FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

1

Rinkachi yawned.

You could've said he wore his loose kimono the way a withered scarecrow wore its raggy jacket, if scarecrows were tigers with muscles sculpted from marble. His white hair was tied back in a long ponytail that ended in an explosion of spikes sharper than a porcupine's back. Scars connected the various contours along his chest and limbs. After yawning, he scratched beneath a loincloth so clashingly white it could've only been brand new. All of his clothes were new, once. They were custom tailored and made of the finest materials. A day on Rinkachi's back put an end to that pretentious nonsense. Being wrapped around his balls on this hot day wasn't doing his loincloth any favors. Newspapers wrapped around Atlantean fish heads didn't have it this bad.

Beatstick was dead.

They hadn't heard from Horei in days.

Gunso never returned.

That left three of them.

The Three Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus didn't have a nice ring to it. Well, who ever heard of a six-petaled lotus anyway? Didn't they have, like, lots of petals or something? Never mind the logistics of actually hiring the corresponding amount of otherworldly assassins, there had to've been a more pleasant sounding number than "six". Rinkachi picked his nose in deep concentration.

The Sixteen Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus? No.

The Twenty-Eight Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus? Nah.

"Rin!"

Rinkachi sat up straight and pulled his bare feet off Lord Kage's flower vase. They hovered in place as he debated whether or not it would've been rude to dip them in the garden pond below. The footsteps were getting louder. He crossed his legs on the veranda. His hands dove into his wide sleeves and he shut his eyes to don a meditative poise.

Michitaka Kage ran around the corner, two adult-sized swords clattering against his sides like baseball cards in spokes. Rinkachi imagined his sister's scowl to maintain a neutral expression.

The young otter wore an elegant silk kimono. A sash of some similarly expensive material was tied around his waist, in contrast to the musty rope Rinkachi used for a belt.

"It's time for practice," Michitaka said, beaming. "You promised."

Rinkachi yawned again. "Did I?"

"You did. Where are your swords?"

"A true Kage," Rinkachi began, settling back into his original uncouth, undignified resting position, "never reveals his secrets to a prospecting foe."

"You lost them again."

Rinkachi winced. He'd taken arrows to the back with less sting.

"I...put them away before going out last night, that's all," he said, folding his arms behind his head.

"I won't tell Meiku, if you practice with me."

Rinkachi's fuzzy brows twitched. One without Meikurichi for a sister might've assumed a big tiger like him wouldn't bend to such a threat. He preferred the relaxing pleasure of nailing stakes through his eardrums to her lectures, which usually followed or preceded an assault so brutal it'd put her on trial for war crimes.

"Fine," Rinkachi growled. "Lend me one of yours. They're too big for you anyway."

"They are not!" Michitaka stomped and tripped against one of the swords. He recovered, but only just, with a tight grimace and rosy cheeks. The laughter he expected never came. Rinkachi was looking toward the garden's walls, ears perked.

"What's that look on your face?" he asked.

"What look?"

"You're smirking like the guy on those stranger danger posters back in the city."

“Something's going on in South Gate," Rinkachi said, standing, memorizing his current expression to examine it in a mirror later. "Looks like I'm gonna warm-up before our practice session."

Michitaka's eyes widened. "Take me with you!"

"Nah," Rinkachi said. “Your old man's got enough reasons to have my head on a pike without me getting you killed fighting bandits."

He crouched low, then launched himself backwards with a soaring flip. Landing against a shaggy willow on the opposite side of the pond, he launched himself with another leap when it leaned under his weight and flung him back. Next, he skip-ran across jutting rocks, somersaulting to get atop the largest stone to vault over the tall flower hedges.

Michitaka gaped for some time before forcing his mouth shut.

"Show off!" he shouted after him.

South Gate, huh? Michitaka ran back the way he came, scabbards smacking his thighs. Who said he couldn't go for a jog before practice?

2

"What's the commotion Ma'am?" a passing rabbit pushing a wheelbarrow of vegetables asked an older hare.

Laborers stood atop unfinished rooftops to get a better view of South Gate. Townsfolk down below stopped to watch teams of guards rushing toward it. The whole street was congested with the kind of gossiping crowds that only the bandits everyone squawked about could purgate.

