The Good Mistake

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Matthew and his boss, Dean, flee I.O.A as an experiment breaches out into the world. Dean, however, has a plan...and desires.

The darkest story I've written yet so... [GORE TRIGGER WARNING]

Posted using PostyBirb


The Good Mistake

***August, 2022***

Matthew fixed his collar. Dean wanted the final test done for the day. Protocol demands approval first to what is tested. Surrounding Matthew were monitors as the yorkshire terrier anthro gathered thoughts.

"Thank you, so umm...the...brain fluid is a programmed nanocomposite. The "bots" are nanometer thick, the...components are almost atomic. Here's a closeup of one bead, one...bot. There...That's...I know it looks like a smiling face. Those are the two salt batteries, those pointy things are for conducting and transmitting electromagnetism for powering the drive and for the...magnetic th-...The Stamets effect. That "smile" is the drive, which stores qubits based on Tobias' Gate calculations, it contains instructions for dismantling and replicating the brain and A Simulated, Ideal, Influencing Mother-AI. It's cooled by the "mantle" of water inside the glass casing full of pores, like normal silica gel. Water allows the Stamets effect to keep the beads of nanosilica to cling to each other, super magnetic attraction I add.

Dean huffed. "It's smiling, Matty!" He excitedly said. Matthew shuffled a bit, the shark anthro with a blue suit was a bit amused in the video feed. "Dean, you know I tried." Matthew said.

"I know, I know..." Dean said. The board of The Institute of Alteration left for other necessary meetings they had except Dean, no-one was bothered to listen to the former father, a balled fist and a few drops of sweat was Matthew struggling to contain his anger. Dean was sympathetic, a good drinking buddy and a decent boss, he only had the HUFF -branch of the Institute to supervise, HUFF being Hypothetical Utilities For the Forces. The shark anthro could care little about his responsibilities, because I.O.A had rarely accomplished anything. The last successful innovation was in 2018, for air units of the Forces, as a tire-saving surface for aircraft carriers.

"I see a lot of fun in these little things, Matty. I know I'm not supposed to joke if this can run that DREAD shooter on it, but really the idea of the beads combining-compiling a bigger drive to utilize....it sounds exciting! Are you sure you want to call the cooling layer "gel" though? Seems a bit more sophisticated than that." Dean said as Matthew looked at the diagram. "It's gonna be just like fine silica gel. I just hope I haven't underestimated the size of random access qubit processing. But...Amaranth knows that to operate it needs to grow the size of the buffer and duplicate available organic material.

***Two months later***

Matthew scrambled to reach the exit as the nearby city had fallen to his invention, running as fast as his short legs could carry. He was about to be the most guilty person on anthro Earth and knew that someone would skip trial with him. He had no idea how the beads could replicate themselves from every organic bit, aided by sugar, as if sugar caused Amaranth to...evolve. Become anomalous in not only replicating anthro brains, but bodies too. How Amaranth manages to move, morph...Those were questions that did not matter. He knew that "gel" is a gray goo caused by his zealous desires to resurrect life. And he was to blame.

As he exited to the parking garage to run past cars to unlock his own, he felt a cool rough hand grab him from behind a pillar. "Matthew!" Dean yelled as Matthew screamed. "GET OUT OF HERE! THEY'LL COME AFTER YOU TOO!" Matthew told his friend as Dean lifted the five feet tall yorkshire terrier into a hug. "Calm down. Don't you realize what you've done?" Dean excitedly asked as Matthew felt conflicted. "I've done terrible things." Matthew admitted, from the bottom of his heart. "Nope, YOU have done me proud! HUFF has been a joke for a decade! We'll find a way out from this one and can resume field tests, no-one has to die in wars anymore!" Dean speculated. "No-one has to die, period." Matthew muttered. "What do you mean? Surely there's...are you sure it's...We can stop it?" Dean worried as Matthew teared. "Understand when I tell you how out of control it is." Matthew mumbled.

Dean looked around. He, too, understood to be responsible. "They'll court-martial me." Dean whispered and carried his colleague to the car, slamming the gas down on his Toyobaru and driving past the gate into blackness.

In the car, the two shared a silence, Dean had no idea where to drive, Matthew had no idea what to say. Dean exhaled, calming down. "So...Any idea what color you'll be?" Dean asked as Matthew grabbed his canine muzzle and screamed. "It doesn't matter! We're gonna be zombies under the AI!" Matthew screamed as Dean calmed him. "It's barely an AI. Just a stamp on specific thoughts to "not do", like you said." Dean said as Matthew felt conflicted. "I don't deserve to fail like this...I don't deserve..." Matthew grumbled. Dean's tail, which was through the zippable hole in the driver's seat, flapped behind the yorkshire terrier anthro as Matthew gasped to feeling the giant shark anthro push him from behind. "Cheer up, Matty. It's not like anyone's dying to it!" Dean beamed. Matthew looked towards New Haven, seeing a gel glow and fly elsewhere. "It's a death to the way we are." He emphasized.

