FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Ambrosia. Let's test your seed gun." Glen held his hand over the bulbasaur's tremendous bulb and waited. The grass-type set itself, gazed forward without seeing, and released a series of ten seeds into the hand. The black-haired boy whistled quietly to himself and shook his hand off, sending a drop or two of blood to the ground. With the other hand, he withdrew a vial of a weak potion and poured the thin oil over the wounds. It was supposed to be used for pokémon only, but he knew enough chemistry to know it wouldn't hurt him. He inspected the lacerations as he treated them. "Huh. That hurt a lot, but only two cuts. Again."

The test was repeated three more times before Glen nodded, holding his injured hand. "I need to pick up a normal-type and TM a healing spell into it. You're getting too good at this. Allanon, how'd he do?" He reached down a hand to absentmindedly rub Amber's wide, smooth head. The pokémon pushed into it like a cat.

They were standing in a small clearing in the woods. It was midday, so sunlight drifted lazily down in an emerald haze through the various trees and cast jagged, soft patterns on all it touched. Some metapod cocoons dotted tree trunks, and here and there a pineco could be seen complacently resting on a branch. It was warm, but not hot, today. It was a good day; slow-moving, with time to train, but no real pressing urge to get into it too much like he had before meeting the kid.

Some people use calculators. The creature was sitting against the trunk of one of the many trees surrounding them and yawned. That way, they don't have to interrupt my sleep.

"Yeah, and some people also have excess money lying around."

He's up to thirty-one point three-two meters per second. We're still not up to even paintball speeds. Would you please give up trying to turn him into a handgun?

"I swear to you that I saw an ivysaur pip an ace from thirty yards and the only way to do that is with bullet speeds and accuracy."

And I'm telling you that contest was rigged.

The bulbasaur shook itself and made a series of grunts and growls. "Saur."

Glen looked first at him, then at the abra. "See? You heard him. If he thinks he can do it, what gives you the right to trample on his dreams?"

Well, his exact phrasing was, There is no way in Hell an ivysaur beats me at anything,' but I'm nonetheless impressed. By myself; the translation patch I made for you must be improving.

Glen rolled his eyes and sat down against the same tree trunk. "Go back to sleep, fox-bait. I suppose I'll just carry you when Synapse gets back." Despite the raichu's bright colors and tendency to lose concentration on the task at hand, he was by far the best for reconaissance of the three. Allanon could feel other pokémon's presence, but had run into problems before with identifying them properly and had sent the four of them into a flock of irritated farfetch'd once. Luckily, irritated farfetch'd are generally about as dangerous as irritated ladybugs. It's not until you really piss one off that they start slitting throats with those leeks.

The boy pulled his hat low over his eyes to block out the thin, but bright light filtering through the canopy and allowed himself to think back to Allanon's capture, enjoying the opportunity to riminisce. It had been two years ago.

He had heard that there was a particularly territorial abra living in an abandoned warehouse. People had been moved out by telekinesis and hypnosis on multiple occasions, which made Glen both especially wary and especially intrigued; abras weren't known to do more than teleport themselves to safety, in most cases.

Even knowing grass types generally had weaker wills and were thus more susceptible to psychic types, he had brought both Ambrosia and Synapse, who was still a pikachu at the time. Amber had stayed by his side as he dared the dark confines of the warehouse, one vine wrapped securely around his leg so that if one was manipulated by the abra, the other could help him snap out of it. Synapse scouted around them, charging the spots on his cheeks every few seconds to give Glen a dim glow to see by. They were sure the abra had seen them by the time they walked in the door, so discretion wasn't really a top priority.

Glen started talking. He figured it was the best thing to do. Psychic pokémon generally knew a good deal of the language of the area, and this one seemed special; it was entirely possible he could speak it fluently. "It occurs to me that most people who come here are either annoyingly curious or irritatingly cocky." The flashes from Syn continued, but beyond that, the only light was from dim streetlamps outside. Amber's vine was quivering; he was afraid of the dark.

