It began with a soft, muffled rasping sound: claws scratching against the smooth, hard wall. Then a loud crunch as powerful mandibles bit through the shell. There was a glimpse of yellow orange through the small hole, then the mandibles reappeared and started gnawing away.

For the last several months, the egg was a nursery, sheltering and nourishing the growing pupae inside. Now it was a prison, the captive chewing and clawing his way out.

Tiny hands gripped the edge of the hole and tugged, attempting to break it open. The walls of the egg bowed but did not crack. For a split second Christopher was overwhelmed by the need to help his child free. It took great strength not to... this was the first test. A child that could not hatch on his own would never survive to adulthood.

There was no need for him to worry. Instinctively, the unhatched child cut an arc in the shell, then leaned back and used his legs to push outwards. The shell gave with a loud pop, a large section falling to the ground.

Large gray eyes blinked as his pupils dilated, adjusting to their first real exposure to light, as minuscule antenna twitched rhythmically. The hatchling child was a flawless miniature fellow. He looked up at Christopher for several long moments, strands of thick clear fluid still clinging to his carapace, before turning back to the egg to devour it.

Perfect.

He was perfect.

Hours later and they had still not left the nest. Exhausted from the struggle to escape the egg, and with a full belly, the child was fast asleep under the crook of Christopher's foot, hands gently clutching his toes.

Christopher was poised defensively, hunched below the emaciated remains of a goat. For the first time in his life, his mind was empty, vacantly drifting. As dusk grew into night, he slowly came out of the trance.

Thoughts flickered from one memory to the next. His own maternal father, who'd produced and reared him; his paternal father, who he'd never really known as anything but just another fellow. His own child would only have one parent. It made him think of what had prompted him to reproduce: honestly, there was no one single reason or event. A mosaic of thoughts and memories flooded over him, each one with such clarity it could have just happened.

die eersgeborene

Fanfic by Jixie 5/28/2010

District 9 © TriStar Pictures, Block / Hanson, WingNut Films

They were not at war.

Checking outside one last time before ducking inside, he reminded himself again. They were not at war. This was just a precaution.

He was constantly amazed by the contradictory nature of humans. Some were kind, some were abusive, and they were all very clever and manipulative. Their caste system was highly dysfunctional, causing more bickering and hatred than harmony, which was difficult for him to understand. But most confusing was how the species would display a great deal of intelligence and a great deal of stupidity all at the same time.

This was the perfect example. Paul pulled aside a fake wall and waved exuberantly at the array of weaponry collected. "Take whatever you want," he urged.

The humans had rescued his fellows from the mother ship- which, like an egg, had turned from a fortress into a prison. They staged a massive recovery mission, bringing a great deal of food and supplies and medical relief for a species they'd known nothing about until then.

... and then dumped them in the most convenient place possible, right outside of Johannesburg. Right beside a heavily occupied human city. They'd had no way of knowing whether the two species could co-exist, or even if newly introduced pathogens would devastate each others non-resistant populations.

The lack of foresight grew more obvious as the city's occupants realized they didn't exactly want to co-exist. That, Christopher could understand - after all, they rarely integrated with other species on other occupied planets - but to settle them one place and then decide it was a bad idea, had been a painfully foolish mistake.

Humans had also made the mistake of trying to salvage some of their weapons and technology. Most anything small enough to be carted off in a helicopter was taken down along with the refugees. However they intended to study these stolen goods, they failed to hide them, or even move them from the immediate area. Although most of his fellows did not have a plan for their weapons, scanners, cleaning and filtration devices, small medical tools, or entertainment platforms... they did know well enough that these things belonged to them, and were very quick to reclaim them. In the end, the humans ended up with very little of what they'd originally hauled from the mother ship.

He carefully picked up a flame thrower, balancing the weapon on his arm, caressing the trigger with his fingers. After a moment he shrugged it off and hung it back on the wall, then selected a smaller arc gun. This weapon wasn't as familiar, but it didn't carry the connotation of the flame thrower.

Nodding to Paul, he carried the gun into the other room as his friend replaced the false wall.

