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How Not To Become Lunch: 95 - Don’t Gossip
“Kessa! Hey~” Lily called out in the hall. A rather colorful bird paused mid-step and turned her feathery neck.
“Oh, hey girl!” the harpy replied with a smile, watching the frog hop a few times to catch up.
Lily landed beside her friend with unmissable poise, but that sort of thing just came naturally to a girl like her. She flashed a flawless, toothless smile and took a step to lead down the hall once more. She noticed her classmate taking notice, and only grinned wider.
“I really don’t know how you do it,” Kessa complimented. “No feathers or even fur to style, but you’re still the hottest thing in the halls.”
“Thanks. It does take a lot of work some days. I mean, I am naturally adorable, of course, but you gotta have the skill to make it work for you, you know?”
“Heh, totally. Hey, your birthday’s coming up pretty soon, right? Got any fun plans?”
“Oh, I’m sure my BF’s got something wonderful ready to surprise me with, so I gotta keep my schedule open.”
“Aww, you and Grizz are so romantic.”
Yeah~,” Lily sighed. “He’s the best~” But she knew better than to just talk about herself. She wasn’t that self-absorbed. “Anyway, you’re not looking too bad yourself. That’s a nice dress. Is it new?”
“Yeah, and you wouldn’t believe how I found it.”
“Oh?” If there was one thing Lily sought more than fashion tips, it was a potentially gossip-worthy story.
“You know Erica Feedman?”
“…That human chick from history class?”
“Yeah. Well, I grabbed her for lunch the other day, but while she was on the way down, I noticed that she was just wearing the cutest thing. So I- …What?”
The frog’s expression had gone from socially interested to raised-brows and judgmental.
“You’re not gonna tell me you took that dress off your half-eaten lunch, are you?”
“What!? Ew, no! I grabbed the label so I could get one myself!”
“Oh *croak* phew.” For any self-respecting pred-girl, wearing human clothes was already a fashion faux pas. But pulling one right out of your own gullet would have been next level. And very gossip worthy. Good thing for Kessa it wasn’t true.
“Seriously?” the bird chirped chidingly. “You think I’d do something like that? I mean, no offense, but we both know that between the two of us, you’re the gross one. I’m just saying.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you did swallow that barf-skull at Sarabeth’s party.”
The frog’s face fell, and her new expression was one of visceral, repressed disgust, and rising indignant anger.
“How do you know about that!?” The amphibian demanded, but the bird turned her beak away.
“Come on, Lily, you know I don’t go squawking on people who give me good gossip. Besides, she just heard it from someone else anyway.”
The amphibian glared daggers at her classmate for a long moment, pressure building.
“What?!” the harpy asked dismissively. “You’re still the hottest thing in the halls anyway.”
“That’s, like, the third time this week someone’s said something about me at that party,” Lily grumbled angrily. “And none of you guys were even there!”
“For real? You think someone is spreading that stuff around?”
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.”
“Ooooh, I feel sorry for someone,” Kessa replied with a supportive smirk. “I’ll ask my girl if she can remember who she heard it from, but I might not catch up with her until last period. You have any clue who you’re gonna ask?”
“I can think of a few people…”
…
Sarabeth was the first, most obvious suspect. It had been her party after all, and she had ample reason for some revenge.
So Lily decided to completely avoid talking to her at all.
It definitely wasn’t because she still felt super awkward and embarrassed and maybe guilty about the words they’d shared at said party. No, nothing like that. It’s just that she wasn’t really sure if Sarabeth was the type to go spreading rumors… and she was sure that if the vampire was that type, then she would never let herself get caught.
So, best to assume it was someone else. Another one of the party guests from school, someone like…
“Hey, Petal, right?” Lily asked, hopping up with a disarming smile.
A much taller panda bear glanced down under her pink shades, took one more lumbering step, then paused and turned. *glurg-SLORSH* went her gut, as a recent human meal within gave a noticeable kick. Though the one being kicked didn’t seem to actually notice it much at all. A lesser girl of Lily’s stature, even another predator, might have been put off by the sheer difference in size. But this frog was very well antiquated with bears, and it showed in her confidence.
