Chapter 106: brought to you by a control freak

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Today on "Be a Man!": Neara gets a female friend and the two engage in emotional manipulation to convince Benedict to dig them a hole.

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Lawrence proved to be more of an annoyance than a threat in the coming days, more interested in standing by a window than actually engaging with any of them in conversation. Neara made it a point to clear her throat whenever she needed to talk strategy with the other beastmen and eventually, he got the hint that she wanted water. He'd heave a sigh and pick up his buckets, the earlier fear completely gone.

Neara, for her part, found playing the point of nagging brat emotionally draining and spent most of her time sitting by the section of the wall that ran through Winston's land. The shade helped cool her down and it gave her a good view of the lake. She still hadn't thought of a plausible reason to go digging in the lake yet, although beastmen still spread rumors that a female on the salt caravan had found it before they got to the City. Thankfully, their memories were more concerned with the fact that they found water rather than obsessing over who found it first. Even though Winston mentioned her by name, none of the beastmen brought it up and most of the credit seemed to fall on Ethel.

Ethel... was a mystery. She refused to talk to anyone, or see anyone, until late morning which in and of itself wasn't unusual, but she didn't seem to acquire any mates either, despite the numerous beastmen hanging on her every word. Lawrence, in particular, almost always left a small bucket of water outside her door, despite the scowls of her assigned guardian, a particularly thick-set beastman named Isaac. When she did come out, she spent the time wandering around the City.

Neara tried not to feel sorry for her, after all the eyelash-fluttering she'd aimed at Winston, but couldn't help it. She'd been the pretty one in the City once, and it felt incredibly lonely, especially since Shay wasn't there. Ugh. Shay. It stung her heart again to think of her friend under the mountain. What would happen to her babies? How long would Curtis survive if he... Aetius said he felt the instant his female's heart stopped beating and although the thought of him, particularly his betrayal, sent angry shivers down her spine and stomach, they hadn't gotten to the bad part of their relationship yet and she didn't think he'd lie. What would Curtis do with the babies once he found out Shay was dead? Or rather, what had he done?

What about Ryan? He seemed to be better with the kids, although she hadn't had much contact with them once they'd transformed. If Curtis went crazy, Ryan could still protect them. What about Parker? He wasn't mated, so he probably wouldn't go too crazy, right? Even if he couldn't take on Ryan or Curtis one-on-one, he seemed to like kids enough to take care of them on his own, and he was a good hunter, son of the old Leopard King, so maybe he'd bring them back here. Or Camel Hump Valley, where his old hut used to be.

Even if she couldn't see her friend again, she could maybe help take care of her kids. First, she had to free the City so they had someplace safe to live. Even if she got rid of Ape King, though, she'd still have to work to convince the greater population that Snake kids didn't pose any threat. One problem at a time though... civil war first, then getting rid of racism. Where had she heard that before?

Not that she wasn't motivated before, but the new goal refreshed her and she felt more of a push to accomplish her goal. It felt... different when she did it for someone else, like she had to succeed in order to properly honor her friend's memory. She could do anything if it was for Shay. She finally got an idea and presented it to the beastmen that night, after sending Lawrence to get 'enough water for a proper bath'. Maybe not prudent in a drought, but restricting water would mean restricting the power of the god and Ape King wouldn't risk doing that. Besides, she didn't intend to actually bathe in it; the beastmen would appreciate a long drink of water not from... animals.

"Ok, so we need Winston to track down some of the rumors about the female finding water with the salt caravan. Find the wildest version he can, the one with the least truth, and believe it."

Tony, who'd gotten over his shock that Neara was the female of the rumor, said, "But wasn't Winston the one that dug the hole in the first place?"

"Yeah, but we haven't heard any rumors about that, just the female finding water after finding a deep hole. I don't think they really paid attention."

"Someone had to." Orson's anger at being cooped up inside what he called a 'sorry excuse for a pen' made him a nightmare to be around on his best days. "Look, we can't just rely on all the predators being as stupid as Tony."

Tony beamed. "Thank you."

