FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Tri-Katsu here! In case there are some people out there who find this story familiar, this is indeed a revision of one of my chapters I posted a long time ago. I finally fixed most of it up, but something tells me that I could use some "reader reviewing." This chapter is kind of dry, but if you think it could be better in someway, feel free to drop a line!

Love, Tri-Katsu ;)

Edit: (8/26) Just added the new ending to the chapter after cutting it off the intro to the second one. Hope it gives you a better feeling about the series!

Chapter One

It had been another sleepless night, filled with troubling thoughts and figures, none of them memorable. Frost's eyesight seemed faded in the light of the overhead projector, its images blurry and distorted.

"Frost, are you okay?" came a voice from his right, "You look exhausted!" Frost recognized the voice to be Cly's, one of his fellow squad mates.

Frost shook his head and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, so as not to scratch himself. Looking round to Cly, he gave a great, shuddering yawn that the instructor in front noticed, but pretended not to.

"No sleep," he replied, smacking his lips and gagging on his morning breath.

"Ah..." Cly looked Frost in the eye, making him somewhat uneasy. "Yes, you do look rather dog eared, if I do say so myself." Frost grunted. "Oh look, he's teaching the first years how to load a gun!" Frost looked sleepily in the direction Cly was pointing.

Sure enough, the firearms instructor - within whose enclosure they were sitting - was now trying to teach the younger, much less experienced recruits how to properly clean, assemble, load, and equip the now standard-issue low caliber rifles, in that order and back. The guns weren't particularly dangerous at far range, but could definitely save the user's life in close combat.

Or at least take the opponent down with them, Frost thought grimly to himself. He watched as the instructor practically sprinted toward a curious first year, who was peering down the barrel of the gun, checking to see if he had swabbed it enough. Cly chuckled as the instructor gingerly pointed it away from the youths face, and began lecturing him presumably on the importance of turning the safety on, and not shooting himself in battle.

"They are lucky, aren't they?" Cly said to himself. Frost looked sideways at him curiously. "I mean," he went on, still watching as the instructor gave the rifle back to the boy, who took it and switched on the safety rather sheepishly. "When we were in training, we didn't have teachers who actually knew how to handle a gun, nor cared about the accidents that happened to their students. We had to learn..." he turned to look at Frost darkly, who gave him the same look back, "...the hard way."

The two of them sat in silence until the familiar chime rang out, signifying the end of the session. Waiting until all the second years had left; Cly stood up and made his way up to the instructor, who looked up at him rather uneasily, Cly being about foot-and-a-half taller than him.

"I'll catch up with you outside!" he shouted across the enclosure to Frost, who had gotten up and was stretching. He acknowledged the instruction with a wave of his hand, and made his way to the gate.

Outside, Frost strolled along a wood side path between the other buildings and training halls that were set up on the land. The sun was slowly declining in the evening sky, a small summer breeze bringing the smell of what were known across Head Quarters as "Arctic Roses."

Arctic Roses had been "discovered" by some of the more imaginative scientists during whatever free time they had, somehow producing an ice blue colored rose that smelled like a mixture of pine needles and the once common garden rose. Everyone, including Frost, liked the sweet, yet piney - as some described it - smell of the flowers, and so it had been ordered that they be planted everywhere on base.

Unfortunately, for some odd reason neither the scientists nor the botanists could determine, the flowers only bloomed in the late afternoon and through the night, only then releasing its alluring fragrance. Only those who awoke at the crack of dawn could even have a chance of seeing it in its full beauty, as curfew was an early seven thirty. Those who did manage to glimpse the plant in bloom described it as being "the frost of summer", and then would look hurriedly at Frost, but he did not mind.

In fact, that was one of the few things he actually agreed with the weak, seemingly spineless humans that he somehow knew he wasn't. Wait a second, scratch that. The way he looked, it was impossible for him to be human. Frost stood at about eight feet tall, although that was mostly because he always stood up at the tops of his feet, or paws, as they were more commonly referred to. He was incredibly muscular, and knew how to handle just about any firearms that came his way without recoil, from handguns to bazookas. His eyes were an icy blue, reflecting the cool, calm, and collected person that he was.

