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Slick Run

III We Love You

Dice said to make it look good, and that's exactly what she did. She had snuck into the base like a proper night-crawler, even though she was just a second-degree initiate and running solo. She wore trousers and a shirt the same color as the rocks; there were no clouds in the sky and the bone-pale moon was shining like an anti-sun, so everybody would have seen her if she wore black; she had her long ears tied back with a length of boot laces, her hair cut short, almost right to the scalp. She knew where every security camera was, knew exactly where and when to step to avoid the roving lenses. She brought a bunch of thick, little grey cloths with her to stick over the cams she couldn't dodge. Her uncle had never trusted her nor believed she was as perceptive as she always said she was; well, she showed him, betcha sure!

Ex-private Samantha Burns lay in the back of her jeep (her jeep, she ruminated to herself with a dreamy expression), her long and seductive legs hanging over the door. A wind blew like a lover's breath and caressed her creamy-brown fur. The young rabbit raised her hands up to the azure sky, lacing her thumbs together and curling her forefingers inwards, making a bird. She flapped her finger-wings, mouth stuck in an open-mouth smile as she watched her bird flying against the immense, sapphire ceiling.

She had been given the day shift on the five-line watchtower after her night mission, a role she enjoyed thoroughly since piss all ever happened. One-line and three-line in the southern hills were the ones who always relayed messages from Big Papa to each other and administered his orders. Mornings like these, the only thing to do was lay back and just wash in the sun's love and maybe rub one out when you got the itch.

She wore only a bra that had once been white but was now as brown as the desert sand, a pair of army trousers she had modified into high-cut short-shorts, grimy army boots, and sunglasses with mirror lenses. On day shifts she always kept her shorts open, no panties.

Samantha loved life, all life; she never wanted to join the military, but her parents had made her go. "You've got to have discipline, Sam," they'd say with exasperated looks, like it was her fault they were having money problems, like it was her fault they were always fighting, like it was her fault they were driving her out of the house every night with their screaming to mess around in the corners of dark Cornerian streets. They were just trying to program her to believe in what they believed, to make her into a robot that walked and talked like a real girl and spouted the same shit as her parents when you pulled her string. Fuck that, she thought angrily. Take all that watered down right-wing bullshit and shove it back in your briefcase; Samantha Burns wasn't no robot. In the shade of the back of her jeep she started to sing, her voice ringing out into the open air.

"She got some gamblin' green, but she left that scene, looking for a place to call her oh-own...Too far from home, with a chicken bone, and a pocket full of broken dreams..."

"Five-line, five-line, come in."

Samantha let her hands fall to the seat. She pulled in her legs and pushed herself up so her back was resting against the door, popping up her head, ears high and stiff. She didn't just hear that, did she?

"Five-line, come in now."

She braced her arms against the top of the door behind her, pushing with all her might against it as she threw up her legs, backflipping out of the vehicle with practiced grace. The bulky mobile radio she had set atop a nearby boulder whined and buzzed, a thousand flies locked into a slightly curved rectangular box. On the way, she grabbed her makeshift machete sticking out of the ground, resting it against her shoulder. It had once been just a digging spade, the metal blade broken into a sharp point, but eight hours with a chisel and it made a very nice long-handled bush machete. The rocks crunched under her as she walked along the mesa, hooking a thumb into a pocket of her shorts.

"Are you there, five-line? Come in."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she grumbled. "Stick a fan in your pants, I'll get to you."

Sighing in the heat, she grabbed the radio and thumbed down the button. She didn't like using the name her parents gave her over radio communication; she always used the name Dice had given her on the fourth day of her reception. She had been trying as hard as she could to forget her false name, an important step in Dice's group, but she just couldn't cut that wire.

"Jolene here. Come in, brother."

"Take a look at the valley, girl. Single vehicle heading down your way."

Jolene, A.K.A. Samantha Burns, sniffed and raised her eyebrows. Lowering her machete, she stepped quickly to the rocky rim of the mesa, wondering what the hell was happening and why one vehicle was such a cause for interrupting her morning. Her small, bushy tail twitched once as a fern rubbed against her thigh. She got down and lay flat on her stomach against the hot surface of a rocky outcropping, taking out a pocket telescope, sucking on her lower lip.