City animals, the fatally bored kind who'd pull out their cellphones to record a kaiju's growing foot, would've gotten close enough to the action to know what to get it for Valentine's day. Settlers, by comparison, saw enough action in the Wilds to write, direct, produce, and star in their own Dollywood blockbusters. They whispered amongst one another, but a respectable distance away so as to get all the juicy details without becoming a footnote.

"Haven't you heard? It's bandits, Lad," the old woman, to whom bandits were a novel excitement while they weren't chopping off her head, cooed. "A whole band of 'em, right outside the gate! They shut it in time, but they're still trying to get in."

"Wow," the somber young rabbit said. He'd worked the fields since sunrise and needed a pick-me-up his impending doom at the hands of murderous predators couldn't provide.

"Someone could get eaten! How utterly dreadful," the old woman said with a big smile.

"Not on my watch!"

The old woman screamed, then fainted.

Rinkachi, who hung upside-down from a sturdy branch directly behind them, caught her arm as she fell. He tossed her over the other rabbit's wheelbarrow, who stared glumly at him.

"Lord Rinkachi, what are you doing here?" he asked. The sudden appearance of a large tiger hadn't so much as tickled his glacial heart rate.

Rinkachi dropped down and landed on his feet, eyes closed, arms folded. Someone nearby happened to hit a bell when he flashed a pearly white grin. Women swooned. The rabbit blinked slowly.

"I'm always near when danger's afoot. Settle down, everyone. No one's getting eaten today."

"What about the people behind the gate?" a curious pedestrian inquired.

Rinkachi considered this. "They're not under my watch, so they're probably getting eaten."

"I saw it myself," another passerby mentioned conversationally. "This one guard dude was still standing after he got his head bitten off. Kept fighting for a bit before he dropped, then they swarmed him. They ripped his clothes off, and started biting him all over, and—"

"The guards behind the gate don't count," Rinkachi interrupted, noticing some listeners' complexions turning unhealthy shades. "They're doing their duty, sacrificing their lives for you. I will ensure their sacrifice is not in vain!"

"Where are your swords?" someone in the crowd shouted.

"I'll bet he lost them again."

"I wouldn't lose my underwear if I had a ball breaking sister like Lady Meikurichi, and this guy's losing his swords? He's gotta have steel in his loincloth."

"Who said that?!" Rinkachi roared at the throng. Everybody shut up.

"It was someone over there. No, not you. You! Yes, you! I'll have you know that, A) I do have balls of steel, and B) I'm not and never was afraid of Meiku! That's slander and you'll hang for it. You!" Rinkachi thrusted a finger at a random child making an earnest effort to swallow a jumbo lollipop whole. "Tie that animal up and see to it he's hanged."

Rinkachi leaped over everyone's heads, landed atop a tiled awning and ran toward South Gate, traversing a disarray of roofs, walls, trees, and fences as easily as solid ground.

He needed a weapon.

Well, he didn't need one. He wanted to show up to his dates tonight with clean fangs and claws at least. What could he use, what could he use...ah! That'd do.

A beaver looked as he was playing a tile in a patch of thinset mortar. It sounded like someone ran toward him up on the rooftop, fast.

"YOINK! I'm borrowing this. Thanks!" an orange blur's voice echoed after zooming past. Freshly laid tiles and cobblestones were still falling around him as he gaped at his now empty hands, then at the shrinking back of a tiger using rooftops like a jungle gym.

3

New Lotus Town was an odd settlement to find this deep on the Feral Islands. Where past settlers were lucky to pull weeds without someone misplacing an arrow in their foreheads, terraced fields and vegetable farms spanned the landscape around the town proper. Its oriental architecture, far from the strictly practical design of a hastily built colony, looked plucked off a postcard with a big red sunset in the background. It would've had “Wish You Were Here!" printed in big letters over quaint, upturned rooftops. On the massive walls surrounding New Lotus, it would've said “Sike".

These walls made gated communities look inclusive. They had all the welcome of a wrought iron fence and the rabid guard dog frothing behind it. The gold-parapeted walls framed four gates, massive double doors, that required the combined strength of twenty men, or two machismo-deficient guys working some levers and cranks, to open.

