Chapter 178: 178: We’re Not Rewarding this behavior!

Learner’s notes, Day 319: On pets.

Humans have a strange practice of caring for useless animals. At first I didn’t understand why a person would own an animal without any specific purpose, such as labor or meat, but my new brain was able to divine the meaning behind this: Humans have a strong bonding instinct, and these animals can fill a need for companionship when normal human relationships may be unrewarding or impossible.

Human use these mindless animals as a blank canvass upon which to paint their desires. I have seen people abuse their animals out of a buried urge to abuse others, and I have seen others treat them like their own children out of a deep-seated parental instinct that never bloomed.

Oftentimes, these desires are not obvious to the people experiencing them, buried deep in their subconscious.

Interested in this practice, I decided to get my own pet to see if there were some kind of hidden desires in my subconscious, so I went looking for a particularly smart and well-behaved animal to take care of: Something easy for a first-timer.

Edit: Kala told me humans can’t be pets, and forced me to return the girl to the orphanage. Boo.

***Kala***

The language in Learner’s book was slowly including more and more human words and phrases, as well as a script that was softer and more rounded. Aside from the low-key kidnapping and the extreme violence when provoked, she was doing remarkably well.

Excellent progress, all things considered. Kala set down the teacup, mind considering all the possible courses the day could take.

I could go to the palace and see if I can wrangle some advantages for Gadvera out of Allast, but something about it feels…pointless. I can get the same advantages from Calvin in a much more enjoyable way, anyway.

Alternatively, I could go shopping for ‘talent’ around the city, find some people to become the patron of, recruit into my circle over the next few years.

One of the advantages of being able to perceive people’s true nature at a glance was being absolutely confident in your staffing choices. Kala hadn’t had a hairbrush stolen or a bungled delegation since she was fourteen.

Allast was a well of untapped potential, especially with their women, So she might have to spend a few afternoons finding some of them with some buried spunk and setting them on the path to riches.

And yet, that too felt like it would be largely fruitless.

How about aiding in the restructuring of local business in the wake of Carem’s passing?

Kala didn’t think they’d be happy to welcome a woman into the planning, especially a foreign one. She briefly considered

If I won’t be able to get work done today, I might as well relax, she thought, taking a sip of her tea across from the rapidly evolving monster. What can I do to relax?

Take a nap?

Play a game of cards?

Read a smut?

Kala released her tight control over her mind, letting her eyes drift wherever they wanted to. Her gaze landed on the magical glass pipe sitting on her dresser.

Hmmm. That does seem like fun. Juntai has to have something new and interesting.

Kala could feel that pursuing this path would turn out best in the long run.

“Learner, I need someone to go shopping with me.”

“Oh? What are we shopping for?”

“A wretched hive of scum and villany. I’ve been in the city for over a month now, and my supply of smokeables is running low. I want to see what the biggest city in Juntai has in store.”

“Ah, are we going to meet more aberrant humans? I’ve been wanting to speak to more examples of those who’ve either made poor life choices or been drawn into a life of crime via circumstances. The serial killer was quite informative.”

Learner seemed particularly enthusiastic.

Kala frowned. “You’re not going to dissect any of them.”

“Unless they attack me and I’m forced to kill them in self defence, right?” Learner asked.

“Going into a situation where you know they will attack you so that you can kill them in self defence is the same as murder.”

“Oh. Oooh…I get it.”

Kala stood and grabbed her purse full of copper, along with her pipe.

“If you want to become an ideal human, you should first seek to resolve any situation peacefully if possible.” Kala said, sliding her purse over her shoulder.

Together, the two of them went out onto the street. Kala was used to attracting lots of attention from her time as a princess, and Learner really didn’t know enough to suffer from social anxiety, which was good, because the two lovely, nearly identical foreigners attracted a lot of attention from everyone.

Children would stop playing with each other to gawk at them, while young men would crane their neck and elbow each other once they thought they were out of eyeshot. Women tended to cast furtive, somewhat envious glances at them before moving on with their business.

At least in Gadvera, their looks wouldn’t particularly stand out, but in Juntai, they were an absolute rarity.

“Are people looking at us more than usual?”

“You noticed that?” Kala asked, glancing over at learner. The more buxom reflection of her glanced around and nodded.

“It’s my new brain. It doesn’t like it because it implies being differentiated from the rest of the group.”

“It’s harmless,” Kala said, adjusting her estimation of Learner’s ability to blend in with humans. “Besides, nobody who blended in with the crowd ever made history.”

Kala took Learner to the market, then began to shop around for a good target.

“What are we looking for?” Learner asked.

“Someone…like…” Across the marketplace, Kala spotted a group of rough looking men sitting around a table, gambling with bone dice, draped in sashes that seemed above their means and shoving Iron coins back and forth with practiced hands as they bet.

