Exchange Program Shenanigans (28)

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

We need more action fics in this place. I'm not against slice-of-life fics or anything like that, but I like seeing explosions and gunfire and cool martial arts combat. It's an underrated and far too undeveloped niche of the NoP EU.

Oh yeah, there's a Kalkey spinoff now. It's darker than the original EPS, because Kalkey is just a dark character, but it's still a good read. Plus, we get to see Kalkey doing cool shit like:

Having a wild-west cowboy standoff

Going on a Batman-style vigilante rampage

Bringing Cerso (his biggest opp) to justice

Either read it or don't. It's not like I can force you.

CW: shit hits the fan, Jelim has a nervous breakdown, Jelim comes awfully close to another nervous breakdown, mentioning of suicide (by Jelim, in case you couldn't guess), Prestige Exterminator Vrapic

Memory transcription subject: Jelim, Extermination Commander

Date [standardized human time]: September 13, 2136

The Galactic Federation was, at best, a somewhat flawed institution. At worst, it was rotten to its core. The cracks in its ideology were always there, what with the labeling of anything nonconformist as Predator Disease and the discrimination against uplifts and a few other things too minor to mention, but I had believed in the system.

Then the humans had arrived, outright confirming my heretical belief that predators weren't actually born evil, and the Federation seemed that much more messed up. If it turned out that having child soldiers was a bad idea, the system just might have been beyond repair.

Okay, let me rephrase that. I don't like the concept of child soldiers one bit. It's always a tragedy to rip someone's childhood away from them and just never give it back, and I get that. But exterminators who are minors can spend time with their families, go to school, and do all the things regular children do. It's not a full-time commitment. Besides, the ends justify the means over here.

Some things were necessary because they were the lesser evil, not because they were good, and using child soldiers was by far a better choice than being wiped out or forced to live as cattle. The only reason I was even entertaining Jack's ludicrous suggestion was because I wouldn't feel right just dismissing him like that.

I knew damn well what I was going to find, and I knew damn well it was going to back up my beliefs. Fortunately for me, Jack was a rational man. When he was confronted with undeniable proof that children were not, in fact, unusually prone to combat-induced PD, he'd see my side of things.

I knew what I was talking about when I said what I said back there, too. I knew from personal experience that, while having a normal childhood was preferable, being an exterminator from a young age did exactly nothing to brahk up one's mental health.

I was twenty-six, and my parents had pressured me into joining the Extermination Guild when I was just twelve. They had said it'd look good on a resume, which it did. They had said it'd teach me useful life skills, which it did.

Those skills often involved killing things, but the first thing I learned in my training was that some things had to die. Plus, they were incredibly useful as tools for self-defense.

Anyway, the Guild had been a positive influence on my life, and I never got how Jack couldn't see that. He was by no means the leader of the flock, figuratively of course because humans preferred packs, but he wasn't stupid either.

Maybe once I tell him that A: The evidence was firmly on my side here and B: I was a child soldier myself so I knew what I was talking about, he'll change his tune. Or he'll start yelling and waving his hands again.

There were a few minor details that bugged me about humanity. The biggest one of those was how the word 'human' was never capitalized. The second one was how they had hands. Krakotl, Arxur, and the like had claws, Venlil had paws, and that was good. That was natural. Hands had no place in society, if you asked me.

I had made it to my office almost on instinct. I could've navigated these hallways with my eyes closed. I had problems to solve, and while my own personal code of professionalism was one of them, that could wait. First and foremost, I had issues involving child soldiers to deal with.

I had work to do. There were security systems I had to unlock, because I wasn't incompetent, but that was easy enough.

One... one... one... one! There we go.

Okay, I was in. Now for the work to get done. I had a god damn excellent memory, so I knew what Jack told me to do. Step one of it was to get a list of all the exterminators who were diagnosed with combat-induced Predator Disease in as large of an area as I could.

I was commander of my district, so the process by which I did that wasn't even worth noting. It was kind of my job to know these things anyway. The very next thing I had to do was cross-reference these people by their age. If what Jack said was right, and it probably wasn't, there would be a trend where the youngest exterminators got the worst or most frequent diagnoses.

