The Tiger She Didn't Expect
They had called it a special tiger, and she had wondered what on earth could be so special about it.
This, she had not expected.
It didn't merely possess a pheromone. The thing hanging around it was a Poison Pheromone—and one bound up with Mariner, no less.
How in the world had that happened?
"Hey, tiger. What are you, exactly?"
Bariya stirred the poison pheromone hanging thick around the tiger and took one step closer.
The tiger flinched. It had been watching her with eyes empty of feeling, and now it scrambled backward in a hurry. At the plain panic in that look, Bariya lifted both hands.
"It's all right. I didn't come to hurt you. I'm a wildcat who owes tigers a debt."
"So I came to help you. You can trust me."
Without a moment's hesitation, she reached through the iron bars. Let it bite her if it wanted. A beastkin's recovery would close the wound soon enough. Right now, saving the tiger mattered more than her own pain.
"Come here. Let's go outside together."
To settle the tiger, still bristling with wariness, she slowly released her pheromone. The instant a sweet floral scent and a bitter scent of grass unfurled together, the tiger's eyes went wide.
Bariya's pheromone came in two kinds. One was the floral scent—her mother Claire's pheromone, with the power to calm whoever breathed it in. The other was the scent of grass, her own, meant to conquer. Thick with the aura of a Divine Beast, it would quiet the tiger quickly and draw it near.
"...Grr."
Sure enough, the tiger sniffed at the pheromone, then came forward slowly and pressed its nose into her palm. Only then could she truly see it.
But is this even a tiger?
An ordinary tiger wore beautiful gold and white fur marked with black stripes. This one had so many more black stripes than white that, at a glance, it looked nearly all black—and its four paws and tail were pure black. Its body had simply been too dark for her to make it out.
"First, come out with me. If you don't, some creepy pervert might drag you off. I'll take you outside."
The tiger stared at her, then tapped the bars with a front paw that looked far too large for its body. The meaning was plain enough. There was a cage. How was it supposed to leave?
"Mm. I don't have a key. And I don't think I can break it with my strength."
"Hmph."
At the tiger's scoff, her eyes narrowed.
"What? I look so weak you didn't even bother hoping? Ha, honestly! I'm only a little small because I didn't get enough to eat when I was little!"
"Hmph, hmph."
"I'll still be small when I grow up, will I? If I start eating properly from now on, I'll become an incredibly strong adult!"
Bariya looked the snorting tiger up and down.
"You're one to talk, laughing at me when you're even smaller than I am."
"Grrrr!"
The tiger bristled, insisting that it, too, would grow big once it was grown, and this time Bariya let out a soft laugh.
"Dream big. You're weaker than me even now."
"Grr, grrrr!"
"What? You could walk right out of this cage this very moment?"
How?
When she tilted her head, the tiger jerked its chin, telling her to get back. She did as she was told and quietly crouched in a corner.
The instant the tiger opened its mouth and bit down on the bars—
Hissss.
Black saliva spilling from its mouth began to melt the iron.
Poison.
So it wasn't only a poison pheromone. Even its saliva was venom.
Is that even possible?
It wasn't a beastkin born to poison. How could a tiger beastkin do something like this? Just what was this tiger?
Clang. Clang!
The venom was so potent that the iron bars corroded in a flash and dropped to the floor. Bariya went straight to the tiger as it stepped out.
"Grrrr."
It bared its teeth, as if warning her not to come any closer.
"Why? Because of the poison? I'm fine."
She waved a hand. The poison that had spread thick while the bars melted vanished in an instant, and the air filled at once with the scent of grass.
"So long as the poison you carry is a pheromone, it can't harm me at all. I didn't expect your saliva to be poisonous too, though..."
She looked at the pitch-black saliva pooled on the floor. A dense pheromone rose from that as well.
"This is a kind of pheromone too, so it's all right."
In truth, she had shared the space with it for quite a while and hadn't been poisoned in the slightest. The tiger's poison pheromone was far thicker and stronger than the venom carried by the Mariner attacker who had tried to kidnap her, and still it wasn't enough to touch Bariya.
"So if the bad guys come in, don't worry about me. Just blast them with poison. They deserve whatever they get."
Locking a young tiger in a cramped cell like this, meaning to sell it off to perverts. If they died of the poison, that was on them. Who else was there to blame?
