Lexia overlooked much of the goings on Mieni atoll with regard to the "talk like a pirate day" shoot. It made for an interesting weekend and also carried a hectic travel schedule for those on the Animalia Ambassadoria team that were sent to cover it. WSA might make some acceptations and add "excused absences" for Animalia Ambassadoria, but many of the colleges couldn't do that, and that was why those that had graduated often retired or were used as occasional "guests" for the program. But even with all that, it was not like WSA would allow Animalia Ambassadoria to be used for just skipping school. All members would have to return relatively quickly, which meant if they were to cover something outside Lyre/Animalia, they couldn't use that as an excuse to be out of school for a week.
This meant a fair amount of travel and even hasty travel at that. Lexia knew that once their coverage was done on Mieni Atoll, they'd have to board the return flight in order to return to school. It wasn't a pass to just stay on the atoll. To some degree, it reminded her on what happened relating to her own uplifting and the circumstances surrounding it. It then let her think over all that, given that the pirate theme largely fit with what happened to her...
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Lexia started as a mundane Yellow-Headed Amazon Parrot living in Guatemala. The species was heavily endangered in the wild, largely due to the illegal pet trade. The animal was raised in captivity and those captive birds were legally bought and sold as pets, but the cost of raising them and selling them was often high enough that people would be willing to pay almost comparable prices on the black market. Lexia, however, didn't know that at the time, as she was but a mundane parrot living in Guatemala's rain forest. At the time, she only knew where her nest for the night was and where her favorite foods were, and for the most part she went to those regularly. But then, one hot summer day, that illegal pet trade came to literally hit her in the face.
It started with one net being swung at her from nowhere while she was resting. She took off and managed to avoid that net, and she heard some screams from below and behind her as she took off. A part of her also glanced back for a second to see a few men in dirty jeans and shirts turning and raising their nets on sticks to chase after her. She barely heard the squawks of other birds that had been resting near her. The glance back, however, only assured she missed a large net that was draped across a gap in the trees that happened to be right in the direction she was flying. The net was made of some kind of wire that was barely visible and in her panicked flight, she didn't see it. She and about three other birds flew right into it. The impact caught her in the net, and she let out a pained squawk as one wing was dislocated as she began to roll down the net toward the ground, pulling it around her as she went.
The rolling fall then tightened the net's hold on her and cushioned her fall, but wasn't good for one of the other birds, another Yellow-Headed Amazon Parrot. He'd gotten his head through one of the gaps in the net but couldn't get the rest of his body through. As Lexia rolled and pulled the net around her as she fell, this served to constrict the net around the other parrot to the point that it was constricting on his neck. When Lexia's fall had stopped, with her now at about head height with the men now approaching the net, the other parrot was futilely kicking its legs as it lost its breath and eventually fell dead still in the net, its feet hanging down limp. Lexia squawked at him, but he did not answer. And then the men approached.
"Looks like we only caught two," one said in Spanish as he put on gloves that a Falconer would typically use, "the others managed to avoid the net."
"Only one, I think," the other answered as he poked at the parrot that wasn't moving. He then poked at Lexia, around the dislocated wing joint that was sending waves of pain through her body, and she squawked in protest and pain. "And this one hurt itself in the net."
"We got a vet in town, we can just say it's a pet that hurt itself in an accident," the first answered, "and he's been super trusting. It might take a little while, but the bosses say people will pay good for these birds."
"Yep," was the only answer.
From there, Lexia was put in a box and carried into a nearby town. She could hear sounds of engines and horns and more people talking, and she did end up at a local vet. It was fairly rudimentary and was only good at recognizing that the wing was dislocated and setting it, and the vet did seem to accept the accident theory for why. The biggest thing was that Lexia heard them give off their names, age, address, and other important details. The men were locals from Guatemala but had connections to a sort of smuggling ring that went all the way into the United States, though for the immediate moment, that didn't factor much to Lexia as she was soon back in the box and being driven north. The car stopped long enough to feed her and for the box to be "cleaned" at the end of the day, but Lexia still found herself in the box as the car went north.
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The journey north then went about its own way. Lexia found herself exchanging hands as she crossed borders, and often with the same excuse of being a private pet or something else. She thought she heard some one official questioning something once, but an offer of something was enough to placate the official as things moved along. It was only after the car she was riding in ended up in line at the California border, and that is where the whatever scheme seemed to break down. The box was put in a compartment somewhere in the car and it was all black for Lexia. When the box was then handled and opened, she found herself looking at a uniformed woman and not the man that had been driving her. There was another man with the woman, also in uniform.