The two drove on, until Dean stopped at a closed kiosk. He picked up a rock and broke the window, entering inside. Matthew watched in fascination how the 6'7" shark anthro walked out with a bottle of Gator, a brilliant blue sports drink.

"There we are." Dean contenly said and started the car. "You're insane. Don't you value a single aspect of being flesh and blood. Why do you think being brain fluid could be any better than-" Matthew tried to say as Dean made a U-turn back to where they came from. "Wh-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WE'LL BE KILLED!" Matthew yelled as Dean smiled. "I have a plan! We'll make our super soldier yet!" Dean laughed.

***

Inside the labs was quiet, all had fled.

Dean and Matthew ran to the testing lab to fetch the back-up batch of Amaranth, which was distinct from the batch rampaging above the ground in looseness, the beads were slightly larger.

"It's here, b-" Matthew warned Dean as Dean opened the vial, poured the loose ooze into the sports recovery drink, as the drink glowed before settling. "If I read your notes right, this was the version with twice the width of the beads? Are the batteries in the bots more protected?" Dean asked. "Yes, bu-" Matthew struggled as Dean squeezed the bottle into his mouth, finding the liquid disappear as it entered, soon the bottle was empty except a few drops at the bottom.

"OH MY GODS, DEAN!!" Matthew screamed and retreated as Dean belched while loose strands of gel drooled from his snout as his clothes became baggy. Dean struggled to stand as his body wobbled. "Woah, woah...A bit loose..." Dean muttered yet solidified soon, like a wave, the nanobots replicated his shark tail too as Dean stood as a shark, made of Gator drink.

"See? Just me still." Dean's voice echoed from within. "You sound strange." Matthew said. "It's my vocal cords, they're not wet." Dean said and eyed the few drops at the bottom. "You?" The anthro shark asked as Matthew shook his head. "Matty, look at me. I might not be there to help you to be in this batch too when you need to." Dean said as Matthew wanted to say no to it all. "I'm sorry you had to do this to yourself." Matthew whispered as Dean frowned.

An explosion on the upper levels was the Forces finally entering to confiscate, shut down and eliminate. "Hear that?" Dean asked Matthew as even the canine couldn't hear what Dean did. He could separate each footstep running downwards.

"Let's go." Dean said and took his first morph by elongating his arms into front legs and making a seat into his back. His rear legs acclimated into a cheetah-like posture. "That's...easy." Dean realized as Matthew climbed on.

Dean's first running steps almost caused Matthew to fall, but arms emerged from the sides of the brilliant blue gel to hold his friend in place. Running towards the parking garage, one of the operatives saw Dean running towards him. Aiming with the Q90, the operative fired eight fast rounds. To Dean, time slowed. He sank Matthew inside him, ran towards the guard and split his tail into four small ones to coil around the gun. Dean squeezed and watched the weapon crumble as Dean realized he didn't need to run anymore.

The bullets had stopped almost point blank into his thick gel. Matthew was unharmed. Dean was a living body armor. He squeezed his tails around the weapon as it just bent like a can.

The operative was pushed back by the speed at which Dean had grabbed the Q90. He saw the gun as scrap. The operative's body language told all to Dean. They had nothing to harm him with. He shed his feral stance, morphing with Matthew inside him, to tower hollow at eleven feet. He walked to the operative and grabbed his ear piece. It too was just scrap now.

"Go home." Dean rumbled and continued on into the parking garage. His steps carried Matthew and him, steps with legs that no longer needed shoes and flexed sharp claws that clacked against the concrete. Dean felt...good.

"I-Incredible! You were like a hero!" Matthew said as Dean let out a low laugh. "I feel...pretty terrific being this big." Dean said. "Your voice..." Matthew wondered. "I'm a bit bigger with you in me." Dean rumbled, words he tried to weigh as he tingled where Matthew's body touched his.

As the two were at the car, Dean felt curious. "What would you do if I...didn't want to let you out? You're safe in my brilliant blue. You saw how those bullets barely penetrated me." Dean asked.

"I need to sit in the car, right? You're too big to drive like that." Matthew said. Dean smiled and felt around Matthew with senses he was still discovering. "Do we need a car? I can be hollow and stretch. What can I be? Think." Dean challenged Matthew.

"I don't know what these games are, but we don't have time! There's operatives coming!" Matthew reminded Dean. "Oh, what can they do to me?" Dean said and inhaled.

