#im so normal about the federation being afraid of him (it makes me crazy)

[kadextra]

Imagine you have managed to lure & successfully capture a special, and dangerous animal in a cage. You brought it to your facility for a reason, to use it for something important that it can provide you, or that it’s capable of doing… and to run some tests.

You know this animal has a history of being extremely vicious, and that it’s really intelligent. You knew what you were getting into beforehand… you’ve heard the hundreds of horror stories, about it being capable of causing terrifying harm- and it hates being in a cage. it’s crafty and will attempt to escape, so you need to treat it nicely, with utmost respect. You have to pacify its temper while you run the tests, so you give it something to care for, other test subjects for company, and objects that it likes. enrichment to make it all more bearable to manage.

It works, and the animal has gotten attached to the things you provided for it! you see how much it cares for them every day, and that’s good because now it doesn’t bite back as much at the keepers you send in to monitor. All the tests are going smoothly. Sometimes, there are unfortunate accidents (it was in a particularly bad mood the other day and someone lost a few fingers) but that’s okay, things like this can be excused in the long run. It’s unwise to punish the animal, as it’s scary, and special, and you aren’t sure if doing that will make it become completely uncontrollable or ruin the tests/any of the benefits. Just continue using more enrichment and hope that works! there is nothing more important than having it be calmed in the cage.

Everything goes well for a while… until one day, when what you had given it to care for disappears. you don’t know where they went (or maybe you do) and the animal falls into a deep depression. you observe as it begins exhibiting stress-related self destructive behaviors like biting its own fur off. but those soon switch to threatening behavior. it starts slamming and tearing into the cage, openly attacking with fangs and claws at the employees, causing a ton of problems- it was only a matter of time until this happened. It has nothing to lose anymore, and you now understand the murderous rage that all those stories talked about. In the dead of night, you walk by and can’t see anything in the darkness but you can feel its sharp eyes watching your movements…. plotting.

If it got out it would certainly try to kill you.

One of the employees goes missing one day, on top of the animal being way more unstable and hard to deal with. While you try to solve this new problem, you tell everyone to halt their work and warn them to not make any sudden, startling movements around the animal + not go near the cage at all for the time being, in fear of it lashing out more. They are all following your orders to stay away. But unbeknownst to you, the missing keeper had actually fallen into the cage with the animal, who is now very focused on toying with its new prey...

When you find out about this, there will need to be a choice: face the threat directly, rescue the employee and risk punishing this already unstable animal for its actions in an attempt to get it under control (you have never done this before) or, cut your losses like previous times and just allow it to play with its toy…?

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fun little analogy & speculation of the federation’s pov related to q!bad, with a sprinkling of special guest theory. the reveal that they’re scared of him & treat him kinda like a dangerous wild animal gave me thoughts :3