Chapter 83: Bonita

“Okay, what’s the plan here, then?” Jimmy asked, “You think they died in the High Grasslands, but what if they didn’t? I’d love to take you guys home, but no offense, I’d rather look for the young hunters today. We spent all night looking for them.”

Furthermore, he added, “I don’t want to step on your toes, but have you looked for the young hunters in the High Grasslands, or have you holed up here since yesterday?”

Another one of the survivors, a thirty-three year old woman then budded in. She was offended, and started speaking out of order. She wasn’t as reverent towards a young man, from the looks of it. To her, Jimmy seemed like a baby spouting out orders.

“How dare you question our bravery, our worth!?” She exclaimed, “If the younglings died, then so be it! It’s not our fault! Get us home, right now, because some of us have our children to tend to, you rock humper!”

“Rock humper?” He chuckled. “That’s a new one. Pretty funny.”

However, his chuckle should not be mistaken as obedience, or fear. If he didn’t seem threatening to these survivors, Gutaxun sure as hell was. He, a large Allosaurus Fragilis, started growling, and letting out these booming chirps, clearly irritated, and letting out a warning that the hunters could not ignore. He stared at the burrow where every human was holed up in, and looked at the woman who was yelling at his master.

Jimmy raised his arm, and without even turning around, he flapped his hand, and said, “Relax, big boy.”

Anna’s QT squeezed its head in the opening of the burrow shortly after, and poked its large beak inside. She wanted to see what was going on, and wanted to figure out if Anna was in trouble. Its large beak almost pierced through Jimmy’s torso, but he calmly dodged it, because he had sensed its large heartbeat accelerate before the QT even got close.

With two, terrifying and large predators watching over them, Jimmy bought himself all of the negotiation power there was to buy. Power that he didn’t even care to have, really, because he already knew that these six survivors weren’t going anywhere without his say so.

Jimmy stopped talking to the survivors for a moment, and spoke to Anna instead, “You’ve been up in the sky all night, Anna. Did you fly above the High Grasslands?”

Anna was still mad at him, he could see it in her face, but she held her composure nonetheless. She could read the room, and already predicted what he was trying to do.

“I spent half of my night above the High Grasslands. That’s how I found these guys.” She answered. “But I haven’t seen anything else. Bonita has great eyes, and she would’ve found the corpses if there were any corpses to find. I taught her to look for humans specifically, dead or alive.”

“Bonita, huh?” He stretched a smile, “Cute name, I like it, and thanks, you helped me get to my point.”

Anna lost the high ground as soon as she mentioned how she named her pet. She told the name to the only guy who would know how to tease her about it, but he resisted, and focused on the matter at hand.

Jimmy turned to the old, six survivors, and said, “So, I can safely assume that you never even bothered to look for the ’younglings’ in the High Grasslands. You followed them, sure, but you gave up when things got hard? Do you value your delicate feet more than the lives of young hunters?”

“Of course not…” The fifty-one year old man answered. “We were just tired, and scared.”

The rest of the survivors were quiet after that point, even that woman who wanted to rip his head off a moment ago avoided eye contact now. Their walls were down, they were embarrassed.

Jimmy felt a bit of compassion for them, but intuitively, he understood that they were bad people. It was human nature for old folk to try and preserve the young ones, even if they’re not related. Anything different reeked of an evil, selfish type of cowardice, a cowardice that these survivors reeked off. He knew, he read them like a book, so he slowly lost any bit of compassion he felt towards them.

He also knew how to step on their toes, in a sense, and said, “We’re not going home today. Our dinosaurs have been up all day and night, doing the job that you were supposed to do, two days ago. They will sleep a few hours, and then we’ll start moving before dusk.”

“What? You want to move at night?” That woman bursted out once again. “Are you mad?!”

“You’re not very smart, are you?” He bit back, and was quite agitated at this point. “Quit yelling or you’re gonna be dino food, and trust me, even as their tamer, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them.”

Afterwards, he also added, “The giants sleep at night, so we’ll be safe. As for the dinos you’re clearly scared to run into, they won’t bother us either. We have Gutaxun, support from the sky, and seven other carnivores to protect us. We’ll be just fine.”

The old survivors were irritated, but there wasn’t anything they could do, really. They were even kicked out of their burrow afterwards, so Gutaxun could go in, and take a nap. Gutaxun liked to sleep in holes, he liked to feel tucked in, and snug.

The rest of the land dinosaurs slept near the opening of the burrow. As for Bonita, the large Quetzalcoatlus Northropi, or otherwise known as Anna’s flying lizard, she was awake, as sharp as ever, and she circled around the burrow where every other pet slept.

Bonita had been taught not to attack, or try to eat the other pet dinosaurs for one thing, but she also understood that sleeping dinosaurs were vulnerable, and so if her master didn’t want them dead, she was willing to do anything in her power to prevent them from being hurt. She stood guard, and let the other dinosaurs sleep.

“Does Bonita speak English? God damn!” Jimmy whispered as loud as he could. “How did you teach her to do that?”

“I didn’t,” Anna answered. “I thought you did?”

Jimmy and Anna looked at each other in confusion, and the both of them couldn’t help breaking out a smile as they looked at each other. Simply said, they couldn’t stay mad at each other even if they wanted to, and after a bit of giggling and dilly dallying, Jimmy landed a kiss on her cheek, and had her melt over.

“You’re lucky I didn’t feed you to Bonita, jackass.” She sighed, defeated, and kissed him on the lips.

Later on, as they looked at the sleeping dinosaurs, she said, “Nice River Fatties, by the way. The Metriacanthosaurus are great at fishing, one of the best of this era, as you can tell by how darn fat they are.”

“Thanks,” He sighed, “I almost shat myself when they surrounded us last night. Did Nechi tell you that I never really tamed them?”

“Yeah,” She nodded. “It’s the first thing she said as soon as I saw her.”

“Of course,” He said.

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