Matthew watched Dean's body to become sinewy, drooly, as air began to fill what Dean didn't need. "Porous, but powerful." Dean bellowed and inhaled more. "The things eighty-five liters of gel can do, Matthew!" Dean giggled and grew even more.

At fifteen feet tall and thirty feet long, Dean stopped. Swallowing, he sealed himself full of air, Matthew in a hammock-like cocoon within, Dean had turned his gel into a stretchy web from within that still held Dean's desired shape of a large reptile.

"Been a fan of our ancestors." Dean rumbled, referring to dinosaurs. "This is crazy, Dean! Let's just take the car and go!" Matthew yelled from within. "To let them shoot the first car coming out of the garage? Think Matthew." Dean laughed. "Oh...right." Matthew realized.

The sliding door needed a good grip from Dean as his tail slipped between a tiny gap on the side. A gentle peel pulled off a passable hole through. "Get ready to bounce a lot!" Dean warned his friend as he began to run, the soft, web-like insides of the shark anthro turned into a hollow apatosaurus gel.

From the spiraling driveway down to the hidden parking hall next to a fake one, next to a road never driven by cars other than those of lost drivers, emerged into a dozen headlights a brilliant blue apatosaurus that laughed as bullets bounced from him. Toppling a van before running to the black field, Dean cheered with a scream. The sky was calling as Dean sped up his run and quickly shot two foils from his sides that nimbled into sails to flap with. Matthew screamed. "STOP FLYING! HOW ARE YOU FLYING?!!" "I just felt like doing it!" Dean replied as Matthew collapsed into his webby hammock. Bullets would still fall from the flying apatosaurus that continued to morph more aerodynamic, into a strange shark griffin.

***

Matthew came to, as he heard a glass shatter. Dean was back at the kiosk, now breaking into a vending machine full of Gator. Dean had once more assumed the shape of a shark anthro but was considerably larger and...naked.

"Dean? What are you doing?" Matthew asked his friend that glowed blue after yet another bottle empty. "This. Fucking. Rocks, Matthew." Dean said, being nine feet tall and without any shred of fat hiding a physique that, disregarding oozing gel, was perfection. Dean sat next to Matthew, to line up different colors of beverages. "Choose one." He said as Matthew looked at the full rainbow of sodas, juice, canned teas, coffee, milks. "Why would I?" Matthew asked. Dean demonstrated with the salt shaker from the broken-into kiosk, how it just shook off him. "We could be without anything hurting us." Dean said.

Matthew needed to be sure about one thing. "I don't want it. Convert me." Matthew said as Dean looked at his friend with confusion. "Do...do you?" Dean asked as Matthew smiled. "Change me!" Matthew yelled.

Dean got up, to pick a can. Confusion settled in. "Do you want it?" Dean worried. "MAKE ME DO IT!" Matthew yelled as Dean reached for...a can of orange soda. Dean was already putting his finger into the can, making it feel good and glow, as anxiety welled inside Dean. "Y-you want this, right?!" Dean screamed as Matthew calmed. "I do not know." Matthew simply said.

A headache, anxiety, panic became pounding waves as Dean collapsed to the sidewalk. Tears glowed down from his eyes. "What the hell is this?!" Dean asked. "Asiimai." Matthew grudgingly said. "It's...what we approved. A failsafe against rogue soldiers. Do no harm. Be kind, Flee from harm, help when needed... Sweet and fake." Matthew reminded Dean as his brilliant blue gel friend clutched his chest. "That's...I didn't know how invasive it would be." Dean gasped. "It's not invasive. I just appealed against the deepest programming Amaranth has; to spread. You do remember you toppled the van? You know you looked how empty it was, how no-one was next to it?" Matthew asked. "I...do. I didn't want to kill, but...I cared. I want to care." Dean told himself.

"You know I designed a failsafe against a failsafe too. Capsaicin." Matthew muttered as he walked into the kiosk to fetch the mildest hot sauce. "Too hot and it's like being drunk, with chili it's a hard allure not to overdo it. But for your information, the correct level of capsaicin is characha. No drunkenness, no Asiimai." Matthew said and tossed the big shark the bottle. "Great. So...do you want to wait while I drink the rest of the Gator from here?" Dean asked as Matthew sighed. "Why do you want to grow bigger?" Matthew asked. Dean's smile was a bright one. "It feels fucking amazing!" He yelled.

***

Dawn was ahead. Matthew stared at the ten feet tall shark anthro gel, seeing how Dean's privates were slightly out of his sheath. Dropping the bottle, Dean took a feral form to come eye level with Matthew that sat in thought on the sidewalk. "Matty?" Dean asked as Matthew recoiled seeing Dean hung open next to him. "What the hell, Dean?!" Matthew said as Dean sat next to the yorkshire terrier. "I'm struggling with it. I shape myself decent and still feel myself forced to morph them." Dean said with a slight worry.