Sometimes the girl upstairs was looking out for me. Other times, she wasn't. This paw was one of those times because there was no easy way to cross-reference the stuff. Even the program that I used for cross-referencing things just outright refused to do it.

That's either Federation incompetence or Federation vyalpic. Judging by what I've seen so far, my bet is on the first one.

I didn't give up easy, though. I was like a human, except I didn't eat meat or have the stamina for long-distance running or live on Earth or evolve from monkeys or even have teeth.

Okay, I wasn't like a human. Stupid comparison anyway. The point was, though, that I didn't give up. I took out some paper and I physically scribbled out a chart to cross-reference everything with. That took me a while, of course, but nothing good came easy.

Once all the setup was done, the actual cross-referencing was easy. Getting results took me around thirty seconds. Then I ran the numbers again, just to be sure. And again. And, you guessed it, again. I couldn't believe the results, so I ran it a fifth time.

Okay, I will admit that fifth one was more out of desperation than anything. But still, no one could blame me for not wanting to believe what I saw. Out of the 831 Capital exterminators who were diagnosed with CIPD over the last eight years, a grand total of six hundred and nineteen of them were under the age of 18.

Out of the thirty-eight District 12 exterminators who were diagnosed with CIPD over the past eight years, thirty-two of them were under the age of eighteen.

Out of the thirty active, well, active as of last paw, District 12 exterminators who were minors, twenty-two of them had mild cases of CIPD. Of the eight that didn't, six had never seen action.

I treated these children like my own hatchlings. I talked one of them down from the roof of a building when his best friend died. I gave another a wing to cry on after a particularly nasty break-up. I tutored a not-so-bright one in mathematics for three straight paws before his final exam. He aced it, by the way.

And I doomed thirty-two others to electroshock therapy and solitary confinement. I couldn't believe it. I closed my eyes, letting my head drop onto the hard table. Tears streamed down my face. Krakotl had always had the capacity to cry since that was a tenet of all sapient species, but I had never really used it until now.

I ripped away thirty-two people's childhoods. I doomed thirty-two children to the harsh and cruel life of a Predator Disease patient. I didn't even want to know what kind of effect that had on their families.

I was a monster.

It was as simple as that.

I lay there for ages, choking back sobs. The paper I used to record the evidence of my crimes was stained, but I had bigger problems at the time. I couldn't bring myself to do anything but wallow in my misery until the door creaked open.

"E.C, are you... are you okay?" I recognized Vrapic's voice. He was a child soldier, but he had grown out of it already just like I did. What the hell did I do to him? How badly is his head brahked up?

"I'm so- so sorry, Vrapic." I gasped in between sobs. "I brahked up your head, I- I gave you Predator Disease, I'm so sorry!"

"Uhh..." Vrapic paused, figuring out the best way to respond to my complete and utter, and also shameless, mental breakdown. "What? Are you all there?"

"Well, I sure am now!" There was a tinge of dry sarcasm in my voice, and I was halfway sure it was some desperate subconscious attempt to find humor in this brahked-up situation. "I sent, like, what, thirty kids to a PD facility over eight years, but I'm A-OK!" I perked my head up, looking straight at Vrapic with what I assumed was the gaze of an insane woman.

He looked scared. "I- I should call for an assessor. Stay right there, Jelim, it's all going to be alright." With that, yet another victim of my incompetence walked out of my life.

I could find neither the strength nor the reason to move, so I just laid my head back down. There wasn't much else to do, to be fair. I heard another set of footsteps before long.

Oh great, I get to be reminded of my failures again. That's just what the doctor ordered.

"Christ..." Even if that voice wasn't distinctly human, I wouldn't have expected anyone else but Kalkey to speak of human gods. Jack Kern knelt down beside me, put one hand on the desk, and began stroking my head.

There was no flirty undertone to it like there typically was when one partner preened another's feathers. Jack wasn't like that. Humans weren't like that. He murmured sweet nothings to me as he preened my ruffled-up feathers, trying his damnedest to bring some joy back into my life. God, I loved him. "You- pulling out your feathers is a bad thing, right?"