The valley was a monstrous, open space of pale brown-yellow sand and jutting rocks and bare sagebrush, helmed in by two intersecting mountain ranges. The five-line "watchtower" was an easily-accessed mesa some three hundred feet high at the far end of the north mountain range; the KING desert combat training range was just visible as a dark little shit-smear in the distance. She noticed a cloud of dust rising high from there, so she swung her telescope around that way. There was of course a single vehicle heading toward her, with only one occupant. Jolene hummed about that fact; usually the soldiers drove in pairs with two people in each jeep. There was a fox behind the wheel, short and wiry vixen wearing green clothes that suited her well.

Jolene smirked as she spoke into her radio, making sure her voice was saturated in disdain and sarcasm.

"Wow. _Real_heavy traffic, Nails."

"That's her! That's her, man! It's the pretty that came in yesterday with the big cat!"

Jolene stared through her telescope at the red fox driving the jeep. She pursed her lips. "I hope her ass looks better than her tits. She doesn't seem to have any."

"Whatever. Look, Dice's been talking about restocking the red tent, right?

"Yeah, but do we really need this one, though? She isn't from KING."

"Fresh vixen bitch like her? What do you think?"

Jolene narrowed her eyes; she suddenly knew what Nails was doing. He was unofficially shifting all of his authority over to her, so that if A) the bitch is killed and Dice really wanted a new one, then it would be her ass on the line, quite literally; and B) if Dice doesn't want any more and they do manage to nab her, then she'd be blamed for making a call that wasn't hers to make, and C) if they just let her go to piss around in the desert, it would still be her problem. The horny little bastard didn't know how to proceed, so he decided to put her bunny-butt on the line if something went wrong.

More likely, he just wanted to get her into trouble so she'd get thrown into the red tent. The rabbit watched the vehicle coming steadily closer, tilting her lip up in a joyless smirk.

"Alright, I'll take care of it."

"Great. Don't break all of her, Jo!" A loud, stupid laugh filled her ear, making her wince.

"Betcha sure."

She thumbed down a button, cutting the conversation. Keeping one eye on the oncoming charcoal grey jeep, she set down her telescope and began tuning the frequency on her radio.

There was hardly an inch of this valley that hasn't been touched by Dice's plans; booby traps were scattered all around, pressure-triggered spike pits and high-grade explosives buried in shallow graves under the sand. All of the explosives were activated and triggered by radio; set the right frequency, press the call button, and blammo. Dice had made sure that all explosives were designated with the frequencies ranging from 70.00 to 99.99, depending on location, and anybody who set even one of them off was supposed to write up the exact place and frequency so that the explosive could be quickly replaced. Because of this, many of those working the watchtowers had written the number of memorized explosives beside their designated frequencies on the side of their radios.

Jolene looked down from her vantage point, staring at a series of five large rocks that had been set evenly apart every fifteen feet. Beside each rock was placed some twenty pounds of either methyl nitrate or nitrobenzene. She knew this because she had helped make the devices, though she buried them on her own.

The jeep was racing unknowingly to the trap-line. Jolene watched the way the vehicle was heading in a direct path, seemingly on par with the second rock, planted right next to a thick stone column, weather-worn into an arching slope. She checked the frequency on the side of her radio, dialed it in, made sure there was a signal, and watched and waited for the vehicle to approach.

---

Fox turned his head up, his eyes squinting from the sunlight and the rush of the wind. He thought he'd seen something in the hills, a flash or glint of some kind, like light reflected off of metal, but it could have just been something in his eye. In any case, he didn't see anything as he glanced up to scan the mountain ridge.

Fox felt his hands shaking against the jeep's wheel. He had no certainty that this was going to work. He had to plan this out thoroughly if he was going to have any chance of success.

