The Curse of Beasts (BEASTARS)

Web of Shadows

An-Man.

The term dominated Alan's thoughts, more than the encounter with Rokume. The snake was nice if a bit unsettling at first glance. He never really met one until she showed herself, so it was a shock. The weird thing was that he was relatively calm throughout their conversation— even when she had him in her grasp and clearly at her mercy.

He wasn't all that frightened if he were being honest. Though, it was a bit unsettling to know that she watched over everyone from literally inside the walls of the school. Even for a guard, it was just plain creepy to him! It seemed to come naturally for the snake, though, as she was so casual about it. She did say she endured the shame of having no limbs by hiding herself, so maybe it was a way of life for her. It really didn't take away from the creep factor in any case.

Were they really similar? He was always ashamed of his wolf side in some way, and it only intensified after certain events. He was at least okay with it being out in the open now, though he never made a show of it. What would he have to gain from doing so? If anything, it would only muddy his already tenuous reputation.

But that wasn't important at the moment. Now, he needed to put the clue he received to use.

He went to the library quickly, finding all the books he could on groups and social programs. He mostly skimmed through the index, wanting to find the term quickly without diving headfirst into long-winded descriptions. He didn't find anything, unfortunately, and it only added to his frustration. If this was related to humans being in Cherryton before him, why couldn't he find it in any books? It is an accredited school, after all, so surely they'd have something related to it. The more he searched, the less prospect of finding anything became.

He had just returned the last book to its shelf when a voice whispered to him, "Alan-san!"

He looked over to see Jack and walked over, "Hey, Jack. What're you doing?"

The dog smiled, "I was just returning a book I checked out and saw you at the shelves. Were you reading something?"

"Kind of.", he scratched the back of his head. "I've been looking into human history lately and heard about something called An-Man. I looked in some books but I couldn't find anything on it."

"I don't think I've heard of it anywhere...", Jack said pensively. "How about we look online? There could be something about it there if it wasn't taken down."

The two ventured to the computers and fired up Zoogle, putting in the name and starting the query. It actually came up with a lot of results, though most of them were deleted forum posts and the like. A few news links were found, but they were dead ends as well. With a few of the links, they managed to get a general idea of what An-Man is.

In actuality, it was a human integration program. From what they could gather, a group of humans was sent into the city to test their interaction with animals. It wasn't clear exactly why it started, but it seemed to happen a long time ago. A lot of the information was lost to time or deleted from the internet. Alan wasn't going to stop, though.

"Wait...so they tried integrating before?", Jack asked in surprise as the human scrolled through more results. "How come we never learned about this? It could've been in history class, at least!"

"No idea, but if there's something here, we'll find it."

He didn't even bother clicking the links, only skimming over their titles to find the promising ones. There wasn't much to find, though. Most of them were more deleted posts and articles, leaving a lot of questions in the air. Alan wasn't going to fall back again, however. He needed to find the truth, and he was going to find it one way or another. He soon found another article, but this time it was archived.

When he looked at the title, he felt a sense of dread.

"An-Man: A Foretelling Nightmare"

He hesitated for a moment before steeling himself and scrolling through. Apparently, the program started decades ago, volunteers being sent into the city for a month to test the waters for further integration. There were humans in the city at the time, but they were few in number and hard to seek out. It seemed like they wanted other humans to see that life in the city was nice, so they worked with the mayor to make a program to get humans to experience life among animals.

The more Alan read, the more shocked he became. When the five were chosen, they were sent in and kept under surveillance as they toured the city. At one point, they even went to Cherryton and met some of the students! It was crazy to imagine, and for Alan, it was a complete fantasy! He looked down ahead a bit and froze at one of the paragraphs.

"This is amazing!", Jack said. "Humans were actually here years back before you, Alan! Why do you think they waited so long to let one enroll?"

"Read further..."

"Huh?", he looked at his face, seeing it frozen as he stared at the screen.

"Read further down."

Jack looked and read a few lines before stopping himself. He slowly looked back to Alan, seeing his expression hadn't changed.

"They disappeared...", he whispered. "They disappeared and were never seen again."

"A-Alan-san, maybe they ran away for some reason.", Jack said reassuringly. "Maybe something happened and they—"

He shook his head, getting out of the chair and stepping back, "They're gone...and nobody said anything."

He already had a feeling of what happened, both of them did. All it took was one look for them to know the fates of the five in the program. The human was frozen, trying to make sense of it all. Why would they keep it under wraps? Why hadn't anyone said anything about it? Why have a transfer program for a human if—

He stopped at that, Am I...

His gaze fell to the floor, his heart started to pound faster as it sank. Now it all made sense to him, now he had all the pieces he needed. An-Man failed because the humans disappeared without a trace, and it was buried for years. Then the humans within the city left, and no human was seen after that.

But then they started a new program...a transfer program.

He looked down at his hands as his breaths went heavy, trying to find another reason. He could feel his heart beating faster, harder than before! His vision began to blur, swaying and stumbling as he tried to keep his balance. He could hear a voice calling his name, but it was faint compared to the ringing in his ears.

The beating, the breaths, the sounds, the pain— it was all too much!

He fell backwards, and the floor gave way to darkness.

~~*~~

A.N: We need more Jack in our lives. This boy deserves more love than he gets! Judging by the trailer for season 2, Golden Boi is getting more screentime!

Anyway, our human is not well. As much as I like the idea of humans being rare and obscure, I wanted to twist it a little. It makes things more interesting with a good old conspiracy theory!