Trixie sighed in exasperation. The shop had closed for the night, but she was still working. Her business was struggling, and she had done everything she could to make it succeed! She had stocked all the most popular exotic animals, she had found ways to care for them without breaking the bank (or any laws), and she did everything in her power to make every step of the process as cheap and efficient as possible.

How was she supposed to know the damn dragon she sold to some young punk last month would let her niece play with the thing? Of course it slashed half her arm off! It's an exotic predator!

Trixie signed again, this time sinking her face into her palms. Remembering the events of the prior month filled her with anger and bitterness. The punks got the police involved, she received a court summons and was this close to losing her commerce license, but, through sheer dumb luck, she was able to keep her license.

Or, rather, most of her license.

Part of the settlement they had reached in court was that she wouldn’t be able to sell “predatory” or “carnivorous” animals at her store anymore, despite the fact that nearly every exotic animal could be considered “predatory.” She fumed at the unfairness of it all, the injustice!

She sighed, for the third time and final time; it was done, now, she had to deal with the fallout. And she would do everything she could to keep her business afloat, she’d spent the last week selling off unneeded supplies and enclosures, and today she received an offer for some very specific equipment.

She entered the back rooms, and was immediately met with the familiar writhing motion of her human farm. They had to go, she thought, she had already found a buyer for the towers; a gloxnar farmer from off world. He wanted them tomorrow, so she had work to do tonight.

Trixie’s eyes travelled to her peripheral vision, she synced her visual assistant to the back room’s systems and accessed the towers’ life support, she turned all the ventilation systems off. Without fresh, circulating air, the creatures would suffocate in their enclosures; she would dispose of the carcasses tomorrow morning when she had Elise’s help.

It was a little brutal, Trixie realized, but ultimately she just didn’t care; she had been feeding these creatures to her pets for years, death by asphyxiation was a mercy compared to what she had done to their forebears.

With the commands put in, Trixie retired from the shop, and headed home for a good night’s sleep.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elise entered the shop the next morning, Trixie had sent her a message telling her what she had done. Elise… wasn’t happy about it, but what could she do? Trixie invested in the humans because they had been financially sound, and they simply weren’t anymore. They had to go. Plus, Trixie was still her boss, and in matters like these, her decision was final.

However, that didn’t change Elise’s mentality, as she entered the back room, she was already dreading what she would have to do.

Trixie had no such reservation, she was already hard at work, taking each tray and emptying the creature’s little bodies into the trash.

“There you are, finally! Quick, help me with these, the buyer will be here any minute.” Trixie didn’t even look up from her work, and Elise soon joined her.

It was gruesome work, She didn’t want to see their tiny bodies, crumpled and twisted, so she took care not to squint so that her visual assistant didn’t zoom in to see much detail. She tried to pretend she was working with inanimate sand grains, but it didn’t work very well. She continued dumping the pale mites into the trash with Trixie in silence, until she heard her curse.

“Oh, damnit!”

Elise’s head shot up, and her eyes shot over to her boss.

“What is it?”

“One of the containers still has live ones!”

Elise walked over to the Trixie, and in her hands was a tray full of humans, still very much alive. Both of their eyes flicked over to their respective visual assistants, the tray had not been reinserted properly when it was last taken out, the data popped up for who last accessed the tray and… Elise’s stomach dropped.

It was her, three months ago, when she took the sample, she was the one who didn’t put the tray back in correctly. The tray’s life support kept working because it defaulted to the prior settings, but it was incapable of receiving the new ones Trixie gave it last night.

“What are we going to do?” Elise asked guiltily. “Could we just dump them?”

“The tray needs time to cool down! It’s still warm, and it’ll stay that way for hours, the buyer is set to be here any minute now!” Trixie hissed.

“I… I’m sorry I didn’t-” but Elise was cut short.

“Stop, we can figure out what to do later. Help me clean the rest of the trays first.”

“Yeah, yeah okay.”

Trixie moved to put the tray down on the table, and then she immediately returned to work. Elise joined her in silence, she was right, they could deal with it later.

They worked faster than before, they finished before the buyer arrived, but only just. Trixie went out to greet him seconds after they finished setting up all the towers in the front room. Elise could hear her apologizing to the buyer, explaining that due to an error on their end, one of the trays was non-functional. Trixie offered the tower in question for half price instead of full, and the buyer happily accepted.

When Trixie returned to the back room, she relaxed a little.

“Hey, Elise, sorry for being snappy a bit back there. I was just a rush, no hard feelings?”

“Of course! No hard feelings. It’s my fault that the tray wasn’t reconnected properly. I should be the one apologizing.” Elise was just happy that everything worked out alright in the end.

“So, what are we going to do with the last tray?” Elise queried, gesturing toward where it lay on the table.

Trixie shrugged, “I’ve got no use for it, could you get rid of it for me? No point keeping it around here.”

“Of course! I’ll handle it, don’t worry, Trix.” Elise smiled, and her friend and boss smiled back.

“Thanks, Elise, I’ll be in the front if you need me, I’ve got to update the inventory.”

And with that, Trixie turned on her heels and strode out, leaving Elise alone in a much stiller room.

Elise relaxed, she loathed making mistakes, especially in professional contexts, she was just glad that Trixie was so forgiving. She brought herself over to the table and brought the tray up to eye level.

She squinted, and her vision zoomed in. Inside the tray she saw… pandemonium, for the first time the majority of the creatures weren’t copulating. Instead, they were cowering in fear, or running around the tray in a panic.

“Now what am I gonna do with you...”