Nature of Predators: Death of a Monster

Chapter 1: A plan is formed.

Memory transcription subject: Estala, Ex-Prestige Exterminator, current predator.

Date [standardised human time]: November 15, 2136

I am a monster.

I have spent my life doing everything I could to further the graces of Inatala, to stop the rot of predators everywhere they could be found, and to protect noble herbivores from a universe filled with danger and death. To stop anyone else from suffering like I did.

I joined the Exterminators at the young age of 12, straight out of the orphanage and into my purpose in life. My general short stature made me a poor fit for the military, but very useful for crawling through holes to purge the despicable beasts from their dens of evil.

I became good at it, learning my craft and every Federation protocol, unwavering in my dedication to protecting the galaxy. I learned to suppress the fear responses of the eyes and teeth that glinted in the dark, I made the universe a better place.

I did my duty under the kind eyes of Inatala for ten years, before moving to Venlil prime as part of a wider federation movement. To help our more skittish allies who had not been gifted the resolve of Inatala to do what must be done, to teach them how to fight, how to win. I trained them, taught them to channel their fear and hate, to fight back against the unnatural order of those who would hunt us.

Then the predators, the humans arrived.

They came bearing not sharp claws, but a sharp tongue, quickly entrapping the poor empathetic Venlil under their spell. I remained silent, knowing when to fight my battles. The predators came proclaiming peace and friendship, but their forwards-facing eyes and constant baring of teeth stated otherwise.

I stayed on Venlil Prime, even as the noble Federation fleet was sent to deal with this new scourge. Eventually, the predators would drop the mask and start their wholesale evil, and I would be ready to help the Venlil, those I now consider my kin, protect them from this new danger.

Then the news broke, about the statements from the Kolshian Chief. Predators were more common than we thought, their evil had spread deep.

And I am one of them.

We Krakotl were affected deeply by this, as it turned out we were nothing more than the rot we swore to destroy. Suicides skyrocketed as many chose to destroy predators with one final act of self-destruction. Others more noble and brave went out in a literal blaze of glory, attacking the humans that infested our streets, trying to take out other predators with suicidal charges.

Some disgraced themselves, choosing to side with the predators, with their own newly discovered evil. A minority went even further, although that problem soon solved itself. I couldn't help feeling sorry for those few, no matter how despicable you were dying from a meat allergy did not look like a fun death.

I originally had intended to join the more noble of my kind when the news of my condition broke, a final fiery charge to try and remove as much evil from the universe as possible. But before I could, a better idea came to me.

I could both remove my own despicable taint from the universe, as well as warn the innocent Venlil of the destruction they were playing with. Using a predatory saying from these humans: To kill two birds with one stone.

I would get a human to eat me. I would show the world the true nature of humanity.

The first step of this attempt had been both successful and unsuccessful. Swiping a predator's communication device had been something even a chick could do, their lack of peripheral vision making sneaking up on them simple.

Reading the information had been a bit harder, but through convincing a Venlil with my predatory deception to consult their "human partner", I had been given a set of instructions to cause the device to speak any words on the screen out loud, at which point the translator embedded in my brain would do its work.

This is where the success of my first stage fell apart. I had expected to see the unfiltered communications of the predators. Instead, I saw what was clearly a decoy. Sure it had shocking depictions: instructions for the vile act of eating meat, violent actions humans had taken and strange anatomically incorrect drawings of federation species.

But it lacked the evil a real predator information-sharing system would have: Their end plan for those on Venlil prime and other federation species. Clearly, they had expected a federation citizen like myself to gain access and had planted this fake network with just enough predatory bait to make it believable, without giving up their actual plan.

This led me to have to guess my next move. Humans were clearly social predators, their lack of claws or strong jaws requiring them to trick their prey. They presumably would also only feast when they were certain to be alone, otherwise their predatory deception would only work once. This means I would need to find a way to be alone with the predators, in order to play the part of "trusting prey".

I purchased a set of long-range monitoring equipment: battery-powered, wireless uplink, waterproof and nearly indestructible. This would then continuously upload to my personal device at home. A dead man's switch was created, where if I didn't cancel the program every 4 paws, it would upload all video and audio to every news outlet and network I could think of. It was strange to think that if any of it ever went off, it would be because I'd been torn apart by an evil predator.

Of course that meant my own predatory influence on the world would also be gone, so every cloud has a silver lining.

All I needed now was a mark, a predator who would be both my executioner and my salvation. I knew I was no longer under the graces of Inatala, I knew that I was the embodiment of despicable destruction that the god of noble herbivores reined against. But the human I found was practically perfect for my needs and was heaven-sent for my purpose.

I was in the middle of nowhere when I heard the predatory scream for the first time. I had been spending less and less time near 'civilised' people, preferring to avoid those I was no longer fit to be around. So hearing the shout this far into the woods, half a claw's flight away from the capital, had been shocking and confusing.

Even more confusing was finding out, upon further investigation, that the sound had come from a male human. Most people wouldn't venture this far from civilization, simply because of the danger posed by predators, not that a human would have to worry about such things.

But the strange thing was this human was just sitting in a clearing, screaming out into nothingness for a good ten minutes. Then the predator would sit there for another hour, doing nothing apart from occasionally eating and drinking from food it had brought with them, before heading back the way it had come.

This behaviour was both shocking and confusing, and even more confusingly, this wasn't the last time I would see the predator do this. Every ten paws, without fail, the human would come to the same clearing, scream for a while, then leave. Clearly, this was a predator finally cracking under the stress of their deception. It was almost too good to be true.

I hooked up the recording equipment, tested and retested the quality of the shots it would store, and made sure that it was well hidden from even a predator's forwards facing eyes. The sound quality was good, visual quality was good, as I captured the test footage I could see every moment of the human shouting into the void. Backups were put in place in place. Everything had to be perfect: I would only get one shot to record this after all.

The only task left was to actually execute the plan. Today I hid in the trees at the correct time, heart pounding as I waited for the predatory shouting to start; which it did, perfectly on time just like clockwork, just as the predator had done so for the last three times. I moved along the ground towards the sound: I knew where the human would be, I knew which direction to go.

Towards my inevitable death.

The only thing a predatory monster like me deserved.