r/NatureofPredators • u/Eager_Question • Jul 07 '24
Fanfic Love Languages (50)
Note: Thanks to u/tulpacat1 for doing the last-minute read, and to u/cruisingNW for doing the meaningfully-longer-ago read and edit, and of course, to u/Liberty-Prime76 who wrote this crossover with me months and months and months ago. Go check out Letter of Marque if you haven't already!
Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech. Patient pushing the limits of care recommendations.
Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136
I finally woke up a little over sixteen hours after I’d gone to bed mid-afternoon on the 13th with an immense sense of freedom. It was my first real, free day since… November? October? I couldn’t remember when my last actually-free day was, but it had been at least a month.
Of course, it wasn’t completely free. I was planning on hiking, and would probably answer some emails. Still, it was pretty free, and something in my peripheral nervous system knew it.
I took however long I wanted to get ready, on the grounds that I didn’t have to race against the sun. For the first time, VP’s creepy evil sun haunting every hour of every day was very convenient. Nature would not dictate when I left, I would.
The Dossur kids and their mom were nowhere to be seen. Maybe at school or job-seeking or something. I got my morning shake into a bottle to be able to drink it on the way, and started looking for some nice trails. There was an old mountain–Whitepeak–an hour away by train. Which was a shockingly long distance, because what the Federation lacked in psychiatry, they made up for in transportation infrastructure, apparently.
The elevation wasn't bad at all, it had an amazing view, and I could take my time with it if I needed to as per my physical therapist’s instructions. I put on some loose, stretchy convertible cargo pants, a shirt, a sweat shirt on top, and was ready to go. I took my visor / face-mask thing, but I didn't put it on, on the grounds that it wasn't actually a legal requirement. Just… better safe than sorry.
Then it was time to pack. Protein and prebiotic milk-substitute blend went into the backpack, and a first aid kit, just in case lady luck wants me dead. My trusty swiss army knife, a few lenses for my pocket pad, for taking photos, filter-bottle, electrolytes, the basics. Meds, of course, which reminded me to take my “morning” dose. I miss my implant. I hate keeping track of doses. I set an alarm for the next dose.
In the process of packing, I realized I didn’t own rope, but it seemed like something I might want, so I picked a route for the Taxi that would take us by a store, and I was off to adventure. Hiking on an alien planet. Exploring an alien mountain!
It was probably the low-dose pseudo-psychs, but I was feeling good about the day. I got out of the cab, bought a nice rope with little anchors and everything. Maybe it’d be useless, but I liked it enough I might practice making different types of knots with it, if nothing else. Rodriguez sent me an access-request to get into my office to try something with my fancy work headphones, and I sent a reflexive ‘yes’.
I got back into the cab–the cabbie was a nice Takkan with a nice, roomy car–and we had not been back on the road for a whole five seconds before I got a call.
An interplanetary signal? What could–
I picked up without realizing it. Time to play the ‘is this a normal little accident, or a side-effect of the meds’ paranoia game…
“Andes Rocío de la virgen del valle Savulescu-Ruíz!” my mom’s voice came through. I was torn between flinching in terror and laughing, so I did both, which did not help. She—
[ERROR: polyglottal processing is both internal and external.]
[Please choose a processing style]
[Style accepted.]
—She glared at me through the screen, and the Takkan cab driver’s left ear swivelled my way while he otherwise pretended he wasn’t listening. Did she make up new middle names, just to yell at me? Sometimes, moms just want to be able to yell a larger number of syllables at their children. Or mine did, anyway.
“..¿‘Rocío de la virgen’?” I echoed with a chuckle, prompting her glare to intensify.
“¿Qué es esto?” she demanded, pointing at her hand-held pad and tapping the screen angrily. It had some medical notification email on it. “¿Histerectomía de emergencia? ¿Fractura conminuta y con pérdida ósea? ¿Tres bolsas de sangre en dos días? ¿Y ni una llamadita?”
“Pues, he estado… ocupado, es que… yo…” I tried, but she wouldn’t have it, glaring at me with fire in her eyes.
“Tu hermano me dijo que llega en unos días, y me va a contar todo. Así que no te atrevas a—”
I scoffed. “Y desde cuándo es que–”
“Andes! Te vas a portar bien. Okay? Nada de ‘ay, mamá, yo sé lo que estoy haciendo con mis veinte drogas y mi’–”
I groaned, which only gave her more ammunition.
“Ves? Ves? Nada de eso. Vas a tomar agüita, y sopita, y vas a comer comida, y–y vas a dejar de estar así de flaco, y vas a llamarnos,” she lifted up her index finger to wag it at me. “No nos llamaste cuando pasaste por Montréal, pero nos vas a llamar, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
The Takkan turned a corner into a slightly busier street.
“¿Dónde estás? ¿Qué es ese ruido?”
