FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Welcome to part two of my series. I hope the first story arc was a good read. That one and this arc go together to create the backstory for the third act of this whole series.

Please let me know what you think! I can't write better stories without critique :)

Part Two - One Clean Cop

Chapter I - The Academy

The slender ferret girl had no trouble ascending the climb. Paw over paw, she flew up the log obstacle, rolled herself sideways over the top, and was down the other side as the other candidates were still cresting the structure. Turning, she rushed on through the tires, even though her small frame made her essentially hop on one footpaw through each.

Raven blew a lock of headfur out of her eyes, panting as she threw on the energy and leapt for a hanging knotted rope that would carry her over the mud pit. Mid-swing, she had half a second to think, which was about all the distraction she allowed herself in the midst of all this.

Good, gotta keep this energy up...Halfway done!

When the rope reached the very end of its swing, she leapt off, twisting her agile spine in midair and bending her knees so that as she landed she could kick off against the dirt and use the momentum to carry herself up the runway of the next construction.

At the top of the wooden obstacle, she turned left on the T-shaped ledge and grabbed a PVC staff with large balls of duct tape and weights on the end. The test instructor ahead of her stood on a circular outcrop of the structure, eight feet above another mud pit placed below it, to cushion the fall for those unfortunate enough not to handle the beating he gave.

She consulted the rules she'd been told an hour ago before the beginning of the physical test portion of the final exam. All she had to do was get past him, to the runway that went away from him at a right angle to where she'd enter. If she got knocked into the mud, she'd not only have to make her way back up and try again, she'd get a deduction from her time.

The wisp of a girl lowered her shoulders and yelled as she charged, remembering one of Sato-sensei's teachings; 'When a man is larger and more experienced than you, your only choice is to defeat him with surprise and ferocity.' The bulky proctor slid a footpaw backwards and raised his staff, preparing as she'd predicted to knock her past him with his strongest strike. The instructors here had been determined since day one to teach her that being a small-framed female made her ineligible to be a cop no matter what the law actually said.

She ducked low as she charged, and when the bottom of his staff came towards her face she threw herself to the side, rolling and spinning to slam her staff's pad into the instructor's groin with all of her strength and momentum. The instructor tried to correct, but his bulk and size prevented him from reversing his momentum, and he staggered from the hit to his jock-strapped balls.

The ferret gave him no opportunity to recover, screaming out a battle-cry as she whirled low, smashing the bar of her staff into the backs of his knees. The lion yelled out inside his helmet and lost his grip on his staff as his knees buckled and he pitched over backwards.

With the exit right next to her, Raven ignored it and instead stood, bringing the pad of her staff down onto the lion's chest at half-strength before shouting out.

"Say uncle, motherfucker!"

The lion glared at her through his helmet, and made a paw gesture, a circle and then a finger pointed behind her. She just nodded, dropped the staff on the lion's chest, and took off running again, her strides sped by the glee she felt at having beaten the brute at his own game.

She descended the ramp and past a few trees where a tall, younger flop-eared dog was waving a baton, pointing her towards the track. She blew another bit of hair out of her eyes, nodded to him in thanks for his direction, and sprinted out onto the running field.

The dirt track showed her she was in the lead, well ahead of the pack...Not a soul was on it, except for the test proctors whose jobs were to make certain she ran the requisite mile. With a smirk on her lips, she recognized one of the test proctors from the written exams that had taken much of the previous week. She'd breezed through them, well ahead of her other classmates, and the wolf had complimented her for her score the day before the physical tests had started. The nod she got from the fur was about all the acknowledgment she'd get, but it helped her push on despite the growing burning in her calves and knees.

Raven grit her teeth and ran full-out, blotting out the distraction, even knowing that this was her worst athletic exercise. She just hoped the time she'd built up in the previous obstacles would make up for it, and that her stamina would hold.

As she rounded the big dirt oval for a third time, she knew she was in trouble. Keeping her wind through the obstacle course had been easy, but these long runs were simply not her friend. The first of her classmates were starting to arrive, too, and with a grunt of annoyance she saw her principle aggravation leading them.

