Author's note: Hello lads and ladies
So the end segment in this chapter kinda came to me in the flow of the moment. I was at the moment thinking about how Riz sees the world and himself, and about how attacking a police officer would end differently then attacking a high schooler as Legosi was the main target in the manga. This was my little spin on it due to the new character.
I think we are at the point where the thread of all stories gets woven together into a fine piece of tapistry. At least we are having all plot lines outstrechted next to each other and they get closer and closer. The climax is not far off. I think that by chapter 28 we enter the final stretch of events that lead to the ending and Epilogue that will do it's best to set up Season 3. There I said it, I of course gotta do the Melon plot line. But so far you fellas just gotta be a little patient. We are just getting to the meat of this season.
Warning: References to suicide
Editors: SuperAverageFoxyboy
Some random reader32
Enjoy!
-Portal
Chapter 23: Watchmen
Louis awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and, in a weird way, even younger than before. Another chain of adulthood's cold grasp had loosened off his mind. Awaking next to Azuki wasn't a shock for a change, but instead just a warm feeling of knowing that he wasn't alone. And that that wouldn't change even in the most dire of situations.
The two arose from bed, Louis letting the lady take a shower before he himself took one. It was a moment of pure peace after all the trouble school's been causing. Afterward, he spent a little time just viewing himself in the mirror, and a weird sense of realization set in.
I don't know why I think I'm like my father. There may be similarities or common interests between the two of us, and we are the same species, but I am my own person. And I decide my own life, no matter who's watching.
In a positive mood, he made his way downstairs to the dining room ahead of Azuki. Oguma's seat was already empty, the last dishes being picked up by the kitchen staff.
"Yuta?" The young buck called for the master butler, the small sheep walking forward with amicable speed.
"Yes, Master Louis?"
"Where's Father?" Louis's command caused a weird reaction from his servant.
"Oh…" The sheep looked a little troubled.
"Master Oguma ate his breakfast early and left for a morning walk. He wished to see you afterward, Master Louis," Yuta reported back.
Great. The young buck looked ahead to the table with part of his eagerness for the day having left him. The one day I actually feel fine, and he already has a plan for another lecture.
He felt a warm pressure on his cheek, his fiance having placed a small kiss. She looked at the butler with an expression of pure sweetness.
"Might we have breakfast first? I have things to discuss with my…" Her pause was delicate, stepping on his foot, his arm reaching around her in reflex. "...fiance…"
"Well, yes, of course, Mistress Azuki. We'll bring breakfast out shortly." The small sheep darted off into the kitchen area as Azuki let go of the young buck, walking to her side of the table. The young heir was stunned again by what magnitude Azuki's character actually carried.
"Eh… Thank you."
"Don't mention it, you need somebody to cut you some slack. And you've shown me that unlike your big mighty important father you actually have the ability to have fun." The doe at the table smirked at him in a tease as she took her seat, companionship present in the gesture.
Louis found that he had an ace up his sleeve his father could never predict nor calculate. The tool of friendship that had hidden itself right in Louis's grasp and out of Oguma's line of omnipresent sight.
Because in Oguma's eyes, Azuki was the perfect daughter-in-law.
His father was utterly meticulous. Utterly thorough with every detail, every member of staff, every gesture in his stride. There wasn't much of anything happening outside of his view… except for his son's personal life, which included his fiance.
Azuki was chosen based on superficial observations and hereditary lineage. Her father was the owner of another one of the top five export businesses in the country, and a business wedding was normal in these kinds of families. The possibility of further checking on her behavior was unlikely if even Louis could do close to anything in his free time without answering or justifying himself for much of anything. And both he and Azuki were smart enough to not let their outside persona be infiltrated by their actual personalities.
I have a plan B. Even if I were to marry, my spouse would be no enemy to me. Meaning that Haru can never truly be lost.
"Sure, I can have some fun." Louis sat down at his seat and pushed his sleeves up. The mere freedom to not have his father opposite of him was reason enough to party, which sprouted a lively smile on his face.