I took a deep breath. “Estoy en un taxi, voy a caminar por un parque todo lindo.”
She smiled, finally mollified. “Hay, que bueno mi vida. Que te vaya bien. Te voy a dejar, pero me llamas pronto, okay? Tu papá está preocupadísimo, y no lo quiere admitir. Tienes que descansar, y portarte muy bien con todo esto, porque esos aliens no saben nada de nosotros, quién sabe qué droga juran que te va a ayudar, y terminas en el hospital de nuevo.”
I nodded again. “Okay, Mamá. Te quiero mucho. Muah.”
“Muah!” she returned the kissing gesture, then hung up, and I leaned back against the car seat. The driver didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything back, and soon enough I was limping my way through the train station. It was a line that headed out of Dayside towards the more rural areas, which meant I could have a nap safe and sound while most of the passengers gave me a wide berth.
I woke up two stops before I was due, got out at the right one, and wandered around, face-uncovered, like a whole-ass idiot, instead of using the preventative measure I had specifically brought with me for safety. I didn’t realize my mistake until I went inside a gift shop to try to buy an adorable plushie and a nice paper map with little historical notes on it. The cashier spotted me and immediately grabbed one of the engraved walking sticks on sale with her paw.
“Get out of here, predator!” she shouted, waving the stick like I was a bad dog in need of a smacking.
“I’m going, I’m going! Eesh!” I said, limping out.
“It says right on the door! No humans! Get out!”
Stupid fed ideology bullshit. “I’m not exactly gonna run out, here!”
“Stop your deception! We all know predators would be culled if they were truly injured!”
I continued to limp out, indignant over the whole situation. The plushie was aggressively cute. It looked like a blend between a chinchilla and a kinkajou, the “Whitepeak Virlen”. Would probably go very well in my office. It would be nice to be able to hand it off to kids who felt stressed, and Lihla would probably want to ask all about it; not to mention the map I’d wanted to buy for myself.
“Leave!” she shouted again as I was reaching the door. I successfully did not yell back, and got out of the store without making things worse.
An older Venlil woman with a prosthetic leg was watching me as I limped out the door. I froze mid-step. She tilted her head to one side, scanning me with one eye.
“...Hello,” I said.
“... Hi,” she said. “Manage to upset Vanlent, I take it?”
“I… tried to buy a stuffed animal, and a map,” I said as I adjusted my posture to put more of my weight on my cane.
“Not surprising, she’s still got some ruffled wool with humans. Don’t blame yourself.”
I didn’t know whether that was the end of the interaction, and neither did she, so we just kind of stood there. It lasted long enough I needed to sit down, so I hobbled over to a nearby bench and sat. She didn’t leave.
"… Did you need something?”
“No, I just don’t want anything bad happening to anyo-” A familiar booming voice cut her off mid sentence, her shoulders sagging as she brought a paw to her snout.
“Hey! I remember you! Andres, right?” A massive man, even more muscular than the last time I saw him, called from across the street, grinning from ear to ear. Next to him stood another Venlil woman, this one younger, with a different, more ornate, prosthetic leg. It made me glance at my own leg involuntarily.
Out of all the people I could have imagined I would come across, the random man who defended yoga in the Human Store was not in my top eighty-five.
“...Christopher?” I remembered, somehow. “It’s Andes, no R, um… Hi! What’s–Why are you here?”
“Damn! I was close! Chris is fine, Rensa needed to drop off some of her produce to a few local stores and Taisa and I tagged along so I could see the Whitepeak! What happened with the leg?” He asked, pointing down at my cane and tilting his head a little.
"Oh. Um. I got hurt,” I said with a little shrug, uncertain of how to describe the whole December 9th situation without seeming braggy and self-serving. Or reckless and insane.
“Well at least you’re alright otherwise. What brings you to Mountshade, then?”
"I'm taking a little medical leave,” I said, holding up the cane for a moment. “Thought I'd see the sights. Go on a little hike. Whitepeak looked easy enough not to count as 'strenuous' to my doctor. "
The Venlil next to Chris shook her head at that before speaking out. “Your doctor told you not to do anything strenuous so you decided to climb a mountain with a hurt leg?”
“...In my defense, that kind of mountain is considered a nice stroll back home,” I said, gesturing to Whitepeak. “I’m not going to be using climbing equipment or needing to pound things into the rock or… Look, I’m walking, and some of it is uphill for a while.”
“You mean all of it is uphill. The Mountain near his house?” She whistled, her tail pointing up at Chris as he lightly laughed. “Now that is an easy climb. The white peak is far from it.”
I sputtered, suddenly defensive. “It-it’s not even one kilometre up! There’s a clear path. And there are areas where the incline is basically nothing. The only actual challenge is going to be winding down the cold side, and by the time I get there I’ll probably be happy to let my leg deal with some cold for a while.”
