This lady pisses me off. Her child’s the one that threw rocks at my boat, yet I’m the one she’s berating? Thankfully, I know the cause of this behavior along with a way to rectify it! When I first met Mrs. Wuffletush, she was an aggressive squirrel because that’s how squirrels are, and once I taught her a lesson, she became very obedient. Err, she wasn’t technically a squirrel … or was she? What if the people there just didn’t know the right name for squirrels, so they called them predators instead? Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the method works on both predators and squirrels!

“Wait, wait, wait. I understand why you’re hitting my wife, but why are you hitting me too!?”

“Hmm? Because you attacked me when I hit your wife!” That’s right. After I smacked this child’s mom, another squirrel, the child’s mom’s husband, yanked on my tail and tried to bite my neck! “If you want brownie points for defending your wife, then you have to earn them with bruises and battle scars!”

“Aren’t you an immortal?” the child’s mom asked while covering her head with her paws. “You’re supposed to be magnanimous! Why can’t you ignore a misbehaving child? What’s wrong with you!? My baby can’t hurt you; he was just trying to play!”

“The best part about being an immortal is people stop doing annoying things to you out of fear! I mean, people stop doing annoying things to you out of respect! How can I ignore a kid doing annoying things to me? This is for his own good! By teaching him a lesson now, he won’t go around bothering human immortals. Do you know what human immortals do to beasts? They dig out their beast cores and cut off their penises!”

“If you’re educating our child, then why are you hitting us?” the child’s mom’s husband—oh, wouldn’t that make him the child’s dad? Mm, it would—the child’s dad asked.

“Ah? Isn’t that simple? I’m not a monster! There’s no way I’d hit a kid! …Except for those few times a kid hurt my daughter, but those don’t really count because anyone who’d hurt my daughter isn’t a kid: they’re a villain!” Ah, I’m going off topic. “Right, there’s no way I’d hit a child. That’s why, I have to hit you guys, his parents. You’ll be upset at your kid for provoking an immortal, and once I’m gone, you’ll beat the snot out of him, and he’ll learn not to do anything like this again.”

“This is an abuse of power!” the child’s mom said, her voice practically turning into a screech. “You, an immortal, is bullying a nameless family! Wait until the ruler hears about this! I’m going to file a complaint against you!”

“Hah?” The ruler responds to complaints like these? “Do you even know who I am?”

“I don’t, but that doesn’t matter! The ruler is impartial!”

Pfft. This woman wants to file a complaint against me, but she doesn’t even know my name! How’s that going to work out for her? It isn’t. Mm, Ilya’s right about squirrels being a little silly and easy to trick! …Wait a minute. I’m the only squirrel she knows! Once I get back home, I’ll show her easy to trick, hmph, hmph. Anyway, before this lady finds out anything else about me, I’ll leave! Ah? Why’s the boat so far away? Didn’t I tell Slayer Junior to keep an eye on it?

“Welcome back, Senior Fluffytail.”

“Stop calling me that.” Isn’t he afraid of calling me senior by now? Even after I beat up squirrels up in front of him, he still disobeys me. He must be too dense to understand what’ll happen if he makes me upset. …Or the boat drifted too far away for him to watch. Well, it wasn’t like he was going to move from his spot on the mast. “Alright, now that that short interlude is over, where’s your home?”

Slayer Junior shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?” How does a squirrel forget—? Oh, right. Squirrel. “How do you normally find your way back home?”

“By sight and smell,” Slayer Junior said. “But I can’t see anything from way up here. Everything looks the same, and the only thing I can smell is the crisp scent of my impending doom. Can we please land?”

Mm, it does make me a bit self-conscious to be the only one flying a boat. There aren’t any other boats in the sky, and what if another bored child decides to throw a rock at me? I can’t go around punishing everyone; well, I mean, I could, but that’s like a huge waste of my time. I might be a good person, but that doesn’t mean I’ll go around helping everyone I see! “Why isn’t anyone else flying a boat?”

“For what?” Slayer Junior tilted his head. “Everything you could possibly want is within walking distance. The only reason to use a flying boat is to travel from mountain range to mountain range, but why would anyone want to do that? The trees cost the same to rent anywhere you go.”

“What do you mean walking distance? This place is huge!” It’d probably take a whole day just walking from the base of a mountain to its peak.

“Every mountain has its own school,” Slayer Junior said. “A place to study and a place to sleep, what more can you want?”

Uh, where do I even start? “A place to eat? A place to clean yourself? A place to poop? A place for entertainment? A place for sparring? A place to grow acorns? A place to get a massage? A place to relax and make fun of people walking by? There’s more to life than studying and sleeping!”

Slayer Junior shook his head. “Not for us squirrels,” he said. “Studying is an integral part of our culture. Anything that detracts from studying time is practically blasphemous.”

“What about training?”

“Training?” Slayer Junior tilted his head. “Why would we need any training? We’re beasts. Our instincts are superior to our conscious thoughts, and we steadily get stronger as we grow older. Training is a waste of time.”

…He has a point. “What do you guys even study anyway?”

“Everything,” Slayer Junior said. “Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more superior you are to your peers.”

Pshaw. Knowing everything is overrated. Ilya knows everything, but she’s still forced to listen to me, isn’t she? But with all this forced learning, I think I know why Slayer Junior ran away from home. Growing up in this place must be horrible!