#he draws people into his orbit hes lively hes intelligent hes a burning whirl of passion and arhrthhhh

[drowningin666fandoms]

Humans are weird - Our humanity

So, I’ve had another idea for the humans are weird tag, and it is both beautiful in what it implies for us and absolutely horrifying and sickening. You see, my mind went down the path of ‘what if what makes us unique among the aliens is our humanity?’ and not with humanity as species, but as compassion and morals and ‘you-just-don't-do-that’. What if aliens managed to get in space only by being partially hive-minded, and don’t have any concept of love and friendship and compassion and caring and all that stuff, but also things like laws, imprisonment and second chances? They barely have a word for Alliance, and those few they make are very brittle and frequently crash and burn when they simultaneously turn their weapons on each other. That’s not necessarily cause by vindictiveness, but maybe an evolutionary trait in them to get rid of overpopulation endangering their much, much smaller planets, or due to a predator looking so much like themselves they had to have that mistrust to survive and nature hasn’t gotten rid of it yet even after they hunted the predator into extinction. So the largest they have are clans of perhaps fifteen, each led by some sort of mayor, but they frequently have infighting with the head changing, however, they have this... kind of list in their heads with the names of all other currently living specimen, and as soon as that reaches a certain point the urge to kill each other stops immediately, and knowledge and discovery is passed around in the same way. Guess that makes them hermaphrodites though. And what if, when they discover Earth, we are still having some war or the other, and they draw their own conclusions from it?

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Aiehas looked towards the mostly blue planet in satisfaction. Their species needed new room for settlements to avoid another killing spree. Their own crew, which in the beginning had thirty people, had been reduced to ten and needed special shielding to not be dragged into the urge to kill again - they couldn’t afford to lose even one more person or the ship had a high chance to crash and burn when landing, and that was something nobody on board wanted. After all, nobody wanted to die, it was just sometimes necessary. This planet though... Well, it might register as Deathworld of the highest class ever found, but certainly, due to the inherit lack of sentient life it would have, they could just get rid of the wildlife and fauna and live there too. As such, xe was extremely surprised when xir first mate called out to xe, claiming there would be satellites and space stations orbiting the planet. Had another species already found it? But what species would voluntarily live together on such a tight space as a space station? Xir own crew had to be forced into the ship! Of course, they could always kill off the contestant and get rid of the evidence - as long as they weren’t seen at least. “Scan the surface.” “Sir, there are... settlements. And they’re gigantic!” Now xe literally whirled around, pushed xir first mate away from the computer and looked for xir self. Indeed, there were huge constructs of metal, stone, glass and wood on the surface, constructs that couldn’t be anything else than housings - for dozens of people each! What sane species would build things like that? It was a waste of resources, especially with so many of the constructs next to each other. Xe could not think of any species in the intergalactic register - established so other species would know when another planet was empty because one species managed to erase itself from existence - that would do such a thing, and just wondered whether or not a Deathworld of class thirteen really just managed to develop sentient, intelligent life, when xir optical sensors were drawn to where the scanner detected... fighting. It was a larger amount of energy signatures than xe had ever seen in one place, but it was clearly fighting, considering when one went off, some others didn’t anymore. There were other signatures too, one highlighting an entire island, and nets and nets of small ones, with a staggering amount within the constructs - other fights, perhaps? - but they weren’t all that telling, though the ones traveling the atmosphere were - they somehow had managed to develop long-distance rockets, something xir species along some others was still figuring out. Interesting. Xir eyes searched the surface of the planet, before finding a blank space within an oddly formed one. It was pretty much in the middle, they would be able to advance in every direction, but was also far enough away to not be found without provocation. “There. Land there.” It was also a reasonable amount of space away from the fighting, so the rockets would need to be aimed at them specifically to hit them, and they could advance to most of the landmasses on their stalks. Of course, they would have to figure out something for the not quite as big landmass in the west and the large island in the south east, as well as all the other islands, but they could do that after making place for themselves on the biggest landmass.”Sir.” Another of xir subordinates, looking a little terrified. Xe was over quickly - if it was terrifying, it wouldn’t be good. “I-I think I just accidentally accessed their hive-mind with my computer.” Xe stared too. That was ludicrous. The other specimen, however, just turned the monitor of xir computer a little, showing so many signals. “Well, see if you can find a way to translate!” Aiehas snapped at the crewmember, who immediately got to work, having only been saved by xir activation of the instinct block. (Yes, they mistook the internet for a hive-mind.)

