Chapter 9: Violence is not an answer its a question and the answer is YES!

Third POV

"Gather round.", Sanu paused. "I have multiple pieces of news, I'm sure you already know but a horrible thing happened at school this morning, Tem the actor…", behind was Cahaya gazing at the herbivores and carnivores separated and glaring at each other from each side of the room and all wearing white shirts and red trousers.

Cahaya looked at the ongoing drama and thought, 'Ok, this is pretty bad.'

The zebra girl looked at Sanu, she was about to talk when she noticed another student and her eyes became like saucers.

"Oh, sorry for seeing us like this, we aren't like this normally, umm what do you need?", she said and seemed embarrassed about the circumstance

"*sigh* This is the other news, Cahaya-kun, our new clubmate.", the pelican mumbled.

"Hi, so you already know my name, I'm a naga.", he said with a smile on his snout, "I want you to know something about me, my blood can cause intense pain and possibly lethal if ingested. I tell you this since I'm now a member of the drama club.

I have CIP or if you don't know it's congenital immunity to pain meaning I might injure myself and not realise it spreading blood everywhere. 

Sorry in advance if I might sound extremely offensive but you should be extremely careful, especially the carnivores, salamander blood is extremely enticing to them.", he finished.

What he just said shocked everyone and angered the Bengal tiger the most out of all the carnivores who were already in a foul mood before.

'Urg, I made it worse.', was Cahaya's current thought. He was sometimes a tad too blunt.

"He didn't mean it! He is new t-", Sanu tried to salvage the situation but was interrupted by the outburst of Bill, "So you are just like the other herbivores uh, you suspect us to have eaten Tem too uh?!"

Cahaya responded with a big 'What' of confusion. His instincts wanted him to shout venom or bite the big cat but he refrained himself from acting on them, killing someone on your first day isn't the best first impression.

Bill immediately realised his outburst was misplaced, "Oh fuck, I'm so sorry if I scared you! You didn't me-" to get interrupted by Cahaya, "Na it's fine. I should have been more careful with the terms I used but I meant it, I'm poisonous after all.

And to be honest with you I don't find you particularly scary.", the Bengal laughed at that.

He clapped his hands to try and dispel the awkward and tense atmosphere, and succeeded, "So who is who here?", he said with his smile back on his snout.

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Cahaya POV

I was currently swimming in the sea, with a net and my snorkelling bag and looking for food. The cafeteria is good and all but since my last moult, I started to get more and more hungry.

The harlequin rabbit was lucky to be in that corridor at the time and not alone or I might have eaten her, two cases of predation in the same week, heh.

I wouldn't have felt guilt, her life is in no way more important than that of any fish I ate. 

It's hypocritical of me, who am I to choose whose life is more important than the others but the answer is simple, the one with more power has the right to choose for the weaker.

And I would have been fine if I did, who would believe a 'herbivore' eating another herbivore. 

Changing subject.

Good thing is that all amphibians can live in the salty water of this world but most prefer freshwater since it irritates their skin and damages their gills with long exposure if they have any, thus dangerous for larvae.

A problem I don't have since I can't feel it, my body regenerates fast and I simply adapt better to it. (IRL some species can live near or in salty water)

Honestly being underwater and able to breathe is such a liberating feeling, totally different from scuba diving in my past life.

I don't feel affected by gravity like on land, I can move freely, able to see the beauty of the deep and I don't need to restrain my instincts as much as on land. I can be myself.

I stopped my thoughts when I saw the start of the reef, I wasn't very deep so no big predators. It was a beautiful mix of corals, sea anemone, rocks and algae of all kinds but there was this eerie atmosphere, it's still a dangerous place.

I began searching for crustaceans under rocks, shellfish, and sleeping fishes.

One hour later I was swimming at a hidden beach near Zebuth that I found during the week with a bit of Zoozle map and scooting in the area.

I caught a humphead parrotfish. I found him sleeping in his cave and flicked him at a certain spot hard enough to render him unconscious. Since I don't want blood and blood would have attracted other predators.