"It wasn't a... never mind," Orson said after a glare from Neara. "Anyway, what if they see Winston digging the hole and they remember? What if they see Neara by the hole and they remember? There's too many risks with this plan. I say we just dig the hole in the middle of the night, somewhere out of sight of the City, then..."

"The wall prevents that." Winston nodded towards the open window. "Even if we went to the farthest end of the lake, the wall is monitored every night by Ape beastmen since that's the most likely time for Scorpions to attack. In the day..."

"Yeah, yeah, other predators would see." Orson groaned in frustration. "Fine, Neara, so why does..."

"I think we should refer to her as Agatha, whenever possible." Winston interjected, the base of his ears slightly pink. "Just in case someone is listening in."

"Nobody is listening in! I would have heard them; there's absolutely nobody within earshot, at least for them, and nobody is talking about us at all. We're fine."

"I didn't know Sheeps had such good hearing." Tony commented.

Orson's mouth sucked in on itself and his chest heaved. "It's... yes, there's a lot of stuff you don't know about Sheeps, Tony." He emphasized the s at the end, shooting the Bear a withering glance.

Tony, true to form, continued as if he didn't notice, "Anyway, what else will we have to do once Winston finds out who started the rumor?"

Neara unclenched her hands from the back of her neck and tried to rest them casually on her shoulders. Yeah, no, she was trying too hard. Maybe looped around the back like an anime... freak, that was worse. She slapped them down to her sides and blushed at the confused looks. "Um, so once he finds the rumor, he'll talk to the beastmen and they'll say there was water in a hole. So then he's going to get the other beastmen to dig a hole in the middle of the lake. Once they dig deep enough, we'll have water."

"What happens if they don't?"

"Don't dig deep enough?" Neara tried to understand what Tony meant, although that was a mystery in and of itself some days.

"What if there isn't water in the lake? If you say there was water in the river, what if it's all gone now? It all fell through that hole in the..."

"Agatha is never wrong." Winston insisted quietly. "If she says there's water in the lake, there will be water."

The small room lay thick with dust blown in on hot winds, footprints carving large swathes through it on the most-traveled paths. It smelled like baking stone, like someone spit on a hot sidewalk. Lawrence's grumbles could be heard just outside the doorway, filling up the stone tub Winston carved for her on their first night back. His voice suddenly changed, the sharp anger dropping to something almost pleasant and soft. He seemed to be talking to someone else from the pauses in between, but whoever it was, their voice couldn't be heard. At least, by Neara, which wasn't saying much. The beastmen didn't look concerned, so she was sure it wasn't Ape King.

Although what if it was and they couldn't hear either? What if it was Ape King, but he wasn't talking about her and just getting a status update? Surely he'd want to know why one female required so much water although his questions wouldn't necessarily be incriminating enough to bother the beastmen, but they didn't know about political intrigue or manipulation so Ape King could technically say anything or have any number of double meanings and nobody except her would know! Except she couldn't open the door because then he'd say something like, 'Oh, Agatha, just checking on why you need so much water.' and since he'd be caught, he wouldn't repeat what he said and she'd have to come up with an excuse as to why she was crammed in a room with three beastmen, but she was technically supposed to be mated to Winston. She checked the pseudo mate mark on her thigh and it still looked fresh. Orson said it wouldn't fool anyone since beastmen of a high enough mark could smell whether or not you were mated, but with Winston the highest mark in the City... well, with Orson the highest mark in the City, she should be safe, right?

The voices stopped and her fear crashed around her ears, drowning her in fear and tightness, like a whirlpool dragging her into painful awareness of everyone and everything. Why couldn't she sense everything? She was going to die at the hands of a crazy person in an unknown world lightyears away from her family and they'd never know what happened. They probably cried themselves to sleep every night thinking about how she'd been kidnapped or something and she technically had been but it was different and-

A soft knock barely registered at the door. Winston opened it with a small smile and Ethel walked through, her eyes large and bright. "Hello?"

"Oh, hey, Ethel."

Her eyes widened and she halfway smiled, her eyes looking around. "I just wanted to meet the mate of the Tiger King. I'd heard she was up here and it's kind of lonely downstairs."