Hiding the arc gun, Christopher couldn't help but reflect on his choice. The weight and feel of flame thrower brought unpleasant memories. He'd never been in any war or conquest, but he had been a part of containment and cleansing during the fungus outbreak.

Wearing a clunky, unwieldy biosuit - nothing like the refined armory mechs - they'd been sent out to incinerate the victims contaminated with fungus. Fire would destroy the spores, so they had to burn everything. He was still haunted by memories of bent, twitching bodies dragging and shuffling aimlessly; the emptiness of their already dead eyes; the crown of velvety white horns that grew from those in the farthest stage of infection. The biosuit had filtered out the smell, but not the noise... that wet crackling of bodies burning, gray ash drifting from the sky.

At least the fungus was something they could identify... something they could combat. The unknown virus that crippled them had stormed through their ranks, before they even had a chance to understand what it was. Before they could find out how it worked, who was naturally immune, or how to stop it.

Now all they could do was wonder if they were still carrying the disease, and if it was even possible to return home without infecting others.

He was in line at the meat vendor when a whistling chirp caught his attention.

It was a friendly cat-call, and not unwelcome. One of his associates, Helen, approached the line to greet him.

"You're looking mighty green today," Helen complemented as he carefully looked him over.

Christopher beamed. He may never get the amount of that attention Gerald did, but many found his unique Developer features quite attractive.

The pheromones helped. His scent changed before anything else had. But it was the color that got real notice. The tint grew bolder with each moult, leaving his shell iridescent with a muted olive-brown base that graduated to metallic emerald green, depending on the light.

As fashionable as it was to paint ones shell in bright, fetching colors, most fellows still appreciated a nice, natural green or blue.

"I have some... parts... for you. Found things." Parts from the ship, he meant, or at least parts he believed where from the ship. Like most, Helen wasn't very good at discerning the difference between their technology or humans. And, like most, he knew better than to talk about their salvaging efforts in public. But Helen wasn't very good at being sly.

Christopher nodded absently. "Give them to Francis."

The breakthrough happened when he was explaining the shuttles pilot controls to Francis.

It had stumped Christopher for months, he couldn't get those controls to respond no matter what. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, having another fellow's perspective might give him a nudge in the right direction, he'd brought Francis in to go over the problem.

"I don't know anything about that," Francis insisted, for what must have been the fifth time.

"Yes, I know." Christopher pointed to the I/O connection and the twisted greenish cable leading from it. "It just helps if I can show someone else. Besides, you might notice something I missed."

"I won't."

With a click of frustration, Christopher gave Francis a look. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing. It's just- it seemed that we would have accomplished something by now." He paused. "When you talk to me about these things, I feel like an idiot. Before... before I didn't know what I didn't know. Now, every time we look at this shuttle it rakes at my tendrils just how inept I am!"

There was a minute of silence, and Christopher slowly shook his head.

"You think I don't know that?" He turned his attention to the controls for a moment, fiddling with them, then looked back at Francis. "You think I haven't been there? I know better than anyone what you're going through, and there was no one for me to ask questions or to guide me."

Francis immediately grew tense, bending his knees in submission. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to belittle you."

"It's okay." He shook his head again.

There was an odd, passing thought, where he realized it would be easier to teach a child. The changes in his genetic material were advanced enough that any offspring he had now would hatch as a Developer, and instinctively be more capable than even he himself was. Christopher dismissed the thought as quickly as it came - why was it the shuttle seemed to encourage thoughts of breeding more than anywhere else?

He wondered if it was because the small ship stirred memories of the mother ship and their home. Or, if it was because the contained air trapped scents, and the build up of pheromones had an effect on his behavior. He could still taste the lingering scent of Paul and his youngest child, who'd been there nearly a week ago.

Absently, he continued to go over the controls with Francis, when he realized he was going into more depth than he'd intended. Snapping back into focus, he pointed out what the problem was, what caused it, and now... with a rush of enlightenment... how they were going to fix it.