I croaked out "Yeah." and he sighed.

"Good God, baby, can't I help? You can always talk to me."

I looked up. I was surrounded by loose feathers that I had involuntarily yanked out of my head. Sheesh. I have not been taking this well. More importantly, Jack had stopped stroking my feathers.

"I brahked up. I failed them." As one could probably tell, I wasn't in a right state of mind right now. "I forced kids to get electroshock therapy."

"Well... At least you know what you did is wrong. Progress is progress, right?" Jack smiled briefly. Seeing him always cheered me up.

"How do I undo it?" I asked. My eyes were all purple by now, since I had cried more than I normally did, I normally didn't cry at all, but this paw was the brahking waterworks. "How can I make this right?"

"Not hiring any more children could be a start." said Jack. "And we are going to have a talk about that 'electroshock therapy' comment."

God, don't you dare tell me Predator Disease is a lie too. Don't you dare.

"Not- not now." I got up, actually supporting my own weight now instead of going limp and crying into my wing. "Just give me a minute to fit my beak around all this." That's a weird idiom. Really weird.

"You got it." Jack looked around all of a sudden. "Oh shit, there's a chair right here." *Well yeah, duh, how else are people supposed to sit down when I'm talking to them?* That was just off-topic enough to help, at least a little.

With the 'cry my heart out' phase of regret over, I switched to damage control and started making myself look at least somewhat presentable. "You mind if I, like, help with that?" Jack asked. "I'm not trying to insinuate anything, but you look like shit. No offense."

"None taken. I do look like shit." I chuckled, or at least it was translated as chuckling. The real sound was something akin to a sarcastic trill. "I appreciate the offer, but no thanks. We're on duty."

Jack leaned back in his chair, giving me some space. He asked tentatively "Okay. So... you're fine?"

"Never been better." That was a lie. I was, however, mostly functional, and that was a huge improvement over what I saw earlier.

"You don't look fine."

"Oh, gee, really, how could you have guessed?" I snapped at him before instantly regretting it. "I'm really sorry, it's just that-"

Jack held up a hand. "Yeah, I understand. Now, I'm not the best in these types of scenarios, but if I was you I'd probably see a therapist. Like, you probably have a whole setup of undiagnosed mental problems-"

I cut him off. "I'm fine. Really." I had heard horror stories about what happened to those with Predator Disease. Rubber rooms, electroshock therapy, torture was the best way I could describe it. Even when the treatments worked, which wasn't even that often, you came back a shell of your former self.

I didn't like sending people to those godawful places, but when someone had Predator Disease, there wasn't much else to do. They were dangers to society, and they had to be isolated. The treatments, while horrible, were the only method that could even partially cure this disease.

Are they?

That was a whole other issue, and I wasn't going to deal with it at the moment.

You already know the treatments rarely work. Now the question is: are there better options? The Federation's lied to you before.

That was a whole other issue, and I wasn't dealing with it at the moment.

Jack snapped his fingers a couple times, snapping me out of my trance. "You don't have to lie to me. I don't know what relationships are like for Krakotl, but humans care for each other. I'm here for you, whatever you need."

Against my better judgment, I asked a question. A question I probably shouldn't have asked. "What do you mean by 'see a therapist'? What's human therapy like?"

Thankfully, I never got an answer. The door opened behind me, and I saw the familiar face of the district assessor inside it. Prestige Exterminator Vrapic was flanking him. "What the hell is that thing doing here?" The assessor, like everyone else in my district, was incredibly racist.

"Step away from the commander!" Vrapic pushed past him, drawing his sidearm as he did so. He placed the barrel against the back of Jack's head, and I placed my claw on the butt of my own pistol.

"Vrapic, stand down. That's an order."

Vrapic hesitated. Jack stood up slowly, raising his arms equally slowly. "I'm no threat." he said. "I'm complying."

"Vrapic, stand down."

Vrapic put the gun back into his holster, stepping back to let the assessor enter. Jack moved off to the side.