"Um... everyone's heard of you." She made a shooing motion with her head and the beastmen slowly trickled out. Ethel smiled at Winston and Tony, but ignored Orson. "So what brings you up here?"

Ethel sat herself delicately on a fur, pulling her skirt to cover her ankles. "I wanted to talk to another female. The others I've met don't want much to do with me and they said there's another female in the castle if I'm so 'desperate for company'." She airquoted them and frowned at her feet. "I just want to go on an adventure outside the walls without worrying about, you know... beastmen falling all over me."

Neara felt herself starting to nod and pulled at her cloak. Why would she agree with someone who fell all over Winston? Even now that she and Winston were supposedly 'mated', Ethel still looked at him with big eyes... and although Neara didn't blame her for being attracted... ugh, what did she even feel? She knew she at least hoped Winston would like her back but there was this war, then he showed up with another female, but Neara kind of bullied him into being her fake mate; everything felt weird and wrong and like she was stepping on his toes, like she assumed too much familiarity. It's not like she hadn't felt like that in the human world, but here, everyone wore their heart on their sleeve and would she be out of place for thinking a kiss meant something? Even when it looked like he'd moved on? He knew the mating was fake, and maybe that's why he agreed to it in the first place.

Ethel still looked at her, then gestured out the window. "I'm sure your mates wouldn't mind if we took a walk or something. I hate sitting still and that's all these Beast City females seem to do."

"City of Beasts." Neara corrected.

"Whatever. You know what I meant, or you wouldn't have said anything." Ethel smiled and stood, smoothing her skirt out. "So you'll come?"

"I guess... I mean, I never said I would."

"No, but you look like you need some fun. Come on! I've been dying to walk on the lake bed and look for shells and things." Ethel took her hand, surprisingly soft, and dragged her out the door. Somehow they managed to evade all of their mates, although Ethel's may have been because she glared at them as they passed. Come to think of it, Neara hadn't seen any mate marks on her, so maybe they were just suitors?

They snuck out the back, clinging to the castle walls until they could make a break for it. Ethel had the clear athletic advantage, long legs pumping beneath her skirt which flowered around her and seemed to float. They raced to the wooded edge of the lakebed, although Ethel got there first and immediately hunted out some stout branches. She waited patiently for Neara to catch up. "Wow, I didn't know other females ran that slow. No offense, it's just odd."

"That's rude to say." Neara huffed and gently touched her face to see if the makeup had worn off. It hadn't, thankfully, despite the torrents of sweat running down the sides of her face.

"Observing things is rude? The City has a lot of rules. In my Clan, we don't have so many. It's mostly just keeping females alive. We don't have those big houses like here though, so maybe that's why." She handed Neara a stick and gestured to the lakebed. "Come on! I know it looks scary, but the cracked surface means it's completely dry; we won't sink in." To prove a point, she carefully balanced on one foot, then hopped a few times, the skirt ballooning in and out around her. "See? It's safe." She dragged the stick behind her, checking once in a while to see if it dug up anything interesting.

The last thing Neara wanted to do in this heat, besides anything, was to run around in the middle of a dry lake bed. Even with the water gone, the steep sides and sandy bottom gave her the shivers. She'd never been a fan of wild water, and maybe that had to do with growing up near the mountains and plains. Ethel showed no fear as she walked, not even leaving a footprint in the deep silt. Neara trailed her stick behind her and tried not to look at the dried vegetation stuck to the walls of the lake. As they walked deeper and deeper, she continued to tremble, aware of how much water would be on top of them if the lake were full.

"Ew, I think I found a bone." Ethel turned over a white stick, twice as long as her leg, in disgust. "Definitely not a shell. What do you think this was?"

"I... don't know."

"You look pretty pale beneath that powder; are you feeling ok?"

"Powder?"

Ethel smirked. "I know black powder when I see it. I just can't figure out why you'd put it on your face unless you're covering up something worse."

The walls around Neara seemed to rise and almost blot out the sky. Thick tendrils seemed to climb the walls, even though she told herself they were long dead and couldn't move. The dry sand crept up her sweat-dampened legs and weighed her down. Was she always this heavy? She leaned forward and balanced on the stick, which sank into the soft ground. The air tasted like fish, like even the lake knew they weren't supposed to be out here.

