FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I leaned back in the swivel chair, trying to kick my legs up onto the desk and softly swearing as my tail got tangled up between the seat and the chair back. Fuckin' thing. One damn bite from a were... what? Wolf? Fox? I have no idea. Hell, maybe it wasn't a normal were-creature at all, but an alien, or a demon, or some other sort of supernatural horror. Given that it had been dark enough beforehand, and the damn thing had had the temerity to gobble down my flashlight before sinking its teeth into my shoulder, I never really got that good of a look. The next several minutes had been a flurry of darkness, terror, fur, and mind-jarring growls. By the time things had calmed down, I realized that I was somehow balls-deep in one of the creature's orifices, and I hoped like hell that I'd managed to hit a female one before my panicked body somehow found the energy to incongruously climax.

Afterwards, I had had the good sense to pass out entirely, sparing me any more horrifying - or worse, titillating - details. When I'd come to in the back of the EMS dropship, though, I quickly realized that the encounter had caused some rather rapid, if disappointingly expected, results. The tail, for instance: a long red-orange puff of spastic fur that I quickly learned never did anything I told it to. Oh yeah, and the ears, the furry hands, the clown-shoe-sized footpaws, and the whiskered muzzle where my nose and chin used to be. And the stuff between my legs, of course, although the less I thought about that, the better.

Then again, I supposed, it was hardly the worst fate that could befall a sworn officer of the Special Situations Unit. The only parts of Harnell they ever found were contained in a carefully-crafted vest crocheted from thin, leathered strips of his own skin; Pelkir spent his bleak-eyed days and sleepless nights standing ramrod-straight in front of his workstation, continually babbling Lovecraftian nonsense as he processed the bulk of the squad's computerized intelligence and criminal databases in an eerily efficient manner. All told, I'd gotten off relatively easy so far: I still had surprisingly good health and all my faculties, and aside from my smattering of oddly bestial features, I'd managed to maintain more of a human appearance than most.

True, there were a handful of "untainted" humans who still worked in the department, but most of the time you could hardly tell; they tended to guard their purity zealously, and even in the office most of them wore the up-armored, military equivalent of a hazmat suit. Some wouldn't even take off their breather masks, which only added to the vaguely creepy atmosphere of the working environment. At least in the field, you were usually too busy making sure nothing bad happened to you to notice just how... weird things had gotten.

I mean, things had been weird for a while, but it wasn't like it had happened overnight; it was more like a steady progression, one strange thing after another popping up to redefine people's notions of what was possible. I was old enough that I'd been a teen when stuff started to manifest in earnest, but that was scattered sightings here and there; by the time I'd finished studying criminal justice at college and joined up with the newly-formed Special Situations Agency out of curiosity a decade later, such things had largely become routine and spread worldwide. From there, the... events hadn't exactly gotten more common in the intervening years, but definitely weirder and more geographically widespread.

By the point all the craziness basically engulfed the entire world, I'd sort of lost track of time, as my transformation had managed to muddle the way every part of me worked. Looking at me, various people would swear that I was in my twenties, or thirties, or forties, but it was probably longer than that; by the time I'd hit was I was sure was forty, and had somehow reverted to what looked like at least half that, I just decided to stop counting. The transformation, or curse, or whatever it was had its hooks firmly into me, and it seemed to have no intention of allowing me to succumb to old age before it was satisfied. It's not like I felt any older, anyway - my mindset was still pretty much the way it was when I'd joined up, albeit tempered with a long list of things to do, and not do, to avoid any more unfortunate situations. Even after all those years, though, I still had no idea what to do with that goddamned tail.

It was midnight, so the open-plan office was bustling: the weirdness only seemed to increase once the sun went down. Not that I minded; for some reason, after the transformation, I found that I absolutely loved midnight. Even more so when the moon was out, and if it was full... well, when that happened, I pretty much just gave up on getting anything useful done and gave myself over to stomping around outside and howling at it, among other things. Those other things, well... let's just say I'm not the only beast in town that develops some urgent needs around that time, especially in the spring and summer. Especially since urges that powerful don't always necessarily... discriminate between gender, or attractiveness, or occasionally willingness. I will say, though, that before my transformation, I'd never really thought about whether a crime was committed when two people ended up, due to clashing instincts, basically raping each other simultaneously. Turns out there's not really a law for it, but when it comes to things happening between beasts on a full moon, it seemed that not even my esteemed colleagues in Special Situations could be arsed to care much either way, or or for that matter risk their own hides trying to get between two pent-up beast-people intent on going at it.

"You know, technically, if two people pursue intercourse with each other, it's not actually rape in the first place."

I glanced towards the voice, although I already knew who it belonged to. Banton Orrelleyn could be charitably described as my partner, though it was less a case of mutual compatibility so much as no one else in the department wanting to be anywhere near his... particular attributes, to put it politely. It wasn't that he looked all that bad, comparatively; apart from the living, writhing hair that looked vaguely like someone had dumped a can of nightcrawlers on his head, the rest of him looked human enough.

No, it probably had more to do with the unblinking third eye that sat smugly in the middle of his forehead, and allowed him to glance into the surface thoughts of anyone who happened to be nearby. For rather obvious reasons, that tweaked a lot of people off - but somehow, I didn't much give a shit about it either way. If he wanted to put up with the near-continual stream of violence, smut, and cussing that regularly reverberated between my ears, or at least where my ears used to be, then more power to him. Plus, on the rare occasions his comments crossed the line, all it took was a quick baring of my fangs and a not-so-subtle jibe about the potential tastiness of his flesh to get him back in order. Of course, that didn't mean that I loved being around him - more that his presence was simply a constant, chronic source of low-level aggravation, the sort of irritating background noise that, among other things, you learned to at least partially filter out for the sake of your own sanity. Which meant, paradoxically, that he was actually the best damn partner I'd had in ages.

"Yeah? Is that so?" I swung my legs over again, this time successfully plopping my ridiculously-sized fluffy feet atop a pile of pointless reports.

"I'm afraid it is. Rape is defined as the consummation of a sexual act without the consent of one or more parties, and if someone is actively trying to have sex with someone else, their consent is obviously implied. If both parties are trying to do such a thing, then they cancel each other out and all you're left with is just a normal, regulation act."

"Even when both the parties involved are snarling, rutting animals acting on instinct?"

"Even more so, then. Admittedly there are also sections in the statute based on impairment, but I'm quite sure that just really, really wanting to have sex doesn't count."

