FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Several weeks after I was allowed to leave hospital, not that the admission could stop me from walking out anyway, I returned to the real world's college. Of course, Jaine's also attending classes there. She said she was getting sick of the uni she was stuck in before; Mostly because of the fact she was one of about 50 ‘anthros there, and most of the humans there were racist bastards. Her words, not mine. Kind of reminds me of what a friend told me a while after my discharge.

"The only creature capable of being inhuman is a human"

And in all honesty, I'm sure that there are some good humans out there, and some highly unsavoury ‘anthros. I should know, I've met some in my time. Jaine says she met some nice humans at her old uni, and her main reason for transferring was ‘This place has one of the best science departments here' funny that. I was going to transfer to her uni because of the lack of animal dissections... then I found out that it was almost solely populated by humans. And furthermore, Jaine transferred here.

"Shirai, pay attention! We're gonna need this for the exam next week." Jaine growled to me, more of a harsh whisper to be honest.

"I know, I know..." I peered at the image at the front, and sighed. The lecturer we had in from some other uni; I don't pay attention to that had been running his speech off a power point presentation. I'm not sure why I bothered watching it up until the screen flashed to an origin of species movie. I always found myself wondering why there were more movies than facts with this guy. He probably wanted us to enjoy it more.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say this is on us. Well, not US, but our species and that." I whispered over to Jaine. I enjoyed being able to speak with her without the surrounding humans notice. Having sensitive hearing has helped me out quite a few times in the past.

"Looks like it. I wonder if whoever made this had their facts straight. I'm sick of the human documentaries saying we were an experiment gone wrong. I can find the real facts on the school internet..." I grinned at the comment. I'd taken the liberty of looking about on the internet on the subject with her a few days back. Most of the human documentaries said we were an accidental by-product of a ‘sensory system enhancement'. I knew better, so did she. I knew it would be illegal to show false fact at a uni course, but with all the human supremacy crap, we couldn't make much of a difference.

"That is what the government wants you to believe. That all of the anthropomorphic ‘creatures', those we live with are merely by-products of an experiment. It is almost the exact opposite." The lecturer took a marker from a pocket in his suit I hadn't noticed before. He wrote up the words ‘theory of evolution' on the board.

"You should all be familiar with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. This was the basis for the animal evolution project, or AEP as it was referred to in the laboratory it was carried out in. I was one of the scientists working on this." He paused as the slide faded into a pretty odd picture. I couldn't make out much of it on the film; the image quality was pretty awful. The man put on a pair of spectacles. The little round rimmed ones. They reminded me vaguely of a dictator from ‘World War II'; the name escapes me. I don't bother with history much.

"We were in charge of gene splicing, analysis, and after almost 3 generations of research, the project was finally at the stage we could practically apply the technology. Our first test was on rabbits, carried out with much difficulty. The result was unpredicted, and I am not at liberty to say the result. However we did not give up. Eventually we found the error in this chromosome." He pointed to the 10th chromosome pair. Something about him gave me a bad feeling, but I doubt it is of any real consequence.

"Once more, I am not at liberty to say which genes it was that we had made an error in. The next trial was a success, and the second success, which was performed using genes from a sheep, was notable. One of my companions noticed a pattern, and tested several possible formulae against the answers of the third test, which was conducted on a cat. I later discovered that these animals were not dangerous, unlike what the caretakers had intimated. I proposed a fourth test, and it was conducted. The genes used in this one were of a fox. The youth proved to be a very kind boy. Thanks to the small human gene section we had implanted, he was able to comprehend speech, and various other things." He tapped his cane against the ground several times. Slowly he flicked through several pictures of a burning building.

"When the government discovered that these animals had become, our facility was razed to erase the past. They had not counted on the escape of the animals from the facility." He then proceeded in an odd tone, considering the magnitude of what he had just said.

"This was mostly a history lesson. I can see that; but I hope you will treat your interspecies relation more carefully. I noticed many conflicts between your races; I should hope you have been enlightened. Class dismissed." He continued standing. I'm not sure what he did after we left; but that isn't my business anyway.

After a quick walk to my dorm, I met up with Jaine at the cafeteria. I felt a wave of bitter cold wash over me as I remembered what had happened here, even if it was only in my head. But I guess that your mind is both your best friend and worst enemy, it just depends on how you look at it. I headed over to the table Jaine had sat down at; she'd already ordered lunch for us.