_ Well, most of the time_, Frost thought distractedly, through the now intoxicating aroma of the flowers. His thoughts then drifted to the many remarks on his fur that had been made that day as he hungrily followed the scent.

The fur on his chest down to his stomach was an odd silvery color that looked a light snowy blue under the moon's translucent light, and flecked with black. In contrast, the fur on the rest of his body was pitch black with an unusual "cross" pattern on his back in the same chromatic color of his chest.

Following his nose, Frost took a few steps off the concrete path and found the patch of arctic rose whose scent had been pulling him along. Smiling slightly, he bent down to smell them better, their aroma curling around his muzzle. The sun was now a deep red in the sky, parallel to the horizon, setting despite the protest of the birds. Even as he watched, the Arctic Roses were slowly blooming, releasing more and more of their fragrance.

"Oy, Frost! There you are! Geez, I should've known..." Cly exclaimed suddenly, causing Frost to jump as the stupor of the flower's scent began to wear off. "I've been looking everywhere for you!" Frost looked at him quizzically. Cly sighed impatiently, though his apparent aggravation didn't seem to be directed at him. "Rage and the director want us back at the briefing center." He said, crossing his arms, "They say it's something 'of top priority'," finishing with a crude, but accurate imitation of the CEO's energetic tone.

Frost almost laughed at the look at Cly's face as he said that. It was true, lately nothing of real urgency had come up, most of these "important" meetings usually entailing that they had been assigned new tasks around the base. The last one had been where he and Cly had been assigned "soldier status checker", which was basically a fancy way of saying: "Go make sure where we've placed our troops is actually beneficial to the legion."At least that's how Cly put it.

Cly was probably the closest thing Frost had to a friend in the Legion. He had a way of always being optimistic - sometimes to a fault. His way of always finding a joke or pun in everything basically made the mood brighter wherever he went, which was good, given the strain that often came in to play after hours of conflict. Cly was even the one who had appealed to the military leaders to let Frost to be referred to by his name instead of F-27.

In battle however, he was as fast, efficient, and deadly as lightning. His knife wielding skills were almost unreal, turning him into an assassin that could strike almost faster than death himself. The officers were always admitting grudgingly that Cly had the best track records whenever he went to the gym.

If you really looked at him though, it made sense. Cly had a runner's build, with longer and leaner legs than most. He was tall, measuring approximately 7'7", at least on his last physical. Like Frost, he wasn't what people would define as...human. He too had long fingers that ended in claws, as well as elongated ankles. However, unlike Frost, he was human in every other way, which puzzled the two of them.

"Maybe I'll get my fur today!" Cly said, laughing.

_ Maybe you will,_ thought Frost. It was a stretch, but somehow he couldn't shake the happiness of having his best - his only - friend be a "non-human" along with him. They walked the rest of the way through the junction of buildings. Cly was soon telling jokes, doing impressions, and pretending to scold first and second years who were hurrying to their dormitories the entire way. By the time they had gotten to the Briefing Center, the sun had vanished entirely and now the soothing glow of the moon had begun to climb the starry sky.

"You two sure took your sweet time," growled a low voice by the glass door to the facility. Cly groaned. A large figure stepped out from the darkness of the overlay, red eyes gleaming in the light.

"I know, I know," Cly said to the shadow, exasperated, "We're late. Detention. Demerits. No dinner for a week. Suits me just fine, I hear all we're having is seafood." He faked a gag and crossed his arms again impatiently. "Can we go in now?" The figure growled again, and stepped further into the light. It was Rage.

Rage was a very large fellow, spending most of his time either at the gym, or at the bar in the nearby town. What he did at the latter was unknown to Frost (not that he particularly cared), but he always seemed to come back humming or whistling to himself. Some nights Frost would notice that Rage's wallet was so full of money that he couldn't fit in his pocket, but other nights it would be completely empty. He once asked Cly about this, who had known him longer than he had, but Cly would just sigh and say it was nothing of real importance.