The civilians around them gave them a wide berth.

“Them,” Kala said, pointing.

“Can I make the approach?”

“Sure,” Kala said with a shrug.

Kala followed behind Learner as they made their way through the crowd, until she came to a halt in front of the table. The Eldritch horror put her hands on the table and cleared her throat.

“Excuse me, I’d like to buy some drugs, please.” She said above the din of the market.

“Kala?” came a familiar voice from the back of the table. Ella was sitting at the back of the table, her body previously hidden by the angle and the crowd. It didn’t help that the large woman was slouched in her chair, further reducing her height.

The savage had a rather impressive stack of iron coins in front of her, with a few copper thrown in too.

“Ella?” Kala asked, frowning as she approached beside Learner. “I thought you were on some kind of sacred Genosian camping trip.”

“What? Nah, I just visit the boys every couple days or so covered in mud and bones I bought from the market to get them fired up. The one knife challenge is for gullible young warriors.”

“What’s this? one of the gamblers asked, a man with a scar just outside his eye. “The bone-sucker has friends? With more money to lose?”

“Say what you want,” Ella said, patting her pile. “You’re the one losing.”

“Big talk from a triangle-toothed draft animal of a woman.”

“Hold up,” a skinnier thug said, hold up a hand. “ Let’s go back a moment. I’m not completely sure, but my Ilethan is pretty good. Did that one just offer to buy drugs?” he pointed at Learner.

“Yes. We’re looking for a hive of scum and villany.” Learner agreed nodding.

“Let me just check my loincloth, I remember there was at least a kilo in there…” A third one said, reaching into the weathered fabric around his groin.

“Nope,” He said, shaking his head as he took out his hand. “Just my cock. You can have that if you want, but it won’t come for free.”

The group of thugs burst into laughter, giving each other high fives and chortling as they passed the dice back and forth.

Learner glanced over at Kala curiously.

“They’re being obscene and sexually aggressive to put us on the defensive in this interaction.” Kala answered.

“Wut?” the first thug grunted, frowning, his bushy eyebrows furrowing at the dispassionate, clinical response. This time it was Ella’s turn to chuckle, a small smile forming at the corner of her mouth.

“Can I do that too?” Learner asked.

“I don’t see why not.” Kala said, motioning to the table.

“It’d be a shame if you couldn’t help us,” Learner said, turning back to the table. She leaned forward, affording them a generous view of her cleavage. “It’s been too long since I had a big strong Juntai man…inside me.”

They broke out laughing and crowing until Learner smiled, her lips splitting apart down the sides of her neck to reveal teeth all the way down.

“Hersus, FUCK!” the closest man to Learner bolted out of his chair, hitting the ground and scrambling away in a crabwalk until his skull hit the edge of the next table over. The others rose to their feet in an instant, eyes wide.

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“Good use of a double entendre,” Kala said, petting Learner on the head.

“Are they on the defensive now?” Learner asked.

Kala scanned the group of men, their body language tinged with fear and alarm.

“Yes.”

“You get that mutant away from our table, and out of the city, if you know what’s good for you.” the leader with the scar said, doing his best to look intimidating.

“I’d be happy to…” Kala said. “If you could tell us where to buy some of Allast’s local specialties.” Kala said, jingling her purse, laden with copper.

He hesitated.

“Get it? Inside me, implying both breeding and that I’ll eat you?” Learner asked.

“Three blocks to the south, there’s a warehouse with a red brick path leading to the entrance and bouncers outside, just leave us alone!” the man stammered.

“I’m all in,” Ella said into the ensuing silence, shoving her pile of money toward the center of the table and rolling the dice.

“Oh, no, a seven, it looks like I lost all my money,” Ella said in monotone, standing up from the table and hopping around to the street side to stand beside Kala.

“This looks like it’ll be more fun, anyway,” she whispered into Kala’s ear as they left, sending a thrill down her spine.

A hand roughly gripping her butt elicited a yelp, and Kala jumped in place before she smacked Ella’s hand away, heart hammering.

“Not in front of the child and nameless thugs,” Kala chided, the sensation slowly spreading through her hips.

“I’ve already observed the two of you breeding on several occasions. That wasn’t enough to shock me.” Learner said from ahead of them.

Girl’s got eyes in the back of her head, Kala thought as she noted the faint shimmering concealed by Learner’s hair.

“If I catch you doing that again,” Kala said, pointing at her, “I’ll send you to your room. Do you want to be sent to your room?”

“…No…” Learner said, her shoulders slumping slightly.

“You’ve both got to learn to respect people’s boundaries. Now let’s go find those drug dealers and entrap them into giving us their product.”

The three of them meandered to the south, passing the time with idle chat about their lives and what they’d been up to recently. Ella stole the show with stories about Baroke and Calvin’s aimless suffering in the wilds outside of the city, while Learner tried and failed to use human language to describe her childhood.

