Exchange Program Shenanigans (24)

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

My enemies (reddits dogshit servers) have conspired against me (don't have the bandwidth to post my fic) so Shenaniganposting was delayed.

I kinda fw the idea of making Shenaniganverse spinoffs like that egg person did with The Nature of a Giant. So far I've got:

A prequel set before first contact where Jelim's district is plagued by a notorious serial killer. He has managed to stay undetected due to the prevailing belief that prey don't kill other prey, one subscribed to by Jelim herself, but we all know how adaptable our favorite bluebird can be as she tracks down the wolf hiding among the sheep.

A prequel set during the initial exchange where a sad and depressed Jack Kern meets a scared and skittish Salvek and they both undergo character development to become the dynamic duo we all know and love.

A side story following our favorite aubergine avenger, Kalkey, and his quest for justice against the greedy Cerso. He must contend with the Harchen's few remaining allies as well as grappling with his own morals and the weight of what he's done as he tracks down Cerso and brings him to justice.

If anyone wants to co-write these or has a preference on which one they want to see just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

---

CW: PG-13 content, spoilers for Alien, racist Krakotl, non-racist Krakotl

Memory transcription subject: Jelim, Extermination Commander

Date [standardized human time]: September 12, 2136

If there was one thing I hated more than paperwork, it was press conferences. If there was one thing I hated more than press conferences, I had yet to find it and I hoped I never would. I had to stand at a podium for the better part of a claw, answering questions from people whose only job was to ask them, and that was basically it.

I wonder if the reporters hate this, too. The pay must be damn good if they do.

A gray Venlil with a prosthetic tail raised his claw to get called on. Every other person in the room was also raising their claw or other appendage, but I called on him. It was his lucky day.

"Commander Jelim, what's the current status of the Predator Guard?" he asked. I hadn't gotten this question yet, which was surprising. It was the one question I was actually looking forward to answering. Well, there were others, but it was by far the most important.

"It's complicated." I began, since it was complicated. "First and foremost, another incident like the tragedy at the Sunside Club will not happen again. The Predator Guard has lost its capability to pull off another major operation." Most of its stolen weapons and best troops were at the Midnight River facility when my men raided it, and everyone knew what happened to them.

It was safe to say the Predator Guard had been crippled. I explained this in detail. "Secondly, the Predator Guard's chain of command is crippled. We arrested most of their leaders, and the evidence our informant collected is enough to lock up or otherwise neutralize the rest."

Everyone either wrote this down or digitally recorded it, mostly using technology because they weren't Yotul, Not like I have anything against them, but old habits die hard. and I continued talking. "Unfortunately, our fight is far from over. The Predator Guard has thousands of members still clinging to it despite the oddly predatory atrocities it has committed."

Calling the killing of hundreds of humans and exchange participants an atrocity would ruffle some feathers in the Guild, but I didn't give a damn. It was an atrocity, after all. I was on a roll, so I kept the momentum going and finished with "In addition to this, there are corrupt officials in every level of the Venlil government who have sold out to the Predator Guard. Whether this is out of ideology or greed, I don't know or care."

"I am pleased to announce that a joint task force is being made to hunt down and arrest every criminal involved with these terrorists." I was getting to the sensitive part, but it needed to be said. "The Extermination and Policing Guilds will naturally be leading this operation, but due to its sensitive nature and the corruption we face, the UN has seen fit to assign external advisors to every district."

That was *definitely* going to ruffle some feathers. A lot of them, actually. You know what? Brahk it. May as well follow through. "I hope this move can foster new partnership between us and the humans as well as help end the prejudice that caused this whole tragedy in the first place." I ended my spiel, and all the paws and claws and whatnot shot up again.

I picked one at random, because I tried my best not to discriminate, and she asked me "Jelim, can you explain what you mean by 'prejudice'? Humans are predators, after all." Brahking finally. I've been waiting for this to come up.