Just ahead was a curious-looking rock worn down by wind and the sand into what looked like a natural ramp. He allowed a grin to crack his mouth and a crazy thought to fill his head. It was big enough; he pressed down on the accelerator, heading for the rock. His tail was bristling in his excitement.

I bet this thing gets crazy air time, Fox thought as the vehicle bounced, the wheels growling as they touched the orange-brown slope.

---

"Beep," Jolene said, thumbing down the send button.

A flower of sand, smoke, and yellow fire shot up out of the ground below, followed by a thunderclap less than a second later that roared across the valley. The jeep and its occupant were thrown by the concussive blast as though they were a child's toys. When she triggered it, the vehicle was just to the right of the explosive; the momentum of the vehicle kept it accelerating forward, and the blast sent it reeling off the slope and into the air, spiraling around and around through the air.

She saw that the occupant had clung onto the wheel long enough for the third revolution before flying, falling through the air like a ragdoll with her arms twisting through the air. The sight was so comical, so surrealistically way out that Jolene couldn't help but smile. The vulpine was lying on the sand some twelve feet from the vehicle, which had struck the ground so hard on impact that a cloud of dust and smoke rose up like a second explosion.

Jolene didn't like standing on ceremonies; she jumped up, taking her machete and radio and ran straight to her dune buggy. She had painted a big white diamond on the back, an idea that Dice had liked so much that he had all the other buggies painted to have the same marking, except for his own, of course.

The rabbit threw her objects into the passenger seat, gunned the engine, and let out a whoop as the wheels kicked up a cloud of sand and small rocks. On the way down the mesa, she started singing a song called "Comin' to the Canyon."

---

The world was a bright and faded blur.

His head was filled with an unbearable ringing.

His body felt like he'd just been body-slammed by an asteroid. Everything ached, especially his head.

What the hell happened?

Grunting through the pain and growling from it, he turned his body so that he was lying on his stomach. He looked around him, wondering where the jeep was. He saw it not far away, but it didn't look like the same jeep. He had to tilt his head, realizing that it was on its side.

Wasps hummed in his skull. He coughed once, and his lungs seemed to scream from inside his chest. There was a tickle at his upper lip; he scratched at it and his fingers came away wet and red.

Fox tried to think, tried to remember everything, but the pain in his head was roaring, roaring like fire...

No, that was the sound of tires on the loose rocks and sand. He turned his head and saw another military jeep, but it looked different, with wider-set wheels and steel bars hanging over and across the doors, more suited to the dunes of the desert.

A bare thought of danger crossed his mind; this vehicle had been stolen from KING and modified. He tried to get up, his back wailing a death-scream and his legs wavering as though they were made of pasta. With one successful and rather painful push, he managed to get up on his feet. His hand shot to his hip where he kept his Fimbulvinter machine pistol, though standing up made his head thud and hammer more harshly.

He tried to focus his watery eyes, handgun pointed down to the ground, when he saw a vague, creamy-brown shape fill his vision.

"Ding-dong!"

Something cold and metal slammed into his forehead; fire erupted across his skull as he felt all of his energy blaze out of his body. Stumbling, he looked up at the sky, saw the blue fade back to grey, and the grey gave way to darkness.

---

"Oh, you really picked a weed out of the rose bush with this one, Nails."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, it's going to be real hard for a fetus to gestate in this person's colon; she's a guy, you idiot!"

"Fuck!"

Soft laughter, like birds flying back to Corneria for the spring. Fox opened his eyes, feeling the stinging spikes of sunlight jabbing into them. He groaned, tried to put his hands up to his eyes, but found that they couldn't move. He opened his eyes just a bit more.

"Ooh, sounds like the whore's awake."

"Shut up already..."

Fox's back felt like a column of fire, compounded by the thick wooden cross to which he had been roped. His arms were bound tight to the crosstree, ropes looping around his legs, waist, and neck. A length of rope also gagged his mouth, tasting of grit and grime. His tail had been strung painfully around the pole, as well. His head burned and pulsated red agony, both exterior and interior. He looked down to glance at the pocket where he had put his painkillers, only to realize that he had left his vest coat back at KING.

