FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It turned out that what they were saying on the street was true. I had thought it all bullshit, of course, since the only evidence for it were whispers and rumors, none of which were substantiated by the media or any officials. The anecdotes spread, building up on a figure until the image of him had reached ridiculous proportions. He could jump as high as a building, outrun a train, _and_fly. All the the same time! Not to mention his fists had the power of a hydraulic press on overcharge, he could shoot lightning from his eyes, and on top of it all, he could appear in multiple places at the same time to save people.

Of course, there was a fair amount of conflicting reports. But if you managed to sift through all the hyperbolic nonsense, there did seem to be a grain of truth lying at the source. Most notable was that various events were occuring downtown that the city seemed to be desperately trying to cover up, from building fires to audible shootouts. Whenever anyone tried to penetrate the barriers the police erected to shroud what was happening from prying eyes, they were swiftly turned away, "for their safety," of course.

I had encountered one of these blocked off areas myself just last week, and thought nothing of it. "Another gang shootout," people around the place were saying. Nothing special, just a bunch of idiots shooting each other, hopefully thinning the herd a little. I remember catching hints of "masked man," but thought it might just be in reference to someone in one of the gangs. How wrong I was.

You see, I had recently gotten into some dirty business, just to try and keep a roof over my head. I was desparate to move out and be on my own, but had incurred a vast amount of debt along the way, and before I knew it the creditors were knocking at the door and threatening to take everything away.

So, as a solution, I had heard, all hush-hush like, that a shady group downtown was offering double what I was making now for some deliveries. Seeing as how I did deliveries already (but of a shitty Chinese food kind), I thought it'd be easy enough. The only rules were to be on time, don't tell anyone who you were working for, and above all, don't look in the package. I'd show up when I got the text with the time and place, take the package (usually in the form of a backpack), and take it where I was told. Show up, hand it over, get paid, badda-bing, badda-boom. Nothing to it.

Last night was special, though. Instead of a pack, I was handed a USB flash drive. I tried to think nothing of it, but my mind swam to think of what secrets could possibly be on it, and who would be accessing them thanks to me. What kind of harm would I be causing by continuing to run these deliveries? Such a thought bothered me every so often, but when I thought about the fire of debt I was finally able to do more than weakly piss at, such thoughts were soon forgotten.

The guy who handed me the drive was the usual dude. A canine a few years older than me, piercings on his face, ragged clothes, dark fur. He told me the address and had me recite it three times. "You've got 15 minutes," he said before revving his bike and speeding away, leaving me alone under the bridge with nothing but the sounds of honking cars and police sirens. Fifteen minutes was a damn short amount of time for me to get across town, so I set out immediately, speeding on my bicyle as fast as I could petal.

I darted between buildings, around people, cut through crowds. I tried to take the route the way the crow flies, cutting down time going around the more dangerous areas. I briefly thought of how weird it was that I had such a strict time limit, but it quickly left my mind when I risked getting hit by cars several times, hardly looking both ways or even slowing down before I crossed busy intersections. It was getting hard to see, now that it was twilight out. The sun wasn't up, but still cast an eerie glow on the earth. Even with the sunlight, streetlights were on as well, creepily trapping time between day and night.

I reached a clearing behind a series of tenemants that had no light but for the strange twilight glow. It was fenced off, but just behind the circular clearing was the place I needed to be. It'd be faster to hop the fence and cut directly across, rather than cycle around it. I knew this was a bad area, but I also knew the pay would be good. Reluctantly, I locked my bike on the neartest anchor point I could find, which ended up being a rusted, gutted car abdandoned amid waist-high grass. Hopefully it'd still be there when I came back. The fence was wooden and was taller than me. With a running start, I hopped up, grabbed the edge, and hurled myself over in one swift movement.

Not being the cool young wolf I make myself out to be, I tumbled clumsily on the other side and hit the ground with my back. I lay there a moment, dazed and winded, having felt the air forcefully squeezed from my lungs. After getting up I took a few wobbly steps forward before checking my pockets.