"I didn't teach Amaranth to breed!" Matthew yelled.

"But what if it's learning to?" Dean realized. "What if your invention is learning from anthros? From life? What if it's trying to mimic life even better?" Dean worried.

Matthew looked at Dean with a judging look. "I am not in the mood for your weird jests." Matthew said and looked elsewhere. Dean placed his shark-like head on his friend's lap as Matthew pushed away. "What has gotten into-" He struggled to say yet felt Dean's gel, warm, slippery where he touched. "Body temperature." Matthew connected. Dean lifted his head and looked at Matthew with worry. "I tell you. There's something wrong with Amaranth!" Dean raised his voice while morphing to be an anthro again. "The...sugar. It has to be glucose. Simple carbohydrates are providing the beads to sustain evolution. Evolution towards acclimating to life." Matthew theorized as Dean's crotch sprouted his genitalia again, unwillingly.

"Can you help me get rid of this thing now?" Dean asked as Matthew stood up to face the towering gel shark. "What...what do you want me to do? Go do your business yourself!" Matthew yelled. "Or you could..." Dean stopped saying.

"Boss... ARE YOU OKAY?!" Matthew gestured with his hands as Dean looked away in shame. "It's...I don't feel those...It's hard to describe this...openness. You are my friend, you are open to this and you could help me." Dean tried to explain. Matthew took a hard look at Dean. "Are you fucking out of your MIND?!" Matthew asked as Dean struggled to hold in honesty, morphing eye level again into a feral stance. Matthew watched Dean glow.

"You have always been... cute. A little yorkshire terrier with a lab coat, are you serious? Of course you are adorable..." Dean admitted and gasped. "Give me some fucking characha, I am losing my fucking marbles." Dean asked as Matthew took a few steps towards his boss, then a few more. "I..." Matthew struggled as Dean glowed bright, brilliant blue shining from the kiosk window. "M-Matthew, just...Ignore what I'm saying." Dean frowned.

"You did mean what you said back then...when I had to crash by your place...Amazingly drunk we were, but you were hard against me on the sofa." Matthew recounted. "You've avoided my eyes for so long. And now you're desperate to look at me..." Matthew told Dean as Dean's erection only jumped. "I...I don't feel like I have barriers to prevent me from expressing that...I find your company just...lovely. Even if I'm ten years below you and a foot and a half above, feeling so connected to your passion for...you know. I've wanted to help any way I can. I can't...I can't stop talking, there's so mu-" Dean talked on, as Matthew approached his boss to brace his jaws with his muzzle.

"M-Matty..." Dean muttered as Matthew left the kiss, caressing his boss' cheek. "I...I'm sorry. I've been so long into my work that I've forgotten to move on and you...You're just..." Matthew tried to say. "More than a friend." Dean finished as Matthew looked away. "It really is done. I.O.A. We don't have to worry about being discovered. We don't have to worry about anything." Matthew realized as Dean smiled. "Being discovered? HUFF has been three people the past three years and Camilla's been remotely working, so no wonder we've gotten close. There's no-one else to talk to!" Dean laughed as Matthew smiled.

Quiet settled as the two just looked at each other, eyeing their lips and re-embracing their kiss with even more passion as Matthew welcomed the openness his boss now radiated. Being gently nudged backwards by the feral shark griffin gel, Matthew felt Dean's weight settle on him, as he laid against the asphalt. "I could go about it asking indecisively or you could let me out from Asiimai, so I could enjoy you like I want to." Dean whispered to the tiny dog under the gel. "R-right...I might..." Matthew's mind raced. His long-felt desire towards Dean had been so because of how large shark genetics made anthros like him. Certainly not as big as orca anthros of eight feet, but Matthew himself was almost as small as shrew anthros of four feet.

Matthew took the characha bottle from the coat pocket as Dean looked hypnotized as the small dog opened it and poured a dollop on the sharp tongue that emerged from Dean's mouth.

Swallowing the bit of Asian chili, the sauce seemed to flow like blood wherever until it was a thin web between beads of gel. Dean's eyes, round and curious, closed as Dean flexed his neck. "Mmmh, the high is gone. Strange how one misses the darker intrusive thoughts when they're taken away." Dean rumbled.

"Well?" Matthew asked his friend who was morphing his anthro shark shape again. "Well indeed, my little dog. Let's do this." Dean murred. Confidently, he pushed the terrier's muzzle to his crotch and steered his gelatinous twin phalluses inside Matthew's mouth. "About fucking time!" Dean laughed and watched the forty-something Matthew eat him, as Dean leaned against the roof of the kiosk.

