Challenge #02290-F100: Celtic Legacy
There are some scientists that wants to make human look unbridled and untrustworthy. They make a bullet with weird mixture that makes humans aggressive and bloodthirsty.
Human [name] was spending some time with her co-workers when she feels a little pain in her neck, she blackout. When she wake up she was bonded by her friends and not her blood was on the floor, her and her co-worker. -- Anon Guest
Like all problems in the known universe, this one started with ambition mixed well with hatred and xenophobia. Those three have forever been a toxic combination and will ever be so. Beware them, no matter the pretty cover stories they wrap around themselves.
Nevermind the name of the instigator. People like those are best forgotten, anyway. They had their justifications, they always do. The Humans were everywhere. They were outnumbering civilised folks. They had a barbaric faith. They were barbarians. They were toxic. They had horrific traditions and history. They smelled bad. Take your pick. They were always and ever will be pretty words surrounding a core of unreasoning hatred.
It culminated in a tiny dart no bigger than a carob seed. The toxin within was as clear as the soluble material that was its casing. It was a work of art. It was a work of evil. They called it 'berserk', after the raw savagery that some Humans were known to be capable of. What they had done was find the perfect formula to trigger any given Human into their deepest, most brutal fight-or-flight instincts, and ensure that the switch was flipped to 'fight'. This, they reasoned, would highlight exactly what the Humans could do to the Alliance. They were not wrong.
Human Bunni never saw it coming. A brief, sharp pain in their neck almost went unremarked. They thought it was a mosquito, midge, or any number of bloodsucking insects that were a plague on any station or vessel. The casing dissolved slowly, so the connection was even more tenuous. Humans had an extreme lack of connecting the dots between cause and delayed effect. That way, the attacker reasoned, there would be less need for the safety of their Human-proof shelter.
What they never expected was the depth and strength of Human pack-bonds.
When Human Bunni went from sweet and chirpy to irrationally angry in the passage of minutes, the other Humans realised that something was up with that. So, too, did Bunni, but their method of articulating such was incomprehensible to many. They were angry. Incomprehensibly angry. Looking for an enemy to fight and finding none.
It was Human Larz who literally picked Bunni up and let them struggle in hir arms. By then, the other Humans were swarming. They knew what do do with Adrenaline overload.
There were zero fatalities. Minor injuries. One case of post-adrenaline nausea - who was Bunni - and a lot of therapy requests.
No doubt that 'berserk' would have worked - if the Human considered themself in an area full of enemies. As it was, the remainder of the Alliance is retroactively grateful that the hateful one who invented it marked it as a failure.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / yadviga]
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