It was quiet. The black-haired boy kept his gaze low, not willing to lock his line of sight with what the abra's would be if it ever opened its eyes. "I have a proposition for you. Because I'm an interesting person." He continued slowly wandering. Abruptly, he felt the air pressure shift and heard two tiny, almost indistinguishable pops as the creature teleported. His ears twitched and he snapped with his left hand. At first, Ambrosia refused to respond. Glen knelt down slowly and put a comforting hand on the saur's head. After a moment, a long vine creeped forward and to the left, then slashed with a crack in a full semi-circle. The sound echoed for moment, but there was no response, so Glen stood again and wandered in that direction. He wanted this pokémon. Psychic types tremendously intrigued him.

"You see, I'm a geneticist. I've been investigating a series of studies by Pokenomics, Inc. What I've found may pique your interest." There wasn't a readily available reason why it would pique the fox-creature's interest, but Glen figured that something as cool as genetics would pique anyone's interest, so it was worth a shot.

Another shift in his balance and quiet cracks alerted him to another teleportation. He noticed that the flashes were slowing down and clapped. They stopped entirely, and the sound of the pikachu's skittering feet could be heard returning to him. Glen wished Synapse was strong enough to set up a magnetic field across the warehouse. Then, it would take him no time to locate the thing.

"I think there's something sketchy about to go down. It might have already. Reports are a little vague, but it seems to me that someone's trying to make a transgenic species through the use of dittos and eevees. You understand me? Those are the two presumably least-understood pokémon types in the biological world. I can't confirm anything, but in this backpack, I have a series of fourteen papers I could use some help analyzing for hidden content. If you're as independent as you seem, you should be up to the task."

Synapse's skittering stopped, but the pikachu still wasn't in Glen's field of vision. Glen got slightly concerned. What would the abra do with a rodent given to practically ADD-style unreliability? They could be in danger. "Did you just steal my pikachu?" A nervous squeeze around his leg reminded him that Amber was still with him. "Get on my back, Amber." The vines quickly wrapped around his upper arms and a weight was on his back. A third pop finally sounded. Glen triangulated the various sounds he had heard and felt. Training his ears as a kid had been a good idea. Good thing he hadn't had friends to distract him.

He swung around. "Fire!" A spray of seeds rafed the area as the boy turned. He listened for the impacts. Most clattered off steel and cardboard boxes, but he thought he heard... He bent down, aiming up. "Fire!" Glass sent peals of sound through the warehouse.

A whimper popped out of the darkness and silence that followed. "Chu!"

"Oh, damn!" Glen gasped. "Syn, I'm so sorry!" He jogged towards the sound. With no warning, Syn was lifted up in front of him as though on puppet strings. A bruise was forming on the rodent's cheek. "You okay, bud?" he asked warily, not wanting to touch him in case the abra got the wrong idea and did something cruel.

Synapse nodded slowly, as though moving through water. A resonating, almost serpentine voice cut into Glen's mind. Let me show you how serious I am about my personal sovereignety. I don't just use telekinesis' and beat some poor idiot against the ground. You're a biologist. This should be easy.

The pikachu was suddenly splayed spread eagle in the air, unable to move. Sweat broke out on Glen's forehead. He had killed pokémon before defending himself and his pokémon from the omnipresent Rocketeers. It hadn't quite occurred to him that other pokémon might kill his. Syn's face started turning blue. "You're suffocating him!"

Without hesitating, he put his mouth over Syn's nose, knowing his jaws probably couldn't open except for that one cry, and blew, putting a soothing hand on the pikachu's neck to check his pulse. It was racing from fear. He could feel the odd pressure shift around the mouse. The abra was moving air away from him so he couldn't breathe. Ingenius. He pulled his head away felt the air get pushed back out of Syn's lungs, then carefully blew in again. He could feel Syn's pulse slowly recover.

