Chapter 2: Human Among Beasts
What was this human doing in his apartment? More so, why was a human creeping inside his apartment?
He has never heard of humans but they were mentioned briefly in history class when he was only ten years old. From what he recalled, humans are completely different from carnivores and herbivores because they can survive on both diets. What's even more scary is that they do not have any side effects or feel remorse when eating meat.
Some humans even eat carnivores like him!
The human in front of him was female, judging by the soft round eyes, long messy hair and he could see the built through those baggy clothes. Her scent was very similar to a herbivore he has experienced with the smell of lavender and something else. He wasn't a canine so his scent of smell isn't that strong.
"I'm going to ask one more time before I decide your fate" he growled, using a little bit of his strength to keep her from escaping. "Why did you break into my apartment?"
The human was averting her eyes away from his cold reptilian ones. He could feel her body trembling under him while her chest was rising up and down. Clearly she was scared and she should be!
"I was hungry," she replied, her voice was slightly high like those he heard from a child. "Your window was opened and... I came in there."
He peered into his room and she was right: His window was wide open. The caiman mentally slapped himself on the forehead. He was so desperate for money and paranoid about the sharks hunting him down, he forgot to close his window.
The woman quickly pushed him away and tossed him the bag that contained the food she just stole. "You can take them back. I won't bother you again."
Before he could protest, the human had climbed out of his window with some effort. He shook his head in disbelief.
His night was just the disgusting icing on a very burnt cake.
...
He had both of his claws clamped together to steady himself from looking so nervous as the bill collector was counting the amount of money he had to pay off so that he won't have the debt forever.
His tail swayed a little bit to curl up over his feet. The bill collector was a Pacific red octopus, whose tentacles were multitasking while the two fronts counted the money. If their boss, the tiger shark was not around, the collector will fill in to collect what has been owed.
"Well? How much more do I need to pay up?" he asked in the marine language. There was silence except for the popping sounds of the collector's tentacles. The bubbles surrounding him in the office felt like a ticking time bomb while waiting for a response.
He was thankful that his lung capacity could help him hold his breath for a maximum of two hours.
"Five thousand more and then you are done," was the collector's answer. He could feel his heart eased a bit. That should give him about a week or two to earn more of the money. An idea popped into his head about how can he earn a little extra money.
"In two weeks time, caiman," the collector warned. Even with the bubbles emitting out of his voice, the octopus has never sounded so intimidating.
He nodded, bowing down to thank the collector before swimming up to the surface to take his first gulp of air. Coming out of the water was like being reborn and now he has a new task ahead of him: Getting the money.
First, he needed to go to the hardware store to buy some pliers and he knows a shop that treats herbivore products with care at the Black Market.
...
"Fuck," he muttered to himself as he wiped the drool at the corner of his jaw. Gazing at the reflection of the bathroom mirror, he only saw only a desperate little gecko with tired eyes rather than a fearsome caiman with a powerful bite.
"It's okay, it's okay," he tried to talk to himself to calm himself down. "You can do this, Saigo. You can pull eight more of your teeth to get them pawned. Get the money and erase the debt..."
But his mantra of reassuring himself was short-lived when he placed the grip of the plier's jaws to one of his upper teeth and began to press the lever. He slowly wiggled it around before hearing a small crack. His tooth has been uprooted from it canal, causing his mouth to bleed a bit.
The taste of his blood was too metallic compared to the sweet one of a herbivore he tried at the Black Market.
Eyes watered with tears, Saigo braced himself for the pain he will have to endure. He had made the same mistake twice about trusting someone who wouldn't give him something to ease the pain. The grounded porcupine quill tea he had purchased was nothing but a scam and it tasted like regular jasmine tea.
Crack, snap and pop, Saigo was certain that his mouth was already flooding with blood. He will worry about his missing teeth later. After all, every crocodilians are able to shed their teeth even through adulthood.
It will take him about one or two months for them to regrow back.
Once he finally pulled out the teeth with some bits of the roots stuck on the bottom, he began to gargle his mouth down with anti-bacterial mouthwash. Saigon polished and cleaned the pulled out teeth so that they will stand out before taking them into a pawn shop.
Besides meat, drugs and strip bars, there are pawn shop where carnivores can sell some of their valuables in order to get money. Those who were born and lived in the Black Market must stay in the Black Market.
It was the only was to keep the peace in this city and eventually the nation itself.
Saigo's thoughts were soon interrupted when he heard shoutings. Curious to see what was going on, he placed the bag of his teeth in his pocket before finding a crowd of carnivores gathering at one spot.
It was a small brawl between a king vulture and the same creature in baggy clothes. The others thought she was another animal due to the gloves, the beanie hat and facemask that concealed her true identity.
'Shit, this is bad,' he thought to himself, debating or not whether to intervened the fight. But at the same time, he too was curious to know what sort of strength does it possessed? Carnivore and herbivore?
However, his thoughts were interrupted yet again when he heard that human squealed in pain, as the vulture was about to tear open where the stomach is!
Yeah, this guy I named him Saigo. It's Japanese for last or the end. It was a recommendation from one of my friends when I asked them about giving him a name.
It's canon in this story that most herptiles are fluent in marine language due to some of them being aquatic themselves