Imthinkinglol - Whatever

My doggo, Ezri, who rarely barks and mostly borks.

When I got her, she’d been abused and would cower and pee at almost everything, and had been mistreated when she’d barked, so she never would. One day months after I had her she got excited on a walk and borked at a bird, and then immediately cower-peed. I had to re-teach her to bark by gathering her whole human pack and having everyone bark and howl and feed her treats and pet her till she got excited enough to join in, and then got more treats. Took a while but I was able to teach her to bork on command (and she’s gotta be excited or she just stares at me like “Sorry, the bork system needs charging”) and she’ll do it happily when she’s excited to go for a walk or upon seeing a friend, and at birds. I love her croaky borking, especially when she started off terrified of making a joyful noise.

Okay, I want a superhero story in which the superhero is one of those ‘normal kid gets superpowers through freak accident’ and goes out and fights crime, and of course runs into the supervillain at some point and tries to take them down. And the villain, a couple minutes into the fight, realizes they’re fighting a literal child and just has an internal freak-out about this new development. Because, fine, I’ve got plans to steal all of the world’s largest gems and I’m generally not a nice person, but holy fuck there’s a kid coming at me. This is a kid. I can’t with this.

So the supervillain instead of trying to kill/hurt their nemesis goes through all these complicated plans to trap them or put them to sleep or stick them in a large tank or something so they can go ahead with it. Sometimes it works and the supervillain spends a harried half hour lecturing the superhero about maybe going to school and being safe instead of doing this, that would be nice. 

The supervillain staying up at night occasionally wondering if the tiny superhero is out there trying to get themselves killed right this moment. The supervillain sending supervillain henchmen ninjas out to tail the superhero and help out if it ever looks like the superhero is going to get killed. The supervillain takes to pacing around and muttering to themselves occasionally about PARENTING and RESPONSIBILITY and how they never signed up for this shit. Actually petitioning their version of the Justice League to have someone step in and do something about this, that kid has to be like twelve and what is everyone thinking???? Bonus points if the kid has no parents and the villain finds this out and spends a night internally screaming about it.

Basically I want a supervillain unwittingly becomes the super worried parent of the kid who is actively trying to foil their every plan and topple their evil regime.

A lot of ‘humans are weird’ posts play with the idea that humans are one of the few species that actually evolved as a predator and, as such, we are unusually strong and fast— but what if we’re not.

What if we’re tiny?

What if, to the majority of species in the galaxy, ten feet tall is unusually short— it basically only happens due to rare genetic conditions— and the average human is basically cat sized or smaller?

Instead of being terrified by our strength, the aliens’ most pressing concern is how exactly they’re going to communicate with us when we’re all the way down on the ground.

There are experiments, with aliens crouching low or humans standing on high platforms— but it usually ends up being either uncomfortable for the alien or dangerous for the human, or both, and just generally impractical for everyone.

But, while the diplomats and politicians are trying to figure out a dignified and simple solution, the ordinary people who actually have to work with the aliens have found one. Humans are, generally, pretty good climbers, and most species have conveniently places scales, feathers, fur or clothing that can act as a hand or foothold. Sure, some humans have a fear of heights, but those aren’t typically the ones going into space. Besides, climbing on a living alien often feels safer than climbing up a rock or something— at least you know you’ve got somebody to catch you.

Soon it becomes accepted that that’s the way humans travel with aliens— up high, easy to see and hard to tread on (there were quite a few… near misses, in the first few meetings between humans and aliens), balanced on somebody’s shoulder like the overgrown monkeys that we are.

Many humans see this as kind of an insult and absolutely refuse to go along with it, but they aren’t the ones who end up spending a lot of time with aliens— it’s just too inconvenient to talk to somebody all the way down on the ground. The ones that do best are the ones who just treat it like it’s normal, allowing themselves to be carried (at least, it’s ‘carrying’ when the aliens are within earshot. Among themselves, most humans jokingly refer to it as ‘riding’), and passing on tips to their friends about the best ways to ride on different species without damaging feathers, or stepping on sensitive spots (or, in at least one case, ending up with a foot full of poisonous spines…).