After a few moment of breathing for the pikachu, the air rushed in and Syn dropped into his arms, back to his normal coloring, but still panting. I will be the most dangerous pokémon you will ever meet. I have the means and the will to cause incredible suffering. This voice was full of death, but full of electric intelligence. It was soothing to someone as curious as Glen.

"Can I assume you won't tell me why you would do that for now?" He stroked Syn's fur softly, comforting the shivering creature. The atmosphere was cold and still, after something like that.

I will violate your privacy whenever I want to, for my own amusement. If you treat me like a dumb animal, I will murder you and everything you hold dear. Understand what I'm entrusting you with. My life has not been pleasant. You've convinced me to effectively give you my soul, as unrealistically serious as that seems after less than ten minutes in here with you. You have a purpose. You also have a death wish, and that's why I'm coming with you. You're a good person, but you're obsessed with murder and suicide; mortality, in short. And 'good' in your case is far more subjective than it is for most people.

A shiver ran down the human's spine. The words about his personality had come from seemingly nowhere and this creature knew way too much about him. His telepathic powers were far more advanced than should have been expected. "How old are you?"

Seventeen. Call me precocious.

Most abras had evolved by then. Precocious? Maybe not. "What if I called you Allanon? Or do you have your own name?" Allanon was the name of a powerful druid in a series of books. He figured it would be enticing.

There was another pop, and Glen felt a pokeball slip out of his bandolier. He looked down and tried to catch it with one hand while holding Syn with the other, but his fingers slipped and hit the ready button, making metal plates shift over one another as a scanning lens was revealed. It fell down and landed on the head of the abra, who had appeared in front of the human. It didn't smile. It just looked up at him as a red light scanned his body and converted it to a type of energy physics was only just beginning to understand.

As soon as the sensor light stopped the and confirmation bell sounded, Glen grabbed it and expelled the abra. The two of them looked at one another. "Allanon."

Glen.

"Want to incriminate a multi-billion dollar corporation?"

A slight hint of a smile appeared on the fox-creature's face. Hell yes.

Since then, the only changes to the party besides Syn's evolution had been that the chu had attempted more than once to French kiss Glen. The human wasn't exactly sure why, he just knew that the one time he had let it happen had been unforgettable; he could still remember the gentle, electric jolts on his tongue while he held the smaller animal in his arms...

They still hadn't taken down Pokenomics, primarily because they didn't have nearly enough evidence to implicate anyone. All Glen really knew, with Allanon's help, was that the pokémon he had mentioned - dittos and eevees - in addition to a great deal of normal pokémon, were being exploited and used in animal testing for seemingly unethical and unnecessary things. If you put a ditto in a blender with a bulbasaur's bulb and eevee eggs and sperm, will you get a leafeon zygote? The answer was no, so far, and all subjects had died. Dittos were, of course, not renowned for their intelligence, and were therefore even easier to get permission to test on than caterpies, but it seemed wasteful to kill them on experiments that so obviously had no value to the scientific community. There had to be a reason these reports were being released, especially with the rise in animal protection agencies' power.

It had to be that they needed to publish papers that explained why their dittos and bulbasaur supplies were dwindling. Every paper was proper and had effective scientific motivation and prior research, at least as the paper reported, and ones as wasteful as the leafeon experiment were rare. Others were significantly easier for the wandering eye to pass over. Can a rattata with proper chemical buffering be made to withstand a full blast from a flareon without being singed? pokémon were incredibly resilient to non-physical forms of damage; it was the only reason attacks that could burn down houses were still legal in trainer battles. The rattata experiment wasn't successful, at least with biological significance, but when Glen and Allanon dug into prior and subsequent literature, it turned out that to an extent, they had learned the chemical limitations. Apparently, much more than they applied would first render the pokémon infertile, then kill it.

So he knew something was up. The pieces just weren't coming together. He taught Al everything he could so the abra could help him, which had made their bond almost as close as that he shared with Amber. The bulbasaur, though, had been his first pokémon, so it would be a cold day in Hell before he let something replace that friendship.

