Long ago, humans achieved commercially-viable gene splicing services for anyone who wanted the limbs of a leopard or the bulk of a buffalo or the plumage of a peacock, to both give those people the means to work beyond an ordinary human, and also to live out their fantasies. People who underwent these processes habitually and intensely came to be known as monsterkin, which wasn't a pejorative at the time.
However, this genetic modification had side effects. Monsterkin tended to lose the sharpness of their human minds and they became more bestial in how they expressed their emotions. The first consequence of this was the routine for governments and corporations alike to exploit them for menial labor on the cheap. Over the decades, monsterkin were also found to be genetically unstable; their kids not only retained their modifications, but the expression of those animal characteristics were either more pronounced, or they were mutated into wholly new characteristics. It was common for these monsterkin to become either quite smaller or quite larger than a normal human, and across the board they needed more food—especially more meat—to maintain their health. It took only a 3rd-generation yak-man monsterkin (nearly 11 feet tall and half as wide at the shoulders!) to devour a preteen human girl whole, stretching his neck and gut without issue, for society to start imposing slave-like restrictions across the whole class of monsterkin.
Of course, this wasn't to last. After decades of monsterkin oppression and slaughter with impunity, a concerted effort of tunneling between slave camps across various regions of the world took place. They rose up at each camp and slew the local human masters! Humanity would become the new slave race, as laborers or sex objects, as their genetic inferiorities should make them. Now it'd be the humans who'd be lucky to survive to the ripe old age of 20!
As a last resort, the governments of the world created massive airships, where a huge population could live out their entire lives without seeing a single glimpse of the surface. Most humans aboard airships never knew of Earth and the monsterkin. Those in command were in charge of defense, and most importantly, stopping monsterkin from discovering flight. If they did, entire airships worth of people would be devoured!
This is where you come in, reader! Loyal men and women such as yourself were enlisted into DROP SQUADS! Drop squads leave the airships behind to be forever on duty on Earth, performing missions to ensure the humans in the sky can continue to collect mineral resources and abandoned technologies from the surface as well as disrupt any attempts for the monsterkin to re-civilize!
The paratroopers forces on Earth weren't always so small in number—over a century ago, the monsterkin wised up and changed their tactic from slave labor (the turnabout was gratifying to them) to near-immediate consumption of captured forces. Aside from its reduced risk of humans getting away, humans tend to be incredibly tasty to monsterkin and the struggle within their bellies is far more stimulating than any other physical sensation. So since most soldiers have become a bit of mass on the thighs of a monsterkin and a lot of feces in the woods, the paratroopers that survive their second or third mission on Earth almost always get promoted to Command, Advisory, or Training for the next drop squad that lands in their area of operation instead of risking their necks any further.
It must be stated again that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS A DROP SQUAD MEMBER TO REVEAL THE SECRETS OF FLIGHT! Monsterkin often attempt to bargain with humans for their knowledge once captured in their bellies; so far, nobody has taken this option, knowing that their death is inevitable and that the word of a monsterkin should never be trusted.
So, what kind of squaddie are you?