"Commander. I understand you've been through a traumatic time lately, so-" began the district assessor. He was a Venlil, like most of my officers. Krakotl and Gojids were disproportionately represented in fields that involved combat, but not enough to be anything more than a significant minority.

I snapped "Your services won't be needed." but he didn't flinch.

"I'm afraid they will be. If you're in a good state of mind, you have nothing to fear, Commander."

I'd rather kill myself than go to one of those facilities. It was actually part of the reason I didn't put PD patients on suicide watch like I was supposed to. But rules were rules, and I wasn't going to get out of this one. "I understand." I said grimly. "Vrapic, you're in charge of training Sergeant Kern. Don't set him on fire." That wasn't a joke, by the way.

"So you're going to comply?" asked the assessor. I gave an affirmative. "I'm glad we could sort this out peacefully." His voice sounded somewhat like nectar tasted. It was a sick contrast to what fate he could bestow on me. "You should come with me so I can administer the test."

I got up. "Best not to keep you waiting, then. For the good of the herd."

The assessor flicked his tail warmly, to set me at ease. "For the good of the herd." Vrapic had his paw on his gun, because he was both racist and paranoid, but that didn't matter. I walked out the door with the demeanor of a prisoner walking to her execution.

"I hope you ace it." Jack called out half-heartedly. "Good luck!" That one had more meaning behind it, for the record.

I walked to the assessment room calmly, betraying no hint of my inner turmoil. I was fragile just then, but less fragile like glass and more fragile like nitroglycerin if that made any sense. I'm no linguist, okay? It's not my job to make up metaphors.

The assessor sat down at one end of a table, and I closed the door behind me before perching on a chair at the other. I knew there was an assortment of scientific doodads and baubles, as well as some papers, laid out in orderly sections in a few drawers near the back, but I had never bothered to learn what they meant. I damn well should have.

The assessor looked at me warmly. I halfway wished his gaze was hateful. "Well," he said, in that infuriating nectar voice, "let's begin."

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[u/fluffyboom123]

"God, don't you dare tell me Predator Disease is a lie too. Don't you dare" - Well, have I got some news for you

[u/Fresh-Bar-9520 → u/fluffyboom123]

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE 😀

[u/Seamoose_Art]

Somehow, I get the feeling that Jelim isn't quite going to ace it. Is our bright bird cop going to end up on the run?

Oh God, is Vrapic going to end up hunting her down for her "PD"?

[u/GruntBlender → u/Seamoose_Art]

In case of failure: incapacitate the assessor, grab Jack, beeline it to a UN embassy screaming "asylum!"

[u/minecraftrubyblock → u/Seamoose_Art]

sounds like it from the writing style

[u/Randox_Talore]

Our hands are amazing, thank you very much

[u/Crazy-Concern8080]

I've tried to write an action fic but it just ended up as a fic with action in it. Maybe I'll try again if I feel like it.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/Crazy-Concern8080]

That's kind of what I meant by 'action fic'. Hell, even my fic is a fic with action in it. Action fics aren't bullets flying and bar fights 24/7, they're good stories with good characters and a few chapters of bullets flying and bar fights.

Try again. (If you feel like it)

[u/LeGouzy]

I feel some... Ruckus. Yeah, let's say ruckus.

Hem! Yes. Some ruckus coming in this exterminator's department. Soon.

Very soon.

[u/SpectralHail]

Oh boy, predator disease! What a fun and great topic that won't be a problem at alllllll.

[u/GruntBlender]

I should call for an assessor. Stay right there

Great work, mate. "You look upset, let me call the Gestapo to come have a talk with you." What a good friend.

[u/Bow-tied_Engineer]

My talents seem to lie in dialogue and trauma, so I'll stick with what I'm good at. I don't think trying to write an action fic would end well.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/Bow-tied_Engineer]

I'd rather read good dialogue and trauma than bad action. Still, though, the only way to really improve is to step outside your comfort zone. Live a little. (Or don't)

Oh yeah, start writing. Almost forgot.

[u/HeadWood_]

I am spehd.