Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 4 (Patreon)

CH. 4The Love for One’s ChildrenThe floor and walls of the darkened container shuddered as the engines roared to life.  Clinging to the cubs, Kenny did his best to calm their panicking noises and lights, even if he himself was more terrified than he had ever been in his life.  He had been alive for almost 30 years, and the best parts of it had still consisted of nearly daily occurrences of being yelled at, thrown around, nearly run over by inattentive drivers, and frequently stuffed in places where a Human being wasn't normally supposed to be stuffed.  Now, he was in an alien spaceship, hurtling through space and away from his home planet to God knew where.  He was in fact so scared that he felt numb.  His chest was tight, his arms stiff, and his breath only came in shaking spurts.His hands kept petting, stroking, and soothing the cubs as they curled in around him.  Their cries had subsided somewhat, but he knew that they were still just as scared as he was.  Their bio-lights flashed in constant orange and yellows, punctuated by their excited pinks every other second or so.  He felt one of them, probably Phoebe, shove her face underneath his armpit to hide like she did when she was scared and not wanting anyone to see her cry.  Meanwhile, Joey and Chandler just kept their shivering bodies wrapped close in around his midriff.  Their cries broke his heart and he wished he could do something, anything, to calm them down.So he sang.  He was no great talent, often off-key, and sometimes screechy, but whenever he did so, the cubs always seemed to want to listen.  Their shivering slowed and Chandler even began to purr.  The boys turned their faces in his lap to look up at him.  He knew it was them, even in the total darkness of whatever storage device they had been lifted up and closed into.  He saw Joey's rosettes pulsing and Chandler's ruff doing the same.  Phoebe's stripes soon joined the rhythm they set up and she finally extricated her face from under his arm.He gave them a smile each, even as his breath continued to quiver in and out of him.  "Yeah, we're going to be okay," he promised them.  "We'll figure this out."  They looked doubtful.  "As long as we're a family, we can make it through this."  They purred in unison.  Their ears folded down and they curled in more against him, this time for comfort and to share their warmth.  It was very cold in the cell, for a jail cell it felt like.  There were no windows, not even the visible seam of the door.  He had no idea how long they'd be stuffed in here.  The truth of it was that he had very little time to wait.Just as the cubs had finally started to calm down and were slipping into an exhausted sleep against him, the floor of the cell began to vibrate.  They started up again, eyes wide and colors flashing once more in alarm.  He tried to calm them, to quiet them, but he had only a split second to even do so.  The top of the container suddenly rattled and slid open on an automated system.  Light pierced the darkened interior for a brief moment before it was cut off again.  A massive, clawed arm was reaching into the box.  Reaching for him!Kenny yelped as that huge paw fastened onto the back of his coveralls and lifted him, screeching, up and away from the cubs.  Their faces flashed out of sight, looking terrified and panicking as their Daddy was ripped away.  He heard their desperate yowls start up, louder than ever before.  He turned, the paw holding him up swiveling him around to face their kidnapper.His eyes went wide.  His mouth went dry, falling open.  His chest, already fluctuating, began to constrict tighter and tighter, cutting off his ability to breathe.  He panted, making high-pitched grunts as he stared into the blank face-plate of the alien.  It was enormous, bigger than any living being had any right to be.  Its dark, armored hulk of a body filled his entire view.  The paw that held him seemed to do so with the ease that he might have picked up a newborn kitten.  Before his very eyes, the visor of the helmet changed color, starting to become see-through.A glowing pair of eyes shone through, glaring right at him.  There was a hiss, a chittering sound, and then a second later he was almost deafened at a burst of what could only be described as radio-static mixed in with the roar of a hurricane came from that helmeted face.  It almost sounded like words were intermixed with that sound, but garbled and impossible to understand.Segments of the plated helmet then rattled and began to open, sliding seamlessly and effortlessly apart.  They all clicked into resting positions before retracting, like the legs of a spider, back behind the skull of the creature holding him aloft.  The face was like something out of a nightmare.  It had the skull structure and round features of a tiger, or at least some kind of very large feline.The fur was sable black, with white motifs on the cheeks and visible throat.  Heavy sections of scales, or perhaps plates of metal built seamlessly into the flesh, covered the temples, brow, and disappeared out of sight beneath the armor's harness.  