"You doing ok?" Ethel walked closer and Neara tried to smooth her face, which she felt contorted into... something hideous and painful.

"Yeah, I'm fine." The words echoed around her soul like coins dropped in a well.

"You look sick. How about you sit down and I'll do the poking?" She wrapped a strong hand around Neara's arm and gently guided her to the ground. Ethel's face filled her vision as she peered into Neara's eyes, dark blue meeting dark brown. "You look awful."

"I just don't feel good. The smell..."

"Oh, the fish? Yeah, that'll wear off. One time I tried to lose some weight to fit into my old clothes; I didn't want to ask a male to do it or they'd think I was trying to mate them. Anyway, I only ate fish and by the time I started eating something else, nobody would go near me!" She laughed. "Yeah, I don't mind the smell of it anymore. Which is weird, because I used to hate it." She poked at the sand with a bare toe, then swirled her stick around like a drill. "Maybe if I dig deep enough, I'll poke a hole in its stomach and it'll release the water! We had this female on the salt caravan who found water like this, only Winston had to help her. He's really strong. You're lucky to have him for a mate."

Neara's eyebrows raised and she felt her attention snap back to the present. "Someone found water?"

"Yeah, it was enough for everyone. I don't know what happened to her though."

"Maybe we should get some males down in here to dig like that female did." She watched Ethel kick the sand out of the way. "I mean, it couldn't hurt." She waited, the solid pause blocking the space between them.

"Ha! I'm sure it only worked because she was magic or something. They found her near the mountains and there was a lot of fuss when she joined the caravan. I think she's got to be an Ape Clan member. I've heard they can do things with their mind. Like contact the gods." Ethel cast a doubting look upwards. "Not that I believe in them, but better safe than sorry, right?"

"You're probably right. Any water that would come from here would be gross anyway." How to trick her into thinking of it by herself... Neara couldn't take any credit or they might look too closely at her. Or maybe she SHOULD take credit and be a big mouth about it so everyone avoided her more. Which would be better, and how would she know which one she was supposed to do?

Either way, Ethel seemed like an answer to their problem, if only Neara could convince her to dig a little deeper and get the males to help. Not that Neara couldn't ask, of course she could, but a new female finding water exactly how the old female did? Ugh, she was confusing herself. Agatha finding water the same way Neara did? Someone in the Ape Clan was sure to get suspicious, especially Ape King.

"You look awful." Benedict's voice rang from behind her and she jumped where she sat, sand prickling when she moved.

"Ugh! Benedict!" Neara growled before she could stop herself, clapping her hand quickly over her mouth as though it would undo it.

"She's just tired! Leave her alone." Ethel stood up and stalked in front of Benedict, glaring him down.

Benedict smiled casually and raised an eyebrow. "Whoah, no need to get all defensive, I just meant she looked like she needed help." He directed his smile at Neara, although his thick eyebrows drooped down in false concern. "Agatha, are you sure you're ok?"

"I'm... fine?" She didn't remember telling him her name, or even the plan... although they had spent three days together so maybe he memorized her scent or something... but then why hadn't anyone else figured it out? Beastman rules were confusing...

"I talked to Winston about a certain pair of runaways and he, um, filled me in." He held out his hand to Neara. "Do you need help to stand up? I'm supposed to bring you both back to Tiger Castle."

Neara frowned and pushed the hand away, steadying herself on the sand as she rose. "I'm definitely fine, thanks."

Ethel continued to glare. "What's the big idea, coming here and fetching us like we're children? We're able to take care of ourselves, not that you males would understand that."

Benedict stretched, his long muscles slowly extending above his head and he rocked his neck back and forth. "I can never get it to crack. Anyway, I don't really care what happens to either one of you, I am, unfortunately, the messenger."

Neara looked at the trail of footprints leading towards them and gripped her hands into fists. If Winston was this worried about her, he had to care, right? But he hadn't said anything before, and he had to have smelled her

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