FSE

Furry search engine

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"Yuu-kii!"

Tang watched the fox be eaten alive by some form of Creeper they never saw before. Horror-struck and profoundly confused, she watched the hatchling turn and smile at them with pale green eyes. From behind the flower bulb and the young reptilian, a dozen Creepers regrouped and it looked like they were preparing to attack.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jun still moving toward the growing threat. Releasing the armored wolf, which she was doing little to hold up in the first place, Tang sprinted for her brother and grabbed him by the paw.

"We need to go, now!" shouted Tang, pulling on her brother but he continued to resist. He continued to scream. In anger, sadness or desperation, Tang didn't know but all she knew is that they had to get out of there now. "Jun, come on!"

With a final tug, the younger marten obliged and ran with her but not without difficulty. Redding had already retreated further up the street but he stopped around a corner to wait for the martens and cover their retreat. With his precise shooting, a dozen jets also flew overhead, screaming toward the gathering creepers.

"No!" Jun screamed, resisting against Tang once again. She turned just in time to gather Creepers explode out in pieces. There was no sign of the hatchling but the flower bulb was hit hard by the blast. Without a second look, Tang forced her brother to round the corner with the wolf sniper and they continued to flee.

Her brother had fallen silent, almost with the city has the gunfire had mostly stopped. No more screams were heard, but the roar of the fires and the gusts of winds those fire created still howled through the city.

Before they reached the park, Redding stopped them and looked up at the sky through his shattered visor. Tang followed his gaze and saw hundreds of burning debris falling toward the surface. She had no idea if the battle was over or not, if they won or lost or even if they were the last survivors of their entire race.

Redding waved them to continue running back to the park. It was there only hope to find a transport still operational. If one of Drach'n Fury's ships weren't there then they were stranded on the planet with the surviving Creepers that'd spread and continue to infect everything.

The sigh of the tall trees of the park was a welcome one. Tang continued to stay on the armored wolf's tail while he ran through the trees toward the field that the several dozen ships landed in. Thin smoke columns floating over the trees ahead caused the marten to worry.

Finally arriving on the field, she saw that she had good reason to worry. There was only one ship left and it looked badly damaged. Dead soldiers and civilians were scattered around the field, some burning with small patches of grass. Approaching the damaged ship, Tang stepped over a slain pup who looked to be the age of Yukiomaru.

"All military personnel, code wolf... All military personnel, code wolf..." the static filled transmission repeated itself over and over, growing louder the closer they got to the ship.

"Captain Redding," coughed one of the corpses near the ship. Tang nearly jumped but realized that the springhare was still alive, and not infected. He held his chest that leaked out blood at a steady rate. "Glad to see you made it out alive."

"Are you okay?" asked Tang. She still held onto her brother.

"I'm fine," answered the springhare with a bloody smile. He slowly stood and walked over to the ship. "It's just a flesh wound. Friendly fire if you'd believe that. There was so much confusion and my ship got hit pretty hard by some infected jet."

"Can it still fly?" asked Tang, still cautious of possible infection.

"No," he answered. "Well, not in space. There are far too many punctures that the vacuum would kill us if we tried to leave the atmosphere. I'm Captain Redding's pilot of special missions, Pilot Nishant."

"Can you take us to the mountains then? The Creepers move slower in the cold."

"Just tell me which way to fly," said Neshant, entering the ship with Captain Redding.

Tang followed them in and set Jun in the passengers bay. She kneeled down to him and looked him in his tear-filled eyes.

"Hey, are you hurt?" she asked softly. Her only response was a slight shake of his head. Jun refused to meet her gaze and stared at the floor.

"What's code wolf?" asked Tang, returning to the cockpit where Nishant and Calvin were playing with the controls.

"It's an automated code," answered Nishant, focusing on his task of getting the ship to fly again. "When military command has been incapacitated, all military officers are to send their personal code back on the same channel. Right now, we don't know who's alive or who's in command."

"My uncle was General of the defense fleet," mentioned Tang almost hoping for reassurance that he was still alive.

"The highest ranking commander that responded so far is a Commander," answered Nishant quietly. "Please take a seat, Miss Fa. We'll be taking off soon and flying to your mountain."

The marten obliged and returned to her brother who hasn't moved a muscle. She sat down and put a paw on his back to sooth him.

"We'll be okay. We're going to find mother and father and get off this planet."