“How’s it been?” Lily asked.
“Pretty good,” Petal replied, with an idle grin a hand across her bulging belly. Not much to go off of there.
“That’s a nice top you have. Very colorful,” complimented the frog, noting the bold, tie-dyed swirls.
“Yeah, gotta add some color, otherwise I’d just be black and white. Kinda dull,” the panda remarked in a slow, lazy tone.
Right, ‘dull’ wouldn’t fit you at all, the frog thought sarcastically, though what she said was very different. “Totally~ Love it.”
“Heh, thanks, girl.”
“‘Girl’?” Lily asked, showing just a bit of surprise but hiding her offense. Just ‘girl’!? Did… did this panda seriously not-
“Huh? …Oh wait, I remember you. We met at that party, right? Um… Lucy, right?”
“Lily, actually,” the frog politely corrected, but inside she concealed an annoyed scowl.
Well, definitely can’t be her if she can’t even remember the name of the most popular girl in school.
…
Dumb panda. Seriously, how could you possibly forget a face like-
Lily’s thoughts were interrupted when she glimpsed a face she did remember, though only vaguely.
“Hey!” she called out across the hall. “Boy!”
Harry looked back and then quickly spun around, wand drawn and at the ready, his eyes fixed firmly.
“Chill, chill,” she urged. “That’s how you act when a hot girl wants to talk to you?”
“Well, when that girl’s a pred…” he muttered, relaxing only slightly and hardly lowering his wand at all. She kept walking toward him, and he locked his eyes on her lips, knowing her greedy tongue could spring out in an instant from even a modest gap.
“Chill,” she said again with a smile, easily tracing his gaze. “I’m using it for talking, not hunting.” Her disarming tone took a little more tension from his muscles, enough that she wasn’t too worried about being abruptly blasted in her pretty face with an obnoxious spell. “Do you remember who I am?”
“Yeah, you’re Lily, right?” Harry replied, mildly confused at whatever context he was missing. “We were both at Sarabeth’s birthday, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the frog girl replied happily. At least this human boy can remember me. “And you… You were hanging out with Jack, weren’t you?” she started to recall.
“Uh-huh,” came the answer, still audibly unsure.
The thought of a surviving human being the one to badmouth her had seemed promising, but one of Jack’s friends? The guy was stupid in a lot of ways, but not that stupid, and she doubted he kept friends that dumb either. She’d go easy on him. The last thing she needed was word getting back to Fiona and getting her upset again…
“You…” She lowered her voice a bit. “You know any of the other humans from the party who made it? Anyone who might be talking about what I did there?”
“What you…? Oh! Oh- n- no! No way! I swear on my life I haven’t said a word! Promise! A-and I don’t know any human crazy enough to-”
“Okay okay, shut it,” the frog muttered, throwing a hand over his mouth. His eyes widened and his lips immediately went still. When she removed her predatory palm a moment later, all he did was mutter a single:
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “But you hear anyone spreading that stuff around and you come tell me, got it?”
“Y-Yes, Lily,” he agreed with a tense nod.
“Man, you really do need to chill…”
…
Lily frowned at the mirror, running some water over her hands to stay hydrated as she wallowed in her frustration, secluded away in the girls’ room.
So much for finding the loudmouth, came the unhappy thought. She hardly paid much attention to the *flush* behind her, not until she noticed the footsteps approaching.
“Hey Lily, nice look today~ Oh, is something wrong?” The ferret coming out of the stall had caught her expression in the reflection before she could fully cover it up.
“Oh, hey Mindy. Yeah, I’m fine,” replied the frog. She recognized the other girl as one of the better looking predators from around school, but didn’t really know her much beyond that. Certainly not enough to open up to. Still, her voice carried a hint of frustration enough for her classmate to pick up on.
“You sure? Sounds like something’s gotten under your skin. You miss your chance at a good lunch or something?”
Something about that comment struck Lily as a bit off. It wasn’t a crazy thing to guess, and the ferret was being polite enough, but she couldn’t help but remember that another of her embarrassments from Sarabeth’s birthday was the fact that she’d been basically the only predator there who hadn’t caught anyone from the vampire’s buffet.
