The world around them was alight with colors. Flares of purple, pink, and red light arced into the sky and then swung low down low over the crowd to coast over their heads. The people and aliens were only silhouettes against lights, dazzling Sunny as they made their way with the crowd towards some unknown point. Though she could see over everyone's heads, it was difficult to see where they were heading.

This is one of the things she liked about being aboard a human ship, she was always the tallest, back home she had never been the tallest. Even in a room full of adolescents, it was a tossup if she would be able to see over them all. Sunny had always been the smallest in her family, and of her unit. She had stopped growing very early after hitting adolescence, a fact that annoyed her greatly, and brought a lot of teasing from the other Drev.

Comparatively, she had what humans might call a "baby face" everyone always thought she was several years younger than she actually was. It had made trying to find a mate impossible, despite her brightly colored carapace, metallic blue and purple, which was highly desirable, the height sort of negated that. Instead, she had tried to impress with her prowess in war, which included her sheer power, tactical ability, and proficiency with weapons. However, the war with the humans had put a stopper on many of her plans, and now here she was, the biggest, strongest and tallest..... well comparatively with bruit force anyway.

She looked down at Captain Vir and Krill, Captain Vir pulling Krill by the arm as the strange little insectoid floated behind him. Captain Vir was a good warrior, he had injured Sunny once using a sharp rock, Krill was squishable, but he was also ridiculously smart, and a surgeon, so she supposed he wasn't all that bad.

As they made their way through the crowd, Sunny could see everyone staring at them. There were a lot of humans here, so she knew it wasn't because of Vir, like it usually was, it was definitely for her. Though the lights dazzled her eyes and shadows pooled on their faces, she could see contempt. It was an easy human expression to read, she had a hard time telling the difference between happy faces, but angry faces were easy to pick out.

They were growing close to their location, when they were stopped by a group of burly looking humans. Two of them were a good inch taller than Vir, though she still dwarfed them by at least a head, and maybe a half.

They glared at Sunny, but Vir got between them as she prepared herself for a fight.

Three against one hardly seemed fair to Sunny, in the Captain's favor of course.

"What the F*** is that THING doing here." The man snarled.

"Move aside." Another growled

Vir crossed his arms, "No, she's a member of my crew. Try hurting her and I hurt you.

Sunny took a step forward, but was stopped by Krill placing one of his limbs on her leg holding her back. She looked down, and he held up one of his legs to stop her shaking his head. She reluctantly held back, watching as the humans fanned out to surround the Captain.

One of the men spat on the ground at Vir's feet, "Traitor, you bring one of those things onto a HUMAN colony, after what they did. People died in that war, people were ripped in half. That thing probably DID."

Vir kept his arms crossed and squared up to the man until they were chest to chest, Sunny knew what that meant, that was a dominance move.

"I know what they did, I was in the ninth fire team when they killed all of my men." He reached down and tapped his metal leg, "And I was a member of operation Steel-Eye, so don't F***ing tell me what I already know or what I can and can't do. Now BACK OFF!"

The man seemed quite surprised and took a step back. Captain Vir shouldered past him knocking the man back a step, "Come on Sunny, Krill, let's go."

Sunny did as told walking past the group of men without so much as a backward glance.

Though they received some more glares as they passed, no one said anything openly.

Sunny could see their destination now. It was the raised platform where the lights were coming from. The entire thing was made of metal and plastered in lights, and framework. The platform itself was covered in strange contraptions and strange people. Some of them were wearing odd black material that sort of glittered softly in the lights, like certain types of skin tend to do. A few of them wore lots of spikes, and a few of the humans had brightly colored hair.

She wondered if it was a way to attract mates like the Drev, but she couldn't have been sure.

They stopped in the crowd. She was about to lean down and ask the captain what they were doing here, but he shook his head at her and pointed at the stage.

The lead human walked up to the front of the platform, an odd contraption hanging form a strap around his neck. His hair was completely white, and his shirt didn't have any sleeves, "How's everyone doing tonight."

Sunny was surprised to hear his voice magnified out over the crowd. The humans roared in response. Sunny didn't really understand it.

