DE Vol. 1 pt. 73

Lene. “Minogida of the Plains.” That was how the short, goat-horned girl on the other side of the screen introduced herself to me the last time we talked.

And now, rather than actually look at me, she cautiously looked around what must have been the screen on her end as if looking to check for Kaila and the other Volcano Hounds. It was only when she could confirm that none of them were present that she let out a relieved sigh and finally looked at me.

“Are… are those scary monsters gone?” Lene asked, making me think of her as more of a scared child than the leading representative of a group of people. Then again, if everybody in her group was like that, it would make sense.

But I didn’t want to stereotype them based off of just how one single member of their community behaved.

Though… seeing some of the others behind her cautiously peak at the screen before running off made it a bit hard to not assume they were all cowardly.

Were the Volcano Hounds really that scary?

Well… if I was a person who was seemingly based off of a prey animal, they would probably be scarier than they seemed to me. But they were basically humanoid canines as far as I was concerned, and humans had a long, positive history with canines. It was impossible for me to feel any sort of fear when looking at them in the same way that it was impossible for me to feel fear when looking at a pit bull or German shepherd. Were they potentially dangerous? Yes. But were they also good, cute dogs? Yes. That was how the Volcano Hounds made me feel. Potentially dangerous, but more cute than anything else.

Yet, Lene and the others like her were apparently absolutely terrified of them. Maybe there was a canine species on their world that caused them problems before? That would make sense. Or maybe they were just herbivores and had a natural fear of anything and anybody that looks like a carnivore, even if they’re from entirely different worlds.

I was going to have to ask about that since it made me curious.

“They’re not monsters,” I answered. I wanted to also say that they were our friends, but I needed to be careful about the order of what I talked about if I didn’t want to scare them away again. “They’re not here, either, don’t worry. It’s just me and you.”

Lene let out another sigh before standing up a bit straighter than before, making the tops of her seemingly oversized breasts visible again. “Good… they’re terrifying.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why? Well, because! Did you see them?! They had scary fangs! And sharp claws! Only predators have those!”

Was it racism or speciesism? I wasn’t sure. Though, considering that the goat people were pretty… light skinned, and they were terrified of the darker skinned Volcano Hounds while stereotyping them as predators… there was an unfortunate parallel that I wished didn’t exist. But for the time being, I held back from calling her out on that. “Are there others like them where you’re from?”

“There are! They’re the reason we had to move out of the mountains.”

“What are they like?”

“Big, scary monsters even bigger than you! Covered in scales with sharp fangs and claws! They used to hunt us for food all the time… until we left the mountains. Even though the mountains were our home… it was too dangerous to stay there. But the plains were safe!”

Well, at least it sounded like they were going up against actual monsters rather than just carnivorous people. But still, I wasn’t going to let that justify them discriminating against the Volcano Hounds. “It must have been hard to leave your home because of that.”

“It was… our elders tell us about our ancestors who used to live there. And now because we’re not climbing mountains all the time, but we’re still always hungry… we get fat.”

I blinked a few times. “Pardon?” Nothing about her looked fat from what I could tell. At least, not from her shoulders and up.

Then I had a feeling about what she was talking about.

And that feeling was confirmed when she stood up as far as she could to show me her… excessive chest. Seriously, it was absurd. She looked like she was half the height of Enna yet had a chest that was just as big, if not bigger, than hers.

“Look!” Lene shouted, pulling her tits up even more with her hands underneath them. “The mountains were our exercise! Running and jumping all over them kept us small and healthy! Now all we do is walk around the plains and get fat! I couldn’t jump up a mountain even if I tried to with all this fat weighing me down!” She kept on bouncing her breasts with her hands as if to illustrate her point, seemingly completely unaware about just how erotic she looked. “Fat! And it’s all because of the predators!”

“Ri-right. That’s… uh… a problem. Yes.” Honestly, I was kind of shocked that there was a shortstack just… bouncing her tits in front of me like that. It didn’t help that, like the Volcano Hounds, she wore very little clothing that left basically nothing to the imagination. Was that how species on other worlds dressed? Did nobody care about properly covering their bodies up except for humans?

As for Lene, she continued bouncing her tits around without a single care in the world. “So! Much! Stupid! Fat!” Apparently, she had quite the energetic personality when the Volcano Hounds weren’t around… and when the topic of “fat” came up. “And stupid grass! How dare it be so delicious! The grass here is even tastier than the grass back home!” She went out of sight for a moment. Then, when she returned, she had a mouth full of grass with some of it sticking out through her lips. Then she talked with her mouth full since, apparently, they didn’t believe in not talking with a full mouth. “It’s not right! How is food going to be so delicious but our bodies can’t keep up with getting rid of all the fat?!”

“Is… is grass your main diet?”

“Of course! Grass is the best! Well, sometimes we eat leaves and berries, but nothing beats grass!”

“So… you gained all that… weight, just from eating grass?”

She lifted her breasts up again. “All this fat is almost completely from grass!”

Grass-fed shortstack mega tits.

The universe was probably far stranger than anything humans ever came up with for fictional stories.

