Almost six months.

Six months od doctor Krill's lecture series and they still felt as if they didn't understand humans anymore than they had when they first started. Despite months and months of research, and papers, none of them had managed to get a grade on an assignment that was higher than a C – Dr. krill was using what he called the human letter grading system to give them some more experiences that would help them bond with humans, and boy were they bonding with the humans who just couldn't seem to get it right.

It wasn't that Dr. krill was an unfair teacher, it was just that most of them always managed to be wrong in some massive and obvious way about humans. For example, when writing a paper about how humans cannot see in the dark and would be likely not to survive on a dark planet, but then potentially forgetting about all the humans who survived being completely blind Everything you could say about humans was generally untrue for another human.

Humans have an extreme sense of survival however they seem prone on tossing themselves from high places just for the fun of it.

Humans were both the most survival oriented and the most danger prone species in the entire universe, and that let to some very strange stories that often seemed as if they couldn't possibly be true, but often turned out to be true anyway.

Either way, the class had been both difficult and exciting, and now they were approaching the end of the semester, and Dr. Krill had promised them something very special to go along with their group project.

They all waited nervously in their predetermined groups watching as Dr. Krill stepped into the room.

He said something to his TA and then turned to his projector to fiddle around for a moment.

When the lights blinked overhead this time.

Dr. krill trend to look at the class, "Understanding that we are approaching our last few weeks of class, I have decided to do something a bit special for all of you. To prepare you for the real world of working with humans. I understand that all of you have been working hard despite your abysmal grades, and have decided to do something that human schools do when just such a thing occurs..... Grading on a curve. I certainly didn't expect any of you to understand humans any better after all of this was over, so this week, I am going to give your real opportunities for some real learning."

He looked around the room rather smug, "First of all, I want to introduce you to a REAL life earth predator."

Somehow, in some way, Krill made a sharp whistling noise, and out of the darkness of one of the entrances, their came the soft thudding of footsteps.... Four of them to be precise.

When the furry animal raced into the room the entire class went into a state of panic. Aliens leaped up on their desks and screamed. Vrul inflated and began floating towards the ceiling, all was chaos as the large fuzzy creature raced around the perimeter of the room and then straight towards Dr. krill himself.

More screaming.

"Waffles Sit!"
The animal skidded to a stop, and then sat with a soft thump on the floor.

The classroom grew very still as Dr. Krill began to pat the predator's head.

A pink tongue lolled from it's mouth past massive white K-9 teeth. Its huge ears swiveled back and forth.

The class slowly began to relax back in their seats as Krill continued to pat the dog, rubbing the fur under its chin so that it raised its head and grumbled deep in it's throat. Its tail slapped repeatedly against the ground.

"Everyone, I would like to introduce you to one of the staples of a human pack..... A dog." He continued to pat the animal, as she slid to the ground beside him tail still thumping loudly against the ground, "Waffles was trained by humans for humans, and has the ability to both detect and prevent psychological crisis. As you all know humans are rather prone to mental dysfunction, but this dog is one of the first line defences put in place for a specific human."

The dog leaned up, and with her long pink tongue, she liked the doctor on the arm.

The class cringed back.

"If you ever want to work with humans, it is likely you will have to work with dogs as well. Any dog that is going to be aboard a human ship will have been vetted for work with other alien races. They will be friendly, and they will calm. Waffles has been around humans her entire life, and around aliens for over two years which is a little less than half of her life."

He turned to look at the room, "I will give a hundred points of Extra credit to anyone who is brave enough to come down here and pet her."

There was silence in the room.

No one moved an inch.

Off in the corner a Tesraki shifted nervously in his seat.

He had the lowest grade in the class and he knew it, but a hundred point os extra credit would bring him solidly up a letter grade or two.... but .... It's teeth were so big, and it probably weighed as much as he did.

It was the look that Dr. Krill gave him that finally urged him onward. Dr. Krill knew, and was, surprisingly, trying to help him.

Knees shaking and hands about to tremble off the end of his wrists, the Tesraki stood, and made his slow way across the room. His ears were plastered flat against his head and his hands only shook worse. The dog grew larger and larger in his vision until she was sitting right before him. Even sitting down she was only a foot and a half shorter than he was, and the panic he was feeling was unbelievable.

