{April 3rd, 2015, United States of America, 11:43am}
Jerry looked over at the Commander as he sighed, and sat down. Before anyone had a chance to say anything, an utterly alien scream of pain was heard from the room, causing everyone to jump, or fall over if they were sitting.
Lawrence managed to hear it all the way from the cafeteria and came running over to the area, while everyone else in the base got worried or confused.
Bens quickly raised his weapon to the window, and the others did as well, while the Commander quickly got back up. “What the fuck was that?” He asked, before coughing and regaining his composure. Lawrence rushed into the hall, and crashed into the Commander, causing them both to fall over.
“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry sir!” Lawrence said as he helped the commander back up.
“... Lawrence is an anime protagonist confirmed!” Jerry says with a laugh, though keeping his eyes on the alien in the room.
“... Sometimes, I wonder why I work here.”
“To protect humanity against hostile aliens” Jerry said sarcastically, somewhat lowering his weapon.
“Ahem, right, I need to figure out how to handle the communication with the alien, so I will be taking my leave.” The Commander said, though he also wanted to sit down and scream into his hands after having another thing added to the ever growing list of tasks from the council. He quickly left, glad everyone was too confused about everything to ask for his orders at the moment.
Lawrence spotted the creature lying on the ground inside of the room. “This is going to be a long day… what happened to it?” Lawrence asked as he walked toward the door, and saw it seemed to be in serious pain. “Ok, that seems to be far from ideal. How long has it been like that?”
“For about a minute or two? Right after it screamed… why exactly?” Bens asked as he stepped closer to the door.
“It seems to be injured.”
“That’s odd. It wasn’t injured when it arrived, unless the injury is internal” Vahlen said, walking up to the door as well.
“Remember when it broke out of containment? I heard it fell onto a table and broke it.” Lawrence said as Vahlen mumbles to herself about forgetting the obvious
“Oh, so you think it hurt itself trying to escape?” Jerry asked.
“It is the most likely scenario,” Lawrence said, though he kept his eyes on the creature. He felt a bit sorry for it. “So, what do we do? I know how to treat horses but alien horses are a little out of my depth.” He asked Vahlen, who looked around for a moment thinking.
“Ahem, well… How do you treat normal horses?” She asked, as Lawrence remembers that she has no experience in that regard.
“I can tell the signs of distress and pain but I cannot help this one because I don't know what's wrong.”
“... right… Well, I’ll get someone with a hazmat suit in there to look for the source of the injury, then we can think of a solution” Vahlen said, as Salanda kept back, and looked confused.
“Wait, we are really planning on providing healthcare to an alien that may very well be planning on killing us?” She asked, not out of anger, but of confusion.
Lawrence took a moment to think of a good answer to this question logically, and replied, “Think about it this way, Salanda. An autopsy provides less information than a live captive.”
{April 3rd, 2015, United States of America, 1:03am}
Lawrence stood next to the door as a scientist in a hazmat suit exited the room. “Well,” the scientist started, “I found nothing about it to be toxic to human life, so that is a good thing. From what I could tell, it’s left wing seems to have a greenstick fracture.”
“Oh boy, that explains a lot.” Lawrence said, now seeing it’s wing was bent out of shape.
“I’m sorry, a green stick what?” Bens asked.
“A greenstick fracture is where your bone doesn't break fully and bends to one side.”
“Ow, that sounds painful.”
“It can be, in more extreme cases like this, especially since wings are full of hollow bones which can be fragile and tough to heal.” Lawrence said, as Vahlen began thinking.
“So, has anyone here treated something like a bird that had a broken wing?” She asked.
“That is more of a job suited for you, Valhen, since you work on aliens.”
“Yes, but I haven’t had any experience with healing broken wings” Vahlen said as she pinched the bridge of her nose
“... Seriously?” Lawrence asked, hoping back what he wanted to say because she is higher up then he is.
“Look, I am a xenobiologist, not a veterinarian. I’ll look into how to heal wings tonight, and tomorrow, then I will start treating it.”
{April 4th, 2015, United States of America, 8:20am}
Lawrence walked towards the room the creature was put into, thinking about the previous day. Look, those guys can handle this without me… Vahlen is researching how to help it, so my experience isn’t needed. He thought as he arrived at the room, where Bens, Salanda, and Jerry were, each of them holding a pile of papers in their hands. He caught up to them at the tail end of their conversation.
