FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Just...a little...further!"

The boy grumbled as he lay on his stomach, arm extended down into the rubble of the Blue Haven Plaza, a shopping center that he used to visit all the time. As his fingers stretched out for his prize, he couldn't help but remember the fun times he had here, the shopping and the games.

"And the food," he said to no one as he was alone, but felt an external monolog was justified. His tongue stuck out of the corner of his muzzle and his cheek pushed painfully into the rough, hewn metal of a wall or a roof.

When his fingers brushed smooth plastic he grinned and grabbed the edge between his index and middle finger, clamping on the end like the claw games he enjoyed playing (and often losing) before things had happened. He yanked his arm up and held his prize, a blue and white wrapped energy bar. A Pounce Bar as they were called.

"Best energy bar in the sector!" he said, running a thumb over the pristine packet. The energy bar was a treat from the heavens, it was one of those modern miracle of science foods that kept you full for days if you even ate just a bit. They could survive for a while on this.

Cen quickly pushed the bar into his backpack and peered down at his treasures. Earlier that day, he had found some packets of regular food and a bottle of water. A good haul, all things considered. His tail wagged as he zipped it up nice and secure and got up onto his feet. He had to get home quickly before it got too dark and cold.

The pup slid down the metal siding of fallen wall and jumped off at the last moment before he got to the bottom, stumbling forward and grinning. He turned to laugh about it to a companion that wasn't there. He frowned.

No time for games.

Outside the day was sunny and slightly cloudy, the sky that bright and brilliant shade of blue that gave off a sensation of crispness and clarity. The wind was mild but the air was chilly--winter was on the horizon--and the cold air from the south was coming up to settle over the city for the next few months.

Six months ago the bad weather wouldn't have been more than a passing thought to Cen--the weather control machines kept the city from experiencing anything dangerous while still allowing them to enjoy the rain and the snow, but it kept the air temperate and anything extreme from developing. Garonda III was a habitable planet but before people had settled here it was known for cold winters and short summers. When the Expeditioners came here so many generations ago they had, much like Earth, tamed it to their needs.

But now with everything and everyone gone, there were no weather controls. He could die to the elements. He made note to find some thick clothing for him and Prill when he had a chance.

All around him on his journey back to base he saw the destroyed buildings of things once familiar in their complete state. Now he had a hard time imaging them without being destroyed, without pillars and damage making easy (but dangerous) passages to and from other buildings. Prill had found a high-up pillar that linked two buildings which they called the Sky Bridge. They had used it often, laughing as they hunted for food and others. Of course they never found anybody else, but food was plentiful.

Cen stopped and looked up at the pillar, high up between the buildings and frowned. When was the last time Prill had been able to cross it? Months? He had lost count, but it seemed like such a long time ago.

With a shake of a head and a slap to both of his cheeks, he grunted. No time to worry! he thought. No time to focus on the sad! You have to get home!

And so, Cen ran the rest of the way to the Secret Base.

He always found it amusing that their home was marked with red lettering on the doors calling it "Secret Base," but then, who was going to find it? There wasn't anyone else on the planet. Not a soul. At least not from what they had seen. They found a damaged scanner once, but it shorted out before they could do anything with it. In the short period time they had managed to see their planet, they hadn't seen a life form appear anywhere.

Pushing his way past the cloth hanging in front of the doorway and then hauling open the metal door to what was once a ship, Cen slipped in.

"Prill!" he called with a grin as he shut the door and spun the lock closed.

Their home was a downed passenger shuttle. It had been secure, insulated, and half buried in the ground so they had a lot of cover. The rubble on top of it hid it from view. They had spent days removing the chairs with scattered tools and quickly turned it into their home.

Prill was sitting in one of the chairs, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The young black cat with a white-tipped tail grinned and stood up. "Cen!"

"Look!" the pup said as he pulled over his pack and pulled out the energy bar he found.

Prill gasped a bit. "A Pounce Bar!" he said with a laugh. "Where'd you find this?"

Cen puffed out his chest and pointed to himself with his thumb. "I went to Blue Haven today. It took a long time with all that debris, but it's full of good stuff!"

