Chapter 18: Picnic

I heard the birds chirping outside, so I opened my eyes to see it was rather bright in the living room. I sniffed the air to see what Ms. Clare had made for breakfast, but when I didn't get any scent I got up off the couch and walked to the kitchen. She wasn't there nor was there any food on the table. I looked at the clock on the wall to see it was nine o'clock. "Oh no!" I exclaimed, "Ms. Clare is late for work!" I rushed toward her room, burst through the door, and made my way toward her bed. "Ms. Clare! Ms. Clare! Ms. Clare!" I shook her until she jolted up in a panicked state. "What happened?! What's going on?!" She asked as she was darting her head all over the room. "You're late for your job," I told her, "So I came to wake you up." She looked at me still in a bit of shock and then threw her head back on her pillow, letting out a large sigh. "I don't have work today, Ferral," She responded, "I meant to tell you yesterday, but I forgot. Ugh, don't ever barge into my room and scare me like that again." "I'm sorry, Ms. Clare." She sat up and rested her head against the wall, "It's fine." She patted a corner of the bed where I could sit next to her, so I did. I looked around her room to see a lot of clothes on the ground and some dirty dishes on a desk. "Wow, first time being in your room, Ms. Clare. It's pretty messy." I said. "Yeah well, you're the first guy slash person I've had in here, so haven't had much of a reason to clean," she told me, "Should probably get on that though."

"So, what're we going to do today, Ms. Clare?" I asked. "Well, I was thinking we'd go to the park and have a picnic," She replied, "Maybe you could even invite Leona along too." "R-Really?!" "Yeah. Like you, she probably doesn't have a lot of experience with the real world, so it could be nice for the both of you to get a new experience." Just thinking about seeing Leona again has me so excited. And from the knowledge I have on picnics, it's basically when people go to a park or camping and bring food with them. "I'll go to her apartment and see if she wants to go." "Alright. Tell her that we'll head over to the park at eleven." I nodded. "Good, now if you excuse me I've got to take a shower and prepare a giant lunch to bring with us. Because if her appetite is anything like yours, I'm gonna need all the food I can muster." After that, I left the room and got dressed to head out and see Leona. I still have her address on the slip of paper she gave me so I'll use that to find my way. Once I finished changing, I opened one of the windows and left through it, making my way down the long ladder that was by the window. I walked along various streets in search of the address's name. I and Leona would sometimes meet at Ms. Clare's place to do training together. It was always nice to be around her more. But I'd never been to her house yet, so it took a bit of time to find it but it was only ten, so I still had plenty of time to ask her. Once I reached the apartment complex, I quickly noticed that it was old and seemingly abandoned. Why would anyone want to live here? I found her house number and knocked on the door. No one had answered. I tried again, but still no answer. The third time I tried using the doorbell, finally I heard footsteps coming toward the door.

The door opened and Leona was standing on the other side, hair messed up and wearing a long dark blue t-shirt with an orange lion's paw. She looked tired and annoyed until she realized it was mean, and then her demeanor changed slightly. "Ferral? What're you doing here so early in the morning?" She asked, letting out a yawn. "Well, Ms. Clare wants to go to the park for a picnic, and she wanted me to invite you," I responded, "So….do you wanna come?" She rubbed her eyes, "Umm, sure. What time?" "Eleven o'clock." "Ugh, why do you guys wanna do things so EARLY? *sigh* Alright, I'll meet you guys at your place at around ten forty-five." I nodded, "So you're really gonna come? That's great, I'll see you then. Bye." I turned and started to walk back to Ms. Clare's apartment. "Uh, bye." She said as I walked off, then closed the door.

