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A month passed since I arrived at the Buy-Mart, but it felt like an entire year.

Whenever I wasn't listening to Vox or the other members' ramblings about the political state of the country, the country in the past or even what we could become in the future, the communist swift fox had me follow Blu around like a shadow. We ate together, slept (separately, in different sleeping bags) together and trained together in the center of the abandoned superstore, amidst all the workout equipment. Some joined in, like Jacob or even one of the twin Siamese cats, but I guessed everyone preferred to do it on their own, waiting for their turns.

That, or maybe they just enjoyed the sight of a scrawny orange tabby trying to lift weights. Nobody would ever know.

Blu specifically had me do bench presses, push-ups, sit-ups and a variety of exercises using dumbbells. The only source of light came from two construction spotlights on tripods, bathing the center in bright white light. On occasion, when my mind wasn't split between focusing on the exercises or getting a boner from staring at the muscles adorning Blu's arms, legs and torso, I would catch sight of a familiar swift fox lounging at the far end of the store. Cigar in maw lighting up his facial features, and eyes coldly watching my progress. It seriously creeped me out, but I dared not to mention it. The last thing I definitely needed was giving Vox the Fox an excuse to ramble more about the death of democratic elections and 'the eventual rise of the common workers of America'.

One workout, Blu mentioned that I needed to learn how to kick. He taught me a few styles of blocking and redirecting the strengths of my opponents in a 1v1 fight, but I tried to stall the Doberman's suggestions about legwork. He didn't understand at first until I off-handedly mentioned that muscle atrophy had long-term effects, even long after the subject had woken up.

"Woken up?" he echoed my words, then widened his eyes. "Oh. You're a seddie?"

"Y-Yeah..." I felt embarrassed, looking away from him slightly. "I was."

"Goddamn, Adam." He said after a moment in thought. "Sorry dude. I mean, I can't imagine going through all of that unscathed...I mean, I'd only met a few of them when they were awake, but..."

"I don't like to talk about it," I told the canine, then sighed as my gaze went down to my jean-covered legs, still feeling slightly stiff even as I motioned it around under me. "I can jog, don't get me wrong. Just difficult to raise my, ya know...knees so high."

"Hmmm," Blu placed a couple fingers under his chin, "we could have you do some further leg stretches and focus more on your speed and upper body strength. For now."

I smiled softly. "Whatever helps keep me alive in a fight."

"Amen to that!" Blu grinned in understanding, then clapped his paws before balling them into fists. "Now let's get started! The Devout ain't gonna kick their butts without a little help."

Blu (and Vox, based on his remark that I needed to use my muscles more) encouraged me to try and kick whenever I could during one of our bouts. We'd circle each other, try to get the other to yield without making them bleed. Blu won each match more often, but slowly and surely, I started to grow more confident. Stronger and swifter. To the point I even held my own for some of the matches, making the Doberman sweating and exacerbated for minutes on end as I dodged his attacks. Then, I let his exertion become his downfall.

In time, I met some of the other individuals that joined Vox in staying at the outpost, waiting for Operation Blackjack to commence. Besides Bluford 'Blu' Bowden, there were the Kim twins named Luke and Lee, whose parents fled Communist China following the protests that happened in a place called 'Tiananmen Square'. Both were mystified that I knew close to nothing about where the square was, let alone what happened at said protests.

Nevertheless, it did not take a genius to figure out that what happened there...likely happened back in Chicago.

When Devout America came to be, Luke and Lee's parents decided not to flee to Canada like their friends and neighbors did. They decided to stand their ground and joined the Defiant, ironically finding themselves with Vox the Fox in the process.

"Wait," I remembered asking them one time during a workout, grunting as I stretched, "you don't mind working with Vox? He's a communist."

"He's a socialist," Lee scoffed. "And regardless..."

"He does not murder millions," Luke finished for his brother.