"I wish I could've gone with you," Prill said as he opened the wrapper and took out a single square of the bar. He popped it into his muzzle and handed the package back to Cen.

"I'm not hungry right now," Cen said and put the wrapped bar on the shelf. On it had their supplies--power cells, tools, their medical items they found around the ruined city. When Prill wasn't looking, the pup put some found nuts in his muzzle and quickly chewed on them, swallowing and taking some of the water. He drank down the liquid and put it on the counter after pouring a small cup and handing it to Prill.

"Sorry I couldn't go out with you," the cat said, sipping his water.

Cen shook his head. "We needed someone here to guard the base, and you're it. You're a better shot with the gun than I am anyway." Cen winked at his friend. "You can do the foraging when it gets warmer, how about that?"

Prill smiled. "Fine!" he said, but that smile soon devolved into a cough. Cen frowned and got up and grabbed some of the antibiotic pills from the shelf. The bottle was getting close to the bottom. But he smiled as he turned around and handed some to the cat who gladly took it and drank it down.

"Thanks...and you're not going out in the rain tonight."

"What, why? And how do you know it'll rain?" Cen asked, sitting down in their little nest of blankets near the portable heater they found in an apartment building.

Prill took out a small device from his little stash near him. It was a box that could fit snugly in his small hands, with a flat screen on it. With a tap of a finger, the screen lit up to show all kinds of numbers and graphs. It looked foreign to Cen.

"Mom and Dad were engineers at the weather control station center," Prill explained. "They could tell the weather just by smelling the air. But for the bigger stuff they used this thing. I used to call it my Magic Box because it could predict the future."

"Like when it would rain," Cen said with a wry grin.

"Yeah! I always knew when to wear my rainboots or when to bring my umbrella to school. Got to jump in the puddles while everyone else rushed home."

Cen nudged his friend playfully. "You're the only cat I know who likes getting wet."

Prill nudged back and laughed. "We like to bathe! We just don't like getting wet when we don't plan on it."

"Cats are so fussy." Cen stuck his tongue out at his friend, which got a playful scowl back and laughter from the both of them.

When Prill coughed again and lay back down against the pillows, he looked so tired to Cen.

"You feeling okay?" Cen asked, more serious as he shifted onto his knees and checked the cat's forehead. He didn't know why he did, it was just something his mother used to do for him when he felt sick.

"Just tired," Prill commented, sighing and nestling back into the blankets and pillows. "Sometimes it hurts to laugh, but laughing is totally worth it."

"I'll go look for more medicine tomorrow," Cen said with a pat to his friend's head. "I promise you, we'll make you all better."

His friend's response was solemn. The cat's expression clouded slightly as he looked at the pup. "Cen, we don't even know what's wrong with me."

"So?"

"So, how are we going to make me better?"

"Just because we don't know yet doesn't mean we can't get you better. Just going to take some time and effort and maybe a pinch of luck."

Prill groaned.

"What?" Cen asked.

"If it's your luck--" Prill started, but he cut himself off. "No, that was dark. Never mind."

Cen didn't say anything about it, but he knew where the joke was going. If Prill's survival was dependent on his luck, there was no chance. It was meant to be funny, but joking about the young cat's life wasn't something either of them wanted to do.

The nightmare always began the same way, and he hated being a part of it, every single time.

The sky was cloudy and warm, the breeze rolling through the city was comfortable beyond measure. There was going to be a party today! It was a holiday, Founders' Day, when their small planet went from a colony planet to a full-fledged nation sphere. It happened almost a hundred years ago, or so Cen was told in his classes, but he didn't care about that. It was time off from school!

His mother and father were going to take him to the giant park near the center of the city. There were supposed to be food vendors and games, prizes, and then lights in the sky to celebrate Founders' Day. It was the start of the summer months, and that meant that the time off from school was also right around the corner.

Cen watched himself, in abject horror, as he walked down the boulevard with his parents, his father, a hulking hero of a man in his eyes, the head smithy at the Refinery. He was the one who oversaw and knew the process of the Centurium alloy, a rare metal that was prized and expensive.