The eyes were just like the children's, black with tiny galaxies of stars and bright motes of light swirling within.  They converged on him, angry constellations that then turned dark at the center points of each, as all of the monster's attention focused squarely upon him.All around him, he heard the shifting of yet more arms.  Three more to be exact.  He saw them flexing on all sides of his tiny body.  A pair of tentacles then emerged from behind the creature, opening into grasping claws at the ends that snapped and clicked right in his face.  He could all but feel the thing studying him.  A light flashed at the temples then, a rapid sequence of colors that made no sense.The jaws opened.  There was no intake of air.  Instead, he just winced as another roar of static and garbled audio emitted from between a double-row of fangs, piercing his eardrums.  Each tooth was longer than his middle finger, easily, and the tips of the top canines stuck out over her bottom jaw like a sabertooth tiger.That was when the stripes lit up.  Previously unseen, an intricate system of stripes sprang into existence across the dark fur.  Bright blue, fiery red, blazing orange, and neon pink coursed and fluctuated, glowing like living flame, shimmering the air around them like heatwaves.  Even as they did, the darkness of the eyes changed their hue as well.  The orbs became blue, lighting up like lanterns.  The jaws opened again.The Tiger alien roared.  The sound echoed around the interior of the ship, bouncing off the walls.  This was no attempt at communication, perhaps as the others had been.  This was an animal sound meant to convey one thing: anger.  Its mouth stretched wide in front of his face, jaw distending like a serpent.  The slightly transparent fangs actually flashed, lighting up like Christmas lights, all neon blue.  It looked big enough to bite off his head in a single try.Kenny screamed.  He screamed louder, more shrilly, more terrified than he had ever done before.  Air had finally rushed back into his lungs as his chest loosened, allowing him to suck in a mouthful of air and then let it all explode out in exultation of pure animal terror.The volume of the noise, just as loud as the tiger's roar, had an unintentional consequence.  The alien started, eyes going wide in shock and its jaws snapping shut again, and he was suddenly falling.  The steel floor rushed up toward him and he screamed again, trying to throw up his hands and break his fall.  Instead, he jerked as one of the tentacles grabbed at his ankle, hoisting him back up.  He swung, like a pendulum, back and forth, and watched, upside-down as he was being carried towards a large sealed section of wall.Something hissed loudly as hidden hydraulics whirred to life.  The wall opened and he was looking out a blank room, marked in the center by a yellow symbol.  At the very end of the tiny room, there a thin barrier of energy, separating the inside of the ship with the inky blackness of space hummed ominously.  His eyes went wide.  He was going to be spaced.Terror and desperation surged up inside of him and he kicked his foot up at the claw holding onto his pant leg.  The fabric tore and he fell further toward the ground, not as long of a drop as before.  He landed with a grunt and immediately began scuttling away on all fours, breath hitching up and his eyes wide.  Behind him, the Alien snarled in what sounded like annoyance.  Stomping footfalls immediately started to follow him.  He looked back.  The tentacles were reaching for him.  The Tiger's face was contorted with anger and irritation at having to catch him.He moved as fast as he possibly could.  He ducked, bobbed, weaved, and scurried around, in between, and under objects strewn around the room.  He heard the snapping of the clawed tentacles always right behind him, almost feeling their tips snag at his legs or clothes but missing by what felt like millimeters.  He had begun to sob desperately as the chase continued.  The Alien roared again.Now it was not trying to delicately grab him with the stretching tentacles as it lumbered behind him.  Its four, armor-plated arms were lifting things, smashing them out of its way as it got more and more frustrated at his evasion tactics.  He was almost flattened as one six-fingered fist smashed a container he was about to crawl into and through the opposite end, as he had done before.  The metal object was crushed flat, as easily as he might have flattened a soda can.  He screamed more and kept moving.  He wasn't going to just give up without a fight, even if all he could do was run like a rabbit.The creature grew even more furious as he continued to just barely avoid its grasp or swinging limbs.  Now it was tossing things out of its way, thundering after him.  He looked back only once, which just lent fresh speed and vigor to his limbs.  Its hulking, armored chassis moved without any restrictions or clattering, the giant possessing unnatural levels of agility.  