Cynophobia

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  "Loki you have a puppy!" Rose said happy reaching for the bag. "Can I hold him?"

"Go ahead," he barked as he ran beside the jeep.

Roselyn carefully picked up the small black Cynoid. His tail wagged when their eyes met. "He is so adorable, did you guys find Zeta?"

A felt a pang in my heart for Loki. "She died protecting him, Alpha made his sons hunt her down. The Cynoid that attack you on the beach, Delta, was the one who killed her. His oldest son turned on him and kill Delta, so that's a plus."

Rose cupped her hand over her mouth. "Oh Loki, I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, at least I still have our pup," Loki replied.

"How long will it take for us to get to the hangar?" I asked, changing the subject.

Cairo looked at his compass and map. "It should take about seven hours. The good thing about the jeep is we can get there within a day. The bad thing is that we're more noticeable."

"Yes, but I have a gun. I can shoot them down if they get too close. James has been making us all practice our accuracy since day Ash told us where the weak spot was," Ray responded.

"Not to mention our two guard dogs," I said gesturing towards Rags and Loki. They were running on either side of the jeep.

"What have you two been doing all of this time? Who is the new Cynoid? And how did you two get so far away from the base in so little time? You ran more in a few days than we did in three months," Rose questioned.

"First we had to escape the mine. We met up with another one of Loki's mates. She died helping us escape. She died telling us where to find Rags, he's what we used to call The Ancient. After about a day of travelling, we found him. Then we went to go rescue Loki's mates, we were only successful saving Obsidian. Rags led us to the compound, everything went to hell once we got there," I replied.

"Why did Vincent pick up instead of Ivy, is she alright?" Cairo asked.

"Vincent was pretty pissed when he found out that she was hiding communication with you," Ray replied. "They got into a fight, just a verbal one. But he couldn't do anything to harm her, she was one of the core members. James, Ash, and Cyrus defended her."

"I'm sorry we created a mess, but now we have the key to winning this war," I said happily.

Ray looked at me with his remaining brown eye. "I'm sorry for calling you two cowards. When I saw how many Strikers you were surrounded by, I took it all back. I thought you were going to go straight to the hangar."

"We couldn't leave you two here," I explained. "We are a team, we stick together."

"I'm not one of you," Ray sighed. "I betrayed you to the Remnants."

Rose shook her head. "You were really eager to go save them, you practically had to beg Vincent to let you come along. Plus without me holding them back, they got really far."

"Let's just say everything worked out and put it behind us," Cairo murmured.

"Cairo, shouldn't you be studying flight patterns or something?" I asked half jokingly.

He let out an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, Rose take shot gun, I have a book in my backpack." He grabbed the side of the jeep and swung between me and Rose. Rose just climbed over the seat and sat down.

Cairo pulled out a piloting book that he had in his bag. He slumped down in the seat and opened the page where he bent the corner a little. He grabbed a pair of glasses and began reading.