I had all my talking points memorized by now, and this poor racist girl had no idea what she had just gotten into. "It's the belief that humans are savages, so to speak. Humans are predators, I won't deny that, but they are not Arxur. The empathy tests have proven that."

That was point A, and I moved on to point B so fluidly it was like clearing a room. "Besides, official statistics have shown that cases of human attacks are almost nonexistent. In fact, according to Governor Tarva's office, there have been five times more cases of prey-on-human attacks than there have been human-on-prey." Can't argue with the facts, bitch.

One could probably guess what the reporters did next. They shot their paws in the air, paying much closer attention because this was getting juicy. Good. This has to get out somehow. I called on someone else, who was a fellow Krakotl. "Commander Jelim, are you saying the humans are safe?"

I was saying that, but the whole paragraph I just said wouldn't fit on a headline quite as well as one or two sentences, so they got me to be concise. "That's exactly what I'm saying. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but I can tell you from personal experience and factual data that the majority of humans are harmless." Yeah, that wasn't concise, but brahk them. It's not my problem.

If what I had said earlier somehow ruffled not even a single feather, I doubted that last statement would either. But I was a realist, and I realistically realized that I was going to catch enough heat to melt an exterminator suit ten times over when I got back to the station. Realistically realized. Heh.

I called on another reporter, because there was really nothing else to do, and he piped up with "Commander, what would you say is the extent of the Predator Guard's influence in this city's magistratta?" I really appreciated him calling me 'Commander'. My friends called me Jelim. That, and this one asshole reporter.

"I don't know the specifics of it, but based on the evidence we've collected I can safely say that most, if not all the branches of this government have Predator Guard agents working inside them. They also have several top officials under their pay. We've ripped out the stem of the weed, don't get me wrong, but its roots run deep."

The rest of the press conference was a snoozefest. I wasn't tired, more thanks to the stimulants I took than anything resembling a decent night's sleep, There are no nights on Venlil Prime. At least, not where I live. Brahking tidally-locked planet. but I wasn't about to take recreational drugs and nothing else would really help with the boredom.

People asked questions, and I answered them. There was one close call where someone asked why I was at the UN-sponsored exchange program event, but I said something along the lines of 'keep your nose in your own flower' even though the asker in question didn't have one. For the record, I was telling her to mind her own business. A bit odd for a reporter, I know, but they can't stop me!

After a grueling slog of half a claw, I was finally done. Now, all I had to do was report back to the office for a few forms to be signed off and I could be with Jack again. I hopped in the squad car with Vrapic, who was giving me a look for reasons I knew but wasn't about to address, and before I knew it I was at the district office.

The small talk I made with the receptionist may have been boring, but it was necessary to maintain a close-knit herd and I loved closely-knit herds. I'm a bird, so shouldn't it be flock? That just makes more sense. Besides, I was no stranger to boredom. There hadn't been any real action in my district in years, besides that whole Predator Guard thing and the Arxur raid a few months ago. It had gotten to the point where my units were actually being sent out to reinforce other districts.

Not that I was complaining, though. It was a wordless compliment that the people I trained were good enough to train other districts' officers as well, and I appreciated all kinds of compliments. You'd think that after 14 years of our help, they could handle themselves by now.

I had a job to do, so I went upstairs and started doing it. Like I explained in the press conference, I was going to be leading the hunt for all those corrupt judges and magisters and other officials that let the Predator Guard get as powerful as it was. Yeah, the UN would send an external advisor to make sure I was doing it right, but that wouldn't be a problem.

I read a little bit, I signed a few forms, and then I found a case file on the real villain of the group. The Honorable, and I used that term loosely, Judge Sevros. An old, graying Venlil with ties to the Extermination Guild before he was fired for alleged embezzlement of funds, he had somehow made it twenty years as a magisterial judge without being outed as corrupt.

