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It took far longer than it should have, but Lord Hater finally got around to reading up on watchdogs. He figured it'd be easiest to start with a basic anatomy book. Most of it made as much sense as weird fleshy things could get.
That was, until he got to the chapter discussing watchdog sexes. Obviously the author didn't know anything because even he knew that it wasn't true from personal experience! How dare the ship librarian give him this worthless garbage!
The book immediately got thrown against the wall, and fell to the ground with a thud. Hater loomed above it, fists cackling as they became coated with electricity, when he suddenly stopped himself.
No, he couldn't destroy the book. At least not yet. He needed evidence so they could get any other copies of that trash off his ship! And more importantly, he needed Peepers to find that stupid author so he could destroy them!
"Peepers!" Hater yelled into the phone built into his glove. "Get to my room this instant!"
Peepers, as always, arrived within minutes clearly out of breath. He looked around the room in search of any obvious issues before sighing. "Sir, please call on the watchdogs for trivial matters. I was in the middle of-"
"You don't understand, Peepers!" Hater yelled. "I've been wronged and I need you to fix it!"
Peepers sighed again, half expecting his rage to be over some troll in a video game. "By who?"
"By whatever bozo wrote that!" Hater stomped his foot as he pointed to the book crumpled against his wall. "It's wrong and stupid and they wasted my precious time and I want them in my torture room within the next hour!"
Hater paused, then added offhandedly, "Oh and throw that librarian out the airlock for telling me to read it. As if he thought he could make a fool out of Lord Hater…"
Peepers picked up the book and started looking it over the instant Hater pointed at it. It… seemed to be an ordinary introduction to anatomy textbook aimed at preadolescent watchdogs? What about it could make him want to get rid of one of the only somewhat intelligent watchdogs aboard? Peepers wasn't looking forward to replacing their librarian on a whim.
"Sir?" Peepers straightened out the pages and handed it back to Hater. "I'm sorry but I can't find anything. Can you show me what's wrong?"
Hater snatched it from him, while grumbling about how obvious it was, and Peepers realized the issue as soon as he flipped to the chapter discussing watchdog sexes.
"See!?" Hater shoved the book in Peepers' face while pointing at the diagrams comparing male and female watchdogs. "It says you're a girl and should be having kids and stuff when you're clearly the manliest little man around!"
While Peepers' heart swelled at the compliment, it was cancelled out by what Hater said he should be (even if he didn't actually mean it.) Sweat dripped down his face as he realized that there was no way to resolve this without outing himself. At least Hater came to him first…
Peepers took several deep breaths to calm himself and put his thoughts into order as he prepared to explain. "Sir…" He started, as he subtly stepped past the book to put it out of his view and put his hand on Hater's back.
"It's… mostly correct."
"What does that even mean!? It's either wrong or it's not!"
"So you're a guy despite not fitting into this male category either…" Peepers continued, hoping to find common ground.
"Of course! Why is this writer obsessed with body parts!?"
"Well maybe if you don't need that to be a guy…" Peepers turned the textbook around and pointed at the male's genitals. "...maybe I don't either?"
Hater scoffed. "Duh! But why's this book even bringing it up!?"
"Well when I said it's mostly correct I meant…" Peepers paused, not eager to let Hater know how unusual he is. He threw himself onto Hater's bed as he prepared to rant.
"Look, guys usually look like that and girls usually look at that, but sometimes that doesn't line up and you get a guy that's called a girl because of it!" By the end Peepers was yelling in frustration while wildly gesturing with his hands.
Hater paused to take it in. It sounded weirdly convoluted? He sure was glad he didn't have to deal with whatever mess that was! "Okay but why don't they just… not? Isn't a guy saying he's a guy enough?"
Peppers slammed his helmet forward to cover his face while he screamed.
"Geez! Sorry for asking!" Hater sarcastically yelled.
Peepers stopped to look up at Hater. "No, you're right! It's just- Why does everyone act like it's such a hard concept!?"
"Because they're dumb."
Peepers sat in stunned silence, then laughed. "They really are!"
"So by everyone you meant…?"
"Oh, erm, most sentient beings have similar biological categories and corresponding cultural attitudes based on it."
Hater only understood half of that. Not that he'd let Peepers know. But that wasn't what he was asking about anyways. "No, I mean, all the watchdogs think this grop!?"
Peepers nervously twiddled his thumbs as he answered, "There's a few that don't, including a handful like me but… otherwise yeah."
Hater sprang up while grabbing Peepers and held him under his arm like a football. "We gotta fix this! I don't want flesh-bit obsessed weirdos in my army!!!"
Peepers had a multitude of ideas he'd pondered before without the courage or influence to carry out. But he wanted to see where Hater was going with this. "And how're we gonna do that?"
"How else!? We're gonna order them to stop being weird or else!"
Annnd there it was. The extremely tempting yet not strategically sound answer. But maybe with Lord Hater's intimidation they could pull it off without drastically reducing the size of their army.
"So how do you plan to tell them?"
"With posters! Duh! We'll make them big and eye-catching to make sure everyone sees them, and then we'll blast any watchdog who doesn't listen into oblivion!"
Peepers smiled as he wiggled out of his grasp. "I'll go grab the supplies, sir!", he chirped while saluting him. After Hater got them to take it seriously he could work on putting longer-lasting, less fear-based methods into practice.
As Peepers dashed out the door to get them, Hater yelled after him, "Make it quick! …Oh, and grab some glitter! We gotta make them pop!"
The watchdogs soon found several strange posters hanging up in prominent places on the ship. They showed two crudely-drawn figures of naked watchdogs with arrows pointing at them, and said,
"If you think guys need THIS weird flesh bulb and girls need THIS weird pocket thing, you're WEIRD and GROSS and I HATE YOU!!!!" It was accompanied by a sketch of a smiling Lord Hater with a peace sign, and small, neater handwriting at the bottom saying, "Anyone who questions this will be shot."
"Huh." Wander had slipped into the crowd that had gathered to see what was going on. Sylvia had just finished punching some bozo for snickering over why a skeleton would care when she joined him.
"I didn't know Lord Hater supported trans people." Wander glanced at the handwriting at the bottom. "And Mister Peepers too!"
"Trans rights, buddy!" Sylvia yelled as she rolled on the ground laughing so hard she could hardly breathe. "Trans flarping rights!"
Wander ignored her as they pulled sticky notes out of his hat and added two notes that said, "PS: You don't have to be either... either! Or just one! :)" and "We love you no matter what!"
Peepers later tore down the second note for being too sappy (not to mention hollow and blatantly untrue, in his experience.) But he reluctantly left the first alone. ...Even if it was clearly Wander's work, he was sure some watchdog needed it.
