Way of the Slugcat

Winged Death

The two sat in silence for a while. Thorns was still having trouble catching his breath. In this time of silence, he concluded that, yes, the rains had absolutely gotten worse since he had left. It was no wonder that everyone had deemed living on the surface a laughable aspiration.
Thorns sighed and let his body slump to the floor. The chilled metal was not in any way comfortable. When he closed his eyes, it only got worse.
"Hey, um... rodent?" He asked, realizing that he did not have a name to call it by. Thorns heard a snicker from the corner.
"Yes, other rodent?"
Thorns frowned. "I never caught your name. What is it?"
"Name?"
"Yes. You know, the word that I call you by? Do you rodents even have names?"
"No." It said matter-of-factly. "You should know that by now. You are a slugcat, after all."
"No, I am not! I am Seven Thorns, Morning Wings, of the House of Suns, Count of no living blocks, Counselor of three, and member of the Regional Data Storage and Protection Coalition, to put it very simply!"
"Hmm..." The rodent grumbled. Thorns could no longer see the glow of its eyes. He guessed that they had been closed.
"None of that means anything to me."
"That is because you are a simple rodent and I am an important figure of the Data Preservation Movement!" Thorns fumed.
"Actually, it is because none of that 'knowledge' is going to help me in any way shape or form, nor will it help you. It is entirely useless."
"What!? How dare you... you..."
"All I am saying is, what use would that information be in a pinch? What are you going to do, bore a lizard to death with your grand titles and a speech about data information transfer what-not?"
Thorns didn't have a clue how to respond. What disrespect! He bared his tiny teeth and clenched his three fingers into a fist, although he soon realized that his target couldn't see these gestures at all. So instead, he huffed as loud as he could, turned himself around, and sat with his nose turned towards the wall. If the rodent didn't want to respect him, then he wouldn't respect it.
"Although..." The rodent started again. "I can see why a name would be useful. Not a long one, but a nice, short one would do."
Thorns did not budge.
"How about I call you 'Thorns'? It's either that, or 'seven', and that's a number."
"...fine." Thorns reluctantly agreed. "How about I call you..." Shadow? No, too long. Dark? No, that one is too bland. "...how about 'Night'?"
"That works for me." The rodent responded. Thorns turned around to face its voice- his voice- and found two round white eyes looking back at him. From the way they were situated, it seemed like Night was smiling. Something else caught his gaze as well. A third light, incredibly dim and hardly noticeable in the darkness of the shelter, hovered above the rodent's head.
"I like that. It sounds good."
He blinked, and the eyes vanished again. The light, however, did not. Thorns could hear the rodent brushing against the metal walls of the chamber, situating himself into a comfortable position. Thorns attempted to do the same, but the walls were cold and the floor was less than comfortable. Although, as he sat there in the dark with his chin resting upon his pudgy tail, it appeared as if he had no other options.
"How long must we stay in here?" He whined.
"Until it opens again." Night muttered.
"When will that be?"
Thorns' question was answered with silence.
"Night?" He listened for Night's answer, but all he heard was the sound of heavy, deep breaths in rhythmic intervals from the other side of the shelter. Thorns sighed and curled himself up as tight as he could. He had nothing left to do, nothing left to say.

Thorns awoke to the sound of his own stomach. It growled threateningly at him and he reluctantly rolled over onto his paws. He jumped to his feet as the shelter gave a sudden jerk, followed by the whirring of gears and wires. Light slowly filtered into the room, revealing clouds of dust suspended in the air around him. Although it wasn't warm, Thorns was relieved when it graced his skin.
"Come on. We don't have all cycle." Night stood by the entrance. His form stepped in front of the light, casting a shadow just as black as him. He gestured for Thorns to follow, then crawled outside.
Everything was wet. Every plant, every stone, every brick and pipe, was soaked and dripping. There were many things that Thorns did not recognize as being present the previous cycle, such as the gaping hole in the ceiling. Thorns could see the sun out the top, shimmering in all its glory. He found his mind flashing back to the void, it's pure energy being enough to generate wisps of light.
A shape intercepted the sun's rays and the room fell to shadow. For a second, Thorns could have sworn he spotted feathers on the figure above before it vanished.
"Get back, get back!" Night's harsh whisper filled Thorns' ears as he was dragged backwards under an overhang.
"What was that for? It is only a bird!" He complained.
"Not just a bird, a vulture. Now shut up and follow my lead!" Night snapped. Considering the rodent's knowledge of the land far surpassed his, Thorns decided to listen.