The human grinned, "Well it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the second annual interstellar concert ever." More cheering, "Now, I know we have more nonhumans than we did last year, so we've put some precautions in place. The decibel levels of some of these songs are going to get really high, so heed the warning you saw at the entrance, additionally we will give warnings before those songs come up. Also, human music has been known to cause drug-like effects on certain species, so be aware of what is under you so you don't accidentally trample someone. The venue will not be responsible for your medical bills..... Everyone understand?" Another roar went up, but Sunny reacted too late.

Something tapped her on the knee, and she looked down to find Krill motioning to come up. She reached down two of her arms and lifted him up so he could see over the heads.

He patted her on the shoulder.

"Now this concert is designed to introduce you to as many genres of human music we can get into you before you leave, so let's not waste time going from earliest to newest."

Sunny excitedly lifted her head listening as the lights went low, and the slow long mournful sound cut through the darkness. It was followed by many similar sounds all combining into one interlocking and uniform melody. The further it went the more sounds that came in, some like the call of war horns, others the light whistles of cavern singers, and the occasional rattle of a thundering war drum. She closed her eyes trying to pick out the individual sounds but they slipped through her fingers before she could do anything crawling deeper and deeper into her chest as it did tingling through her limbs.

She almost fell over as the song ended opening her eyes to find Krill practically passed out in her arms. He was stirring just as the next string of music began, using strange sounds that moved quickly from high to low pairing the same sound at higher and lower pitches in equally distant frequencies. The strange sounds slowly began to incorporate the human voice in repeated lines making her shiver.

This time, Krill had been practically passed out, and it remained the same now. She shook herself lifting her head and opening her eyes to listen to the next string of music, a pleasant mix of that war-horn sound, but brought down where it was soft and paired with a pleasantly raspy human voice. She swayed back and forth as the light glittered form the golden horn. The soft lights of the stage rolled over the crowd.

Once that song was done Sunny watched as a red light flared on the stage, and a warning rolled across a set of screens. The first human came up, "Alright, this next bit of music is going to get very intense. These singers have the ability to break crystal glasses with their voices, so if you have a noise sensitivity, take your precautions.

Sunny Stepped forward in excitement bumping into Vir who pushed her back and patted her elbow, "Calm down>"

She grew still watching as two humans moved forward onto the stage dressed in very strange dark costumes faces covered by half masks. The woman began to sing.

Sunny shivered as her voice danced around from one side to the other gong high dropping low opening her mouth wide to bring in a sound that shouldn't have been made by someone that small. When the male human joined, they interwove their voices together, him dropping low her throwing her voice high both of them holding their voices until it seemed as if they would pass out from dropping to the floor, but they held it longer, threw it higher until the woman was holding a note that should have been inhuman. Seconds continued, the man dropped his voice lower dancing around her as she kept holding, holding, holding. And then she dropped the note, took a breath and immediately rolled into the next note. Krill was practically blacked out, Sunny felt her body trembling a bit.

Captain Vir looked board.

The song finished, and the man moved forward to the front of the line peering out over the crowd, "Some of you look half dead, and I'm talking about the humans too....." He grinned, "I know you're here for."

The humans shifted, and the man threw his hand down the strings roaring over the crowd.

The humans began to scream and roar. Sunny began to roar following along with the humans.

The roaring of the instrument built up until his fingers were dancing on the instrument rolling in multiple notes and sounds over the room. And then the drums came in, thundering like the sounds of war. The humans were roaring, the instruments were roaring. Then the humans began their singing. They took the power from the masked humans and combined it with the sound of war. She roared with them, she loved it.

Below her Vir was singing along.

The humans were waving their arms leaping up and down. She lifted her arms too.

She loved it. She loved the drums, loved the roaring of the instruments and the howling of the humans voices.

Lights flashed around them beams rolled around lights flashing blue pink and green.

It was like being high.

Did humans feel like this when listening?

More drums.

She thought they were singing about war, she understood some of what they were saying.

She loved it.

Krill was mostly unconscious, but she kept him secure held in her lower arms as she raised her upper hands high.

By the end of the night, she was exhausted, the human was exhausted.

***

Her incessant pestering of Vir to show her how to find the music ended with him buying her a pair of lime green headphones and one of the human music-containers with multiple music apps. Technically you could do a lot of things on it, but Sunny just wanted the music, and there was SO MUCH!

She loved all of it, the classical, rap, hip-hop, techno, but she especially LOVED rock and all of its related genres, hard rock, metal, grunge, post grunge, Indi, emo, and so much more.

Sunny Loved human music.