"Hmph." He was right, of course. He was, in fact, almost universally right, which, combined with how he projected that rightness onto others, provided a wholly different reason for most people to avoid him. Which was why, as usual, I decided to drop the argument, albeit with a torrent of grumbly, unspoken thoughts that managed to elicit a smirk from him. What did he know about it, anyway? Textbook definitions, sure, but once you've experienced something like that...

Of course, given our line of work and the law of averages, it was probably only a matter of time before Banton got to experience such a thing firsthand; then again, being able to know the intentions of someone long before they struck probably gave him a sizable advantage in avoiding such situations. That, and the fact that the damned third eye seemed to give him preternatural accuracy and finesse with his sidearm, despite the fact that he carried a four-five-five "elephant-gun" revolver, the sort that you'd swear would buckle his spindly arms until you'd watched him methodically empty each of the chambers right into what could vaguely be considered the "ten-ring" on some otherworldly horror.

"All right, ya freakin' smartass. If you're done correcting me for today, I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're bothering me because we've got an actual case tonight." Case nights, in my opinion, were the best; instead of going out to randomly patrol some sector of the city, bracing yourself for whatever weirdness you were just about guaranteed to stumble into, having an actual case to investigate was far superior. It was always better to have something to sink your teeth into; metaphorically speaking, at least, although if it did become physical, my current form didn't seem to have much of a problem with that either.

"A reasonable assumption, and one that is certainly within the logical processing power in your possession." I snarled at that, of course - it was a button that Banton loved to press, given the disjunct between my appearance, and my vastly experienced and reasonably educated mind. Banton largely ignored my wordless riposte, though, and instead unclipped the minicomp from his belt and kicked up a quick projection of the casefile on my desk, the subject heading bleeding over onto my feet and giving the fur an odd blue-green tint. "Tonight, our illustrious leaders have saddled us with a suspected case of shape violation."

"Let me guess. More curses?" As weird as the term sounded, all a shape violation really meant was that there was a person out there who was in a shape they weren't supposed to be, and a shape they didn't want. One of the latest trends in the overall weirdness were self-proclaimed "gypsies" or "shamans" trafficking in various occult potions and incantations. Want to turn your boss into a toad? No problem these days, as long as you're willing to get on the bad side of the law and risk a pissed-off half-werewolf coming to knock on your door. On the grand scale of things, not exactly the most heinous crime someone could get up to, but for the poor sod on the receiving end, it was generally an unpleasant experience. Especially given that the last few cases we'd seen involved guys who'd pissed someone off not just turned into cats or dogs or other sundry pets, but female versions that were somehow given instant estrus and left to "play" with their fellow animals.

The ones Special Situations had found so far, we'd been able to change back, physically at least. Upon their return to their normal form, though, most of them had what Banton had described as "suboptimal mental states." Yeah, you dick, you'd probably have a suboptimal mental state too if you'd just spent the past week getting gangbanged by a bunch of fucking dogs.

"I know your own particular situation likely predisposes you to it, but must you spend your time obsessing over the breeding of lower forms?"

"You just can't give it a rest, can you? Jeez, Banton, I thought you would have learned by now..." I followed that up with a quick, malevolent grin, paired with my best short-form imagining of a pair of dogs going at it with wild abandon, and was swiftly rewarded by Banton making a face like he'd just been sucking on a lemon.

"Had enough?" My smile, by that point, had managed to transform into a full-blown smirk.

"Honestly, for your indeterminate age, your juvenile humor never ceases to both amaze and disgust me." Banton paused for a second, pointedly refusing to look at me, and instead flicked idly through the case file. "I have to admit, though, it does seem odd that so much of the weirdness in our world today seems to revolve around intercourse in some form or other. You'd think there would be more lights in the sky, scenes of sheer magic and wonder, but instead we end up with eldritch tentacle monsters and half-beasts rutting in the streets." He looked up at me, more of a glare than anything else. "Present company most definitely not excluded, of course."

"Jeez, Banton, it was just that one-"

"TWO times. Two miserable times I've had to watch. Two times that haunt my dreams whenever I dare to risk an actual attempt at sleep, and which you make it your mission to replay in your head just often enough to remind me of them."

"Eh, just think of it as payback."

"Payback? Payback for what?"

"Payback for me suffering your existence in my every working day."

Banton sighed. "Fair enough." He turned off the projection and stowed the minicomp before stretching his long, spindly arms. "Shall we get to it, then?"

"Works for me." I slid my feet back down from the desk, buckling my equipment belt back into place. The only thing missing I retrieved from one of the drawers, brushing a few motes of dust off of the hardened barrel. The barrel was actually hexagonal, hard-forged iridium on the outside but professionally rifled within, packing a half-dozen rounds with a magnum powder load and hand-plated silver shells. In this business, it made more sense to pack a punch, and a jamming automatic could quickly take your day from pretty good to very, very bad. Plus, if you were up against something that six nearly half-inch, paranormal-warding slugs couldn't take down, there probably wasn't a gun in the world short of a tank cannon that would do you much good. Not that I drew my gun that often anyway; one of the side effects of my form, and the muscular bulk its hormones had subsequently provided, was a desire to get up close and personal once things kicked off.

I got to my feet, holstering my weapon, and looking out into the bustle of people milling around between us and the door, in what served as a lobby in the open-plan workspace.

Looking over those assembled, it was easy to see just how much Special Situations really was a microcosm of the weirdness in society at large. There was an abundance of fur, both natural-colored and otherwise, and while most of the people milling about still had only the traditional two arms, the quad configuration was growing in popularity. Some of the limbs were even robotic in nature, and the odd squid-like tentacle certainly wasn't unheard of.

There was a time, one I still remembered at least, where you could pick someone here at random and have better than even odds that they'd be a regular, straight-up human; these days, though, it really was rare to spot one at all. It made sense, I supposed: there wasn't a lot of incentive for a human to expose themselves to the dangers of Special Situations, not if they wanted to keep both their life and their inherent species intact. And the perps, well, if all they were was human, there were plenty of more conventional police to keep them in line. And I was happy to let them, as it meant that, danger aside, we got cases that were a whole lot more interesting than whatever pedestrian violence "regular" people got up to.

Of course, there were a few drawbacks to working primarily with the mutated and transformed segments of society. One of those, I was quickly reminded as we made our way through the undulating sea of creatures and people, was the smell. Dozens of different types of hybrids and various eldritch conglomerates, each with their particular mixture of scents, musks, and slimes, and me with the misfortune of having accidentally inherited the sort of canine-type nose that was sensitive enough to unconsciously distinguish and catalog every last one of them, involuntarily breaking down the entirety of the awful collected funk.

