FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

(Two Years Earlier)

It was one o'clock in the morning, and they were at it again. Logic typed as silently as he could, hoping that they wouldn't realize he was still awake and come in. He lay in bed silently, his 5-year old laptop plugged into a LAN port on the wall. The chat window showed that there was only one other person still online at this late hour, and that that person's name was A.J.

Logic: So, what films have you seen recently?

A.J.: None, but I watched the new South Park. It was pretty funny; I'll send you a link so you can watch it.

Logic: Thanks man.

A.J.: So, what else have you been up to recently?

Logic looked around at the walls of his room, which was small and plain, with a single window and one wooden wardrobe. Several pairs of shoes stood in the corner, which was slightly stained with mud. Sometimes he found it difficult to believe that the place cost his parents thirty thousand pounds a year, and that the boarding house was filled with other people whose parents were making the same payment, some for less space for their children than he had.

Logic: Oh, same old. My room's a complete tip atm :P what's yours like?

A.J.: It's pretty neat. I get a good Internet connection and that's the most important thing lol.

Logic: I can't believe you live on your own; you're still only 16.

A.J.: Yeah, it's a bit weird sometimes, but the authorities don't really care so long as we're not smashing shit up. Teben City is awesome though. I can live on my own, and I can even get beer and no one makes a fuss. You should come and visit me though.

Logic sighed at the thought of the impossible journey. How could he possibly tell his parents that he was going to a foreign country just to see some random Internet guy? Of course, A.J. was more than just a random stranger, they video chatted regularly, and A.J. had even managed to come over for a couple of days last summer, and had left him with an open invitation, but that would be how they would see it. At the very least, they would insist on coming with him, if they let him come at all. Lack of fun would be guaranteed. He tried to push the thought from his mind.

Logic: So, any luck finding a job?

A.J.: Not really, I've been looking for a computer job but you know the humans do all the high-end stuff, and they tend not to mix too much with us. It's cool though: we don't want them around either. Over here, they have this...it's like a scent. Every human has it, and it fucking stinks.

Logic: Lol I know what you mean, the jocks here stink too. Sorry to hear you're having problems though, keep at it man.

A.J.: Will do.

Logic was just about to ask A.J. whether he had seen the most recent football match, when his door burst open, and two burly teenagers stood in the doorway. He closed the lid of his laptop quickly, and tried to look as though he was trying to go to sleep.

They were both humans, just like almost every other person at the school. The larger one had curly, sandy-coloured hair, and had acne. Despite the late hour, he was still wearing a white T-Shirt and jeans, and grinned as he looked down at Logic.

The other wore checked pyjama bottoms, but wore a brown hoodie on the top and grinned as well. He stood slightly behind the larger teenager, and smirked from behind his friend's arm. His hair was still curly, but was brown instead of yellow, and his face was clear of spots.

"Hey Logic, what's up?"

"Nothing."

"Fuck that, you were on your laptop. What were you doing?" The large one grinned.

"Were you looking at porn?"

The other chuckled.

"Slim chance, Dave. If he was, he was looking at gay porn. His lot are all fags, it's a miracle there are any left."

"Heh, that's true."

Logic sighed. "Look, can you guys just please go away? I'm really tired."

The large one snorted. "Bullshit. You were on your laptop 30 seconds ago. Open it and let us look at what you were doing and then we'll go away. No problem."

Logic thought of his conversation with A.J., and how they would interpret him talking to a random fox on the Internet. Beyond that, though, he was simply tired of being pushed around by people to whom he owed no respect, and who showed him none. They had been pulling the same trick for several weeks now, and months before in other forms.

At first, it was just small physical things, such as bumping him unnecessarily as they passed him in the corridors, things so small that they were not worth reporting, but large enough to disturb and annoy him. Then, they had moved on more systematically to other things. Whenever he tried to enter a conversation, even with people in his own year group, he found his input ridiculed to the extent that he actually felt nervous and scared to open his mouth in public. Any game he tried to enter disbanded quickly and reformed somewhere else. It had been decided by the school that he was too different to be allowed, and must therefore be excluded until he learnt his place at the bottom.

It wasn't just the upper year that had decided these things, and it wasn't just these two laughing at him right now. Every yeargroup in the house, even the ones below him heckled and ridiculed him just before the point at which he would actually have something to say if he was to go to a higher authority.