Its feet caused heavy stomps whenever they fell, and he had more than once been forced to scurry between them and almost been stepped on.Crush him, grab him, trample him, the Alien seemed to not care anymore so long as it caught him.  And he was running out of room to maneuver.  The debris caused by their chase was beginning to hinder places he could hide or duck into.He had just dove into an uncrushed container and barely scurried out the other side when there was a humming sound and a burst of heat right behind him.  He looked behind him and screamed yet again.  One of the pairs of arms had somehow attached themselves together, then extended a glowing, segmented pair of blades from the bulky forearm.  The sword arm glowed with a pink, orange, and white-hot hiss, sizzling the very air.  The container had been neatly sliced in two.  Before his eyes, the edges of the cuts blackened and started turning to ash before finally it stopped, a good foot past where the initial slice had been made.One cut, not even a major one, would be enough to incinerate him.  The blades were also bigger than he was.  The arm bearing the weapon drew back, ready to slice again.  His back thumped against the wall of the room.  There was nowhere left to run.  His hands sought out anything to grab onto, his mind racing for any solution that might save his life.  There were none.  The Alien's face was a mask of fury, not even any satisfaction towards the close of their chase.  It had the same look he did when squashing an illusive cockroach.  He understood now, more than ever, how it felt to be so meaningless, so powerless, to stop his own demise.He broke.  Kenny's back slid down the wall and he shuddered.  Tears coursed down his face and he blubbered and shook.  He put his hands up in a last futile effort to shield his eyes from what was coming.  He curled into a ball.  He imagined it would at least be fast.  A cut, maybe a flash of heat, and it would be over.  Even so, he didn't want to die.  But this was the end of the line for him.But oblivion did not come.  He warily opened his eyes.  He still wasn't dead.  The Alien still towered over him, face twisted in disgust at his cowering.  The sword hummed, drawn back for that single movement that would dispatch the insect before it.  Lifting one arm on the opposite side then, it curled all but one finger into a ball and turned to point.  He followed the direction it indicated.  The thin barrier, and the void beyond.  His stomach clenched hard.  He looked back to it again and it flexed the blade in his direction meaningfully.It was a choice.  He could all but hear the Alien speak.  'Pick how you want to die,' it glared at him.  The flashing device underneath one tufted and spined ear erupted in another series of colors, settling on a dull red that clicked on and off several times before returning to normal.He couldn't move.  He could barely even process what was being offered to him.  It seemed to take his indecision as a choice and drew back the sword grimly.  He threw out his hands.  "Wait!" he shrieked.  The blade paused again.  He tried to struggle up to his feet but his limbs weren't working.  The Alien rolled its glowing blue eyes down at him, exasperated, then a tentacle reached out and none-too-gently hauled him to his feet.  One of the claws scraped his arm through his clothes, making him wince.  He looked at the blank, black wall of space beyond.  He looked up at it once again.  "D-do I really...have to?" he asked.It did not answer.  Either it did not understand him or it didn't care to try.  It just pointed again at the void outside.He shuddered, limbs stiff as he began to force himself to walk.  He paused, the Alien lumbering slowly out of his way as he had been making his way towards the thin, glowing sheen of energy that separated the ship's interior from the darkness.  He looked into those glowing eyes so high above him for any shred of mercy.  "C-can I please...say goodbye...to the kids?" he asked.The Alien didn't respond.  The blade hummed at its side, still eager and willing to cut him down."Please!" he begged.  "Let me just...say goodbye to them."  He pointed at the untouched container in the far corner of the room, which he only now realized was some sort of storage or hanger bay.  He was almost surprised that he had moved so fast and so far.  It looked to be as big as a football field.  The eyes followed his finger.  The face contorted again in annoyance and it growled down at him.  He stared up at it, pleading silently for this one small mercy.Something shifted behind those glowing eyes.  A flicker, a twitch maybe, or something other than rage, irritation, and disgust toward the Human.  The blade crackled and then finally turned off.  The conjoined arms separated, once again leaving the titan with all four upper limbs.  The tentacles lifted, hovering alongside the feline skull and snapping their claws.  The head jerked.  He began to walk, toward the cell that contained the still yowling and panicking cries of the cubs.The Alien followed after him menacingly, ready to crush him at the slightest excuse or wrong movement.  