My mind simply took it all in, casually noting how the probably-werefox woman sitting at Stelvar's desk and giving a statement was about three hours past the onset of her heat, and the musk coming off her partner standing nearby meant that as soon as they were released, I'd lay good odds that they'd be rutting in the first alley they came across that offered even the slightest level of seclusion. Or how the octopus-headed thing standing a few feet away, its arm-tentacles swaddled in a straitjacket as regular handcuffs could do nothing against them, was about midway through its mysterious slime cycle, which was ostensibly related to mating but not in a way that anyone could reliably explain. Or the fact that the diminutive red imp-like creature weaving its way through the crowd, with a couple of Special Situations officers chasing along behind, had recently emerged from one of the more problematic dimensions, and still hadn't fully cleared its homeland's metallic, sulfurous air from whatever served as its analogue for lungs. It was all informative, sure, but also a sickening reminder that I was actually breathing in all of that stuff.

At least the outside air, when we finally reached it, was marginally more tolerable - given the time of day, though, and the time of year, the exotic tang of heat and the earthy spice of musk were still omnipresent. Unfortunately, mixed in with all the rest were at least a couple of signatures that were halfway compatible with my own transformation, and I was soon walking aggravatingly at half-mast, desperately trying to run through recent sports scores in an attempt to keep everything, so to speak, in my pants - if the knot got free of its containment and started bulging out again, it was gonna be pretty damn obvious, and once it was out it would take at least an hour, or a good several minutes being lodged in someone receptive, before it would be at all tamable again.

I sighed, glancing out at the expanse of the city stretching out before me, asphalt still slick and glimmering under the streetlights from the quickly tapering rain. It was, objectively at least, the kind of future that someone from a few centuries ago would marvel at. I'd seen all the classics, the utopias and dystopias, the worlds of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, and knew that people had expected futuristic cities with staggering verticality, all chrome and neon and glowing pan-asian ambience. The future as it was, though, was more like a mutation, like a city that had sprouted and expanded haphazardly, bulging out pavement and cold concrete as it messily tried to evolve. Things hadn't gone up so much as they had down and out and around each other, jutting out apartment-block elbows and strip-mall knees into the sides of their respective bedfellows, bear-hugging each other with the encirclements of narrow alleys and elevated expressways, glowering at their intimate neighbors with the glowing, unblinking eyes of scanning digital screens. The heights were reserved primarily for the newer breeds of the mechanical locust swarms, glittering drones doing an intricate dance of avoidance as they buzzed and clattered along their own industrious paths to efficient commerce.

It was still better, though, than the sub-city, the place below even the utilities, hot and dark and claustrophobic, more a jumbled assembly of animal warrens than anything approaching proper civilization. I did what I could to foist off any cases we received that went down there, as Banton absolutely refused to work in such close quarters - even though there was fun to be had, at least if you happened to look like me, and knew the right places to poke your head into. That being said, I still liked it better on the surface. At least out here, polluted or not, it didn't feel like the air had been breathed in and then oozed back out through the pores of a hundred different people before it ever reached your nostrils. Especially after a rain, there was nothing quite like walking at ground level, enjoying the relative silence that the downpour had brought to the usually crowded streets and breathing in the air that millions of minute droplets had changed for the better.

"You got the address, right?" I asked Banton, even as I began swiftly stepping in a random direction. After being cooped up in that bullpen of an office, it was hard to deny that need lingering in my legs. They wanted to roam, and I obliged them, even as Banton sighed, ran after me, and tugged my arm in a different direction.

"Yes, just follow me, if you can manage to keep yourself and your pesky canine nose from wallowing in trivial distractions. The sooner we get this over with, the better. I've already had to look at... stuff... dripping out of a dog's hind end twice in the past week already, and I am certainly not looking forward to a third."

"Fine, I won't make you look this time." Ya big baby, I didn't say, but then again, with Banton, I didn't have to. Even with him walking in front of me, I could all but feel the pained expression that was surely forming on his customarily aggravated face.

"Unlike yourself," Banton continued in a clipped, precise tone that I knew signified frustration, "I derive little enjoyment from having an animal's sex all but rubbed in my face. Surely, with a nose like yours, you could simply sniff out the victim's wretched condition without such a physical examination."

"True, maybe, but with all those eyes, I'm sure you have much more insight than a little sniff. Not to mention, we need evidence of all the crimes before we try someone. Someone gets changed and then a pack of animals find them, feral or not, we still get to charge the dumbass who did the transform in the first place with conspiracy to commit rape. You want to get someone dead to rights, sometimes you have to get your hands a little dirty."

"No. Not my hands. Not this time. You want to get ahold of that stuff, you can do it yourself. Not to mention, if you insist on photographic evidence, you can handle it too. The last girl I went out with asked to borrow my phone, and I did not enjoy in the least the mental accusations and subsequent required explanation as to the nature of an investigation that led to the intimate parts of female dogs, actual female dogs, maintaining a presence in its image gallery."

"Banton! I'm shocked! Breaking an important chain of custody by letting some random civilian gain access to your-"

"Stuff it." Banton, as I well knew, was not one to be subtle about when a conversation was over.

"Suit yourself," I replied, glancing at his writing hair and idly wondering for the umpteenth time whether some of the strands would eventually lose it and, independently of their owner, make an aggressive lunge at me. "Like I told you, though, I've got your back. The next time some fine lady catches you with your phone showing the ace of spades, I'd be happy to explain your heroic dedication to your job, especially as it extends to your personal electronics."

"Hmph. Right. I wouldn't introduce you to a woman I had the slightest interest in if you paid me. We both know exactly what happened with Lilah, after all."

"Um... well, in my defense, she was in heat..."

"No, no she wasn't, and you know it."

"Er... I was in heat?"

Banton glanced back for a moment, glaring at me. "You're always in heat. That's the problem."

"Well, not technically-"

"Tell me, when was the last time you spent more than ten minutes at a stretch with a canine woman, one who hadn't already sworn to chew your balls off if you tried anything, that you didn't end up dipping your wick in? And don't bother trying to make anyone up, either. You know I know when you're lying."

"Dipping my wick? Really? What fuckin' century did you-"

"Don't try to dodge the question. Seriously, how many?"

"Hmm, well, let's see... three?"

"Out of?"

"Um... more than three?" A lot more than three...

"I rest my case."

"You know, you could stop seeing canine women..." I trailed off, eating another glare.

"Really? I should think you, of all people, would have the least right to comment on my tastes in women."

"Yeah, probably..."