His chest burning, he took a breath and looked around him, surveying the dirty faces and the individuals that owned them. He shifted his feet on the ground, realizing that his ankles had been restrained, too.

One was a rat who might at one point in his life have been handsome. He had bright green eyes, a powerful jawline and strong cheeks, arms and legs thick with muscle, and long, clever fingers. But something had taken those looks and twisted them, some accident that had ripped away half of his face, shattered his right knee and his shoulder so that he walked with a pronounced limp, his back bent in a permanent hunch, his bright eyes and large eyebrows locked down into a scowl. His fur was mottled with brown, red, and creamy white. His long fingers ended in ugly yellowed claws. Fox presumed he was the Nails to which the other voice had spoken.

The other was a female rabbit, creamy-brown fur, centerfold body shape. She wore high-cut shorts, a bra, and mirrored sunglasses. Fox felt himself blush when he noticed that the girl's shorts were clearly open, her nether fur dark and twisting like heavy brush. She was holding a curious wooden-handled digging spade against her shoulder, the metal blade broken to a point and sharpened along all the edges. She had a weird look on her face, a silly open-mouthed smile with her head slightly tilted to the side. Fox immediately knew she was Major Cook's niece, he could see the resemblance. And that laugh, light and airy, he had heard that laugh before, and it now gave him a chill to hear it again.

She was the person who had snuck into the bathroom the other night, the one who had left those messages on the mirrors, and the one in the sink. The fact that she looked like she belonged on a beach sipping expensive alcohol with a group of friends only added to the befuddlement.

Standing off to the side just inside of Fox's vision was a severe-looking hyena. Her hair was a close-cut mohawk that Fox recognized as being a rather popular style after a recent film had come out in Corneria. There was heavy red dye all around her dark, stone-grey eyes, covering the top of her cheeks and her forehead. She was powerfully built, her arms breaking through a filthy denim vest, her large breasts exposed, washboard stomach beneath visible abdominal muscles, army pants tucked into her boots. Whereas Samantha Burns exuded a strong feminine and almost childish atmosphere, the hyena possessed an air of pure violence, genderless and democratically cruel.

There seemed to be an end to the ground beyond the three individuals, making Fox think that they were somewhere up high, another level plain in the hills. The wind up here was hot and silk-smooth, seeping through his fur and already sucking up his perspiration.

Fox couldn't help but notice that both the gnarled rat and the hyena each had a small X carved into their foreheads, fur missing in ragged patches around the scar tissue. Samantha Burns did not have the marking.

Samantha hefted her machete so that it rested across her shoulders, her head listing to the other side. "What should we do with him?"

"Fuck it!" the rat spat onto the ground, "Let the sun take care of him."

"Ass is ass, Nails. Don't be so repressed just 'cause he doesn't have a pussy."

"I'm not being repressed! It's a matter of preference!"

"Don't make it such a big deal," the hyena rumbled. Her hand slunk into the confines of her vest, returning with a short blade, its handle wrapped in hemp rope. Fox watched as she flicked out the blade with an air bordering on boredom, as if this situation were commonplace. Fox vainly tried to move his hands and legs as she came closer.

Her hands flew to his pants, unbuttoning and unzipping. He jerked against the post as she peeled down his boxers to expose his genitals to the group and the elements. She grabbed his penis, roughly tugging it so that it lay straight in her hand. Fox's eyes flew open as she raised the knife up to his face long enough for him to see it, then let it slowly fall.

"Nails said he saw a pretty. Who's calling him a liar?"

Samantha was laughing, bird-song giggling sounding a lot like a little kid watching something funny. Fox looked into the hyena's grey eyes, saw the contempt in them, saw how her teeth were yellowed like sulfur.

"What is this?"

The hyena looked beyond Fox, her smile vanishing and her eyes filling with worry. She let him go and began taking several steps back. She looked behind her at the others, and they quickly became silent. The wind seemed to die away to allow the sound of heavy boots to echo across the mesa. Fox turned his eyes to the side, trying to look around.