Later that day, neither of us pressed on the issue. Not that it needed to be explored further. I understood their struggle, in some tiny way. Simply put, their parents didn't come all this way to live under another regime, which I had to secretly admire. Even if Vox was very...open about his distaste towards capitalism.

Another face to remember was a lanky female ferret dressed in cargo jeans, a long coat and possessively held onto a news cap she often wore. Valerie S. Schultz, who insisted everybody call her 'Val', once worked as an investigative journalist for the New York Times before they were shut down during the New York City Rebellion of 1999. Thankfully, due to her street smarts and foresight, she managed to get herself and a girlfriend (I never asked what kind) out of Manhattan before going underground. They went their separate ways, but Val eventually stumbled upon Vox's cell while trying to flee west. Now she had the same job of documenting the truth, but with a bat and half a dozen different cameras hidden in her coat.

If I had to describe Val's personality, it all came down to an equation; Lowell + undiagnosed paranoid personality disorder + caffeine + socialism = Val.

Lastly, there were Jacob Grey and Kendall Jenners, stallions who worked as the heavy muscles in the Peoria cell. They spoke even less than the Siamese cat twins, but I knew thanks to a comment here and there from Bluford that they trusted me enough. Even went so far as to teach me how to work the muscles in my arms during pushups and proper bench presses. Whatever helped me prepare for Operation Blackjack.

Days before it all went down, everybody in the break room gathered around a table to discuss the operation. "While Canadian resistance keeps hammerin' against them Devout bastards as much as they can, Nessen and her government keep sendin' supplies to their troops up north," Vox huffed in the last of his cigar, exhaling more smoke that caused my nostrils and whiskers to twitch. "If they're gonna get a better chance at pushing 'em back home, we need to make sure the troops and guns and supplies stay here on American soil. Two against one's better than three or four against one, right?"

He didn't give anybody a chance to answer the rhetorical question, letting Val (his second-in-command) explain the rest of the plan to me, Jacob, Kendall and Blu. The first thing she did was grin, pulling out a photo of what appeared to be...

"RPGs?" I spoke up first, staring at the photographs in her paw.

"Nah, little kitten," she shook her amused muzzle, then revealed a few more photos. "RPGs are Russian. The pigs in the Covenant Guard call these babies 'Fire and Brimstone Launchers', or FBLs. They are specialized thermite-tipped grenade launchers designed to melt anything when it explodes--metal doors, concrete barriers, or in this case a concrete runway--up to an explosive range of...well, for the newbie here and Jacob's fragile mind's sake..."

"Hey!" Jacob snorted as Blu and Kendall snickered besides the tan stallion. "Fuck you, bitch."

"One projectile is enough to create a gaping pothole the size of a tank when it's done being a lethal firework," Val finished without so much as blinking in Jacob's direction.

I asked, "Where are we going to get these--"

"Oh, we already got 'em, Adam," Val interrupted me to explain, her ribboned tail (Val loved to decorate it with various ribbons, insisting it wasn't 'feminine') swishing against the table. "We've got them hidden in the cars in the back. Your cell's got some of the FBLs too, and next week, we're going to be converging on Moses International to ground the flights over there. Permanently.

"It won't be just us though; almost every cell will be converging on the largest international airports in their states to attack them."

"Attack?" I echoed that one word, incredulously. "We're attacking an airport?"

"Sorry, not attacking, but rather disabling it," she made haste to correct me. "Our priority's to destroy the runways in order to limit military supply flights up to Occupied Canada. This'll give the resistance fighters up north more time to reorganize and plan for counterstrikes on Devout outposts across the provinces. And bada-bing, bada-boom they'll be strong enough to push the bastards back to us."

Val sarcastically waved her paw in the air, celebratorily.

My thoughts flashed back to the Maverick Hotel conference room, to the photos Johanna showed to me, Lowell and the others, showing the effects of Canadian life under Devout occupation. We already saw the evidence of chaos and destruction unleashed on the cities and territorial landscape being mined for resources. Recalling the photographs of charred buildings, dead corpses and barren forests amidst armies of soldiers, tanks and mining equipment made me wonder what it might be like to be a Canadian resistance fighter. I thought of how the resistance, their families and neighbors were doing everything possible to stay alive as hope continued to dwindle. How far would someone like me be able to last on my own?

