(1169 words)

As the day of the SWJHL draft was approaching Narboza was extremely excited. He was told that teams would be selecting other humans to serve on their teams.  On Sardang they have a similar yearly event where overlords select which members of the subspecies they wish to use as slaves to work on the spore collecting farms.  There are pre-selection events where all of the individuals on offer are inspected and measured.

Naturally there are a few things that all Sardangian Overlords look for when perusing their goods. 

First, the slaves must have excellent teeth. One might wonder why this is so important if one were not from the planet.  Of course, all good overlords know that a spore stem must be chewed off in order to remove it and place it in the hoverbaskets nearby.  Most slaves will only get a few months in of chewing and ripping before the wear and tear becomes too much and the slaves must be discarded and replaced.  However, there are times when an Overlord may find a particularly hardy specimen that has teeth which are well above grade, and in those rare circumstances they might get an entire season of usage out of the slave before moving on from them. 

The inspection and grading of subspecies teeth is a highly regarded skill that many Sardangians spend a great deal of time educating themselves on.

Second, all potential candidates for spore farming work must have a well developed reproductive system so that they can pass their genetics onto a new line of subspecies for future farming.  For example, great care is taken to look over all aspects of a Spazmodium beast's third breast to be sure it will perform it's reproductive duties as many times as possible.  Failing to do so is simply a dereliction of duty for any spore farming Overlord who is inspecting candidates.  The best of the best farms are known throughout the Nebula for being veritable breeding grounds of high quality candidates and are used as case studies for any up and coming overlord looking to make his mark in the area.

It was with this experience that Narboza prepared himself for the "Draft", as it was called.

The night before the draft he spent a great deal of time washing the salivary glands behind his knees, as well as the reproductive ejectors on the back of his neck. It was assumed that these would be two areas of extremely high importance in determining his draft stock.  Aside from that he took some extra care and concern in sharpening his teeth, though this was something he did regularly anyways.  As he mentally prepared himself for the following day, he was quite confident that he would be the first overall pick, just based on his teeth alone.  He burbled with laughter thinking of some of the horrible teeth that many of the humans had.

To his surprise he was passed over time and again for puny humans who barely filled out their protective cups and had dull teeth.  He could not understand what was happening as the draft board continued to fill out, and was confused as to why none of the scouts had even bothered to ask him to open up his mouth.  He was to learn that these humans did not care for such thing, but wanted humans who could skate quickly, smash into one another with great force, or propel the vulcanized chunks of rubber with high speed.  Learning the ways of the human was continuously astounding to him, and he had much to adapt to.

As it turned out, many of the Overlords for the team also did not whip or beat their slaves, and even considered them what they called "mates of the team". The prospect that all of these humans, many of whom were the same sex as each other, were to consider mating with one another over the course of the season confused him even more.  Why then were the reproductive organs of each potential slave not considered more closely if that was one of the key aspect of their role.  Something was not quite adding up, and Narboza still had much to look into.

As the draft came to a close, Narboza decided to take a look at the final three draft picks to try and understand why they were passed up.

First was Mike Kokkinju. This human was incredibly large and from what he could tell, had decent teeth.  Based on his size Narboza had assumed that his reproductive organs were likely in excellent condition as well - though he would need to someday confirm the correlation between species size and reproductive capability. There were suggestions that some of the species used illegal drugs to increase their size which had the unfortunate side effect of damaging or shrinking their reproductive organs.  Narboza could only surmise that humans from Finland were shunned in some way if they were too large. 

Second was Mop Top.  He was also large, though not abnormally so like some others.  After doing some research it was discovered that he came from a place that was known for sexual promiscuity called Kissimmee.  Some of the dots were starting to connect in Narboza's massive brain. Perhaps, while the slaves were expected to mate with one another on the team, that if they were from a place that was known for kissing and other actions, they would already be tainted and damaged for future mating.  It was only a theory, but given what he had seen so far it made some sense.

Third was Theo McFleury. It took even more research to find out why McFleury dropped so far in the draft but eventually Narboza was fairly certain he found out.  He was from Muckanaghederdauhaulia Ireland.  While that didn't seem to be of much concern at first glance (after all it had a wonderful name much like many places on Sardang), it was located in the parish of Killcummin.  Clearly Narboza's theories were gaining traction.  Why would you select someone who came from a place that would likely due extreme damage to the reproductive capabilities of many of the mates of the team who are with you!

After spending a great deal of time researching and studying, he felt much more confident in the expectations that would be placed upon him as a mate of the team.  He would smash into other humans with high velocity, move his legs very quickly, and be sure to make the chunk of vulcanized rubber go very quickly around the ice.  It didn't make sense yet "WHY" he would need to do these things, but he would eventually figure that out.

As for being a mate of the team he had much thinking on that to do.  Clearly there were customs he was unaware of still and would need to do more research on, and how someone from Sardang would mate with a human was unclear, but he was excited to continue his studies.

"Take care of your teeth,
that might work for you,
but what's a Canadian farmboy to do?"

Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody

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