Humans believed themselves civilized, but Aki found villages and cities to be wilder than any wood. They were noisy, smelly, and crammed full of life and activity and temptation. Over the course of all his visits, he'd seen females (and sometimes males) offer their bodies to strangers, savage fights break out, and had watched a wide variety of dramas play out with a variety of endings. It was like several hundred packs, several hundred different families, had all been squeezed together into the same territory--and yet there was some sense of order to it all, something he couldn't quite pinpoint.
It made no sense at all.
It was curiosity that kept bringing him back--and perhaps it helped that humans were also pack animals. Either way, he'd found himself spending more and more time in the city and more time in this shape while his sister largely avoided it and came only when she absolutely needed to; the place intimidated her and she hadn't yet caught onto proper behavior. For Aki, however? It was a playground, a place where every want and need was just a few coins away from fulfillment.
The trick was getting that coin.
Sniffing the air, the smell of livestock caught his attention, of goats and pigs and chickens, and he had to remind himself that he couldn't just do what he'd done last time again so soon. That had been a reckless move pulled off for shits and giggles with a poor, unsuspecting victim--and it was a wonder that he and Snowball had gotten out of there in one piece. No, if he wanted anything (and he was rather hungry, having spent the day hunting with no results before deciding, hell with it, cities were always stocked with food) he had to do it properly this time. With coin.
Or...
Another scent had caught his attention, one less desirable but decent enough: cat.
The city was full of cats. Cats one didn't have to pay for, cats no one paid attention to, cats that didn't belong to anyone. He'd eaten cat enough times when they'd wandered outside the city. Wasn't the best thing--they were too lean and barely more than a snack--but it wasn't terrible, and if he had the choice then he'd rather spend his meager coin on something he couldn't attain freely.
Doubtless no one would miss another.
Yet when he followed the scent to its source, he froze. Well. There was the cat.
Out on the street walking next to a human.
Huh.
Aki blinked, for a second confused (because while he got keeping and breeding animals to eat--pretty smart idea, that!--he didn't understand the concept of pets), before he shook himself and headed toward the pair to get the man's attention.
"So," he said, nodding toward the cat. "Are you gonna eat that or...?"
