I Have No Excuse

Untitled Part 32

I was waiting for my parents to call me. Prowl was really on edge with the way this asshole was hanging around all the time now. That led to the others getting aggressive and just made our jobs a whole lot harder. Then of course the guy had to insult us on our abilities to handle our mers. His voice was way too high pitched for a guys I swear. It was like he was trying to sound cheery all the time though you knew that he had it out for you. Just listening to him was giving me a headache. He walked around like he owned the place and there was nothing we could do about it.

Prowl simply refused to leave the water now. His scales were always puffed out when the guy was around and he would hiss whenever he got too close from within his nest. He never came out at all anymore. The Accuratious would bring him his meals right to his nest. One would get the fish while the others patrolled around Prowls nest. Their own scales puffed in aggression and their fangs bared at everyone who came by. That meant that we hadn't been able to clean the tank in a while and we would have to drug them up soon to do it. We'd need to get Prowl out of the tank to start pulling out scales soon too. We were going to be pulling out scales by the handful at this rate. We didn't need Prowl's scales rotting and him getting sick on top of the stress.

I really wanted to be able to push the guy out of the door. All of these questions on what was going on. All of the notes. It shifted more toward Prowl every day.

'And they made these designs?'

'They have their own written language? Is there evidence to support this?'

'How long has this been going on?'

'This is the mer that has supplied these markings?'

'How long has he been here?'

'When and where was your first encounter with this mer?'

'And it Escaped the traps?'

Question upon question. Note upon note. He was staring at Prowl half the time and I was starting to fear what they were going to do. I never had wanted to hear from my parents so much in my life. I needed this information as soon as possible. I needed to make sure that Prowl was going to be ok. In order to protect him though I needed to know what I was protecting him from and how. Then of course Blaster and I came up during one of his little 'interviews' and how we had found him. So we ended up having to talk to the guy. Blaster had been his first target. Blaster had been rather cold toward him and gave as little information as possible I'm proud to say. His clipped answers had really annoyed him I'm sure.

"What do ya want?"

"I would like to talk about the mer that has given us access to their language."

"Of course ya do. That's all ya want to talk about."

"Is that a problem?"

"Yes. Having ya here is bothering him." I spoke bluntly as I gestured to the hissing mer.

"One would think that with how long he has been here that he would be more accustomed to people."

"He's a wild mer that had his pod destroyed by people. He's not some pet. Of course he's going to be upset by new people."

Prowl didn't mind people coming. He didn't care about the people that came in with deliveries. He didn't care about the inspector that came in. He didn't care about some of the employees kids and spouses coming in. Hell he even followed the kids along the glass wall curiously and boy did the kids have fun with that. It was only Him that bothered him. It was only this shady creep that made him act like this.

"Most mers become comfortable enough with people that they don't act so aggressively in such facilities within a few months."

"Prowl's not most mers."

"No he is not."

For some reason the way he said that and looked at Prowl was putting me on edge. It was like there was something behind the words. Some hidden meaning that I couldn't find.

"A lot of the mers here aren't comfortable with people being so close and the way ya keep staring at him would bother anyone mer or not."

He didn't give me a response and just walked away with a grin. One of the most disturbing things that had happened was when Prowl had started hiding in his neighbor's nest when he came by. The one that he had been avoiding going into the entire time that he had been in there with them. They guarded the nest with such ferocity that we had to drug them later that day to clean the tank and pull Prowl out. That was the only time he had actually fought us. He simply did not want to leave the water. He had thrashed and pulled and had even bit Cliffs hand when they got him on the gurney to take him to the medbay. He hadn't broken the skin, but there was enough pressure to get his point across that he didn't want to go anywhere. However one sedative given near his wing fin and he had let go.

His wing fins twitched as we worked on pulling out all of the dead scales. He whined more the longer he was out. He had buried himself into my stomach when I moved to comfort him. The black, white, and grey skin under the scales was soft and vulnerable, but very warm. Handfuls of scales were pulled out and Ratchet had cursed under his breath about him not taking care of himself. There was no sign of any of the scales rotting, but the amount of scales that were going to regrow would have left him extremely vulnerable out in the ocean. The moment he was back into the water he fled to their nest again and we didn't see him the rest of the day.