Jun still didn't answer. She knew that her brother and Yukiomaru bonded and became quite attached to each other during their stay in the mountains. After they arrived at the cabin from the long hike, Yukiomaru insisted on staying updated with his crew and the military actions happening throughout the solar system.

The young fox and marten were sleeping in the same room, adjacent to Tang's room that night and she was woken up in the early hours of the morning by the sounds of a struggle and laughter. Tang hurried to ensure everything was all right but when she entered their room, she saw them wrestling on the floor.

Their naked tails flicked from side to side while they rolled and crashed into one of the nearby beds. Often times Yukiomaru would have her brother pinned but somehow Jun managed to escape without loosening his grip on Yukiomaru's PawPad.

"Give it back," the fox had pleaded, still wrestling on the ground.

"No," refused Jun with laughter. He did his best to keep the device away from the fox but the fox's training always kept the fox on the same level with the older marten. "You're on vacation. Oof! Your ships are in good paws. There's no need to check up on them every minute."

"Please Jun," Yukiomaru asked, sitting on the marten's chest while reaching for the PawPad but his arms were shorter than Jun's.

"Jun, Yuki," mumbled Tang, her eyes still heavy from sleep. "Can't you play your games in the morning. It's too early."

"She's right Yukiomaru," said Jun. He was now pinning the fox to the ground. "You don't need to read this report until the sun comes up."

"It might be important," rebuked Yukiomaru. The two of them again started to roll around, leaving Tang only to yawn and turn back to her room.

With the ruckus, she had already woken up enough to easily fallen back asleep. Instead she cleaned herself up a bit before searching for breakfast. Through the large glass walls, Tang could see that the sky had already turned a little brighter. The sun would rise within a couple hours but being robbed of those two hours left her more tired than she would have assumed.

During her preparation of breakfast, Tang didn't notice the noise caused by the fox and marten had ceased. When she returned to the room to let them aware of the breakfast she made, she found them asleep on the floor, one lying across the other. With a smile, Tang covered both of their naked bodies with a sheet from a nearby bed and returned to her morning meal.

The sun barely rose when the two emerged from the bedroom. Now they were wearing clothes that looked a lot better than their ruffled fur.

"I think you two need to shower or comb, or something," chuckled Yelena when she saw the sleepy pups. "Did you manage to get your PawPad back, Yukiomaru?"

"No," he said, feigning a pout that only made Jun laugh. "Jun buried me under a bunch of blankets and hid it before I could get out. I looked but he tackled me again before I could find it."

"I'm lucky you got tired," Jun said, sitting at the table with his sister. "I was getting warn out. I'm sure you could have won any time you wanted to though."

"I didn't want to hurt you," said Yukiomaru sitting at the table too. "And you are a lot stronger than I am."

"I don't know about that," said Tang.

"Hey!" Jun yelled but she and Yukiomaru only laughed.

"Eat you two," insisted Tang, pushing a plate of food at the two of them. "Mother and Father won't be here until tomorrow morning so we have the day to ourselves. I'm taking you two to a hot spring that's a little further down the mountain. We'll go swimming for a bit and eat lunch out there."

Tang remembered watching the two squabble over some of the food while they continued to act like children. She hasn't known the Admiral for very long but he was completely different now than he was the entire time she knew him on Drach'n Fury. It made her smile to see her brother getting along so well with someone.

Throughout Jun's life, he never really connected with his peers since they were usually more interested in other things and always wanted to compete. Jun enjoyed spending time with a more mature crowd because he got along with them better but after Tang was ordered to investigate the source of the alien signal, all of Jun's older friends also scattered.

Not only is Jun spending time with someone who's younger than him by four years, but he's also acting more like a pup than she's ever seen him act. Those two shared a loneliness that only the other could understand and that's what made them get along so well; or at least that's what Tang's theory is.

When they were in the hot spring, Tang watched Yukiomaru claim his revenge by stealing and hiding Jun's clothes in the nearby woods. With the two of them naked, Jun didn't risk searching for his clothes while the high mountain air would freeze the water on his fur if he were to step out of the spring. Instead he made a grab for Yukiomaru's clothes but the fox quickly defended them and it wasn't long before they were splashing and wrestling in the water.

Tang sat nearby in the water, with her clothes piled nearby and closely guarded. She relaxed against the edge of the spring, despite the sounds of the two pups playing in the water nearby, and stared up at the sky as the thin and high clouds very slowly sailed across.