Francis picked up on his sudden enthusiasm, and listened raptly. Soon, Christopher was shouting through the trap door as Francis scrambled around the hut, pulling cables, cutters, crimps, and the parts to the soldering iron.

They worked together, Christopher warmed by the chance to synchronize with another budding Developer, Francis carefully following Christopher's guidance and helping where he could. They formed a simple relay, and while it may have been laughable to those who'd engineered the ship in the first place, it was all they needed to reach peak performance and encourage each other to do far more than either could've accomplished alone.

The shuttle hummed with life as Christopher manipulated the controls.

There was no group of fellows, no cheering or congratulations. It was just the two of them, Francis rattling with laughter, and Christopher, stunned by all that had just happened. Emotions caught up with him moments later, and he sunk to the floor, overwhelmed.

Hands grasped his forearms and Francis joined him on the ground, their private celebration coming about in the most primal of ways.

They didn't tell the others, not right away. The next few weeks they spent exploring the particulars of the now functioning craft.

"You're in an unusually good mood," Paul observed.

Christopher glanced up from the cow head, slurped down the remaining eye, and nodded. "I've been able to get a lot done." Then he paused for a moment. "Francis has become more useful to our work."

"Well, it's good to see you happy for a change."

A small child scampered through the hut, wove between Paul's legs, and raced back outside. In a few minutes he was back, begging for food. Paul bit off a large strip of muscle from the jaw, and handed it down, and his son plopped down on the floor to eat.

Christopher watched, amused. The basic instinct to breed had always been there, in the far back of his mind, but he hadn't reached maturity until after they'd reached Earth... and ever since he'd been focused on finding a way to get back home. Still...

"I was thinking, it might be... time... to start considering offspring."

He waited for a response to the unspoken request, but Paul said nothing. When Christopher gave him a questioning look, his yellow-painted friend smirked.

"Your first child? If you do, he should be yours only."

With the shuttle up and running, the next order of business was communication with the mother ship.

It was more than capable of communicating, and possibly even manually over-riding the ships auto-pilot controls. They'd got it to send out an open signal, but were stuck when it came to getting any response.

"What are you going to do when it's flight ready?"

Christopher glanced over his shoulder. "What?"

"When the shuttle is flight ready. Do you have a plan?"

A plan.

Now that was a good question.

"The plan is to go back home."

This earned him a curt laugh. "I know. You can't go by yourself. Are you going to take a crew? A group of friends?" A crew would mean at least two others, they never traveled in less than three... but a group could be anything from three to three hundred. "Or could we take everyone?"

He mulled it over. The truth was, he hadn't really thought about it. Christopher's focus was on their technology, their ship, understanding how they worked and fixing them so they did. He wasn't a Commander, and had no desire to step into such a role. He did what he had to for his work - but preparing and organizing the migration of millions of fellows was so far out of his scope, it was impossible to even know where to start.

"A crew... I think... would make the most sense. Once we are back home, they'll have all the information needed to have the problem handled by a Founder."

Francis was quiet for a moment. Then he tapped his finger against his antenna, lost in thought.

"If we could show some of the others, the other Developers, that the shuttle is working... they will probably come along as a crew."

"It's unlikely."

Christopher and Francis weren't the only ones to progress to a higher station - just the only ones actively working towards a solution. The others... the ones who'd had the sense to lay low and survive... had lost all hope of getting off Earth, or even improving their current conditions. "You don't know how I've pleaded for help, or how little reasoning with them had an effect."

"But now we have the shuttle working."

Christopher was silent: he'd long given up on getting help from the handful of other Developers.

Quickly getting the point, Francis dropped the subject. "So it will be you, myself, and Molly?"

"Hmm."

"Or Paul? But not both. There won't be enough of us around to diffuse the inevitable conflicts. Molly would be more useful... but..." he smirked, "it would be just the two of us, with him."

Christopher laughed, then shook his head.

"There's still plenty of time before we have to choose."

The next ovulation cycle came, and at the height of his fertility, Christopher spent days scavenging garbage heaps in the city... as far from District 9 as he could safety go. Avoiding Paul, Francis, and everyone else.