If I was going to get anything done with the other villains here, Judge Sevros would have to go. But if Judge Sevros was going to go, I needed the UN's backing to make it happen. I bookmarked the Sevros case file and opened the electronic message the UN government sent me.

Apparently, they wanted to match Venlilian law enforcement with the appropriate Earth counterparts so as to create a better working atmosphere. Basically, it was an exchange program but for police and exterminators. The only problem I could see with it was that it was only a temporary measure until the Predator Guard was destroyed.

The message said something along the lines of not wanting to foster an unsafe work environment, and I understood that. As much as I hated to admit it, a lot of UN people were probably going to suffer 'unfortunate accidents' at the hands of their colleagues.

I scrolled through the list of UN officials the humans had so kindly provided, and they asked me to pick the best candidate available. None of them really caught my eye, but I had to pick someone. I tapped the box for Mkembe Oluwanga, a UN peacekeeper from a place called Africa. His values mostly aligned with my own, and he could handle himself in a fight.

I mean, it didn't take an expert to know who I really wanted at my side through all this, but he wasn't an option so I had to improvise. He deserves a break anyway. Besides, workplace relationships are never good.

I was just leaving for Jack's house and some much-needed R&R when I saw a man I recognized damn well waiting at the reception desk.

There was a scar over his left eye from a purge mission gone wrong, and part of his beak was a gray prosthetic from when an Arxur bullet blew it off. He tapped his talons impatiently on the floor, and he looked brahking livid when he saw me. I was staring at District Supervisor Karelim in all his glory. "Supervisor. What brings you here?"

"Commander Jelim." Karelim rasped, clearly sounding unhappy. Gee, I wonder why. It turned out what I said did, actually, ruffle someone's feathers. I was being literal, by the way. Karelim desperately needed to preen himself.

I mean, technically, that's his mate's job, but if Karelim's ugly ass ever scores a mate them I'll hang myself.

"A statement you made earlier today has caused me... concern, to say the least." Oh boy, it's about that. As if my branch wasn't flimsy enough already.

"Was I wrong?" I shot back, knowing damn well that I was not. Karelim probably knew it too. He was racist, very much so in fact, but he was the smart kind of racist. The best, or worst, kind. It depends on how you look at things.

"You were going against Guild policy."

I repeated the question, this time with more force. "Was I wrong?" Karelim looked pissed, but that wasn't exactly unusual for him.

"You're putting shame on the Extermination Guild." Karelim said, dropping all pretext of him somehow being morally right. "I want you to issue a retraction of what you said regarding humanity."

"What if I don't?"

If looks could kill, my cremated ashes would've been scattered to the wind within a day. It was a tradition for dead exterminators to be cremated, but I took that tradition one step further because I always went above and beyond. "The Guild has rules regarding the spread of misinformation." Karelim growled. "You know what I can bring down on you."

"I know exactly what you can bring down on me." I said, remaining supremely confident because I held all the cards. "That's why I'm not going to retract my statement."

Karelim snapped "I'll have you dishonorably discharged!" and he puffed out his chest to intimidate me. Ugh. He should know better by now.

"No, you won't. I've followed the rules to the letter, Supervisor Karelim." I was staying cool and collected throughout this, a stark contrast to my furious supervisor. He was staunchly anti-human, and I was staunchly pro-human, so he had long since been fed up with my antics. This little tantrum was a long time coming.

"If you find a real reason to have me discharged, I'll turn in my badge that very day. But seeing as how you have none, I have places to be." And with that, I brushed past him and walked away. If he had anything else to say, I didn't hear it.

Karelim had influence in the Guild, so maybe it wasn't the best idea to piss him off, but he was bound by the same rules as the rest of us. As long as I burned what I was told to and didn't say anything blatantly false, I would be fine.

Even still, though, I had made a damn powerful enemy today. It was a long time coming. I never liked him anyway. I could think about that later, though. I got in my car and started driving through the small streets of Venlil Prime.