"Hey, Shirai. Enjoyed the biology lesson? Well, lecture, really. But you know what I mean." Jaine grinned. I found it pretty amusing how different we were sometimes; and on occasions how similar. Normally Jaine was the more serious one.

"It was interesting, to say the least. And also a little disturbing; he must have been about 50." I sighed heavily. It made no sense how a few experiments suddenly become a huge population in one generation. Although to be perfectly honest, I was worrying more over our relationship.

"You have to stop worrying over stuff like that. Besides, our parents were born in completely... different places..." She gave a small grin. Whatever was going through her head at that point in time was probably none of my business. I wish I wasn't so tactless when I think about it.

"What was that I saw? You can tell me, you know that." I grinned back, and something must have got to her, but I continued anyway.

"The lecturer in biology was probably lying about how long it took. And it was probably worldwide; so it's not really worth worrying about anyway." Once more, I'll remind you I'm not much of a person for history, but I'm not the same as Jaine, obviously. She gave me a quick glare.

"You know that how all of us" she gestured to every ‘anthro in the room before returning to her sentence.

"Have a right to know exactly where we came from, how long our races have been on this planet, and why. I know you don't care for history, Shirai, but this should concern you more." Her irritated sentence finished somewhat abruptly, and I finally realized what she had going through her head - or at least I thought so. You never really can tell; people are kind of enigmatic. There's always the repetitive action that some people will see coming a mile away, but if it's something that they haven't noticed before, it can make them wonder.

"I guess I should say something more constructive about now, heh... But I can help you if you'd like. But do you really think the cafe is the best place to discuss it?" To be honest, I'm not sure why I almost always called this place the cafe, or cafeteria. I guess it's a throwback from high school. But I found it pretty odd that our uni had an operating restaurant on the premises, so there's the other half of my thought. After that we finally got to eating our lunch; as usual I had a meat pie, Jaine had... to be honest, I have no idea what it's called; it looked like someone had thrown a salad into egg whites and cooked it.

"It's called quiche. I thought I'd try some; it isn't that bad, I guess." Jaine grinned. She could guess what I was thinking more often than I could do the opposite. She took psychology back in high school, I think. That or I'm just kind of predictable.

"Tomorrow's Saturday, Let's start then, ok?" She said between bites of the quiche stuff. I stopped myself before I made another stupid comment, and managed a simple reply.

"Sounds good enough to me. I've already remembered most of the test notes, and I should be fine with the sheet I wrote up." After she finished the quiche, we both walked out.

After I made my way up to my dorm, I fished through to contents of my bag. Since the last incident at the park, though I admit that wasn't at uni, I had brought a few things from home, so I had to be a fair bit more careful, or I'd wind up cutting my hand. I pulled out a dagger and a few 15 round, .40 calibre clips. I'd got a licence for the gun, but I had hidden it from campus security, just in case. I unzipped the front section of my bag, and opened a cloth ‘fake bottom' of sorts. If it was that easy to sneak in daggers and guns to the campus, it made me wonder why they hadn't got metal detectors like a few other places around. At that point I started getting a bit suspicious of the school system in general. After all, why shouldn't I? I removed the Glock 22, and quickly hid it in a holster on the inside of my jacket. Most people would give me some very strange looks about the gun. It is after all the weapon of choice for most of the police units here, not that they're used often. I hoped I wouldn't have to use mine either. I put my jacket and other clothes into the dresser; it was about 11:40 PM when I got to sleep.

"Don't worry; this won't hurt a bit..." An unfamiliar voice whispered out. A gloved hand rubbed over my forehead. I felt something thin poke its way into an artery, and something was forced out of it. Whatever it was, it hurt like hell. After a few seconds though, my entire body was numb. I could hear some people talking in a foreign language, and when I managed to open my eyes, all I could see anyway was a blindfold made of a very dense material; I couldn't see anything through the blackness. My hands were strapped to what I now assumed was a gurney. I started to feel dizzy, and tried to fight back and stay conscious.