South Gate was painted red, like the others, to pop against the viridescent wilderness. Weather and age faded it. Bandits and guards on its outer side were giving it a sloppy new coat with the other's entrails.

Recumbent animals blanketed the dirt road leading out of town, in various states of wholeness or lack thereof. Behind the wall's parapets, archers ducked for cover or caught flying arrows in ways that would've only raised eyebrows in a morgue. Bandits swarmed the forest, hunting fled guards and ambushing travelers.

Diverse war parties like these, with a variety of predator species working together, were uncommon. Predators formed tribes with their own or hunted solo. Eclectic bands were typically destitute vagabonds looking to carve a primeval empire out of the Wilds' autochthonous pie chart. Few lasted more than a week. It always came crashing down over stupid shit, like who drank whose beer, who fucked whose wife, who ate whose leg, or who drank whose beer while fucking their wife and eating their leg.

Not these guys.

These bandits cooperated like they shared beer, wives, and legs for team building exercises, which might've explained some of the peg legs. If there was a league for butchering people alive and making them watch as you devour their guts like rage zombies, these guys were organized enough to unanimously avoid entering, because that's fucked up.

That said, they were pretty good at it. While some demonstrated this to less than enthusiastic guards, others built ladders out of jungle foliage.

"Yoooo!"

The bandits looked up at the tiger with his foot on a parapet and a garden rake over his shoulder. Plaster dripped from its tines. Sunlight flooded over his back in a fierce halo of rim light, which he'd spent the past few minutes repositioning himself to perfect. The sole surviving guard behind the wall'd critiqued his poses while cowering behind cover.

"This will be your first and last warning," Rinkachi said. "Collect your fallen comrades. Leave now. Keep your lives. Good deal, eh?"

Rinkachi was the first person today to catch an arrow between his fingers. The guard behind him, not seeing the arrowhead barely touched his nose, fainted.

"Alright, I'm coming down. Keep that same energy while I'm ripping your hearts out of your asses."

Rinkachi backed away and made a running leap, somersaulting to dodge a flurry of arrows that would've hit a less handsome target. He landed in a crouch surrounded by scraggly thugs who must've thought things like "Man, he's so cool!" or "How can I get abs like that?" moments before he swung his rake at them. A mutt the color and smell of manure spun around with his throat gouged out, spraying blood as he fell. Another blinked and missed his own eyeballs being ripped from their sockets. They became the meatballs on the kebab skewer embedded deep in the last bandit's face, who died mid-battle cry. His body went limp, his head hanging from Rinkachi's rake like a flaccid sausage.

Rinkachi waited for someone to shout “Get him, you idiots!" and was instead almost caught off guard when two sword-wielding animals rushed him at once.

Almost.

He shoved the raked canine between him and a slash meant for his back, then kicked the corpse at his attacker and ducked low, dodging the second attacker's slash from the front. Twirling his freed rake upwards, he smashed the front bandit's chin and sent him flying. The other animal, after shoving the corpse aside, jumped at Rinkachi with another strike, who spun on his heels while swinging his rake. Bloodied tines tore dirty clothes, flesh, and guts from the leaping bandit's belly in one jiggly chunk. It launched into the faces of nearby bandits, followed by the dead man's body as it soared over Rinkachi's head.

"Quit comin' at me one at a time! Rush me together. I wanna have some fun!" Rinkachi shouted.

"W-who th'fuck's this guy? He's so strong!" a bandit said. Rinkachi's ears perked at that.

Aaaah.

The Climactic Moment!

Trumpets blared in his head. Confetti flew in his mind's eye instead of dust and blood and smelly fabric. For the first time today, he missed his swords.

Spinning and tossing his rake into the air, Rinkachi pulled open his kimono to expose his bare, scarred chest. He then hip thrusted into a pose he genuinely believed looked threatening, then caught the falling rake from behind, underhanded.

"I am Rinkachi," he said, grinning. "One of the Six—"

Five animals jumped him, slashing, stabbing, thrusting their weapons where he once stood after he'd slipped under the legs of a large bear.

