Author's Note: Hello Lads and Ladies

Not even going to look for excuses, my lack of patience within handling older hardware was the main reason for the main delay here. Chances are good i am getting a new PC in December. Bonus point, i am having an appointment equally soon with a psychiatrist in order to get some new antidepressants.

I have not been feeling well recently and while i am on the search of a therapist i think antidepressants sound like an acceptable method of aid during these extremely challenging times for me.

Thank you all, Chapters are gonna be a little slow for the rest of the year, but who knows really. Might get a end of the year burst of motivation and energy while i work on my discipline.

The one thing i will promise all of you, no matter how long it takes, even if till early year `25, i will finish this story.

Much love:

Edited by: SuperAverageFoxyboy, The Dude who likes Tanks
Enjoy!
-Portal

Chapter 19: Some Birds Need to Fly

Melon did not drink alcohol nor did he use any substances. A clear mind was elemental at this point. However, he wished today that he was anything but present. He checked his watch, the first vans full of families under protection by Omnivora were already on the way towards the city border. Lions, vixens, leopards, wolves, and Komodo dragons alike driving the different vehicles.

There was some animosity between them and him, but nothing that surprised him in any way. He was the villain painted in bright colors hidden away just below the surface. In some ways, he had reached a level of infamy that even the prestigious nob would never reach. A constant problem might be an issue for much longer, but Melon had managed to be volatile. A problem that spread within your walls and then punched them out was much more terrifying than a group of individuals that broke the law daily on the other side of town in one of the districts that you'd rather pretend didn't exist.

He had written an extensive list of things that they needed restocks for and he had prepped his men for a prison hit. Something that he would rather avoid but he wasn't about to break the trust of the man that held all the people he fought for. He had begun to feel a healthy serving of hatred for the cougar and his restraint. But he couldn't allow himself to act on it.

Right now, however, as he wistfully watched the city in twilight from the rooftop of a building on Cherryton Hill, the ocean presenting itself as a line along the horizon, he thought of his mother.

He hated how good it had felt to bash her face in, he hated how that memory was the best he had of her. His father was meaningless, a face that bolted before he was even born. A coward of the highest grade, presumably living his life with a normal family someplace else. If he ever found him he would kill him immediately, but that with a pistol and without any meaning. There was little emotion there, little sign of care or emotion. He deserved to die yet the judge called out the verdict without any passion.

Yet his mother… He had enjoyed watching her bleed out, the sheer strength of her thirteen-year-old son overwhelming her. Her face, a crooked visage under the filter of no longer accurate memory.

He had felt relief when he pocketed her cash, even more relief when all the things he needed were in places where he could easily and quickly get them. His horns had barely come up and the face masks for the medical duties of his mother's nursing job were perfectly long enough to hide his face. He ventured out into the world as a beggar turned thief turned company man. The promise to Yajuu was that he would try his best to attempt a normal life.

Yet all of that life he had lived so far all led back to bath time. His mother's insistence always made him uncomfortable before she began to lay hands on him and the discomfort turned into active dismay. She saw his father in him, he was just a kid. How cruel was it that the biggest form of torture was that her touch was meant to titillate and pleasure yet he wished she had been physically abusive more than anything else. The beatings would have made him less crooked than he was today. His sense for sexuality of any kind caused him nausea and yet he hungered for intimacy like any other person. The cruel gift she had given was to forever break him in such ways. She didn't ignite his rage, but she shut the pressure valve, disallowing him from ever truly catching rest from this lifelong loneliness that he seemed to be destined for.

But what really stoked his fire, the thing that even moved him to do as he did in the first place, was the indifference and downright malice with which others viewed him and his past. When he was sixteen, wearing his face mask, cleaning the floor of a seven-eleven on the corner of some sleepy street he overheard a conversation that he would never forget. Words that were not meant for him, never directed at him, yet encapsulated everything that he was.

"She's keeping the child… that stupid girl."

"Your daughter? Is keeping the hybrid kid?"