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The aliens had landed, unfortunately for them, in the middle of Germany. As such, they were noticed almost instantly, and a military team was send out to either greet them, or, if they prove hostile, exterminate them and hopefully reverse engineer the technology. The war in the middle east could use the boon of whatever weapons they had, and the civil applications of the technology of a spaceship were too lucrative to pass up on in case they were, in fact, hostile. Of course, the entire thing was watched by their superiors through one of the bodycams, in case of hostility they needed to know immediately, if friendly they could later publish it. They would probably do that either way, but if they were friendly they would obscure the identities of the soldiers. One of these soldiers was Laura Petersen, who was what civilians would call a sniper and thus got dispatched some distance away from her team. Her rifle held one of the cameras,meant to give them a higher and clearer vantage point. As it was, she was the first to spot the... extraterrestrials. They looked a lot like the zombies with the awfully long tongue out of the Persistent Evil series. Just with their brains covered up and walking on two legs instead of four, plus probably a not as long tongue, considering it wasn’t hanging out of their mouth. “Otto, three o’clock.” The captain of the team turned, finally spotting the fleshy things. They didn’t wear much clothing aside from some sort of leather that was probably more armor than clothing, or at the very least rank indicating uniform. The one who volunteered to risk their own live and try and speak with the aliens now spotted them too, and barely waited long enough for the rest of the soldiers to be in position before stepping towards the visitors. Laura couldn’t remember his name, some rookie who barely absolved the necessary training for this. He was the only one who was willing to die just to be the first to officially make contact with lifeforms from outer space. Now he stepped forwards, likely to do his job, keeping from smiling due to training. The aliens did not even wait for him to bring out a single world, already lashing out and practically tearing him apart. She almost screamed. That was NOT what should have happened! As it was, she had better training than that, instead immediately taking aim and hitting the first one, closing in on her captain, with a bullet through the head. At least their brain seemed to be in the same location, as his skull practically exploded and send bits everywhere. Damn. Things like that were why she was a sniper and not melee fighter. She’d probably have retched at being showered with brain like that. Some of the aliens now took some steps back, and another bellowed out, in heavily accented, terribly pronounced English. “Surrender or we will destroy you completely!” Well, that wouldn’t do. Seems their captain thought the same, as he merely shouted back a no and shot the alien in question between... well, she’d have to go with optic sensors because it weren’t exactly eyes. Considering the small number of opponents, it was over before any human other than the rookie got so much as a scratch, but most of her teammates were now showered in bits of alien, and obviously grossed out. Swiftly, she disassembled the rifle, making her way down the hill. Her teammates seemed rather bemused she barely looked ruffled while they probably wanted nothing more than a shower and regretted getting out of the bed that morning. “Good shots, Laura.” “Thanks Captain. What about...?” “Yes, we should probably sweep it to make sure there are not more of these fuckers hiding in there.” He wiped a bit of brain from his brow, expression thoroughly disgusted as he flicked his hand to get rid of it.

The inside of the ship was, if possible, worse than the outside. They had to walk slightly hunched, indicating the aliens preferred to walk on all four instead of bipedal as they did on the outside, and there were rotting corpses of them neatly stacked up in what seemed to be their equivalent to the eating hall, some of which evidently been used as food despite the reasonably full storage. One of the team members lost his breakfast as that, but did manage to get outside before actually spitting. There was some information on the race there, but also, funnily enough, a computer looking advanced but running way worse than a modern laptop opened to the internet. Well, that would explain where they knew English from.

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It had been two of Earth’s years since the Humans had joined the galactic ‘community’, as they called it, though none of the other species knew what they meant with that. Nor did they know how to handle them, who domesticated predators, lived on planets without killing all native species, and helped people in need without a second thought - they had words for all of their concepts, but they had so many more, and they were so vastly different from each species they knew that nobody dared raise any appendix against any human - the demise of Aiehas and the disaster of the ‘orphanage’, where another species had decided to get a building full of younglings out of the way without informing the humans as whole, and just not told the ones in the building which ended in the species being constantly held just under the killing limit by humans for multiple years, until they eventually swore on their species’ continued existence to never harm a human ever again, were very well known and terrifying to the aliens in how humanity had no overpopulation switch they could use, and would always do something they called avenging that none of them had a concept of.

On the other hand, they developed way faster than any other race, and had managed to make contact with some other species, though none of them knew how to handle humanity either. They constantly snapped at each other, and after the attempted invasion at the beginning had been fought of by ALL of humanity UNITED, they had gone right back to fighting their own war of the time as if nothing happened.

They could also be cruel, as not only seen in the orphanage disaster, but also knew things like ‘torture’, which was deliberate non-lethal pain infliction, often to gain information, and managed to use some of their ‘medical’ equipment in such a way that once they knocked out any member of any species, they could listen in to the hive-mind of said species without being detected or anyone being able to cut them off.

They had things no other species had - they called them ‘art’ and ‘music’ - and had lost multiple people before they stopped ignoring the danger coming from all other species’ young when there was conflict.

Truly, humanity were like the old folk from the fables - incomprehensible and too complex for any other species to understand.