Rage had fur as red as his eyes covering his entire body, with the exception of four black oddly shaped streaks that ran down his arms and thighs. For that reason, Rage had been given the code name "Bloodlace", which matched his personality down to the letter. Just like Cly, Rage became a cold blooded killer in battle, becoming excited at even the smallest trace of fear, and often was caught laughing wickedly at the helpless he would hold by their necks. It also didn't help that many of those "helpless" were often new recruits. Frost, however, had been different.

The second Frost had joined Cly's squad, Rage had immediately puffed up his chest, looking more like a large red furred balloon than the imposing alpha male Frost presumed he was trying to be. So instead of cowering with his tail between his legs - like many of the others had done - Frost had favored him with a long, penetrating stare with his ice cold eyes, and said a few choice words that made Cly nearly choke from laughter. The challenge of authority hadn't been lost on anyone, and so Frost and Rage were considered by all to be the two rivals, the leaders of the pack.

"Alright, what're you two smirking about now?" Frost willed himself not to look at Cly, who was doubtlessly reliving the same memory, perhaps even quoting the words in his head.

"Oh, nothing..." Cly replied, looking at him innocently. Rage grunted, turning to face the door.

"Open," he growled at it; the door was automatic, yet for some reason, hadn't opened. "Open," he said again, Frost could feel the trickle, quickly becoming a wave of irritation, radiating from him.

"It is currently past curfew", an automated voice rasped from the door's small sensor bar, "The building is closed for the night. Please return to your respective quarters and have a nice-"The voice stopped with a crunching sound as Rage forcefully ripped the sensor from its mount in anger. Snarling, he plunged both his hands through the plexiglass siding, gripped the frame of the door, and pried it open.

"You two get to pay for that," He said, twisting the lock out for good measure, and glaring back at Cly and Frost. Without another word, he sauntered into the building as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Frost following suit. Cly shook his head wistfully, and gave a sad look to the destroyed door before slowly going in to join them.

"So, um..." he said, looking at the darkened lobby once they had stepped inside. "Is anybody even here?"

"Maybe if you two numbskulls hadn't taken your sweet time getting here, I'd have an answer for you!"

Frost sighed. There was no way of talking to Rage when he was in a temper. Cly understood that as well, and instead satisfied himself by gnawing furiously on one of the throwing knives that he kept strapped to his thigh. Frost was about to ask for one himself - though not quite for the same reason - when they heard footsteps echoing out of a nearby hallway. The shadow of a humanoid figure crossed the wall in front of them.

"Who's that?" Cly managed to whisper, the handle of knife sticking out of his mouth like it was part of a bizarre circus act. Rage looked at him impatiently.

"How the hell should I know?"He said, "And get that thing out of your mouth before you cut your tongue off!"

"It's the director." Frost suddenly said quietly, as Cly grudgingly sheathed the weapon.

"And how do you know that?" Rage asked skeptically.

"Smell," came the simple reply.

It was true. Frost had been to so many meetings and around the director so many times that he could probably find him across a three square mile garbage dump. Rage snorted, and Frost could see him shake his head in the darkness.

"I don't believe this..."

"Well," Cly started to walk slowly toward the hallway, "Since you don't seem to have any better ideas, I'm going to trust Frost on this one." Frost followed silently behind him, and Rage, knowing he was defeated - though not exactly feeling better about it - groaned and started down the hall as well.

Before long, they reached a pair of double doors with a small crease of light shining out from under it.

"'Director of Military Intelligence'," Cly read off of the name plate, "Elijah Tacey. Yep, this is him all right..." He turned to Frost, grinning. "Looks like you burned ol' Red Eyes again!"

"Would you shut up already?" Rage growled, coming up from behind them. "Just open the damn door..."

"Whatever you say, sir."

And so, with Frost on one side, and Cly on the other, together they pulled the doors open for their irate leader, before stepping into the bright room side by side.