Bribery Commences

Kaiwi stretched as the first morning light began to stream through his window. Another day in paradise. He stepped out onto his balcony for his usual morning routine when movement caught his eye. A pair of strange looking raptors with keratin crests darted across the street, ducking into the bushes. One had a dark grey body with bright white banding and a white crest while the other was smaller, unfeathered and a dull brown in colour with a bright splash of green across the crest. They seemed to take the leaves in their claws and examine them before tearing the entire bush out of the ground systematically. Kaiwi watched, fascinated, as they tossed the branches aside and started to place something into the hole where they had once taken root. He'd feel offended at their vandalism of his local area but he was too enraptured by their strange routine, what in the world were they doing? He had no idea what they were called but he thought they looked a lot like Magpie, the strange raptor fella that sold all manner of trinkets from a broken down human car. He rose from his sitting position and crept quietly back into the apartment so the intruders wouldn't spot him. He hurried down the stairs, all four floors of them, until he was out the door and into his overgrown back garden. 'His' in the lightest sense of the word, he didn't plant it but he liked to think of himself as its custodian. The thought of these strange raptors tearing it up sent a spike of anger through him and it made him pick up the pace to where he had last seen them. 

Kaiwi wasn't a harmonious colour built to blend in with the grasses, but he was dark enough to hide in the shadows and watch the raptors move around. They would stop at any sight of worn dirt in the concrete and try to plant more seeds. If the ground was too hard or if they hit concrete too soon they would move on to the next. He lay in wait for a while, unsure of how to proceed. He could easily jump them and pin one down, forcing it to answer his questions with an iron grip on its throat but that had never been Kaiwi's style. These two were skittish, their heads turning at rapid speeds to take in every direction on the street before moving on,  so coming straight out with best friendly patter would probably fail too. His next thought was bribery, these guys seemed like pretty big plants fans, maybe they'd enjoy some of the more juicy plants growing in his garden. He knew very little about herbivore diets but he knew there were a choice few growths in the garden that his more plant-based buddies seemed to enjoy when he offered them free rein out back. He tucked his arms to his body and stalked quietly back to his building, stopping only to peer through the tall grass and make sure they hadn't heard him moving. 

When Kaiwi reached his garden it took him a moment to remember which of the plants he had to retrieve. As he snapped the branches with thick green foliage off of the larger trees, he began to think about what he actually wanted to ask these intruders. He supposed he could open with asking politely for them to not fuck with his garden, but what then? He should ask why they're replacing the plants with their own, ask if there was something wrong with the old ones that they needed to be uprooted for safety purposes. He nodded to himself, these were logical questions to ask of the strangers in your neighbourhood that seemed to be fully preoccupied with agriculture. He tucked the branches under his wings and hurried off to the street, not wanting to miss the raptors.

"Hey there friends!" he called out down the street, making both of the planters jump a mile in the air. They froze, like any second they would take off running so he waved the branches in front of him. "Looks like hungry work, can I offer you some lunch?" The taller one looked down to the other, they exchanged silently before the shorter one stepped forward.

"Very kind of you, thank you...?" he trailed off, clearly waiting for an introduction.

"Kaiwi, nice to meet you," the Utahraptor greeted. He handed over the branches to the strangers and stepped back to a comfortable distance while they chowed down. "I live in that building there, noticed you rummaging around with the plants and I'd like to ask you nicely to not do that to my garden," he said in a rush and the dinosaurs looked up at him.

"You've been watching us?" the grey one asked sharply.

"Of course, not every day new folk come to town," Kaiwi said lightly, trying to keep the conversation friendly, "Like I said, just worried about my own garden, something wrong with the plants you were taking up?" The brown one folded his hands and sighed, setting down the leaves and facing Kaiwi properly.

"There's nothing wrong with the plants here, we just need to make room for the ones we brought with us."

"Brought with you? You from the other island?" Kaiwi asked, tilting his head.

"Yeah, the other island, we came through the tunnels," the grey one cut the smaller one off.

"Didn't catch your names, by the way," Kaiwi mentioned, "Never seen you around before, anyone like you for that matter, aside from that crazy shopkeep near the woods." They looked at each other at the mention of Magpie but clearly didn't want to address it directly.

"I'm Pokie, that's Varpunen," the grey one said, clearly the one in charge, "We're Oviraptors, same as um, that shopkeeper."

"Again, nice to meet you both," Kaiwi said with a polite smile, "Let me know if you need anything, there's more of those trees in my garden if you want some."

"Oh, no need, we're omnivorous so we can eat all sorts of things when we're on the surface," Varpunen said cheerfully. Kaiwi took a minute to digest that reply. On the surface? Implying they didn't live above ground? He knew there were tunnels under the islands carved out by lava flow, maybe that's where they lived most opf the time, that would explain why he had never seen them before. And the thing about being omnivorous? He suppressed a grin, that certainly worked in his favour. He stood up and shook himself, stretching his neck into the air.

"Huh, good to know," he said, lazily pawing at the ground, "I'll be sure to bring you something different tomorrow." He left before the Oviraptors could protest, heading into the back streets to make his way to his usual hunting grounds to see if there was anything he could catch for them. They hadn't given him everything he wanted to know, but he was sure he could get there with time, and with enough bribery.