“Oh boy-” Bens said before Salanda suddenly knocked on the door loudly and the creature suddenly snarled at her. Salanda’s eyes narrowed, took a deep breath, and growled back even louder! Jesus Christ, I feel like the only responsible adult in the room. Lawrence thought as the creature went into a fight or flight reaction and it collected energy around it’s horn!
Oh no. She is going to get herself killed at this rate.“Salanda enough! Leave it alone! You are here to guard it, not antagonize it!” He yelled as he reached for his arc thrower, honestly not sure who he should use it on at the moment.
“The… I was just showing it that it wasn’t in a position to do anything like that! Besides, they started it!" Salanda said defensively
Nevermind, I literally am the only responsible adult right now. “Ya? Well I'm finishing it.” He said as he tapped his arc thrower, and Salanda got the message.
“Yesh dude,” She said as she backed away from the door, “I get the point, but did you really need to go for that thing? I’m just stressed out now that everyone is breathing down our necks.”
“Your mission was to guard it, not try to pick a fight with it. Till the commander orders change or it tries to escape, we will guard it. Besides, remember what I said about autopsies providing less information than live captives?”
“Wait… ‘We will guard it’? I thought you quit the guard job?” Salanda said with a big old grinn as Bens began to work through the papers with the creature.
“Well, that was because I was under the assumption that you could handle it. Clearly I was mistaken.” Lawrence said with a sigh as Salanda actually smiled at that.
“Thank goodness you said that, cause none of us know how to teach anything really. I heard you had siblings, so you have got to be better at this than me.”
“Well, I have plenty of siblings but what does that have to do with teaching ability? I can wrangle horses and other farm animals but I guess this is the same in principle… Wait, don’t you have a sister?”
“Well, ya, my older sister, who I didn't teach anything. Still, anything is better than just us right now.” She said. Lord give me restraint right now, cause if you give me strength I am going to use it to deck her, Lawrence thought as he facepalmed, hard.
Bens spoke up. “Um, guys? I think Vahlen needs to double check on the tests. This thing seems to think it was poisoned? Maybe by the water?” Lawrence shuttered at the thought that providing the most basic of necessities to this creature could be hurting it.
“I think there is a chance that there is something in the water that it can't take, but we can, cause otherwise Hazmat would have found it. Jerry, why don’t you let Vahlen and the other scientists know.” Lawrence said, as he saw that Jerry was already running to the labs, causing him to mutter something as Bens pulled out a large stack of papers and showed them to the creature.
He sighed and sat down, and watched as the lesson began.
{April 4th, 2015, United States of America, 9:26am}
Lawrence took a small sigh of relief as Jerry came back with a large smile, and a (probably stolen) veggie burger. “Well, Vahlen said that there is nothing new in the water. She also said that she doesn’t know how to handle it’s broken wing yet, but she does think we can give it aspirin. So, I stu- ”
Bens interrupted Jerry, saying “Hmm, so it wrote the sun regally, and delicately, but scribbled the moon? That’s interesting. Now, time to see about DRAGONS!” Lawrence questioned why Bens was so excited about the dragon part… Wait what? He thought as he looked over at the paper to find a drawing of a standard fantasy dragon with red scales on it, drawn with a pen and a colored pencil.
“Um… why did Valhen give you a paper with dragons? Especially when she was mad at you all teaching that thing unimportant words?” Lawrence asked, as Jerry snickered.
Salanda spoke, trying to choke back laughter, “Oh, it's just a joke from another scientist. I’m going to tell her about it right after we end this lesson, but what is the harm in doing this?”
Bens put the paper to the window, as the creature suddenly looked more excited then Bens, despite the pain it must be going through. It grabbed a piece of paper and began to draw out multiple objects, to the point where it took it five minutes to finish, and show it to the humans. To everyone’s surprise, along with the word “Dragon”, was a drawing of the creature hugging what appeared to be a small purple and green dragon-like creature, and an arrow pointing from the dragon to a sketch of a metal spike.
“This is disturbing, with the major implication” Lawrence said, trying to say face as inside, he was terrified.
“Implication? What Implication?” Jerry asked, only now getting his head around what the creature just did.
“The aliens have freaking dragons and now we may have to fight them.” Lawrence said with a shutter.
“...Sweet!” Salanda said with real enthusiasm.