It came, and went, and he did not self-fertilize.

Gun shots rang out, some fellows ducking and running, others looking around to find out what had happened. There was the sudden scent of fear and pain, which drew more attention than the shots had.

Within moments the excitement died down, musk dissipating in the wind.

Christopher ignored the commotion: his policy on humans gangs were to leave them alone, and in turn, they generally acted in kind. A feral dog ran past him, limping, as he headed towards Molly's hut. Shouting broke out, followed by another round of gun fire, this time much closer.

Then there was a sharp piercing agony in his leg. Panicked, he bolted behind a shack, dropping to the ground. Looking down at his upper leg, there was a glimpse of splintered shell amidst the pooling blood. Turning back towards the alley, he flinched as more shots were fired. Humans and some angry-looking fellows raced through street, followed shortly by a smaller group.

The noise grew distant as they went farther and farther away.

Still, he did not move for a very, very long time after that.

Gerald gnawed thoughtfully on a dented can of cat food.

"Would you give it a rest already?"

He glanced up at Molly, who was currently picking bits of shrapnel and broken shell with a pair of tweezers.

"But there's still some in there, along the edge," Molly replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

Christopher winced as the metal probed his wound, digging into torn flesh. Molly was thorough, not gentle.

"Where'd you get the money for that, anyway?"

They were halfway through the month - welfare monies had been passed out weeks ago. None of them were especially good with handling money, or really even the concept of currency, but Gerald was the worst. How he could afford even a single can of cat food this time of the month was a mystery.

He wasn't ashamed to tell them.

"A human woman paid me to comfort her."

This elicited a laugh from Molly, while Christopher could only stare. "You would - you're coupling with humans now?" he finally managed.

"No? No. I didn't. It wasn't coupling, I only used my tendrils."

The tweezers clatter to the floor as Molly bent over, rattling the spines on his arms with laughter. Gerald gave him a dark look, cursing as he continued.

"What! It's not funny, what's wrong with you?"

"You- you're a prostitute!"

It was a made up word in their language. Prostitution had been an alien concept, the best they could come up with was an insult that meant 'one who eats without working', mish-mashed with a crude term for coupling. A freeloading fuck, to put it in human terms.

Christopher found himself chuckling, despite his pain. Of all the fellows who would turn to prostitution for cat food... well, it wasn't that surprising.

"I never coupled with a human. They're strange! I don't like it, I just did her a favor, made her feel happy. It's different. Molly. Molly! Stop laughing at me!"

Molly gained composure as the distress in Gerald's voice became evident. Then, cuffing him on the side of the head, scolded him. "Oh, lighten up. Don't let me hear about your whoring yourself out for cat food again."

"But-"

It was too late, Molly was now back to the job of cleaning Christopher's wound, and deliberately ignored him.

It wasn't long after that Mack arrived with vials of antibiotics and ointments. Human medicine, none as effective as their medical machines, equipped with DNA-based technology to repair everything from the simplest scratch to the deadliest wounds. Some human medicine and techniques were more helpful than others, while some were detrimental. These would keep his wound clean, and help the flesh regenerate sooner.

"Why don't you just cut it off, let it grow back?"

"That takes too long," Christopher answered.

"Helen's arm grew back in one year. That's not long."

He shook his head. "It was eighteen months. It's too long for me."

And what was too long for him was too long for everyone. They couldn't afford to have Christopher sit out for a year, much less a year and a half... not when he was this close.

While it hadn't quite been a near-death-experience, the injury had forced him into action. His anxieties and concerns over producing a child were soundly squashed by the greater anxiety and concerns over staying barren.

With this shift in balance, there was only one thing he could do. When his leg had healed enough for him to walk without a crutch, he looked up the address he needed, and limped into the unsegregated part of Johannesburg.

"Can I help you?"