Soon enough, a giant walked past Fox, stepping solidly between him and the small group. He wore a pair of dusty maroon trousers, worn ragged at the hemlines from use, no footwear and no shirt, displaying the muscle that bulged under the skin. His fur was grizzled with yellow-brown on his ears, legs, and feet, darkening at his back and shoulders into grey and then into thin black. A bulky and muscular snake's tail rippled across the sand, faded ashy grey with diamond-shaped bands of white and black tapering to a segmented rattle. Fox could see how the fur just stopped at the person's lower back, simply giving way to reptilian scales.

"Well, what's going on here?" Dice said. He turned his head, and Fox heard the jingle of his neckwear before he saw the source, several loops of bone and wood and colorful beads jingling and jostling each other in a melodic fashion. Long and wild golden-brown hair fell over a bright red headband, into which had been woven the yellowed skull of a vulture. There was a worried look in his eyes, his eyebrows raised in concern, but Fox could also see a wild power in them, coiled spring energy.

Nails was the first to find his voice. "He's one of the newcomer's, Dice. We caught him trying to hunt us out. Soldier's fuckin' pet!"

"He had this, Dicey," Samantha cut in. She held up Fox's Fimbulvinter handgun, twirling it around her index finger like a gunslinger. Dice let his eyes rest on the weapon for a couple seconds before silently turning back to Nails.

"Didn't you say there was a pretty the other day?"

The rat didn't say anything. He glanced at Samantha, who appeared stone-faced throughout the conversation. Dice only stared back at him, and the rat winced as though he had been slapped.

"I thought he was--."

"I know what you thought, Nails. I put you up there because you've got good eyes, but when something like this happens, when you give false information like this, I don't dig it."

The rat nodded, not daring to look up at the shirtless titan. Dice kept his gaze on the hapless lookout for a little while longer before turning to Fox. The vulpine could only watch, his eyes darting from person to person before settling back to the coyote's eyes. The sun was rising, and the heat was getting vicious, incubating a migraine.

"Didn't you at least let him give his story?"

The three didn't answer; the rat was staring at a rock he was nudging with his boot, Samantha was scratching her leg with her machete, but the hyena seemed resolutely inclined to simply not answer. She held Dice's glare with a hardened look of her own. Dice grunted and shook his head, frustrated father to unruly children.

Fox watched as Dice came over to him--his nose just coming up to the top of the coyote's abdomen--and looked down on him. Fox could just barely match his stare, the ropes keeping his head steady.

Dice bent down onto his knees, his hands reaching for Fox's hips. Fox grumbled behind his rope gag and shook against his restraints, but Dice held up his hand. "It's alright, I promise," he said, though Fox wasn't easily assuaged.

The coyote pulled up his underwear and pants, zipping and buttoning them, even brushing off streaks of sand. "Datura," he said gravely, "let me see your knife."

The hyena narrowed her eyes, angry grey slits in a field of red, but she complied, stepping forward with the weapon. Fox saw the confusion in her eyes, which he shared. He saw the big survival knife Dice already carried at his hip, the black sheath bouncing against his hip.

The coyote took Datura's knife and walked behind the post, out of Fox's vision. There was a sound like a whisper, and Fox felt the ropes running around his mouth loosen and fall to his shoulders. The one around his neck fell also. He spat out a black mass of dirt onto the sand, his head throbbing. Another whisper, and another, and the ropes binding his hands to the crosstree fell. Dice went down along the post, cutting all the ropes that held Fox in place and unwound his tail. Fox rubbed his wrists back into circulation, rope marks stinging like needles.

A hand fell softly onto his shoulder. He looked up and saw Dice staring down on him, eyes like the desert sand.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," Fox said, unsure of what to say and of what Dice was doing. The others were staring at him, their faces mingling between anger and bewilderment.

"So, what' your name? It's usually considerate to know who somebody is when you kidnap them."

Fox was at a loss; Dice's actions and manner were entirely contradictory to what he had envisioned. The kindness and cordiality and the sincerity behind them were throwing him off the scheme. Fox rubbed at his wrists, keeping his eyes locked on Dice's face. "I'm Fox McCloud."