In the end of it all, my thoughts remained on one subject: Lowell.

During the month apart, the only means of contact we maintained were through the bi-weekly video calls on Vox's 'Deep Web' laptop when he finished speaking to Johanna about any important updates.

One evening, minutes of chatting and catching up on our time apart somehow transitioned into hours. We laughed at the absurdity of our separation, describe the things each of us had been up to. The wolf was both impressed and saddened by my toning arm muscles, since he wanted to work out with me, apparently wanting to feel them before comparing them to his.

"Don't worry, Lowell," I chuckled at his obvious flirtation, feeling relaxed as the wolf flashed his auburn eyes onscreen. "We can still work out together when I'm back."

"Mmmm, it'll be nice to see you in some shorts again," he grinned, actively making me blush in further embarrassment. "What, cat got your tongue?"

"S-Stop that," I whimpered, "and you know I've always hated that joke..."

"I know." Lowell leaned closely to the camera, "If I can be serious for a moment, Adam, I'm excited to have you back here. It's been boring without you by my side, and I've got so much to tell you...like..."

"...like?" I echoed, ears perked high. "Like what, Lowell?"

The gray wolf, still in need of a headfur trimming, shook his head. "Never mind...anyway, wanna know what happened to me after I woke up this morning? I had this very weird-ass dream where I lived in WWII Europe and you were at a dance club dressed in a tacky suit and fedora..."

By the end of each video session, I'd stare off into space wearing a stupid expression of elation on my muzzle, feline tail wiggling at the thought of seeing that cocky, foul-mouthed wolf once more. And maybe kiss him too, if the time ever came for some form of privacy.

My memories drifted back to the present with a nudge from Blu.

"Excited to be back home?" he whispered to me.

"A-Absolutely..." I beamed unresistingly to the Doberman, though making sure not to wag my tail too hard against the ground. "Can't wait to take a shower again, to be frank."

"Hehe, I hear ya," Kendall snickered.

"Per me and Johanna Cardinal's orders, let me make this clear," Vox raised his voice to our conversation, having replaced one of his cigars with a fresh one, "Absolutely_nobody_ is to fire on any airplanes or the buildings. War doesn't need a high body count."

"Don't forget the mission, boys: this is sabotage, not terrorism," Val reiterated the swift fox's words, "Besides, we'll only have one shot at this before the entire city goes into lockdown. And little kitten, this will be your only choice to get back to your cell."

"Yes, ma'am," I replied. "I won't let you down."

"I know you won't," she motioned to the Doberman, "which is why I'm also tasking you with getting Bluford to the cell too. Johanna says she needs him for another operation after Blackjack, so you two will be watching each other's backs as you rendezvous with Chicago's team. No screw ups, Bluford. I'd hate to burn your things."

"Same to you, Val," he joked, crossing his arms, "Try not to trip on your own camera."

She rolled her eyes. "Try not to trip on your own dick."

Everybody either laughed at their banter or departed to do other things as I remained standing at the table, silent and uncertain. Truth be told, the weight of a resistance mission like this weighed down on my shoulders like the heaviest of dumbbells.

No. I couldn't let anybody down. I wouldn't.

Not if it meant getting myself back to the closest place that I ever called home.

***

I didn't sleep well the night before we rode back to Chicago. Dreams and translucent images of Lowell, Lowell's hard cock and the feeling of heartwarming delight filled the pit of my stomach when Blu shook me awake, telling me to shower and get dressed.

"We need you prepped for the long night tonight," he said. As I scrambled out of the sleeping bag the Peoria cell had rented me, the intimidating Doberman patted my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Uh, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" My instinctual nods did not convince him, from the way he stared right through me. I practically exhaled my true thoughts, "Can I be honest with you? I'm...worried that something might go wrong. Security's gonna be tight and--"

"Hey, relax," he smiled encouragingly. "You're gonna be okay. We can do this."