They walked until the bustling marketplace gave way to warehouses near the south of the city. Most of them were for holding lumber and dry goods, but one in particular had rather serious looking bouncers sitting in front of the door, playing a similar dice game to the one they’d left previously.

This particular warehouse had a red brick path set into the hard-packed earth, making the comings and goings of wagons less likely to get stuck in their front yard, presumably.

“Can I try again?” Learner said, turning to face Kala and unconsciously bouncing with excitement, her entire body jiggling with unnatural perkiness.

“I don’t see why not, but try something a little more understated than ‘we’d like to buy some drugs. Try a cover story this time.”

“Yay!” Learner turned and approached the table.

The men were far more wary than the ones in the marketplace, and they stood as she approached, hands inching toward their weapons.

“What you want?” the man on the left demanded, eyes narrowed.

Learner crossed her arms under her chest and subtly pushed up, putting her finger in her mouth as if in thought while cocking her hips.

The stance looked highly difficult to pull off with actual bones, but Learner made it work.

“My sister and I took a tour of the pleasure district last week, and there was this…stuff? that made us feel sooo good! We’re heading back to Gadvera in another week or two and we were hoping we could take some home with us.”

Learner reached over and fondled Kala’s purse, grinning at the bouncers as the copper tinkled inside the bag.

“And who’s she?”

“She’s my sister’s bodyguard, obviously.”

“Huh. You with the guard?”

“Look our faces,” Learner said, gesturing between them. “I mean, duh.”

The left hand guard chewed on his lip for a moment, before shouting a single word at the top of his lungs.

“Boss!”

There was some clattering and a middle aged Juntai man stuck his head out of the warehouse, glaring at the bouncer.

“They wanna meet with you!” the bouncer shouted, pointing a thumb at the group of women.

The man scanned the three of them, his eyebrows rising.

“Come on in.” he said, standing out of the way.

“Yay!” Learner pranced through the door, followed by Kala and Ella. A moment later, the  man closed the door behind them, dropping a heavy steel bar over the entrance, locking them inside.

The meeting went just about as well as Kala anticipated. In short: incredibly sleazy and predictable.

“This the stuff you were looking for?” The dealer asked, offering her what she assumed was something highly addictive that would render her senseless so that she and the others could be taken advantage of.

“That’s exactly the stuff! She said wide eyed. “How much for a brick, about yay?” she asked, motioning with her hands.

“Why don’t you try some, make sure it’s the right stuff?” he said with a grin, the smell from his rotting tooth making it difficult not to gag.

“I don’t want to fall asleep here.” Kala said with her sweetest smile. “No offense.”

“None taken, but you’re not leaving here without trying some.” He said as more men gradually filled the space of the warehouse. A couple of the bigger ones stepped forward and seized Ella’s arms.

Two more grabbed learner, and another seized the back of her head.

“And once you do, you’re never gonna wanna come back to reality,” he said with a chuckle, leaning forward with a spoon full of flaky orange powder aimed at her nose. “You’re not gonna care where you are, or who you’re with.”

Kala no longer had any doubt that the stuff was exactly what she didn’t want to smoke.

“Is this the part where we beat them up and take their stuff?” Learner asked.

“Indeed it is.”

Kala used Beli Ma to fling the spoon up into the man’s eye while her other hand grabbed the wrist in her hair and crushed it between her fingers with a crack.

Ella’s skin turned silvery-red and she shrugged the men holding her off and punched through one of their heads.

Learner grew spines out of her back, skewering the two men restraining her before insectoid legs burst out of her chest, lifting her rapidly changing body into the air.

They hewed through the surrounding thugs like a sharp scythe through wheat, breaking their morale in a matter of seconds.

Ella tore through man after man, painting herself in blood while Learner did similarly. Kala didn’t agree with their level of violence, but it was the best way of making sure no one came after them for revenge.

She didn’t end them as violently as the other two, but the men who attacked Kala were left in no position to retaliate.

Ella was cornering one of the thugs with her steel fists, preparing to take his life, when Learner made one of her typical timely observations.

“So, let me get this straight. It’s emotionally far easier for humans to hurt other humans when they don’t know their names, correct? That’s why neither of us asked, right? Because we were planning on hurting each other?”

“My name’s Berack!” the man in front of Ella shouted, cowering as he guarded his face. “I’ve got a wife and two children!”

Ella hesitated, putting her fist down with a frown.

“I’m Treva! My house is a lovely green!

“My name’s Andur! I don’t wanna die!”

More and more names echoed around them, causing Kala to sigh. Sometimes it surprises me how observant she is.

“My name’s Kala, this is Learner and Ella,” She said, picking up the chair she’d toppled when the fight started.

She set it back down in front of the table and sat in it.

“Now, would anyone like to deal with us in good faith?”

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