After a few minutes of silence, Al quietly spoke up. Does it ever bother you that we're apparently doing all this secret stuff, but no one has come after us?

"What do you mean?" He knew exactly what he meant.

If something as sinister as this is really happening, don't you think someone would try to stop us?

Glen sighed. "Let's just skip to the meat of this. I'm too much of a wuss to actually break into a lab and look around. You know we've basically been sniffing at the wind this whole time. I mean... that's why we go to the gyms. So I can at least pretend I'm accomplishing something." He absentmindedly touched the bag beside him, where four or five badges were kept safe in a hidden pocket.

Do you want a boost of confidence or something the next time we hit a major city? I can give you one, you know.

The boy hesitated. "I don't know... I think it would just be weird. I'd rather have a dark type I could trust. You know that you'd be detected without one; we need a proficient thief to get this done, and I don't know where anyone would be."

The Rocketeers...

"... turn their pokémon into braindead fleshbags. And the high-level guys who would have smart ones are always surrounded by too many flunkies. I'm sorry, but even as good as you three are, I'm pretty sure we'd be humiliated, and probably captured."

So you need to catch one.

"You know how I feel about that."

The abra sighed in Glen's mind. It was a pretty cool thing to feel. Intimately. Glen had always been prejudiced against dark types. He learned that they hadn't even existed until human beings evolved and began making their impact on the world. Dark types had come into being based on the childish fantasies of adolescents who felt as though their "dark and emotional side" should be represented in the natural world. The only reason it had any validity as the prevailing theory for their late emergence in the scheme of evolution was that there were no other theories beyond alien invasion, and no one wanted to believe that.

The result was a group of pokémon with strange and repulsive characteristics, rather than the smooth and complex darkness that a human soul truly embodies. Murkrows and shiftry represented some of the least appealing, while the rest simply lacked characteristics that would endear them to normal human beings. The haughty face of the sneasil, for instance, or the fat heads of stunkies. Sure, hounooms and mightyenas had their appeal, but neither had offered the kind of intelligence Glen needed in a companion.

His pokémon were all brilliant. It was why he didn't confine them to pokeballs. Syn had successfully formed a circuit using himself, three magnemites, and a human being as conduits. Amber could coordinate his various projectiles and vine techniques to nullify enemy attacks and turn them back on themselves. And Al... well, Al was Al. He generally didn't fight. Instead, he slept and passively gathered data. And they all understood him, and with the addition of Allanon's translation patch, he could understand them.

What Allanon meant by "intimately" was a simple story. They had all been asleep in a woods one night when a sneasil had come upon them and decided he wanted some cash. He had come so close to success that he had begun snickering. Glen awoke to the sound and bashed the thing's head into a tree. It wasn't pleased and retaliated by slashing wildly and tearing a wide gash in Glen's side, although it was dazed from the blow to its head. The boy knew it was stupid to approach it again, but its stumbling movements had brought it very close to Amber, who was notoriously hard to awaken. The distance was too small for Syn to act. Glen heard Al say, Just catch the damn thing. It's in no state of mind to resist.

Glen hesitated and sucked air through his teeth. "I'm not going to add the product of an idiot's imagination to this team."

Fine. The dark type immediately stopped moving, and they all heard a tiny pop.'

"You just detonated his heart, didn't you?"

That I did. What in hell, heaven, and earth is wrong with you? That was a high-level catch that would have done anything you told it to.

"I have a few policies that I'm not willing to break. Anyway, don't dark types have a psychic shield on them?"

No shield is perfect.

"This one is. I've studied it. You're not supposed to be able to break through."

Let's pretend for a while that I have secrets. Glen had stared at the creature for a bit longer before turning away and applying a healing salve to his arm. And that was how the confrontation ended.

Back to the present moment. Absol. They're smart, they're smooth, they're capable. Go get one.