He was big, especially for a fox, at right around six foot two or so, and he was wearing that annoying shit-eating grin he always had when he called out to her.

"Hey dook-dook!" She scowled at the nickname, as others laughed. The long-legged fox took off after her, and she pushed her burning legs, glaring at them as if to make them run faster, or at least break free of the numbing torpor she could feel creeping through them with every jarring footfall.

The casual popularly-accepted racism aside, at least he didn't try to embarrass her publicly like half the other police academy morons. When he pulled up alongside her, sweating from his previous exertions but running with that easy canine lope of his, she managed not to get violent with him for his greeting.

He turned around and, jogging backwards in front and slightly to her right, stuck his tongue out at her, winning a sweaty, panting glare in return.

"You need to loosen up!"

She glared as hard as she could, and wished she could make him burst into flames with it. Raven tried to push herself, just to get past him, but she was coming up on the end of her reserves.

"No seriously, you run with too much tension, you're wasting energy and hurting your joints!"

"Its called...Hff hff...Running with purpose, you lazy slacker!" The waste of breath was irking her too, but she couldn't help but be surprised. He hadn't tried to help her before, mostly just been a smartass handsome-jock type, carousing with the other cop-candidates and ignoring their shitty treatment of her.

He laughed loudly, running ahead of her with smooth powerful pumping of muscles.

"Fine fine, I'll leave you alone, but only if you come get a drink with me after the test. Like I said, loosen up! Nine o'clock, Finnigan's!"

Before she could get a word in edgewise, he turned and sprinted off. She pushed the blush off, in her mind, as simple flushing from exertion.

The finish loomed ahead of her, and she dug for any reserves she might have left. Her muscles, not really built by evolution for sustained running, were twitchy and only sluggishly responsive to her demands for more and more out of them.

The last dozen steps were shaky, torturous ones, the hard dirt sending painful vibrations through her footpaws, blistered despite years of training for this very day.

Finally, the proctor yelled and gestured for her to break free of the loop, and she cut right past a few puffing, panting wolves, limp-jogging her way into the shade created by bleachers next to what she'd been told was originally a high school football field before the academy had taken it over.

About a dozen furs were there, some employees of the school there to hand out delicious hydration, a few others wealthy donors to the school who were allowed to come down and watch the trainees in their final trial by fire.

She accepted a red plastic cup of something sugary and wet, took a slurpy mouthful, and started to walk back and forth slowly, to let her heart slow back down to a normal pace. It also gave her a few seconds to gather herself before approaching her mentor, who sat in a fold-out chair a few paces off from the other wealthy 'well-wishers'.

These guys are here to scout which cops they want to buy later. Fucking disgusting.

Raven didn't miss it when one of the proctors walked over to her mentor and his bodyguard first, no doubt telling him how she'd done. Then he came over to her, as she slowed to a stop and leaned, panting, against the back of the bleachers.

"You've done great, kid." He held out a paw, which she took and shook more out of reflex than respect. His smile seemed sincere enough, at least. "You already know you got the top time. Combined with your high scores on the written, you're going to pass. I look forward to working with you after hiring is done.

She blinked and looked up at his eyes. The proctor was a bear, though a small and pale-furred one. Raven hadn't realized the proctors might be off-duty cops themselves. The ferret straightened up, or tried to, before her legs buckled and she ended up leaning on the bleacher again.

The bear laughed and patted her sweaty shoulder once, firmly.

"Relax, kid, and congratulations. You deserve it." With that, he simply walked back to his station and went back to work tabulating scores and times.

Which left her no further excuses. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to her mentor. It was what he represented on this particular day, in this particular context. She pushed off of the bleachers and walked towards him, holding herself upright by force of will rather than letting her fatigue show.

The silver wolf in the fold-out chair was in a very nice grey suit that fit him so well she knew it was tailored. Even with his crippled leg, the wolf was more regal than most men twice his age, and a good sight deadlier. More dangerous still was the bodyguard, friend, and if rumor was right boyfriend, who stood behind him, an intimidating tower of black fur and muscles in a suit that fit him but looked uncomfortable all the same.