His mother, beautiful and full of life, was also a Refinery worker. She was working on something about chemicals and analysis, as Cen was told. His parents worked together to figure out how to make the metal work. They were two of the best people on the planet--at least in his mind. They helped make the metal which brought attention to them from throughout the universe. Cen even had a bracelet of the rare metal, gleaming in the sunlight and faintly blue. It was his birthday gift this year, and he treasured it. Especially since his father made it himself.

Please...stop this, Cen thought, holding his head with both his hands, looking around the city street, people walking along clean roads and past undamaged buildings.

He followed behind--he had no choice but to follow--but he tried to resist each and every time. He didn't want to see this again.

The dream jumped ahead--it always skipped the part with the ice cream, and right to the grilling his father was doing, his mother sitting under one of the trees and Cen looking at the food, hungry for something delicious.

Then, it happened.

At first it was a rumble, just like any ship coming into orbit. But it kept getting louder and louder. Cen held his hands over his floppy ears and stared up at the sky but could see nothing with the clouds in the way.

His mother was up and walking over to the two of them. "That sounds like a big ship."

"It does," Cen's father said with a frown. "Why would one of those be over the city? The spaceport is--"

The Demons. That was what Cen thought of when he saw their long ships come out of the cloud, black and slick like oil and gleaming with red lights. They looked like...creatures. Alive things that made his skin crawl and fur stand on end.

Cen grabbed his father's hand. At that moment, the sky changed. Demon ships were descending and the warning alarm went off. Cen gasped in horror.

"What's that...?" he said, but he was quickly picked up by his hulking father.

The invasion alarm went off. Warning sounds, someone speaking out over a radio but Cen couldn't make it out. He clung to his father tightly as his heart pounded and fear began to overwhelm him.

The Demon Ships rained fire on the city. In an instant, beams of red light cut through the city, slicing through buildings Cen had known since he was a tiny pup. He couldn't believe what he was seeing as they toppled over and into the street, rubble falling and cascading around. He heard screams and people wailing, crying for help.

More beams came down. More buildings got destroyed. Cen used to build towers like this with blocks when he was much younger, which he would knock down so haphazardly afterwards. Now he trembled and knew when he played pretend next time he wouldn't destroy buildings in his mind.

Some of the Demon Ships landed and their hulls opened. Men in completely black armor and guns came out and began to fire on the people in the park. Screams and the smell of cooked meat were everywhere. People fell, exploded, limbs vaporized or torn off... it was hard to tell.

His father ran.

When the boy looked back, he couldn't see his mother. "Where's Mom?" Cen asked, panicked.

"Shh!" his father said, stumbling when a blast blew up the road just behind them. Cen saw a small crater formed where a part of the road was vaporized. Had his father been half a step slower, they would have died.

The hulking big man stepped through the rubble of a building and looked around, frowning. Cen recognized it as the bank where he came sometimes with his parents. Seeing it destroyed did not calm his nerves.

Cen's father put him down and tucked under a tall metal door. It was the door to the vault, made of purest grade of Centrium. His father crouched down and looked at him closely.

The man leaned down and looked at his son in the eyes. "I need you to stay here," he said. "Stay right here, you understand? You'll be safe here."

The boy cried. He always cried. Bawling. "No! Don't go! Dad, please don't go!"

"Cen!" his father shouted. Tears streaked down his father's cheeks. "I need...I need to find your mother. I'll be right back, I promise you, Cen. You need to be the strong guy I know you are. Can you do that for me, son?"

Sniffling, the pup nodded his head. "Y...yes."

His father spared a smile and kissed him on the forehead. "I love you. You be right here. Just hold on. Be brave, okay?"

That was the last time Cen saw his father.

The next few hours were the scariest of Cen's life. The bank exploded again, rubble falling all around him and onto his makeshift hiding spot. Fire and heat cooked the side of it and he was burned across his nose more than once. He cried during the whole thing. He was begging for his father to come back. He screamed in his mind for his father, needing him so badly right now.

Something fell from the ceiling and hit Cen on the head. Blackness took him as he was sure he was dying. But of course he didn't die, unless this was the afterlife in some horrible, twisted way. He woke up to his home, his planet, devoid of life. No one was here. He wandered the streets all day.

I'm going to die alone, he remembered thinking to himself.

The nightmare would end there, and Cen would wake up, gasping for air as he remembered the smoldering smokes that surrounded him as buildings burned around him.