“Hey… um…” Lily might not have been so direct with another pred girl- after all, she was doing all this to protect her reputation- but something about the inherent privacy of the girls’ room lulled her social instincts. “You haven’t heard anyone blabbing about me, have you? You know, spreading rumors?”
“Rumors? About you?” The ferret took a moment to think, then gave a little gasp. “Oh, that’s right. I did hear someone saying something. About the Beatricia party.”
“Who?” Lily asked greedily.
“Oh, um, what was his name…? Some human who said he’d been there… Mark. Mark Irwin,” she recalled.
“So it was one of the humans after all!” the frog muttered angrily.
“Yeah, he’s been telling stories after class, at least the one we’re in together. Bragging to all his friends. I didn’t believe any of the stuff he was saying about you, but I guess word got around anyway, huh?”
Lily scowled as she turned off her faucet, storm clouds brewing silently in her eyes.
“If I ever caught anyone talking about me like that, I’d gurgle them into slop,” remarked the ferret.
“Not a bad idea,” grumbled the frog.
…
For a girl like Lily, it hadn’t taken much to track down this ‘Mark Irwin’ and find out which classes he had. But it was the look in his eye when he saw her that confirmed it. That terrified, guilty gaze that bulged from his face the moment he picked her out of the crowd. The way he’d immediately turned and tried to run. He knew what he’d done. And he knew what was coming- or more accurately, where he was going.
The frog’s eyes narrowed in fury as she called, “Mark Irwin!”
And then the chase began. Tongue tensed within her maw, she yearned to yank him straight down into her gullet, but he did a good job of weaving through the crowd, never giving her a clear shot. Fortunately for her, that also slowed him down, which meant she was gaining ground with every hop. With increasingly fewer and fewer people between them, it was only a matter of time until-
“Gotcha!”
*THWACK*
“Noo!!” He cried as he felt the squishy, living mass mold around him. And even as she pulled him with all her might back through the air, he continued to plead frantically. “It wasn’t me! I swear! It was- OOF”
*SHLULK*
He crashed butt-first into the amphibian’s gaping maw, sinking straight down into her throat and passing almost completely through her lips in an instant. If not for the awkward, bulky, folded-over position of his arrival, he would have already been in the frog’s stomach before he’d even had time to blink. Instead he found himself wedged there, right on the far edge of her tongue, dangling precariously over that final, fatal drop. He felt the muscles of her gullet tense, and knew the end was upon him. He filled his lungs one final time and screamed:
“IT WAS THE FERRET!”
“…Wha?”
Lily had been expecting begging and pleading. Relishing the thought, actually. A final scream and maybe some muffled cries as her belly took sweet revenge on the horrid human who’d dared to spread dirt about her. But these final words were… very specific. A little too specific.
“The ferret!! The ferret!!” he cried again, grabbing hold of the moment she’d left him, even as his hands failed to grab hold of anything else. “She made me tell her everything! I didn’t want to! I swear! She said she’d gurgle me into slop if I didn’t!”
That familiar turn of phrase re-lit the flames in the amphibian’s eyes. This boy’s flavor soaked into her tongue, and her gut gave an impatient growl as her meal hung just a moment away. But her hunger for vengeance was stronger than her hunger for mere food.
*blech*!
Mark Irwin tumbled out onto the floor, panting, backside covered in drool.
“Thank you! Thank you! I swear I never wanted to say anything about-”
“About nothing!” Lily interrupted, noticing the eyes (and ears) turning their way. “You’re just lucky I’m more angry than hungry.”
“R-Right, right, sorry!” He scrambled back to his feet, almost slipping on the saliva, but just as he turned to run, the frog’s voice abruptly brought him to a halt.
“Hold it!”
Mark froze.
“You’re not getting off the hook that easily.”
He turned around slowly, dread in his eyes as his mind raced with possibilities. Increasingly terrible possibilities as he took in her growing, evil smile.
“You’re going to help me get some payback.”
…
It had been another wonderful day for Mindy, naturally, being a girl up at the top of the high school food chain- in more ways than one. She’d had another perfect fur day, three different boys had asked to carry her books, and she’d even managed to see firsthand just how effective her little rumors had been at taking that pompous Lily down a few pegs.