"You have friends at school right?" he asked her.
"Who doesn't have friends?" She retorted, running her hand over her head in order to straighten her fur. Louis eyed her with curiosity.
"Have you had any boyfriends?" His question was peculiar but understandable. She looked only barely surprised.
"My share." She answered with the same suave, cool way of the previous evening. Louis found her to be an unlikely enigma that puzzled him more than anything for the last few days, weeks, months. For a short moment, he contemplated if he had just lost his touch when it came to handling things outside of the mundane, but his relationship with a certain rabbit, and the friendship with three carnivores begged to differ.
"All of them deers?" The question sounded odd, and Louis realized only after uttering it. Azuki's eye caught his, still with that smirk.
"Why do you ask?"
Louis stumbled for words, looking at the table in embarrassment. His cheeks flushed a bright red, and his mind demanded a respectable answer to the question while he himself wasn't sure what to say in the face of this incompetent surge of curiosity in his being.
"I was simply curious," he blurted out, getting himself back under control. The doe laughed a hearty laugh.
"So, that's why you were so tense with your father. You're in an inter-special relationship, aren't you?" She made a short pause to laugh again, Louis wishing he could sink into the ground.
"Before I answer your question, let me ask you one. Who is the lucky lady down for the count? A fellow horn-bearing cousin on the species chart, another herbivore entire or… a carnivore? Oooh, how about a wolf? I could see you being that kind of guy."
"Ahem." The young buck coughed, his cheeks a peachy red. You got a friend on the other side of the board. Why not be honest?
"A dwarf rabbit… whom I love very much." Louis found saying those words to be easier than he thought it would be. Azuki reacted with a quaint smirk.
"Well, isn't that a sight to see… To answer your question, yes, I've had a few ventures with fellows outside of the Cervidae genome. But I never really was thrilled by it. I'm more comfortable with fellow deers as I see." She trailed off, looking into space as she recounted previous endeavors.
"I was curious merely because I wanted to know the reason that drives you to rebel as you do. If you have a boyfriend you fight for or if there is something you don't want to lose." As Louis' question concluded the doors opened, and several servants emerged with breakfast, serving it up as Azuki studied him sparingly from across the table.
The silence continued even as the servants left, her focus now laying directly on him. Louis found his knowledge of people hitting a dead end when it came to her.
"You know Louis, not everything has to be so complicated." The pause weighed on him like packets of lead. The sentence was confusing and eye-opening at once, leaving his head barren of any conclusive thought at all. He felt stripped to the bone by her words, no armor to save him from… what exactly? Emotional vulnerability? It seemed stupid from an outside perspective.
"You're always so caught up in yourself that you don't ever bother to notice what's around you. Not everything has to have some deep reason in order to exist, some things just are. You should bury that damn hatchet with your father and start living for a change. That's the reason why I rebel… I live in the moment instead of in the future."
The deer saw himself sitting at the table, his face an almost frown, and he was in awe. How much his life had been pre-planned by not only his father… but by himself. The bureaucracy had infected his being, and he had shown submission ever since.
"Well, I guess you're right." The deer solemnly replied, sober and clear of any illusion. It was a pitiful sight.
"You'll make it."
Louis looked at the doe, her words coming as a bit of a surprise.
"Animals like us always do…"
The conversation ebbed and choked on the finishing note, a pause of almost five minutes setting in before Azuki commented on his singing performance the night before. The laughter was nice and relieving. Louis was grateful to have finally met her for who she really was.
Finally, they finished their meal, and Azuki left with a soft kiss on his cheek. Partly to keep appearances of the happy couple up, but also partly because she started to endearingly like him. Marrying him no longer seemed like a losing option. They both would cling to their own freedom, and that would make them good partners.
Louis navigated through his home, searching for one of the spacious living rooms. He stood in front of the window and gazed at the clear blue, the sun shining brightly into the room as it still hung low on the eastern sky.
I should take them out sometime. A dinner maybe… yeah, a dinner among friends.
