Venom
"Damn, Andross really knows how to self-destruct a base," a Cornerian private first class commented as he picked through the rubble.
"What were you expecting? Did you think we could just walk in and find everything in neat, organized piles? Did you think the craziest…thing…in this system was stupid enough to not make sure his explosives would work?" a particularly unhappy sergeant rebutted.
That group was just one of many sent to pick through the remains of Andross's home base. Now that Fox McCloud had taken care of him, and that Venom's other inhabitants had been subdued, they could finally go about this menial job with some semblance of peace.
That didn't mean they were unarmed, of course; there were still Venomian crazies about. Hushed chatter in the mess hall yesterday spread the word that an entire squad had been injured or killed by one of them. Where that civilian had gotten a hold of all those grenades, they'd never know.
Luckily, they were also near the end of their stint. No one still searching through the wreckage believed there was anything left to find, or indeed that anything had even been found. That was above the clearance of even the first lieutenant, though, so they figured they'd never know.
The squad of the aforementioned PFC was approaching one of the last rooms left to comb through. Just like every other room, it was a mass of twisted metal, charred debris, and broken glass. It had once been a superior office space, with cozy furniture and a layout that didn't fill its visitors with pangs of nervousness as they entered for their chat with the boss. Or so the PFC liked to imagine it.
As you could probably guess, the lesson that you shouldn't write the other guy's epitaph hadn't quite stuck on this one yet.
But after a grueling ninety minutes of shoveling, uncovering, and sifting, the PFC finally found something of interest behind the ashes of an indeterminable piece of wooden furniture, perhaps an ornate stained desk, or a mahogany bookshelf. After prying away some annoyingly strewn metal bars, it was revealed to be one of those ultra-strong safes, guaranteed to survive anything or your money back.
"Hey guys, come check this out, I think I've got something," he called out to his group. Dutifully, they walked over, but all of them expected it to be another false alarm.
It wasn't, though. When one of them went to touch it, the holographic lock screen showed up. The electronics had obviously been damaged, though; the screen was cut into jagged segments, like each fraction of it had no idea what the other fractions were showing.
"I'll be damned. Nice work," the sergeant said. Officially, they were supposed to take the whole, unopened safe to their superiors, but one cannot just unpique one's curiosity, especially after the drought they'd been experiencing. "Let's crack it open if we can."
The PFC nodded. He went to tap the jagged holographic keypad, hoping it might still accept input.
Not so. Touching it pushed the electronics over the cliff edge, and it shorted out completely in a shower of blue sparks.
"You idiot!" his most arrogant squadmate chastised, while all the others knew there hadn't been much else to try.
"Well, what do you suggest?!" the PFC retorted anyway, not caring that it was probably a bad idea.
That squadmate replied in action by ramming his boot into the side of the busted safe. Everyone's tails jumped in astonishment as the door just fell right off, advertising its death with a faint metallic clang. The safe-kicker just turned his head and put on a smug smile.
Inside the safe there was only one object: a thick, crimson binder. It looked like that of a college student's; not only was the binding full to bursting, but messy folded papers stuck out in all directions, as if whatever project it contained was creating a real annoyance for its manager. The PFC picked it up and immediately almost dropped it; even after seeing its thickness, it was still unexpectedly heavy.
He wound up sitting down and opening the binder across his lap. The loose papers, as it turned out, were blueprints for something called a "Purification Ray." They were all the old designs, Mks 1-27, each of them dubbed a failure by a large red X stamped on the bottom left corner. The PFC gave them to the sergeant, who in turn put them in a manila folder.
What lay hooked through the three rings, though, was what spread amazement so thick among the group that it could only be cut with a chainsaw. Stylized on the cover page were the words "The Inhabitants of Planet Earth and their Inferiorities."
The PFC and his squad, for the first time enthralled with a scientific document, continued to read. Inside, Andross told the tale of an alternate evolutionary pattern in which somehow, one species came to dominate instead of many different species at once. This dominant species, humans, were apparently evolved from apes, and although analogues to Lylatian species existed, they existed only in some kind of subservient, quadrapedal, non-sapient form. As a result, Andross theorized, the human's position as the only dominant species was causing them to take a remarkably arrogant and self-destructive path that, unless remedied, would certainly cause their extinction within one hundred years.
There were a couple of paragraphs that stuck with the PFC so much that he wound up memorizing them word for word:
As humans lack features like erect ears and tails that demonstrate with certainty the emotional state of their host, misunderstandings occur on such a regular basis that they only serve to speed up the humans' rapid descent to self-destruction.
And then there was this paragraph that only became more and more ironic as he read:
Although genetic mutations that lead to severe mental illness are bound to occur in any life that could be classified as intelligent, the frequency at which these occur in humans, or at least the frequency at which they are diagnosed, is astronomically high compared to even the most liberal Lylatian baseline.
And then this paragraph, which no one could make heads or tails of:
Strangely enough, a select group of humans seems to understand their species' inferiority. Classified as 'furries' by their peers, they alone realize that the best candidates for sapience on their planet are exactly the ones that didn't evolve to sapience. It is from this pool that I shall draw my test subjects.
No matter what their educational background or their ability to understand scientific literature, the gravity of this discovery was apparent to all of them: Andross had beaten every other scientist in the system by being the first to find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
After the worded description, which in itself was at least 50 pages long, they encountered a long section of various statistics, graphs, facts, and figures. All the essentials were there, such as the coordinates of the alien planet, geopolitical maps, the length of a human's genetic code, and so on, as well as some oddities, like "Average Hair Thickness," or "Frequency of Baths/Showers." An entire subsection was even devoted to what Andross had dubbed "furries," with all the same statistics inside. That took up at least the next 125 pages.
The sergeant, suddenly realizing how much time had probably passed, checked his watch and was not disappointed. He ordered his squad to pack it up and that is was about time to turn that binder in to the people who could understand it best.
The PFC, though, wasn't ready to stop. He kept the binder open across his arms as he walked, absorbed in it to the highest degree. Then, though, he came across Andross' plan.
He thought he could remedy the humans! At least, that's what it said on the introduction to the Purification Ray Mk. 28. That blueprint had not on it a red X, but a green check mark. It had passed Andross's small-scale test.
When the PFC found out what that small-scale test was, his eyes widened and he shut the binder roughly and suddenly.
"What was that about?" one of his squadmates asked. The noise had caused all of them to jump.
"You…uh…you don't wanna know…" he stammered in reply. In itself, the small-scale test wasn't evil, but when the ramifications on the test subject were considered, it certainly made the PFC glad he wasn't that person.
"If you think you alone are allowed to know what's in the binder, you are sorely mistaken. Tell us what you read," the sergeant commanded. Since they were still several hallways away from any other squad, this was a safe order.
The PFC's eyes went up with thought for a moment.
"Uh…lemme put it this way. Some kit on Earth just had a really bad day."