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Up on the ridge, you see your family's home. It's wide and squat, one story, with high ceilings and openings for the windows and doorways as per the traditional Vetucker style. While it has all the technology and modern amenities of any Hegemonic home; this openness negates your innate claustrophobia you feel back at the research base. It casts a warm glow over the mountain path. You can smell the sweet-grass growing on the estate just behind.
You peek your head inside the entry way, seeing one of your siblings. Dad is probably asleep already; older Vetuckers get terribly tired once the sun goes down. You make your way to the kitchen to see your mother there, straining feed.
<span class="mu-g">”Hi mom!”</span>
“Hi sweetie! You're home later then normal; Did something happen?”
<span class="mu-g">”No, I had to, err, help someone with the fabricators for a while. I also volunteered to clean up the fabricator bay today too.”</span>
“Oh good! You're such a nice boy. I'm glad they don't pay you for cleaning. They said that Swall still won't do it unless they get paid for it. Dreadful... At least you're willing to help everyone out! Come over here and help me with breaking open these seed pods, won't you dear?”
<span class="mu-g">”...Err, Mom... I'd love to but can I...”</span>
She turns over to you; either to chew you out or give you permission to run along, but she notices your black eye first. It's already barely a bruise, it'll be gone by tomorrow morning for sure.
“Oh! What happened dear?”
<span class="mu-g">”...Oh, it's nothing. I took up some boxing for my PT today.”</span>
“That's wonderful!”
You somehow don't think she really means that. But then she nods her head to you at your fidgeting. She never could say no to her kids; no discipline in this house when Dad's asleep!
”...Alright dear, go run along and play your tactical sims. Learn a lot! Maybe you could be part of a real life breaching squad some day. You can help with Dinner in a few minutes.”
<span class="mu-g">“Thanks Mom!”</span>
You run excitedly towards your room across the heavy industrial carpet, crushing softly under your weight like grass. It absorbs the impacts of your hooves with barely a sound; the hard polished floors of Jaxtian homes and laboratories would be much too noisy in a Vetucker home.