"I was introducing myself, asshole! Who does that? Who attacks somebody while they're doing their introduction?!"

The bear he'd ducked under might've given a coherent answer if he hadn't stabbed the back of his neck with dirty rake tines. Instead, he spat up lots of blood and dropped dead. The stuck rake slipped out of Rinkachi's wet palms as he fell over.

"Hey, I gotta return that!"

Rinkachi sidestepped and shoved a coyote that'd tried stabbing him from the side, throwing him and his knife into another animal. Both fell, and as the coyote tried getting up Rinkachi stomped his heel into the back of his neck, breaking it.

The last two bandits, a lizard and a hawk, witnessed this the way a fawn might watch a speeding sixteen-wheeler turn their parents into roadkill. A dark, wet stain grew on the lizard's crotch. The hawk dropped his spear to put his hands up.

“Hoh? Feeling remorseful now, I see," Rinkachi, bending over to borrow the stabbed bandit's bow and arrows, said. "You can go, beat it."

"Y-you're just gonna shoot us in the back!" the hawk said. The lizard said nothing. Rinkachi'd never seen a cold-blooded animal sweat so much.

"No shit. But at least I'm not mauling you. Besides, I might miss."

He began counting to ten.

The hawk flew away. It took exactly nine seconds for the lizard's life to finish flashing before his eyes before he ran away, terrified.

Rinkachi shot twice. He didn't miss.

The dust settled. Aside from some deathrattles, the noisy sluicing of various arteries, and the hawk's body hitting the ground with an oddly juxtaposed splat, everything was quiet.

"So much for a fun afternoon," he yawned. "Could've sworn there were more of..."

Several ladders were propped against the walls. Noticing them, Rinkachi now heard the auditory hodgepodge of clashing swords, distant screams, and alarms coming from town.

"Oh shit."

4

Michitaka Kage, trading his silk kimono for western shorts and a simple vest he'd borrowed from laundry lines along the way, took back roads and narrow alleys to avoid being seen.

His etiquette teacher would've had an aneurysm seeing him now, running around dirty streets with his bare chest showing. Imagining their aghast face, as well as finally getting to test his skills, gave him an adrenaline spike that carried him farther than his own endurance would've allowed.

He should've snuck out dressed as a commoner to fight bandits ages ago. Not that he wanted bandits to attack New Lotus. Well, he kinda did, so long as the invasion was manageable. But only with his help, of course. Disguised as a commoner, he'd swing the losing battle in their favor and be home for tea before anyone noticed he was gone. Everyone would praise the mysterious sword-fighting youth who disappeared before he could be properly congratulated. Bandits could attack every day if he could privately enjoy everyone's adoration after saving their lives. Weak bandits preferably, but not too weak.

Someone's head rolled like tumbleweed on the street up ahead.

Michitaka skidded to a stop, staring.

It must've been a bandit's head. Surely no one in New Lotus had teeth the shape and color of candy corn. Just a bandit, yeah. He peeked out of the alley, avoiding the head, and ducked back in before an arrow buried itself in the wall where his face'd been. When it stopped juddering like a hyperactive woodpecker, Michitaka looked again.

Town guards dueled scroungy animals amidst corpses mopping the ground with their insides. A thick, brown fog blanketed what he once wistfully called “the action" like a gritty filter. Clashing swords and shrill screams rattled the air with its tinny reverberation.

And, Gods, that stench!

It reminded him of a hanging he'd snuck out to watch, where the condemned soiled himself. He'd tasted the criminal's last meal the way he tasted blood in the air now.

There was a crash to his right.

A guard's headless corpse fell against an outdoor cafe's table. Its severed neck emptied itself in rhythmic spurts, like laundresses successively dumping wastewater. Its exposed spinal column, bundled in pulsating flesh, was a swollen eye blinking at him. The body's hanging right hand opened and closed.

Michitaka found a large potted plant to water with his stomach acid.

"Kid, look out!"

He recognized the voice. A large alligator's shadow eclipsed Michitaka as he turned to face it. His face was a wicked yawn of malice. His axe, inches away from his head, slowed as though swung through molasses.