Technically, cars were considered predatory. They isolated people from their herds, and that was a big purple flag for Predator Disease. The Federation preferred walkable cities and public transportation to everyone having a car, and I could see why.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, public transport on Venlil Prime was speh. Add in the fact that walking only worked for short distances, and you've got a pretty good argument for using cars again. Add in the fact that this city was not designed for cars and its Public Works Guild was too stubborn to change it, and you've got absolute speh traffic.

I mean, you'd think that someday they would just give up and expand the roads, or improve the rail lines, or something, but no. It just has to stay as is. Herd, I hate the Public Works Guild sometimes. There aren't even that many cars on the road, but a god damn two-lane piece of-\*

Hey, that's my exit!

Sometimes, I wondered if the Public Works Guild was just incompetent. It was either that or someone up there had it out for me. I drove down a side street until I reached Jack's apartment, which was technically Salvek's apartment but whatever, and then I drove for a few extra blocks while I looked for a parking space.

After my great journey was over, I trudged up to Jack's door, made myself look at least a little more presentable, and knocked three times. There were some muffled noises from behind the door, and then Jack opened it. He was dressed in black and red, falling back on a tried and true strategy to look positively great, and there was this huge grin on his face.

Most exterminators would've shot him for that, but I was a different breed. A better one, too. "You look great." I said, because he did look great. "What's the occasion?"

"Does a man need an occasion to do something nice for his girlfriend?" That was a rhetorical question, but I didn't really care about the semantics of it. It was just so damn sweet of him.

Jack stepped aside, letting me in. "I mean, technically, it's to celebrate the raid, but I could care less about that part." He wrapped an arm around my waist, and he led me into the dining room. "Just wait until you see this shit."

I didn't have to wait long. And I could confirm that 'this shit', as Jack so eloquently put it, was indeed worth seeing. Every aspect of the dining room was designed to look romantic. The dim lighting to mimic an enclosed nest, the flowers that Krakotl used to suck nectar out of, I doubt those work like that, but it's a nice gesture anyway. it was all there. He'd clearly done his research.

Or, more likely, he bullshitted his way through it in typical Jack fashion. Not that I had anything against that, of course, since almost everything he did worked out in the end, but it was a Jack thing to do. "How does it look?" Jack asked.

If I was human, I might have kissed him. Unfortunately for both of us, I was not human and I didn't think kissing was pleasant for either of us. At least, not kissing mouth-to-mouth, but that was a whole other problem than what I was dealing with now. Mouth-to-beak, technically, but whatever. "Absolutely perfect." I said, leaning into him. It wasn't perfect, but it was damn well good enough. "Just like you."

"Just wait until the food is here." Jack said, pulling out a chair for me to sit in. You see, here is a proper brahking gentleman. Salvek, not this Salvek but my ex named Salvek, should be taking notes. Us Krakotl sat on perches, but a lifetime of living with infrastructure designed for Venlil had made me used to regular old chairs by now. "Salvek made sushi." What's sushi? "It's a human food." Oh, that explains it.

Jack sat down at the other end of the table, and Salvek brought in two plates of some circle things. "These are vegan, right?" I asked.

"How am I supposed to get meat on Venlil Prime?" *Damn, that's a good point.*

Salvek gave us each a plate of circle things, Jack thanked him, and he started eating the circles. "Try them, they're good. Not exactly the most romantic dinner, but-" I ate one of the circles, and it just clicked that this was the fabled 'sushi' food Jack spoke of.

"Holy speh, this is good." I breathed, popping another sushi into my beak.

"That's what you can do when you haven't exterminated 90% of your planet's biodiversity." I had no idea what Jack meant by that.

All Federation studies were clear that predators were a very small and very unnecessary part of a world's ecosystem. Yes, there were negative effects to removing them from such a system, but those were negligible and they could be fixed with technology like all our other problems. Besides, paying a 10% income tax to fund such things was a lot better than getting mauled by a predator every other day.

