Satirical Sprouting
by Violet
Hey y'all, I conceived this dumb one shot in a haze after consuming everyone else's wonderful stories in the HDG universe. Unlike those other works, this is in fact, pretty bad. But writing it made me laugh a bit, and maybe someone else will get a chuckle out of it too.
I hope that this is interpreted as it's intended: as a lighthearted parody of HDG's tropes. Any jabs contained within are wholly self-deprecating ones aimed at myself. Part of what's wonderful about HDG stories is the acceptance and encouragement of folks to be who they are and want what they want, and I'd hate for anyone to feel like I'm mocking them for doing just that.
This is of course, incredibly non-canon.
It was a grey Wednesday afternoon when Penelope Gramen-Conplexus lost internet in her office. She was working on the 27th floor of Terrar Incorporated (makers of the new rainbow flag police drone!) and she found herself unsure of who to bother about the wifi. Ever since the news of the Affini reached Terra, her office had steadily emptied out, and as far as she knew, she was the only one still here.
Therefore, she was less "working", she supposed, and more "watching anime." She'd only come in because the building's network was so much faster than her home connection, and one of the conference rooms had the largest screen she'd ever seen in her life. But now the wifi wasn't working and she had to figure out what to do. Her apartment was so far away and if the internet at Terrar Corp wasn't working, why would the transit lines be? They barely worked most of the time anyways.
As Penelope pondered this situation, she was interrupted by a forceful shock that rattled her body, causing her to spill her Vly Dew Uranium Toothpaste™ all over the conference room table.
"Fuck. What?"
A jump drive near downtown? It was a common occurence out where she lived near the spaceport, but she wasn't expecting one here. Penelope rushed to the window and looked outside. Wait, fuck, there's too many buildings. She can't see anything.
Rushing to the 79th floor, she checks again and then she sees it. An immense flower hanging in the sky. But like, sideways? It must be a ship of some sort, based on all the smaller objects falling out of it before shooting off in every direction. Oh wow, it must be the affini. What should she do?
After taking a selfie she captioned "Didn't even get to fuck around and now I'm finding out" and uploaded it to Terrar's social network (where it received a record high 3 likes), she rushed downstairs to grab her laptop. She hadn't finished the episode yet and maybe the wifi would come back before the invading plants drank her like a juice box.
But as soon as she'd picked her laptop up, a massive shuttle covered in brightly colored tangrams smashed through the far windows of the open plan office. Having absolutely no idea how to respond to this, Penelope stood and watched as a hatch snapped open on the shuttle and a mass of foliage spilled out with a strangely wooshy coughing sound. The shrub moved it's- eyes? -until it was looking at Penelope, and froze in place.
Human and plant stared at each other in silence for what could have been a moment or five minutes. Probably not much longer though.
But eventually, the affini exploded into a chaos of vines and- was that dress tape? Before tightening down to the most voluptuous humanoid figure Penelope had seen outside of a screen. Easily over ten feet tall, but conveniently only in a way that wouldn't impose any difficulty on moving around inside a human office.
This uh, this did not help Penelope figure out how to react here. Fortunately, the affini seemed eager to bridge the divide.
"Hello little one! No need to worry, the affini are here and you're safe now."
Somehow that last sentence broke Penelope out of her fugue.
"Safe? You crashed a spaceship through the window!"
"Oh petal, you weren't in any danger."
"I wasn't?"
"Of course not, no sophonts can be hurt while the Affini are around," the affini stated, hands on hips, staring off into the distance heroically. Penelope looked past her to the wreckage of what used to be her desk, crushed under the alien's shuttle.
"But if I'd-" she's cut off by a vine clumsily slapping over her mouth.
"Shhhh, it's ok little terran. You can let go of all that feralist propaganda now."
Penelope doesn't know what the affini means by that, but figures the issue probably isn't worth arguing over.
Removing her vine, the walking verdant pile of cheesecake inquires, "Now what horrors of your barbaric culture can I rescue you from? Poverty? Bigotry? The soul crushing monotony of trying to get your coworkers duties done but they're on vacation and haven't documented anything about what they were working on?"
"Well, honestly mostly just that the wifi isn't working and I'm on episode 40a of Kiss Kiss Yuri Explosion and I don't know if they're going to finally kiss yet!" Penelope replies. She does in fact know that they won't kiss, since in the manga they didn't until the final book, which roughly corresponds to 27 episodes from this one (not counting the 5 episode interlude where the main character and love interest are accidentally transported to another world, but not the same world, and one of them has to date the creator's blatant self insert character).
The affini, waiting for the terran to make eye contact again since she seems to be lost in her thoughts somewhere after her response, marks a square on her Domestication Bingo app on her tablet. Seeing Penelope resurface, she once more adopts the terran expression of Condescending Concern.
