OK this is a story I've had in my head for a while while the intro was to get a message to someone this is an unrelated story.
'My name is Cactus Flower Tusker, I like cheese pizza, popcorn and ghost stories...'
Cactus Flower Tusker was a Collared Peccary (Pecari tajacu) Humanimal who lived in the town of Red Rocks in Cholla County of the Western Continant of Planet Mizzer.
Cactus Flower, normally called just Cactus was regarded as on odd girl, her Mom was a teacher at her the middle school she went to, Cactus was quiet, a loner she mostly kept to herself, hardly ever interacted with any of the other cubs.
The town of Red Rocks began as an Oil Well, that was the only reason the Earthlings came to this barren desert that was only stone and some water, no plants ever grew until the Earthlings started bringing soil for their gardens...Because of the need to prtoect themselves from the heat, Red Rocks is one of the most futuristic towns in all of Mizzer, with a Monorail that goes around the town to take people to and fro so they get minimal exposure to the sun,still most of the Humanimals who live here are still creatures adapted for the desert, besides the unbitious domestic species like cats and dogs and some livestck species like pigs, the Peccaries were actually among the largest species in this town, there were no camels or kangaroos or other large species that need vast amounts of plants for grazing like you might find in Saguaro County the Desert County that was right next to the Original Valley where the Earthlings first landed, a much more lush desert by comparison known for its many tourist traps, Cactus noticed the difference seemed to be right in the names, Saguaro was named after the cactus that was towering and magestic and also grew a delicious fruit, Cholla was named after a cactus that was none of those things, it was ugly and painful to touch anyway Saguaro was much better at growing things like dates and citrus like grapefruits, aside from anything Cholla citizens could grow in their gardens with their imported soil had to be grown in a greenhouse or imported from lusher counties and you know why hothouse tomatoes have the reputation they do for being bland and disgusting.
Why was Cholla County so barren? Cactus never told anyone this but sometimes she had visions, she could see the past sometimes, she saw this area was once the place of a great war, long before the Earthlings ever came to this planet, sometimes when she looked at a bizarely shaped rock formation she could see the event that made it, some great explostion that caused to be shaped like a hand now...There had long been knowladge by the Earthlings that Mizzer had been inhabited by an ancient race of aliens who died out long before the Earthlings ever arrived, Cactus had special unique insight into exactly what happened to them, and she knew in the Great Plains just North of Cholla County was where the Biollante those viscious carnivorous plants that had to be exterminated because they were extremely hostile and would not live peacefully with the Earthlings, that gave Cactus further hints that many eons ago something of great evil happened here.
Peccaries tend to have large families and Cactus' family the Tuskers were a prominent Humanimal Family here in Red Rocks, they came in early being one of the few Humanimals who were helping the humans with the oil well, because Peccaries live in both North and South America they inhabit both the Woodland and Tropical Mammal Districts of the Humanimal Side of Town, which in this case was really more a collection of suburbs attached to the much large human side of town, that was another thing Cactus noticed about Red Rocks, that because of the harshness of desert life while the seperate districts still existed out of a sense of tradation, nobody cared if anyone stepped outside their designated district to hang with someone of a different district, here in the desert everyone has to look out for everyone else, and it probobly didn't hurt the first Humanimal founders were bonded by friendship by working together on the oil well, Some Humanimals say to escape 'The Game' as it's called you have to cross the New Mississippi River over to where TV and Radio stations start with a 'W' instead of a 'K' and there is quite a lot of uptight priggishness around the New Great Lakes so you have to go all the way to the East Coast to places like Twin Rivers, called 'The New City of Brotherly Love' but Cactus new you didn't have to go that far, here in the desert where the living is harsh, watch how fast even the Cats and Dogs drop 'The Game' because they know they have to be more reliant on their neighbors.
But all this stll didn't answer the question, why didn't Cactus have any friends at all? Well the unfortunate answer is because of something that happened before Cactus was even born, 12 years ago, her Mother met a handsome Collared Peccary-Man no one had ever seen before, and because of the closeness of the town she knew every Peccary in Red Rocks, after a while they decided to get married, and they did, but then sometime after they got married, he just...Vanished...Without a trace...One night he just didn't come home, her Mother and other Members of her family searched for him but they couldn't find him either dead or alive, with no evidence one way or the other they couldn't say for sure weather he met an unfortunate end or he just...Left with wife with no explanation, Cactus' Mother when telling her daughter the story always erred on the safe side and stated she believed he must have fallen into the great canyon and got washed down into the Rain Forests below the Equator...Other family members various aunts and uncles told Cactus that they never liked that Peccary, the fact they had never seen him before, that he never told them anything about his family some of her Uncles said things about how he was 'strangely dressed' and that he 'had funny eyes' when Cactus asked what was funny about his eyes the response was 'they didn't sparkle like Humanimal eyes'
So it was an unfortunate scandel for the well established Tusker family and throughout her school years, Cactus had to endure the taunts of the school cubs
"Cactus, Cactus
Fat and dumb
Doesn't know
Where her Papa's from!"
And many a time Cactus could not let those insults pass! She would squeal and charge at them with all the fury of a boar and only a few times would she succeed in catching any of her tormenters.
OK so I've been toying with the idea of before Donatello fell in love with Belladonna there were previous instances of Mutants and Humanimals falling in love
