A/N: Written for the Green Room 2015 (RLt), challenge #5 – wacky laws challenge, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b13 – write a fic that is exactly 1000 words.
Deprived Generation Law
Nobody knew who the first Cursed Children was, whether they were conceived during the initial Gaestra invasion or after. Promoters weren't recognised until the first anniversary of the invasion in any case, once the Monolith was built and their population safely tucked away behind those walls. They weren't recognised until those little infected girls began growing up, and then all of a sudden there was a new problem arising from within their walls, and the people were afraid all over again. They thought the Gaestra had found a way to destroy their future as well as their present. They thought the doom of humanity had come.
But they were humans and if there was one thing they could not accept, it was impending doom.
So the Government gathered. Some saw the use of them as weapons. 'Let's use them against the Gaestra. Let's take what they've given us and use it against them!' But others were afraid, afraid that they were too like the Gaestra, uncontrollable. 'We'd sign our own death warrents.' And few wanted them anywhere near humans at all. The fear of being murdered unsuspected. The fear of entire buildings: apartment complexes, schools, shopping malls – the fear of hundreds or even thousands of humans being cleared out because they weren't diligent enough, or strong enough to protect themselves.
'We should kill them,' said someone suddenly, and they found themselves latching on to the idea. Kill them like they killed the Gaestra. Few spoke against that. Few argued that they were children. Little girls their mothers had given birth to – and that in itself was a double-edged sword because some mothers were disgusted or scared for their lives, and others clung desperately to them. But there was enough to lose the majority. No-one could agree so they swept up all the little girls showing signs of power and locked them together.
Scientists studied them. Maybe if they found something useful, they'd be able to decide on something. A vaccine was the most humane thing. Something to reverse the effects. Something to prevent future Cursed Childrens from being born. But they couldn't manage that. There was a rumour on the darker side of the Government that the funding wasn't near enough for a project on that large a scale, nor were the resources. Someone with a lot of power was putting the plug on that sort of research. Someone didn't want that doom or untapped potential to be destroyed.
So that research got nowhere. But other research did. They found the girls were child-like, aside from their amazing combat abilities. They were malleable. They could be used against the Gaestra, if someone was willing to get close enough to build up a rapport with them. It was a way to fight against the Gaestra, and they wound up more successful than the ones who were tortured and driven mad like dogs in a cage.
Unarguable evidence, and while the call to exterminate was still shouted in both the Government and the general public, their usefulness could not be denied. Still, no-one could think of them as messiahs. They were too dangerous. They slaughtered the Gaestras when their best weapons had little to no effect. And when angered, they destroyed humans as well.
Not all of them meant to, but that was the sad reality. And eventually, the Government made a compromise. 'Don't kill them,' they said. 'We'll take them and pair them up with security folks willing to take on the role, and they'll fight the Gaestra and hold our walls and keep us safe.'
It didn't work too well at first. Some of the security, dubbed "Promotors" in this role, were good. They got along with the Cursed Child that was their weapon. They kept them happy, and calm, and in prime condition as a weapon. Others were too distant, or too hard, and the Cursed Children exploded in a moment of anger and rage and that was the end of them. So a failsafe was built in. A moment of madness and that was the end of the Cursed Child, and thus the Promotor was spared.
And then there was the problem of Cursed Children hiding, or being hidden. They were obvious in the interim between realising their powers and realising a way to control them, for their eyes became red like all the blood humans lost to the Gaestra. They weren't welcome in the general population. And it wasn't safe to have them there, away from control. It wasn't good for the normal children if they saw a Cursed Child blow up right in front of them. It wasn't safe if that Cursed Child didn't have a failsafe in.
So the Deprived Generation laws were passed. The Cursed Children weren't humans, but weapons that belonged to the Government. Anyone caught harbouring one without a Promotor license would be subject to punishment by the law. Anyone who detected a Cursed Child was to report them to the nearest Security Bureau immediately. All the time a failsafe was put in them and then sometimes they were assigned. Often they had to grow up in a specialised home because there weren't enough Promotors to go around, until a new Promotor came along or an old one lost their original weapon.
And then some of the unlucky ones, the ones with abilities deemed useless in the fight against Gaestra, were guinea pigs for further experimentation. The search for a vaccine went on half-heartedly, almost as though it was for show and nothing else, and ways to further utilise the Cursed Children were explored as well. Ways to make the useless abilities more useful. Ways to make the Cursed Children more controllable. Ways to find every one of them, so there weren't public incidents, weren't public fears. And ways to do things about the ones who strayed from the home, who wandered the streets and begged for a happier, more normal life, until they were killed by neglect, law or a Gaestra.