But not all dreams were nightmares. Just as often as he saw the cataclysm unfold in his sleep, he would also dream of the time his world changed for the better--when he first met Prill.

It was three weeks since the Demons came and destroyed the city. Cen found so many dead bodies, but no one alive. Why had they come just to kill everyone? Did they have prisoners, like in the holo-movies he watched? Were his parents alive? The one good thing about this was he didn't find their bodies anywhere, but that didn't really mean anything. He knew he could have missed them or they were vaporized. At best they were prisoners.

Cen decided right then and there that he wouldn't die. He would be brave, just like his father had told him. He pushed himself forward.

At first it was hard. His apartment building was destroyed, but he found things he knew he could use. A backpack, some Pounce Bars, water...and he began to try and find somewhere to survive.

He tried random buildings but he felt weird sleeping in someone else's bed or in buildings that looked like they could come down around your ears at a moment's notice. So he kept wandering, usually sleeping outside and picking up what he needed. His pack had swelled with stuff he thought he needed, and stuff he realized, now, that he didn't.

He kept himself sane by telling himself he was on an adventure, or exploring, some kind of game to vanish into. He didn't want to think about the reality of the moment--that he was all alone on a planet.

Cen tried using some of the terminals but they were all unresponsive. He had no idea how to fix them. The few times he did try, he usually ended up cutting his finger for his troubles.

The whole city was without power. Nothing worked without batteries, which he did stockpile like the little hoarder he was becoming. He spent nights in destroyed shuttles, on the warm grass in the park, in the gorged earth that had been cut by the Demons' attack. Nothing felt right, and every night he was curled up for warmth.

But eventually, he couldn't hold it in any further. One day, he slipped from a small embankment and cut his knee. The pain and the blood oozing from the wound was too much for the boy to handle, and he began to cry and scream, not from pain but from the terror that he had been holding inside him for so long. He didn't care that doing so would only waste his energy; he was tired, afraid, lonely...

And it was then that he heard something--another voice of a living being.

"Hey," the voice said softly.

Cen couldn't believe what he was hearing. He lifted his head and looked around, his cheeks wet and dirty. His whole body ached. He wiped his nose.

"H...Hello?" he said in return.

"Hey!" the voice called, this time louder.

Cen found himself acting before he knew what he was doing. He quickly climbed the embankment, digging his fingers and his feet into the ground, hauling himself up and over the edge. His head peeked over the lip and he saw him, a black cat smaller and younger than him.

He wasn't alone.

The black cat with the white tail tip was standing there with a backpack much like his own. He waved and jumped over, reaching down and helped Cen up.

At first they just stared at each other. Touching an arm, a cheek, ear...then there was laughter, the happy kind, and a hug. Talking came next, rapid and quick, both boys so excited they talked over one another. They exchanged food--Cen gave up one of his precious Pounce Bars and the cat, who introduced himself as Prill, gave him an apple.

The dream would speed up again to different scenes of their lives thereafter. Their adventure, their life, their fun. How they found the Secret Base and modified it. How they went exploring every day and found supplies.

Cen didn't feel so alone anymore, and he just laughed together with his new friend. Prill had ended up being a year younger than Cen. They went to different schools, but that wasn't important.

They were survivors.

They were friends.

Cen woke up with a yawn. His whole body felt so light and relaxed. He hadn't had the good dream of Prill in a while, and it revitalized him. He sat up slowly and saw the cat sitting there, reading.

"Morning!" Prill said with a charming smile. "You sleep well last night?"

"Oh! Yeah..." Cen said with a chuckle. "Thanks to you."

Prill tilted his head to the side, not understanding what Cen might have meant by that, but he smiled nonetheless and handed his friend some dried fruits. "Breakfast," he said.

The boys ate in silence. Cen watched Prill, who still had his appetite. That was good. Cen felt a sigh of relief escape his mouth.

"What?" Prill asked.

"Just watching you eat, and being thankful that you're here, is all."

"Of course," the cat said, covering up a cough. "Through thick and thin, you know we'll always be together."

Cen smiled. "We will."

And if he had any say in the matter, he would make absolutely sure that it would come true.