She was right. He needed to live free of a plan for once, taking in life as it comes. Maybe if he enjoyed what he had in calm serenity, then perhaps he would find the point of view he truly needed. Maybe…
"Louis."
His father's voice came from the doorway. A sound he had awaited this morning but mercifully had avoided. He turned around and looked at the large dark figure standing there, his coat still hung around him. A white paper shone out of his hand.
"Louis…" Oguma's voice was full of sadness and regret, his eyes were drawn towards the ground. Louis drew a blank on the reason behind the change in demeanor.
Without a word the senior buck stepped into the room towards the window, stopping right beside his son who, in turn, looked at him quizzically. The old buck remained silent, watching the sunrise slowly. His eyes were a yellowish shade of red as if irritated by something.
"I haven't ever stopped to think about how I've treated you. I never even took a small pause to dare to think what you having all this responsibility actually meant. And that every responsible young adult needs to be treated like one…"
This break in sequence was a wandering one. Louis was in the complete dark, no bearings on anything in sight. He didn't know if he should tremble in fear or knock his head back with laughter. He stayed still with a poker face.
His father turned to him.
W-What?…
Oguma's arms around him were warm and welcoming. His chest was equally warm and… protective. Louis never knew that a parent's hug could be as empowering as it is. It was a first to feel his instinct of safety answered so warmly and welcomingly.
Oguma squeezed him a bit and let go. The first hug between father and son in twelve years of relationship. What a baffling life. Twelve years without a single hug…
He suddenly pulled his hand back to himself, as if remembering the etiquette he usually followed. He awkwardly shuffled his hands and rummaged through his coat pocket. The bright white letter reemerged.
"I don't know how or why you helped them… I suppose I never want to know. But you've shown me that you're ready to make decisions for yourself."
Oguma left before Louis could even answer, the letter in his hand. There were tons of words left to speak and no time to do so. But whatever this letter enclosed it had caused something of a magnitude outside of Louis's field of control. It was frightening how powerless he was.
"What on earth…" Louis opened the letter in a daze. Fearful of what he might see on the inside of the paper, his mind not grasping anything in logic's reach. And as he read through the letter, his jaw dropped further and further. He truly had a talent for getting himself into trouble.
There were nights that things seemed to grow a hostile kind of quiet. When the absence of noise was a droning buzz in your eardrum, making you wary as you wait for the sound to return with explosive and violent resurgence. It was only then when one was used to the noise that the absence of it made you uneasy.
City life had never been quiet to Strightman. His home was in calm suburbs but even there he still heard noise all the time. Crickets chirping, cars driving in the distance or occasionally past his home and the nocturnal neighbor going about their shift. The types of noises that made him snuggle up to his wife knowing he was in the comfort of a safe place.
But being nocturnal became more and more unpopular with the change of the city's heartbeat. Most animals were day walkers, and the many decided more than the few. Naturally nocturnal species just got used to changes or very rarely worked the night shift in order to feel in line. But most activities stayed in the hours of daylight.
The school grounds of Cherryton were just the same, almost exclusively diurnal. A few game nights in the month for a few of the awake at late times to unwind a bit, but nothing that called for specific supervision or noise control. And out on the pathways, it became that… hostile type of quiet. The type of quiet that made you await the noise, the attack… the barrage on the senses that fills the emptiness in frightening quickness.
Strightman walked his rounds as he did every night. The late shift was one of the tasks he personally dreaded. His wife's sleep cycle was diurnal, meaning when he arrived home she would already be asleep. But he never complained to anyone about it. He would never complain about being responsible for guarding lives…
He took off his police cap and inspected the front as he came to a halt. The golden sigil on the front stood for so many things. Justice, safety, civilization… empty promises in a vacuum. Victim after victim made him realize how bitterly ineffective a single watch at the school was. He tried his damnedest and covered ground methodically with precision and accuracy. But the killer proved to be a challenge a notch above what they originally expected.
He sat his cap back on his head and continued onwards through the violent silence, smothering any sensory activity in its crib.