A small, plump human female peered at him from behind the front desk- a semi-circle counter blocking the door to the back. By human standards she was shapely and attractive, with an average face. By his standards she was fat and pasty, breasts like swollen tumors. After all these years the two species had grown accustomed to each others appearances, but Christopher was still put off by the strange nose, tendril-less toothed mouth. The lack of tendrils was probably the worst part, worse than the skin or breasts or nose.

Worse even than the veins, a network of spidery blue-green veins below the skin, which was almost semi-transparent to his eyes.

"Excuse me, can I help you sir?"

He blinked back to reality. "Yes, please. I would like to apply for a license."

"Which one?"

Most of his dealings with humans were with the criminals who flocked to District 9. Christopher was not used to polite - even if it was feigned - conversation with them. It made him distinctly uneasy.

"A... parenting license."

"Do you have a breeding license?"

"No."

"You'll need to apply for one first, to legally lay eggs. Do you already have an egg?"

"No."

Pale eyes narrowed, her eyebrows dropping by a fraction of a millimeter. Did she think he wouldn't notice?

"Are you sure you don't have any eggs?"

"I have not laid any eggs."

Slowly, she opened a drawer and started pulling papers. Laying them on the counter, she pointed to each one, briefly explaining what they said. He quickly realized that she assumed he couldn't read English.

"You'll need to sign here, here, and," she put an 'x' by each signature line, "right here. You may sign in Outlander Standard."

He quickly examined the forms. They were standard human legal documents, overly obtuse in both language and intention. There had been so many they were forced to sign - residential agreement forms, disease control and sanitation standards, weapon surrender forms, to name a few. Nothing here stood out, and satisfied, he scratched out a signature in all the required boxes.

...in English, if only to make a point.

Saying nothing, the woman took them from him, writing down a code in each right hand corner, and stamping next to every signature. She then dropped them into an envelope, and leaned heavily on the counter.

"There are a few standard questions. Do you already have an egg?"

It took him a few moments to regain composure.

"No."

"Do you know the whereabouts of any current nests?"

"No.

"Have you ever been arrested for criminal or weapons violations?"

He blinked in surprise. "I have not."

"Have you ever been cited for disease or sanitation code violations?"

"No." All of District 9 was a sanitation violation, but that was not a tangent he wanted to go on now.

"Are you currently employed?"

"Yes, I work for MNU's product engineering department." He predicted the next question, "I manufacture components for circuitry boards."

She nodded as she filled out a short form, checking off several boxes, before dropping it into the same envelope. Labeling it with his name - both in English and "Outlander Standard" - she set it into a file box hanging on the door.

"You should expect a response for your license request in four to six weeks. You have a right to contest the response if you so like. A parenting license should be applied to after receiving a breeding license and before laying eggs, if you have not already done so. Questions or concerns should be directed to this office."

"Thank you."

He turned to leave, and the woman smiled at him. There was a hint of sincerity. "I'm sure you'll be a great parent - you're not like those other ones."

Christopher wasn't sure what disgusted him more: the species insult, or the fact she'd meant well.

Time dragged between application and license. If anything, the second wait was more agonizing that the first.

He couldn't explain what had compelled him to go the legal route. Between contraband and weaponry, there were enough broken laws to land him in prison forever. Perhaps it was a misguided sense of pride, or over the years he'd learned some human hypocrisy. More likely, though, it was the fact that breeding without a license wasn't risking his life. It was risking his childs.

Paul had laughed when he found out, and gently teased him.

Between the delays and the timing of his internal cycle- and ultimately, his impatience- he was gravid before the second license came in. This led to a flurry of "what-ifs"... what if the license never came? What if the egg was laid before it did? What if they found and destroyed it? Or worse, what if it hatched, and they took the child away?

What if they took away his license after that, didn't let him try again?

What if...

He would have to shake off the irrational paranoia each time these questions began to form. It happened more than he cared to admit. The worst was when he returned to the city and fill out yet more paperwork, he'd been sick with fear, worse than anything he'd ever experienced. Fortunately, humans could not pick up on the slight physical changes, much less the cloying scent of motherhood.

Even after his application was approved and his paperwork was in good order, Christopher was still plagued with anxiety, leaving his work troubled and his sleep restless.