There was just one other anthro boy in his house, but he couldn't talk to him because he was always looking to expose things about people that might possibly get him raised higher in the social circle. In the school, Logic was the only person he could possibly bad-mouth without fear of rebuke from others.

The one time Logic had tried to talk to him, he had told him how he had never kissed a girl, and by the next morning, the news was all over the school. Logic felt hurt every time he thought about this situation, but the sad reality was that he would have done the exact same in a heartbeat; he was so desperate to escape his current social standing and find friends.

"Look, I'm tired, it's none of your business what I was doing, so please go away, okay?"

"Sure man, we'll go away. After you show us your laptop."

Logic sighed again. There was no way out except flat denial. "No."

The smaller one burst out laughing. "He WAS looking at gay porn! I fucking told you, Dave."

Logic felt himself getting angry. "I wasn't looking at... that stuff, and please fuck off!"

Dave widened his eyes mockingly, pretending to be shocked by Logic's language. "Whoa man, chill out. We believe you. Just show us your laptop screen, and we'll go away."

Logic clenched his fists under the duvet. They did it all the fucking time. Why couldn't they just leave him alone and pick on some other guy? He knew why they didn't, but why couldn't they? "No. I'm not going to show you my laptop screen, you're going to get the fuck out of my room!" Logic rolled over and propped himself up with one arm, looking at the two for the first time since they had entered the room, his voice cracking with tiredness and frustration. At this points, Dave decided that Logic needed a physical incentive to capitulate. He stood up, and squared his shoulders, looking straight at Logic.

"Show us the screen, or we won't go away."

Logic tore off the duvet, and stood upright, facing Dave, shaking with supressed anger. "What is your problem?! Just LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Suddenly switching tack, Dave held up his hands and backed out of the room, in the manner of someone taking the moral high ground and conceding defeat at the same time. "Okay, no need to get so stressed. I think you're being kinda unreasonable though."

Logic tried to resist the urge to attack. Dave had won; technically, he had said nothing wrong himself, and though his friend had insulted him, Dave could simply deny that he had ever been there, since Logic had nothing to prove that either of them had been in his room.

"Ok, I'm sorry. Just... can you please leave me alone? I'm fucking exhausted."

Dave grinned. "Sure, no problem. We were just having a joke, man. Just... one more thing..." As he said these words, the teenager behind him was taken with a sudden fit of silent laughter, doubled over and stumbled out of sight, audibly sniggering. Logic felt apprehensive. Just what stunt was Dave trying to pull? Determined not to demean himself any further by shouting and screaming, he addressed Dave calmly, lowering himself to a sitting position on his bed.

"Yeah, what is it?"

Dave moved closer to Logic, and then suddenly pressed himself on top of him, forcing him down onto the bed and grabbing his shoulder.

"You know what Roland said about you selling blowjobs? Is it true? Because I could really do with one-"

Logic had been unaware of his claws extending, and yet when he swiped his paw across Dave's face in an joint attempt to get him off and to get back at him for the cheap insult, each razor-sharp talon on the end of his fingers had slid out and each left a deep red gash in the teenager's face as his fingers sliced across his cheek.

Dave screamed and rolled off Logic, trying to stem the flow of blood that was seeping from his face. He landed in a heap on the floor, and struggled to his feet. "AHH! You... you ANIMAL!" he screamed, running out of the door and leaving Logic to the peace which he had wanted so badly, leaving a deathly silence, except for the banging of a door in the distance, and Dave's quickly fading cries of pain.

Logic was completely still for some time, half-risen from his sitting position on the bed, on hand on the mattress, his paw raised, with the claws still extended as though he simply could not believe what he had done. Finally, he slowly sank down onto the bed, and buried his face in his paws. After a while, he went and sat by his window, still sobbing to himself, and didn't move from that spot until morning. When he left his room the next day, he saw blood on his carpet, and felt a sick lurching feeling in his stomach.

He had done that.

As he walked into the dining room of the boarding house to have breakfast, all eyes were on him, and some people even pointed and whispered at him. Dave was not seated at his table, and neither was his friend. Logic had not been in the room for half a minute before the housemaster came over to him and told him to come to his study.

