Work in Progress: Infinity - The Un-mouse
This story is the full version of my 'Short Yiff from PDem'. Basically, I read through Squirrel's furry space adventures and was inspired. I suggested a crew member to put aboard the Arctic, but was shot down due to the fact that he was a predator and it was a prey-only ship. So I gave him a home aboard the 'Infinity'. The inspiration hit me quickly, raped my mind, and left me drooling and broken. This is all I've got to show for it, except for Dusan's recurring nightmare, which I'm going to put into this one of these days.
The universe this occurs in was created by Squirrel, and I'm using it with his permission (though that was a LONG time ago)
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Infinity was on course for its trial run. Since she was a new ship, Infinity had to be put through her paces before she could go on to ‘bigger and better things', as the phrase goes. The whisperings around the ship were that the ship was captained by a prey fur, but that nobody except the senior staff had actually seen him. They said he even missed the ship's launch, something totally unheard of. But as the shining silver ship flowed through space, drifting lazily, interesting things were happening aboard.
The mouse sat at a table by himself in Infinity's mess hall, quietly munching on a bowl of mixed nuts and dehydrated fruits. His eyes lazily slid across the furs in the room, marking what they looked and sounded like. He was of the opinion that, given the troubled state of affairs, every fur had an equal chance to die, and he felt it was his duty to remember the dead.
He tuned out the mess hall as he thought back, back to when things had been so easy, when life had been normal. Before everything went topsy-turvy...
His reverie was broken by the approaching of several predators. Nothing special, really. Infinity was a joint predator/prey venture, and while there were far less predators than prey, that didn't make predator sightings a rarity.
The mouse simply chose to continue munching on his meal, picking up a piece of dehydrated banana and nibbling it with relish. He barely took notice as the trio of predators sat down at the far end of his table.
The first, a cougar, whom the mouse knew was named Giles, used his fork to spear a piece of steak from his plate, before lifting it to his mouth and popping it in, chewing noisily with his mouth open, talking all the while.
"Ya know," he said between bites, "I think this Infinity's a pretty nice ship. But there's too much prey!"
"To think, this beautiful ship is captained by prey," replied the second, a wolf femme named Carmen. "It's almost criminal!"
"Ugh, I totally agree," concurred the third, a fisher. He went by the name of Raz, and despite the captain's struggles, he couldn't convince the Federation's admirals to remove him from the roster. The two porcupines on board were ordered to give the fisher a wide berth. Severe tensions existed between fishers and porcupines, after the fishers almost made porcupines extinct. And Raz was definitely a credit to his species. His favorite pass-time seemed to be walking around the ship and intimidating the prey furs. And his favorite targets: mice. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the gray mouse's dishy ears swivel ever so slightly in his direction, a sure sign of eavesdropping. With a sideways nod of his head, he informed his friends that they were being spied upon, and he slid down the bench, coming to rest across from the mouse. The other two followed a moment later, neatly boxing the mouse in.
The mouse, however, didn't react like a regular mouse would. His whiskers didn't twitch, he didn't try to run, he just continued to sit there, munching on a piece of dehydrated pineapple. He liked the fact that he could have pineapple without all the sticky juices mussing up his fur. Such a hassle to clean up.
Nibble nibble.
The fisher frowned at the mouse, unaccustomed to being ignored by prey. He cleared his throat for attention. The mouse glanced up at Raz for just a moment, then looked down at his bowl again, reaching in to grab an almond. Fur bristling at being brushed off, Raz slapped the bowl out from beneath the mouse's nose, sending it hurtling down the table, before it hit the wall and shattered, scattering nuts, fruity bits, and ceramic shards everywhere. Now the mouse did look of up the fisher, still without emotion. The room froze, all furs tuning in to the drama unfolding.
"What d'you think yer doin', mouse?" asked Raz, a sneer in his voice. He put on his best tough guy act.
The mouse locked eyes with the fisher, unblinking. His eyes, the color of stormy skies during the daytime, made the fisher want to shiver. They had a quality to them that he had never seen.
