Do You Mind Helping Me Taking This Off?

“Do you mind helping me taking this off?”

Drawn on Ibispant on my phone. My finger game is still good, it seems.

Hunting

It is unlikely that humans are the only predator species to achieve sapience in the galaxy.

In order to be a successful predator one has to be intelligent enough to learn your prey's movements and be able to think ahead to what they're going to do next but also be flexible enough in your thinking that you can improvise if the situation chances. If you don't have this elasticity, you won't be a very successful predator.

Humans are very successful predators.

****

Greg bent down low and spoke as quietly as he could to the worried Sefigan next to him. "I need you to stay as still as you can. I'm going to go around, and try and surprise the Gren guarding the exit."

The three Sefigans, caught between wanting to obey Greg and staying silent but also trying to communicate that they thought it was suicide to do so started shaking.

"No, no, it'll be fine. I've been watching him. He's not really paying attention." Greg stood silently and put one finger to his lips, then smiled.

Moving much quieter than one would think given his mass, Greg crept away, hunched down just a little to keep motion out of the tops of the bushes they used to hide. The Sefigans watched in horrified fascination as Greg would take a few steps and then freeze, not even breathing while he watched the Gren.

As he walked, he made no noise at all over the soft sand, his feet finding purchase slowly. The Sefigans, a small furry prey species from a rocky mountainous world felt very old fears from the most early parts of their brains while watching him hunt the Gren.

The Gren guard was panning slowly as he guarded the exit, his fur flat, his eyes dull and his mouthparts drooping. If one knew a bit about Gren physiology one could easily see that he was bored and tired. His shift wasn't due to end for another 3 demi-cycles and nothing usually ever happened on this exit.

When Greg was no more than 2 meters away, he reached down and picked up a stone, no larger than a comm badge. He raised his arm and in one silent fluid motion, tossed the stone high and far over his head, to hide its origin. It clattered against the wall on the far side of the pen, opposite to where Greg was standing. The noise and motion caught the Gren's eye and his whole body swung over to where the stone landed.

His back was turned to Greg.

Greg bent his legs low building energy and took two steps and lept onto the Gren's back. His higher mass bowled the taller but much lighter Gren over and the Gren's head hit the stone with a hollow thwack.

Greg jumped up off the Gren and checked him quickly. He was dead. Trotting quickly over to where the Sefigans were still hiding he motioned for them to follow.

Still terrified, they followed this... ambush predator they were scared of and by the time they reached him, he had gotten the comm out of the Gren's pack and was fiddling with a ring that had complicated studs all around it, fitting them against the door until one clicked and the door hissed open.

Minutes later they were all running across the desert to the canal below where they had hoped to cling to the side of a barge and float to the spaceport.

"Human Greg! Human Greg!" The smallest Sefigan called as they jogged down the sandy hill towards the canal.

"What is it Li? Can it wait?"

"That was amazing! I've never seen a human hunt before! Is that how they all do it?"

"Not really? Humans developed as persistence hunters, not ambush hunters, but as you well know, skills can be taught."

"Persistence hunter?"

"Yeah, my ancestors would pick an animal out of a herd and run after it. As long as we didn't overexert ourselves we could just... run until it died."

The three Sefigans looked at each other as they jogged. Greg wasn't breathing heavily as they went towards the canal, but all three of them were nearly at their limit and would need a long time to rest when they were safe.

"Human Greg, you scare us." The tallest Sefigan looked back at the holding compound and then back at Greg. "But, not as much as we were scared of what the Gren would have done to us."

Greg smiled showing his wide, large, white teeth. "In this world, sometimes you need to be scary." He looked at the canal. "Come on, the water isn't too cold, let's get in and swim towards that barge. It's not too far."

Terrans

Humanity.

Listen well, for this is a tale of warning and of caution.

When humanity was first observed, many of the council thought they should be eradicated. A tumultuous and violent species who revelled in the destruction of their own kind. It was a close thing, but the council voted and humanity was allowed to develop - under the condition that none were to contact them until they were deemed ready.

Humanity never gave us the chance to do so.

They progressed their technology in timeframes yet unseen. They went from discovering electricity to landing on their own moon in a matter of decades - doing so with primitive technology, but it was a feat nonetheless.