Speaking strictly in terms of minutes, it was a quick discussion, lasting about ten minutes or so, but everything seemed to drag painfully slowly for Logic, and by the time he left the housemaster's study, it had been agreed that he was going to be expelled. The housemaster had told him that Dave was going to hospital to have facial reconstructive surgery, and that the parents had threatened a lawsuit against the school unless they expelled the culprit.

The housemaster had said that both Dave and his friend had given full testimony, claiming that Dave had been attacked without provocation or warning, and that Logic was extremely lucky to be avoiding criminal charges.

Logic didn't say anything during the interview, even when the housemaster asked him if he had anything to say for himself. He hadn't, apart from saying that it was his fault and he already knew that. When the housemaster had run out of things to say, he told Logic to pack his bags and that his parents would collect him from the school in a couple of hours.

He didn't say anything in the car either, and he didn't even say anything at home when he was confronted with his parents' tear-stained faces, begging him to tell them why he had thrown away the chance they had saved every penny they had earned all their lives to give him.

After hours of one sided talk, they gave up trying to talk to him and he went up to his bed. After he had listened attentively for his parents going to bed, still debating with each other why he had done what he had, he waited until he was sure they were asleep, then pulled the lockbox out from under his bed, and began to count his money.

Three thousand pounds. He giggled to himself, despite everything that had happened, or perhaps out of mild hysteria. The school may have gotten rid of him, but he hadn't left with nothing.

Despite their first-rate education, almost all of the pupils there seemed to have had much more money than sense.

It had started with small things, like proposition bets. Originally, he hadn't even done it for the money, just for the look on the face of one of his tormentors as he proved he could drink three pints of beer more quickly than they could drink three large shots. Ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty and eventually a hundred pounds, no one avoided him because no one wanted to admit to their friends that the weird anthro had beaten them and taken their money, and no one short-changed him because no one wanted to be in the same room as an angry tiger.

Eventually, enough people lost money for his 'games' to become common knowledge, and therefore avoided, but by then he had moved up to something bigger.

Pick-pocketing had made him nervous, he had had to practise it for months before he worked up the courage to try it on someone, and even then it had only been a lift from a coat hanging on the back of a chair. However, the reward for his endeavours was immense: he walked away with the fat wallet of Roland, the human who had spread the rumour that he gave blowjobs for money, and pocketed five hundred pounds in one go.

The boy had received a new wallet, complete with more cash within the week.

He raised change from the fat shopkeeper who behind his back he knew called him a 'rabid mongrel', and said that he should be 'put down', so often that it began to become part of his regular income.

The shopkeeper never noticed: he ran the only sweet shop in the town, and boys from the school flocked there to waste their parents' money. What was ten pounds when you made a hundred or more from hungry schoolboys every day?

Despite all his escapades though, he had never really straight up conned someone before. The bets, sure he had the angle, but he could still lose. He had only done so a couple of times, a meagre amount compared to the gain he had made, but it was a possibility.

When he stole the wallet, his heart rate had been sky high, and he had nearly dropped it in his nervousness as he walked away. Despite the reward he had reaped, he had vowed never to try his luck with pick-pocketing again. Change raising was easy, if you did it right it was both straightforward and quick, but even that caused him to sweat beneath his fur.

But he had never been caught, and he had made three thousand pounds. He had had only one rule: if they abuse you, they're fair game. Somewhere inside himself, he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but that part of him seemed to get pushed deeper down with every scam, bet and theft he pulled off.

He stared down at his winnings, and then extracted a wad of notes from the pocket of his jeans (worth fifty pounds, the shopkeepers had charged him seventy five, despite the fact that he could read fifty on the price tag, but he had made sure he got his money back) and added it to the pile. That made three thousand five hundred.

Could he start a new life with three thousand five hundred pounds? He had no idea, but in his current situation choice was a luxury he didn't have. It would have to do. He had to get away. His parents' house was now tainted by his presence; their jobs would be in jeapordy too.

The parents of the kids at his school had a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. That was one of the main reasons his parents had wanted him to go in the first place. To establish contacts. To make friends. To have a chance at a job and a social life that they had never had a chance at. To be something other than an animal.

Silently, he opened his laptop and checked the price of train tickets bound for Teben City. He stuffed the cash into his rucksack, and typed one message to A.J. before he shut his laptop and shoved it on top of the money.

Logic: Everything gone to shit. I'm coming.