He looked into her eyes, and she shifted forward on her paws, snout pushing towards him. He backed away and the entire class gasped. She rocked back on her feet and gently lowered herself to the ground, looking up at him with wide brown eyes.

When he didn't move she slowly rolled until she had flipped over on her back, looking up at him with her head tilted

A tooth poked out from under her lip, and her tail beat against the ground.

"Look at that!" krill exclaimed, "That's a submissive pose she would use on a human, she wants you to rub her chest and belly, go on, she's giving your permission."

Heart hammering in his ears, he leaned down, and with trembling fingers patted the coarse fur on her belly. She made a grumbling noise and he leaped back, but Dr. Krill encouraged him on saying that it was a good thing, and so he continued. The animal kicked her leg a couple of times and the Tesraki felt his entire body tingle with exhilaration.

He was.... He was petting a dangerous earth animal, just like the humans would!

Eventually he was dismissed back to his seat, and the dog rolled over onto her stomach, resting her head on her paws, which she began to lick absently, large ears still perked.

Dr Krill turned to look at them, "But of course this class it primarily about humans, is it not, and I strongly believe that there is really only one way to teach someone how to interact with humans properly...." he looked around at all of them, "And that, is by experience."

The class shifted in their seats with exclamations of surprise, and from down one of the hallways they heard a sharp repeated thudding. The beat was so regular and rhythmic it managed to make many of the Vrul students dizzy and confused, nearly lolling out of their seats.

Dr Krill stood firm two hands on hips, two hands crossed over his chest.

And that is when the column of humans marched into the room in perfect time with each other, their botos hitting the floor such that the seats about them seemed to rattle. The vrul could barely keep in their seats and the other students leaned forward in awe.

Most of the humans wore strange clothing in a black and greyblue pattern all over their bodies, while the human at the front wore light grey and a strange adornment atop his head. The front of his chest glittered with small colorful ribbons and little glittering symbols though no one could have been sure what they meant.

The line of humans drew to the front of the room and then stopped.

"LEFT FACE!"

The group turned in unison with the sharp rattling of boots on the floor."

"ATTENTION!"
Their bodies snapped into position, hands raised to their temples as they looked forward perfectly still."
"AT EASE."

The group of humans, together, fell back into a posture of relative relaxation. Feet spread, hands clasped gently behind their backs, and there they stood as Doctor Krill moved to stand next to them, "Well class, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the Omen's Alpha team. These marines have trained for years in ground combat for most of their careers. IF there is ever a problem on your planet, this is likely who the humans will send as reinforcements."

He turned to the last human, the one with the shiny uniform, "And it is my pleasure to introduce our ship's admiral, who graciously agreed to come and bring his men today. I think you will recognize him from your textbooks."

When the human removed his hat and turned to face them, there was a shocked muttering. They knew him from their textbooks, as HE was the very template for the classic anatomical diagram that adorned many of the pages in their textbooks.

It was essentially his system that they were examining whenever they discussed the systems of the human body.

"A couple of things I would like you all to note here, and those are the highly social structure in which humans operate. This structure includes a strict hierarchy that humans take pains to make known. The Single Star on the Admiral's shoulder marks him as the highest ranking human in this room. He outranks me, these other humans and all of you as civilians. In the human world, he is to be listened to, and his orders to be obeyed. In certain cases humans will overlook the intelligence of what someone is saying, if they are of a higher rank in worry of social repercussion."

He turned to walk towards the marines still standing in their straight line, "They rank in order from this symbol down to this symbol and each of them has an important task to preform. In the early days of our meeting humans, this strict social hierarchy was enough to make some assume that humans were in possession of some sort of hive mind. However, this is clearly not the case. Humans do not have a hive mind, but they do possess a social structure so rigid in some cases that it may seem like it. I would also like to note the diversity in human appearance. The only other species that we have seen with even remotely comparable diversity in facial, tonal, and physical structure are either the Drev, or the Tesraki."

He turned to look at the groups and his antenna buzzed with amusement, "Now, in your groups, I want you all to pick one of the marines to come join you, and then for the rest of the class, I would like you to come up with a principal about humans to demonstrate at the end of the lecture." he pointed to one of the first groups, "pick a human."

There was some slight shuffling and discussion as they tried to determine which human would be best. In the end they went for the smallest human hoping beyond hope that they would be the least aggressive.

