A researcher decides, out of curiosity, to see if it's just human adults that are dangerous, and how far back that 'dangerous' could be listed. Then they read the study of a human toddler named Pib, and research other human toddlers aboard other ships that employ adult humans. Let's just say the kill counts for the toddlers, and the description of what these kids did, caused the researcher to end up in therapy, terrified of human children.
@internutter/challenge-03024-h101-mostly-harmless-you-say -- Fighting Fit
Researcher Ornsen should have known that undertaking veracity research into the whole "Humans Are Space Orcs" thing was just asking for trouble. Ze started with noble intentions, which we all know is the final impetus on the slippery dip to Hades.
Case file: Human Pib. The first known toddler with a kill count. There were others that sprang up, but Pib was the first. Therefore, they were also the most notorious. The worrying part was that there was no de-escalation of incidents in Pib's record. In fact, the incidents seemed to be increasingly more precise.
Research into Human young was disturbing. Even at their most helpless, they could randomly emit any number of toxic substances. Debate continued to rage as to whether this was a survival mechanism or not[1]. However, the key point appeared to be when the Human larvae reached the stage where they could move themselves about and manipulate their environment. That was when things became -at least scientifically- interesting.
Humans could do so much damage with rice puffs, rusks, and assorted sweet pastes. They were among one of the few species who could safely ingest the highly dangerous peanut[2], and viewed it as a treat. They even fed it to their animal ambassadors, the dogs.
Deathworlders. They're wacky.
As the research continued, Ornsen discovered the true horror. Most of these Human larvae had killed by accident rather than design. When it came to design, it was the 'kids' between five and eight who could cause the most damage to the enemy.
They knew what they should not do, why they should not do it, and what those things did to people. And they could do it on purpose to the "bad guys". Often with frightening accuracy.
Human Pib, Ornsen checked, was entering teenagerhood. The time of life when a Human most feared what other people thought of them. Yet, this Ships' Human was going on field trips with Planetary Surveys because he was just so gosh-darn good at crisis management.
His parentals recognised an early skill and encouraged creative solutions. The most creative of those had involved putting out a fire with... s'mores. Since the fire was on a pirate ship, nobody else was mad.
And now... the kid was doing it more or less professionally. According to records, Pib had a compulsive habit of cataloguing the chemical properties of everything around him and stockpiling things that "could come in handy".
The worrying part was that they frequently did.
Other Human Larvae did not lag far behind Pib. By accident or design, they were formidable warriors before they could reliably walk.
Ornsen started having the nightmares a month in to hir research paper's progress.
[1] On one hand, the noxious emissions could discourage predators, on the other, it could let them know where the vulnerable prey was.
[2] This is not, astonishingly, the most dangerous nut in the known universe. That crown goes to the cashew, which has to go through an intense treatment process to be edible without delivering chemical burns to the consumer. Many Galactics are surprised to learn this.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / jlombard]
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