“So, just… let me recap a bit here,” I said. “Your people used to live in mountains. Predators pushed you out of them. You moved into the plains full of grass, then got… ‘fat,’ from eating too much grass and no longer getting exercise from climbing mountains?”

“Right!” Lene replied. “Well… that was what happened to my ancestors. I’ve never been to the mountains.”

“Couldn’t you run around or find other ways of exercising? Like body weight fitness?”

“But running around for no reason is boring.”

“But you want to exercise so you lose weight, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to exercise. It’s just… back when we lived on the mountains, we were forced to exercise! And there wasn’t food everywhere we went! So we were forced to jump up and down the mountains all day to look for food!”

“Ah. I see. So, you don’t want to exercise, you just think you would be skinnier if you were born in different conditions. Because being forced to would make losing weight easy.”

“Exactly!”

“You don’t want to climb mountains. You just want to eat more.”

“Right!”

“And you think that if you were born on the mountains and forced to climb them, you would be forced to be skinny while also getting to still try and eat as much as you want.”

“Yes!”

The representative of the Minogida was not only borderline racist… but also lazy.

I took a deep breath to hold myself back. I was supposed to be making friends with them, not antagonizing them by criticizing their lifestyle.

But when I looked at Lene, I saw the face of what America had degraded to.

If the men and women of America chose to be obese themselves, fully aware of the damage they were doing to their bodies, then that was fine. There was nothing wrong with that. If somebody wanted to stuff their face full of burgers and cake until they ballooned up to a thousand pounds, that was their right and I would fight to the death to protect their right to do so.

But then there were the others.

There were the Americans who ballooned up, blamed everybody else for their problems, and never put the effort into fixing it themselves. They would weigh five hundred pounds and blame everybody else for their weight. Rather than just exercise for a few minutes, they would talk about how much they hate being fat before stuffing their face full of more pizza and sugary drinks.

I admired Americans who helped themselves, even if it was helping themselves into an early grave.

I had no respect for the Americans who played stupid and harmed themselves while blaming everybody and everything else for their issues.

A true American would laugh in the face of diabetes, raise a middle finger to their cholesterol, and down a burger with twenty thousand calories in it while taking full responsibility for their body and life.

Meanwhile, a modern “American” would stuff their face full of burgers and pizza while crying about how a baby looked at them funny so now they have to comfort eat to cope and it’s totally not their fault for being fat.

There were few things more beautiful than an American who purposely ballooned up to the heaviest weight they could reach. That was freedom and self-actualization.

The others were just pathetic children blaming others for their problems.

And Lene looked to be in the second camp so far.

So, even though I knew I was supposed to be playing nice… I couldn’t hold back.

“One,” I said, “the Volcano Hounds living with us are good, friendly people. They have no interest in eating you despite the language they used before. They are our allies and, if you become our ally, they would fight to protect you just as hard as they fight to protect the rest of us. Two, there’s nothing wrong with eating as much grass as you want, but you have no right to complain about your weight if you’re not going to put any effort into trying to lose it. Complain about how difficult it is to lose weight, but only while trying your best to lose it. Anything other than that is—”

The call dropped.

I stared at the empty screen for a few seconds, my eyes twitching every now and then.

She hung up on me.

Again.

Furthermore, while she might have looked scared again as soon as I brought up the Volcano Hounds… that fear was immediately replaced with annoyance as soon as I brought up her weight.

She didn’t hang up on me because she was scared.

She hung up on me because I was calling her out for being “fat” without putting in any effort to change that.

I let out a long, deep sigh as I unclenched my fist that I didn’t even realize I had balled up.

Thanks to the Demons, I had hyper capitalism at its worst end result. Now with Lene and the Minogida, I had a bunch of whiny brats who just wanted to eat all day and then complain about being fat like it wasn’t their fault.

Kaila and the Volcano Hounds were the only ones who simply wanted to live… well, simple lives. Simple, peaceful, fun lives doing whatever they felt like. They didn’t have to worry about a career. They didn’t stuff themselves full of grass and then complain about being fat. They just wanted to have fun and didn’t care about any of that complicated stuff.

Were the Volcano Hounds the peak of civilization?

Should the Volcano Hounds be who everybody else aspires to be like?

I looked over to where Kaila was. Thad was holding her back for me since he was the only one strong enough to restrain her and keep her out of the way while I tried to make friends with the Minogida. Following a nod from me, Thad let her go and she came running up to me.

“How’d it go?!” Kaila asked, her tail rapidly wagging behind her. “Did make new friends? New friends to play with and taste?! They looked so tasty…”

While I was sure the Volcano Hounds wouldn’t actually try eating any of the Minogida… I wasn’t so sure that they wouldn’t at least try licking them just for fun.

More importantly, I placed a hand on top of Kaila’s head to give her some pets. “Thank you, Kaila.”

Kaila tilted her head a bit, her ears twitching as a smile curled her lips. “For what?”

“For being so good. You and all the Volcano Hounds. We should all aspire to live as freely as you do.”

“Yes! Then we can play and eat all day!”

Truly, being a Volcano Hound was living freely without a care in the world.

Their lifestyle needed protected from food stuffed full of sugar to make it more addicting and capitalism that would seek to turn them into wage slaves for the rest of their lives.