"She's no longer my daughter. That monster forced himself on her and now she's deciding to keep it, some form of cruel Stockholm syndrome.""But it wasn't consensual, how is it her fault?""She's keeping the damn thing, that's what's her fault. She willfully is letting herself be a brood mother to those damned parasites, no doubt about it… I already packed her things, when she comes home today I'll kick her out."That night was the second murder that Melon would ever commit. His rage only abated as he choked the old buck to death, having walked in on Melon stabbing his wife. He felt a sense of justice as the buck's face channeled true fear and that potent kick-up of the survival instinct that was not strong enough to beat the Antelope-Leopard. Melon enjoyed himself the evening as he drank some wine from the fridge in their estate house. He kept the bottle as a souvenir when he later on realized that leaving or destroying it would leave his genetic material. He wiped the surfaces clean and stole anything of value he could detect within the sprawling homestead. He did his due diligence making it look like a robbery gone array, yet he never managed to track the girl down.

It wasn't until years later, when he returned a wanted man to Edobutsu that she and her then teenage son returned. She herself was awfully young, a deer doe that had been scraping by on multiple jobs about the same age as Melon. She became something of a leader among the families, taking care of some of the management and actually putting herself on one of the last vans in order to oversee the operation. He held pride in the fact that he avenged the injustice done to her by her caretakers. He never told her what really happened.

The door to the roof opened and the heavy footsteps and lack of any vocalization was the perfect calling card.

Richard moved up beside him, vigilantly watching the horizon. Melon stretched his arms over his head, feeling the tension throughout his body vent a slight bit when he released.

"Are the men ready?" A nod answered.

"You ready?" An outstretched thumb feather answered this time.

"Let's go piss Yahya off."


Prison was routine. The same few things through the week repeated over and over again. Breakfast, yard time, confinement, lunch, free time, shower, dinner, lights out.

It was nigh impossible to keep track of time, days melding into each other and nights coming quicker than expected. He had spent no more than a week in the joint and already the weariness of time and what it did to someone rolled around. However, the one aid that saved him from going stir-crazy was the people all around him. If they weren't behind bars for the same reason as he was, then they had family members or friends who were hybrids.

And as the afternoon turned to evening, After dinner concluded Louis found himself in the group cell he called his own, playing chess with Shinji, the Serow that had admitted pledging to his cause under the emotional tears of meeting a personal idol face to face.

Shinji was admirable in the game, yet Louis had the advantage of being adopted into the higher class. Chess was the game of kings, and any son of any given animal of high political power held decent skill in it. Unlike his peers, those who would surely despise him now, he held no contempt for it. On the contrary even, most times he enjoyed the way it made time move by faster for a little while.

"Checkmate." Louis placed the rook into the corner of the board, the only other escape for Shinji's king being blocked by a rather pesky knight that the father had forgotten over the course of the last few moves.

"Why are you so good at chess?" The serow adjusted the glasses on his muzzle. Louis simply laughed.

"Aristocratic youth. Any upper-class child is good at it."

Shinji leaned back on the ground, propping one leg up on which he laid his arm. The look of constant melancholy returned to Shinji. He didn't lament his stay here with words much at all, but that look was a bi-hourly thing. Louis didn't expect any different from a father, his own son's smile never leaving his mind's palace.

"It's hard… being different." The Serow sighed. Louis gave a knowing look.

"I once tried to be normal." He said, straightening his cuffs as he remembered back to his school days. Cherryton Academy even in such a small time lay infinitely far back in his mind.

"Then I made a friend that showed me how it felt to make my own choices instead of letting myself be dictated by others. For the same reason you have your daughter." The serow was transfixed by the deer's words.

"I would not complain if I was you. You've been given the gift of parenthood and that is not something everyone deserves or when deserving not everybody gets."

"I don't know how to feel about it…" Shinji rubbed his elbow and adjusted his glasses.