"Clever name," Dice said with a grin, and Samantha gave a tittering chuckle. "Your parents came up with that, didn't they?"

Fox nodded, lowering his eyes to the ground. His parents had always been a touchy subject with him, but he suppressed his passions as best as he could. He couldn't allow them to ruin the act.

"They told me about you at KING," Fox said. "I heard about the things you guys did there, how you showed those assholes that you weren't going to stand for their conservative bullshit anymore. They told me that you tried to get them to see how things really are, but they couldn't handle it, so they tried to put you guys down. I want to join, if that's alright. It just makes sense to me, what you guys are about, the only thing that really makes sense. I just...I really get it."

Dice was smiling, but there was an attentive gleam in his eye. "That right? How do you feel about those assholes over at KING? What're they to you?"

Fox knew he had to play this right. He made a show of thinking hard on the question, then turned his head back up to Dice with a shrug, sounding as sincere as he could.

"Honestly? I don't really feel anything for them, other than pity."

Dice looked at him for a few moments more--Fox had a discomfiting feeling in his gut that he had just kicked the hornet's nest--before he nodded, his smile widening to display the brightest, most perfectly aligned pearly whites Fox had ever seen.

"But what about that mark?"

"What mark?"

The smile vanished from Dice's mouth. He looked sterner, more authoritative. "Lift up your shirt," he said, his voice like gravel. Fox did so with several shades of worry melded to his self-consciousness, lifting the hem of his green shirt up to his chest. The coyote pointed at a spot on Fox's stomach, an ugly dark yellow bruise that could be seen under the cream-white fur there.

"Right there. That looks...that looks pretty nasty, Fox. How'd you get it?"

Behind the behemoth coyote, Fox saw Nails shake his head and Datura take great time and effort to crack each and every one of her knuckles. Samantha started pacing from one edge of the mesa to the other.

"I was shot, with a rubber bullet."

"A rubber bullet," Dice echoed slowly, shaking his head. He turned to the others, who all jerked to attention. "You all hear that? They never kill on the first round, they have to maximize one's pain and suffering first! Filthy bastards."

Fox gratefully let the hem of his shirt fall back down. Dice threw his arm around Fox's shoulder; he could feel the power in the coyote's muscles, and he made a mental note, should Dice ever catch wind of his plan, to never be within arm's reach. He allowed himself to be led over to where a group of dune buggies had been parked at the head of a road that spiraled down through the hills. One of them was twice as large as the others, well armored and heavily fortified with a thick rear attachment and a high seating. Fox quickly made the assumption that this monster was Dice's own vehicle. There was a Doberman sitting behind the wheel, his arms lazily arched behind his head.

"Did they tell you we were all crazy hardcase psycho butchers? I bet they did."

They didn't have to, you madman, Fox thought. "Yeah, they did," he answered.

"They're liars, all of them. They enjoy lying and killing because that's the world they know, that's their bag. They love that as much as we love life, music, and love, and that's the world we want to make, Fox. A world of life, music, and love. That's what we're about, man. We don't want to hurt people, nor do we like it when we do, but one must defend oneself when the need arises."

Dice stopped and faced the vulpine, putting both hands on his shoulders. Fox was grinning, trying to make it seem like he was accepting Dice's words, but there was something in the coyote's eyes that unnerved him, something hidden and eldritch, making him secretly wonder whether or not he could carry this deceit to its conclusion without any breaks. Dice leaned down and kept those desert gemstone eyes locked on Fox's own emeralds. There was a smile on his face, exhibiting complete serenity.

"Fox, is this really the world you want to belong to?"

"Yeah, I really do. Everything else just feels like an illusion."

Dice held his gaze for another moment, then looked to his three followers. "Jolene! Give the man his gun back."

The rabbit's ears fell in tandem with her mouth, the outright absurdity of the command stunning her for a second. When she spoke, her voice had a wavering, uncertain quality about it. "Are you sure about that, D--."