Once I got back home I told Ms. Clare about Leona agreeing to come with us. Ms. Clare was glad that she agreed and asked me to help her with preparing the food. By ten-fifty, I heard knocking on a window and saw Leona crouching outside it. "Do NOT let her break my window again, I just got it fixed." Ms. Clare said as she rushed over toward the window and opened it. "You know, you could always just knock on the door, right?" Ms. Clare said. "Yeah, but climbing up the ladder is easier." Leona responded, "So, do you guys have all the stuff we need?" "Yep!" I said from the kitchen, "We got all six bags worth of food." "Six? Why so many bags?" "I'm figuring you and Ferral have the same appetite," Ms. Clare said, "So naturally I made hopefully enough for both of you. Taking what I've gathered by how much Ferral eats." Ms. Clare asked if Leona could help, so we each grabbed two of the bags and headed down to the parking lot, and put the bags in the trunk of Ms.  Clare's car along with a large tablecloth. Then Ms. Clare started up her car and we drove off to the park that mother had taken me to the first time I came outside. It's also the same park where I fought the gorilla guy and cobra guy. Once we got to the park, Ms. Clare asked me and Leona to grab the bags and find a bench to eat at while she went to find a parking spot. "Is this your first time coming to the park, Leona?" I asked. "Nah, the scientist that took me outside the first time brought me here. It's nothing special really." She responded. "When I first came outside, it was my mother who brought me here. She let me play with the other people and their pets." "I've heard you mention this "mother" person before. I thought it was Ms. Clare at first, but the fact you called her by name, made me realize you're talking about a different person. So, who is she?" I didn't respond. Truth is, while I love talking about how great Mother was, I don't like talking about what happened to her. It'll only make me sad, and I'm trying to get past that sadness….but it feels like it never wants to go away, no matter how much I ignore it. So, I quickly spotted a bench where we could sit and pointed it out to Leona. It was a way to get off the topic. We put the bags and the tablecloth on the top of the bench and waited for Ms. Clare to find us. I did not want to look at Leona, because I did not want her to bring up Mother again, so I turned my gaze toward the lake that was in the center of the park. I saw a group of ducks swimming and geese making their loud goose noises. Nature has been a way to calm me down. "So, how long will it'll take before Ms. Clare finds us?" Leona asked, standing beside me and looking at the lake. "Oh, well we didn't go too far from where she dropped us off so I don't think she'll have much trouble." As our gaze was fixed on the lake, I could feel something approaching us from behind and I turned around and saw two of the bags were missing.

"What the…?" I looked up to see two people running with the bags. "HEY!" I ran after them, leaving Leona behind. "Ferral! What happened?" She called out. I quickly turned around, "Someone's trying to steal our stuff!" I turned back and continued to chase after them. These two were fast, they had quite a distance from me, but I wasn't going to let them steal MY food so easily. I transformed into my wolf-like state, slightly ripping my clothes, and bolted even faster toward them. They ran into a large crowd of people celebrating something, pushing past them trying to make me lose their scent. It worked, so I had to stop and darted my eyes around to try and find them. I had very good vision and could see from very far. I had eventually seen them about halfway through the crowd, and I continued to my chase, excusing myself through the crowd. They had finally made it out of the crowd and ran off while I was barely getting through the middle….

"Ha!" I laughed as we made it out of the park and onto the roof of a small grocery store. "I told you we were gonna get away." "Sucks we couldn't grab one more bag," My sister said, "But I guess this'll have to do for now." "It's fine, would've been more trouble having to carry more weight with us." I told her, "Besides, once we put this stuff away, we'll go back down and grab some more." She nodded and I put the bag I had gotten down, only to get tackled by something. My sister yelped as I was pinned to the ground. It was the guy we ran from at the park! "H-How the hell did you catch up to us?!" I asked in disbelief. "No one steals my food and gets away with it." He responded, "Now hand it over!" He growled at me, almost like he was some kind of wild animal. "You better listen to him," a tall woman said behind my sister who jumped and started walking back. "Right now he's pretty hungry, and you wouldn't like him when he's hungry." I stared at the woman for a second. Her demeanor was serious and demanding, then I turned to the guy who looked at me angrily and his teeth bared. These guys were nuts, we weren't gonna beat them. "Alright, alright. Sis, give 'em the bags." "What?!" "Just…do it. Something tells me these guys aren't people we should mess with." She sighed and handed the two bags over to the woman. Then the guy got off me and I dusted myself off and walked toward my sister. "You two should be ashamed of yourselves," The man said, "Stealing is wrong." "W-We're sorry." I said, "We were just hungry." "Yeah, ever since we ran away from that stupid facility, we've been on our own." My sister added. The two looked at us with confusion for a second, then at each other and again back at us. "You said "facility," right?" The woman asked. "Uhh, yeah. Oh shit wait, we're not supposed to talk about that." "Oops! I'm sorry bro, I forgot and it just came out…." "Hold on." The man stopped her, "You wouldn't happen to be from a facility of people who make animal-human hybrids, would you?" I and my sister looked at each other then back at the man who stuck out his arms, showing all the fur all over them and his animal-like claws. Giving him a second look, I finally noticed he had dog-like ears on the top of his head, his feet were covered with fur and claws as well and he had a tail. The woman next to him looked at him for a second and then stuck out her arms too, showing them slowly started growing fur on them. Just like the man, she too gained animal-like qualities, but her's were more cat-like while the guy was like a dog or a wolf. My sister and I looked at each other in shock. We're not alone out here.