"Do you see mountains somewhere?"

Two years, Glen. Let's go find some mountains.

"Okay. Fine. We'll go find some mountains. But first, explain to me again why we can't find a ghost."

Because ghosts are sick bastards and left over pieces of shit who deserve to dispersed into an irretrievable void. I would rip any ghost you brought into this party into pieces before you even thought about catching it. Let's just say I bare a grudge.

Glen smirked at the onslaught. "Let's just say that. This mysteriousness will end some day, though." There was no response.

"Go, Jerome!" Zach cried, snarling furiously at the Rocketeers who had found him. There were two of them. One was an overweight, young man with greasy hair and beady, brown eyes. The other was a short, angry woman with fiery red hair and a scar across her cheek. Both were laughing at him and his pokémon.

They had each released a pokémon, meaning that Zach's third trainer battle was his second unfair one. A koffing and a gloom were an unfortunate combination. They could obscure one another indefintely and create a smokescreen around all participants that only the koffing could see through. "Jerome, take down the gloom!"

A purple blur crossed the distance between them in a flash. They were out on the open road, with nothing to conceal the battle for miles but a lone oak tree that had somehow survived to give shade to the rare, weary traveller. The koffing's perpetual gas was visibly poisoning the leaves as they fought, but also kept what was going on nebulous to the outsider.

The gloom didn't have time to react. The rattata bodyslammed it, sending it flying backwards and clearing a space in the haze. "Go for the eyes!" Zach cried, knowing that was the only weak spot on a koffing. Jerome turned and jumped, but the ballooning creature spun itself like a top and knocked him back. The rat was quick to recover, getting to its feet and growling furiously at his opponent. "Finish off the gloom first, then."

It turned again to the groaning gloom, jumped, and was immediately surrounded by a blue flash of light before disappearing. Zach blinked, stunned, as a master ball clinked to the ground. Was he never going to have another fair fight? "Let him go!" he shouted, and ran towards the black-clothed Rocketeers, wanting more than anything to tear those letters from their chests and beat them senseless.

"Ha!" the woman whinnied, "I'll bet you would fit in a pokeball, you little runt. Let's find out!" Everyone knew that pokeballs were specifically designed to scan for certain types of energy so that human beings could never be captured by one, but mistakes had been made before in the manufacturing, and mistakes of that nature seemed to be far more prevalent around Rocketeers. Like a whip, she slung the ball at him, hitting Zach hard in the head. The yellow, scanning light of a great ball surrounded him, and for a moment, he felt a tug on every part of his body. He reached up to shield his face. Could they...? No!

A strange look passed between the two goons as the light receded and the ball flew back to them. They must have seen something. "Could he be...?" the guy whispered.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "If there's even the slightest chance, we should bring him in. At the very least, we can sell him to Giraldo." She grinned sickeningly. "Giraldo likes little boys," she explained gleefully to Zach, who was crouched down in fear. What was he supposed to do? "Hand me the other master ball; we'll transfer the rat later." The guy slipped a pokeball with a stylized "M" on the front out of his belt. Zach backed away.

"You can't! I'll... I'll..." She smiled a thin smile and took the ball. "Glen Terrian!" he bellowed. The sound ricocheted out of his young throat and resounded far more loudly than he expected. It took the villains by surprise and made them both hesitate, but not for long. The woman wound her arm back and threw.

Immediately, a flash of orange streaked across Zach's vision as he felt someone tackle him from the side and heard the unmistakable zzzt of an electric pokémon. Vines wrapped around the pokeball on the ground and threw it down, releasing Jerome, who wasted no time in punching his long fangs deep into the female's leg. She screamed bloody murder and kicked, but he had already let go and backed off, ready to tackle again. A yellow-blue explosion blasted the ball that had been aimed at Zach high in the air before the raichu turned and electrocuted the gloom with such ferocity that the creature exploded in a shower of sod and blue blood.