After a few more seconds' stalling, waiting to be sure her legs wouldn't try to fold again, she approached Sato Goza, put her paws together palm to palm, and bowed to him.

"Good afternoon, Sato-sensei."

The silver wolf gave her an amused, canny smile, his grey-brown eyes staying on hers with the steadiness so typical of his feral cousins.

"You performed quite well, Raven. I am very proud of you." His English, so perfectly-spoken, always set him aside as both a person of education and a foreigner. Somehow, it made him seem slightly sinister to her. Not evil, per se, but mysterious and more clever than she was typically comfortable with.

As she straightened from the bow, she noticed Arlen's eyes on her. They were unreadable, so blank of anything it could still give her the willies even after having known him tangentially for years. They had never sat down to have a conversation, but she knew a lot about the tiger from having read his files. A real killer, to all appearances fearless, not a fur to be trifled with.

"I take it you will not be reconsidering my uncle's offer." The wolf gestured with a thumb, up towards his black-furred shadow.

Raven's jaw clenched slightly, the muscles along its bottom rippling and twitching thanks to all the adrenaline still running through her. When she spoke, it was in a terse tone. This argument had been done to death already.

"I never needed his money. In case you forgot, my father's death left me with all of his considerable money. I don't believe in what your uncle does." She gestured angrily towards the others, who were now spilling through the gap gasping, panting, straggling. "And I will never, ever, be an owned cop."

Sato raised both open paws, and laughed lightly, in a gesture of surrender that softened her angry expression only a little.

"My uncle wished to offer you work, not a long-term bribe, Raven. But so be it." He smiled broadly and reached out, taking her paw. Surprised, she shook with him, as he met her eyes with a serious, level expression.

"I am proud of the woman you have become."

The black tiger's voice rumbled out at her, as he set a heavy paw on the back of Sato's chair.

"Too bad. You would have made a good team member."

Team member.

The black tiger's words were still jangling around in her head hours later.

The sun had set over the Windy City, though the summer heat hadn't abated in the least. Raven stood in the bathroom of her studio apartment, paws leaned on the bathroom counter as she looked her naked body over in its reflection.

Soft brown eyes, she noticed, and practiced her hard-faced look. Satisfied that the mask was in place, they trailed downward over her slender features, cataloguing each in turn. Mid-sized breasts for a girl of her species and frame, which meant not much bust compared to others, were covered in a patch of cream-white fur that ran down in a more or less heart shape ending at her navel.

On her shoulder, a pink scar was covered in shock white fur, where she had been shot the day her father had been killed, and the day she had met the political benefactor who had convinced the Academy to accept her despite her size and 'attitude problem'.

He had also convinced them not to expel her when she'd broken another student's arm in her fist week at the academy, for trying to grab her ass. Which, she noted with satisfaction, looked toned and quite grabbable.

Not that she had any intent to let that happen anytime soon. Romance wasn't an entanglement she felt she could afford. Her personal crusade was more important, and a significant other would just get hurt or be leverage against her.

Raven ran her paws down that toned front of hers, over a flat stomach framed with wiry muscle, and stopped at her hips, left paw going out to clear bathroom steam off the mirror.

Just as she was considering the merits of playing with herself for a bit, her cell phone let off a siren sound, and she frowned at it before grabbing the plastic thing off her counter.

Finnigan's...Nine. Goddamnit. Are you serious? What, you're going to mock me more and leave me with the bill?

The display showed her text was from her vulpine tormentor, Sean Finn. She almost deleted the message without reading it, but his easy smile and the words 'loosen up' caught her.

A drink won't be the end of the world. If he's an ass, it'll also give me a chance to beat his ass off-campus where I can't get in as much trouble for it.

She flipped the phone open, and raised the text.

"Hey, Dooks. I didn't have time to explain myself on the track. I want to buy you a drink as an apology for being an asshole. Give me a chance. We'll probably end up working together. - Sean."

Raven snapped the phone shut and ran her paw through her dripping headfur with a groan of aggravation. Her upbringing wouldn't let her leave him hanging, even though he'd basically forced himself on her time.