They were also a lot of females of this species but they were going to lay their unfertilised eggs, seeing that we are close to their spawning season.

I want to eat and not lose one of my food sources. Speaking of food, I was currently on the beach next to a cave full of water next to a cliff, a very enjoyable place if a bit noisy due to the wave slamming against the cliff, a net on my shoulder and a 1,1 meter (3,6 ft) long unconscious fish under my armpit, slithering to my premade campfire.

I placed the net and the fish on a big flat rock and set the campfire aflame with my lighter. Opened the net and started cooking the lobsters in the metal wok.

My attention was back on the main course, fish-san. I opened my snorkelling bag, took my swiss knife, put pressure on him with my tail so he won't move, started to cut his beak off, next carefully and with practised ease started gutting the now not-so-unconscious fish. 

He stared at me horrified and I smiled gently back at him, my gills extended in excitement, my eyes looking softly back into his own and with an innocent tilt of my head. I might be a bit sadistic.

Making him look somehow even more horrified than before. I assume he was also in immense agony with how he tried to squirm harder when my hand was moving in his open belly, taking his stomach and guts out of him. I don't want to eat the sand inside of them, he should be more understanding and stop moving.

*crunch* I was munching one of the lobsters that I directly picked up from the scalding water in the metal wok with one of my bloody hands like it was nothing, which it was in less than an hour they won't be proofs it ever happened and it's not like it's painful in the first place, though I do feel the heat.

I looked back at the now practically dead fish and said with schadenfreude in Seaspeak, -Thank you for the meal- I opened my jaws, my split lower jaw extending itself and I started to swallow without any problems, he passed my throat, then my torso and finished his journey in my stomach situated in my snake half. Not even visible from the outside since I directly crushed him with my stomach.

"*burp" hmm delicious," I mumbled before packing everything. I swam back to Cherryton, avoided the dorm mother by entering the building ventilation and entered my room the same way.

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Third POV

30 minutes earlier at the cliff next to the same beach where Cahaya was.

A light brown skinny gazelle with twisted horns, patches of black furs below his eyes and a white sirurgical mask covering all of his muzzles could be seen strolling around the cliff while playing with a gun in his left clawed hands and a butterfly knife in the other.

He was humming when he saw the hidden light of a campfire, "Oh?", he approached the cliff and dangerously hunched himself over the void, "An amphibian eating in the middle of the night, well if you want to die go for it.", he said with amusement.

He continued to peek at the animal below him and saw it plunge its hand into the blue fish and he realized in astonishment that the fish was actually alive! It was feebly twitching.

He saw how he poke about, took out and played with the organs of the fish like it was some kind of living mystery box game.

"Hot damn that is some fucked up level of shit! Poor fishy dying like this hahahahahaha, oh for the big ass whale's sa-", he stopped his feat of hysteria and looked at how it opened its jaw disturbingly wide and started to swallow the whole fish that was more than half his size and surely heavier than him like it was a snack.

He saw the bulge of the fish moving from the throat, to the torso, to the belly, to the pelvis and finally in the serpentine half before disappearing. The thing burped, packed up its things then swam away.

"What in the actual fuck is that thing! It isn't an amphibian for sure or not entirely… one… oh! Oh! It must be a brethren!!! Ahahahahihihihi, who is it?! That's the 10 billion yen question of the night!", he continued to laugh hysterically to himself like a madman while gripping his horns, his weapons having disappeared somewhere.

"I will need to investigate.", he abruptly turned serious but a maniacal grin could be seen behind his mask that was hiding all of his peculiar teeth.

His customary walk next to the sea has unexpectedly become more than interesting.

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Third POV

Whispering could be heard as Cahaya was slithering with a bouquet of blue roses, in hand, he was going to class 4 where Tem was eaten. He was now a part of the drama club, him not going here would not have been the best of ideas.

And they are something wrong, you don't let students go to a crime scene 3 days after the murder. He was curious about who was the murderer.