Zach could feel Glen's face close to his. He felt safe. "I gotchya, bud. These guys won't get away with that." He pushed himself to his feet and pulled a pocket knife out of his shorts, then walked over to the other humans. "Smokescreen!" the woman cried, favoring her good leg while the other bled rivers. The spherical creature puffed itself up in readiness, then tried and failed to release its poisons. It was as though the vents all over its body had been suddenly clogged, meaning that the gas had to find a release somewhere. Cracks appeared across its surface, slowly spreading along its body, until it detonated.

"You think you know how to fight unfairly?" Glen asked darkly, his eyes totally obscured by his hat and hair. It was a horrifying last thing to see. The Rocketeers, duly, were horrified. Zach watched from the ground. "You think that just because you break an unwritten rule' or two that that makes you some kind of radical?" He walked towards them, knife in hand. "I think you're a bunch of pussies who don't have the courage to ever actually get anything done. You want change? Start murdering people. That's what changes things." The other two crouched down, ready to fight, and the big guy swung a meaty fist at Glen's head.

Glen casually met the hand with his knife, twisted the arm, and for all the world looked like he aided the man in stabbing his eye out. He calmly unsheathed the weapon from its fleshy landing place and let the body drop to the floor. "You tell your boss that when you see him in Hell." The girl tried to kick him with her wounded foot, but he just caught the leg and threw her to the ground, then landed on her and cut her throat, leaving her to drown. He next very casually released the remainder of their pokémon and stole the pokeballs. They were all confused for a while, but with some encouragement from Allanon, who had remained hidden, they ran off in different directions, as wild as they had been before being captured.

Zach slowly picked himself up, petting Jerome as the rattata came to his side. "Th-thanks. Sorry I had to call you so soon. I thought they were gonna..." He trailed off, his ears red with shame.

Glen turned around after cleaning off his knife and pocketing it. He smiled reassuringly. "It's fine. What happened, exactly?"

Zach told him about the pokeball and Giraldo. "I felt like it almost got me," he said shakily.

"Huh. Damned Rocketeers; I didn't know they were child molesters." A strange look passed across his features. "Do you want to travel with me? I'm headed to the mountains to see if I can get myself an absol, and you can get Jerome some experience and maybe catch something, while you're at it."

Zach nodded slowly, not really sure if he wanted to come with someone who killed so easily. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman gargle her last and die. Somewhere deep inside him, he felt something break. Over the past few days, he had been inundated by thoughts of Glen, the mysterious stranger who had killed and resurrected the only pokémon he had ever had. From what the older boy said, something bad was going to happen to him. He was alone and ten years old, wandering the roads to the next city and training with Jerome, not tremendously concerned with catching another pokémon because he was afraid of himself. He had felt for that chest hair Glen had talked about and found it, and knew that that was wrong. He kept thinking about the way Glen had touched him, the questions he had asked, the confusing mix of temperatures in the older boy's eyes warmth, icy cold, tepid indifference, simmering indecision, all in the space of so little time. And now, to see two people and two pokémon killed with the same lack of attachment from one moment to the next, and then to be asked to join him, and to have the unquenchable urge to do so, despite everything... it was too much.

He started crying, then cried harder in shame for doing so twice in front of the same person. It started as just sniffles and wondering why there was a tear running down his cheek, and then he saw Jerome's concerned countenance, and then Glen's confusion, and hugged Jerome tight to his chest and wept into his fur while the small creature nuzzled into him and tried to comfort him.

Glen was initially dumbfounded by the emotional display, but then remembered the bodies behind him and the fragments of koffing littering the area. He was ashamed of himself for being so careless of the boy's emotions. "Um..." he muttered, and put a hand behind his head to scratch at an itch that wasn't there. He turned partway away from the kid, not quite sure what to do. He had two distinct choices: he could comfort the boy and thus establish a close and caring relationship with him, giving unnecessary meaning to his inspection a few days previous, or he could maintain total detachment and turn his back, thus training the kid to be just as cold as he.