It was like back then, the last time he appeared.

Michitaka froze.

And bells jingled.

An apparition drifted beside the alligator, moving swiftly despite time's gradual crawl. Then the bandit's arms fell off. Both cleanly severed arms landed with dull flops, followed by the harsh slice of the man's axe shearing three of his toes when it landed blade-first. Michitaka blinked. The stubs where his elbows and forearms once met were pink, like sliced ham with the bone still in.

The bandit opened his mouth, maybe to yell, maybe to utter his confusion, and a thin, white line drew down his forehead to his groin. Sunlight shone brighter between the growing vertical gap of his bisected body as both halves fell in opposite directions. Blood flowed only when they hit the ground, showering everything. Redness sprayed everything except for the wall directly behind Michitaka and the space where his soles met the ground.

"Wuh," he said dumbly.

"Michitaka Kage, what on earth are you wearing?" a voice born to have a ruler and a palm to slap with it asked behind him.

He wanted to say “Another man's guts," but it came out as “Whahuhuh?" which only sounded marginally dumber than the face he made while saying it looked.

The tigress behind him wore a black, floral kimono and an overcoat flowing with the breeze like a vengeful spirit's nightgown. A single silk ribbon tied her long hair back. Bells hung from the knot. Kage swords were sheathed at her sides, and she held a second pair in her left hand. Michitaka avoided her gaze. Her's was the kind of stringent presence that sucked joy out of rooms and sent it to bed without supper. It demanded mindfulness of Ps and Qs, or else.

"M-m-meikurichi," Michitaka said, minding neither, unless you counted his already empty bladder regarding the former. She hadn't called out to him a moment ago. That was…

"Me! I'm here too!" Rinkachi shouted, jogging over. Sweat rolled down his forehead, either from fighting or nearly watching him get scalped, Michitaka couldn't tell.

"Brother," Meikurichi began, weariness warming her the way two degrees will for a freezer. "You didn't bring Michitaka here, I hope."

"N-no, I didn't. Rather, I distinctly remember telling him not to follow me," Rinkachi said.

"No you didn't!" Michitaka snapped. Debilitating shock or not, he wasn't going under Meiku's bus quietly. “You said you wouldn't take me with you, but you never said I couldn't come!"

"It was definitely implied."

"But—"

Meikurichi cleared her throat and they both shut up.

"You lost your swords again, Rin."

What should've been a quiet moment, strangled with tension, was instead one full of a battlefield's clangor, but no less strangled. Rinkachi suppressed the urge to swallow.

She tossed the two katanas she'd carried to him after another pause.

"Where did you find them?" he asked, feigning indifference.

"You dropped them when you toppled that merchant's stall last night."

“Ooooh," Rinkachi said. Then, bristled, “You followed me? Wait, you're that angry bi—woman people said was glaring at me. How come I never saw you?"

"You were drunk."

"Oh yeah."

"The salient question is why were you, and still are, dressed like a slovenly street urchin?"

"Haven't you heard the song, 'Sis?"

Meikurichi raised a brow.

"I'm lettin' it all hang out. Chicks love a man with scars and muscles."

Another pause.

"You mean those women you harassed in your inebriated stupor?"

"I take offense to that," Rinkachi said in as inoffensive a tone as he could, "they agreed when I asked to join them."

"Of course they agreed! You're a tiger!"

"A devilishly charming, dangerously handsome tiger."

"They'd've agreed with anything you asked."

"You think so? I was hoping I could maybe save time by having all of them come back to my room at once."

Michitaka's focus bounced between them as they argued, bandits and guards still slaughtering one another around them, until a severed hand hit and slid across a nearby table.

"Gods, what happened to you?" Rinkachi asked, finally noticing Michitaka's bloodied state.

"We'll get you cleaned up after we've secured the area, young Master," Meikurichi said.

“Won't take long. I slew most of the front line already," Rinkachi grinned, unconsciously drawing a katana and slashing a stray arrow in half.

"So you allowed their remaining forces to breach the gate," Meikurichi said.

"Er..."