"Gotta say, you're pretty sharp in there but it hurts jack shit." Dean nonchalantly said while morphing his hand into a blade. "A weapon I am, yes indeed..." Dean whispered. Asiimai could bother little Dean's emerging dark desires. Wild ideas which emerged freely, as Dean scolded himself little in embracing them.

"Might as well." Dean said, lifting Matthew with his hands against the wall of the kiosk while maneuvering his tips to pull down bare Matthew's ass. "DE- ah..." Matthew offered no complaints, nanocomposite gel was like lube. "You're fully mine now." Dean told his lackie, suspended against a kiosk.

A car driving past the brilliant blue giant accelerated as Dean let out a laugh. "Damn, they're scared! This is...a rush!" He joked and bulged wider inside Matthew, eliciting Matthew to moan and shed pre. "This... body... is... fucking awesome!" Dean slammed the final thrusts and felt his gel overflow in drooly syrup, like long thick strands that coursed from somewhere deep inside Dean out.

As Dean pulled out, he was surprised to see how his hemipenes had long strings from their tips inside his co-worker, which slowly oozed out from Matthew's anal cavity. Strings that began to slowly retract as Dean huffed to feeling his tips sounded by ejaculate coursing back inside his body.

Dean watched how, against what he'd seen Lewis Pepperfield be able to do with his boyfriend, his gel shimmered in release and only mimicked a generous cumshot before it calmed and retracted back, becoming just another malleable part of his body,

"My cum's weird, Matty." Dean said, coming down from the orgasm. "Huf...H-huh?" Matthew asked.

***

Dean stroked and let loose as Matthew observed the syrup. It was nothing but shimmering strands that oozed before adhering to the legs of the shark gel. "We've documented Amaranth gels to be able to separate from their mass, so...why can't I do it?" Dean asked as his load just drooped and fuzed back. "Because your beads are big enough to contain the energy surge that causes beads to abandon their magnetic link, it's a simple change that makes you...sterile. Safe.

Dean sat down. "So if I grow...I grow. There's no going back." Dean understood as Matthew looked at his boss with uncertainty. "Not planning to become a giant?" The yorkshire terrier asked him. Dean smiled. "I don't think there's enough Gator to fill even five swimming pools in the world, right?" Dean asked.

Characha within Dean flowed through thin veins. Dean felt little change in how much Asiimai would bother him. He wondered if he should tell Matthew, but decided against it.

"So, where next?" Dean asked the anthro half his height. "Why would I decide? You're the one with wings." Dean grabbed Matthew and redid his hollow insides, though this time Matty's cocoon was tighter. "How about we go back to the labs, show those punks in armor how I really think about them trying to hurt me?" Dean asked.

"What? Why would we go back at all? Just...take me home, Dean." Matthew told him as Dean flexed his claws. "I'd really just want to wreck those bastards. They...oh, they'd do me dirty after all I've done for the Forces." Dean rumbled. "Maybe set aside revenge? Just...We need to leave. Get away from this place." Matthew bossed Dean as for a little moment, the shark wanted to feed Matthew cocks. "Whatever." Dean said and manifested two limbs that stretched into sails as Dean grabbed air.

***

Flying to Hartford, Dean let Matthew out next to a tiny house, almost like a shed. The gel wished to not tell how he still felt his thoughts as anthro as ever. How he still wished to mitigate what he knew was only a matter of time.

"I'll meet with you later. I'll go...make sure my family's safe." Dean lied. "Where, Dean?" Matthew asked. "Good Mistakes -bar. Tomorrow." Dean told Matthew as the yorkshire terrier began to walk into his apartment. Dean jumped up in the air, huffing out and feeling his claws stretch outwards. The griffin put all into his next flap and burst the sound barrier with the flap, like a whip.

Dean was drunk. Not because the characha chili sauce still flowed in him, blurring the nanobots just enough, but because he had dreamt of a moment to wield a breakthrough and use it to dismantle the international Forces presence from New England. This was very much possible, as Dean knew the three bases by heart.

Every anthro must serve the Forces for three months, the Forces evaluates great leaders and signs them for years of pain through military school. This Dean didn't mind. What Dean did mind was that global crisis control through Forces was ruthless. Nothing can dismantle power if those in power share one single shield, no revolution is left unquenched by blood. A century after the Great Peace, the force that ensured its existence, the Forces was a twisted husk of what its original purpose was. It is why Dean fell from the sky to the front gates of the Forces Connecticut Station and stared at the rat in the booth.

Dean was blinded, he stared at the operative in the white body armor through the glass. The rat hit the alarm and started to empty the mag into Dean, each bullet sank an inch, flattening and falling to the ground. Dean saw red. Dean, who had gone through a decade in the Forces, now was just another civilian to be slaughtered.