From there they developed their own world - the space around their home planet Terra became a field of haphazard signals and messages, a bombardment of signals that interfered with our observational machinery. Due to this we weren’t ready when humanity ventured into the stars truly for the first time. They blasted themselves out of their atmosphere with controlled explosions of all things, their technology was nowhere near discovering antimatter coupling yet. Despite this they reached the edge of the quarantine zone within a matter of years, and we were discovered.

Despite our initial thoughts, humanity reacted very differently to us than expected. They didn’t wage wars on us, didn’t lay claim to our planets. They met us with unrestrained joy at finding others in the universe. They told us of their numerous attempts to reach out to us, and showed us some of their works of fiction that depicted how they imagined us (though they seemed to hide some others for reasons we couldn’t ascertain).

Humanity was welcomed into the stars, and they became commonplace. Their biology was baffling and their behaviour bizarre, but we accommodated them and they taught us how to work with them.

Centuries passed, and though the initial explorers were long gone, humanity had become a part of the council as low ranking members. Their species had become mostly peaceful, lowering their internal wars to less than skirmishes. Humanity’s violent and cruel nature seemed to have been tempered by the stars.

We were wrong.

From beyond the councils borders, beyond the observable space in the void, a threat appeared. They blasted through our sensors and demolished our border colonies in hours. Our intel on them was near zero due to the ferocity they annihilated our kin.

They reached the inner borders of the council, and the elder members prepared for a bitter battle. To our surprise, humanity asked to join the defence. They told us that their kin had settled on some of the border colonies, and that many had lost loved ones. We allowed humanity to join our last fight, even if we didn’t expect them to affect the battle.

We were wrong.

Many of my comrades who survived the battle have sleep terrors to this day. Not of the void settlers, but of the humans. The cruelty and viciousness we thought had disappeared from their culture came back with a vengeance. Who we had seen as scientists and farmers for centuries, comrades we had known for decades - they showed us that monsters don’t come from the void.

The void settlers never stood a chance. The council was barely able to get in formation before the battle was ended. If the void bringers tactics were ferocious, then the Terran’s were monstrous. For every ship they lost, every life they sacrificed, the void settlers lost a battalion, a planet’s worth of lives.

This loss brought the void settlers much shame and anger. They made a mistake that haunts me to this day. They used their speed to reach Terra before the council could relay to the humans the threat. Humanity watched as Terra split, as trillions of their families and non-fighting members were eradicated.

The fighting ceased. Humanity seemed to have frozen. Their fleets stopped dead in space and their communications went silent. Where humanity had been surrounded by wavelengths and frequencies that interfered with some technology still, the space around them became eerily silent, as though the death of the planet had killed even those off world.

The void settlers continued their attack on the council and disregarded Humanity. No need to worry about a broken opponent… Right?

They were wrong.

The Terran’s weren’t dead, or even broken. It was later revealed that the freeze had been due to grief. Humanity had lost its home world, but worse than that it had lost its peaceable citizens. The ones who should have been safe from the conflict.

All of humanity had watched, and all of humanity had grieved. But they were not broken.

The void settlers learnt this very soon.

Humanity descended on them in ways that made the last defence seem like a diplomatic discussion. We though we had seen the worst of humanity in our early observations. WE. WERE. WRONG.

Humanity has a saying “Hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned”, but the council has adapted it: “The void hath no wrath like a Terran without a home”.

The void settlers were routed from every planet they had taken. They retreated to the void leaving behind their technology and supplies, not even taking the time to recover some of their teams. But the humans didn’t stop.

In a move that the council had forbidden for millennia, the humans flew into the void. The entirety of the Terran race disappeared into the blackness beyond space and wasn’t heard from for longer than we had known of them.

The council mourned their losses, but viewed their final act as something done out of the madness of their loss. The Terran’s were remembered as warriors, as fighters, but also as family. They became known to those of us who’d seen them fight as “The angels of Death”.

I never expected to see a Terran again, assumed that the void had devoured them and their destructive grief with them. But one day a vessel I was onboard, tasked with assessing possible colonies to rebuild in the border planets - it detected something.