In the end, Yukiomaru not only failed in defending his clothes but allowed Jun to submerge them in the water. The trip back to the cabin the poor fox walked with his fur exposed to the frigid air. To apologize, Jun wrapped the naked fox in a heavy blanket and returned Yukiomaru's PawPad to him.

Tang wasn't in the room once she was sure Yukiomaru wouldn't develop a fever but she knew the arctic fox did as his friend requested and stopped worrying about the reports concerning his ship and crew. The rest of that trip the two were inseparable, sometimes wrestling over some minuscule reason or they'd be playing outside in the snow.

Jun and Yukiomaru truly did become close friends, thought Tang, still soothing her brother. He hasn't said a word since they left the city, and he looked to be as motionless as a statue. He finally has a best friend, and now Yukiomaru's gone.

Tang didn't know what to say to make her brother feel better, or at least sooth some of the pain away. She felt helpless. More helpless than she felt when Drach'n Fury was ambushed a few days ago. When the flight smoothed out, Tang stood and returned to the cockpit.

Captain Redding had taken off his helmet to reveal the wound to his head. Blood still leaked from his eye, the bullet destroying it but he was lucky to be alive. The armor slowed it down enough to prevent it from going through his brain. He held a paw over his eye and was growling at the pain but didn't even bother turning toward the marten.

"Are you okay to fly?" she asked the pilot, who was ignoring his own pain of the chest wound.

"I'll be fine," he said, staring at the horizon. "I think it stopped bleeding already so it should be fine."

"Captain Redding, do you want me to patch you up?" asked Tang, turning her attention to the wolf. He didn't say anything but moved his paw away from his blood soaked eye. Tang grabbed the emergency kit from behind the seat and did her best to clean and seal up the wound. If there was a crude projectile, they'd have to wait till they landed before she could retrieve it.

"So how are we getting off the planet?" Tang questioned while she continued her work. There was no response from the pilot for a moment.

"We received a few other distress calls," he started. "Fellorian has been invaded as well and although not as bad as us, they're requesting for our aid. They don't even know how bad we got it so we can assume that communications are down. There's automated signals coming from all over the solar system of ships claiming to be heavily damaged. Our shipyards and other space stations have fallen silent. There have been no answers to any of the distress calls. Not even reports of Creepers answering them like we thought they would. Everything almost seems quiet right now.

"Miss Fa, from what I can conclude, I'd say all of our fleets are down," continued Nishant without even looking at her. "Not a single ship is left. Our colonies on the other planets are being attacked and are in no position to aid us. Our allies, the Guardian alien race, are missing since they retreated from the battle. We're not going to receive help. We're not getting off this planet either."

Tang didn't reply but focused her attention on the wolf's eye. She had to latterly bite her lips to keep her from tearing up in front of the wolf.

How did this happen? Mother, father, where are you?

Once finished with her work, she made a decision.

"Pilot Nishant," she said standing tall. "While my father is missing, I'm the head of my family. Send out a signal to all survivors capable of moving to meet us at the mountain with the coordinates I'm going to give you. We're going to establish a refuge for the survivors, and collect as many ships and weapons as we can. I want the Commander in charge to meet me at the cabin immediately. We're going to take our planet back."

"Yes ma'am," he said, his tone sharp with his soldier professional again.

"Captain Redding, I'm afraid that you might lose that eye unless a medical ship arrives within the next day," she continued. "In the meantime, after I remove the bullet, I want you to help me plan with the Commander a defense strategy to guard our refuge and build a base."

With one nod, the wolf winced in pain but gave his acknowledgement. Tang turned back to the passenger compartment and knelt down to her brother.

"Jun, I need your help," she said softly. "I know you and Yukiomaru were close. I'm sorry that he's gone now. I'm missing him too. We'll do him proud though, and we'll kill every last Creeper seed that ever thought to come to this planet."

Tang's tear-filled eyes finally rose to meet hers. He could sense pain and suffering but something else was behind those: rage.

Thirty thousand years of technology and research have been lost, thought Tang. She returned to the cockpit to stare out the windshield. We knew this war would last long. I never thought we'd be stuck fighting it on Canidera though. No matter how many years it'll take, we're going to take it back and push the Creepers back the way the Guardians have failed to so. We'll eradicate the entire parasitic race from this galaxy!