Insectoids: The Job of the Males

Lu Yao’s men came quickly enough, and picked up not just Cheng Zhaoci and Xiao Ji, but also took a detour for He Huaijian.

They arrive at Lu Yao’s own mansion soon enough. It’s not a big mansion, kind of like Wei Zhuo’s own, probably because Lu Yao now lives alone. There’s another visitor at his place, however.

Bai Jun, who Cheng Zhaoci just had a call with.

“I-I’m still worried, so, uh, I came to see,” Bai Jun nervously walks over to Cheng Zhaoci, “are you-you really are going to be uncle Lu’s grandson-in-law?”

“Yeah,” Cheng Zhaoci answers matter-of-factly, then asks, “so you’re pretty good at weapons tech research?”

“Of course!” Bai Jun answers by reflex, confident in his expertise. Everyone is looking at him, though.

Cheng Zhaoci continues asking, “but why would males work on weapons tech? It’s not like males are smart enough,” Cheng Zhaoci says deliberately.

Bai Jun, who just now realised his slip of the tongue, is incensed once more, “what do you mean not smart enough?! Shemales are the ones who don’t have the intellectual capacity! Us Institute researchers all have perfect memory! The First Research Institute invented the mechas, you know?!”

“Wow,” Cheng Zhaoci, Xiao Ji and He Huaijian all respond with unanimous amazement.

Lu Yao… has nothing to say. That’s why he often can’t tell if these males from the Institute are geniuses or dumbasses.

Bai Jun realises his slip of the tongue… again. Now he’s decided to block his mouth physically with his hand, “you’re trying to get me talking again?”

“I’m not?” Cheng Zhaoci says with this innocent look on his face.

“No, he did not,” Lu Yao quickly leads the teenage insectoids away, “you were the one spilling stuff yourself. Don’t blame it on xiao-Ci.”

“I… I…” Bai Jun’s face is all red. He looks like he would rather not talk to Cheng Zhaoci for a while.

Though that’s when He Huaijian interjects to ask, “can I ask you for advice?”

Bai Jun has practically admitted to being a First Research Institute researcher. He’s overheard his classmates, that it’s exceedingly difficult to enter. At least, the passing rate of students taking their enrolment examination has always been zero. Some of them speculate that those doing the research are robots and AI.

Otherwise, how come not a single one of them is accepted? Their academy is one of the top performers in the Federation.
Unless AIs have taken over.

It turns out it’s not AIs, though, but males. He Huaijian suspects he’s stumbled upon serendipitous circumstances, and certainly would like to ask questions as well, on his current project.

He just doesn’t know if Bai Jun would answer or not.

Unexpectedly, Bai Jun isn’t opposed to answering him.

Cheng Zhaoci thought that this Institute thing is largely kept under wraps outside, and imagined it as some sort of secret male society that shemales cannot learn about.

“Huh? All males? That’s because not a single shemale or demi has passed the examination!” Bai Jun looks like he’s given up the veil entirely after Cheng Zhaoci asks, “if a shemale or demi passes, then they’d be in,” like Parliament. Mostly males, but some shemales can be found here and there as well.

“You’ll know why no one knows about this after meeting my father.”

“Your father? Oh, right, your dad is the Chairman of Chief Command. You mean, he’s already married?”

Bai Jun “…”

“Xiao-Bai, really, just shut up,” Lu Yao comes to save the day, “xiao-Ci, don’t ask. You’ll know what you need to when you’re eighteen.”

“Sure,” Cheng Zhaoci has already figured out that eighteen is a major milestone for males – depending on their aptitude results.

“They can come all they want,” Jin Yue is perusing the strategic starmap with legs crossed in his cockpit, and suddenly, he turns to ask, “is that asshole Wei Zhuo on the frontline?”

“He is,” a subordinate answers.

“Ah, then be flexible. Don’t get too caught up with fighting,” Jin Yue replies while reading his holodeck. There are many replies to his many messages, “we’ll have to grow our base first. You might not find someone insane like me around every nook and cranny, but there’s still a lot of us in the insectoids.”

Reading the replies paints a smile on Jin Yue’s face.

“There haven’t been as many males on voyage recently,” his subordinate suddenly says.

“Taking precautions?”

“I don’t think so. They seem to have banded together online to protest… um, kuhum, protest against that comic artist you are following, for his latest chapter.”

“They’ve rented out quite some large advertisement space on several prosperous planets. It seems many of them are busy typing out their anger at home,” the subordinate looks quite confounded as well, “they’re giving the artist thumbs downs, but they aren’t shy with their gifts at all.”

Actually, there are also quite a lot of pirates among them who enjoy the comic artist’s work. Regardless of their usual ‘career,’ they do need some cultural entertainment now and then.

In fact, when that latest chapter was released, a few of the crazier pirates wanted to go to the Capital planet to kidnap the artist and keep him in some sort of room arrest, forced to keep drawing new comics. Though they were caught and sent into ‘room arrest’ themselves by the boss for two days. They gave up on the idea completely.

Jin Yue seems surprised for a moment, before waving his hand dismissively, “never mind that, then. Get the four males onto the flagship, and warn those male-coddling babies of the Federation, that if they want to play tough, then they might find these four beloved males sans some arms or legs.”

“Yessir.”

“This photo…” Meng Yuele is knitting his brows, feeling rather astounded seeing the background of Wei Zhuo’s holodeck, “you know, it looks really like you got kidnapped by Mr Cheng Zhaoci. How did you even manage to take a photo that makes the good male look like a bad guy?”

“You need your eyes checked out,” Wei Zhuo shuts him down with a simple remark as he checks his messages with Cheng Zhaoci. He is relieved to see Cheng Zhaoci has been relocated to his granddad’s.

“You’ve been training a lot recently, say,” Meng Yuele can see how tired Wei Zhuo looks. The lack of sleep is getting to him, “do you really need to spend every night in the training facility? Is there even a single insectoid who can actually put up a struggle against you in a one-on-one?”

Even the insane Jin Yue knows to scarper like a rat seeing Wei Zhuo. Who is Wei Zhuo even going to fight raising his fighting strength further? Divide like a cell and fight one another? He doesn’t seem the type to be interested in ‘pushing the limits of shemales’ or some such bollocks.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Wei Zhuo covers his eyes with his hands.

While they slept in separate rooms besides the night his granddad arrived, he knew Cheng Zhaoci was in the bedroom right next to his own. Wei Zhuo could sleep particularly well knowing that.

A high-quality sleep meant high-quality mental state for the next day. When Cheng Zhaoci is yet to wake up, he would also sneakily open the door to Cheng Zhaoci’s room slightly, and feel serene just seeing Cheng Zhaoci sleeping soundly on the bed.

Cheng Zhaoci himself seems somewhat apologetic that Wei Zhuo is always waking up before him and making him meals, but Wei Zhuo would beg to differ. He enjoys seeing the male live without having to worry about the mundanities of life beside him.

Now that he can’t see Cheng Zhaoci by his side anymore… Insomnia has struck him.

He can’t see the little male anywhere. He’s not happy.

In the past, he thought war was good. It was a way for him to vent his frustrations with this world. Now, he feels like it’s a waste of his time. His time he would rather spend with the male.

“Let’s just get all these battles over with,” Wei Zhuo mumbles, not knowing this typical guerilla skirmish with space buccaneers that would usually die down in weeks and, at most, months, is going to stretch into years.