Animals died, new ones were born, others were killed before they even got the chance to properly live. Monsters were hiding among them, no single shred of evidence pointing at anyone. It was a scary thought, to know that just about anyone could be sitting on the edge, no external sign of their internal struggle.
The good samaritan was a nuance in a sea of sleeper agents, waiting for one bad day to unravel in their glory of rage. Countless academics talked about it, politicians had fights about it, and departments were called to deal with it. And yet here they were. A sliver of good in a sea of madness and hypocrisy.
Strightman grabbed his wallet and flicked it open, grabbing for a picture nestled deep into a side fold.
A true testament to how society works was Strightman's family itself. A story that he was forced to keep secret even after all this time.
Strightman was born in a traditional family upbringing. A blooming marriage, the second oldest of the five kids. They shared a decently big house with Grandpa and their uncle's family, making his childhood one that never seemed to be quite alone. Seven kids in the household that he lived an unremarkable life in perfect conditions in. So it was a shock to all when he developed as he did.
He met Vera when he was nineteen. A young cheetah in the police academy, a perfectly well trained and behaved young gentleman versed well in tradition and manners… until he met her.
Vera worked part-time as a barista in a coffee shop Strightman would occasionally visit. Their friendship was initially small and fleeting, a cheetah and a deer had not many things to talk about in the public's eye, but the two clicked. His visits grew more and more frequent, their conversations growing deeper. The two ended up dating just a month after meeting each other.
Shortly after he came to his parents on a holiday weekend, the family had packed his bags and given them to him. They refused to talk or acknowledge any inquiry about their behavior, setting him down for dinner that went on normally even though the adults seemed tense. After the weekend his father came to the doorway and told him to never set foot into their household again. Strightman left without many words, moving into the barracks at the academy until he found a small apartment in the city.
He cried for his family but accepted their jaded views as just how things were. He knew they were traditional and it didn't come as much of a surprise to him, but he couldn't change who or what he was. He continued his work at the academy and met Gouhin about a week after he had proposed to Vera, the two marrying in complete secrecy. He learned during their time as fiances that she had been an orphan, leaving the two without families.
Strightman often asked himself why he had become a police officer for a society that treated his love as a deviation from decency. As if he had chosen to break some kind of code. He had later found out that his family had destroyed family photos and memorabilia including him. He heard from friends of the family that his parents pretended like he didn't exist. He was thankful for their loyalty and asked them to not mention it to them. He treated the whole ordeal with a depressing soberness, leaving emotions out of it and deciding for himself that changing their minds would be a futile and time-wasting task. He had Vera, that was what was important.
Times moved past and he handled it. Only through Doctor Gouhin did he realize that he was still fighting injustice all the same. Even if society shunned his choices so he could still do the right thing. And that was all it was about.
Strightman stopped his patrol at the portion of the chain link fence which overlooked the ocean. The city of Edobutsu was outstretched before him. His city, a beautiful but savage diamond in the rough. Skyscrapers merely hid the rabid blood beneath, the heartbeat of beasts striking through the ground in periodic patterns, like the pendulum in a grandfather's clock.
There were moments when he felt worthless and terrible, where society's rules unchanged in the face of time made him feel like a freak, but those feelings never persisted when he could see the city from an elevated position. The City might house the biggest black market south of the country, have high rates of bigotry and speciesism, and give shelter to some of the greediest people of the country. But it was alive. It breathed and had a heartbeat. And that was something to be cherished.
Dry leaves crunched under a footstep, his feline ears darting straight upwards.
His hand steady on his baton he swung around quickly, easily avoiding the blow from the shadow. The baton connected with the side of the carnivore's face, a loud growl acting as confirmation.
The shadow lashed out, Strightman feeling the blow to his chest. He flew backward, a strafing tree catching his fall. Halfway sliding down the side of the tree, the cheetah caught his footing, straightening his posture, ignoring the dull pain in his back. The shadow moved forward, stomps sounding over the ground. Strightman tried his best getting his bearings, his vision not adapting to the black flash moving past his eye.
The officer dodged another attack, swinging his baton for a blow to the head, merely hitting the assailant's shoulder. This grunt was louder, angrier than of pain.