No more.

Dean split around the booth, coiled around and came together in the blink of an eye. His gel gave no way for anything between the two nanometers thick beads of dense gel to be trapped inside, as everything inside Dean burst high as fine dust, mixed with red, dried remains of bone, blood and tissues. All was pulverized to mist and dust. The operative had dried and become but a fading cloud of dust, as Dean felt squishy. The water inside the operative's body had squeezed between the beads of gel through the nanoscopic pores and became suspended by extreme tension.

"Dried to a crisp..." Dean pondered as he started to feel tiny pokes, the squad inside the compound had lined neatly for him to dry, as Dean made haste to envelop the anthros and blink back into a shape. Once again, water just pooled into a weightless mane around Dean as he stood in a cloud of red mist that dissipated. Dean felt a rush. "I don't even need swords!" He laughed.

***

The tanks were firing at a shark griffin gel that was accumulating water around itself into a semi-prehensile corona. Each explosion caused water around the monster to splash off, yet anthros kept getting sucked in, speeding towards the brilliant blue jaws that caused anyone inside to instantly heat to 1000 degrees celsius and vaporize, as Dean bit down fast enough to cause all water to boil and explode into a red cloud of mist that the beast exhaled out like cigarette smoke. Mercy kills, Dean said to himself. Being trapped in the Forces is worse than a granted death.

Dean was more focused in using his water corona to tear down buildings and towers than eating anthros, but temptation to devour continued to wash over him as he felt like an apex predator preying on anthros that were brainwashed into massacring all. Dean knew this wasn't true, some were unlucky to be station-bound. But the ability to just do what he wanted was catching up. The more he shed water, the more he felt characha leave him. He had to hurry. Slamming a tank of water allowed him to control almost a million liters of water now, some sloshing off as Dean had to do the last touches to make sure this station was unusable. Grabbing a refueling tank by maneuvering the strange exosuit of water, Dean held it in his jaws. The strange water elemental was following the motions of the shark griffin within, as Dean dropped the tank through a hole he had punched into the armory. He then coiled his tail around a weaponized tank still trying to kill what cannot be killed and slammed it into the fuel.

The fireball instantly blew away Dean's corona and Dean. Inside the gel, all of characha had slowly dissolved into the water and now, Dean screamed in pain. He had taken about forty-six lives directly, perhaps a dozen more indirectly. The overload of emotions was crushing as Dean began to part with tears.

"I'm m-melting!" Dean yelled and struggled to stand just outside the compound. Fires behind him instantly made him recoil the moment he looked at them. He could only leave the devastation, to regroup with. "I need...hot sauce."

Dean babbled amidst tears and jumped, instant exertion blasted Dean high and away.

***

He'd cried maybe a jug of brilliant blue gel away and there was no stop to how he felt, he continued to shed tears as he marched into the Martswell and received screams as he ran to the hot sauce section, leaving behind Gator as shimmering droplets.

He scanned the shelf and spotted the bottle Matthew had given. It almost burst as Dean squeezed it into him. The false weight of what Dean had done slowly faded as the tears stopped.

"Phew." Dean exhaled and grabbed the remaining bottles inside him. Running back out, he still wished to annihilate New York and Massachusetts -stations. He leapt again into a glide and then pushed down his wings to steer himself towards wrath.

***

Matthew's arms shook while holding his phone. Reading the news about a brilliant blue beast that controlled a layer of water around it like an exoskeleton to slaughter and demolish all three of the Forces' peacekeeper bases.

The bar was empty, the bartender, an albatross, used his flight feathers to clean the three glasses of New England Pale Ale he had downed while watching videos of how Dean was destroying armories, squeezing anthros into not even pulp but dust, twisting tanks into scrap, running through buildings to make them collapse.

Suddenly, the door to the bar opened to reveal a brilliant blue gel that had a weightless mane of water, with veins pulsating in characha. Dean sat opposite of Matthew, forcing himself against the table as the sofa behind him snapped from within.

The barkeep watched how the gel put his talons on the table, leaned wide and fully encompassed the sofa behind him. Matthew looked away as Dean breathed raspily.

"It...it had to be done." Dean rumbled. Matthew's disgust prevented him from seeing his close friend.

"How. How can you think of something like that... How have you accomplished something so...sad?" Matthew muttered as Dean flexed his talons.

"Let me tell you a story. In 2012, I was three years into the Forces special operative training. Our annual speech was given by a private investor, like he was something that should've mattered. I had already realized that I was misled by a message of peace to ensure that no status quo should be questioned. I was protecting...No, we were protecting a group of maybe two hundred anthros, so immortalized by wealth that even their families would never be able to be torn from it. It is what I was forced to do. To protect a few families to remain so rich that tribe-nations in Africa have collapsed due to how much the continent is being drained by their enterprises." Dean rumbled as Matthew had his head in arms against the table.