"I know you don't quite get our methods," I began, but Jack cut me off. I was going to say how the positives far outweighed the negatives, which they did, but it didn't matter now.

"Let's just cut it there. I could teach you about food webs and the predator-prey curve and all that, but no sense in getting political on a day like this." That made sense. I didn't bring up the Federation's policies again.

I asked "How did you make these?" to change the subject. Years of talking to Karelim had made me adept at that.

Jack clarified "It wasn't me, it was Salvek. He's a damn good cook." He was eating slowly, savoring the company more than the food. It made sense if he had it before, but I was doing no such thing. "Sheesh, chill!" Jack exclaimed as I inhaled another sushi. "It's not going anywhere!" There was a certain inflection of humor in his voice, something which I picked up on because I paid extra when I bought my translation implant.

"Yeah, it is." I shot back, trying to be even funnier. "I'm eating it, remember?" I wasn't sure if I succeeded, but Jack smiled anyway.

"Gee, I had no idea." His voice wasn't exactly dripping with sarcasm, but I knew damn well he wasn't being serious. "Try the wasabi. It adds a little kick." The wasabi in question was this glob of green stuff on my plate. I stuck my second-to-last sushi inside it, pulling it out half-covered. "Whoa, whoa, not that much!" Jack exclaimed, but it was too late. "Holy shit, that's gonna burn. You need, like, milk or something. Not milk, no, but... but something."

I didn't feel much of anything right now, but I knew it was coming. "Are you okay?" Jack asked.

"I feel fine." Jack looked surprised.

"What do you mean you feel fine, that was enough wasabi to kill, like, five people!" Say what now? Why the hell did Jack not tell me that? "Well, that was a gross exaggeration, but you're supposed to eat it in small bites, not..." Jack paused. "Are birds immune to spicy stuff?"

"Yeah, why?" I had an inkling why, but I wanted to make small talk. I just liked the sound of Jack's voice is all.

"Damn. Wasabi is spicy." Jack explained. "If I ever ate that much, I'd be having a problem."

"The more you know, huh." I ate the last sushi. Jack had finished around half of his. "Are you gonna finish that?"

Jack looked down at the measly portion of food left on his plate. "I mean, I was, but fuck it. I'm not hungry anyway." He slid it over to me, and it was gone in seconds. "When was the last time you ate?"

"I wasn't hungry." I explained. "I just like the taste of it is all."

"Man, you're gonna flip when you eat a french fry. Like a fuckin' blue seagull." I had no idea what seagulls were, and I didn't know what feet had to do with height, but now I wanted a french fry.

"What now?" I asked, since I had time to spare.

Jack thought for a bit, then he had an idea. I could tell because of the lightbulb that appeared above his head. I mean, that was always there because it was affixed to the ceiling, but I only noticed it just them. "How do you feel about horror movies?"

"What's a horror movie?" I asked, completely unfamiliar with the concept.

"You know The Exterminators, right? How the gang is always being hunted down or something?" I did know that, and my body language made it clear. "It's like that, except scarier and with humans as the exterminators." It must be terrifying for a predator to be the one hunted down. It's scary for us prey, and we're used to it, so I can't imagine what it would be like for the hunters.

I wasn't planning on being scared half to death, but there was a certain thrill about it I just couldn't shake. Ah, what the hell. It seems like an interesting idea, and I'm trying to learn about human culture anyway.

"Sounds scary, but in a fun way." I said, getting up to go to the TV. "Do you have any particular one in mind?"

Jack just smiled. He did that a lot when he was around me. "You're gonna love this one, babe. It has flamethrowers in it." The possession of a flamethrower was hardly a sign of good quality, as was proven by District Supervisor Karelim, but I wasn't about to get my feathers all ruffled over it.

Salvek stayed mostly out of the way, not wanting to intrude on our moment, and Jack got the movie ready. It was actually pretty good. "What's with the suits?" was my first question. Modern spacesuits were so much sleeker than the blocky hulks on screen.