The only thing that could possibly make the day any better was maybe a nice, big meal. And the idea was seeming more and more appealing with each step she took towards the back of the school.
Apparently that Mark boy had remembered more about the vampire party and wanted to tell her. More dirt on the frog and an easy meal? After she’d gotten him to spill his guts the first time, she’d only decided to keep him out of hers so she’d have someone to take the fall if anyone came looking. Lily did have that brute of a boyfriend, after all. But apparently even after giving the frog the boy’s name, she still hadn’t managed to track him down, and the thought of stealing this human right out from under her was just too delicious to pass up.
The ferret’s mind was made up the moment she caught sight of the obviously frightened boy, waiting there for her in a little secluded nook. Her stomach growled hungrily as she approached, just out of his earshot. With a confident smile and a flash of teeth, she approached.
“Hey there, Mark,” she greeted warmly. “Gotta say, I’m glad to see you again. And I’m very curious what you have to tell me this time~”
“M-Mindy, hi,” he replied, nerves doubling (which only made her smile inch wider). “G-Good to see you too. Yeah, I… I do have something else.”
“Well, don’t keep a girl waiting,” she invited.
“I, um… well…” He seemed clearly hesitant.
“Come on, don’t be shy. Tell me what you remembered about Lily.” Get it off your tongue before I show you mine.
“R-Right, what I came here to tell you, was… ‘g-get gurgled, loser’.”
“Huh?”
*TWACK*!
The ferret girl turned just in time to see the streak of blurred pink rush in to fill her vision. With no chase to distract her, or other people to get in her way, Lily’s aim had been dead-on this time.
The sensation of predator fur on her tongue reached her well before her peer-turned-prey actually arrived, a texture and flavor she usually found quite off-putting, but today it tasted like something much more palatable: vengeance.
*SQUARSH*!
Only Mark had been in a position to see the split second of fear and revelation in the ferret’s face, just as it disappeared into the pink, sticky mass, and just before the entire furry form of the once formidable predator had flown clear through the air and landed with a loud, wet splat and squelch, deep in the gullet of the angry amphibian, where the girl completely disappeared from view in just the blink of an eye.
Lily felt the enormous lump drop down her throat as her top and her skin stretched to accommodate, and then settle with a rowdy bounce in her hungry, waiting belly. She clenched it tight, holding her prize in her grasp, reveling in the fullness of a fresh dinner as she waited for the less-than-pleasant taste to pass.
“Oops, sorry, Mindy,” the frog teased. “I must have missed Mark and gotten you by mistake. The only person I’m hungry for today is the one who’s been dragging my rep through the mud. …Oh, wait, no, that was you, wasn’t it?”
Her belly surged and shook in protest. A wild thrashing fueled by a predator’s strength. It was almost worrying, especially for a girl Lily’s size, but the frog just put both hands to her gut and grinned.
“What’s the matter? Too dirty in there for you? I thought you liked spreading dirt. Oh well, too bad. Thanks for the early birthday gift, though.”
“A-am I done?” muttered the human boy, finally mustering the courage to speak up. “I said what you wanted me to, right?”
“Yeah, I guess we can call it even,” Lily agreed, more than satisfied. “But this never happened, got it? And the only thing I ever want to hear you say about me again is ‘Lily’s the hottest, coolest, most popular pred in school.’ Or else I’ll introduce you to my boyfriend, and you’ll wish you were frog food.”
“G-got it, yeah,” Mark muttered with frantic nods.
“Good. Then it was nice meeting you, Mark. See you around school.”
She waved goodbye and he took off at top speed. Glancing back to her belly, it gave another lively thrash, nearly knocking her off balance.
“Speaking of my boyfriend, maybe I should try to find him. See if he’ll carry us home? I’m sure he’d love to hear all about you. Maybe we can even get a hint of what he’s planning for me, huh?”
And so off hopped Lily the stuffed frog, eager to show off her meal, and more importantly how good she looked with it boosting her curves. After all, she had a reputation to keep up.