Thank God that he didn't point out the morning wood in my boxers. Though I prayed nobody noticed me spending ten minutes longer in the bathroom, 'relieving' myself in order to not be distracted by my libido. Did anybody in this scent-encrusted water closet still have a good sense of smell, I wondered.

Anyway, once I dressed myself in some two-sizes-too-big jeans, latched tightly around my waistline with a thick leather belt, as well as the same washed t-shirt and dark hoodie jacket I wore from the day I was rescued (then beaten, but still) by the Peoria cell, Vox had us gather in the loading bay of the Buy-Mart. Jacob, Kendall and the twins were loading supplies into two a used minivan, a used sedan and even a rusting, blue semi-truck without a trailer. All three vehicles didn't look new, so they wouldn't stand out.

"Hey Grimwald?"

"Yes sir?" I cleared my throat and stood straight.

A smoke-laced smirk etched itself onto Vox the Fox's greying muzzle. "If you don't fuck up and get yourself killed, get yourself back to your cell, I'll see you when the Revolution comes."

"Uh...thanks?" I replied, then corrected with, "Thank you, sir!"

"Call me Vox, kid! Now then," he raised a fist and shouted to everyone present, "all of you listen. Tonight, we the people will be taking another stand against the Christofascist hypocrites who corrupted this great country! We the people will save our brothers and sisters of the North from the Devout tentacles strangling them by their necks! Tonight, we will be aiding our comrades in Chicago in sabotaging Moses International Airport! Tonight, we the people...will be tearing some shit up!"

Even I couldn't resist cheering for what was to come.

The plan seemed simple enough; three teams would stay on Highway 80 leading towards the outer city limits of Chicago, then split up once we reached Naperville. Team 1 (me, Blu and Val) would drive the minivan to Schiller Park while Team 2 (Jacob and Vox, the latter of whom hid himself in the sleeper pod of the semi-truck within a hidden compartment, until they passed the military checkpoints) and Team 3 (Kendall, Luke and Lee) would tangent away to Bensenville and Elk Grove Village respectively, the latter of which was where they planned to destroy a warehouse containing jet fuel.

Including the series of checkpoints, Vox expected anything to go wrong, thus decided to have us leave before noon to get to Chicago before the work traffic grew worse. After all, each of the vehicles had a couple FBLs and enough of the explosives to turn a highway into Hell on Earth.

I tried not to ponder on that bit of information too much. Not as I sat in the front passenger seat of the mini-van, watching the cars, farmland and small, country-loving, patriotic towns pass us by as Chicago came closer and closer into view.

Certainly not as my eyes wandered between the windshield and the rear-view mirror, past Val in the backseat to the packed boxes that filled up the rest of the cushion seats. Knowing they held school supplies meant for the upcoming school year at the University of Chicago, knowing we were not in fact college students, and knowing that the boxes were a red herring for the checkpoint officers. All of it seemingly legitimate so they wouldn't notice the two detached launchers hidden horizontally beneath the second-row seats. Or that the FBL's ammunition, wrapped in duct tape and loose cardboard, bulged in various nooks and crannies that none of the inspectors would suspect to search in, from the door's emptied airbag compartments to even inside the car seats.

Correct. Somehow, I found myself literally sitting on top of explosive ammunition.

Don't think about them exploding on accident, I told myself over and over early into the trip, the Buy-Mart already no longer visible behind us, Don't think about it, don't think about--

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Val sidetracked me with some wild conspiracies she knew of or heard about from various other Defiant, during the long traffic jam leading to the checkpoints into Chicago. Most of them ranged between plausible, confirmed and outright ridiculous. Like, the idea of the Devout government replacing diplomats from the European Union and East Asia--before the Canadian Occupation--with sleeper agents to infiltrate the higher ranks, or a hidden sect of the Devout elite wanting to turn all of Chile into a private country for themselves to live in as the military conquered the rest of the world.