"I love my girls, that's of no concern, but I feel like I cheated them by siring them into a world as hateful and intolerant as this… I just wish I could've given them something better… Out of love, I'd rather they hadn't been born at all, not in this terrible place." After the serow stopped talking the deer planted a hand firmly on his shoulder. Louis felt a surge of anger that was fresh in a completely new way.

He felt like he wanted to rip up these walls and kill any guard he could see, parent or not. He lifted his finger at the serow, making it bob along every single beat of the lecture, and for a moment he disappeared completely. Where there once sat a young buck with aspirations of changing the world now sat a weathered old man so sick of his home that had become such a dump that it deserved outright being scrapped.

"Do not ever let this world convince you that your children were a mistake. The one thing that Yahya deserves death for is for making you regret the most beautiful thing you could ever have. When, not if, these walls come down and everything vain stops mattering I want you to feel joy in your heart. If anything matters then it's your family, however strange it may be." He let go of the serow which stared back like a fawn listening to their father give a stern talking down to them.

Louis looked ahead, the stress drawing a phantom age into his features that made him look centuries old. He looked like he had seen the walls crumble once, the people degrading him as crazy. Yet when the walls fell and crushed the doubting many, he had remained.

"The father I once had believed in ignorance for so long only realized his faults when he was dying. And I nearly threw everything away to please him out of guilt… so I say pride be damned. Too much of it is a burden anyway."

"I'm sorry-"

"Don't… you'll know the truth next time you hug your kids close to the chest where they can hear your heartbeat." Louis looked across and daydreamed of his pure white wife, standing in the gardens of her family halfway across the giant island. His son was in her arms and he was looking for his father, unaware just how far his daddy was.

He stood up and walked across the cell, leaning his head against the automatic metal door. Somewhere, someplace, someone is feeling lost and alone. Today I am among them… If for anything at all, I wish I could help them out of their hopeless place, even if it means I'll remain in mine.

Footsteps, urgent footsteps. Suddenly his leaning head became straight as he turned his ears. faintly beyond the door officers were panicking, calling for backup. Why?

Louis took a step back from the doors when he heard the first gunshots. He had nothing to defend himself with, and neither did anyone in the room.

"Boss is coming!" Ken, the kangaroo jumped down from his double bed. He cracked his fingers and his neck and then began loosening his limbs.

"Who?" It was foolish to ask. The kangaroo grinned.

"Melon."

The walking became more frantic. Gunshots rang closer. Bodies began to fall in the hallway just outside. Louis walked a step backward and began to realize that to Omnivora, as brutal as they tended to be. He would be a hero.

The door finally automatically rolled open, the hybrid men standing outside shoulder to shoulder, holding shotguns with barrels the size of small bottle rockets.

"Come on!" The quiet command came, and the entire room followed. Ken was handed weaponry and sent ahead, meanwhile the other green suits were herded along the hallway, dead guards lining their path to salvation.

They made it along to the first bottleneck, crawling through a blown-open wall into the utilities block. Piping and electrical buzzing surrounded them as they went along the way here. The group came to a stop in front of the door, the frontman holding his arm up, listening quietly. He determined it was safe, opened the door, and walked through. As soon as he passed the doorway a uniformed carnivore jumped atop him, the only thing sticking out of the pragmatic and sleek futuristic suit being a bushy gray tail.

Louis watched in shock for a moment as he witnessed the Cerberus operative attack. Louis watched for just a moment as time fell to a crawl and Louis felt something within him twist and thrash. This kid was probably just like him and it followed the words of the devil in black like a servant followed its master's commands.

His hands ached before he even used them, the green-suited antlerless buck sprinted ahead and expertly grabbed for the quick-release controls on the helmet just as Legosi had explained them to him.

Panic spread in the wolf as the helmet slid off him and he released his grip to jump for the helmet. Louis's arms went around his throat instantly and he yanked backward. The wolf gasped for air and with his strength whirled around, trying to get the deer off him. With his superior strength he needed two turns until Louis crashed into a wall, yet so did a fist crash into the wolf's face and send him to the floor, out cold.