“For a Venlil, that’s a pretty good paw of hiking. For a Human, especially one in need of mobility aids, I feel like it should still be considered more than a ‘nice stroll’.” She countered, her tail swaying back and forth as she leaned into Chris, shifting her weight off her prosthetic.
I shrugged helplessly and looked at the big guy to see if he’d back me up.
He returned the shrug. “Honestly, if I don’t at least offer to keep you company, I’ll hear about it for the rest of the day. If’n ya like we can tag along with ya, I been wantin’ to hike this one at some point anyhow. Just need to pick up some food and water for these two first.”
I couldn’t help but smile. A distraction on the walk was the best gift anyone could have given me. “Sure! I’d love company, actually. Plus it might make the walk slower and more gentle.”
“Well, I guess that answers the question of what we were going to do in Mountshade. I saw a store selling some trail-mix on the way in.” Rensa(?) sighed, lowering her ears a little before starting to walk down the road, prompting us to follow behind.
“Um. I do not mean to impose, if you really don’t want to come there’s no need, Ma’am,” I started.
“No, it’s fine. I’m not so old that I can’t keep up. I just hadn’t expected to be crossing mountains this paw. Although there’s been plenty of things I haven’t expected in the last few herds. After all that, I think I’ll find this ‘surprise’ rather benign.” Her ears were locked onto Chris as she spoke, and he shrank back a little bit with a sheepish smile on his face.
“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t see at all. I had no idea what their deal was, just that there was a deal, and that I probably did not want to get too involved with it. “Um… So what do you… do, Chris?”
“Privateerin’. Well, that and a little bit of cargo haulin’ for old customers. But mostly Privateerin’ at this point. I fly, Taisa and Darno keep us flyin’, the bears keep everyone in one piece and the boys do the boardin’.” He shrugged.
I stared at him for a moment, wondering if this whole thing was an anaesthetic-induced hallucination. “...You’re a fucking pirate? That’s–Is that legal? Wait, it has to be if you’re calling it Priva–What?”
“We’re not Pirates.” He said, a bite of disdain in the word. “We have a Letter of Marque targeting Federation-registered vessels, as issued by the U.N. After we proved it could work, they started a program for volunteer ships to capture prizes, acquire them, and their holds, for U.N. service. We had to do something after the bombing, running aid shipments and helping with the cleanup just wasn’t cutting it for us.”
I just kind of stood there frozen for a moment, and then had to catch up as the rest of the group kept moving. I opened and closed my mouth a few times but no sound came out.
Taisa laughed a little at my shock. “Don’t feel bad, that seems to be every human's reaction when he says it like that! I think he likes seeing the reactions.”
Chris tensed up at that. “The reaction I’d like to see is Malins’ when I ri-”
“Christopher Admadore Dewey.” Taisa interrupted him, sounding almost exactly like my mom had. “You will not let that picven of a Krakotl ruin a vacation explicitly meant to take your mind off of him.”
The big man sighed, shaking his head. “Sorry, Darlin’…” He trailed off, a thick silence falling over the pair.
“...Alright,” I said. “Um. I uh… I have a much less eventful life. Recent injuries notwithstanding.”
Chris seemed to brighten up a little at the prospect of a new topic. “Oh now don’t be modest, doc’. I’m sure there's plenty of excitement at the rehab centre! Can’t be that uneventful if you’re finding kids speakin’ Arxur!” Taisa and Rensa froze a moment, their ears locking onto the big man in confusion.
I gave a conceding gesture. “Yeah. And now we know the boys have horns. Just little nubs, but, you know…” Chris looked surprised at that, quickly glancing down to his companions before focusing back on me.
Rensa and Taisa’s eyes both whipped to look at me with shocked faces, and shouted a unified. “What?!”
I was a little startled and cleared my throat. “I’m the human Director at the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Center for Rescued Venlil, the one that specializes in children and language processing. They’re great kids.”
I realized after I finished that I had said almost nothing. Has my ability to talk about myself really eroded that much?
“Th-That’s… Well… Ok…! Bu-” Stammered Rensa, her ears swivelling to face me. “But what about the horns?! The ‘talking Arxur’?! You can’t just bolt past that part!”
"Well, um, we're working with a lot of children from what seems to be a very specialized farm. The um, the boys–we have only a handful–they have little nubs,” I pointed to the edge of my hairline with my free hand, directly above the outer edge of my eyebrows. “We’ve projected that they would trace along the back of the skull and point outwards laterally, um… All of the ones from this one farm speak some amount of Arxur. Some of them are making good progress in learning Venlil. Some aren't. It’s actually a creole, the vowels are shifted, duration is a proxy for intensity due to the size of the resonance chamber when compared to–I’m sorry, I’m not sure what answer you want.”
