fix space ghosts forever? Can Wen finally know what a woman's touch is like? Perhaps Hoshiko could flash him again and see if he relapses?" Jun would illustrate her plan in the virtuality as well, showing Wen laying on the table with a topless Hoshiko straddling him as she leaned forward just enough to keep his view filled with her chest.

Jun was of course right next to the table with a gun in case Wen malfunctioned again.

"And when we've determined for good Wen is fixed we can move on to talking about me being made a princess?"
 
Wen stood in his own mind space, dumbfounded. With all the mental fortitude he could muster, he tried to pull together his own senses to comprehend what was occurring. Numb to the real world, he could only piece together that the Mother Empress did something to bring in the form and sapience of the monster that they had slain a day ago. Now, that same monster has taken sexual possession of him. His mental form collapsed to the ground. Even in here, in his current condition, he couldn't pretend that he was okay.

The world warped around him. To the others, his virtual form glitched in and out of existence, until it solidified into a man kneeling on the ground, panting quietly. The Aos Si soul occupied elsewhere finally freed his alter-ego to freely manifest itself.

"I... need a moment." Wen announced, realizing that throughout this entire time, he was still technically sharing a mind space with the rest of the group. With a shaky wave of his hand, he summoned his comfort zone in his section the space: untainted highlands, with green grass that reached to distant, snow-topped mountains, under a clear, blue sky, with Orkhons grazing at their leisure.

The bull-form staggered up and walked away from the group, into his safe space. The luxurious apartment space seamlessly transitioned into the open landscape that he conjured. He sat down next to one of the Orkhons, petting its woolly fur as he stared blankly at the false horizon. An emotion welled up that he didn't expect in his moment of liberty: Sadness. He cared little for the Aos Si soul that possessed half of his mind, much less the alien bicorn. But just as the Aos Si soul stared into all of his memories and insecurities, so did he stare into hers. They were too intertwined. At times in his fractured mind, he felt that he was her. Knowing that that alter-ego of his, hostile and alien as she was, was now being forever punished by another monster, brought him empathy that he did not wish for. Even that bicorn forced some sympathy onto him, for its soul too, was now forever trapped.

The bull-form's eyes flashed wide open. His physical form was still numb. He saw now his chest was split open, with the exotic crystal pressed against his heart. "I want this thing destroyed." He snapped at the Empress, having seemingly forgotten all his manners towards his Goddess. "Every atom, every ethereal trace of it, all gone." The dead deserved complete rest. That minimal mercy, he could concede to the vengeful spirits.
 
"If it were contagious, my sister, and the Cow-form," Koyama gestured to Hoshiko and Jun. "Would have been infected as we entered Wen's mind. And suppressed whatever it was that was plaguing him. But it seems as though it was not enough. But he at least had enough self-control to withstand its mental assault." She crossed her arms, her customary cheongsam of white and red rustled a little as her tail swayed in virtual space.

Her avatar spread its arms, and narrowed her eyes slightly in challenge at the Tigress, Xian, "Yet we are not infected. It was centralized within him. The Mother-Empress knows her work."

Yet in meatspace, she rolled her eyes at her Mother, and Sakamoto in turn. "Both of you are incorrigible. Mother, have you already discarded your last lover so soon?" She shook her head.

She sent Hoshiko a private message: "Should we 'block' Mother's attempts at Wen?"
 
The Empress looked at Wen as though he were a young boy with a cold.

"Oh, you poor thing," she began, reaching out to put a hand on his forehead. "You must still be traumatized by the whole ordeal," Zhuli noted. "I can understand wanting to destroy this heartstone, but it's one of the few samples we have at this time," the empress pointed out to him. "Would you really deprive the empire of such a rare, limited thing?" she now rubbed his ears to console Wen. Looking up at her daughter, she smiled. "Lover? You mean lovers, plural? It couldn't hurt to include Wen."

"Ara-ara," Sakamoto began, coyly smiling at Koyama. "I may have only known Wen for a short while, but I believe he really needs a win," she noted rather accurately.

Properly reconnected, his internal 'saboteur' dealt with, Wen could clearly hear them speaking in meatspace as well as their virtuality.

"Is that even possible? She's a maneater. Let him get gobbled up, 'for the empire' and all that," Hoshiko cynically replied. "Unless..."

"Hey, Chongwu, give him a hug? He needs it."
 
Jun had to consider her options. What if the Wen got to bang the empress? Wen could end up as Emperor? The Bull that she'd shot a few times since this adventure began being that close to the throne would ensure bad things for her!

She had to do something princessy.

She thought back to her romance books, and court dramas, and the like. The princesses in those always had something dramatic to do. She considered her options:

1) Declare she was madly in love with Wen? -> ew.

2) Declare she was already dramatically pregnant with Wen's child!? -> That might ruin her prospects of princess-hood

3) Suggest Wen could relapse if he is shown boobs again? -> Maybe

4) ...

ok, she didn't have a four. She was going to have to go with plan number 3.

