fir-trees-unite:

alright alright alright, @space-australians asked for some humans are space orcs re: adrenaline and tonight you shall receive because it’s 1:15 in the morning and my brain clearly does not believe in sleep!!!

After some time of observation, the Intergalactic Fleet happily welcomed the Terrans. While their uncontrollable pack-bonding instincts had caused some… incidents… they were mostly a boon. In dire straits, the flimsy little two-legged things proved themselves capable of surviving in any inhospitable climate and either pulling their comrades out of danger or summoning help for the danger even while suffering from their own grievous injuries. 

So when Medical Chief Sylatn-Dra’xxort got to share an important dinner with a human called Commander Geralt O’Brien – a rarity, because the Fleet was generally segregated by breathing requirements and her people favored chlorine – she was very excited to pick his brain on how his species could go from “let’s put a knife on this cleaning bot and name it and promote it” to a facsimile of the Terran folk hero “Terminator” in a manner of seconds.

Thanks to the airflow manipulation technologies of the bird-like Aarkorysh people, Commander O’Brien’s voice was only slightly warped as he responded to her questions. “Well, obviously you know humans are full of hormones. When things get dire, say because of a tunnel collapse for example, there’s a hormone called adrenaline that gets released.”

Sylatn-Draxxort listened intently to O’Brien’s explanation of how this ‘adrenaline’ was in many ways a biological equivalent of a starship’s emergency lockdown mode. Terran psychologists called this state “Fight or Flight Mode” and while in such a state, a human might even be able to shrug off pain that would kill other organisms as their body was flooded with a veritable cocktail of substances that blocked pain while providing additional blood sugar to perform feats of strength that impressed even Golretzi soldiers. 

“Now the problem with adrenaline is that it’s really only good for you in short bursts,” O’Brien continued, and took a sip from his glass of red liquid – another human curiosity, their fondness for substances toxic to other species with similar biology. “If a human is under that kind of stress for too long they start producing adrenaline and other stress hormones even when they’re out of danger. At that point, the constant elevated heartrate and stuff ends up becoming a medical issue.” 

He smiled to himself while Sylatn-Draxxort took a few bites of her own meal. “Although on the other end of the spectrum you get adrenaline junkies who seek out that kind of reaction.”

The Medical Chief turned a few of her eyes back to look at the dark-skinned commander, who sounded fond. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, we call them adrenaline junkies. These are the people who do a lot of base jumping and crazy ski jumps and stuff.”

“Yes, I recently read about a Sergeant injuring herself ‘skiing’ on Pyrhatsdis…”

O’Brien made a face of discomfort before laughing. “Yeah, I read that too. If I remember correctly, she got out with just a little concussion and some scrapes. I’ve had worse skiing injuries than that, though it was partly just because I didn’t do the straps right.”

“And people seek out the sorts of situations that cause this physiological reaction, even though too much of said reaction causes damage to your circulatory system?”

“I know, right?”

Sylatn-Draxxort reached out one of her many arms to take a sip of the cool mercury brew she was fond of while she considered how to respond to this politely. “How strange,” she said softly.