"Everything will be OK..." The voice said again. It slowly faded away as I lapsed into unconsciousness. The next thing I knew I had been wheeled out to a small chamber. The gurney had been removed, and I pulled myself up. The blindfold must have been removed too. I could smell smoke creeping in under a door, along with some licks of flame. I started to panic, and I noticed a window without bars. I needed something to break it. I looked around and remembered that there only was the bed and me. I scanned it with my eyes. The smoke was starting to get to me, but there was something under the bed I could use. I pulled a vial of something out from underneath. It had a symbol of something fragmenting. I threw it at the glass window, and jumped out of the way. The glass shattered as a small explosion tore away the window and some of the surrounding wall. I pushed the bed over, and climbed out. I started running from the blaze, and I noticed several others running away as well. Something still didn't seem right; then something from far away made a loud crack, and a pile of dirt near me was suddenly knocked out of the hillside. More cracking noise and more holes in the hillside burst out. Some of the others fell back as chunks of metal tore through them. Blood slowly trickled down the hillside from them. I tried to look back but something forced me to keep going. Suddenly I felt something tear a hole through my right arm. It exploded into fiery pain, but I kept running. Blood rushed out of the wound, wind whipped at me. Somehow I made it to the perimeter, but I was met with a fence. The cracks continued, pausing briefly for something. I panted heavily, I was feeling tired... I had to get out though. Stars flashed in front of my eyes, but I was snapped out of it when one of the flying metal pieces cut through a small panel on the wall. Luck was on my side as the door slowly opened. I dragged myself painfully across the terrain to the door, slowly grinding open. Stars were dancing in front of my eyes, I felt like I couldn't breathe. The blood was still leaking from my wound. As I passed out again, I felt something pick me up and run.

"Do you mind, Shirai? You've been waking me up almost all night. You fell out of your bed a few times, you sounded like you'd been shot or something. Pull yourself together." I was suddenly awake. My old roommate, as I believe I forgot to mention, had been incarcerated; Shae had been looking for a new dorm since his was overcrowded. 4 people in one dorm here is a real pain in the ass.

"Do you know what the time is by any chance?" My reply didn't make any impact, but he did pick up the clock and shove it in my face. The time glowed in the red bars that made it up. 6:12 AM, it said...

"...Oh. Sorry, I couldn't really help it." I grinned sheepishly as he walked back to his bed. It's a good thing I'd been friends with Shae since we were little, so he knew about the odd nightmares I have sometimes, but they've been more frequent lately. I got into my clothes and jacket, making sure my glock was still where I left it.

"I have to help Jaine out with something. I guess I'll start early." I said to Shae as I left. He took his weekends off of work to get some rest. He tells me it's a pain trying to keep up his good grades without as much time as I have to study, but I always wind up with a ton of free time. The library and research computers were fine for general work, but the uni had some kind of firewall as well, so I normally used my laptop to look at more... sensitive information. It had broken down recently, so I sent it back for repairs. They prove to be pretty expensive, if you're in my shoes. I swiped my student ID at the library checkpoint. Somehow it amused me how lax security was here. I sat down at the back left hand corner of the computer area, and started work. I loaded BIOS on the computer and fiddled around the settings quickly, then loaded some software from a USB drive that had my student files on it. I wasn't supposed to do this kind of hacking at uni, but the techies here knew I wasn't going to fuck anything up. I earned their trust over a long period of information exchange, so I was almost above the law when it came to the computers here. I loaded up the internet browser, and terminated the school filter program. I started to use a filter program of my own to search for any page with a few choice keywords. After some trial and error, I found a server with a small work website on it. OK, small is an understatement; at least when the Institute of Genetic and Evolutionary Study is involved. I'll explain that later, when I know what the hell they're all about. It was going to take me a long time to get access to that information; it made me wish I'd wrote the filter so I'd know how it found the website in the first place. I minimized the tab and opened another. I googled the IGES, as I will now abbreviate it. They had a main website, at least. To be honest, despite their name sounding like a club of some sort, they were serious business.

"Morning Shirai." I was greeted by Jaine as she walked over. She looked a bit nervous, but aside from that fine. She put an arm around me in an embrace and gave a quick kiss, which I returned.

"You could have woken me up, you know." She laughed and winked at me. I blushed a little, which made her laugh a bit more.