"Good. If that's settled, could we please talk about something else? I would rather, at the moment, discuss brutal disembowelment with you than have to consider again what happened between you and Lilah."

"Look, I'm sorry I forgot to lock the stall door before we-"

"NOT THINKING ABOUT IT." Banton turned back around, his shoes thudding on the pavement as he angrily increased his pace. I considered for a moment replaying a snippet from that particular event in my mind, but I wisely decided that Banton had already been tweaked enough, and pushing it would probably result in the monstrous barrel of his gun tickling my muzzle in an uncomfortably phallic manner.

Come to think of it, Banton always avoided using the station showers, at least while I was there, and I realized I'd never actually seen him other than fully clothed, despite the fact that he'd probably seen me that way more times than I could count. In all honesty, I had no idea what exactly a creature like him packed inside his drawers, but given his penchant for women and generally male appearance, it had seemed like an easy assumption. I couldn't help but wonder, though, if his wriggling mass of not-exactly-hair might presage something particularly... adventurous lower down. Not that it was any of my business, though - Banton's personality was more than enough to discourage even any peripheral notion of getting in his pants.

Banton paused, clearing his throat. "I know that you know I'm more than well aware of what you're thinking."

Oh, yeah. Well, it wasn't like I was going to be embarrassed about thinking it. "So? Care to tell me what you do have down there?"

"I will tell you precisely this. Don't talk. Don't make noise. Don't even fucking think out loud until we reach our destination. Can you do me that one small and thoroughly inadequate favor? Or at the very least, could you maybe converse about something work-related and not directly salacious?"

"Well, now that's a tall order, but for you..." I paused for a moment, watching Banton dodge around one of the scuttling, ground-based cargo variant of the insect-like drones, trying to think of anything that reasonably resembled work and didn't involve some level of sexuality, twisted or otherwise, a tall order in the vicinity of a full moon during one of the common breeding seasons. "You listen to the scanner coming in? Heard something about DAVE's latest escapades downtown..."

"Those jerkwads? Yeah, I heard they took apart an outpost of some supposed demon organization. And when I say took apart, I mean it literally. They jacked a bunch of plasma cutters from a construction site and really went to town on the fuckers. Surgically precise, apparently. Even arranged the resulting body fragments into several obscene words, just for effect. They're cocky, for sure, but given that plasma cutters aren't exactly supernatural, they're not really our department. Those slackers in the regular police had better get around to catching them soon, though, or there's gonna be another abnormal riot on our hands."

"Yeah, well..." I shrugged, walking along as Banton made the scrambling transition between narrow street and dirt-encrusted maze of alleys, dodging expertly around several pieces of questionable debris that I stomped uncaringly on top of moments later. It was true that the illustrious and disturbingly organized vigilantes that made up the Death and Violence Equalizers weren't exactly our concern, but the fact that nearly all of their targets were supernatural, at least in some respect, didn't exactly spur confidence in that section of the populace. While I didn't think that members of the "abnormal" community were particularly more or less likely to commit crimes, the ones they did were occasionally of a level of gruesomeness that was beyond the capabilities of the average human, so there was certainly a level of fear and resentment to be had. Of course, DAVE was quickly managing to demonstrate that humans could be just as inventively gruesome in their revenge, and there was no question that someone would have to deal with them before they really got out of hand. It might, I wondered, actually even be fun to take on such a sophisticated rival. It certainly beat tracking down some stupid asshole whose greatest claim to fame was turning apparently random guys into literal bitches.

"All right, a couple more blocks, and we're there." Banton moved on, his wormlike hair writhing and glistening in the light rain in a slightly unsettling manner. Even more unsettling, the sight of the writhing mass was for some reason actually making me hungry. True, ever since the transformation and the heightened sense of smell I'd found a much wider range of dishes appealing, but I hadn't yet descended to devouring cans of actual worms. Nevertheless, I resolved to track down something once we'd done our initial evaluation, as the last thing I wanted to do is end up absentmindedly nibbling on whatever it was that passed for Banton's hair.

We traversed the next couple of blocks, if the narrow, twisting segments of alley could really be described as such, and found ourselves at the entrance to a squat, wide block of average-looking apartments, butting up against other nearby buildings and sitting next to what looked like a radiant star of alleyways leading off in several different directions - each one with masses of pipes and conduits snaking along their edges, twisting around and through each other and giving the whole scene the look of a perverse spiderweb extruded from black plastic and dull, rust-dotted steel.

I spent a moment gazing curiously at the odd-looking intersection, but Banton didn't seem to give it much notice at all, instead tracking down the main entrance to the apartment building. Like most, it was access-controlled with an automatic door to ensure that no one unauthorized was allowed in, even if it was more of a comforting notion than it was actually secure - anyone with a little know-how, the right micro-computer, and knowledge of where the access panels were could hack it open in a matter of moments. For us, though, such subterfuge wasn't necessary - like most buildings, the door had the usual police overrides built in, and the door whooshed open a moment after Banton held his badge up in front of it.

The interior was nice enough, the hallways painted over in OLEDs to form dynamic floor-to-ceiling screens, as had been the fashion for a number of years; for this particular building, the screens appeared to be set to display a calming island scene, complete with palm trees and waves lapping soundlessly against the artificial shore. In that clear blue sky, luminescent numbers glowed at regular intervals, the scenes flashing out to reveal the shapes of doors behind them as soon as either of our badges got close enough for the system to recognize. The stairway and elevators at the end of the hallway were the only areas not adorned with the scene, and I enthusiastically bounded towards them, halfway up the first flight of stairs before Banton, probably sighing inwardly, gave up on the elevator and started thumping up the stair behind me.

We emptied out on the third level, with hallways that were displaying a quiet, pristine forest, with rays of light filtering in through the verdant canopy. I wondered just how many people in the building, or even the city, had actually been present in a forest like the one on display - I had, of course, but that was probably decades ago, and after all of the crazy things that had happened since, I honestly didn't know if places such as that still existed. I made a note in my mind, though, to try and find one the next time my slot for taking vacation days came up.

Banton stopped behind the third door that appeared on the left. "This one, I believe." He rapped on the surface of the door, then took an abrupt step back. "Oh, and by the way, while I sincerely doubt that this will faze you, the female human inside has just seen what we look like on her internal video feed, and will be greeting us at the door in several seconds with a firearm in hand - hard to tell exactly from the thoughts, but I believe it's actually a pump-action shotgun. Quaint, that. I don't think we'll need to draw, though."

"Eh, don't worry. I'm sure I've had worse pointed at me."