They crawled down a skinny corridor, making sure to keep the rubble above their heads. The vulture's shadow passed them over a good number of times, as the lack of a roof exposed most of the hallway to the open air. Slowly, the garbage walls around Thorns began to close in. Barbed wire, glass, and aluminum cans stuck out on all sides, leaving very little room for error. Soon, the slugcats were belly sliding through a tight passegway, the only improvement from the previous corridor being that the roof hadn't fallen in yet.
"Where are we going?" Thorns asked as he pushed Night's pudgy black tail away from his nose. He would have very much preferred to have taken a different route to wherever Night had in mind.
"Food." The rodent whispered back, twitching his ear in slight annoyance.
"Is there not food in another direction?"
"I have my own agenda, Thorns, and you showing up is not going to make me reconsider it."
Thorns sighed, but said nothing. He couldn't argue with the idea of filling his stomach.
It didn't take the two slugcats long to reach the end of the tunnel. Thorns was hoping that the rodent was leading them to another cavern, but that apparently was not the case. Night pressed his body up against the tunnel's side, allowing Thorns to see past him.
One could have mistaken the scenery to be a pond, but to Thorns it looked more like a floodplain. Rancid green water filled a shallow valley. The poles and platforms rising out of the muck looked twice as degraded as their surroundings, with large tumors of rust and discolored markings staining their surfaces. A huge harvester had dropped into the middle of the pond, providing the one and only place for stable footing. At first, Thorns couldn't detect any lifeforms making their homes within the flooded valley, but then something caught his eye.
He had to squeeze into the tight space Night had left for him in order to get a look at something black wiggling around in his peripheral vision. A cluster of long, snake-like creatures occupied a patch of scrap metal, slightly submerged in the water. They stood completely upright, their lower bodies burrowed tightly into the pile of metal. Occasionally, one would make a sudden movement and thrust its bulbous head into the water, not even bothering to close its large, white eyes. Thorns could hear them gurgling to each other as they swayed back and forth, following flying insects and inspecting various pieces of metal nearby.
"Garbage worms." Night commented, following Thorn's gaze. "Don't bother them." Thorns nodded.
Suddenly, the worm's attention was jerked to the sky. All five of them were sucked into their burrows as a shadow passed overhead. It cruised over the pond in a leisurely glide, the silhouette of its stringy feathers lagging behind its body. Then, it was out of sight. The cautious heads of the garbage worms appeared at the entrance of the burrows. Before long they were back to catching bugs as if nothing had happened. Night raised a finger.
"Do you see that opening over there?"
"Um..." Thorns followed Night's gesture and concluded that he most definitely did not.
"Alright then, I'll go first."
"Wait, what!?" He couldn't be serious. "We are not actually going out there, right? Not with the vulture around, right?"
"Do you want to starve? Because the rain won't wait for our mouths to be filled."
Thorns grumbled under his breath. He supposed that being eaten by a massive bird wasn't the worst thing that could happen, although he would much rather never find out what being devoured felt like.
"Just follow what I do and you'll be fine." With that, the black rodent pulled himself from the tunnel's maw and began sprinting across the pond.
Night landed with a splash and took off running, his body bobbing up and down in the water. The ruble footing dropped from beneath him, forcing him into a kind of swimming, using his front paws as the motor and wiggling his tail to give him momentum. He dove under the water's surface and launched himself upwards, taking hold of the poles and leaping from one to another. The garbage worms watched him curiously from their secluded corner. Night finished every jump with the utmost precision, the expression on his face a calculating one. Gracefully, he leapt from a pole onto the fallen harvester and tucked himself into a roll.
Again, the shadow came. The worms ducked into their holes and Night collided with the water once again. The silhouette paused for a moment, mid flight. Within a split second, the vulture's massive body descended from above. Pink gas spewed from its wing pits, filling Thorn's nose with the overpowering stench of sulfur. It's stringy wings touched down on the harvester, holding the vulture's bulk off the ground. The green feathers on its back shivered with the breeze it's own entrance had created and the long, ribbon like ones on its wings splayed out in every direction, their brilliance only enhanced by the light of the sun gleaming off of them. The vulture's neck was as black as Night's, snaking its way towards him as he scrambled up the cliff of trash emerging from the water. There seemed to be something slowing him down, little red strings hanging off of his tail.
"Night, get out of there!" Thorns yelled. The vulture's head snapped in his direction. Hungry red eyes zeroed in on Thron's location, shining brightly behind a pale green mask. It's pitch black beak opened to reveal the bird's tongue and throat, as if to say "Look, it is empty. Come fill it up, why don't you?" It lunged forwards, it's wings carrying it like stilts through the water.