"Just the wifi, petal? Are you sure you don't have any super deep dark traumas that are too painful to even mention?"
"Well sure, who doesn't? But my therapist keeps telling me I need to stop holding out for someone to show up and force me to deal with them because it would lead to a really codependent relationship that would deny me real opportunities for growth."
"Well, I suppose we can address that later, flower" the affini replies, while tagging the therapist for immediate class O's. "Now, are you sure you just want me to fix your show? You don't want to struggle a little first or maybe try one of your terran weapons on me? I'd been told to expect more resistance to the concept of aliens showing up to conquer you all."
"I don't think there are any weapons in the office and you're like twice my height. I don't think I'd be very good at fighting anyways. I guess I could go grab some scissors if you want though."
"No, it's no fun if you're only doing it because I asked you to," the affini said, glumly.
"Well, uh, I guess I do have some questions about some rumors I heard."
"Oh?" The plant alien perked back up. "Of course! I'd be glad to *correct* you about any feralist propaganda that may have sullied your cute little ears."
"Oh, well, ok. Do you have like, a name though?" Penelope asked, "I'm running out of words to describe you in my head."
"Ah, my apologies my adorable terran. I am Dandelion Taraxacum, she/her. I picked the name myself: a fearsome invader that also contains your planet's most majestic horse."
Dandelion it is, Penelope thought to herself, choosing not to engage with any other part of that sentence.
"Well, nice to meet you Dandelion, I'm Penelope. Anyways, people were saying a lot of things online. Like, do Affini drink human blood?"
"Absolutely some of us do," Dandelion responded with a thorny grin.
"Wow, ok, like, consensually?"
"I'm terribly sorry Penelope, but I'm still learning your human language. What does that word mean? I don't think it exists in the local Affini dialect"
"It means they have to agree to it."
"Oh, little leaf, of course. An Affini would never drink a sophont's blood without making them agree to it first."
Penelope wasn't entirely sure Dandelion had really understood her, but figured she'd move along since the topic seemed to have expanded the affini's smile into an even more predatory grin.
"Then, um, your broadcasts said something about fixing society. Isn't that like, difficult?"
"Well petal," the affini replied, "The brave men and women of your navy may have tried their hardest, but they couldn't prevent the Compact from reaching Terra. So too will-"
"Wait, the navy doesn't have any men in it," Penelope interrupted, confused.
"What? Of course it does. I've personally led the capture of several navy ships and I assure you the full breadth of your terran genders have been onboard futilely resisting us."
"I guess I can see how it would seem that way, but I worked on a navy contract back when you Affini first showed up and I may have looked at some documents I wasn't supposed to. They started screening all of their AMAB soldiers for latent gender dysphoria. Something about Affini predilection for dysphoric pets making for better bait while the corp elites escaped."
Dandelion considered for a moment before admitting in a rush of air from their vines, "That does make quite a few things make sense."
"Uh, does that mean you're really turning everyone into pets? That can't be true right?"
"Oh, but it is darling! Well not everyone, at first. Some of you little terrans haven't morally justified overt domestication, and so will be put into temporary wardships that really could possibly result in their becoming independent sophonts some day. Theoretically. But yes, most terrans are terribly incapable of being responsible for themselves and are much happier as kinky hypnotized immortal pets of dominant immortal Affini, seduced into our power through a combination of outright manipulation, incomprehensible bureaucracy, and interstellar pharmacology. Does that sort of thing sound like something you'd enjoy little one? All you need to do is ask."
"I'd never ask for that! Then I wouldn't be able to sublimate my fear of rejection into fantasies of a dominant pursuer with a voracious hunger to force me into all the things I desire but am too ashamed to admit to desiring!"
The free space on the Domestication bingo was of course already checked, but Dandelion decided to draw an extra X over it for emphasis.
Penelope, still breathing heavily from her fervent denial, couldn't stop her mind from traveling down dark paths to dread horrors that no Affini had ever had to confront before.
Extremely un-horny logistical questions.
"But, what do you do with the children of domesticated humans? Do they get domesticated too?"
The question practically forced itself out of her body, despite not really wanting to know the answer to it.
"For that matter, how do your pet species reproduce? Do you breed them?"
Penelope had to pause to recover from even considering the possible answers to that question. Maybe they weren't all un-horny after all.
"And if Affini and their pets are immortal, but Affini and their pets keep being born, won't you eventually consume all matter in the universe?"
Penelope's mind and mouth continued to run rampant, somehow ignoring the gorgeous plant woman in front of her to instead focus on irrelevant minutae, before she finally ceased at the prick of a needle she hadn't seen coming.
Dandelion caught her before she could fall, gathering the pedantic terran into her velvety grasp, before heading back to her shuttle. This would be a more challenging case than most, but she was more than up for it.
But first, she had to catch up with her pet-to-be's favorite show. When Penelope woke up, they could watch it together.