The kindness that had filled Dice's face disappeared, tide gone out, his eyes blazing with fury. He drew himself up to his full height, his snake's tail rattling a death song. Samantha, looking like she had been struck, obediently took out Fox's handgun and walked forward. Fox wondered about the change of name from Samantha to Jolene. It was just another weird feature of the situation.

She stared at the ground as she stepped up to him. Holding the pistol by the barrel, she proffered it to him, as well as one ammunition clip.

"Thanks," Fox said.

"Betcha."

Samantha stepped back, poking at the ground with her machete. Fox noticed that Nails and Datura were staring at him, their eyes painting hatred as they glared at him and his weapon. He looked up at Dice, who was once again wearing his mask of kindness, and stuck his handgun into the back of his pants.

"Yeah, Fox, I think you're going to be alright with us. You won't get shot with no rubber bullets out here. No, out here it's just us and nature. Long nights and longer days. We're all together, Fox; everything's linked like a big spider web, like bubbles in foam. What you do to one, you do to all. You follow me?"

Fox nodded.

"Desert children are all one and the same. Treat a scorpion with love and they'll treat you with love right back. Have you ever been lied to by a scorpion?"

Caught a little off guard, Fox shook his head and said that he in fact had never been lied to by a scorpion.

"Scorpion don't need to lie, see? Scorpion lives his life under the sun, always searching and eating and living, and he doesn't need deception or trickery to get what he wants. There is no wrong when you're a scorpion, no ethics, no rules, no worries of whether or not you've got enough money for the rent, or if your parents will like your new date, or if you're wearing the right fashion, if you're doing the right things or your_saying_ the right things. Scorpion doesn't worry about any of that because he doesn't need to. Those misguided folk over at KING, they like to step on Scorpion, squash him out of their existence because they think little old Scorpion doesn't have a place in their existence. They see him as wicked, as poisonous, a despicable monster that needs to be eradicated. They just can't see the truth, and that's what you'll find here with us, Fox; the truth.

"We're not going to lie to you or make fancy double-talk, that's not our way. Would you lie to your brother or sister? We love each other, as we love life itself. We're all just a family, a massive family that spans the cosmos."

Dice looked deep into Fox's eyes, a gesture that Fox felt far too affectionate for the situation. Dice clapped his hands on Fox's shoulders again, the force almost driving him down to the ground.

"Welcome to the family, Fox McCloud. We love you."

Fox wondered if biting his lower lip would have been overdoing it. Instead, he blinked away some fake tears and smiled. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mullein, he thought happily enough. You have no idea that you're talking to the guy who's going to kill you.

He was about to say his thanks when the static whine of a radio cut him off.

"Five-line, come in, come in."

Samantha jumped when the radio cut through the calmness, her breasts rippling against her bra. She sprinted to her buggy and grabbed the radio.

"This is Jolene, state yer fuckin' business."

"We've got cavalry heading down your way, two jeeps from the base. I can see heavy machine guns and grenades."

"Copy that. 'Bout time they caught wind of the crash..." Samantha held the radio to her chest and looked to Dice for a response.

"Who did you leave up there?" Dice asked Nails. His tail gave a single buzzing shake.

"Merridew. I've been training him on watchtower duty."

Dice nodded his head. "Alright. Bug out, all of you! Head for the Red Valley camp."

Nails, Samantha, and Datura all scrambled to their buggies. Samantha gave a loud whoop as she jumped over the door and gunned the engine, but Datura yelled at her to shut up. Fox stood where he was for a minute before he began walking toward Samantha's vehicle. He was eager to talk to her about several matters of interest, but Dice put one massive hand on his back. "Not you, Fox. Why don't you hop on up into my rig right there? We have different sights to see."

Fox obeyed, stepping onto the floor of the passenger side and settling into the seat. Beside him, behind the wheel, was the scarecrow of a Doberman, well-built and lean and clearly proud of showing himself off. He was wearing a muddy brown cowboy hat and sunglasses, no shirt (a feature that seemed common in Dice's cult), a pair of grimy army pants, and some tarnished cowboy boots.