Fate graciously pulled Meikurichi's attention by thinning the fog where several men were surrounding a large, scarred hippo. He stood as tall as his belly was wide, which was a nice way of saying he kept a drum scale in his bathroom. His dripping club looked like a small tree someone ripped out of the ground and shaved, which was exactly what it was. It was decorated with skulls and chains and spikes with limbs skewered on them, none of which hindered its aerodynamics as he swung it at the guards with a deafening roar.

The first guard struck became a wet mist. The next two in its path went flying, their mangled corpses smashing through walls across the street like artillery shells. Everyone else, the fog included, was blown away by the gale force of his swing. Meikurichi watched this, unblinking. Rinkachi pushed Michitaka behind him.

"I think the guards got it covered," Rinkachi said. "We might as well escort the little Lord back home now. I'd rather not get dirty before my date tonight anyway. OW! Alright, I'm coming, stop pulling so hard."

His ear released, Rinkachi walked toward the hippopotamus beside his sister. He couldn't tell if the behemoth was cackling at them, or if he'd recently swallowed a bloated corpse that was now gargling. Meikurichi stopped where they wouldn't be pelted by his spittle.

"How did he even get up those ladders? He's as big as the gate itself!" Rinkachi said.

"You were probably too busy showboating to notice," Meikurichi said.

"Here we go, more slander. I've never showboated in my life."

The hippo's belly-laughter steadily became a low, awkward chuckle.

"What do you call those ridiculous poses? The flips and twirls? Those self-aggrandizing monologues?"

"The habits of a man with zest for life."

"You can have “zest" without disgracing our Lord in public."

"Um," the hippo said, and Rinkachi thrusted a finger at him.

"I'm a grown man. I don't need a babysitter."

Meikurichi glared sidelong at him. "How I wish that were true."

The siblings continued, trading jabs with themselves rather than the gargantuan bandit in front of them. The hippo's eyes darted back and forth as they bickered, his gaze soon glossing over as memories of his broken childhood, toxic relationships, and never being allowed to sit on anyone's furniture came rushing back. In the daytime drama of another universe, the camera would slowly zoom in on his vacant eyes. Background noise would become a droning ring. They'd triggered him. His trauma response was lashing out, so when he unleashed an enormous roar and readied another swing, it looked like he'd just gotten tired of waiting.

The tigers glared, one sneering, the other scowling.

"Take the back formation," Meikurichi said.

"I'm always back formation," Rinkachi complained. Moving behind her, both siblings readying their swords, the world around them dulled. Meikurichi bent low and crossed her swords. Rinkachi crossed his, so their blades intersected behind her neck.

The tigers pounced on their large prey, frozen by the icy chill of their indecipherable speed.

Then, they stood where they were previously. The world breathed again. It was over.

Michitaka hadn't blinked. All he saw were flashes and blurs.

Rinkachi flicked his swords before tossing them upwards. Both fell into their scabbards with resounding clicks.

Meikurichi wiped her blades with a silk cloth, then sheathed them properly.

The hippopotamus blinked as they walked away.

This blatant show of disrespect would've had him in pieces, if he weren't already falling apart.

His face slid off the gory slope of his head, followed by his scalp and jaw. Then his arm fell off.

A leg.

The other arm.

Red lines cross-crossed the rotund bandit as he fell, piece by piece, in a blubbery meat shower. Townsfolk, guards, and bandits watched in stunned awe, from behind hiding places or crossed weapons respectively, long after the diced corpse stopped pattering the ground.

"You may all cheer now," Rinkachi said.

Townsfolk and guards obliged, until noticing the bandits were running away and stopping to pursue them in the latter case.

"Don't make them cheer for us!" Meikurichi said, flushed.

"Why not? We saved their lives, didn't we?"

Meikurichi scowled. Rinkachi, waving at the incoming crowd, presented not to notice.

“That's our job."

"And their job is to shower us with gratitude afterward. Win-win, I say."

Rinkachi flung himself at the crowd before she could argue. After a strenuous moment where everyone beneath him struggled to support his bulk, they began tossing him up and down while cheering. Meikurichi hid her face in her hands. Michitaka, who hadn't moved since they approached the hippo, watched with his mouth still open.