"I was eating," replied the mouse softly, his voice a monotone.
"You was listenin' in on us," accused the fisher, bearing his teeth.
"And if I was?"
"Then you've got a problem." Raz grinned, bearing his teeth as he stood, Carmen and Giles following quickly. Nothing gives predators confidence like a posse to back them up.
"Alright then." The mouse stood.
Raz reached out to grab the, admittedly bold, mouse, intent on shaking him until he begged. His paw got within an inch of the mouse's uniform when all hell broke loose.
The mouse grabbed the fisher's wrist and twisted, pulling Raz to him while the predator cried out in pain. The other two predators tried to grab the mouse, intent on freeing Raz. Carmen got one paw near the mouse's neck, only to have him bite down on it. She screamed at the top of her lungs and jerked, but the mouse didn't let go. Giles slashed at him with his claws, but the mouse's tail lashed out and cracked him on the knuckles, then his footpaws grabbed his wrist and jerked the cougar down, before latching onto his neck, squeezing. Carmen sank to the floor, trying in vain to free her paw, before the mouse suddenly released it. Carmen fell back with a cry, colliding with the bench. She struggled to sit up and stared in horror at what had happened in the few seconds she had been down.
Giles lay unconscious on the floor, having had his breath choked out of him. The mouse was now on the table, with the fisher's head in one hand, his unblunted claws digging into Raz's chin, while the other hand held a steel combat knife, which he held just a few inches from his captive's face. The fisher cursed softly, eyes nearly crossed from staring at the glittering blade.
The mouse's expression remained unchanged, though he was breathing a little hard. His brows knit just slightly before he spoke.
"Listen up, ensign. I don't take kindly to anyone who threatens me. I will not give in, I will not be intimidated. I will, however, kill you if you try this again. Do I make myself clear?" The fisher, unable to speak, simply nodded. "Good." The mouse lifted the top of his uniform slightly, revealing a sheath in the waistband of his pants. He slid his knife home, then lowered his top again, the knife hidden seamlessly once more. He released Raz's head, allowing the fisher to sink to the floor, gasping for breath and sweating from fear.
"I'm...gonna tell the captain," swore the fisher. Carmen was surprised to hear such words. Such cowardly, childish words.
The mouse laughed hollowly and Raz grit his teeth. "Tell him Dusan says hi," replied the mouse.
Growling deep in his throat at being made a fool of, Raz snarled out, "Computer, locate the captain."
The computer beeped in acknowledgement. "Captain is in the mess hall."
Eyes wide, Carmen looked over at the mouse, suddenly filled with a terror she had never experienced before. "D-dusan?" she stuttered out.
The mouse nodded, seeing the realization in her eyes.
"Dusan the Heartless."
A low murmur went around the room at that name. Who DIDN'T know of the war hero Dusan the Heartless. A fur who'd fought with the snow rabbits during their war with the Arctic foxes. A prey fur who'd killed 47 foxes by himself. Who had later, during the Homeworld civil war, fought off many furs who sought to torch a school filled with children of mixed species. Once it was over, he'd received a medal for his bravery.
But for all that, Dusan the Heartless was said to be camera shy. He never appeared on TV, and people only heard rumors about what sort of fur he was. Now those in the mess hall knew. He was a mouse. But definitely not an ordinary mouse. In fact, he was like the opposite of a mouse. An un-mouse.
His nose didn't twitch, his ears didn't swivel, his tail didn't snake. He simply locked eyes with the fisher. The fisher shivered. There was no mercy in those eyes. There wasn't anything. The mouse's eyes were dead eyes, the eyes of someone who had seen so much horror and death that they had died emotionally.
With a sound of sheer terror, the fisher shot to his feet and took off as fast as he could. Carmen was left staring after her former comrade. Her blood froze when the mouse turned his attention back to her. Her eyes welled with tears as he fixed his dead gaze on her.
He cocked his head as he gazed at her. "You, take Giles here to the med lab. Now," he said, seeing her hesitate.