Challenge #01854-E030: Which is Which?
The gun went off a second time. “Get up and fight, damn you! Show them the real you, you wretched animal!" The shooter’s allies, dozens in number, faces masked, drew in closer, eager to see this… thing… die.
The figure grunted, slowly but painfully rising. "This is the real me. We are not… so different.” A bloody cough. “It is easier for you and your friends to think of us as… less than you, less than human…”
“Shut up, shut up!!” A third shot, but the hand shook from rage; the bullet merely grazed an ear.
A bloodied smile. “We aren’t what you think we are. Because if we truly were the vicious inhuman monsters you believe us to be…”
Suddenly came the sound of metal unsheathed, and the now-silent masked parted as a handful of figures, anonymous like the rest, but armed with hidden blades and intimidating presence, stepped forward and took defensive poses around the injured one.
“…you would all be dead now.” -- ChaosWolf1982
This is the way the world works, they were told. We are One, and everyone else is Other. But you will not learn about Other, oh no. They are too brutal. Too savage. When old One explorers found Other, they were eating people. Brutal cannibals. They only know savagery. That's enough about Them. Time to explore the long and glorious history of Us.
When One found the Other, they were naked. They were almost animals. They didn't speak proper words like the One did. They didn't know real civilisation like the One did. One took the Other in. Gave them work. Showed them new fontiers. Helped them find new opportunities and new lands and they had the gall to be angry about that. Why, before the One came along, the Other didn't even have one language to complain in. How dare they.
But the wheel turns. Those who were beneath the One rise, despite the numerous obstacles in their way. Others who are smart, who invent, who make, who create, who change the world are treated as statistical anomalies. Outliers. They are very smart, for an Other. They're very well spoken, for an Other. They're articulate. And then more and more Others rise up through the efforts of the first, and it's suddenly too many of Them coming in where Us belong. Taking Our jobs. Ruining Our neighbourhoods. Lowering the tone of the place.
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