[Dante POV]
The snake was worried, but looking at her made me happy …
Finally, a thinking beast. Like me her intelligence came after the meteor shower, it was nice to find another intelligent animal… a mean the other one I know is an egocentric jackass so after noticing him I preferred not to talk to him. The snake didn't have memories from before. She kept moving back and forth wondering if she should go after getting the call. As I thought there is an Alpha reptile in the forest that was calling them, I didn't feel the call because of the species difference.
Rose was looking at the Snake pondering if talking to the snake could be dangerous for me or not.
'Are you sure everything is going to be ok.'
'I don't think she will attack me, at least not right away~. She is worried because she is not sure if following this alpha is the right choice for her~.'
'Then why she doesn't just ignore him?'
Humans are so weird…
I don't get what part of animals following the strongest in their groups they don't understand, they don't notice that they have their own way to choose their alpha, they call it elections.
'If you don't like your president you have to follow the rules anyway right~? It's the same for animals~.'
Rose seemed surprised by the comparison, but she understood right away what I meant.
'Then she has to leave if she doesn't want to follow the Alpha?'
'Yep~.'
Rose went near the snake, and I followed her, even being a snake you can see in her face the doubts she had.
'Excuse me miss~.'
'HYYYSSSS!!'
The snake jumped and hid behind a tree I'm not sure what to think about it… after all, even if this is the first time she is talking with someone else and I took her by surprise isn't this a little of an overreaction?
The snake looked around trying to figure out who talked, she found me when she saw to the floor, I was surprised to know that she also noticed Rose floating.
'A cat? What do you want from me!!… I mean hissss what are you looking for little cat…~…hisss.'
'Are you trying to scare me? that will not work.'
'Hisss~… you understand me?'
'Yeah~, finally a smart animal to talk, it starting to get annoying to understand human logic sometimes.'
The Snake tilted her head without understanding.
'Since most animals don't understand when I talk I have to spend most of my time talking to humans, they get annoying sometimes.'
'Oh…~ I don't know thissss issss my firssst time talking.'
She seemed a little sad about it, Rose at my side seemed to pity her.
'You are not going to respond to the Alpha's call~?'
She looked at the floor.
'I don't want to~, but he will attack the humansss, and I think it isss a bad idea~.'
Rose at my side was surprised when she heard about it and talked. Of course, I have to make a connection for all of us so she could listen to her.
'Why don't you try to stop it if you don't like that?'
'I tried, but they don't underssstand. When I tried to talk to humansss to warn them, they run away at the moment they sssee me I don't know what to do!'
I was curious why she was so worried about humans, so I started to look at her memories from before the meteor shower.
She wasn't born in the swamps, she was part of a reptile exhibition apparently the light blue skin was a characteristic from her species, and she was born there and been there for a whole month when the meteor showed happened, she got intelligence and grew bigger after that event. The exhibition was destroyed, and she left and survived eating rats in the city… good thing, eating rats is good for the world. Before the meteor shower, humans always took care of her, was because of this that she subconsciously developed a bond with them more than with other snakes.
'I can help you communicate with them, but if it gets dangerous, I think we all should leave.'
'Really!'
'Yeah~ we will go and try to talk with them, and prevent the attack on the city. If it doesn't work, we run away, and my master will figure out something.'
'That girl?'
She asked while looking at Rose.
'No, she is my master's partner.'
'I didn't introduce myself. I'm Rose, and he is Dante.'
'Hi, ~… I don't have a name sssorry.'
'Let's name you then.'
Rose started to think, and I could see a high amount of stupid names that I had to prevent from coming out of her mouth. I mean she even regrets not calling her bunny Cotton Tail instead of Lucy…
After a couple of second in which I have to work like never before, she opened her mouth again.
'What do you think of Cai-Cai?'
'Cai-Cai?'
The snake got the feeling of the name, and she decided that she liked it, I'm not sure what it meant but something warm spread inside her.
'That… sssounds nissse~.'
I didn't know that snakes could smile, but I'm pretty sure that Cai-Cai was. Rose, on the other hand, was petting her.
I had to interrupt them at that moment.
'We should go~ we have to prevent the attack right?'
Cai-Cai looked at me, and after thinking for a second, she nodded with her eyes more decided than before.
____________
I never came or have seen pictures of this forest before, so it was my first time seeing it, it's normal for there to be so many trees, bushes, and stuff? I can barely walk here, how other animals even go in and out from here?
All I could do was follow Cai-Cai and use the same path she was using, I hate this place, is wet, and my paws sink on the mud. Rose had an easy time just going through everything with Lucy.
I have been reading the other reptiles minds for a while, and I can't believe that there are creatures dumber than rats…
Cai-Cai wasn't wrong in what she said, there was a bloodlust for human blood on the stronger beasts that clearly reflected their desires. One of them was smarter than the others. He wasn't at Cai-Cai or my level of intelligence, but he was smart enough to understand that if he wants to kill the humans what they are doing right now is completely useless.
This was the new Alpha candidate, an oversized Lizard that was really planning to attack Green Shelter. That made me wonder how he is planning to take this army and leave this place that I could barely enter.
The reason I called him a candidate was that most of the creatures here were snakes, and some of the snake leaders didn't like the idea of following him. But unlike the lizard that was all under that Alpha orders, the snakes, alligators, and others had different leaders, one of the snakes right now is in the middle of a duel with the lizard lord.
It's not like they were opposed to attack the humans like Cai-Cai. They Just didn't want the leader to be a lizard, I already notice that this was a lost cause, but what can we do? Psychological warfare would only make them angrier.
Even without knowing what they were thinking Rose face was serious and noticed what was happening.
'We should leave, Dante can you enforce the opposition to have a leader from a different species? This would give us time to prepare.'
'We are not going to talk to them?'
'No, they are not going to change their minds, we have to inform Green Shelter about so we will be ready if something happens.'
I nodded my head, to show that I agreed with her, and started to plant hatred seeds on their minds, they would make that each species reject each other so it would make an alliance less probable. As I was doing this we started to go back, I noticed that Spence is near us in the city, is the right moment to introduce Cai-Cai to him. We don't want her to be hurt if she goes to Green Shelter alone right?
We were retiring from the place, one of the snakes that was farther from the fight started to lick the air moving his tongue in an out, the snake suddenly turned in our direction and noticed Cai-Cai's smell, her bright colors attracted his attention and started to hiss. The hissing called the attention of other Snakes near it and more and more started to notice and come in our direction.
We must leave now… we turned around and using our fastest speed left the place. I was slower than the others, so when we managed to leave the forest I jumped on Cai-Cai, and we fled away followed by a group of snakes.
Well, at least the system sent reinforcements …