One of the paws lifted and touched the side of the pod.  It opened, spilling the kids out onto the hanger floor.  Their eyes rapidly pulsed and swirled in alarm before fixating on Kenny.  They leaped onto him at once, making desperate sounds in their joy at seeing him unharmed and their fear of their hostile new surroundings.  Every so often, one of them would look up at the Alien giant towering over them and their terror would resume, forcing him to try and calm them down once more.  He clung to them, stroking, soothing, petting, and kissing them all over and over.  Every time felt like the last and he couldn't stop crying.  They seemed to sense his desperation and despair, which only made it worse for them.Then, at last, he pulled himself up from their cuddle-pile and started to push himself out of their grasp.  They yowled and cried anew, trying to hold onto him.  He shook his head, sniffling and shuddering all over as he tried to get them to let go.  "N-no!" he cried.  They just hung on more stubbornly.  "Kids, let go!" he commanded.  Their eyes went wide and they shrunk slowly away from him.  He took a few more steps back.  They tried to follow.  He held up a hand.  "S-s-stay," he told them.  "D-Daddy has to go."Their heartbroken noises shattered him.  They didn't want him to, they didn't understand."Daddy...has to," he blubbered.  He looked up once more at the Alien.  He nodded shakily, turned his back to the cubs, and began walking back towards the barrier.  The cubs kept crying out behind him, sounding pitiful and desperate to get him to come back.  As he got closer to the humming wall, however, their sounds changed, now alarmed and terrified.  Even they knew what was about to happen  He looked back one more time.  The Alien was still nearby, ready to press the pad to eject him from the ship and out into the icy dark.  The cubs stared at him in horror and confusion.  He met the Giant's eyes.  Those flaming stripes continued to blaze alongside the glowing blue eyes.  "Please...don't hurt them," he begged of it.The face flickered again.  The device at its temple flashed.  The jaw became tighter and it raised its paw as his feet came to rest on an appropriate spot right in front of the open bay doors.  He took one last breath to prepare himself and squeezed his eyes shut.There was a sudden, furious, frenzied rushing of claws on the metal floor.  Kenny turned.  His eyes flew open wide as he recognized that sound.  "Kids no!" he screamed.Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler were hurtling toward the Giant alien.  Their lips had drawn back in fury and terror, flashing their teeth and their eyes fixed on their titanic foe.  Their claws flexed at the ends of their paws and they leaped as one.  The Alien balked, actually stumbling back a step, eyes wide and disbelieving like Kenny's were.  The three furry-bionic rockets struck the bulky chassis like cannonballs.  Each impact rocked their enemy back a step as claws scratched, teeth flashed, and yowling cries filled the hanger bay.  They had no chance against such a huge opponent and they did not seemingly care.  Their Daddy was in danger.Even so, Kenny's adrenaline was pumping as powerfully as it ever had as a different kind of terror took hold.  It was even worse than when they had attacked Derrick, worse than when the agent had called them out of hiding by threatening him.  Neither of those had fists so big that they could crush one of the cubs with an offhand strike.  Neither of them had possessed extendable arm blades, which could disintegrate anything they touched.  One such sword erupted from one of the Giant's wrists in a sparkling burst of heat as one of the cubs bit through a power cord, supposedly disengaging the weapon's safety.  He did what any parent would do."CUBS!" he howled at the top of his lungs.  The sounds of battle ceased at once.  Four pairs of feline, glowing eyes turned to look at him.  "DOWN!" he commanded, pointing at the ground.  They yowled angrily, still eager to continue the fight.  "Now!"  He stomped one foot and pointed again.Growling unhappily, they did as he commanded.  The huge Alien stared down at him in shock as the cubs did as they were told, hanging their heads and looking dejected.  He looked away from their oppressor, planting his hands on his hips.  None of the trio would meet his eyes.  Their furry faces were stained with tears.  Tails and tentacles drooped in defeat."That is not the way we behave!" he told them sternly.  "Nice people, Aliens, whatever, do not go around mauling and attacking people.  Even if they're scared."  He looked up at the silent hulk once again and glared, then returned his gaze to the cubs.  "Now.  Daddy is going to get in the terrifying ejector room.  The big Alien is going to space me.  And you are all going to stop fighting.  I couldn't live with myself if one of you got hurt trying to protect me!"The three of them yowled unhappily.  Each and every one of them was eager to return to the fight, to defending their Daddy even if it meant they would be killed too.   