"You alright, Beastar Louis?" Ken had come along. Louis nodded as he rubbed his head, dull pain throbbing up and down his back.

"I'm fine… thank you."

"Let's keep it moving! I've heard that you know your way around firearms, is that true?" Ken ushered the group along, paying close attention to the deer.

"I don't like to kill."

"But you know how to shoot?"

"Argh… yeah."

"Don't have to be lethal, but defend yourself and the others." The pistol felt familiar, it was almost the exact same make as the one he carried for personal protection. It felt almost comedic that the first personal freedom he was given back was his firearm.

And then, almost immediately, Louis disappeared anew. He tagged along with the group, giving orders as naturally as he stood on stage or played chess. The new person that Louis would come to call the protector was a second skin so comfortable that Louis was sure he had been this persona more often than once. Only now did he realize how dependent he was on it.

They hurried along the corridors that progressively lowered themselves into the pipe terminals further, slipping through holes in the reinforced cement and exposed rebar, they reached the entrance. Just as the front men opened the sewer gutters a maintenance door flew open, another Cerberus operative ready to open fire.

Louis pressed the trigger without any restraint, walking in front of the group. The shots penetrated the government dog's arms, his rifle falling to the floor. He had no other option but to sag backward out of harm's way, before another Omnivora strongman unloaded his rifle into the door. The first Cerberus operative's colleague dropped to the floor dead, having jumped in to return fire.

"Down the drain right now!" Louis shouted, herding the rest down the chute. He barely had enough time to reload before another dog in black armor arrived. Louis's aim was good enough as a deterrence for the current moment, sending the operative scrawling back, thankfully avoiding the assault rifle fire that inevitably followed.

Louis landed on the damp floor and smelled the horrible scent of feces in the dank depths and immediately felt right at home. Deep underground he seemed to belong after all this time.

"Keep going, don't slow down." He again spoke a command, moving the people along. Louis admitted to himself that he was feeling an excitement that was closer to fun than panic. All this running away, all this feeling like prey, holding this gun felt right. He knew he shouldn't if he wanted to keep from making things worse, yet his inhibition started to slip more and more. He wanted to kill them.

Just a little change to his posture and he would become a predator more powerful than any natural being in the world. Something so great stories would be told about the unlikeliness of it happening resulting in a strong amount of disbelief, of people struggling to rectify the sheer fact that yes, they lived in a world where something like Louis existed.

They waded through the water and Louis was staring at the black metal of his gun. Becoming a legend was so easy, so tangible. So close, so tasty, so fresh, so..- alive.

The young Beastar began to laugh, feeling light-headed and freer than anything could ever become. How could his body yearn for chains when being free of them felt this great? He felt yearning, tugging at him to kiss his wife. A twinge of arousal came through him and the distance between him and his family seemed like a street and an intersection away.

What was stopping him anyway? Who needed Father state, who needed this forgotten archaic system that did nothing but block and forbid? How could anyone survive this long under the boot of a tyrant?

The feeling of freedom and self-grandeur abated partly, not fully or he would've lost his mind. This short break of sanity was the very relief that he needed to stay whole. Yet wasn't the question an answer to something entirely different?

Why did he do what he did? Because nobody survives for long under the rule of a tyrant. His people have borne him for twenty-five years and now they rightly had enough of this shit.

In the most innocently offensive part of any great civilization, its sewage system, Louis began to understand the nature of fighting and why he did it, what dictated this fruitless endeavor, and exactly why he could not stop and should never stop. Because no one cared for the weak except if the weak themselves decided to be strong together and kick society back into moral uprightness.

Laziness and indifference idled them right into intolerance. Freedom had to constantly be grasped for, it never stopped to be important, never stopped to be truly reached. Doing nothing killed you, and what has modern life become? Accepting that you changed nothing and just letting the man with the gun go to work. What stopped him from telling the man with the gun to go fuck himself. What stopped him from lunging for the gun himself and letting someone else speak? What moral in any story told on this earth dictated that accepting that you were powerless was the correct thing to do? And what stopped you from going up and proving the slimy little ass-kisser who told that story wrong in any way possible.