Although Strightman's vision was still not adjusted to the black shadow, his reflexes and fighting experiences were still alive and kicking. He took a swift step backward to avoid the large clawed hand nearly gripping his uniform. He swung his baton again, hitting the large arm, muscles bulging under the skin. Strightman quickly noticed the actual size of his attacker, surpassing two meters by a few centimeters.
The large carnivore swiped at the officer, its claws drifting through the air. This time Strightman used the missed attack for a kick to the assailant's frame. The large creature huffed, its lungs ejecting air. It stepped back, the officer readying his baton as his eyes uncovered the shadow slowly.
And as soon as he could see the brown fur on its face, as soon did the carnivore turn around and run through the tree line. The cheetah sprinted forwards, jumping through the tree line behind the creature.
"Stop right there!" Strightman ran as fast as he could, trying his best to keep the shadow in his eye line. Brown Fur, Brown Fur, Brown Fur. He repeated in his mind over and over again.
They zoomed past the tree line, Strightman racing with his entire athletic prowess kicking into action. His shoes clipped the ground in quick succession, the shadow in his eye line. The distance between the two was a good 20 meters, the shadow still far enough to be undefiable in the mixture of light and darkness on the field, messing with Strightman's vision.
The shadow walked into the absolute light of the Female Dormitory building's entrance, the light staying on for the entire night. A flash of hulking brown crashed the doors into the hallways.
"Stop!" Strightman jumped up the staircase, following into the doorway. He landed in the hallway and ran forward only to come for his running to die into a jog, to a walk, and then into a halt.
Strightman caught his breath while looking around himself, sniffing the air. He smelled dust on the heaters, the smell of carnivore females most of which were asleep by now, and his own adrenaline. The smell of foreign exertion wasn't present. He took a long look at the hallway.
He threw his cap at the ground and let loose a frustrated grunt. He heard a noise to his right, looking at the noise instantaneously. An ocelot looked out of her room, peaking past her door with scared eyes. The exasperated officer let his head sink and ran a hand over his head.
"Officer Strightman?" her voice was nimble and weak, obviously quite worried. The cheetah raised his head and mustered a smile.
"Everything's fine. You better go back to sleep. There was just a little trouble maker loitering outside, I'll catch him."
Rule #1 of handling civilians: Never cause panic where there needn't be any. The ocelot didn't ease up, looking at the cheetah with the same worry.
"Are you sure officer? Your arm…" Strightman looked down at his sleeve, seeing the red slashes through his jacket. In the adrenaline of the moment he hadn't even noticed It. He stared at the wound and processed the new information, assessing how to handle the student seeing him in a state like this.
"He really got me." He said absentmindedly, looking at the Ocelot in shock for just a moment. He let his arm hang down and bent over to grab his police cap. He looked at the young girl again and felt a twinge of guilt. Wasn't civilization itself what he stood for? And wasn't civilization the fact that honesty and respect was the most important tool in upholding that?
They were mocking them by lying in their faces.
"Look. I just got involved with a rowdy student ok? It's nothing to be scared of, I'll talk to them once I find out who they are." Her face was still a scared one, looking up at the officer with wariness.
"Are you sure officer? That wound looks bad."
Strightman looked down at his arm for a second, blood staining his fur. He put on his most charismatic smile.
"They just got scared, and I should've been more careful. But now go back to sleep. I promise you are safe here."
The ocelot barely eased up, closing the door with the certainty that she wouldn't sleep very well tonight. Strightman's posture let loose, his head sagging to a hang, his arms dangling and his knees bent.
"Great..." he muttered under his breath.
"Great start for this shit show." Strightman continued in the same low tone as he observed the three slashes on his lower arm. They were deep enough to cause moderate bleeding, the wound on his arm being positively fiery red.
His adrenaline had been too high and his pain only now resurfaced. He made his way down the hallway and out to the back of the building, finding the place deserted, with no sign of any trespass. No one walked past here for hours, except… whatever dark shadow traversed the halls at night.