Not to say that some did not turn out to be true. For example, the spybots that performed mass surveillance on active Pious users. Until about several years prior, it had not been confirmed that anybody who used the online search engine would be catalogued into a system determining whether the government considered them traitors or not. Or rather, traitorous enough to interrogate, imprison or execute. For the Defiant, it felt relieving knowing that their paranoia did pay off.

"David Farthing is not a goddamned psychic, Val!" Blu insisted, giving a dramatic yet frustrated sigh. I restrained myself from doing the same. "If he were a freaking psychic or whatever, I doubt we'd all be even standing here."

"Don't you mean 'sitting here'?" she teased.

"Ugh, you know what I mean!" Blu snorted, still gripping the wheel. "And he ain't secretly predicting the future either. Period."

"Just hear me out, Blu!" Val waved her black-furred paws paws, leaning forward in the backseat. Whether or not the vixen did this to tease Blu, or if an irrational part of the ex-journalist believed her own words, I couldn't tell. "Think about how much of a fucking miracle--I mean, the stars all aligning and that shit--that it took for him to get elected, quit the GOP, create a political party from the ground up while making the country independent, and then get himself reelected without a single thing going wrong."

"God, wouldn't that be terrifying huh? David Farthing, able to read minds and predict the future...Terrifying!" the Doberman mused aloud, then shook his muzzle while training eyes on the packed road ahead of them. Then, he cleared his throat while glancing between the windshield, the rearview mirror and me, "Look, Val, I'm not saying it's isn't shady how quickly Old Man Farthing got to the top without a single scandal, then got the Rev Party so popular. Far from it. Wait until the evidence shows that Farthing's been rigging court cases even before the Soviets fell. Or what happened to the Farthing brother..."

I had read about the rigged court cases in some of the pamphlets produced back in Rosemont, but not about the 'Farthing brother'. "Who?" the words slipped from my lips.

Val leaned slightly to me, asking, "Adam, what do you know about the Farthing Family?"

"The Farthings?" I shrugged slightly at her question. I knew that after David Farthing's eight years as the U.S. President, his cubs--three boys and a girl--followed in their father's political footsteps. So did their cubs in turn, most of whom were in their mid-twenties like I was. Heck, the oldest grandson currently worked as a state representative. "Only a little bit, but I'm not obsessed too much..."

"Did you know David had an older brother?" Val got to the point of her rhetorical question. "Name was Alexander Joseph Farthing, and he and his family conveniently disappeared the week after the Election of '96?"

My eyes widened. "Are you serious?"

"Swear on my own grave, kid," the vixen chuckled with a raised paw. "Betcha they never told you about Davy's past in those school textbooks, did they?"

I shook my muzzle. "Not really. They only said he grew up on a farm, I think..."

"No records exist anywhere I search on Pious, but I remember hearing about the guy being a left-wing activist. Guess that Davy didn't wanna have any family secrets get--"

"Guys," Blu interrupted and steeled his eyes straight ahead. "We're getting here."

The conversation shriveled and died. Our eyes gazed forward to find the checkpoint--a regular toll booth draped in extra security and armed guards--looming closer over the line of cars waiting to get inside.

I glanced back to see Val lean back in an unassuming position, tail tucked onto her lap as I straightened up in the front seat, clawed fingers gripping the armrest as the minivan patiently rolled forward. Within seconds, we transitioned from Defiant bent on disrupting the status quo, into regular furs. No, sir, we weren't suspicious individuals. No, sir, we didn't have anything to hide inside of our vehicle.

Oh...right, my thoughts spiraled back to what I'd been distracted from. There are explosives in this car.

***

"You ready there, little dude?" the Doberman beside me asked in a hushed, almost inaudible whisper, despite us being inside of the minivan, as we waited for the signal. "Lemme tell ya, I was born ready..."