Chandler glanced to the side, growling at their enemy. It made the other two more agitated"Chandler!" he proclaimed.  The boy looked away, head drooping down more.  "Good."  He kneeled down and their eyes looked imploringly into his.  He hugged them all, arms shaking.  He may have sounded confident, but he was still so scared.  He eventually let go and turned around to face the Giant.  It regarded him flatly, eyes large, bright, and staring down at him.  "Y-you better...not hurt these cubs," he stated angrily.  He even lifted his fists threateningly.  "O-o-or...I'll come back somehow and h-haunt you...forever."The huge creature tilted its head to the side.  The device beeped rapidly.  Their eyes, flashing blue, were fixed entirely on his face.  It then looked to the side, eyeing the cubs behind him.  All of them must have glared back for it chuffed and returned to looking down at the Human.  Brown eyes met glowing, neon blue.There was an almost imperceptible nod and the Alien blinked.  The half-deployed blade at its side disengaged and it took a step back.  The blink was only once, but it was slow.  He had seen the cubs do much the same before when they were at peace or trusting him on something, a decidedly feline gesture.He stared.  His eyes traveled up and down the massive armored bulk.  He saw the four arms, the tentacles, the feline yet scaly face.  Before his eyes, the dark, lusterless coloration of the plated chassis brightened in color.  Along the edges and in between the heavier sections, bright flashes of color erupted into being, similar to the stripes on its abruptly and undeniably female yet still inhuman face.  The lights and stripes both now pulsed with flashes of orange, yellow, red, blue, and pink.  Kenny, at last, realized the truth."You're..." he breathed.  "You're like them?"  Then a fact even more obvious struck him like a hammerblow.  “You came looking for them… You’re their mother…”She blinked again.  The cubs started behind Kenny, also shocked by this revelation.He took a deep, calming breath.  He should have seen it before.  Maybe it would have helped, although he wasn't sure how or why.  She had been pretty dead-set on crushing him.  But now that he knew that she wasn't going to harm her own cubs, it made what she still wanted him to do, by the stern look in her impassive and mistrustful eyes, at least easier.  He wasn't abandoning the cubs to an uncaring monster.  Any mother would obviously want to protect their young.  He just wasn't necessary anymore.He turned around and looked at his kids...her kids.  He smiled but it was weak and still tinged by fear.  "You're going to be just fine," he told them as they frowned unhappily up at him.  God, they were so expressive.  He loved every face that they could make, as limitless and intelligent and emotional as any Human, perhaps even more.  No living being on Earth had ever looked at him with so much love, with so much fear for the idea of losing him.  "You're with your mother now.  She's..."  He paused, then glanced back at her.  "She's going to protect you."  It was not a question, but a statement, as firm as her wish for him to be spaced.  The cubs yowled again and Phoebe reared up, trying to grab onto him.  He realized that she was nearly as tall as he was on her hind legs.  How fast they seemed to be growing...  He put his hands up and stopped her and she dropped back down dejected, eyes hopeless.He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started walking once again towards the disposal doors.  The cubs made pathetic mewls and sobbing calls, which just broke his heart all the more.  But they were where she was supposed to be now.  He had done what he knew he needed to: protect them long enough for Her to come back for them.  He might not have wanted to die, not at all, but he would stand no chance if he tried to defy her.  All she would do was do it for him, and the cubs didn't need to see that.  He could hear the hum of the energy field in front of him.  Nothing but inky blackness, punctuated by the scattered pinpricks of stars in unfamiliar constellations, greeted his sight as he opened them once again."I'm ready..." he said, voice shaking and trembling audibly.***Behind him, the Mother looked down at her children.  They had eyes only for the fleshy little Earthling.  The sounds they made were full of despair and sorrow.  She knew those sounds very well.  She had made them herself when she had watched her home planet be destroyed.  They were all she had.  And He was all they had.  He looked back at her once more and her empathic and memetic scanner fastened onto his eyes.  Time slowed as she processed his surface memories.  She saw everything he had done to protect, care for, and hide her cubs from his fellow Humans.  She saw a gentle heart, a naive but loving mind, and a wish only for their safety that overrode even his instinct for self-preservation.  He was willing to die at her command, if only because he trusted her to take charge of the children from then on.  For the love of one's children, not even his own, he was ready to give his life.She didn't want him there.  She was scared.  