As the time drew near, his attention shifted to the nest, his work entirely neglected as he fretted over setting up an ideal place for the egg to incubate. Paul helped here, although he was more experienced with building large community nurseries, and more importantly, camouflaging them against "predators"... in this case, humans.

If he had to be honest, Paul ended up more of a distraction than anything. If being in the shuttle stirred certain feelings, being in the nest whipped them into a frenzy. More often than not, the half-finished nutritional drip-feed remained half-finished and forgotten, as the two took turns comforting one another and coupling. It was a pleasant reminder why Paul had always been a favorite... of course, Christopher was endeared by his fellows loyalty, eagerness to help, and nurturing, maternal nature. But it didn't hurt that he was one of the best partners Christopher had known.

In the end, he'd had no choice but to ban Paul from the nursery, just to clear his head and get anything done.

Instinct drove him to spend more and more time at the nest, until he was spending more time there than at his home. After he had everything set up and ready for the egg, Francis would bring over smaller projects for them to work on. Francis would inevitably take the lead in whatever they were doing, with Christopher fighting to stay focused.

They were converting some old computer CRT monitors when he went into labor. Francis wordlessly gathered the equipment to leave. The somber silence was comically broken by the bleating goat, tethered outside, oblivious of its impending doom. They laughed, and Francis reassuringly grasped Christopher's arm for a moment before hurrying out the door.

Labor was a strange experience, painful, but not as bad has he'd expected. The egg came out thin and malleable, its leathery shell wrinkled and contracted. Exposed to the atmosphere it began to expand, slowly ballooning out into a familiar ovoid shape, after which the shell began to harden. It was a this crucial point that he hooked up the IV's and tubing to provide nutrients to the developing pupae.

Once upon a time, the egg would have contained everything it needed, but they'd long since grown past that point. By pumping in external nutrition, the child would develop faster, hatching stronger and healthier. After this practice had caught on, they'd relied on it to such an extent that their eggs couldn't survive without it. It was a non-issue on their homeworld and their generational ships, but a huge complication here on Earth. There had been much trial-and-error coming up with satisfactory rigs, and even now, it meant that their eggs were especially vulnerable to human meddling.

Quickly dispatching the luckless goat and hanging it from the ceiling, he gave the nest one last look over, double checking the tubes and connections before heading back home.

The overwhelming maternal feelings eased with each step. He still felt incredibly protective of the egg and the nest, certainly, but the anxiety and emotional turmoil began to fade now that the egg was outside and fairly self-sufficient.

Stumbling into his house, he started getting ready to bed down for night, then thought better of it. Uncovering the trap door and opening the hatch to the shuttle, he hopped in and set to work.

The next few months had been some of his most prolific. He came up with a better, more efficient way of refining the biofuel - the lifeblood of their ship - so that what they collected would be purer and more potent. He began to set up a new lab in Paul's home, which, despite Molly's teasing, was really out of practicality. Of course he still had his own preferences... who didn't? But as his hormones normalized, his attention naturally shifted back to fixing the shuttle, and getting the hell home.

A small nagging part of him felt he might have made a mistake. Even in the best circumstances a child would be a distraction, possibly even a disruption, and once he'd refocused he was reluctant to let anything else derail him.

Now, now he could only wonder that he'd ever felt such a thing.

That he'd ever questioned, ever hesitated, ever doubted.

It was an epiphany. All of these things that had come together for this moment, in this nest. This child. This father. Their people, stranded on this planet. Here, the culmination of everything he'd done, everything he was.

Reaching down, he placed a cautious hand against his sons neck, tracing the scalloped edge of the scales across his shoulders before gently cradling his head. Eventually, Christopher knelt down and scooped the child up. He woke, briefly, and squirmed into a more comfortable position. A tiny pair of hands gripped his arm, while the smaller second set pawed at the air. With a satisfied chirp, he nestled in closer and drifted back off.

Elbowing the door open, Christopher side stepped out into the night air, where the light from city glinted across iridescent green.

Perfect.