Title: Day Job

Rated: K+ (with the occasional profanities from time to time)

Summary: The woes of a junior officer, as told by Wally Feltin.

Warn: oc, ooc, future timeline, timeline what timeline, manga spoilers, half-assed scientific mumbo jumbo, random drabbles, weird, absurd, not beta'd.

A/N: First of all, sorry for not updating and what-not. No excuses can be enough to explain myself. Second, I never thought this 600-ish word draft grew to a 2k juggernaut, so take it as my apology...? With a grain of salt...? Thirdly, I think I'm on a fanfic-roll to avoid homework, help

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. (As per Chuuta Kokonose's admittance.)

It was first brought up by Diana Might, an officer from the third division, when they had captured a rogue criminal that had tried to flee to another planet after months of illegal marshmallow smuggling near the Tokyo Suburbs.

"I may not know Earthling's biology, but from what I understand, shouldn't you have Senior Officer Kokonose's hair and Assistant Inspector Sonokata's eyes, not the other way around?"

This led to raised eyebrows and a curious mind toward the ship's archives.

After getting the data he needed, he lightly skimmed through the mountains of data as he found the chapter he was looking for.

"Earthling Gene Inheritance." He murmured.

It was fairly short and dense with the information he needed, and deemed his human disguise was mostly on the spot according to it (the chances of the parental DNA to be passed down to their filial(s) are 50/50), but stopped to stare when he stumbled upon the Dominant and Recessive gene sub-chapter.

"Although the process of inheritance is a 50/50 chance, there is a certain rule that must always be present in determining if the genes are to be activated or not in the filial's body. That is the Rule of Dominant and Recessive Gene Inheritance. If, for example, a dark-colored haired individual (DD) to mate a lighter-colored haired individual (dd), then their filial will all have dark-colored hairs (Dd), but if their filial to ever mate with each other, their own filial will have dark-colored hairs (Dd), with also a small percentage of lighter-colored hairs (dd). This results as the dark-colored hair is the dominant gene, which is why commonly referred with a large D, and the lighter-colored hair is the recessive gene, which is why commonly referred with a smaller d. This also applied to eye colors as well, with darker colored eyes as more dominant to lighter colored eyes."

When he had finished reading the whole thing, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples as he reread it again. Again. And again. And again.

(Needless to say, it was an eyesore to his already tired artificial eyes.)

After multiple times of reading, he finally snapped and went straight to his Earthling senior officers for some explanation. (Either that, or he would go on full rage-mode in the archives for not being able to understand the darn Earthling biology—why the hell was it so complicated?! Even the Raddoshes' biology made more sense than this!)

"Earthling Gene Inheritance?" Assistant Inspector Sonokata repeated, blinking as she looked down toward his eyesight. In her hands were a tablet, one usually used for their mission briefings and filing reports of said missions, while Senior Inspector Kokonose lazily glanced at them with one eye from his desk, probably doing his own report about their earlier mission. "While I would gladly explain it to you in much more in-depth, Officer Feltin, can I ask why? Are the ones in the archives not enough for you?"

Wally was about to say, no it's actually the opposite, and it's making my semi-organic memory fibers rot from sheer numbers of word repetitions to the point of redundancy, but went against it and said, "it was a bit of an... unusual concept to what I am used to," he carefully chose his words as he continued. "The Fabrees' way of gene inheritance is not as complicated as the Earthlings'—well I guess it kind of is in your eyes, but not by a long shot... I think..."

While one of her eyebrows rose in curiosity, she didn't comment and waited until he continued his line of thoughts as she put the tablet in her hands aside.

"It's like," he paused as he thought of some other Earthling creatures he knew to be used as an analogy, "uh, a fish, because while the fertilization is on the outside of the male and female body, it's actually done inside the newly made body of the new individual, usually made a few weeks to months prior of the fertilization. And then, depending of their fibers' compatibility, it'll usually take a couple of days or weeks until the newly made individual to finally be able to called 'newborn' as you call it and determine their biological sex by looking at the dominated color of their fibers, blue for male and red for female, a few days later."