Sure enough, the door opened a moment later to reveal, first the barrel of a shotgun, and then the woman holding it. She looked to be maybe in her mid-twenties, caucasian and blond, and unchanged from the standard human form, at least in any obvious way. I could differentiate her red shirt and and blue pants clearly enough - unlike some of those who were transformed in a canine way, I'd only acquired a little colorblindness, but if she'd been wearing pastels it might have been impossible to tell. I didn't need any other senses or instincts, though, to tell that she was on edge - her eyes were hard as they glared between us, and the barrel of the gun jittered just perceptibly enough as she trained it alternately on each of us.

"You've got about twenty seconds to explain why you're trying to bust down my door, and if you think I'm unprotected, if you think you're gonna come in here and do something to me, you're both gonna find out what it feels like to be neutered by buckshot. Clear?"

I just grinned, admiring her attitude, as Banton spoke up - and quite frankly, when it came to interviewing witnesses, he had a far more... professional-minded manner than I did. Then again, I supposed, having foreknowledge of another person's responses probably helped a lot with that.

"I can assure you, madam, that we have no intention of doing you harm, and that your weapon will be wholly unnecessary in this encounter. In fact, I do believe we're here in response to your earlier summons." He reached down, slowly and evenly - even as the barrel of the shotgun tracked his movements - and retrieved his badge, proffering it to her. The woman kept the shotgun trained with one hand even as she flipped the badge open with the other, looking at first surprised and then even a little embarrassed as she quickly trained the shotgun down towards the floor.

"Um, sorry about that..." she said, her gaze quickly following the barrel down towards her feet. "It's just that ever since I got home and found out what happened to Walter, and worrying if someone was after me, too... I've just been a little scared, and when I saw your faces outside, I don't know what I thought, but I'm sure it was nothing good. I'm sorry - I shouldn't be judgmental like that, I know, but it's just unsettling sometimes, and if I offended you-"

"Oh, I'm quite sure that isn't the case," Banton said, although I wasn't entirely sure if his writhing hair was in agreement. "I tend to be incredibly hard to offend over trivial matters of appearance, and as for my colleague here, I've been trying actively to offend him for years, but I've yet to have anything stick. However, offended or not, we are here for a specific purpose. Perhaps we could continue the discussion inside?"

"Yes, of course..." She stepped back, and I followed Banton into the apartment, making sure to give the woman a wide berth - while it was true that Banton was more unsettling overall, I imagined that I was probably the one she'd been afraid was going to force his animal lusts on her. Not that I ever would, of course, as doing so wasn't my thing, animal traits or not. Besides, with the breeds of women I tended to gravitate towards, they were just as likely to pounce on me as I was them.

She led us into the living room of the apartment, and I glanced around, taking in the place and checking to see if anyone else might be lurking. Nothing immediately stood out as suspicious - just a generic, average-sized, thoroughly middle-class dwelling, some slightly drab couches and tables and electronic frames with glowing, shifting abstract color patterns that some people seemed to think qualified as art. Everything seemed quiet and unremarkable, though, except for one door leading off of the room that was conspicuously closed.

The woman seemed to follow my gaze, and gestured toward the door. "My husb- Walter's in there. Or, at least I think it is..."

"Don't worry, madam, I'm quite sure will have this sorted out shortly." Banton paused for a moment, contemplating something. "You didn't, perhaps, ask the canine whether or not it was Walter, did you?"

He seemed to wince a moment before the woman gave her response. "Um... he's a dog right now, how am I supposed to ask it whether it's Walter? But it's here, and Walter's not, and... something about the dog, the way it moves, it just... seems like him somehow. I don't know how to explain it, but I can feel it, you know?"

"And you're sure Walter isn't simply elsewhere?"

"No, of course not! He's not at work, no one we know has seen him, I can't contact him, and trust me, the kind of guy Walter is, the last thing he'd do is sneak off with someone..."

The woman continued with her justifications, but it seemed to me that there was a far easier way of sorting things out, and it involved walking over to the closed door and swinging it open to reveal what seemed to be a hall closet, with a whimpering ball of fur curled up in the corner.

While there wasn't much to see, a single, simple sniff told me just about everything I needed to know. Canine, definitely. Purebreed, probably. Unquestionably female. By the strength of her scent, she was in either the first or second day of her heat, and from the combination of other scents on her, that heat had already been taken advantage of several dogs of the male variety - at least four or five, maybe six. There was also another scent, very faint amidst everything else, but still ever so barely noticeable. It took a few more sniffs, but I was finally able to tease out what it was: some sort of aftershave, a distinct combination of scents that a couple of the male file clerks in the department administration seemed to use. It wasn't impossible, of course, for a dog to come into contact with such a thing, but it was certainly more than a little intriguing.

I wandered back over to the woman, who was glaring at Banton for some reason.

"Look, madam, I'm simply trying to ascertain-"

"He's not cheating on me!"

"I know you keep saying that, but I keep getting the sense that you have your doubts about-"

"And I keep getting the sense that you're kind of a-" She stopped short as I held up a hand to interject, although the barrel of the shotgun bobbed a bit in her grasp, and I immediately regretted not having her set the thing down in the first place. Best to derail that line of stress, then, and the easiest way to do that, it seemed, was to simply be direct.

"Ma'am... you mind if I ask your name?"

"Huh? Oh... it's Angela."

"All right, Angela, I've just got one question for you. Did your husband use an aftershave called Diamond Mist?"

She looked momentarily taken aback. "Um... yes, yes he did, every day. I told him I liked the way he smelled on our first date, and he took it as a command to wear it religiously. To be honest, it's kind of getting tiresome to smell, but I didn't really know how to tell him..."

"Thank you very much, ma'am. In that case, I'm beginning to think that your theory is correct. Which is why I think we should try to get some information from the source." I turned to Banton. "So... ever try to read a dog before?"

"Don't be facetious. That stuff only works on sentients. Only those with intelligence can organize their thoughts in a way that's comprehensible beyond the current moment in time."

"And if they're someone sentient somehow transformed into a dog's body?"

"Oh, fine, I'll try. Madam, if you wouldn't mind waiting here for just a moment..."

He followed me back to the room, leaning over and staring down at the ball of fur, which had uncurled enough to reveal a pair of big, wet eyes and a clearly feral canine muzzle.

"Hmmm... I'm guessing female, then, like the others?" I nodded. "And... wait, hold that thought. I really don't want to know what this poor chap was subjected to. Especially not as filtered through your thoughts."