"I don't think your roommate would have... appreciated that." It was my turn to laugh now; I could see her cheeks had gone bright red through her auburn fur. It's actually quite pretty, but I generally don't bother with that kind of thing.

"Back to business though, I found a company that has some information that you'd want." I smiled and waited for her reply. I felt like irritating her by telling her I wouldn't be able to access it without the right ID.

"Let me guess. It's something to do with the government, or a multibillion dollar company, and you can't just walk in and look at it?"

"Pretty much. It's to do with some Institute of Genetic and Evolutionary Study. I had no idea what they were until I found their webpage. I doubt it'd be that easy to come across any worker's ID without a hell of a lot of risks. I'll keep it at the back of my head though. My filter didn't find anything else of use though." Jaine pulled out a pen and scribbled something down on a piece of paper, tore it out and put it in her pocket. She wrote it down again and passed this one to me. I unfolded the paper, it was just a memo. I turned it over at her request. There was a faint marking on it, only just visible. I didn't ask her what she meant by ‘We're being watched', because that would be extremely tactless. I started thanking god I brought my glock with me, and a few spare clips. I reached into my coat and turned the safety off, just in case. A soft click resounded through the room. I quickly started a system restore to before I'd got here.

"Shirai, don't tell me you brought the... you know." Jaine whimpered. She was always nervous around firearms, and I'll admit they make enough noise to almost put us in pain, thanks to our hearing.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to use it unless I really have to." I replied. I glanced around to the windows and vantage points around the room. It was getting brighter by the minute, so I didn't bother continue waiting. I stood up and started walking out. I switched the safety back on, the same click resounding. A few other students entered, probably for a lesson.

"Come on Jaine, it'll look bad for both of us if you're cowering in a corner in a room with me." I offered her a hand, and pulled her up when she accepted. I cursed myself for performing a system restore now; that was the only real evidence I had. I didn't want to go through a crowd, either. I took my USB out of the computer, switched it off and... Walked out of the computer room. It would have looked even worse if we climbed out the window in my reasoning. Jaine was still a little shaken from finding out I had a gun with me, and from thinking we were being watched. She didn't let go of my arm until we were outside of the library.

"Did you really have to latch onto my arm?" I asked. My voice came out more irritated than I had intended. I quickly mouthed an apology, but it proved difficult when she suddenly French kissed me. I guess she was trying to shut me up; but it was kind of embarrassing, being kissed like that in the middle of a corridor... With a lot of people passing through. I walked across the schoolyard with her, not really heading anywhere. On the way we passed by a few guys playing some kind of card game, but we didn't really pay any attention. After walking around the building a few times, I remembered we hadn't even had breakfast. I didn't really care, though. Suddenly my mind flickered over the past few minutes.

"W- Why did you French kiss me back at the library?" I suddenly blurted out. I couldn't stop myself; and normally I don't stutter. I guess I was getting more embarrassed than I thought I would.

"It was impulse." She replied hastily. Her cheeks went that nice shade of red, and it was obvious she was hiding something from me. I brought my forepaw to her chin, and tilted it up when I noticed she was looking at the ground behind me.

"Am I really that scary?" I asked slowly, looking straight through her eyes. She started fiddling with her hair, and I guess it wasn't going to need an answer after that. I somehow wished there was a better setting for us. She murmured something, I'm not sure what. I pulled her in towards me, and suddenly I couldn't make myself stop from doing exactly what I'd been embarrassed about only a few minutes ago. That time seemed to last forever, even when a few people started yelling at us to ‘get a room' and such, I simply threatened them with my glock. I would have grinned when they ran off, Jaine and I knew that it wouldn't fire until I disabled the safety; but it would have been hard not to have been smiling already.

Amusingly enough, I'd forgotten just how fast news spreads on campus. Since Virginia Tech and the other gun-related incidents had become common, well, guns had become scarce in high schools. By the time the campus ‘police' made it to my dorm, I'd disassembled the glock and hidden the parts with the techies. Because the school didn't have video surveillance in that area, and because I didn't have a gun, nothing could be done to me. The ammunition I had left in my bag was confiscated, but I still had about 5 clips with the techies. I decided to play it safe and leave the gun with them until later. For now I decided to make do with my daggers, which in the eyes of the campus police were perfectly legal. Now the security was really worrying me; I mean the daggers were obviously sharp, but having .40 caliber rounds was more dangerous? Sheesh.