Because you've been taught to shut up and eat the shit that father state gave you. Because Father State was the act of idling without the brooding and resenting heat of Mother Rebellion.

Why did he fight Yahya any chance he got? Because anything else would make me a bystander in my life and the life of my wife and Oggie too.

These guns would still remain protectors, not killers. But his words held meaning. Enough that Yahya deemed him dangerous.

Let's tear his ivory tower to the ground.


Tokugawa wore a black suit today, the first time ever that Ibuki had seen him wear anything below a certain threshold of color. It was a worrisome detail that nagged slightly at the edge of his psyche. The focus of today's job however seemed to put him in a somewhat stable equilibrium.

They were outside of town, a little clearing among the rocks above the rocky coast to the southeast of Mount Edo. The cloudfront had blown away, leaving a clear sky that was only illuminated by the silvery moon slowly crawling up above the horizon.

Ibuki was carrying a duffel bag filled with a few tarp sheets, shovels, spades, rope, and a few buckets. Murder supplies of course, although his boss hadn't yet revealed who for. Another factor that seemed to put him on edge and calm him at the same time.

"Here." Tokugawa pointed to a spot between a few rocks where grass covered the dirt.

"Two and a half meters deep, then the tarp over it." Tokugawa looked at the mountain, gazing upon the foliage that had already started sporadically turning yellow and a few of them even muted reds.

"Get rid of the grass, it should all look about the same."

Ibuki followed the advice and placed down the tools, getting to work right away. To his immense surprise, Tokugawa took his jacket off and proceeded to help. They reached half of the desired depth within an hour. By midnight the hole was finished and with the help of the rope, they heaved themselves out. Without much pause, they began moving the mounds of loose dirt among the few trees and some of it into the buckets. Next, they placed a tarp under the rocks on one side of the opening and covered it with some of the earth. They pulled the tarp out until it was under tension. They covered it entirely and placed the other end under the rocks on the other side.

Soon they were standing on the edge of the cliff side, beyond the clearing. Tokugawa stood straight watching the ocean flow towards the land by forces of tidal wives yet only crashed against the rocky outcropping at the bottom of the cliff. Ibuki smoked a cigarette while leaning against a tree.

"Do you feel that things will never be the same?" Tokugawa asked without averting his gaze from the sea.

"Things always change. I don't get hung up on the feeling."

"What a blind thing to say."

Ibuki eyed his boss with care, worried for a moment that their relationship was not as steadfast as he had first hoped. He only then realized just how much he enjoyed it when that which was good remained unchanged. He had spoken blindly.

"I don't want good things to end… Guess I'm scared to lose what I got."

"We don't have nothing if we don't fix the world around us. Once this is over someone is gonna have to answer for crimes they committed." Tokugawa looked over at his right-hand man.

"If the right side wins, I won't put up a fight when the police come to take me to prison."

"Why would they put you in prison?" Ibuki raised his brow.

"Because this business runs on blood… bad blood. I think there is a good new world coming, but we can't take bad blood into it without poisoning it…" Tokugawa took a pause that was long enough that Ibuki nearly thought he was done before he continued.

"There's no place for a mafia if eating meat was legal, but I hardly believe any of you would qualify as cops either. If the state changes, then we must repay our debt. The debt we racked up when we started to profit from this system. All of us."

Tokugawa started to feel some semblance of anxiety as his boss spoke with an absolute finality. His boss turned around and walked back towards the clearing and after a small moment of hesitation, Ibuki followed. Although he wasn't directly scared there was sufficient worry in him to cause him trouble.

When they got back in the car a silence wafted between them that laid thickly between them like a pollution that was hard to see through. He didn't know what to expect or where the conversation was going to go next and perhaps just that uncertainty was enough to cause him this horrible fear in the pit of his stomach.

