driftfleet | (no subject)

All yours if you can keep 'em away from Snuggles.

Deal!

[She looks down at the fox.]

Guess you gotta eat too, ain't that right?

[Killing for eating is something she can accept. Fox got a right to survive just as much as the space rat.]

[Snuggles, knowing his cue, yips and wags his tail.]

Gotta eat to live, gotta live to eat. [Grin.] Since we don't pay him in credits.

[The rat startles at the fox's yip and scurries into Misty's shirt to hide. A little rat-shaped lump can be seen trembling under her clothes. She pats him gently through the cloth.]

Aww honey it'll be alright, don't you worry.

[She returns her attention to Wrath.]

What do you feed him, if there ain't any rats around?

He can eat the same protein base that we do. And the kelp, since foxes are omnivores. But hunting is better for him.

Hell who doesn't love bacon kelp? That's the best plant I've ever seen. Too bad we don't got it on Earth.

It's definitely the best! Like I think I still like vat salmon better, but Vision comes up with some great stuff. I wish he could do protein like we did back home though.

Vat salmon? What's that?

A kind of fish protein that's grown? It's pink!

So like... you don't have to kill anything to make it?

Well yeah. Ugh, why would a person eat a dead animal, that's so gross. Like, it's one thing if Officer Snuggles wants to eat rats, he's a fox, and that's what foxes are supposed to do. But... [UGH.]

I wish we had something like that back home. I mean, I guess there's tofu, but that ain't quite the same.

I don't know if I've ever had tofu. But it's got to be better than eating an animal! That's so gross.

I don't like it either but y'know, sometimes people ain't got many choices, you know? It ain't like when they kill animals for fur or for fun. I don't tolerate that none.

Well yeah, I guess if there wasn't anything else to eat, you gotta do what you gotta do. Surviving is number one.

Maybe I can give the vegetarian thing a try here though. With the bacon kelp and protein cubes and everything. Wasn't something I could do at home.

Totally. Well, unless you want to eat space rats, you're kind of default vegan right now I think. I doubt any of this came from anywhere but a vat.

Probably not. Ain't much natural about any of this at all.

I don't see what's so great about natural stuff anyway. Nature just wants to kill you and eat your corpse.

[All right, now she's gonna take offense to that. She pulls back and frowns, her voice getting louder as she talks.]

Nature ain't ever killed me. The swamps gave me a home and the birds gave me friends and the wind gave me music. People are the ones who killed me, who hunted me and called me a freak. Not nature.

Wow, that really sucks.

Some people just aren't kind, or generous, and they deserve to get their fucking heads beat in.

But I lived on a planet that was trying to kill us, so. [Shrug.]

[Appeased by Wrath’s sympathy, Misty relaxes again.]

How’s it tryin’ to kill you?

Atmosphere's poisonous now. It'll eat your skin off. And then you get dysthrophe and try to kill your friends.

Holy shit!

How'd it get like that?

The atmosphere started poisonous and the first settlers started the terraforming. But everything went wrong during the war.