With a second, frustrated grunt, she opened the bathroom door and went to get dressed.

Sean sat inside Finnigan's, comfortable in his street clothes. His hat was off, sitting on the countertop, as he sipped a soda and checked his watch. 9:10. Raven wasn't the type to be late, and he kept glancing at the door hoping she was going to show up.

He had no illusions that she might stand him up. He hadn't exactly been the nicest to her. Sure, he didn't try to mess with her as badly as others had, but he hadn't exactly tried to stop them either, and the guilt was what had made him take this step more so than his attraction to her.

Speaking of...

The doors to the bar swung open, letting in a creeping roil of hot wet air into the air-conditioned environs, as Raven Schier yanked it open and stepped inside with a grouchy look pasted across the scrunched features of her cute little face.

Sean felt his heart lurch, and couldn't help the smile, even though he knew she was probably mad as hell at him by the look on her face. He raised his glass to her, and the athletic girl walked towards him, shoulders stiff and paws balled in a combative posture.

He was nearly a foot taller than her. Sitting, however, he was just about the right height for her to grab him by the collar, balling her fist up in it as she pulled him off-balance. Windmilling one arm, he grabbed the bar with the other, blinking at her in surprise as she leaned in and gave a high-pitched growl before speaking.

"If you call me 'dook-dook' again, I'm going to beat the everliving shit out of you, understand?"

Sean's eyebrows went way up, as he made the mental note, and also noticed her breath smelled of tooth paste when it riffled through his whiskers.

"You got it, Raven. Uh. Mind letting go of my collar?"

She pushed him backwards enough that he could sit upright without falling, and pulled herself up onto the stool next to his, while the fox absently batted his collar to keep it from wrinkling up. After a few seconds, she turned her head towards him, still scowling, and gave a half-shrug.

"So say what you want to say."

He shifted in the seat, and just watched her for a second. Though they'd been in classes together, and run on the same fields, they'd rarely had much chance to talk directly. She'd always seemed tense, ready to defend herself, with an attitude of anger towards most things that didn't fit her ideals.

Sean realized that's what he liked her for. Where he generally studied and excelled, she was truly driven. What he didn't know was why. Why such a pretty, bright girl would be so gloomy and angry all the time.

"What's your drink?" He waved to the bartender, a reddish-furred burly old wolf that happened to be his second cousin.

Raven scowled at the bar, and trailed sharp little finger claws along it, drawing in the bits of moisture left over from when his uncle had wiped it down a minute or so before she'd arrived.

"Not really a drinker."

"Whiskey then. Its an Irish bar, don't insult the locals." He grinned and nodded to his cousin, making a hand-sign for a drink, knowing that without further instruction he'd get what he was talking about. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the big quiet wolf left them a pair of rum and cokes.

Without looking at him again, Raven took hers in paw and sipped at it with a grimace.

He was startled to realize his effort to learn about her was bearing fruit; she was shy, and the anger might very well be a defensive façade.

"So uh..." He sipped from his drink, nodding in appreciation at the taste and burn, "I wanted to apologize for being an asshole all year. The other guys have been really big bastards, and I kind of didn't realize it until just a little while ago."

She shrugged noncommittally and took another drink, made another grimace as the unfamiliar alcohol burn started to warm her belly.

"Forget it, I'm used to people being idiots."

"Heh, thanks for being so charitable Rave."

"Name's not 'Rave,' its 'Raven.'"

She took another drink, having finished about half the glass, and blew out a gusty drawn-out sigh that seemed to shrink her from a puffed-up state of aggression down to a surprisingly tired posture, both of her arms coming to rest on the bar.

He quirked an eyebrow, about to tease her when she spoke again.

"No...I guess Rave is fine. Just...Sorry, I'm still mad about the dook-dook thing."

Sean waved his cousin over, got a second whiskey and coke, and slid it over to her as she finished the first. Seamlessly, she grabbed the second and started drinking it down.

"Heh. Gets easier after the first one, I guess."

Sean nodded and slugged down his own, getting a second before his cousin moved away.

