This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Melanie_UK on 2025-11-28 01:53:58+00:00.

This is a first foray into this genre. Please let me know what you think.

Humanity was descended from predators. That is what the sign on the enclosure read. There was more, but none was of much import.

When they landed, it was like a swarm of locusts, human weapons were as bows and arrows against the lightning, they didn't even really recognize humans until they were almost wiped out.

There was no fat lady alive to sing.

A century later, humans were regarded as a curiosity, the indigenous species that once had the hubris to claim the planet as its own, a notion they were quickly disabused of.

Now, humans existed in something a human would have termed a zoo, for them it was similar, but we shared the space with all indigenous fauna and flora, while great machines worked away outside to change the atmosphere to something they would be more comfortable with. Not deadly for us, but just a bit more inconvenient, just a bit less oxygen, a bit more nitrogen, quite a bit more carbon dioxide.

Ideal for plants.

Ideal for the invaders.

Having eradicated most of the indigenous species, save for small remnants, they were faced with the task of scrubbing oxygen from the atmosphere and adding carbon dioxide. This was done by means of a bacteria living in a sludge that had to be carefully tended. In huge caverns, the lowest of the low labored away at tending the sludge and the machinery that moved air into and out of the processing facilities.

The break for humanity hinged on a simple thought, that the lowest could elevate themselves by creating slaves of their own, and humans came to mind. The sign on the cage was disregarded, not important in the politics of the invaders. Humans were fetched from the cages, and trained in the menial, dirty work that the prior serfs were no longer willing to do. Performance was rewarded by giving the humans other indigenous lifeforms, with the humans tearing these lifeforms limb from limb, a coveted spectacle that soon attracted the curious and morbid, and tickets to these events sold at a premium.

Decades went by and, by now, most of the low level processing was performed by human slaves, with some, having been found to be marginally intelligent and docile enough, having been taught simple mechanical maintenance. Life was good for the invaders, but little did they know.

Descended from predators.

Some humans developed an interest in the processes the invaders used, they also did what humans did best, better even than kill, and that was to investigate. Some parts of some animals, substances from quills, livers and spleens, from glands and sacs, were collected and tested, until, finally, one ray of light pierced the darkness, a compound powerful enough to kill a certain bacteria quickly and efficiently.

Humans communicated, in languages the invaders never bothered to learn, with cunning the invaders would never have attributed to them. Those who were to be given animals to eat began to express which animals they wanted. Not docile bovines, not helpless poultry, no, snakes and spiders, animals that would fight, that soon were recognized to drive up the possible asking prices of the tickets to the feedings.

The requests were granted. Panem et circenses, bread and circuses, the humans gave the invaders, a show they had never seen before, a fight for life and death.

Descended from predators.

Eventually, poisons were collected, strike plans were made. When, finally, the call came, the substances were released into the sludge, the machines gears arrested, circuitry destroyed, and humans freed.

The invaders were plants. There was one thing they feared.

It took oxygen to work.

It was fire.

Safe in the deep pits, humans started a campaign of fire, pumping flammable substances up the pipes they found themselves the masters of, using the machines against the invaders, and while humanity was safe in the caverns, the surface burned.

The plants, the invaders, it turned out, were good for one thing, food for humans. As humanity rebuilt the surface, repopulated it with the indigenous animals, they consumed the invaders, as surely as if they had never been there, took and learned the technology and positioned themselves to embark for distant shores, there to conquer and burn the race that had caused them so much harm.

Descended from predators?

No.

Risen from predators!