"Everyone will know you belong to me now."
"You're my bitch now."
— Cain, to Abel
Set in an undetermined date in the future, a space station houses a starfighter fleet, each ship manned by a fighter and a navigator. Navigator Abel is assigned to the notorious fighter Cain, who kicks off their partnership by permanently scarring Abel to mark him as his property, then threatening him. Forced together by circumstance and military command, Abel does his best to be a professional partner and navigator to loose-cannon Cain, while entering into a brutal, messy relationship with him even as hints arise that Cain is even more dangerous than he appears.
Can be found here.
There is a Visual Novel based on the comic, which can be found here.
NSFW for graphic sex, but has a SFW filter page.
This webcomic contains examples of:
- The Ace: Both Cain and Abel show signs of being this: Cain's a darker and nastier version. While Abel plays it straighter, being both skilled and the first Navigator to volunteer for what may be a suicide mission.
- And the Adventure Continues: The comic ends on Abel and Cain reaffirming their love for each other before going to meet up with Encke and Keeler to help them expose the entire Government Conspiracy with the reader left wondering what happens next.
- Animesque: Done in an anime-inspired art style, with Bishōnen aplenty, and also uses Yaoi Genre relationship tropes. It's basically a western-made Boys' Love comic.
- Art Evolution: It's not dramatic, but the comic slowly got prettier, smoother, and more professional looking over time.
- Ax-Crazy: The nastier Navigators seem to think all Fighters are this. They're probably wrong, but Blood Knight Cain doesn't do much to avert the stereotype. However, Praxis and Encke seem relatively stable, and there are hints that are less an issue of disposition and more a class issue.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. That scar is permanent.
- Beta Couple: Keeler and Encke. While their romantic involvement is only ever implied, they do seem to have the most respectful and healthy relationship as fighter and navigator shown so far, especially true considering that most fighters and navigators dislike each other. Explicitly confirmed at the end of Chapter 5.
- Bio-Augmentation:
Word of God has it that Abel and the other Navigators have this, explaining both their intellect and their uniformly pretty looks. The Fighters don't have this advantage, so they apparently have to compensate in other ways. Link here. - Bug War: to what we've seen so far, the Colterons are apparently a race of insects.
- Braving the Blizzard: Played With due to being part of a dream Cain has, in which Abel finds him at a bar in the middle of a snowstorm. Abel is implied to have journeyed a long way on foot to find Cain, who doesn't recognize him. Cain gets kicked out and is left to die in the snow. After waking up, Cain gets repeated flashbacks of Abel out in the blizzard.
- Cain and Abel, natch.
- Cast Full of Gay: Necessary for the genre. Most of the characters on the all-male military fleet have gay relationships or crushes. This trope is Exploited by the higher-ups with a new technology that requires fighter-navigator pairs to be lovers in order to work.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: So far. Except for "Mother"...
- Catapult Nightmare: Abel has one of these when a dream involving Cain goes horribly wrong.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Deimos to Cain, and evidently Cain to Abel. Yeah, this is going to end well...
- Colonized Solar System: In the setting, humanity has colonized Mars, but is engaged in an active war against aliens to maintain this control. In this variant, the planet has been terraform, but is covered in snow and seems to resemble Siberia in a number of other respects as well. Unlike most examples, the colonies are somewhat of a dump, much worse than Earth, and full of toughs and criminals (most of whom seem to speak Russian).
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Navigators are in white uniforms with white or blond hair, Fighters have dark hair and uniforms. Almost all exceptions to the rule for Navigators are people of colour, and all of the named characters conform.
- Curse Cut Short: "You mean you can fly a starfighter but you don't know how to suck - NGH!"
- Dogged Nice Guy: Praxis obviously feels Abel deserves better than someone like Cain, and has ignored warnings not to even talk to Abel at all. It's not until later that we learn that he does indeed have feelings for Abel, at the very least a physical attraction to him.
- Fetishized Abuser: Cain bites Abel, calls him his bitch, and is generally cocky and sadistic in a sexy, kinky way that Abel finds irresistibly attractive even as he resents it. As their relationship develops, Cain becomes less violent and more emotionally open.
- Gratuitous Russian: Myshonok, also Cain is a "tsygan bastard" according to Praxis.
- Groin Attack: Cain to Praxis in Chapter 2.
- Hello, Sailor!: Nearly everyone is gay in the Space Navy of the fleet.
- Honey Trap: Phobos seduces Cook to steal highly confidential information in his back.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Cain's interactions with Abel have this vibe at first. Not so much later... Cook plays it straight with Abel later, which enrages Cain enough to subdue their captors.
- Inter-Class Romance: Abel is the son of one of Earth's most powerful politicians while Cain is a low-life criminal from the desolate Mars colonies.