"Still am," I replied, banishing all uncertain thoughts. "Little nervous, maybe..."

"Oh?" he perked an ear. "Try not to think about it too much. Gets in the way sometimes."

"Heh, you would know."

"Screw you, Val."

"Why are you even nervous?" she coldly remarked from the backseat, "You've said you've been in the field, yeah?"

"But this isn't like hiding pamphlets or hanging up banners," I told him, "What we're doing isn't like that. We're literally committing mass vandalism..."

"Got a problem with that, little kitten?" she raised a sharp eyebrow, looking up from her burner phone to glare at me. "You didn't have a problem planting a virus on computers."

Frowning slightly, I narrowed my eyes at the older vixen, craning my neck instead of looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "I don't have a problem with it."

"Good. The Defiant don't need dead weight."

"Which he isn't, Val!" Blu intervened, offering an apologetic glance. "Sorry she can be a handful...And a bit of a bitch too."

"You'll pay for that when you return to HQ in a couple months, Blu..." the vixen commented dryly. "Now will you two shut it? For all we know, we won't hear the other teams over either of you yapping!"

Blu smirked, "Says the vixen who--"

"Zip it, Bluford!" Val hissed again, then held up a paw as she looked back down to her burner phone. "Here we go. Commander Vox is in the air. Should be any minute now..."

By that, she meant that Vox the Fox, with Jacob keeping cover for him, had gotten to his spot and deployed the (stolen) portable Covenant Guard drone. He'd be hovering it near the edge of Moses International nearby to trip the airport surveillance radar, not only to detect any Archangels, and thus discover if Operation Blackjack had been compromised, but to have the airport be evacuated. It would give civilians and staff enough time to get away from the runway before the real mission began.

Nightfall finally arrived as the orange sky receded into a purple hue. After we arrived at the airport parking garage and started to ascend the floors until we reached a camera blind spot on the top floor, my heartbeat raced into the back of my throat. I could practically see the Maverick itself amongst the other buildings and hotels several blocks away. So close, yet so far.

My paws anxiously caressed my knees, eyes darting from the adjacent balcony overlooking the airport's runways, down to minivan's interior floor, to the FBLs' explosive projectiles neatly stacked beside Val in the backseat, to Blu bored and tapping his paws on the steering wheel, then to the launchers leaning on the vixens knees before returning back to the interior floor's carpeting.

In spite of my anxiety though, I felt ready. I needed to be ready. The Defiant counted on it, Johanna counted on it...as did Lowell.

A distant boom sounded from outside the parking garage.

"Showtime, boys!" Val slammed her door open, as did me and Blu. A few more explosions echoed. "Let's fuck shit up! Go, go go!"

We placed our earmuffs on. Launchers in their paws and determined grins spread across their respective muzzles, I handed Val and Blu the projectiles as instructed. Careful and quick, knowing we had little time to destroy as much strip as we could. The faster we got this done, the sooner we could leave before police and Archangels converged on our location.

I imagined being a bored, impatient civilian awaiting his flight, or a passenger on a plane witnessing bright explosions from the airstrip his airplane had just departed from minutes prior. Or, a passenger trapped on a flight now delayed due to the destroyed runways. Or, a staff member of Moses International hastily asking everyone to evacuate the entire airport, hoping and praying that the explosions did not reach them. Praying that the 'terrorists', as they'd off-handedly call us, did not take their lives by aiming the rockets at the emptying terminals.

Taking into consideration of the dark evening's wind direction, the explosions never strayed from their targets. Bright and brilliant as miniature suns, the kickback that came from each launching FBL paled to the explosions raining across Moses International.

I imagined being a civilian, not a Defiant, and tried to feel disgust as I eyed the explosions after handing Val the last projectile left. I tried to feel disgust as I watched the last projectile whoosh from the parking garage to the final, untouched runaway and create a final grandiose example of destruction. We weren't just disrupting the Devout military's supply line into Canada; we were disrupting the lives of civilians going about their day.