"Fuck," I whispered, not feeling the drive where it should be. All around me was overgrown grass, and a little further ahead was a graveyard of scrap metal, salvaged vehicals, and all kinds of other crap that people coralled here for whatever reason. It was dark, and it was oddly quiet, with the hustle and bustle of downtown sounding miles away, like a faint memory.

I had minutes at most. Quickly I searched the ground for the drive, parting grass and digging through smaller bits of scrap like loose screws, bolts, and sections of rusted water pipe.

"Son of a bitch, why did they have to make these fucking things smaller and smaller?" I growled as I searched, frantically moving from one square foot of space to another, hoping I was being smart by searching in a grid-like fashion. The darkness didn't help, and the light I had to go on was dwindling. Time was running out.

I didn't notice the person perched on top of the fence, looking down at me. He crouched up there like a bird, his hands between his feet, both sets of which were grasping the ledge. "Psst," he said.

Embarrassingly enough, I gasped like I had just stumbled upon a murder, and fell back right onto my ass. I looked up and saw his black silhouette, his details impossible to see in the encroaching darkness. He sat up there and stared down at me like a gargoyle, his head tilting to the side. I couldn't see his face, or even his fur. Just shadow.

"Oops, scared ya?" he said with a playful tone. I don't know if it was to calm me down or intimidate me even more. Either way, it performed the latter.

Naturally, I didn't respond. I didn't know what to say, and my brain wasn't functioning well enough to form words. It was fight or flight, but I took secret option C and decided to stay completely still like an idiot.

With the grace of a dancer, he hopped down to the ground, landing in a crouch, then nimbly sprang back up to his feet. He wasn't too tall, maybe just under six feet. His figure, by what I could tell, was lithe, with somewhat thick arms and legs. He was definitely fit, I could tell just by the outline of his body and the ease with which he moved, like gravity wasn't an issue to him.

My ears pressed back against my head. I trembled and put my hands up, not knowing what else to do, and suddenly in fear for my life. "I - I dropped it," I stammered, bargaining the one thing I could think of to save myself. "In the grass somewhere, after I fell."

The figure walked towards me. "Yeah, I saw you take a tumble," he said. His voice matched his figure: somewhat light and young sounding, with that constant hint of playfulness as though he was always in control and everything around him was a game. "I've been following you. You can really zip around on that bike, huh?"

I furrowed my brow, one of my ears perking up now. "I....what?" I said, lowering my arms and trying to get a better look at this guy. A couple more details were apparent - well, the absence of details. He wore a suit of somekind that covered his fur. Obviously, it was dark in color, and seemed to cover his whole body. Even his head was covered. I couldn't see eyes, ears, anything, but there were two light-colored holes where his eyes should be. They were the only things I could see clearly.

The figure put his hands on his hips and circled around me like a man taking a stroll through the neighborhood, his head down and turning side to side. He was searching for the drive, albeit quite casually, like he was walking around and inspecting a new car he was thinking about buying. I thought about making a run for it, but he was too close to me for that to be feasible. Instead, I remained still, his knees against my chest.

"Yep, there it is!" he said, crouching to dig his hand through the grass. When it pulled away, I could see the rectangular shape of the tiny drive between his fingers. I also couldn't help but notice the perfect curve of his ass as he crouched, giving me a good side view of it. Shit, not even artists could draw a circle so perfect. But before I could think anything more of it, he stood up, and it fell back into shadow.

"How...how did you find it?" I said, my fascination with his sight now greater than my infatuation with his fit butt.

"I know! They make these things smaller all the time, don't they?" he said, tossing the drive up and then catching it again, closing his fist around it. "I'm sure you know this by now, buuuuuut I'm gonna have to take this," he said.

I blinked a few times, my fear starting to dwindle, becoming replaced by panic. "Wait, what? No! I need it! If I don't -" I stopped myself before I said anything incriminating. Before I could continue, he put a hand up for me to stop, then crouched right in front of me.