Her paw lifted towards the ejection button, ready to watch the tiny being be sucked out into the void.  He wouldn't suffer much.  Death for his kind in a vacuum was assured, and swift.  It was a mercy, really.  The galaxy was filled with things far worse than she.  She knew from experience.  The Human nodded at her, then turned back around.  He lifted one foot, ready to cross over.The hanger doors let out a massive hiss as the hydraulics again began to whirl.***Kenny blinked as a rushing of air gusted past and around him, a second before he was forced to jump back as the hanger doors suddenly slammed back closed, right in front of his face.  The barrier's hum was cut off.  He stared at the walls as they appeared see-through for a moment then faded into blank, featureless, rounded uniformity.  He looked back behind himself barely able to trust, to believe that this was real.The Mother scowled down at him and looked away.  The cubs, meanwhile, stared at him with wide, shocked eyes before, as one, they yowled in sudden joy and rushed him.  They knocked him over, nuzzling, licking, and pawing at him.  He returned the cuddles but numbly, still staring up at the massive creature who had just spared his life.  A million questions raced through his mind, but he dismissed them all.  He just sank himself into the trembling bodies of his kids and gave thanks to God for her mercy.That was when he noticed that the cubs were truly shivering.  Not entirely from fear either.  Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, they were huddling against him also for warmth.  Their ears drooped, as did their tails and tentacles.  They sniffled.  Joey even sneezed.The Mother looked down at them distressed.  She turned and quickly approached a section of machinery that resembled giant pods, similar to the ones the cubs had landed in and hatched from their eggs in.  She pressed one paw against a panel on three of the four available ones.  Their front, opaque panels slid open at once with smooth precision, revealing the sloping interiors.  She turned back around, facing her kids, and gave a rumble.  Another burst of radio static and rushing, garbled sound emitted from her jaws.The kids stiffened as if able to understand her and turned around.  They glared up at her.  Chandler was barely moving at this point, exhausted from emotional and physical strain.  The Mother looked to Kenny, frustrated, sad, and imploringly.  He knew she hated having to depend on someone she had just a second ago been ready to kill.  Any other person would not have been willing to so readily help her.  He was still a bit angry.  But this wasn't about them.  She was trying to help the cubs with whatever was wrong."Kids, do as she says," he muttered softly down at the trio.  They growled but struggled to their paws.  Chandler had to be helped by Joey, while Phoebe limped on her own.  The Mother gave him a look then tried to nudge her daughter into the first of the pods.  Phoebe just growled and swatted at the tentacle that had touched her, making the Mother back off in annoyance.  Eventually, all three had taken a pod to themselves.  Chandler just curled up on the floor of his. Joey sat curious but deflated, not even able to smile.  Last to enter her own pod, Phoebe gave Kenny a single, worried look as the doors hissed closed over them, obstructing all three from view.He walked over and pressed his face against one of the panels, only for the polished, metallic material to suddenly brighten up and then become transparent.  He was relieved to see the cubs inside of each, sniffing, pawing, or looking around.  The Mother reached up then and pressed a dial.  Immediately, the pods whirred to life, lights flashing.  A vent in the floor opened in each of them.Out of the hole came a slow-flowing flood of yellow liquid, slightly viscous like honey.  The cubs yowled in surprise and alarm as they were enveloped in the stuff.  Kenny looked up at the Mother in worry, but she wasn't looking at him.  She did not so much as move until the pods had completely filled with the yellow goo.  Then she relaxed.Looking back at them, Kenny tried to peer through the opaque liquid.  He thought he saw, dimly, the curled up form of Phoebe floating there.  She was in a ball, four arms curled around her hind legs, and her head tucked against her chest.  Her lights had all turned off and when he caught a look at her face, he was delighted to see her nose twitching and a sleepy smile stretching her muzzle.  They were asleep.  He checked on the boys and saw the same.  Whatever the liquid was, it had immediately lulled them to much needed slumber.A grunt at his side tore his gaze from a twitching and curled up Chandler, looking back up at the Mother.  She growled down at him, eyes narrowed, then crossed to another, much larger pod of similar design.  He assumed she was going to rest too, but instead, he was alarmed to see, as she approached it and pressed a button on her suit, the pod opened and a long series of claws, tentacles, hooks, and clamps emerged on metal arms.  