"Hi," Fox said.

"Hey there," the Doberman replied with a smile. Fox's eyes had wandered along the canine's bare, brown-furred chest, abs, and stomach, settling into the bump in his lap before he realized what he was doing. He shifted nervously in his seat, clearing his throat, mentally yelling at himself for being so obvious and for being easily distracted. He had to keep his mind in the game; this was far too dangerous to mess around.

Dice jumped into the seatless rear of the jeep, letting his arms rest over the doors and propping one of his legs up against the back of Fox's seat. He looked like a sultan at the end of the world, languishing in some new apocalyptic treasure.

"Let's go, Kaz."

They took off down the winding road that wrapped through the hills, following the serpent trail through a long cloud of dust that had been thrown up by the others. Fox tried to memorize the route, failing and ceasing after the fifth turnaround.

---

An hour had passed on the road, though Fox could not have been aware of this fact. His mind was turning over everything that had happened since he had left KING.

He had been blown out of his vehicle by some kind of explosive. He didn't see any mounted or shoulder-carried launching systems, and the explosion was too large and precise to have been a grenade. It had to have been a trap that had been dug and left in the sand. That led Fox to assume that they had traps all over the desert. But how could they trigger them?

Hitting a dead end, he went down another thought-path. He found it strange that each member in Dice's group would change their name to something else. Perhaps it was symbolic, he thought, of shifting from not only a location but a frame of mind. By changing your name you can create a new identity, and from that identity can be formed a new personality. It made sense, but it seemed just so strange.

Fox wondered about the major's niece, wondered what had happened to her to make her so twisted. She couldn't have been older than he was, but she seemed like a little kid, only with a soldier's deportment. Another strange question that he had no doubt would have a strange answer.

The hyena was a dangerous piece of work. What was her name again? Datura, something that sounded like a poisonous flower or a physiological disorder. He remembered the look she gave Dice when he told her to give him her knife, venom glare of bottled rage. He wondered if there was a power struggle in action, or if one could be made. It would make his job a bit easier, that was for certain.

He reached up and touched the place where he had been struck by the flat surface of Samantha's machete. There was a hard, cold mass of dried blood there across the top of his forehead, a small diagonal streak surrounded by clumps of matted fur. The moment his fingers had applied subtle, tentative pressure, the full force of the pain caused by the blow flared into hellish reality, augmented by the headache that had been building and building since he had been roped to the post.

Fox shut his eyes, feeling the reverberating pain along the whole right side of his face, his teeth tingling with it. He covered the side of his head, hissing through clenched teeth; it felt as if the spider behind his eye had made some friends and was now hosting a block party, complete with a magnificent neuron binge. The vehicle jerked roughly on a particularly bumpy stretch of road, level sand-covered ground giving way to rocks and uneven terrain, elevating Fox's despondency.

The jeep jerked again, and Fox grunted in his throat, letting his hand rest on the top of the door. It felt like someone was slowly driving a crowbar through his skull, the tip tapping against his mandible. There were trees growing up out of the cracked ground beside the road, tall and bulbous trees that looked like sculptures made of tarnished copper, but they were going by too fast. Everything was too fast, too bright, too hot. Fox felt himself getting so warm that he was starting to feel cold.

He looked at the Doberman, who kept his eyes trained on the road. He wanted to talk, to try to point his mind away from the pulsing agony that filled it, but he didn't think the Doberman was the talkative sort. Instead, he turned in his seat and looked at Dice.

The coyote was staring at him through half-lidded eyes, mouth set in a thoughtful frown. His brown-gold hair was billowing behind him, flailing in the wind like searching tendrils. How long has he been staring at me? Fox wondered.

"Where are we going?" Fox asked, trying not to sound as if every single noise was aggravating him.

Dice didn't answer immediately, just stared in consternation at him. After a time of waiting for an answer, Fox looked to the Doberman, thinking that the coyote had fallen asleep. Before he could say anything, Dice's gravel-laden voice rumbled into his ears.

"We're coming to Now."