"So... we got a guy with a forged trade visa smuggling a bird," the woman slowly and ignoring Lexia's squawks for the moment, "will he talk?"
"Not straight," the uniformed man commented, "I think that's a Yellow-Headed Amazon Parrot. I think they're supposed to be endangered in the wild, IF the bird was harvested in the wild."
"We'll have to check for paperwork," the woman nodded, "if this was one raised in captivity from a licensed breeder, he should have paperwork... though, he also wouldn't have had it stashed in a plastic console under the floor of the car."
"May have to do what those guys in Florida did about a year ago with that Capybara," the uniformed man, "give a call to Horizon. See if they'll update the bird and then she can testify... or at least give us some information that can be used to break the smuggling ring."
These things flew over Lexia's head, partially because it was in English, not Spanish, and partially for at the time she was still just a mundane bird.
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It wasn't until a few days later when someone from Horizon arrived and set up a stand in the open with a water bottle in it. Lexia watched as her cage was opened and the Horizon scientist escorted both the uniformed officers out and shut the door. Once it shut, she made her way out and looked around the room. It was very different from the rainforest she preferred, but it was spacious enough to do more than just hop back and forth the way the boxes and cages she'd been in. Eventually, Lexia got curious enough about the bottle, which had to be filled with water, give the sloshing inside it.
At first, Lexia pecked at the top of the bottle, and nothing came out. She then followed the side of the bottle until she came to a metal cylinder at the bottom of it. She pecked a ball in the cylinder and was reward by seeing some water then drip from the bottle. That got Lexia to drink from the bottle, and she kept drinking until things began to feel weird. To some degree, standing on two feet wasn't a problem, birds had been standing on two legs since they evolved. The thing that happened that startled Lexia the most was that her hips and spine altered a bit and actually enabled her to stand erect, the way the Humans did. Her legs began to grow longer as her body grew in size. Her wings moved more onto her back, and strangely the lingering pain from having them put back in place seemed to go away. She even beat her mostly green wings, only to note that they were bigger and that the top of the table didn't seem to be as far above her head as it did a few moments before.
It felt weird and odd, and a part of Lexia wanted to panic, but the sensations that followed as her hips began to widen and then two limbs began to push out from the general area where her wings had been before. They were tipped with a clawed hand, with the wrists and fingers covered in the grayish-pink scaled skin that was on her feet. The feathers on her newly grown arms were largely green, though her elbows had the same red-orange and yellow feathers that the apex of her wings did. And then two large mounds began to push out on her chest, the sensation felt strangely pleasant and while bringing a hand up to them, she ultimately found a fleshy nipple under the green feathers there, which only surprised her more.
"This is all strange," Lexia spoke, not mimicking Human speech or repeating things that that Humans wanted to pet parrots, and sometimes ravens to say, but voicing her own opinion and noting a rather heavy Hispanic accent to her English. And that alerted those outside the door.
"It's pretty common for new Animalians to feel weird after being uplifted, ma'am," said a voice through the door, which Lexia turned, and saw was still shut.
"Animalian?" Lexia asked.
"Yes, a community of anthropomorphic animals that have their own community that lives alongside Humans in various parts of the world," the voice said through the door, "and abides by Human laws. You were uplifted because the border officials here in California believe you were taken illegally from the wilds of Guatemala for the pet trade, and as a member of an endangered species in the wild, you're also going to be needed to help convict the man that drove you to the US and possibly help bust those that grabbed you in Guatemala, and might well be doing the same to other Yellow Headed Amazon Parrots."
And it was there that the events of Lexia's capture struck her. Those men had taken her from her home, killed another of her kind because the net they had used tightened around his neck, and saw nothing but using her to make money for someone else. That didn't sound right to her, and it did make her more than willing to give the uniformed officers what information she could to help stop the abuse that was being done. She might not be able to return to her old perch as an Animalian, but she could help give some justice for others of her species.
"I would happily help in any way I can," Lexia called back, "though... I appear to be naked. Humans seem averse to nudity. I've never seen one without clothes."
"We have some attire you can wear," said the voice through the door.
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From there, Lexia would get her shot to testify, and while she directly only brought down the man that had driven her into the US, the information she provided was also shared with international watchdogs regarding dealing with the illegal pet trade, which also included alerting the Guatemalan government on those that had captured her. From there, Lexia had her option at living at Animalia, at least under a student visa. She then finished the summer and came in to join Animalia Ambassadoria, which had done one small bit on her arrival in Lyre/Animalia. It seemed interesting and got her interested in helping them...
Which lead to her position now, as a member of the team and reporting on a specialized fashion shoot for "talk like a pirate day."