She faced the pod as it began to peel her out of the armored suit she was wearing.  Blades cut delicately along precise incisions, clamps and claws whirled and gripped loose sections of plating.Slowly, the Mother's real body was revealed.  The helmet device at the back of her throat was the last to go, which, when removed, released an actual mane of what could only be hair.  It was dark, like her fur, but streaked through with the same flaming colors and designs as her stripes.  The suit assembled itself again, piece by piece, hanging from the wrack.  He was reminded of Ironman, except this was by far a more bizarre experience.  But none of it compared to what she actually looked like underneath.  Kenny's jaw fell open. Once finished being extricated from her armor, the Mother turned back around, revealing the front of her.  And he had thought the rear view was confusingly wonderful.  She was only slightly less bulky without the suit, and that was already incredible enough on its own, for she had maybe lost only a foot of height.  Her entire, over ten-foot-tall, body was corded and muscular, just like a hunting beast's, constructed just like the children were with the bizarre sections of living yet synthetic flesh covered in that thick fur as well as the sections of plated scales.  He barely even came up to her hip.  All four, burly arms were wider across than the span of his shoulders. and her legs were thus even thicker to support her bipedal frame.  Each of her multi-jointed, six-fingered, mostly mechanical paws were seemingly big enough to wrap around his midriff with just one.Just like on her face, her black-furred, multi-limbed humanoid body was high-lighted with tiger stripes in those same fiery hues, blazing before his eyes and interwoven underneath and in between the scaly plates.  And that was when Kenny noticed something else.  She wasn't shaped like an animal, and it wasn't just her face that made her look definitively female.  There was no good way for Kenny to describe it to himself, save for one word that he hated because it felt so derogatory and new-age to use as a description for a woman.  But there it was: the Mother was Thicc!She was huge in every way possible, but also shapely and well-proportioned, without an ounce of wasted evolutionary assets anywhere in sight.  Muscular but also incredibly well-endowed.  Her bulky, yet hourglass frame naturally drew the eyes, especially the eyes of someone like Kenny who was a shut in, introverted, and perpetually single 'forever-alone' guy.  And she wasn't wearing clothing, just a spare few, synthetic scraps of strange material that covered the fronts of her incredibly endowed chest and across her waist.  That shouldn't have surprised him, she was an Alien, covered in fur and scales, and certainly nothing was directly showing but, all the same...His face began to rapidly heat up as his eyes could not help but notice as she stretched and moved around, working out seeming knots and points of stress after wearing all that armor for who knew how long.  The movements just made her non-hardened portions sway in tantalizing, hypnotic ways, not that she seemed to even notice that she was doing so.  She even bent over and stretched her spine like a cat, yawning and flashing her fangs in that huge mouth again.  And still, Kenny continued to stare.It was weird to think, especially given that he had just narrowly been allowed to live by this space-tigress out of mercy for probably not wanting to traumatize her own children but...the Mother was beautiful.  Sure, she wasn't human.  But she definitely was not just some freaky xenomorph that the internet had redrawn from source materials in order to give it sexual traits or features.  This creature, the Mother, was all that and more, and entirely by evolutionary design.A rapid flashing of light underneath her temple alerted the still stretching and arching Alien and she glanced up, eyes refocusing from their lazy gaze, now with her back partially turned to him.  The bright blue color returned to them and she turned to look down and over her shoulder at him in a dangerous glare.  Her lip rolled up on one side, revealing more of her saberteeth.  A growl shook the deck plates beneath his feet.  The intent was clear.'Look away.'Kenny did so, turning his back entirely to her.  His face was completely red and he was shaky for entirely different reasons now.  "Sorry," he muttered quickly.  He could feel her glaring daggers into his back and he couldn't really blame her.  He honestly felt super guilty all of a sudden, ogling an Alien like that.  Not that he felt bad for finding her beautiful, but that here she was, barely reunited with her kids, and having to deal with this weird, intrusive tiny being who they seemed to prefer, and who had just been staring at her body so openly.  Naked or not, it was creepy and inappropriate.The growling subsided and he heard a long, gusty sigh.  He hung his head as the floor creaked beneath her ponderous footsteps as she passed by him.  He kept his eyes down and off of her, as hard as it was to do.  