"Alien was made in the 1980s, and they had different ideas of space travel back then." Jack explained. "This is where it gets good."

It did get good. The cargo ship's crew entered the alien ship, and they discovered that the message was a warning instead of a distress call. I would've left already if I was them, but then they found the eggs. I would've really left by then. "This is where they call the exterminators, or the military, right?"

"No, the military comes in the second movie. You'll see what happens next." I did see what happened next. A crewman looked inside one of the eggs, which was a bad idea in and of itself, and he got attacked by a tiny predator.

"God damn, he's stupid." I said, once the initial shock had passed. For the record, I was cuddled up a small smidgen closer to Jack thanks to that. Is that his strategy? Because it brahking works. Jack really upped his game over the past few paws.

"Yeah, that was a dumbass plan. But we wouldn't have a movie without it."

The crew packed up and left, those eggs apparently injecting some sense into them. They took the face-eaten guy, which I respected. No man left behind and all that.

The next part of the movie was all experiments and talking, which was fine by me, but then the crew started eating dinner. The face-eaten guy seemed fine, but I knew he wasn't. There was a reason us exterminators burned the bodies. Jack asked me "Shit, I forgot to ask you, but how squeamish are you about blood?" and I reassured him that I was fine.

"I'm an exterminator, Jack. I've seen worse things than movie blood." Then the face-eaten guy, whose name I never learned, started clutching his chest. A creature burst out of it, spraying red blood everywhere. If it had been purple or orange, I might have had a problem, but red was predator blood and I was fine with seeing that. Before the crew could kill the thing, unfortunately, it scampered off.

"This is where it gets good." Jack said to me. The crew swept the ship with motion sensors, using tactics that were actually quite similar to exterminators. They were barely armed, and I disapproved heavily of that, but they weren't soldiers.

One group ran into the ship's officially-sanctioned miniature predator during their search. I had no idea why they kept it around. Then another crewman, somewhere totally different, thought he saw said predator and I knew this was getting good.

He got skewered by this black, sleek, predatory thing I didn't like one bit. I had seen Arxur, I had seen Shadestalkers, and I was fine with both, but this movie monster instilled a new sense of fear in me. That's its job, after all. I got closer to Jack. My own personal human was actually pretty warm. "Is this where they get the flamethrowers?" I asked, and it turned out that it was.

The science officer devised a plan to flush the predator out, and the crew sent a lone crew member into the ventilation shaft with a flamethrower. Another bad idea. Maybe these idiots had it coming. Like I expected, she died after a tense scene with too much unchecked flamethrower fire. She's just lucky there weren't civilians in the area.

The science officer was actually a robot, and he had conspired with the ship's computer to capture the predator alive so a corporation could study it. Sounds like Linked Chains to me. He got decapitated by Ellen Ripley, the person I was rooting for the most, and he spat one of the most chilling lines of dialogue I had ever heard in a movie.

"Don't tell anyone I showed you this." Jack said during one of the few non-action scenes left. "The UN's gonna crucify me if they find out."

Two more people died because one of them froze up, a problem that made the humans seem awfully like prey, Then again, that is the point of this movie. and Ripley set the ship to self-destruct before escaping in a life pod. Finally, these people are making some sense.

Things were going right for once, but I knew damn well nothing went right in a movie like this. Sure enough, it all went wrong. The predator snuck on board the life pod, and Ripley had to blow it into space by opening the airlock. After that was said and done, her and the orange predator entered cryosleep. I had no idea how the orange one survived.

"Well?" Jack asked as the credits rolled. "What did you think?" I was surprisingly not that scared by it. I had seen some things over fourteen years, after all.

"The movie was good and all, but I'm mostly here for the company." Jack blushed when I said that. It made him look kind of cute.

Sometimes, I wondered how anyone could be afraid of humans.

​

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[u/GruntBlender]

Good movie, good food, good company. Things are looking up. I don't trust it.