The reason they don’t feel patronised by this is that they know, and they know that nearly everyone else in the galaxy knows, that humans are not just pets.

After all, you’d be surprised when a small size comes in handy.

Need somebody to look at the wiring in a small and fairly inaccessible area of the ship? Ask a human.

Need somebody to fix this fairly small and very detailed piece of machinery? Ask a human, they’re so small that their eyes naturally pick up smaller details.

Trapped under rubble and need somebody to crawl through a small gap and get help? Ask a human— most can wriggle through any gap that they can fit their head and shoulders through.

If you’re a friend, humans can be very useful. If, on the other hand, you’re an enemy…

Rumours spread all around the galaxy, of ships that threatened humans or human allies and started experiencing technical problems. Lights going off, wires being cut— in some cases, the cases where the threats were more than just words and humans or friends of humans were killed, life support lines have been severed, or airlocks have mysteriously malfunctioned and whole crews have been sucked out into space.

If the subject comes up, most humans will blame it on “gremlins” and exchange grim smiles when they’re other species friends aren’t looking.

By this point, most ships have a crew of humans, whether they like it or not. Lots of humans, young ones generally, the ones who want to see a bit of the universe but don’t have the money or connections to make it happen any other way, like to stowaway on ships. They’ll hang around the space ports, wait for a ship’s door to open and dart on in. The average human can have quite a nice time scurrying around in the walls of an alien ship, so long as they’re careful not to dislodge anything important.

Normally nobody notices them, and the ones that do tend not  to say anything— it’s generally recognised that having humans on your ship is good luck.

If there are humans on your ship, they say, then anything you lose will be found within a matter of days, sometimes even in your quarters; any minor task you leave out— some dishes that need to be cleaned, a report that needs to be spellchecked, some calculations that need to be done— will be quickly and quietly completed during the night; any small children on the ship, who are still young enough to start to cry in the night, will be soothed almost before their parents even wake, sometimes even by words in their own tongue, spoken clumsily through human vocal chords. If any of the human are engineers (and a lot of them are, and still more of them aren’t, but have picked up quite a few tricks on their travels from humans who are) then minor malfunctions will be fixed before you even notice them, and your ship is significantly less likely to experience any major problems.

The humans are eager to earn their keep, especially when the more grateful aliens start leaving out dishes of human-safe foods for them.

This, again, is considered good luck— especially since the aliens who aren’t kind to the humans often end up losing things, or waking up to find that their fur has been cut, or the report they spent hours on yesterday has mysteriously been deleted.

To human crew members, who work on alien ships out in the open, and have their names on the crew manifest and everything, these small groups of humans are colloquially referred to as ‘ship’s rats’. There’s a sort of uneasy relationship between the two groups. On the one hand, the crew members regard the ship’s rats as spongers and potential nuisances— on the other hand, most human crew members started out as ship’s rats themselves, and now benefit from the respect (and more than a little awe) that the ship’s rats have made most aliens feel for humans. The general arrangement is that ship’s rats try to avoid ships with human crew members and, when they can’t, then they make sure to stay out of the crew members’ way, and the crew members who do see one make sure not to mention them to any alien crew members.

The aliens who know, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of not calling them by name— mainly because they’re shaky as the legality of this arrangement, and don’t want to admit that anything’s going on. Instead they talk about “the little people” or “the ones in the walls” or, more vaguely, “Them”.

Their human friends— balancing on their shoulders, occasionally scurrying down and arm so as to get to a table, or jumping from one person’s shoulder to another, in order to better follow the conversation— laugh quietly to themselves when they hear this.

Back before the first first contact, lot of people on Earth thought that humans would become space orcs. Little did they know, they’d actually end up as space fae.

comfy

(◡‿◡✿)

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

(ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ “hold my flower”