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Chapter 240 — The Night of Feeding the Tiger
Just before entering the lab, Henry didn't forget about the hungry little tiger in his arms. He set Katie down, and the moment her paws touched the sand of this new, pitch-dark, barren world, the small striped creature began exploring curiously—momentarily forgetting that her stomach was still empty.
…Or perhaps, driven purely by instinct, the little one was already sniffing around for something edible.
Henry still couldn't fully read what went on inside the young tiger's mind. All he could interpret through their half-functional "communication" was whether she was hungry—or had made a mess.
Using his super senses, he locked onto a desert hare not far away. A moment later, the animal was in his hand. He twisted its neck with a clean motion and placed the body in front of Katie.
He didn't bother removing the entrails or cooking the meat. A tiger was an apex predator; the nutrients she needed were in the raw meat and organs. Skinning, draining, or boiling would only destroy much of that.
Even freezing and thawing raw meat damaged its composition—and the meat processed for human consumption had already been drained of blood and sterilized.
He'd learned that lesson the hard way: after a period of feeding Katie cooked food, her behavior started feeling… off. So Henry hit the books. Turns out, there was a reason why tigers were carnivores, not omnivores like dogs that could eat almost anything.
So now, he simply tossed the whole hare to her. Instinct told the little tiger exactly where to bite first and which parts to eat for nourishment.
As for why he didn't let her hunt live prey herself—well, that was obvious. A grown tiger, even one that could play cute like a puppy, was already terrifying to most people. If she also retained her predatory instincts, that would be a nightmare.
Henry had no intention of releasing Katie into the wild. He was waiting for her to live out her full life—then he'd have tiger bones and tiger whip to harvest. Even if he had to let her "die naturally" a bit early someday, she'd at least need to reach adulthood first.
—The little tiger shuddered mid-bite, as if sensing something dreadful behind those thoughts!—
If he truly intended to keep her as a domestic companion, he'd have to curb her wildness and suppress her instincts.
City-dwelling carbon-based lifeforms weren't equipped to handle an actual tiger attack. If Katie ever learned to hunt when hungry, the consequences would be unimaginable.
So, feeding her manually it was. Nothing wrong with that.
Henry had already looked into the laws: at this point in California's history, there were no specific restrictions on keeping certain animals as pets. But if that pet injured a person or someone else's animal, the owner bore full liability.
Only endangered and protected species were explicitly illegal to buy or own—and those were clearly listed. It wasn't just up to random activists to decide what counted. Tigers weren't on that list.
In any case, the hare didn't last long. Katie tore through it quickly, her small face smeared with blood.
She'd mangled the fur but hadn't eaten much of it, mostly chewing the meat. The organs were largely intact—only the heart was missing, and she'd taken a small bite out of the liver. The rest of the viscera remained untouched.
From the look on her face, though, the little tiger still wasn't quite satisfied.
Fortunately, Henry's ears picked up movement nearby—a fox this time. He caught it easily, snapped its neck, and tossed it in front of her just like before.
Thanks to his precision, the pelt was still in good shape, though tanning and curing it would've been a hassle. Rather than bother, Henry just gave the entire fox to Katie as-is.
Judging when she'd had enough was easy: once she started playing with the food, it meant she was full—or bored.
Playing with food, whether for humans or animals, was a bad habit. It showed a lack of respect for life.
Eating was for survival. Playing with what you killed—that was something else entirely. That's why humans preached against waste.
For carnivores, such behavior could turn into something far worse—killing not for hunger, but for fun. Henry wasn't about to gamble that Katie wouldn't someday extend that impulse toward humans. Better to stop it at the source.
So whenever she started toying with food, he'd take it away immediately—whether she wanted more or not.
This made the little tiger fiercely possessive of her meals. Whenever she saw food, she'd devour the edible parts as fast as possible, leaving the rest for her "caretaker" to clean up.
While Katie gnawed at the dead fox, Henry sat nearby and looked up.
Out here, far from civilization and light pollution, the moonless desert sky was a revelation—a dome of glittering stars, impossibly vivid. With Kryptonian vision, he could even see their true colors: blues, reds, golds—not the uniform white human eyes perceived.
For once, he let his mind go blank. The super-brain that never stopped calculating finally went silent, and Henry simply was, surrounded by stillness.
The desert wind carried faint sounds from all directions—the whisper of sand shifting, the rustle of small creatures scurrying in the dark, the mating calls of animals in heat.
All meaningless noise, normally. Yet tonight, they seemed to merge into something unified—an orchestra of life in perfect balance.
And suddenly, the quieted super-brain flared to life.
Not in pain, not from overload as when his senses flooded him with too much data—but with exhilaration. His thoughts accelerated beyond human limits, and his body temperature rose sharply, like a fever of insight.
It felt… new. Like the time he'd decided to decipher tiger vocalizations after mastering over thirty human languages. His Kryptonian mind was trying to interpret the world itself.
Why was this happening? He didn't know. Only that he could sense a thread—something intangible—and if he followed it, he might discover something profound.
Was this something Kryptonians—or even Superman—were capable of? Henry had no idea. The only Superman he knew was a fictional one from comics and films, and if it wasn't written there, then he had no reference.
But if something wasn't mentioned… did that mean it didn't exist?
Realizing that his current state was unprecedented, Henry simply stopped resisting. He let instinct take over.
Without conscious thought, he rose from the ground, hovering midair. His legs crossed beneath him, palms open toward the sky.
Purple light blossomed above his crown, blue at his brow, cyan at his throat. His chest glowed green, his navel yellow, his groin orange, and a faint red shimmer radiated from his perineum—each point resonating with the world around him.
Until, without a sound, someone—or something—wrapped him in a mirror dimension, cutting him off completely from the real world.
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