"Over time, those who would be discovered to voice their opinions against campaigning for the elite, were sent on missions. I was an idiot and was assigned to "clean up". The village was just a bit too close to the cobalt mine in Yakutia. We had our Q90 SMGs, we went to that village and ensured that the anthros there would not be able to protest against Grandnations Inc. We, peacekeepers in white, wearing the Tridigit banner, quelled an insignificance in the middle of nowhere. And those operatives at the stations that I have now dismantled...It was me giving my opinion about what I think about the status quo." Dean rumbled.

Matthew lifted his gaze to see Dean's crazed smile, had he truly been blind as to what made Dean so cheerful, all these years... A chance to embrace any advantage in power, to use it against what he despised. Yet Matthew shared Dean's comprehension of the situation. It is why he wished to strip anthros from the ability to harm each other forever through Asiimai.

"You made gels into monsters by image, Dean." Matthew said as Dean squinted his eyes, cartoonishly even in gel. "As if no-one else has suffered under the tyranny of the Forces." Dean growled.

Matthew, unphased, walked to fill his glass with more pale ale before sitting back down in the dark bar. He took a long, desperate gulp before slamming the glass down as even Dean flinched back.

"I don't think you understand where I'm coming from. We have an opportunity to change soldiers...no, ANTHROS into something that can and will never WAGE such hatred for each other again through senseless WARS like you have just...done against the Forces. It is...I wanted to corrupt soldiers of the Forces into what the Asiimai is for. We agreed on it! GELS could finally allow us to HOLD a PEACE that could never be broken, FOREVER!!" Matthew screamed in a tirade as Dean saw the tiny dog threaten him, yet Matthew was still just his friend.

"Matthew, I...I had to defend myself! There were guns being fired at me! Tanks shot at me!" Dean explained as Matthew burst out laughing a raspy cackle while clawing his eyes, desperately trying to still redeem his friend from being a mass murderer in his eyes. "Oh...good one Dean. A good one..." Matthew said and felt tears well in his eyes. "Who the fuck can kill so much while trying to destroy things?" Matthew muttered as Dean was speechless. His training to defend himself, his rage against the massacres, the Forces that tried to still slaughter him.

"I...I.was trained to respond to fire. I was angry. I wanted to get rid of them. I wanted to destroy it all." Dean excused himself.

Matthew looked away, crying. "You became the thing I wanted to destroy." Matthew whispered, mostly to himself.

Dean's gel still pulsed strongly with characha, a drug that allowed the anthro inside him to enact such carnage. But Dean also thought of what he'd done, coming from the feral high that he had had while flying to the bar from Massachusetts Station. Usually, the memories after those highs were faint, a reason why the Great Peace was necessary. Anthros are faulty in their rage.

"I..." Dean stuttered. Matthew understood, his friend didn't have to say anything. "It's too much power for us without reins. Nanosilica is even more powerful than I intended, but I never would have imagined...You. Of all the anthrofolk." Matthew said quietly.

Dean searched his memory, shocked how clear it all still was. Never after his missions did he remember every second so clearly and now, those seconds he could go through like videotapes. "I remember it all..." Dean whispered.

"As anthros should. But ...Gods fucked us up." Matthew growled.

Dean couldn't really answer, his eyes searched seconds like ants crawled on the floor. "Make it stop!" Dean pleaded as Matthew went to get his fifth beer. Dean lived through screams, fire, terror he had caused. Dean had caused it. It was in lust for blood, a feral remnant inside all that walked on two legs. Yet gels could recall perfectly, beyond the abilities of anthros, especially from when adrenaline flowed wild.

Dean slammed the table flat and screamed. "FUCKING WHYYYY?!!!" Dean yelled and collapsed from the sofa on the floor to cry. "I don't...I don't want to remember. I don't want to..." Dean pleaded as Matthew sat on the stool next to the ten feet tall shark gel with flowing watery frills decorating him.

"It's awful isn't it. I wondered how you were still...you, when you came to I.O.A after such a long time in the Forces. We can't remember such tiny things like biting into another in the haze, like decapitating "terrorists", like-" Matthew listed as Dean threw up, his gel mimicked the bile loosening into a projectile from his mouth, shimmering, before resuming animacy and returning to Dean's mouth as Dean tried to shake it away.

"I need...I don't...I can't stop thinking about it all." Dean said in fear. Matthew sipped his beer and went to the floor to lift Dean's head to look at his. "I feared this, Dean. But I...I trusted you. You've disappointed me and...terrified me. And I...I can't even-" Matthew said and left, to walk to an alley and behind a dumpster, to collapse and continue crying.

