It isn't the first evaluation Sierra Dennison had ever made. All through getting her master's, she had spent hours writing elaborate assessments of supertitan applicants: expected growth profiles, basal metabolic load, estimated damage resistance and exsanguination rates. But this is the first time she's ever met one of her subjects in person and had to make the call for real.

She's not a student anymore, she's Dispatch. If this candidate checks out, and she gives the nod, this young farmer ferret will spend the rest of her puberty shooting hormone supplements and growing from impressive to ridiculous heights, the better to mount stronger armor and heavier guns.

She stays polite enough talking to the adoptive parents, sipping iced black coffee like water and feeling her lapine ears sizzle in the stifling farmhouse kitchen. She nods patiently at their praise of their dear Jessica, and sympathetically at every mention of the growing debt. They show her snapshots- actual printed photos!- of the giant ferret out in the fields, and she makes appreciative sounds and silently guesses how many .50 BMG rounds to the skull the child can endure.

Then they go outside to meet Jessica, and all her old titan phobia comes flashing back when she realizes the corn rises well over her head and she won't be able to see the ferret coming.

Even a twelve-year-old titan still outmasses a young bull elephant. Dispatch can feel the footsteps thudding her way seconds before the giant ferret steps right over the corn rows, an entire stalk hanging from her muzzle like a rustic chewing a wheat stem. Big blue eyes light up, and Dispatch squares her shoulders, forcing her ears to stay up as she looks up at the wall of overall-clad giantess before her.

Then Jessica forgets her manners, and years of careful training in whiplash prevention, size etiquette, and personal-space rights goes out the window. The mortified parents try in vain to wave her off, but she scoops Dispatch right off her feet for a curious petting.

It takes years for Dispatch to forgive her.

---

Adorably drawn by  shadow-of-nights at Anthrocon 2016. Jessica here (who will grow up to be Agent Scarecrow) is a friend's, and little Dispatch is mine.