"It was hard, stuck in such a tight space, wasn't it? Come on. Let's stretch."
Bariya seized the tiger's front paws and pulled them out, long and slow. Forced up onto two legs, the tiger snarled in apparent panic, but she paid it no mind at all, rubbing its waist and kneading its hind legs as well.
"You're terribly thin. Is a tiger even allowed to be this skinny?"
Wherever she touched, there was nothing but bone. Sighing, she kept rubbing as if giving a massage.
"There, there. Feels good, doesn't it? There's a huge white tiger I like—White. Thump her right here and she loves it."
When her small hand patted the spot just in front of the tail, above the rump, the tiger looked horrified. It twisted this way and that, desperate to get away, but it couldn't escape the child's hands, which had a firm grip on its body.
Far from it.
"Ooh, you like it, you like it. See? A cat's a cat after all."
Unable to fight instinct, its hindquarters rose little by little. Under Bariya's beaming smile the tiger seemed mortified, but there was no escaping the hands of a child already well practiced at handling tigers.
"But you could have broken out of that cage on your own. Why did you stay so quietly?"
She stared at the tiger—whether it was enjoying this or enduring it, she couldn't tell—and asked. It was strange, too, that something with venom this strong had been caught by villains in the first place.
The tiger said nothing. In those sunken crimson eyes, she could read no emotion at all. So she could only keep patting its rump in silence.
How long had they been like that?
Thud. Thud.
At the sound from outside, both of them jerked their heads up. Someone was coming.
The moment they hid in a corner with the tiger in her arms, the door opened, and two men strode into the hidden room. Otus, the auction-house master who had ordered Bariya locked away here, and his subordinate.
"Huh? Boss, the cell where we locked that girl is empty!"
The subordinate stared at the cage that had held her and panicked outright.
"She'll still be in here somewhere. This place only opens from the outside. Get in there and find her, fast."
Otus didn't so much as flinch. He planted a kick on his subordinate's rear. And the instant both of them were fully inside—
"Ghk!"
Bariya spread her pheromone at once. Struck by it, the two men staggered and collapsed where they stood.
"Wh-what is this..."
Only when she saw them unable to move, merely twitching, did she step out of the corner with the tiger still in her arms.
"Hello, villains."
At the sight of the child standing there, thoroughly pleased with herself, both men bulged their eyes.
"Y-you! How in the world...! And that t-tiger!"
"This tiger is mine now, you bastards."
"Urgh—gk—kagh!"
The moment Bariya grinned, the tiger in her arms breathed out its poison. The subordinate foamed at the mouth and passed out on the spot.
"Huh? What? Why aren't you passing out? Was the poison too weak?"
Otus, though, only heaved great ragged breaths. He didn't faint. When Bariya looked back and forth between the tiger and Otus, the tiger lashed its tail in clear displeasure.
"Grr, grrrr!"
Ah. That one's a badger beastkin, so he's resistant to poison.
On top of that, the tiger protested fiercely that it hadn't dared use a strong dose, because Bariya was right there and it was afraid of hurting her. This was not its fault.
Then I'll do it.
Bariya dumped her pheromone over Otus in a rush, and at last he couldn't hold out any longer. He fainted where he lay.
She gave each of the fallen men a kick and slipped out of the hidden room, then went into the lavish chamber she had seen when they dragged her in.
They put me through all that, so I'm taking what I'm owed!
If it were up to her heart, she would have wanted the big, flashy, glittering things. But she had a tiger to escape with, and that would be a bit much. With no other choice, she set the tiger on her head and picked through the ornaments for only the lightest ones set with jewels, tucking them into her pockets one after another. The pockets bulged in an instant.
"Ah, I want to take more, but I can't exactly have you hold them in your mouth."
She looked at the tiger with a mournful face. If she let it bite down, its poison would melt all that expensive gold. A shame, but there was nothing for it.
Then just one more...
It was the moment she reached for a palm-sized ornament inside the ornate display case.
The door burst open.
"It is an honor to be the first to present the tiger to the young clan head..."
Three men came in.
"Hm?"
"Huh?"
"Eh?"
"Oh."
The three men, and Bariya still greedily clutching the ornament, stared blankly at one another.