Dean was ravaged by things he had never imagined to face. He wished to see just how much he could remember from his haze and he saw no end to the destruction that his hazy self continued to cause inside the stations. It all came back perfectly. The gel shrank as tears overwhelmed even Dean's dense armor.

***3 months later***

Inside The Good Mistakes -bar sat a purple gel. A quiet, dark bar, with one of the rows demolished, sofa torn asunder, table slammed flat to ground. In addition, the pool table had been flipped, bottles had been shattered, the large television punched in and a hole into the sky had appeared into the ceiling. "All him..." Matthew muttered and sank in his gel. He felt the darkness of his thoughts subsiding after he had come back to the bar where he left his greatest friend to his own luck. He had berated himself for abandoning Dean when the brilliant blue shark needed someone to comfort him the most.

Silence, a quiet hum from Matthew's plum juice nanosilica. All the worries were gently fading as Matthew found it less and less bothersome to dwell in what had occurred, thanks to the simulated, ideal, influencing mother-AI taking good care of gels when they felt bad. Matthew didn't want to unthink the thoughts that were becoming quiet. He wasn't willing to.

With him was a tiny, red bottle, and a large bag full of many like it. Sampling a tiny dollop of characha, Matthew's expression soured as the bar came back with its gloom, along with regrets and anger as Matthew leapt from the worn, red sofa to lift it; he had sat on it back then and wanted to feel his tonnes of strength.

Easily Matthew, in his five feet of current height, tore the sofa with the bolts and floor tiles and lifted it before throwing it to the wall. "FFFUUUUCK!!!" Matthew screamed and shrunk down into a sob. He had no idea where Dean was, no idea where he could find the friend he had abandoned and missed like hell. Even the massacres Matthew wanted to forgive now.

***

Dean walked with the harpoon in his hand from a sea blackened by clouds above. He proceeded towards the makeshift shed of boats stacked next to one another to filet the fish, preferring to use his gel to cut through, like he'd wanted to when he was k-

"NO!" Dean was alarmed by his thoughts. He calmed and cleared his mind. He knew the last time he meditated was in the worst storm Isle of Mull had seen in months. He struggled little in mastering Gaelic, but held from his decision to travel to Fionnphort to introduce himself and - possibly - gels.

The fish he once more put to dry, like before, as he sat next to the rack, morphing into a wolf. He knew his friend who spoke no language would come to play and he waited patiently.

A few hours later, Muiri appeared and quickly pounced on Dean as the shark gel pretended to pant and growl in play. Muiri liked licking the sweet Gator that the strange wolf was made of.

Muiri quickly snacked the fishes as Dean pretended to, too. Finished eating, Muiri was at it again with the sniffing. "Fucking..." Dean angrily whispered as Muiri's interest in how the blue wolf smelled from behind became licks as Dean smelled and tasted quite good actually. The feel of the tongue made Dean disgusted. A taboo, both ways. Ferals knew not what anthros did.

Soon Muiri gestured Dean to follow towards the forest next to the mountains, like usual. Dean already knew to expect the wolves to demean him with their own twisted way, but Dean had no other company anymore.

The alpha growled at Muiri once more for bringing the freak to their pack, as Dean laid his head down to appear small, tail low too, signals of submission. The alpha went around Dean, Dean desperately morphed back there. The moment the wolf mounted him, it was quiet.

Never would Dean have imagined himself in these situations. The wolf gel Dean nicknamed 'Deen', she was an escape to a version of themselves where she could slowly distance herself from the anthro that had done the unforgivable, while allowing Dean time to accept what he wishes to never again experience.

This meant that Deen needed to be in these situations. Situations where she cared less and less with each thrust by the alpha. Where she was belittled, humiliated, yet welcomed. Feeling like nothing to the rest of the pack allowed Deen to run away from the Dean that felt like anything.

The alpha did his mess into Deen as the next one in line continued. The alpha cared little, the blue freak wasn't but a toy for the pack.

***

Scampering away in the evening, Deen made sure to be alone as he stood up as a shark anthro. Leaning against a tree, Dean cursed his erections and walked towards the abandoned cabin he squatted in, when he didn't feel like sleeping on seaweed. At times, Dean did want to fly, but he would risk being spotted and feared, like those kids did when he sl-

"No..." Dean sighed. When will the memories end, he thought. He wanted Asiimai to forgive, but every life he had taken was a week of conflict in his head.

Continuing on, Dean walked to open his cabin, the floor was filled with many blunt wooden objects that the gel carved.

For best sleep, Dean needed to be as far away from his thoughts, as Deen coiled her tail around one of the dildos and stuffed herself full and content. Where had laid a shark male soon slowly twisted and massaged herself a female, to know one more escape before sleep.