Challenge #02195-F005: Won Family by Combat
It's the nice, sweet, quiet ones that never argue that you should be afraid of. -- Anon Guest
They thought the Human was docile. Quiet and apologetic, they assumed that they had been 'trained'. The Human certainly acted that way. Always eager to please. Always nice to the point of being excruciating. They thought that Human Zie would never be violent.
They were wrong.
The thing about Humans is - even the soppiest milquetoast has their line in the sand. The point at which no more shit will be tolerated. At that point... all bets are off. For Human Zie, that point was seeing an abusive guardian in one of the Edge Territory markets. Needless to say it was more than a shock for her Thufei crew to see hir charge at another Human and lay them flat with one punch.
It was like watching a duckling savage a rottweiler. It was like watching a mouse take on a cat and win. It was like... it was like watching a diminutive Human face off a Vorax fleet with one small, zippy ship and a set of light laser weapons and win. Only the last of these comparisons was something that was known to actually happen.
More surprising that the abusive guardian had five friends that Human Zie also took on bare-handed and won. They emerged on the other side, bloody and victorious, with a brand-new child adopted by an extremely nebulous local law. All they had to do was prove that they were better at caring for the child. Something the authorities were happy about inside of two standard weeks.
The Thufei were less than pleased to have a rambunctious Human Larva aboard their ship. They were very much less than pleased to see the creature graduate through being afraid to set a foot wrong though confidence and into getting into places that no mortal should be able to get to. This, Human Zie insisted, was a good thing, and part of normal Human development. All Human Zie had to do was keep on their toes until their new larva understood what was safe and what wasn't.
Once again, the Thufei pondered how the hell Humanity survived to make it into space.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / camptown]
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