"Wen has been through a lot. He might not survive strenuous activity." Jun said, trying to sound helpful.
 
Last edited:
The sound of flesh being smacked was audible in meatspace. Koyama's voice in meatspace beating in time with the sound of the smacks... she was smacking the Mother-Empress' chest back and forth! "Mother! He isn't a snack for you!" Another smack along her chest. "Not another conquest, Mother-Maneater!" The last was sent to Zhuli privately. She huffed. Her avatar, and physical body crossing their arms in perfect synchronicity.

Her tail whipped about. "I know you probably have at least half a dozen or more you've had your eyes on." Another private message to her mother.

Looking at Hoshiko in virtual space, she sent her sister a response. "I'm going to give Mother a case of blue balls even if it kills me."
 
Xian's eyes went wide. She was so startled by this action that she entirely dropped from the virtuality. The Empress was under DIRECT ATTACK and she had failed in her duty to protect her! She tried to rush to the Empress' defense, only to be caught unable to get in between the Princess and the Empress with how close the two of them were. She couldn't risk hurting the princess any more than she could risk hurting the Empress!

She rushed to the Empress' side, and did her best to squeeze between the Empress and Koyama, "DO NOT LAY YOUR HANDS ON THE EMPRESS!"
 
"Ahhhh!" the empress cried out in pain. "It's not my fault you scare men away!" Her black synthsilk dress seemed to miraculously hold under the vicious assault, preserving her dignity while fully allowing Real Physics(TM) to play out. Seeing this reprehensible act of violence however, Zuǒshǒu and Yòushǒu decloaked and clung to each other in horror, the imperial guards helpless and unable to intervene thanks to her-highness's standing command.

"Ara ara, how exciting," Sakamoto politely laughed, coyly hiding her mouth behind her fanned out feathers. It seemed that this was a family affair, and they were allowed to glimpse at the empire's private moments. And in Xian's case, participate?

"Wait. Do we still need to talk in meatspace for Wen?" Hoshiko asked aloud, eyebrow raised. "Or should we go back to normal mode?" Ignoring the drama, she peered at the young bull for a moment and shrugged. "Well, we still need to discuss some things," she began, briefly tapping her foot. "I know Jun's head is about to explode from wanting to ask about her wedding, but are we going to have to go hunt more of these things? Because I want bigger guns if we do," the tigress demanded, now putting the impatient foot down for emphasis.

"Aahhhh," the empress moaned. "Of course we'll have the wedding," she winced. "Though, I thought that was obvious," she pouted her lips a little at Koyama. "But I we also need to do the whole reward ceremony for the whole FTL combat bit, since that's a first in history too! I'd rather not send you all into danger if I could h - "

"More missions, more guns," Hoshiko insisted. "Right everyone?"
 
Wen watched with wide eyed horror from the surgical table as the casual maternal violence continued. I need a fucking drink, he thought to himself. He wanted to intervene again, like the rookie was in front of him, though she was making a fool of herself more than any actual progress. Though, Koyama did physically force him to back down, and that the Mother Empress seems to have condoned this violence. The ox-form has vowed to never enter the royal family, or carry the ambition to do so. It just didn't seem worth it. More importantly though...

"Yes, I am willing to continue to serve the Empire, even if it means carrying this catonite burden with me." Wen replied the Hoshiko. "But Your Highness," He continued, "If Your servant could make a request, could You kindly seal my chest back up?"

The ox form pointed to his opened chest, which showed his beating heart and the alien gemstone lodged next to it. Already, his tissues were wrapping around it, small capillaries forming like red strands of fiber, interweaving. Next to him on a sanitized table was his bloody sternum, threatened to be knocked to the ground by the antics between Koyama and the Mother Empress.
 
"Of course, of course!" Zhuli happily answered them all. Gesturing to Sakamoto, she smiled, "Assistant, please do the thing. And as we close up, please watch his heart everyone!" As the feathered woman excitedly hurried to don protective gear, the Mother Empress made sure to put a mirror up for Wen to see too. Only to use the slight of hand to bend down and affectionately kiss him on the cheek.

"Ararararararaaaaa!!!" Sakamoto exclaimed!

It looked like the poor man's heart had gone into maximum overdrive.

*****

Adjusting her uniform slightly, Hoshiko looked at the others, a wry grin on her lips. As the horns rang with the first notes of an ancient victory song, they rounded the corner. Great armored doors slid aside as they entered the throne room, where rows and rows of soldiers, lords and ladies all stood before them at attention. As the motley group of heroes and heroines walked down the central aisle, they could even see a few new faces that they had met along the way. But they all eventually came to a stop before the Mother Empress herself, now the stateswoman of legend that presented each of them their medals in turn.

The war was short, but ruthless and bloody. However, the empress had been rescued from treacherous captivity, and their unexplained attack in FTL struck fear into the barbarous humans thanks to the lack of survivors, their remains lost in the realm between time and space. What's more, new possibilities were coming forth, and the royal family was due a new daughter.

It felt like this was only the beginning for greater things to come.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top