He didn't have a face. He wore a mask, dark blue, with white circle where his eyes would be and a symmetrical patterns of straight lines on his cheeks. His mouth had no adordment, but I could see the fabric stretch as he moved his jaw to talk. "I know. But you won't have to worry about that," he said, a softly this time, rather than playfully. It did a good job of calming me down, and my heart began to beat faster not in panic, but with a feeling of...something else.

He was kneeling before me like a knight about to take his vows, with one hand on his knee, the other proffered to me. I looked from his face, to the hand, to his face again, and didn't notice that I was leaning slightly closer towards him. "I won't?"

He shook his head. I could hear the material of his suit creak with the movement, louder even than the car horns constantly blaring in the city. The hand was also a dark blue, the same color, with white fingertips and a white circular pattern around his wrist like a bracelet. I noticed a similar white circle pattern wrapped around his elbow. "I'll take care of it. That's why I'm here. Well, one of the reasons," he said, and teasingly wiggled the drive in front of me. I couldn't see it, but I had a feeling he was grinning devilishly behind his mask. "Come on, get up. I need to get you out of here. Don't worry, you'll be safe."

I still had no idea what the fuck was going on. I was thinking at a thosand miles an hour, not able to reach any semblance of an explanation with how much of a jumble my head was in. I took the hand, my own trembling slightly. As soon as I touched his palm, his fingers locked around mine firmly. He stood, and I could see the muscles of his thighs bulging against his suit as he did. He pulled me up with him, and I was shocked to see that I was a couple inches taller than him. "Alright, time to go," he said. Before I could get a good look at him, his arm went around my waist. It was solid, and I could feel the firm muscles of his bicep flex against my side as he took a good grip of me. It wasn't bulky, exactly, but toned, like a swimmer's, maybe. "Hey, what are you-" I started, but it turned into a yelp as I was suddenly yanked into the air. As though I was on a rollercoaster, I arched a parabola over the fence, and landed on the other side with as much impact as though I had just walked down a step.

My whole body was so tense that I didn't notice his arm had left my waist. I looked from side to side so hard my neck snapped, but I ignored it as I looked for the man. He wasn't by my side, but instead was several yards directly in front of me. He was facing me, but was jogging backwards, and I just knew he was smiling when he said, in that playful tone, "Hey, thanks! And find another line of work!" Then he turned around, and ran towards a streetlight. I lurched forward, hoping to get a better look at him as he passed under the light, but to my dismay he jumped _over_the light as he got close to it, and disappeared into the night sky.

The strange quiet that had deafened me to ambiant noises when he was near me lifted, and suddenly I was aware of doors bursting open and angry people stepping out of their homes, probably alerted by my yell when I was swept over the fence by...whatever that was. Surpressing my bewilderment for the time being, I ran from backyard to backyard until I reached a street, forgetting about my bike completely. I followed it north, then came across one of the busier main streets, which was well lit. I sheltered in the light, pausing to catch my breath. I didn't know if I had just been saved, or screwed.

* * *

Naturally, I couldn't tell anyone what had happened to me, or what I saw, because of the questions that would be raised when I said that I was cutting across a dangerous junkyard in one of the more crime-ridden parts of town. That masked figure...he said he had been following me. For how long? And why did he decide to pounce just tonight? Maybe he knew I was in danger. Or maybe he knew that what he needed was on this drive. Whatever it could have been.

I was laying on my bed, unable to sleep, with my neighbors above me stomping around and the neighbor adjacent to me blasting his bass-heavy music. I had been thinking about my night for hours. What had happened, what it meant, and if anything would happen to me now that I had failed my job and gotten the package stolen. Would someone come for me?

I was jolted upwards by every noise, in a constant state of panic, thinking someone was breaking in. I was so tense so constantly that it was making me feel sick. In a desperate attempt for answers or for sense amidst this madness, I ran through the night again in my head, step by step.

When I thought about him, I relaxed a little. I was less jumpy, but was still jumping at every noise. One thing did calm me down, though.

"Don't worry, you'll be safe," he had said.

That line played in my head like a broken record. It helped me ease myself back onto my bed, helped me think about his face, his outline...his body. Helped me finally drift off to sleep.

In my dreams I was flying above the city with his arm around my waist.