He saw in front of the broken door, Louis on one knee next to him, Legoshi staring at the red deer.

"Staring isn't polite, I already warned you about this.", Cahaya slithered silently behind the two and put down his bouquet, "Ha, thank you for your intervention Cahaya-kun, I must agree that wolves are rude. Isn't it Legoshi-kun?", Louis said with annoyance at the amphibian and tried to intimidate the wolf.

And he saw the grey wolf nodding at what Louis just said and facepalmed at the display of submissiveness and fanboying ness to a deer by one of the largest breeds of canidae. 

'That's ridiculous… will he let himself be walked over by Louis and wag his tail or what.', he thought in exasperation not understanding the strange dynamic between the two.

"That's speciesism Louis-senpai.", said the hybrid, the deer who only harrumphed him in dismal.

"Legoshi-kun I have something to say to you, follow me.", he ordered the wolf, like he was his servant.

'And he obeys like a good dog… yep Gosha, your grandson seems to be a lost cause.'

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The next day morning in room 701.

Legoshi POV

'I don't wanna get out of bed, can't sleep, can't get up. I want to stay like this-like a shellfish.', I thought exhausted.

'I'm dangerous you were wrong Cahaya, I'm a monster, a vile wolf that should be caged to protect herbivores like you and Louis-senpai.', I thought in depression.

'I should just stay here forever-'" Legoshi! Get up already!", Collot said and interrupted my monologue.

"Don't look so scary it's time to get up.", and he started to drag me like a sack of potatoes off my bed,' Big dogs sure have strong arms.'

"Legoshi's like this every morning.", said exasperated Minugo, the spotted hyena of our dorm.

"Huh, he mustn't be prepared for the intermediary quiz in math? You're gloomier than usual and that's an exploit!", Durham a coyote let out with a chuckle.

'If only it was only that…', we did our morning routine, walked to the cafeteria, and bought our food.

I looked at the bread in my paw, 'It's so soft just like her fur, '

"Hey! If you don't want it give it to me and stop brooding.", said Jack my best friend since kindergarten. 

"Oww, you bastard!"

"Hey, he just bit the arm of the fox!""Someone get a teacher!""Herbivore stands back!", animals were crying out in frenzy.

And I was looking, transfixed by the violence between the two canidaes. Remembering what I did last night.

I look at the two, my brain instinctively looking at the potential danger they present, bite strength, size and weight. My body is readying itself to fight.

"S-", I was interrupted in my scream, "Could you please fight elsewhere!? You are bothering everyone here and you look like two rabid animals at each other's throats!", an extremely pissed Cahaya-kun slithered between the two, his scales looking flakier and less colourful and jewel-like than usual, 'Is he moulting?'

Everyone gasped and was shocked at his appearance, except the fox.

"Who do you think you are!? What can you even d-hmmm!", he was stopped in his barking by a black scaly hand, grabbing and closing his muzzle. 

He looked dumbfounded at what just happened like everyone else in the cafeteria at the moment.

Cahaya-kun started to lift the fox off the ground by the muzzle and with only one hand, while the fox was trying desperately to remove said hand with his two paws. 

The eyes of the fox were full of fear and were fixed on Cahaya-kun's own. His fur standing on end.

"Way better, you don't sssshow your fangsss to a defenssselessss herbivore and even lessss on your junior.", he hissed with a heavy undertone of sarcasm, a scowl on his snout and his gills fully extended.

He gripped harder at the fox's muzzle until the fox started to sob and whimper from… pain?!

"I think that's enough, don't you think so too Cahaya-kun?", said Louis-senpai.

He let go of the fox making him fall hitting the ground with a thud, the fox looked in terror at Cahaya-kun, backpedalled on the ground and ran away tail between his legs

A smear of blood and fangs on the ground could be seen. Students have seen the fate of the caiman didn't react much but for the others, it was an entirely different story.

'Wow he is strong…', I thought in awe.

"*cough* Sorry for the chaos I might have caused you can go back to eating your breakfast.", he said with a bow then slithered away.