They arrived at Tokugawa's mansion not much longer after. Ibuki inquired shortly if he should follow or if his actions for the day were enough. His boss simply strutted towards the building and held the door open for the lion. Inside awaited them one of the warm lounge rooms, whose ceilings were lower than the rest of the house in order to achieve a much more comforting feel than the echoey corridors that threw back whatever you said into them.

Tokugawa stood by the window staring out at his front lawn much like he had stared at the crashing waves beyond the clearing where they had dug someone's future grave.

Ibuki walked beside him, joining him in watching the elaborate display of flowers, statues, and greatly maintained lawn grass.

"I think those young few will change the world in ways no one normally would be able to predict. I think they might even make meat legal…. The last thing I will do as a mob boss, besides paying damages to a lot of people, is to give all the vendors licenses and rent contracts." He ended the sentence with a scoff.

"Bureaucracy is a great tool but after doing things one way for so long it still feels like a defeat."

"If how you did the paperwork was the only change then there wouldn't be any reason for concern would there?"

Tokugawa smiled at his subordinate.

"That is true…" Tokugawa continued to stare outside, the smile slowly abating until only the neutral tug of thought remained.

"After my mob ceases to exist what will you do?"

His boss's question stumped for a moment. He came to think that he had no idea.

"I have no idea. Ever since being a kid on the black market streets, I lived day to day, week to week, happy that I'm even still alive. Living year to year just seemed useless."

Tokugawa hummed at the answer from the mob man. Meanwhile, Ibuki walked further down the route and imagined a lioness and a few kittens in some apartment block somewhere in the town center. The bespeckled lion belonging to that family might look like him or how he wished to look, yet he couldn't connect him to himself.

"Settling down was never a goal, nor has it become… I can't even give it a thought because all my life I never thought of that as the goal…"

He thought of neon lights, skyscrapers, premium booze, and the feeling that you could crush the world under your heels if you so wished.

"We never had goals. The only dream we had was the top. We all knew that that wouldn't last long even if we made it, so we just… kept on doing what we did."

Ibuki eyed his wine contemplatively and then placed it on the table, resting his hands in his pockets.

"I think when the black market opens its doors anew after New Year's I'll need a few caretakers. Animals that take care of the beasts roaming the streets at night. I know a panda who does so, but he needs capable staff to cover the strip-'' Tokugawa laughed huskily.

"-maybe even construction crew and overseers. You think you got professionals cut out for that job?" He looked at the lion with a glint of playfulness. Ibuki thought for a second and then gave a smile back.

"Of course boss. Anything for you."

Tokugawa turned around and walked towards the hallway, stopping halfway to turn around one last time to share a look at him.

"Maybe to the Carribeans."

"What?"

"Maybe all of you should take a part of that mountain of cash you're sitting on and go to the Caribbean. Get a clear head and gain some new perspective on life."

With those words, Tokugawa left his right-hand man alone to dwell on his own thoughts for a minute. Uncertain of the future and present, Ibuki thought that he should look at some apartments. The headquarters had outgrown its shabby yet comforting allure. In the new world, he would have to learn how to be independent. Ibuki began to understand that although the story of the kids was about to end only for their adult selves to take rule, in that picture mob men didn't have any place. He looked at the empty corridor where his boss had been a moment ago and sighed to himself.

In some deep part of his mind, he saw a young version of himself standing at the door of his cell, a guard crashed in front of the cell, the key in reach of an outstretched arm. The guard was Yahya, keeping him in the cell of the passed age, the kids were the key. Only this time he wouldn't be the one grabbing it, the key had an autonomy of its own. And when the door unlocked, the person he currently was would have to either go or change.

Ibuki took a last sip of wine and then placed the glass down. For the little time that he was still needed he wanted to be useful. If he really would cease to exist, then he wanted his last action to be a positive one. He asked himself for what reason and in the corner of his mind Tokugawa's large mansion answered again, in its knowing and resounding voice.

Your legacy.