Plants, plants and more plants.
#11 of Exploration
Two weeks before Central New Year, and my birthday, Draco and Simba arrived with a flourish and a smile.
"Off to a charted planet this time." Draco laughed. "Tropical climate, so no need for bear skins. Fairly quiet on the surface, and reasonably small creatures."
I got my stuff together accordingly. Jacket, for wet weather, shorts, t-shirts, deoderant, a few water bottles, food, rifle, swiss knife, matches, rope, torch, and sunscreen. All the basics. After half an hour, I took hold of Simba's hand, and we teleported. Instead of going back to Central, we arrived in a leafy clearing. Draco drew his scanner out.
"No life signs yet, save for plants."
But what plants. They grew in abundance. The trees were gigantic, easily fifty metres tall, and the plants were magnificent. There was a bed of beautiful flowers, their petals stained a dark red. There was several huge flowers, easily a metre across, which shone pure white. It was poetic. We walked through this garden of Eden, and failed to see any animals at all. We saw many, many wonderful plants, but nothing animal.There were plenty of insects, one species was very much like our bees, but nothing larger than a dragon fly.
Needless to say, Draco was somewhat confused about the lack of fauna. Simba made regular comments on the wonderful flowers, but was also slightly astonished that while such life proliferated, animals were nowhere to see.
So we walked. It was a rather hot day, and by the looks of the ground, had been for a wee while, because dry branches lay strewn about, and the grass was slightly not green. Yet several of the larger plants seemed perfectly healthy.
This paradox was soon to be solved. We were confronted by a bed of the red flowers, and we walked straight into them. We walked through them, and then I felt something brush my ankle, a barb or something sharp. It was enough to trip me, and I staggered, and then fell down with a cry of amazement. My companions turned, and suddenly I felt hundreds of little barbs hit me. I struggled, but that just ripped my skin worse.I could feel the barbs jerking as they penetrated my skin. Then Draco got over to me, and breathed in.
I closed my eyes as he let go with a low intensity blast of dragon flame. It stung, but I felt all the barbs retreat. Draco picked me up bodily, although I was scratched and slightly singed, I was completely fine, and we rushed out of the red flowers. As soon as we did, I whipped off my shirt. It was scratched in a hundred places, and so was my skin. Simba spoke into the recorder, explaining the properties of the red flowers.
"The red flowers appear harmless, but they have small barbs which they can send out and latch onto animals. Once they attach, they draw blood out of the victim. The flowers become a darker red the more blood they drink, but it appears they die if they don't get any after a while. The vampire flowers cluster in groups to ambush unsuspecting creatures."
It was a good name, but as I looked at them, looking up from the hundred rents in my clothing and skin, I noticed something really freaky. This particular patch of flowers had petals which had been slightly pinker, and now the ones in the centre were now a darker red. Draco looked, and smiled.
"Blood is thicker than water."
"It's also tastier than water, by the looks of things." I said darkly, wishing I could burn the lot. But despite my intentions, we carried on, although now my skin itched like when I had had chickenpox.
We walked for the best part of three hours, the sun beating down on us. Finally we came to halt against a few trees, and took out our various lunches.We ate quickly, but talking rapidly. There were still no signs of any animals, which was starting to get worrying. Draco voiced a theory that the vampire flowers had taken care of most of them, but I had argued against it.
"They would have learned to avoid them, if that was the case."
We bickered over this for a few minutes, and then set off again. After fifteen minutes of walking through dense brush, we came to something absolutely astonishing. I shuffled around a tree, through some low undergrowth, and lo!, there was a mighty plant.
The centre of it was like a water jug or pitcher. It was tall and narrow, almost to four metres height.It was smooth and silky around, and then at the bottom, vines hung out horizontal at frequent intervals, like questing roots.These roots were about fifteen metres in length, and looked somewhat rubbery.
"What on Central is that?" Draco whistled appreciatively. I took off my pack, and as Draco stepped forward to have a look at the centre piece, examined one of the roots. I observed it critically, taking in it's soft look, and then, with infinite care, prodded the protrusion.
It recoiled, as though repulsed. As it did, I saw another move.
Then I worked out what they were, and why creatures were so seldom around here. This was a monster sized, intelligent, plant, that ate animals, and the tentacles were used for catching prey. This was not a good situation.
This sounds like it took me a good minute to think all this, but in reality it was no more than three or four seconds. I stood, and shouted.
"Draco, run!"
He turned in surprise and confusion, and then saw one of the roots unearth itself, and come flying at him.Another wrapped around my foot, and I drew my rifle, blasting at it. Draco was struck by one, and a second coiled around his waist.I blew the one off my foot, and then started firing at the one that held Draco. Five more went for him, and four at me.
It's hard to shoot a single shot rifle at four at once, and while one whipped away as I successfully severed it, The other three took hold of me. One around my waist, another run my gun arm, and on around my leg, and then I felt myself being lifted into the air.I shouted to the tiger.
"Simba, we need fuel for a fire!"
He tore through his backpack, and came out with a bottle of dark liquid.Then he started grabbing branches of dead wood. The plant hadn't noticed him, it was busy executing the second stage of capture. A tentacle each whipped up, and into our mouths. I was busy firing one handed at the tentacle plant, and hitting, and Draco was having problems. I managed to reload my rifle several times, as my ammo arm hadn't been attacked.As Simba ran forward carrying the wood and oil, I thought that the tentacles would go for him.