Strightman would call in the incident ten minutes later when he returned to his makeshift office at the entrance hall of the class building, notifying the police of the suspect's brown fur and the possibility of them being the main suspect in the school killings. He talked to the operators and looked down the hall, hearing rushed footsteps just out of view.
With a raised baton he looked down the hall, seeing the double doors that were usually closed wide open, no one else in sight. He stepped closer to find no real clues. No fragrance or anything, possibly not even the same student until…
The wall next to one of the class roams had a huge claw gash on it. Strightman came to understand something right then and there. His presence made the killer nervous… and he was on the target list.
Time was a valuable resource, and they had already lost so many things by losing track of it. The inner cycle of the killings was moving towards another strike to twelve. They were close to midnight, and as they liked to say. The night was always darkest right before dawn. The only problem with the sentiment was… nobody knew if dawn would ever come.
"What am I doing?" Riz's face was irritated as he stumbled onto the roof, the night sky shining full of bright stars.
Beasts. Stars. They could never be the same, instinct was the death of civilization and they all pretended they were great when they were just as bad as him. They were all monsters, every last one of them.
"What am I DOING?!" he voicelessly screamed.
How stupid could he be? Attacking a trained police officer expecting to actually overtake a trained professional. How could he throw so many things away, how could he whisk away his friendship… his love for herbivores. Had he become so blinded by his own fears that he ignored what's truly important?
Riz starred at the edge of the roof, the stone border being a block of wall between him and a fall down a good eight floors. Maybe this is what I deserve.
Riz stood upon the stone border and felt a gust of wind go through his fur. The school and city laid outstretched before him. So many lives on the heel of his boot, so many friendships gone with the wind. He had so many things that he wanted to do but had all whisked them away in an attempt to selfishly feel safe.
The tip of his shoe dipped over the edge, his mind eerily calm and unburdened by instinct.
It was truly comical how the survival instinct is the strongest instinct of them all, but suicide was a decision purely devised from civilization. When people couldn't survive the endless pressure they just snapped and ended it in the grace of their own free will. Maybe this is what I deserve
The gust of wind picked up and moved on by, leaves flying through the air. Riz made peace with himself and stepped forward.
"Riz."
The bear twitched in surprise, slipping off the border onto the roof, landing on his back.
"Oooooow…" He clutched his head, hoisting up from the floor. The pain in his back and head expanded outwards like pressure.
When he realized why he had fallen Riz looked up to see the bright white entity in his vision. Tem stood by the trees, looking onto the bear.
"Tem!" Riz lurched forward enveloping the small white creature in his arms. His fur was fuzzy and warm, his heartbeat sending shivers down the bear's spine. He hugged the alpaca for a good few minutes.
"Riz." Tem looked up at him, his eyes full of appreciation.
Riz felt a piercing pain in his stomach, the alpaca's claws digging through his uniform like it was nothing. Tem glared angrily at the bear who still held him by his arms.
"Tem…" Riz's voice was firm, questioning in tone. The pain didn't subside, the claws digging deeper into his flesh.
"Tem….." Riz's voice became weaker, his legs failing his weight as he slid down, the alpaca still focused on digging deeper into his intestines.
"TEM!"
Riz jumped awake, sitting upwards alone on the ceiling. The stone border was right next to him, a dull ache in the back of his head. I must've slipped and hit my back.
He rubbed the back of his head and slowly trotted towards the few trees planted here. They were of course deserted, his first true friend has become part of him a not insubstantial time before.
"Tem… I'm so sorry. I didn't…" How did he mean it? He had just thought about ending his own life, taking the legacy of so many friends with him. His life was no longer just his own, his friends living with him. Mark the otter, Tem the alpaca, Tsuko the fox, and Hank the cow.
He wasn't alone anymore, he had to live for them. He had to experience all he could in their name. Some police officer wouldn't stop him ever again.
With a smile the bear walked back downstairs, never alone, surrounded by his friends, loudly chatting over each other while the bear remained quiet, the grin never leaving his face.