When he was finished, his eyes cast down as he fiddled with his fingers. "I... was a late bloomer," Wally explained, "or at least that's what my Mom explained to me every time I ask her—finally be able to be 'born' after a year later from the initial two weeks prediction—unlike my older sister, who is technically younger than I am in terms of fertilization time, was able to be 'born' two days after her fertilization time, which was a month or two before I was 'born.'"

He then gently breathed out the oxygen in his fibers as a small smile crooked on his artificial lips. "So, um, now you know why I'm much more smaller than what the other Feltins in my age, pretty dumb right."

As silence engulfed the whole division two office, (even Head Division Chips was as quiet as a needle) the two senior officers exchanged baffled and genuinely puzzled looks toward their junior officer. While it was true it had been a few months since they first worked together, and also had a fair share of very life-changing missions along the way to bring them all much closer than before—it was still shocking to hear their youngest inspector openly admit such a personal information, even though they already knew it from his files before he got admitted to the second division and was started by a very offhanded question about Earthling gene inheritances.

"It's not dumb if you ask me," Chuuta replied after another few moments of silence, his body now facing directly at Wally, office work report all set aside to address the younger officer's statement. "I actually find it heartwarming that you willingly pour your thoughts to inform us after we've been working together for the last couple of months, Wally."

"Yes, I agree," Misuzu nodded, a small smile was slightly curled up on the corners of her lips, as she gently patted the free seat near her desk, a subtle gesture Wally noticed and slowly sat there. "Truthfully, I was only able to open up to Officer Kokonose, and mostly everyone, a year after we've become partners, it's by no means a small feat you know."

Said man snorted whilst grinning mischievously. "You really need to see her back when I started working here, lots of deadly glares and 'without leaving traces,' good times, good times."

His partner merely shot him a short playful glare as Wally began to wonder how a soft-spoken and kind-hearted person like Misuzu could do such an act.

"Anyway," his senior officer rolled her eyes as she cleared her throat, probably because of the embarrassing topic of her past, directing her eyes back to him, "you said you wanted to know more about the Earthling gene inheritance, right? Although I'm not that well versed in the topic, I hope it can at least explain some aspects of it, so what do you want to know?"

Thinking back toward the wall of text he read back at the archives, there was one part that nagged him the most.

"There's a part in the text, where it says light color hair and eyes are all in the recessive gene—while I know the implications of that word means—what I don't get why is my human disguise as your 'biological child' isn't even as close to that rule? Okay, so I get that it's just something trivial since when we're on that mission, the people there didn't even bat an eye at the small percentage of me being you 'child,' but can't it at least be more convincing than saying 'it suited me more this way'?"

When Wally had finished with his rant, he felt a sense of deja vu as his seniors exchanged surprised looks to each other before looking back at him.

"Wait, so you read the whole Earthling gene in the archives and told us the reason for your condition, just because you're not okay your Earthling disguise isn't 100% true to the Earthling gene rules?" Chuuta clarified, his expression was a cross between wanting to laugh and tease him, if it weren't for Misuzu's glare, as he rolled his eyes. "Never knew you're peeved about this kind of thing Wally."

The junior officer looked down and clenched his fists. "It just felt... wrong you know, knowing maybe one day, some civilians will remark about how I don't really look like your 'son' and can tip a wanted criminal to know someone's on to him, or something." And being the reason why the mission failed.

There was another moment of silence, this time both senior officers were taken back from their junior's confession and quickly dispersing any humor in their tones.

"I…" the female officer slowly spoke, as she paused and chose another word to start again, "we're very sorry Wally, we didn't know all this time, this made you uncomfortable." Misuzu apologized, her hand lightly stroking his hair.

Silence began to engulf them again, sans the occasional quiet taps of the keyboard from their Head Division, when her partner began to speak.

"If... you want someone to blame, it's probably... me."

Wally's eyes perked up at Chuuta's words, his tone was filled with guilt, he noticed, as the man explained.

"You..." the senior officer paused to close his eyes as he took slow, deep breaths, before starting again, "do you know the 05TPG Incident?"

