I've never been a betting mammal, but if I'm going to bet on anything right about now, it's that we're going to snap some time soon... none of us are going to be able to survive the next little bit of time, are we?
No, Theo, that's not the right way to think about this whole deal, you need to stay calm otherwise you're all going to end up dead for real, and you sure as hell haven't survived this much and done this will for yourself only to fall short and flat on your face at the end.
Of course, that would be my luck, but seeing how I'm trying to do better here...
"Can someone please explain to me what's going on here?" I ask, and instead of any words in response, I get silence and blank stares full of pain.
"Please?" I ask, feeling my knees start to knock, "can we please just survive this?"
"You're a fucking pelt, fox," one of the guards snarls, ramming me to the ground with the butt of his rifle, and today, hell, I'm feeling like I'm just the butt of a joke. "If you manage to make it through all of this alive, well, wouldn't that take a minor miracle?"
"You're telling me," I say, not daring to move, not when I can feel the tip of yet another damn bayonet dig into my back.
"And all of you-" the soldier says, gesturing with a sweep of his free arm, "none of you move or I'm going to make sure copper stains the dirt here for a good long fucking time."
"Pass, thanks," Tony mutters, and thankfully nobody hears him, at least not any creature with the hearing range that we have... I know we're trapped by Sturgmen... hell, it'll be a dam miracle if we get out of this one alive, so that's why I try and keep an extra one stuffed in my back pockets...
"Can you at least try not to be so darn dirty-minded?" Jenna asks, and can somebody please just help me here?
"Can you take the damn bayonet out of my paw please?" I whimper, my tail digging at my paws... I can smell the salt and iron in my fur, and the searing in my paws is almost enough to make my brain fry... what little of it there is left, that is... hell, the edges of my vision are going red as it is... please please please please please take the damn thing out!
As if they can read my mind (and screw it, they probably all can), the guards all look at me, and one of them shakes their head, barely barely barely, but they do, and it tears me up even more inside.
"Why not?" I whimper, the edges of my vision red now and coming closer in, and I'm not going to be able to stop myself from crying... well, screw it, I'm not going to be able to anyways 'cause I'm crying anyways...
"How can we prove that you're not going to kill us? You're a fucking fox, is there anyone who can prove what you said? Can anyone corroborate your claim? 'Cause until then, foxy woxy, you're staying there..."
"Please, no, let him be!" Alaina says, begging, pleading, and the soldier angles his gun at her head, and it's all I can do not to let my scream of terror slip out of my mind and into my mouth.
"Well, is there?" the soldier asks, and both of us are shocked when someone wearing camouflage raises an arm.
"I can, sir," the soldier says.
"Your name and rank, soldier?"
"Pretasetyo, sir, Staff Sergeant Pretasetyo."
"Pretasetyo, you mean the same Pretasetyo who bashed me and asked me what the fucking hell I was doing here the first time, that Pretasetyo, the same Pretasetyo who couldn't possibly believe that a sixteen year old walking, talking red fox was his commandant, that Pretasetyo?"
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Parallels
FantascienzaWhether or not Theodore Aspen (Theo, to his few friends) wanted to get dragged into the conflict between his old home, Terra, and his new one, Earth, that doesn't matter. He thought that by becoming an exchange student to Earth with his lupine best...
