Subject to Study (Naga!Brothers x Reader)

Chapter 8

I gasped before running into the container, lifting up Oso's limp head to see his face pockmarked with bruises and cuts that trailed down to his shoulders and chest. A metal muzzle covered his mouth and nose, just like the one the men used on Choro, while three tranquilizer darts still hung from his skin.

"Oso...!" I barely whispered his name as I checked the rest of his body for wounds, saddened to see that the men at the landing pad had really roughed him up. Some of his scales were split from damage and would take a few sheds to fully heal, but the majority of the damage was on his human half. Carefully twisting out the barbed darts, I tossed them out of the container before I made eye contact with the black-and-red eyes of Oso.

My heart raced in fear as his black irises contracted into thin slits, the red sclera widening as Oso and I stared at each other for a brief moment before he blinked and lowered his head, letting a groan slip through the muzzle.

"Let me guess...it didn't work."

The tone in his voice sounded broken, sounding like a man that had lost everything. I sucked in a short breath, wrapping my arms around his neck and torso in a tight hug. I couldn't find the right words to say, not wanting to sound insincere or saying anything superfluous. With his arms still chained to the sides of the container, Oso lowered his head into the crook of my neck, returning the hug as much as he was allowed to.

"The other containers are here, and I was going to open all of them so you could talk to each other," I didn't pull away from the hug until he moved his head up, "I don't have the key that unlocks the chains..."

"Go check on them..." The slight urgency in his voice was mirrored by the look in his eyes. I nodded before moving out of the container, leaving the doors wide open so he could hear everything.

Opening the next container, I paused as I took in the naga's appearance, standing a little out of the light so the colors could be more visible.

This was a new naga, one that I hadn't met before. He was chained up like Oso and Choro were, his arms stretched wide as the chains tethered them to the sides of the metal container while two more chains from the ceiling restrained his head movement. His tail was clamped into tight angles that would've made it nearly impossible for him to move anywhere. My frown deepened as I cautiously walked into the container, keeping my hands to myself as I looked at the scale patterns all along his body.

The coloration caught my eye first, the words of Jyushi echoing in my head as he described one of his clutchmates being colored 'purple'. The color was indeed a light purple, with various shades of it all along his body forming different sized circles, or saddles, in the patterning. The scales went up higher on his waist before sinking into the skin around his midriff and re-emerging along the top of his arms and neck, disappearing into the skin as they neared his head. His hair was a deep lavender, with a darker 'v' pattern forming from the front of his bangs and opening up near the top of his head.

Ichi. The naga's name was Ichi, and he was a lavender corn naga.

There weren't any visible wounds that I could see on either his chest or arms, but I still moved cautiously closer while bringing my hands up to support his head. Corn snakes weren't venomous, but would still bite defensively. If I compared the size of Oso's and Jyushi's fangs to their normal-sized relatives, then I still wouldn't want to get bitten by Ichi's curved ice pick-like fangs.

"(Y/n)?" I heard Oso call out from his container.

"Ichi is next to you," I responded as I pulled out the two darts lodged in his shoulder and neck.

"Is he okay?"

"Physically, he looks fine," I gently lay his head down into a relaxed position, stepping away from the unconscious naga and leaving the container, "He's still asleep, but I pulled the darts from him."