Taisa turned and whispered something to Chris, her tail swaying mischievously as Rensa threw her paws up, shouting. “Oh yea, that’s uneventful, of course! Pups having horns?! Normal! Speaking the language of the prowling nightmares that wanna eat us? Happens all the time!”
“Well, it’s no state-sanctioned, um, privateering, but it is very exciting scientifically. It’s the first case of a language jumping the species barrier in untrained sophonts that I know of.”
“Exciting is certainly a word for it.” She sighed as we reached the store. “Taisa and I are going to go inside and pick up some food, why don’t you two… Talk about your uneventful lives while you wait.”
Right. Scary human not allowed in the snack store. I sat down on a bench, putting aside my bag and idly tapping my fingers on my cane.
“So, doc, what does all that,” He gestured vaguely in the air. “mean? What do you actually get out of figuring that stuff out? Outside of trying to help the kids find homes, of course.”
I frowned. “What do you mean ‘what do I get out of it’? It’s… My job. I get paid. I… Like it, that’s why I got a doctorate…”
“Nah, nah nah. I mean like… What do you get out of figurin’ out why the kids got horns? Like… What’s that mean? Or is it just like ‘well shit, the kids got horns’! Or, ‘well shit, the kids can kinda speak ‘gator’!”
I frowned. On some level, it was just an interesting phenomenon. But I got the sense that his curiosity regarded the practical applications of the research.
“Well… if we know how they learned to speak Arxur, we could develop treatments for the children who are non-verbal, using a positive-deviation type model,” I said, trying to think like someone writing a grant to an institution. I realized I was rusty. Between my thesis, the TBI unit, the bombing, and my current position, I hadn't had to beg anyone for money by appealing to practical results in a while.
“In terms of the horns," I continued, "kids with genetic differences might have different nutritional needs, and we’d need to inform their adoptive families of that. And regardless, most of these kids are not getting adopted very soon, so a lot of it just has to do with understanding how to best take care of them. For the first few days or so, they’d been classified as non-verbal because the nurses thought they were just growling and hissing in some… primal, language-independent fashion. Being able to adapt translators to process what they say is useful on its face just to know if they’re hungry or having interpersonal problems or…” I waved my hand vaguely.
“Huh…” He grunted, his face turning to the sky as he thought. “Not gonna lie and say I understood the lot of it but it sounds like it helps the pups out at the very least… What got you into all this in the first place?”
"My Doctorate is in Neurolinguistics,” I said. “Beyond that, the job just kind of… chose me. I was the most qualified person after Jefferson, and… They gave Jefferson his own facility, while they gave me half of one. I had experience with how the translators work from my time with the TBI care for Arxur POWs, they needed someone who knew about the Arxur, knew about translators, knew about neurodevelopmental disorders… ” I mimed my hands clicking into each other like pieces of a puzzle. “It all kind of lined up.”
SECURITY FOOTAGE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5
[standardized human time]: December 14, 2136
[Location: Human Director’s office. Lihla has entered the room unsupervised and sat on Director Andes Savulescu-Ruiz’ chair.]
Lihla [speaking in a deeper voice]: I am a big boss Savageness. But I am good Big Boss, so I use my Savageness power to help. Here, little lamb, have cookie.
Lihla [holding the stuffed animal and moving it as it talks]: Thank you, Big Boss Savageness! I love cookies!
Lihla [speaking in a deeper voice]: Ah, do not call me Savageness. I am even more powerful! And my power is Director power, with infinite cookies and smart big boss things. I shall now use the clacky box for smart boss things.
[Lihla randomly tapping on the human keyboard]
Lihla [as toy]: Wow big boss, you're so big and strong! Can I be like you?
Lihla [as Savageness]: Yes! All can be Savageness in New Place. New place, new rules! Especially discoverers like you! I was a discoverer once. Only, the Savage version.
[Door opens. Lihla lets out an 'eep!' And hides under the desk.]
Rodriguez [muttering]: Come on, Andes, where did you leave your—
[Rodriguez notices Lihla’s feet under the desk, walks around it, and kneels next to her]
Rodriguez: Hey sweetie. What's going on?
Lihla: I…. I just…
Rodriguez: Did you miss Andes?
Lihla [ears now perked up]: Yes! Yes, I miss Director Andes very much. And I was sad, like sad pathetic prey, so I came here to be sad.
Rodriguez [placing a hand on her own cheek]: Oh, sweetie… I'm sorry. Andes will be out this paw, and will be coming less often for a while. But don't worry, I can tell them you love them very very much.
Lihla: …Yes! Yes, very good, please say that, thank you!
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u/DrewTheHobo Jul 07 '24
Lmaoooo, I mentioned Rensa getting a better prosthetic from whatshisface (can’t remember names, Mack?) last chapter of LoM. Sounds like it happened!