He looked helplessly at Ambrosia, who motioned him to go to the kid. He felt a general negative from Allanon, and, turning to Syn for a tie-breaker, found that he was jumping after a butterfly a dozen yards away. Well... he thought, looking back at the bulbasaur, I guess Amber wins. With a deep, preparatory breath, he turned back to the child, walked over, and knelt down to put them at eye level.

"Zach?" No response. That was expected. "Zach, I'm sorry."

"I don't know why I'm crying... I just..." He was cut off by a sob.

Glen reached to touch his shoulder, and felt Jerome's teeth pressing warningly into his hand. He withdrew it, respecting the rodent's protective instinct. "It's okay. A lot's happened and you're out here alone. I haven't been ten years old in a long time, and I forgot what it was like. Just let it out. I'm going to go see if I can clean up some, and you come talk when you want to, okay?" He left before waiting for a response.

For the next few minutes, he, the chu, and the saur dug a deep, wide hole in the ground. He had a spade with him in his pack, though it was a small one, so the work was long. Before long, he was sweating and sure he was stinking and a thin film of dirt covered his exposed skin, which felt hot in the bright sun. He had taken his hat off so it would be clean and left it next to Allanon, who had come out of "hiding" and was resting against the tree, along with his bag.

They were halfway done when Glen felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see Zach, who was still sniffling and rubbing his eyes now and then, but had cleaned his face off with a kerchief. "What's up?" the older boy asked lightly. "Are you feeling oof!" he exclaimed as Zach fell against his chest, arms open wide to hug him. "Oh...ah...um..." he stumbled. After a moment's hesitation, he made the difficult decision to return the embrace. Glen was not a touchy-feely person when he didn't want to be.

Zach could smell Glen's scent, and feel the dirt and sweat from his labor get rubbed off on him, but didn't care. He needed to feel protected and, well... a rattata wasn't really big enough to accomplish that. He needed a person, if only for a few moments, to make him feel warm all over and safe. Glen couldn't really be counted on for warmth, he knew, but he felt safe, even it was a very strange, aloof safety. "I'll come with you," he mumbled, "at least until I can protect myself better. Maybe... you could teach me some stuff?"

Glen grinned and prayed Jerome couldn't see that it was the grin of a predatorial pedagogue. He had a trainee - someone he could bring up and teach to avoid the mindless and cowardly ways of the prosaic public. Before releasing Zach, he touched the nape of his neck again. The boy shuddered as Glen withdrew his arms. "I'm glad. Now, let me finish this before we go." He turned back to digging. "The Rocketeers don't trust their own people, so they leave cameras implanted in their clothes that I totally forgot about, so we're probably on their 'Most Wanted' list. I am, anyway, and you just by association. I'm sorry for that." It wasn't a lie. They had been watched and recorded, and would be chased. Zach blinked. "But, we also need to hide the evidence of this so that the actual authorities aren't also on our case. If you'd like to help dig while Amber here collects what's left of that koffing, that would be awesome. I have another spade in my pack." He grinned. "Always be prepared."

After a moment, Zach came back with the spade. Amber wordlessly moved off. They worked in silence, although Glen had thought his new charge would have questions for him. When the hole was big enough, Glen and Amber dumped in the corpses, and everyone helped fill the graves back in. The saur padded out the ground, and the group left the two mounds behind to be obscured by future rains.

A dark face quivered with rage. "That's the one! I know that's the one!" he barked, making the arcanine beside him lift its head in inquiry.

"The boy?" asked the present flunky.

"No, you idiot! The older one! His face is on security tapes from nearly every single outpost we have, and no one knows him. I wondered if it meant anything, and I know it does, now. He's dangerous. I want him killed, and I want to be sipping wine out of his skull in the next two weeks! Bring me the boy, too; he could be interesting."

The flunky bowed. "Sir. I will inform the ranks."

A fat face grinned. "Good."