"Had a visit from the campus police, have we?" Shae walked into the room. When you pay attention to him you almost always notice something random, or bother checking fur colour. Or at least, whit Shae that's the case. Like mine, his fur was auburn and cream, only his was a shade darker, and all of his extremities were coated in white fur. Pretty odd, I guess. His hair had been dyed today, I'd assume. It was a dark blackish red colour instead of the usual brown. Nothing special about his ears, they were about average height and width.

"Not much of one, they only took about eighty dollars of .40 caliber ammo; hi Shae." I replied, casually tossing one of my daggers to myself. I haven't cut myself doing that yet, so in my reasoning it's perfectly fine.

"Apparently one of the guys in your biology class got decked for cheating at a card game of all things."

"I thought that kind of thing would've been left in primary school. What the heck is wrong with some people? Actually, why even bring that up?" Knowing Shae, He'd probably tell me it was something amusing, not that it matters.

"Oh, no real reason. Besides, you should know me better than that." Shae pulled out a comb and started grooming. I looked at my own face in a mirror, and tilted my right ear toward it; my right ear has an odd scar on it. It's been there for as long as I can remember. I can't really describe it in words, but it's kind of like a Z, with a Japanese syllable for ‘ri' underneath it; I think the katakana ‘ri' would fit the description better, it looks more rigid, I guess. After a few more seconds I stopped looking at it and turned back to Shae, who yawned widely. I assumed he was tired because I kind of kept him up almost all night, not that anyone could guess. I continued tossing around the dagger for a few more minutes before bothering to do anything else, and when I did, I was going to sleep. I guess I'm not so interesting after all.

I can remember being hit by some flying metal before I came to again. My arm was killing me, and I was still dizzy from blood loss. But, I had no idea where I was, and there was an eerie feel about the place. After finally being in a situation that I could examine myself in, I took some time to do so. I've heard the saying ‘He (or she) isn't him (or her) self today' but this was completely different. I could tell my fur was a darker shade of auburn, and the fur covering my belly, inner thighs and parts of my arms wasn't cream, it was white. And as I noticed that, I also realized that I hadn't got any clothes on. I cursed silently to myself, and quickly examined myself further. My paws faded to a black colour at my elbow and knee on the respective appendage, my ears were still auburn. For once I took the time to pay better attention to my tail. It was about the length of my legs, closer to the size of my torso. It was mostly auburn, but had a white tip. I found it easy to notice there was something seriously wrong going on here, but somehow I didn't think I was asleep. ‘Damn blood loss' I thought to myself before passing out again.

However long I'd been unconscious had ironically saved me. The men with the metal shooters had passed about thirty meters ahead of my intended course, and I intended to make use of that. I guess they thought I had died of blood loss, and I was pretty sure I should have, if not for a wad of bandage stemming the flow. It had become wet enough with blood that it was indistinguishable from the wound at a glance. Once I thought I could without being noticed, I turned my head around. The gate to the now charred lab was closed, and about half a kilometre away. My memory snapped back to something carrying me when I fell unconscious not so long ago. I guess it must have set me up here so I could survive the genocide that was in process nearby. As hard as it was, I tried to fall asleep on the field to keep up the charade I'd woken up in, but the sound of the metal shooters was unbearably loud; I felt like my eardrums would be shattered if they kept it up. It was so tempting to cover my ears, but I thought they'd notice me if I did. I just held out for as long as I could, and I swear to god that my fur was standing on end. I felt ridiculous. The men suddenly stopped and one of them called out a message in an odd language. They began to run back to the charred ruins down the hill. One of the men, in his dash brought a steel plated shoe down on my head, and knocked me out. It occurred to me that it happened a hell of a lot, and I wished it didn't happen so often.

I woke up the next morning with one hell of a headache and it sounded like more than one person was trying to break in my dorm for something.

"Damnit, why can't you people try this after 10 AM? It's a Sunday..." I moaned in irritation. I put on my clothes and took my daggers out, one in each hand, and a spare in a sheath on my belt.

"I wish I had my gun..."

To be continued, unlike my previous part, which could have easily been an ending.