From the other side of the pond, a rock was loosed. It flew through the air and collided with the vulture, bouncing off its mask with an audible tonk and falling into the water. The bird turned just in time to see Night's tail vanish into a tunnel, a few squirming red strings still clinging to its skin.
Thorns let his heart rate slow to a normal pace as the vulture inspected Night's hole. He forced himself to squeeze further back into the tunnel in case the bird came towards him again. Up close, the beast was much more massive than he had ever anticipated, it's shadow alone being large enough to swallow him whole.
It wasn't long before the bird tired of pecking at the garbage lining the tunnel's entrance. It wiped its beak on its feathers and took to the air once more, leaving behind a cloud of noxious gas above the pond. Thorns let out a grateful sigh as Night's nose emerged from its hiding place.
"Ha! Stupid bird." Thorns scoffed. He watched its shadow shrink and vanish out of his line of sight. With a new found confidence, he readied his hind legs to give him a long head start. If the bird was distracted that easily, he would make it across the pond unscathed! In fact, Thorns could even beat Night's time! Without a doubt in his mind, Thorns launched himself from the entrance of the tunnel.
"Wait Thorns, not yet!" It was too late. Night's call didn't reach his ears until he was suspended mid air.
The vulture came out of nowhere, its beak wide open, lunging towards the falling slugcat. Thorns opened his mouth to scream in surprise. Rancid water filled his maw as he broke the pond's surface, blurring his vision and tainting his tongue with the lingering taste of rust. He flailed his tiny arms in a circle, then pulled himself down deeper. The vulture plunged its head in after him.
The water stung Thorn's eyes like mad, as if a hive of string bees had decided to try and blind him. His fingers clung to the rocky bottom of the pond, desperately trying to keep distance between the bird's beak and his flabby tail, still floating near the water's surface. His heart raced. His lungs burned. What now? His panicked mind asked. While his body screamed for air, Thorns forced his eyes to search the pond's bed for something, anything, to assist him.
There! The base of a pole jutted out from the rubble. It wasn't much, but maybe it could hold him in place. Thorns let his fingers slip from the rocks as he squirmed over to the pole and grasped it with both hands. At the same time, he felt a sharp pain on his tail. It felt as if it had been crushed between two metal beams. They pulled him skyward at an alarming pace, plucking the slugcat from the water. His anchor came with him in his tightly balled fists. To his surprise, the pole in his hands was much smaller than he had perceived it to be. Most of it had been snapped off, leaving only a metal bar with a sharpened tip. In his panicked state, Thorns found only one way to use it. If he was going to die this cycle, then the vulture was coming with him, goddamn it!
The vulture screeched in pain, sending Thorns plummeting back to earth. It's call echoed through the little valley, richoceying off the walls of rubble. It was only when Thorns hit the surface of the harvester and looked upwards at the beast did he realize what he had done. The metal rod was embedded in the vulture's neck. It's mask had flown off during the struggle, falling and sinking beneath the surface of the pond. Without it, the bird seemed distraught, panicking and flailing its head about in every direction. Thorns caught a much needed breath of air, followed by a fit of coughs and the spitting of water.
"Get over here, hurry Thorns!"
He turned to see Night's head poking out of a tunnel, his eyes darting from the vulture, to Thorns, to the sky, and back. Thorns pushed himself from the ground and began crawling in his direction, still working on orienting himself. Then, his foot brushed against something. Another sharpened bar sat before him, about the same size as the other one. Thorns glanced over his shoulder at the flailing vulture. Something burned within his chest. This time, it was not his lungs.
"What are you doing, come over here! Hurry up!" Night yelled.
Thorns snatched the spear from the ground. What right did that sorry excuse for an avian have to consider him as food? He was not food! He did not belong on this food chain to begin with! He was so much more, so much more than a simple pipe cleaner rat crawling about the waste of civilization, and he was going to prove it to that no good lump of flesh feathers!
The spear flew from his hand with ease. It cut through the air with unparalleled grace, soaring right towards the vulture's exposed face. The bird paused to look back at him, it's beady eyes catching sight of what was soon to be its untimely demise. Then...
The vulture ducked. The spear clattered against the wall behind it and fell to the water, sinking slowly out of sight. A moment of silence passed. The bird and the slugcat locked eyes, both unsure about how to proceed. Thorns blinked.
The vulture shot forwards.

Anger
A primordial instinct that drives us to extinction.