It was a real pity that they didn't understand the rule about short humans, and maverick, in an attempt to get to her group, ignored all the rules of decorum and simply stepped up onto the desks clambering over with great dexterity until she plopped herself down in a seat in the middle of the group turning to look at them, "Yo." She said, rather un ironically as they stared at each other in shock.

The other humans were quickly divided out and went to sit with their groups mostly enjoying being the center of attention.

There was one less marine than they needed, so the highest ranking human handed his hat to the dog sitting on the floor and walked over to slide into a seat with them, showing his teeth in a gesture that was supposed to be friendly.

All around the room chattering steadily grew as the aliens began asking the humans quick fire questions which some of the marines found hard to keep up with.

When asked a question Ramirez simply shook his head, "You know what you guys probably know way more about humans that me. I'm not a doctor, or anything else. I am a marine, I know how to do like four things effectively, I call them the four Fs, Fight, Fun, Food, and er well you get the picture."

Maverick was having a very amusing time explaining teeth to the aliens, albeit rather inaccurately considering that teeth weren't actually bone but a mixture of enamel covered dentine, but Krill let it go on for the factor of amusement."

The nervous members of the admiral's group had already been lulled into a sense of ease at the man's friendly and relaxing demeanor, and he was attempting to do his best at explaining a question given to him by one of the aliens, and was doing a better job than the marines at taking their questions seriously.

"Well you see, when it comes to humans you are always going to be relatively safe. Over the past thousands of years, access to soft cooked foods have caused our jaws to grow relatively small and weak leaving little room for our teeth. So most humans don't like food that is difficult to eat. We aren't impressive enough predators that we can just strip flesh from bone. Plus thats a great way to catch diseases, furthermore, our diets and the way we eat really had to change as our vocal cords moved further up in our throats. Sure this gave us the ability to speak and mimic almost any alien language known, but it also made us very prone to choking on our own food."

He sighed, "I remember this one time when I was five and I choked on a hard candy, scariest moment of my life probably, or at least in the top ten. If you don't know what choking is, its when something gets stuck in your airway blocking your ability to breath and you die from oxygen loss, I know a horrible way to die."

The conversations continued all around the room until there was only twenty minutes left in class, and he called a stop so that the groups could demonstrate a human principle that they had learned.

The first group brought Maverick up and one of the other students presented her with a rock No one was really sure why he had the rock, but the fact that it had big eyeballs drawn on it was enough for her to happily accept the gift and declare its name to be "The Boulder." The class was surprised to find that it took such little effort for a human to pack bond with something, but the fact that she held the rock in two hands and occasionally stroked a finger down it was clear enough evidence that it was true.

The other students demonstrated a human's depth perception by throwing an object and watching as Ramirez leaped out over the desks, hands stretched out to catch the object mid fly before landing back on the ground. The precision that it required to do that left the class very very impressed.

Someone else had a human try to identify what something was based on it's smell, and he accurately guessed the difference between Vrull Texraki and Runid just based on their smell. They even brought in one of the other humans to which the test subject exclaimed, "Don't tell me it's Ramirez and his bitch ass. I would know those fumes anywhere."

One of the humans managed to demonstrate a very impressive climbing ability, and another one of the marines was pleased to demonstrate a human's advanced vestibular sense by doing a backflip off of one of the desks. He tried to do it twice, but tripped upon anding and ended up on his back much to the amusement of the other humans.

That was also a good demonstration of the human's empathy reflex as the humans winced and were silent for a moment before they began their ridicule.

If they remembered correctly, humans used teasing and humor as social bonding. They would never have made fun of their friend if he had actually been hurt, but the fact that he wasn't made it clearly acceptable to joke as it let the other humans know that everything was ok.

The last group caught the admiral off guard by saying the word yawn and causing a chain reaction that made its way all around the room until it terminated with the dog, who also yawned, much to the surprise of the students.

Krill watched all of this with interest, keeping an eye on his more motivated students, and the ones who got along best with the humans. He was still trying to get permission from his superiors, but taking a few house students with them on the omen and back to earth would be a great PR move and also a good way to get some of his more invested students an experience that they could really take with them into their careers.

If one thing WAS clear by the end of the lecture.

It was that Maverick was not going to give up her pet rock any time soon.