FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Ayumi settled behind a cash register at the front desk and watched with disinterest as Micah, another employee, slowly made his rounds through the arcade, checking all the games and ticket eaters to make sure they were all in working order. He noticed Ayumi and waved. Ayumi managed a small smile and waved back before yawning widely and closing her eyes to doze on her paw.

"BOO!" Suddenly, someone grabbed her sides from behind, and Ayumi jumped, shrieking in surprise. Her attacker held her around the middle, laughing at her reaction. "Gotcha, 'Yumi."

Ayumi immediately recognized the voice. "Sam! Let me go, you...you..." She was at a loss for words. As impressive as her English vocabulary was, expletives and insults were not her forte.

Samantha Sullivan, a slim female lop-eared rabbit with white fur and ears that hung down past her shoulders giggled and released the vixen. "What? What were you gonna call me?"

Ayumi scowled at her. "I was going to call you the worst word I could think of."

"But you can't think of any." Ayumi shrugged and shook her head. Samantha laughed again. "We'll have to fix that sometime. You can't live in the States and not know how to curse someone out with style."

"The way you can?" Ayumi raised an eyebrow at her friend.

The rabbit nodded solemnly. "Absolutely." She then proceeded to recite a long string of words, only a few of which Ayumi actually knew the definition of. It was apparently quite abrasive, though, because Bryce actually poked his head out from the back room and glared angrily at Samantha.

"Jesus, Sam! What the hell do you think you're doing, talking like that behind the desk?"

Samantha nonchalantly waved off Bryce's objections. "Oh, don't worry, Fuzzy. I'm just clearing out my dirty mouth before the whelps arrive, so I don't accidentally call one of them a-" the word was so filthy that it made Ayumi blush, even though she didn't understand it.

Bryce frowned. "Whatever. Just make sure you get it out of your system before we open." He closed the door again.

"Sure thing, Fuzz," Samantha called after him. She looked back at Ayumi with a mischievous grin on her face. "Although there isn't nearly enough time to clear out all the words..."

"You wouldn't."

Sam laughed. "I might. I mean, it's not like they'll understand, and besides, their parents will just assume they heard it at school. That's where I picked it all up."

Ayumi rolled her eyes and laughed. The two friends conversed until 8:00, when Bryce finally reappeared and opened the front door, turning on all the lights and banners that announced that the establishment was open. "Look alive, furs."

Within a matter of hours, the store was swamped. Scores of younglings ranging in age from six to eighteen filled the place, spending the bulk of their time in the arcade. Occasionally, however, large groups would approach the counter and buy slots in the next LazerStorm game. Ayumi and Samantha tried desperately to be as patient as possible with the younglings, even though each group contained at least four members who wanted to brand themselves 'Zion' for the next game.

During one particularly hectic moment, however, Samantha's station broke down, and while she waited for someone to come fix it, Ayumi's was the only operational station. At the same moment, a group of forty urchins between the ages of eight and twelve approached her and all started talking at once. To her credit, she managed to keep herself under control until almost all the children were taken care of. However, the last straw was broken when the second to last youngster asked her for the handle "Zion." Not surprised, Ayumi repeated for the thirteenth time that the first one in line had already gotten that handle. The whelp was unfazed. "So? Take it from him and give it to me."

Ayumi sighed. "I can't do that. It's against the rules and besides, it's unfair."

The pup scowled. "I don't care. I want that name, and I want you to let me have it."

Ayumi muttered in Japanese, "What a coincidence. I don't care, either."

The pup listened to her speak with sudden interest. "What was that?"

"I said, 'blow it out your-'"

"No, the language."

Ayumi shrugged. "Japanese."

"You speak Japanese?"

Who cared? "Yeah. It's my first language."

The youngling was silent for a moment while he contemplated this. Finally, he looked back up at Ayumi and said, "I want a Japanese name."

Ayumi rolled her eyes. "Fine. What name?"

"I don't know. A good one. I want a superhero's name."

"What a surprise." She offered him a few suggestions, which he immediately discarded. Finally, she reached her breaking point. With a flash of anger that was quite unlike her, she quickly picked a word she thought the pup would take. "How about Hakuchi?"

"Who's he?"

"A hero." Ayumi heard Samantha stifle a giggle next to her, but she ignored the rabbit, silently willing the whelp to accept her suggestion. "A superhero."

The youngling pondered this for a moment before nodding. "Okay. I want to be called Hackchi."

"Hakuchi."

"Whatever." Ayumi sighed in relief and entered the name, giving the whelp his ID card and shooing him away. The next youngling in line went through almost the exact same conversation with her, only this time, Ayumi suggested a different Japanese word. "Baka."

"Who?"

"He's Hakuchi's sidekick."

"Okay." Again, Samantha snorted in laughter behind her paws, and Ayumi threw her a questioning glance as she handed the whelp his ID card and got rid of him. "What's so funny?"

The technician repairing Samantha's station finished up and left. Since a new game was starting, no one was waiting at the counter to be given cards or names, so the two had a chance to converse for a little while. Sam grinned at Ayumi. "Yumi, Yumi, Yumi. You are a bad girl, you know that?"

Ayumi shrugged. "What? I helped them choose names that no one else had. Maybe they'll share them with their friends. Who knows, maybe next week, we'll have to deal with a hundred pups who all want to be called Hakuchi." She could only hope.

"Come now, Ayumi, you really think those are appropriate names? 'Idiot'? 'Moron'? I mean, those are the basic meanings of those words, right?"

Ayumi was surprised. The translation was rough, but accurate enough to impress. "Uh...yeah. More or less. Wait, how did you know that?" She raised an accusatory eyebrow at the female rabbit. "What, did you just go through a Japanese-English dictionary and pick out all the insulting words and phrases?"

Samantha rolled her eyes and shook her head. "No." She glanced around covertly and leaned forward. "Okay, I was going to surprise you, but I guess I kinda ruined my own surprise, so I'm just going to tell you. I've been taking Japanese classes at school." She straightened back up and smiled proudly.

Ayumi was impressed and pleasantly surprised. "Really? You learned Japanese? Why did you do that? I thought you were going to take Russian."

Sam shrugged and smiled. "I changed my mind. I wanted to be able to talk to you in your native language, you know, make you feel more at home and all that. Besides, I'm not sorry I changed languages. Japanese is way better than Russian, trust me."

Ayumi almost cried. "Aw, Sam, that's so sweet! Thank you!" She leaned over and gave the rabbit a hug.

Samantha laughed and hugged her back. "Oh don't get all mushy. You're worth it, Yumi. You're one of my best friends, you know that." She leaned back and smiled at the vixen. "I'd do anything for you."

Ayumi smiled and spoke in Japanese. "Domo, Samansa."

"Do itashi mashite, Ayumi."

They both laughed and continued conversing in Japanese for the rest of the day. It often surprised Ayumi how good of friends she and Samantha had become, especially considering the circumstances under which they had first met. It had been the same day that Ayumi had met Murasaki, and the day before she had met Bryce. Like several other occasions and days that had burned themselves permanently into Ayumi's memories, the day had begun normally and had suddenly become horrifically bad in a matter of seconds.