He heard her moving around more about the hanger bay, probably having to resituate and fix the things she had thrown around, crushed, or destroyed while chasing him.  There was a massive hissing sound as those terrifying doors opened once more.  He looked up in alarm, thinking she was about to space him after all!  Instead, he just watched her doing so with the unusable pieces of gear.  She shoved the flattened containers, broken equipment, and other various crushed devices onto the marked pad, stepped back out, and then ejected them from the ship.  He saw them vanish in an instant, sucked out by the deactivated pressure shielding.  The doors shut once again, becoming opaque once more.A shudder went up his back and he squeezed his eyes tight.  He couldn't help but imagine that it was in fact happening to him.  He had heard a lot of things about what open space did to an unprotected body.  He would supposedly freeze, suffocate, and then explode.  He tried not to picture it, tried not to imagine what it would feel like to die that way.  He failed and he had to hug himself, shaking his head rapidly to dispel the horrifying imagery.  All of it was punctuated with the image of an impassive, cold, glaring Monster-sized Alien Mother watching him die, swept off her ship like trash.  The cubs staring, horrified faces as they watched him walk away to his death would haunt his memories for a long time, he knew.Kenny sniffled pitifully.  The sound drew the Mother's attention and he could feel her eyes fall onto him.  Oh great, now she was going to know how weak he was.  She had spared him out of mercy for her children, not for him.  He was little better than a pet now, rather than a Dad.  He felt her thundering towards him again and he sank down, unable to stop himself from cowering.  The claws of one of her tentacles audibly snapped open and he flinched.  Sure enough, she plucked him up in it and lifted him up off the ground.  He kept his eyes shut, until her pointed growl forced him to open them.He was up off the ground fully, dangling in her grip once more.  Their faces were mostly level, her huge muzzle barely a foot away from him.  He quailed and shrank beneath that blue-eyed lantern gaze, still sniffling and shuddering.  He had no idea what was going through her mind right then.  Her device beeped and flashed again.Her snout twitched and she moved him closer to her face.  He flinched back as that huge nose almost pressed against him, sniffing rapidly.  She pulled him away then, making a face of distaste.  He couldn't blame her."S-sorry..." he whimpered.  "I ha-haven't had a shower in...a while and...it's been...a l-l-long..." his voice failed him and he cut off mid-sentence.  He was cold too, and he tried to warm himself by rubbing at his arms.The Mother glowered at him before she sighed again, performing another slow blink.  She turned, stomped closer to the cell she had pulled him out of to begin with, and plopped him back down inside.  He had expected this, to be locked back up at least.  What he didn't expect was, a second later, a fold of heavy, rough material to be dropped in on top of him.  He extricated himself from underneath a second later.  It was felt-like and smelled, but it was warm.  He looked up at the glowing eyes up above.  A strange expression flashed across her face, one he didn't understand."T-thank you," he offered, genuinely feeling grateful for this small gift.  He wrapped himself up in the cloth and settled in against the wall of his pod-cell.  She blinked, then pressed the door latch on the top.  He was sealed back into the darkness.  He snuggled down, still miserable, into the bottom of the pod's curved floor.  He pulled out his phone from the top of his coveralls.  The screen was a bit cracked at one side, but it still worked.  There wasn't any reception, of course.  He stowed it to the side, then pulled out the last thing he had from home.  He crinkled the edges of the protein bar, trying to decide whether it was supposed to be his last meal.  He just set it to the side.  He was too tired to eat.  He just curled up in a ball, arm for a pillow, and tried to get some sleep.He had just started to drift off when a sound rippled through the decks.  A massive hum dominated everything for a second, fading away as suddenly as it had come.  He blinked but nothing happened.  He waited then tried to resettle.  Once again, his eyes began to drift closed.A growl made him sit up in alarm.  It was an echoing growl, savage, primal, and terrifying.  It wasn't from anywhere close, literally rattling the floor beneath him.  It alternated pitch every now and then, making him think that at any second the Mother was going to come back and do...something awful to him.  He tried to shut it out, to ignore it, even clamping his hands over his ears.  Nothing worked.  He just curled up tighter and tried to block out the mental images of whatever was causing the Mother to make those awful sounds.  Maybe she had other captives and was eating them?  Maybe she was angry?  He couldn't know, and the sounds continued to rumble on and on.  There would be no sleeping tonight...