#crowthebitty

Redid an old drawing. Just putting it here then running real fast.

(Now I have like 3 versions of the same drawing and I still dunno which one to use. Oh boy...)

"Okay, okay, but this one's funny, I swear!" Laughed the guy as his friends rolled their eyes. His nerdy personality and everlasting speech about bittys had already ruined the evening. Yet they gave him a last chance. Who knows, maybe this upcoming fact was really interesting.

"So." He started. "You know how some animal species are clearly more clever than others?"

"Ah, this time, it isn't about bittys? What a miracle." Mocked a young woman but her girlfriend made her shut up.

"And." He carried on. "How rats are gifted to use the best of their surroundings?"

"Well, yeah...?" Answered one of the dudes, not understanding where his friend was going.

"We've discovered some months ago that stray rats are actually training bittys to their advantage! They often 'adopt out', steal, one babybone from its parents and use it to beg for them. Since the young bitty gathers human sympathy, it asks the passing by for food and then bring it right back to the rats! So? Amazing, isn't it?"

"That's bullshit." One stated.

"At least it had rats in it. I like rats." Shrugged another.

.

.

Bittybones breeding mills are one of our main sources of income. Breeding stock are gathered from here and there, from owner surrenders to strays caught sneaking. For everyone's convenience and before we start using them, we cleanly remove their now useless limbs. That way, we have closer to zero escape attempts. Once its done, we keep them in neatly stacked up cages and pair them with a mate.

Everyday, our team comes to feed them with an healthy mix of meds, hormons, and proteins. We also give them all a gentle pat on the head to provide Soul time. The babybones are controlled everyday. Those with defects will pass through our machine to prevent any struggle then will be sent to fighting rings as cheap XP for the fighters. The good ones, that worth selling, are removed at one month old, near the physical weaning time. They are then sent to some of our stores and sold cheaper than the bittys created in the lab.

"Must have fallen from the truck."

After the bitty craze, the city faced a growing number of abandonments. Some shelters were made in the spur of the moment, to help those ownerless bittys. Yet, not anyone was willing to drive to a shelter or to pay an abandomnent fee since it was so much easier to throw the little pest by the car window. Hence, stray bittys.

The mortality rates, as generations of stray bittys went by, fall drastically. Bittys were able to survive, provided they found Soul time. They started organizing and now it is not a surprise if you happen to spot a pack of them in the nearest trash.

Usually, they play nice. They still rely on humans and monsters to recharge their Soulshard. Usually.

Cause it doesn't really matter if your consenting to give Soul time or not, isn't it? Provided they corner you, they are able to take by force as much aggressive cuddles as they want. You're lucky if you manage to escape.

Bittys aren't a danger by themselves, of course. But 20 ? 50 ? Heck, 100 ? You'd get buried under them and received 3rd degree burns by blasters all over.

It doesn't help that the streets are so much unforgiving that a lot of them will end up with very high LV. Of course, we did /try/ to capture some for the fighting rings, but it's not worth the effort.

Those bittys are usually brutals against each other. A bitty killing another will raise its LV but a bitty /eating/ another will greatly raise its stats. Cannibalism is more than often the way to go for strays.

Of course, we have exterminators. They happen to train bittys to lure the strays directly to traps filled with corrosive poison! Good riddance!

Things went downhill recently as a group of bittys escaping from the fighting ring started to devour humans and monsters alive. Yes. Devouring. We found half-eaten human corpses rotting in alleys! Experts think that they have understood that this can recharge their Soul shard fuller than cuddles and kisses. Yet we still don't know /how/ they understood it.