The 27 ēl-year-old nodded after a moment of memory digging. Of course anyone aspiring to be an ēlDLIVE officer knew about the infamous 2005 Tamii-Pasolini-Gwar Incident, or The 05TPG Incident for short, that happened in 2005 (why the ēl Society used Earthling year was beyond him) when a massive pandemic had occurred in three planets, wiping the whole species with 100% infection-death rate and only left small traces of dust from the carcass of the bodies. Luckily the virus hadn't infected the nearby planets, making the planet-scale massacre fiasco got swept under the rug quite quickly, preventing any nation-wide panic to arise in the ēl Society. Needless to say, it was still a sore spot to the government, leaving a bitter taste to anyone who talked about it, even to this day.

"Did you ever think why the Solar System District also got famous around that time, even though there were no records about handling some big cases?"

Wally also wondered about that, back when he first heard about the district there were some rumors floating around the ēlDLIVE enthusiasts, about a small and somewhat unknown district far on the edge of the ēl Society that helped solved the recent pandemic uproar. When the name of the district was revealed by a data leak from an unknown source a few months later, many speculated there were some conspiracies involved to keep the name hidden from the public eye. There was one even suggesting the SSD was just a hoax and it was made by the government as a scapegoat if the pandemic wasn't resolved.

(Which was kind of true, but didn't deter the young officer from wanting to apply at the district and that was another tale for another time.)

"There were some rumors, but none really stood out from what I can recall." He finally shook his head after another moment of thought. Although...

"But there was one, I don't know if it's true or not, recently circling again around a year ago," Wally recounted, "that the original members of the SSD were all killed and got revived from a similar virus, no one knew why or who did it, but there were speculations it's the same as the source of the 05TPG Incident."

"Well they're... not that off about that," Chuuta admitted after a moment of silence, his right hand nervously scratching the back of his neck and let out an awkward laugh as Wally's eyes perked up once again, "though I have to admit, the world of conspiracy theorists never cease to amaze me with their crazy ideas and connections."

"So it was true?"

"Kind of... I guess...?" the senior officer replied lamely, "it's true they were... killed... by the virus…and got revived, if you will, a few weeks later…"

He continued to mumble incoherently for a few minutes before finally shaking his head violently and grumbled when Misuzu coughed and nudged his side to get his attention back.

(Wally wasn't able to hear what his senior officer was saying, but he could hear bits of, "Mothers' fault," "managed to detain," and wondered why.)

"Right-right, sorry got carried away," he apologized, "anyway, one of the upper echelon members of the rebels had… similar looks to us… and that's why we asked Dr. Ludwig to have your orthopedic surgery like that to avoid any future complications in the future, to say the least…"

After hearing Chuuta's explanation, the young officer nodded, now understanding their reason, but there was still something nagging on the back of his mind, so he prodded further. "...how similar? From what I read, no matter how similar two different individuals—even from different races—there will always be some visible differences, whether hair color, eye shape, et cetera. There'll still be nothing wrong with me having the genetically-correct orthopedic disguise."

Again, both of his senior officers were taken back with his rebuttal by giving two surprised replies.

"You also read the other races' genes in the archive just to ask about Earthling genes?"

"Wow, you must really like my hair and Misuzu's eyes huh?"

He inwardly rolled his eyes but nodded.

"So can I now please know the reason why the similarities are a no-no for everyone?"

After making uneasy sideways glances at each other, Misuzu finally relented and gestured to the older man to grab her tablet. When he had finally handed it to her, she quickly flicked her fingers after typing some words on the search bar, stopping when she had found what she was looking for.

On it was a picture of a man, dark-haired and looking distressed toward the camera. For a brief second, Wally thought he was seeing one of Chuuta's rare hangover photos, but after a closer look, he finally noticed the slight differences between the man in the tablet and his senior officer.

For one, his eyes were actually dark colored, like the color of Misuzu's eyes, and had longer eyelashes than Chuuta would ever have. There was also a small braid above left his ear and a small scar on one side of his forehead.

Wait a minute…

As if being struck by one of Senior Officer Weroniki's practice kicks (don't ask), the small child's head jolted up. His artificial green eyes widened whilst mouthing.

"Is he… a clone made from you?"

While the ēl society didn't condone cloning procedures (as some planets only used cloning to reproduce asexually and for scientific experiments), it was still an uncommon, expensive, and difficult practice to the general populace, especially when using DNA from different species from different planets because of the unknown variables that could affect the cloning processes.

"That's one of the possibilities we had thought beforehand," Misuzu replied, "but the man was already around our age today when we encountered them ten years ago, so it was rather an unlikely scenario and we somewhat disregard that after doing some tests to his DNA."