"Hey, think what you might of me, but the people I fantasize about tend to be of the two-legged variety. And besides, getting shoved into a dog's body and then having a half-dozen other dogs shoved inside in a different way doesn't sound like anyone's idea of a good time." Actually, I had no idea how that very specific situation felt - for all I knew, actual four-legged bitches enjoyed the heck out of it, but somehow I doubted someone who had been a regular human guy just a few minutes before would find it all that amusing. In all likelihood, if this was Walter, he was most likely traumatized and scared out of his wits - and having us standing over him, especially if he was still able to comprehend what we were saying, probably wasn't helping. "Look, just check the dog out already. If it's just a bunch of stupid dog thoughts in there, you can go back to your cheating theory, although I do think that's more projection than anything else-"

"Hey!"

"All right, all right, I know - on the job, gotta be professional. It's real simple, though. We figure out this is actually Walter, then we can get one step closer in figuring out the kind of psycho that's behind all these cases. If it's not, then we figure out whose pet it is, and we're back to a missing person, jilted lover, whatever."

"Ugh. Fine."

"What, you think it's beneath you?"

"No... not that. If its actually a guy in there, that's one thing. But if it's actually a dog, a female dog in heat... there are a lot of things in this world I wonder about, but whatever fantasies a bitch in heat might have isn't one of them." Nevertheless, after a moment his hair seemed to momentarily cease its writhing, which usually meant he was concentrating on something. It was odd, though - usually, he'd know someone's thoughts in an instant, but a good minute passed before he leaned back upright, shaking his head.

"Well, that's certainly ten types of odd. It's definitely not a regular dog - if it was, I'd get some flashes, some pictures of surface thoughts, something at least. There's definitely something in there, but it's convoluted somehow... I can't really describe it, but it almost feels like whatever's in there is wrapped around and around itself, like thread on a spool. Whatever it is, I can't parse it beyond that feeling."

"Hmm... maybe that's what comes of trying to cram a whole human mind into that little skull down there..."

"Could be. I've never actually tried to read someone transformed to this extent, since in the previous cases, I hadn't had to, what with the witnesses who'd seen the transformations firsthand. Problem is, while I know it's not right for a dog, I can't confirm anything beyond that. Doesn't mean it's Walter, though. Could be a... a demon, who knows what else..."

"So... can't read the thing. I guess we'll just have to try and do this the old-fashioned way." I crouched down, looking over at the dog as it tried to shrink back further into the corner.

"Hey now, I'm not gonna hurt ya. Just want to know if Walter's in there? Are you, Walter? Can you understand me?"

The dog just looked back at me, seemingly befuddled.

"Okay, let's try this again. If your name is Walter, extend one of your front paws and tap it twice against the carpet. Can you do that?"

The dog seemed to hesitate, but a moment later uncurled into a much clearer canine shape. Upon further examination, it looked to be a border collie, with the same distinctive build and fur pattern. The dog crouched on its stomach, looking pensively up at me, but a moment later tentatively extended its right front paw and tapped it clearly twice on the floor of the closet before settling it back down.

"See? Easy enough. It's Walter."

"Yeah... or it's a dog that happened to randomly move its paw around. We need to be more thorough than that."

"Fine, fine... Okay, Walter, let's see... I'm going to ask you some questions, and I want you to tap twice for yes, three times for no. Can you do that?" The dog's head seemed to nod, but a moment later the paw came out and tapped twice. "So, Walter... are you married?" Two taps. "Good... and do you remember your wife's name?" Twice more. "Is it... Theresa?" Three slow, distinct taps. "Viola?" Three, a little faster, maybe impatient? "Regina?" Three again. "Angela?" This elicited a sudden, panicked bark, the dog's ears suddenly going flat against her head, but the forepaw tapped twice a moment later.

"I'd say that's clear enough, Banton... wouldn't you?"

"Yeah, fine. Guess the poor sod really did get transformed. A bit odd that he's terrified of his wife, though."

"Really? Seems obvious to me. Assuming he was raised traditionally enough, he thinks he's the man, in charge and all that, especially in sex. The fact that he just got helplessly dicked, and by a bunch of four-legged dogs no less, is humiliating enough on its own - but probably doubly so when he realizes how weak he looks in front of his own wife."

"Wait, you think the- you think Walter got done right in front of her?"

"No, but it's apparent enough - you don't get done up by that many dogs without something leaking out prodigiously afterwards. And no, before you say anything... I told, you, nothing with four legs. However, I'm guessing that Walter here sure as heck didn't want his wife finding out just what a sad state he was in, so I'm guessing that as soon as she opened the door he darted right into the closet and curled up like that so there was nothing to see." The dog didn't respond, but something about the way it looked back at me seemed to lend truth to that statement.

Banton sighed, rubbing his temples. Obviously, thinking about the circumstances of the situation wasn't doing wonders for him.

"Urgh... well, at least we know it's him, which means there are only two other things we have to find out - who did this to him, and how to get him back to normal. I guess there are some department clerics who might be able to sort him out, but unraveling this sort of mess without whatever did the transformation in the first place - well, they eventually got it done in the previous cases, but it isn't exactly gonna happen overnight. The best way to fix this is to find the jerk responsible and have them fix it, voluntarily or otherwise. I assume you'll have no problem arranging the 'otherwise' if it comes to that, yes?"

"Yeah, no problem. Been a while since I've been in a good dust-up, and with the moon being the way it is, not quite there but close enough... let's just say I've got more than enough energy to burn. We find this guy, heck, I'm gonna have some fun with him even if he does fix things."

"Right... you eat another 'citizen complaint', though, I'm not helping to sell whatever bullshit story you come up with." Banton looked down at the dog skeptically. "Of course, figuring out who decided to subject him to something this sick might take some doing."

"Or, you know, since he's here... we could just ask him."

"How? What, you think he actually knows who did this? And if so, what are you gonna do, run through the alphabet and have him spell it out letter by letter?"

"Dunno about you, but it's not like there's any place I've gotta be tonight, and it still beats filling out paperwork. Tell you what - I'll see what else I can get, and you can fill Angela in and see if she has any guesses as to who might be behind this."

"Suit yourself." Banton shuffled back over to where the woman was waiting somewhere behind us, and I turned my attention back to the rather unhappy canine in front of me.

"So, Walter... got any enemies?"

It turned out that trying to get a dog, even an intelligent being trapped as one, to explain itself was just as tedious as Banton had suggested. In fact, for that matter, it was downright boring, and as antsy as I was, going through the alphabet letter by letter ended up leaving me growling in frustration. That, of course, caused the dog - Walter - to shrink back fearfully, leaving me sighing and trying to think of a better tactic.