- Jerkass: Cain's idea of saying hello and getting to know his new roommate/navigator involves biting his face to "mark" him as his property. In Chapter 4, it's made clear he warned all the other Fighters not to even talk to Abel, and he's ready to hand out a beating to Praxis for daring to speak to Abel for a few moments in the hallway.
- As of the mission into Colteron space, with Abel taking the helm more in their relationship, Cain seems to be slowly evolving into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Keeler. With a Motherly Side Plait.
- MacGuffin: the "Jump Drive", a piece of Warp Drive technology stolen from the Colterons and installed on the Reliant that Bering and Cook try to make work.
- The Masochism Tango: A fairly literal example, as Cain gives Abel a permanent scar, and really seems to take an interest when Abel tries to punch him out and later returns the lip-scarring favour by scratching Cain bloody in the heat of the moment. Later chapters seems to show that their relationship is getting better.
- Military Science Fiction
- No Sense of Personal Space: Deimos, where Cain is concerned. Cain can get this way around Abel, too, except Abel seems to enjoy it.
- "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: Messes around with this one. Was Cain being a pushy abusive jackass? Well yeah. Abel, despite being none too happy with Cain's charming personality, never tries to stop Cain, is explicitly enjoying himself, and gets off multiple times. At one point, he even tells Cain to stop...and although Cain complains, stop he does.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Every Fighter and Navigator are given a Code Name that they must use on the ship. Using someone's real name is forbidden unless in private and around specific persons - like, say, lovers. This includes Cain and Abel. Abel's birth name is given as Ethan in his dream and Cain's is revealed as Alexei later on when he talks about his past. Revealing their secret birth names to each other is a sign of intimacy and how far their relationship has progressed.
- Pet the Dog: Subverted at first, then more frequently with Cain as the comic goes on.
- The Power of Love: apparently a requirement to make the Jump Drive work, because Cook notes that Abel's desire to protect Cain activated it during the second encounter with the Colterons.
- Really Gets Around: Commander Cook often sleeps with younger Navigators and was once in a relationship with Jules (Phobos). Phobos himself seems to have this reputation. And Cain as well, as part of a plan set by Bering and Cook, which requires him to seduce his Navigators.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Cain's a bloodthirsty adrenaline junkie. Abel is the type to put himself in harm's way to save a stranger's life. Guess who tops?
- Real Men Hate Affection: Averted. Interestingly, Cain doesn't seem to mind post-sex cuddling.
- Rebellious Princess: Gender-flipped, from the looks of Abel's backstory. He's a high-minded, noble, empathetic, and somewhat feminine boy from a wealthy and powerful political family, making him similar to a Princess Classic, who went against his father's wishes to become a Navigator. His father had a problem with his sexuality, too.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
- Naming your protagonists "Cain" and "Abel"? Obviously, happy and fluffy times are ahead.
- The eavesdropping fighter is named Deimos, one of Ares' twins sons who followed him into battle. Deimos seems to have a...thing for the very war-like Cain. You do the math.
- Chapter 2 introduces the Terran battleship Sleipnir.
- Riding into the Sunset: In Chapter 5, the comic ends with Cain and Abel riding off on a motorcycle into the dim Martian sunset. It's implied that they're going off to make contact with Keeler and Enke, but conveys the vaguer promise of them going off to a future of adventure together.
- Scars Are Forever: Cain bites Abel's lip after being partnered together, the remaining scar marking him as Cain's "bitch".
- Seme: Cain is an aggressive Blood Knight. He's more muscular and sexually experienced than Cain, and usually tops.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Abel and Cain respectively.
- Shout-Out: The name of the space fighter Abel helps rescue? The Tiberius. Coincidence? I think not.
- Also, one of the nasty Navigators in the lift is code-named Porthos.
- The... thing Bering, Cook and Cain are working on is called Project Thebes, an obvious reference to the Theban Sacred Band, an army of male lovers. And Chapter 5 reveals that seducing Abel was part of the plan.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: After their first mission, Abel is convinced that Cain is a psycho and starts verbally chewing him out. Cain's response is to kiss him. Then, they have sex.
- Space Navy
- Space Opera: While the main story is a romance, the overarching plot is about the complex political dynamics underlying a space war against alien foes, and the lives of the soldiers who fight against them. The political elements emerge gradually as the story progresses.
- Starfighter: Of course.
- Unsound Effect
- Uke: Abel is thin and twink-ish, sexually inexperienced, high-class, and considerably more innocent and noble than Cain. He usually bottoms.
- Weak, but Skilled: The Navigators. They're designed that way: see above under Bio-Augmentation.
- Wham Line: "We are losing this war."
- World of Badass: Justified, since this is a military base during what is, presumably, a large-scale war.
- Yaoi Genre: It's a Western-made, Animesque comic full of female-oriented Fanservice that focuses on sex and romance between Bishōnen, and uses many standard tropes of the genre.