Meaning, his DNA was not the exact copy of their DNA which was the main criteria of a clone.

"Hold on, 'somewhat disregard'?" Wally asked, one of his artificial eyebrows rose in question.

Looking at her partner, Chuuta took it as his cue and continued. "...traces of our DNA were found in his, though it was all scrambled, aged, and was already modified before, so it wasn't as exact as ours."

The Feltin widened his eyes again.

"You mean it could be time travel?"

In the few months of being part of the SSD, Wally had his fair share of watching Earthling "science-fiction" movies from Senior Officer Ninotchka's library (again, don't ask), time-travels being one of them. Although he had never seen any publicized ēlDlive time-travel cases, at least to his knowledge, he always thought the possibility was there since anything could be possible even with the current light speed travel and wormhole technologies.

(Wait, did that mean the mass genocide culprits were their future child coming from the future? It would make a really compelling case why they would try to keep it under wraps and steer away from anything resembling them.)

Shaking her head, Misuzu shrugged, "we can't be so sure about that, since there's also other variables in DNA, so perhaps he was made using other people DNAs too and ours were also got into the mix."

"Anyway," the older man stretched his body upward and patted the younger teen's head, "now you know why we don't want that color combination on your disguise, even if it's more biologically accurate."

Crouching to his eye level, he continued. "It's not as if we don't care about it, it just brings us bad memories from the past, so it was best to suppress that part of life for everyone and be cautious of that part in our missions."

"And besides," grinning, Chuuta began to ruffle Wally's hair, "you already read that part in the sub-chapter, right? Recessive gene anomaly is also part of accurate gene biology, so even if anyone asks you about it, just tell them that and they wouldn't even bat an eyelash at you."

Blinking, the Fabree teen gaped at the sudden tone shift as he tried (and failed) to flail away the taller man's hand from his head. "Did you have to say that while messing up my perfectly placed fibers, Chuuta!"

"It's called 'hair' and yes, in a heartbeat, Wally."

The only female officer chuckled whilst waving away her partner's hand and gently helping her younger officer comb his hair with her fingers.

"If you're still upset with the arrangement, I could ask Glock if he can make an official placement for you in the coming weeks to his division."

Wally's hands instantly froze as his eyes widened to look up at the two senior officers.

"Excuse me?"

Both of them had small solemn smiles to his bewildered face, Chuuta casually sitting on the edge of Misuzu's desk. "You've already seen what we usually dealt with in the last few months right? To be honest, you're actually still on trial so your position hasn't been set in stone yet."

"So if you want to, we can end the trial and place you there." Misuzu continued, "and besides, it's common to change the division of a trainee's choice to someplace else if they're not comfortable or felt endangered with it in the recent years since the protocol changes changed a few years ago, so it's not that weird."

Changing his division?

Sure he had some minor pet peeves and misfortunes in the second division, but the thought had never crossed his mind in the last few months of his active duty days. He had made new friends, got new experiences he could never have dreamt in the last 27 ēl years of his life, and probably best of all, actually managed to fulfill his life long goal as an ēlDLIVE officer in the end ever since he was young.

But was it worth the times he had to risk his own life on the lines of others?

The back of his mind whispered. The tiny doubt that had lingered since he was given the ēlDLIVE badge those months ago.

"No," he firmly shook his head, he had chosen this path and he was going to keep it through until his body could no longer hold on like the famed Fabree Warriors on his home planet.

"I'll continue to be in this division, no matter how dangerous it is," he then grinned, "and besides, someone has to have your backs when the two of you get too occupied with each other."

This caused his two senior officers to splutter, bright splotches of red marring their faces as he laughed.

Well there was that, in the end he still had his promises he would become the greatest Fabree ēlDLIVE officer to be fulfilled to those stuck up "friends" of his back home after all and nothing like a few battle scars could scare him away from achieving his goals.

END

A/N: This has certainly turned from one thing to another pretty fast, lol. Anyway, I really hope Wally's character and how his society worked were a bit more explored here, I have a couple more topics in mind to expand it further, but prolly next time, haha Have a nice day and constructive criticisms are welcomed!

~G L. [10.05.2020]