"All right, since this is getting us nowhere, and not at all fast to boot... How about we try a game of charades?"

Walter looked back at me quizzically.

"What I mean is... I'm gonna try to, you know, act out, pantomime some stuff that might have happened, and you do the same yes/no thing until what I'm doing seems like it resembles what happened. All right?" Which did make sense - while spelling things out would take ages, there were only so many types of people and interactions that Walter was likely to have encountered.

Walter tapped twice, and I started going through everything I could think of, with the notion of an affair being first (although I couldn't imagine how awkward I looked trying to illustrate it by hugging across my own chest). Luckily, Walter at least seemed revolted by that possibility, so we moved on - and whether I lucked out by acting out the right things first, while it wasn't absolutely perfect or full of detail, within another five minutes I had at least a decent outline of what had gone down.

I thanked Walter, reaching out to pet him reassuringly, but thought better of it midway through. Instead, it seemed far wiser to wander back into the living room and see how Banton was faring with his own line of questioning.

"Look, ma'am, we really are trying here," I heard him say as I wandered back into the room. In all fairness, I probably could have just swiveled my ears around and picked up the conversation, but there was something... well, satisfying about seeing the aggravated look on Banton's face to go along with the edge in his voice.

"Trying? If you were trying, wouldn't someone be trying to turn him back to normal? That's one of the things you guys are supposed to do, right?"

"Yes, technically, but as I'm trying to explain to you, not everyone in our unit has the same duties, or the same specialties. We're investigators, not practitioners of the occult, which means the most useful thing you can do is to answer our questions, so that when the people with the capability to potentially fix this arrive, we can provide them with what they need to sort this all out."

"Which is all well and good, but in the meantime, my husband's a fucking dog! I don't... I don't even know how I'm supposed to deal with that! What am I supposed to do, pet him?"

"Ma'am, as far as we can tell, your husband's just in a different shape right now, but is probably otherwise fine, and most likely retains his mental capacity - that seems to be fairly well-indicated by his ability to answer our questions. That means he can also hear and understand everything you're saying. Just... treat him like your husband, I guess, and remember that this is in all likelihood a temporary situation."

"In all likelihood? Are you trying to say he could be stuck like this for good?"

"No, ma'am, what I'm trying to say is, we're going to do everything we can..." He trailed off, glancing past her until he met my gaze, his expression seeming to implore me to intervene while he still had one last good nerve left. Fair enough, then. I quickly stepped forward, nudging myself between them and allowing him to back away for a moment.

"Look... honestly? Magic is crazy and unpredictable, and there are no guarantees. Here's what I do know, though: we find the person who actually put this curse on him, there's probably a better than average chance of fixing him in a few hours. We don't find the guy, the folks who work with this stuff can probably still unravel whatever it is and fix him, but then we're talking days or weeks. Luckily, though, your husband was able to tell me... enough of what happened for us to at least know where to start looking."

That news seemed to calm her down instantly, or at least back her off from the height of her frustration. "Wait... you know who did this to him?" She paused, and to Banton's displeasure, her anger and frustration seemed ready to spike back up. "No, don't tell me... it was that bitch Courtney, wasn't it? I know he wasn't sleeping with her, heck, I know he wasn't attracted to her - if I had a dick, the sight of her piggy slut face would make me soft instantly, but she kept trying to poach him anyway. If she did, I swear-"

"Actually, ma'am, I'm quite sure it wasn't her. I asked about several scenarios, and that... wasn't one of them."

"Then... then what? Who else would want to do this to him?"

"Well... it's entirely possible he was the victim of random happenstance. As far as I can tell, he was walking back from work, and one of those corner-hawkers stuck a free sample of a drink in front of his face - probably one of those guys handing out stuff for that new... corporate soda, whatever it is, that they're flogging all over the place to get people interested in it. He was thirsty, accepted the free soda, drank it down, felt kinda sick a few minutes later, and then bam! Transformed. Confused, he ran into the wrong alley to try and escape, and-" Oops! Yeah, Walter probably didn't want her filled in on exactly why it had been the wrong alley..."

"And?"

"And then, after some... trials and tribulations, Walter managed to conjure back enough of his faculties to navigate his way back here to you. Which is a really good sign - sometimes, with these cases, the people can't really handle it, kind of just go feral and wander off, and it's a heck of a time to track them down. The fact that he came back, that he tried to reach out to you for help, that he was able to communicate with us... it means that once we get him back to normal, sure he's probably gonna need some serious therapy, but he's likely to come all the way back, be the same person he was before, with none of it lost to the transformation. So, don't worry about it too much, okay? We got this. Clerics will be by in a while to see what they can sort out, and in the meantime, we'll work on tracking down the shithead who's terrorizing random people on their way home from work."

"All right, fine..." Angela paused, sighing. "I hope this gets fixed soon, though. Really not much of a pet person..."

"And you don't have to be. Just treat Walter with some respect and dignity, and remember that whatever he looks like now, you're husband's still in there, just like before. Anyway, unless there's something else you can tell us that might help..."

"Yeah, yeah. Get out there and find the fucker. Oh, and I'd consider it a personal favor if the guy that did this isn't particularly... intact, afterwards. They don't get to pull this shit, not with my Walter..."

Banton handed over his card, promised to light a fire under the clerics and get them there sooner rather than later, and then we headed out - Banton grumbling slightly, but expectedly, as we walked down the hallway.

"So... I'm guessing you read something that she wasn't saying out loud? Maybe something that might make one think this is a little less random than I might have implied?"

"Sadly, not at all. If you're thinking an affair, on either of their parts, with some sort of revenge as a motive, her response was sadly lacking. No, it was... that frustration in her voice, it wasn't simply aggravation due to her husband being transformed. Some of the thoughts, feelings that I gathered... well, I'm surprised your nose didn't sniff it out, although probably hard to do underneath everything emanating off of that dog. Walter, I'm afraid, isn't the only one in heat."

"Heat? Really? You do know that-"

"Yes, of course I know it's not actually heat! Arousal. Happy?" I shrugged. "In any case, I'm guessing that she had a... special night planned, just for the two of them, and all of a sudden here's her husband turned into a dog, and one that isn't gonna be of much help, to boot! Honestly... well, actually, it's not even a conjecture, as I caught a glimpse of the fantasy in response to one of my questions. Sadly, if the transformed Walter had maintained his physical sex, I seriously doubt we would have gotten the call until tomorrow morning at the earliest..."

"Well, I guess you can't blame her..."