"Yeah, so they say. So I guess I don't get to make fun of you for being a ferret, huh? I promise I'm not a specieist. Its just how I grew up socializing, y'know? I'm a mick and a fox. It's a joke."

Raven's chocolate brown eyes finally shifted off the bar-top and to him again, her muzzle blocked taking another drink for a second.

"Mickey McYip huh?" Her voice was solid with pasted-on confidence, but he felt like maybe he could see some uncertainty in her eyes.

Shit you have no friends do you? Probably never have.

He grinned, keeping his thoughtless-handsome-guy mask firmly in place, and saluted with his cup.

"A toast to Mickey McYip and Dook-Dook!"

There it is! She DOES smile!

The ferret blushed and laughed quietly, though it sounded like it almost hurt. Something she didn't do very much, he thought, a kind of barking sound. For a second, it made him sad to think that; a cute, driven girl, who was depressed enough to look sad after just a couple of drinks.

"So, you're not just a cop school reject, Rave. You HAVE to have some kind of hobby."

She shook her head and looked down into the bottom of her drink before finishing the second of her glasses for the night.

"You'll laugh at me."

He snorted and leaned over in his chair, elbowing her arm lightly and getting a punch in his bicep right back. Laughing, he rubbed at it.

"Then tell me to fuck off when I do. What're you gonna do, hurt my feelings?"

"Okay okay fine." She was grinning that he was rubbing his arm, he thought.

Has to be tougher than others. Hm okay. Definitely been traumatized at some point.

"I like amateur sleuthing. Like...Y'know. Everything from reading detective novels to geocaching."

"Hah! Seriously? Geocaching? Fucking nerd."

He recoiled with a laugh as she jabbed him in the arm again, right in the same damn spot.

"Fuck you, Finn."

"That's more like it! Have another drink."

"Why's th'floor wobblin'..."

She looked up blearily, and watched the stars dance overhead in shifting waves, as if the whole sky was rolling back and forth and wobbling around the edges.

"That's not the floor, Dooks, that's the sky."

The ferret drunkenly swatted, her paw hitting forcelessly against the fox's chest, as he carried her light, limp form towards his apartment, her tail trailing along the ground.

"Shuddup, I know that. Where we goin'?"

He shifted her weight from one arm to the other with a grunt. Though she was hardly heavy, he wasn't exactly muscle-bound himself. More a runner than an endurance lifter. Also, he could feel that while he wasn't so drunk as she, he certainly wasn't sober either after six whiskey and cokes and a few hours of gabbing with the normally taciturn and acerbic girl.

"My place. The directions you gave me to yours go to the Academy's front steps."

"Oh...Right...They wouldn' like me sleepin' th...there...huh?"

He laughed and turned as he ambled up the front steps of his building, using his shoulder to mash buttons on the call box until someone sleepily growled and answered.

From the box crackled a "whaddaya want?"

"Ken! Come down here an' let me in!"

"...Sean? What the fuck dude...Its like...Three am...Use your fucking key..."

"Get off your fat ass and help me out here, man. She's heavy!"

The ferret stirred, a drunken little half-sleeping angel, and muttered against his chest.

"M'not fat...Fuck you..."

Sean laughed and buzzed the button again, to the grunted displeasure of the bear that lived next door to him.

Five minutes later, the surly, tightey-white clad ursine had let them through the gate and helped them up the steps, then gone back into his room with a very emphatic rude gesture in response to Sean's "thanks buddy!"

The fox commented, drunk and chipper, to the half-conscious ferret.

"He's a good guy, Ken. Just surly and an asshole when sleepy."

Raven responded with a gurgly sound, followed by a hot wetness that ran down his shirt.

"Oh...Ew..."

She'd passed out against the vomit stain on his chest, limp, helpless. Even drunk, he made a mental note to be prepared for her wrath tomorrow. She didn't like feeling helpless, and getting passing-out drunk on what had probably been her first trip to a bar for real drinking wasn't a good way to stay in control.

He spent the night dozing on the bathroom floor so he could keep her next to the toilet and make sure she didn't drown or something.