The frequencies and wavelengths of data that had only ever been human in nature. They were coming from the void.

The council watched as humanity emerged unexpected for the second time.

The flagship docked with our observation vessel, and the leaders came aboard to see us. I vaguely recognised the captain. Their features so slightly similar to the grief driven warrior we’d watched descend into the void. We asked what had happened, and the captain responded with the most chilling visage I had seen since the first footage of the void settlers. Their baring of their teeth was savage and joyous. So similar to the expression we saw at first meeting, yet so distorted. In that moment I saw what could have happened if the Terran’s had waged war on us.

“We won.”

"How can you still have hope in your kind?", the alien asked, as their ships decorated the blue skies with gray.

"We need each other", the human ambassador replied.

"Your kind is one of war".

"I know".

"Your kind is one that silences itself".

"I know".

"Your kind got used to its cruelty".

"And yet, we can still be delighted by sunlight".

"You are close, yet divided and distant from each other".

"From our differences we find harmony and reasons to connect. This is more prevalent than our hate".

"All I see is your kind spiraling down to nothing. Your planet is dying, you hate each other, and you do not believe in a future anymore".

The ambassador did not reply.

"Your museums are filled with relics of ruin, ambassador, and your own body has scars from the wars you inflict upon each other. Your kind can never discover all living creatures on Earth, for you have already killed too many things you will never have the pleasure of knowing".

The alien shook their/its head.

"Your punishment is solitude and guilt".

"No".

The aliens looked down upon the human.

"Spiraling down our minds, you still saw something good. Otherwise, you would have killed us on sight, like you did with others in the past. In our darkest moments, we learned how to make fire. You saw a fossil of an old woman without teeth, and yet, she lived for long enough for her wounds to heal. If we were truly cruel, she would have been killed. If we were truly crooked, she would have been abandoned. Yet, she was kept alive, and someone was kind enough to feed her, even when she was toothless".

The human rose his/her/their voice.

"What is real resists the lies of convenience".

"You speak with fancy words, but I cannot believe any of them. We saw what you did".

"You saw war and how it can disappear from your mind as you get used to it, but you are still watching us fight against it".

"You can make a bad person fall, but you cannot stop your own nature".

"Our love and our caring is our nature, and it finds a way".

"Describe how it does so, then. Prove it. Show us what you can do, even after everything you saw".

"We cannot describe our care, and the more we try, the more we fail. We look at those we love and all we can do is think about how distant we are from them, and how utterly incapable we are of showing them how much we love them. When I go to sleep next to my partner and I see their back, and I hug them close to me and listen as their breathe in and breathe out, all I can do is think about how I will never be able to hold them as much as I need to. I can make all the poetry in the world and do the impossible, and yet this wont satisfy me.

I could scream at the top of my lungs and paint a canvas with romantic pink and save the world. I could do all of that and it would never be enough. My partner will tell me, when I go back home, that they know I love them and I know they love me back, and I will agree, but still cry as I say 'I am sorry for not showing you enough'.

My partner does not take away from me. They do not fulfill me. They simply make me understand that I cannot stop caring for them".

Silence in the courtroom of aliens that think they can judge others.

"You listened to our songs, you saw your movies, you read our books and listened to our stories. You saw us die and live. You saw everything that mades us ourselves and you refuse to accept us, because you cannot fathom the idea of an alien species that both care and hate and live and die and create and destroy. You cannot live with the idea of choosing to be better. You want to be born good and pure of cruelty so you can feel less guilty about your own mistakes".

And the aliens could not say anything back, nor the billions of humans that were watching their own judgement through screens, nor the other many alien species that survived the invaders cruel purity.

"You can kill me. But humanity won the moment we realized death may only exist as long as we are alive to name it".

So, this is a comic about the GoD and Og Cale having a short conversation before striking the deal.

Version with sound | yt version

-What did you want to be-

-when you were small?-

-Hm?-

-You didn't want to be-

-this.-

-I'm sure of that.-

-No child wants to become-

-something like you.-

..........................................................................................

Me looking for genderbend fics like

filtering down ao3 results from 14000 to 6 based on a single tag is foul. im sorry none of you are as enlightened as me ig.