They didn't. The plant barely noticed him, possibly because it was thinking about us two only.As the tentacles thrust back and forth inside our mouths, I was having a severe case of deja vu. But these tentacles didn't want sex, they wanted food, and very soon we were to see the point of this behaviour.
After a minute, they ejaculated liquid into our mouths. It wasn't semen, it was acid. My mouth felt like it was on fire, and was coughing in agony. I could feel it bite into my throat. They were digesting my body. Draco was also coughing through a mouthful of tentacle. Simba had stacked the wood against the plant, and then thrown the oil over the side of the plant. I took steady aim, not easy, and fired my last round. The bullet severed a tentacle, the one force feeding Draco. Draco coughed out the bit inside, and then jerked his head.
He let go with a flame immense in power, directly at the wood and oil.The rifle was knocked out of my hand, but I watched as the fire caught, and suddenly it spread across the surface of the plant. The oil ignited, sending up small explosions, and the wood burnt fiercely, even catching on the pitcher itself. Then it set fire to the acid inside.
With an almighty screech of plant pain, its tentacles all jerked out, and me and Draco were flung away. Our fall was broken by the undergrowth, and then the plant simply exploded. All of it's tentacles, the pitcher in the centre, it all went up in a thick black cloud. Bits of plant rained down on us as we got to our feet.
Draco looked at the defoliation campaign he had started.
"Well, their acid seems to be highly flammable."
Speaking of which, acid rained down on us, pockets which hadn't been destroyed. One landed on my shirt, and started eating at it.Simba drew out a strange tool, like a gun but with no barrel, and pointed at the acidic compound.
"It's attracted to heat and light, and is immensely strong, but immensely flammable. The way to neutralise it is to give it an extremely alkaline substance, or plaster it with a sticky substance. It appears the stickiness makes the acid 'die', in effect.Tissue won't stop it."
I rubbed my throat in soreness.
"Oh, joy I'm going to be eaten from inside out."
Draco coughed up blood.
"Do we have either sort of thing?"
"No alkalis, no sticky stuff, unless these plants have something."
"That would be tempting disaster." Draco replied.
"Wait. We do have something that might work, Draco.Quick, we must move quickly."
Draco picked it up.
"You are a genius."
He stripped down, as did I, and as he lay down, I crawled onto him.
Simba started making computations on his device.
"Yes, it might work."
"Well, we've got nothing to lose." I replied, and plunged down onto Draco's cock. He did the same to mine. We worked exceptionally quickly, the threat of imminent death hanging over us. Simba sat down, he could only hope.
"You enjoying yourselves?"
I lifted my head, stroking Draco's cock allegro con brio with my hands.
"If the situation weren't so serious, I would be." I replied sarcastically. Draco managed a semi chuckle, muffled by his work.
After a game of 'Cum in under two minutes', Draco brought me to orgasm, and I ejaculated into his mouth. Within ten seconds, he did the same to me, and I felt the sticky liquid strike the back of my throat, where all the pain was. After a few seconds, to my intense relief, the serious pain numbed, and then disappeared, leaving behind only soreness.I rolled sideways off Draco, and coughed weakly. He gasped for air.
"Simba, let's get out of here."
"Sounds like the best idea I've heard all day." Draco replied faintly.After collecting our gear together, we struggled to our feet and Simba teleported us away.
We arrived on Central in a large heap. A glower came to us, as I practically collapsed. Draco still had his dignity, but was holding onto Simba for strength. The glower started speaking with speed and gusto.
"We need medical staff here. We have one fallen and one weak scout here, needing treatment. Internal bleeding appears to have taken place."
Within a minute, as the glower came forward, four creatures carrying stretchers ran up. Two helped me on to one, and Draco sat heavily into the other. Simba was left to explain to the glower.
Arachno was at the table as we arrived. As I was planted on the table, I opened my mouth, and he lowered a little tube with a light.
"They've been burned severely, by something acidic.The damage can be fixed. Bring me the paralytic gas!"
Someone brought Arachno a strange pump device, which he attached to my mouth. I breathed, and was instantly inside in my dreams. I fell unconscious.
I woke, and immediately retched. Everything inside me felt terrible. My throat was dry as the Sahara, and prickled in phantom pain. As I coughed in agony, Arachno came over with a bottle of liquid.He handed it to me, and I drained it in a single go. It was water, and I felt my parched throat feel less awful. Arachno took the empty bottle back, and spoke.
"Simba hasn't told us what happened. Can you tell me?"
"We were walking through the jungle when we came across this amazing plant. If you've got some paper and a pencil, I'll have a go at drawing it."
Paper was produced, and managed a rather realistic representation of the creature. Then I explained with my diagram what had happened next, and how we destroyed it. Arachno nodded as I explained how Simba had found out about the acid.
"I see. So how did you stop it eating at your body?"
I told him. He burst out laughing.
"Now that is really off the top of your head. If everyone was as quick thinking as that, my job would be lot less busy.
We were very quickly rearranged off for a few weeks because of this. And I swear my throat hasn't healed yet.