Banton turned to glare at me. "Seriously? This coming from Mr. 'I don't do anything with four legs'..."

"Not gonna dignify that with a response." Although, if I had to be honest with myself... being in the room with Walter, that damn smell emanating all over the place, and with the moon near full... yeah, there was more than one reason for finding a way to speed up that questioning. I doubted I was unprofessional enough to slip that significantly, at least in front of a victim, but when the instincts that came with the fuzzy bits of me flare up... let's just say I was thankful enough that I hadn't worn boxers, which would have done nothing to constrain things and would have led to a rather embarrassing display that Walter would have been none too happy to see...

"Whatever. You actually feel like wandering around the whole damn town shaking down street hawkers?"

"Eh, no need to. We know where Walter lives, and from the pay stub that was sitting on the living room table, I know where he works. Only so many routes he could take between them, and when you rule out the obviously unsafe ones, fewer still. Then I see where Walter's scent is the strongest, and we go after the hawkers around there. Chances are the one that did this up and bolted already - have to be one heck of an idiot to do this and just stay at the scene of the crime - but maybe some of the other hawkers know him, and can point us in the right direction."

"You're obviously sure it's a him, aren't you?"

"Well, that's what Walter seemed to indicate... but you're right. No assumptions. Just gotta track whoever the fuck is doing this down and sort it out. Unless you want to be chasing more obnoxious calls like this for the rest of the month..."

"Yeah, no. Not doing that. Which means... I guess we're pounding the pavement the rest of the night. And considering the kind of night it is... can you at least try to keep your impulses in check?"

"You know I will, but no promises. I can keep myself under control, mostly, but who knows what else might be out there, and depending on how aggressive they are..."

"Urgh... yeah, I'm more than well aware of how that can play out, no thanks to you. Seriously, though, if something like that does happen, I'm going to consider plugging the offending party, yourself included..."

I just shrugged at the idle threat. After all, if getting shot was enough to actually stop me, I'd have been taken out long ago, but considering I was still there... that, plus apparently I wasn't werewolf enough for silver to do much of anything extra, so gunshots were generally the least of my concerns. Some of the newer energy weapons, though... and of course, if someone happened to wield magic, then all bets were off. Both of us were at least a little resistant due to our transformations, but then again, some manner of magic also happened to be the reason we'd both been transformed in the first place...

Luckily, though, we wouldn't be heading into a part of the city where such weapons were likely to be commonplace - as I'd said, it seemed unlikely that a mild-seeming guy like Walter, at least as he had been described, would have been trundling through any of the dicier neighborhoods. No, it was likelier that he'd been traversing the main commercial corridor that stretched from the neighborhood, through a narrow portion of vaguely upscale downtown towards the city's commercial center, where he'd worked in the one part of the city still home to ubiquitous high-rises.

Well... maybe not the really upscale parts, now that I thought about it. Judging by where Walter apparently worked, and by the generally unassuming nature of their shared apartment, the couple was middle-class at best. The truly upscale areas weren't just tony, with security guards posted to mildly dissuade any riff-raff that might wander up - once things had started getting weird, those who could afford protection had gotten more serious. Now the whole area was wrapped in a very tastefully decorated electrified wall, with armed and armored personnel by all of the entrance gates, and you had to swipe to get in - not your identification, but your credit, and the only way you got in was if your credit line didn't have a limit attached to it. True, it was actually a slightly less stringent requirement than walking into the seedier part of the commercial corridor - there, if you were human at least, you kind of needed to be someone who actually was armed and armored, if you wanted to make it back unvictimized and uncorrupted. For someone like me, that wasn't much of an issue, as most of the skels who frequented that part of town only needed a glance at my muscular bulk and fang-bearing grin to decide it was a better idea to accost someone else. Walter, though, I couldn't imagine having a similar sort of intimidation, or, for that matter, limitless credit, so it seemed almost a certainty that he'd walked the more reasonable middle path. Which made our job easier, at least: for that particular part of the city, once the shadier and fenced-off parts were discounted, there were really only three main drags left that Walter might had taken between work and home. And since the middle one seemed like the straightest shot, at least according to the efficient mapping program on Banton's minicomp, that's where the next phase of our investigation would begin.

The commercial corridor was true enough to its name - counting all the snaking skyways that arched over it from one cluster of buildings to another, you could just about see it as a series of gently-sloping tunnels. And while it was difficult to say that the commercial corridor was made up of roads, per se, the three primary routes that traversed it were one of the few places the usually subterranean transit tubes deigned to run along the surface: tight groups of wide, translucent blue pipes through which you could see the intermittent, uneven shadows of vehicle pods darting about at speed or sliding to a halt near one of the dark grey access portals that dotted the pipes' surface. Such an emergence, of course, was to deliver people with ease to the long rows of shops that shoved in close to the pedestrian walkways that flanked the piping, close enough that you could reach out and touch the pipes if you were so inclined. Not that most people were - considering the pipes were impregnable to anything short of a bunker-buster, and equipped with an active "discouragement field" running along their surface, even mischievously powerful demons and militant groups like DAVE tended to look for more conveniently vulnerable targets.

That being said, it was easy enough to see how someone could blunder into them by accident. The walkways weren't really all that wide, and densely packed with a host of people and creatures scurrying back and forth along it, dodging out of the way of the occasional ground-scuttling drone, storefront patio, or one of the ever-more-frequent food carts catering to a series of tastes that seemed to widen by the day. In fact, out of all the futuristic things that had been portrayed, the carts, almost universally bedecked with video screens flashing ads to eke out every bit of possible revenue, were the only real aesthetic that had stuck around accurately. Made sense, though - barring a few exceptions, everyone needed to eat, and in such a hectic and crammed-tight city, having food available to grab was the next-best thing to having a drone fly it up to your office window, and cheaper by an order of magnitude at least. Not that I minded - I'd let the aromas of a thousand different cuisines fill my nostrils than take in the melange of stench that they currently overpowered.

I walked carefully along the main drag as it opened up at least slightly, the skyways breaking apart to let a bit of light glimmer in from above. Not that there was as much reason to look up as there used to be - a while back, the whole area used to be studded with skyscrapers poking up through the dreary grey air. Once stuff started getting strange, though, people discovered quickly enough that once you got past a certain height, the taller a building got, the more likely it was to be used as the anchor to open up a portal to some demonic realm, pillar of glowing red light descending from the swirling vortex in the sky and everything. That meant the skyscrapers were either destroyed in the invasions that poured out of them, or were subjected to planned demolition out of an abundance of caution afterwards. Now, most things were mid-rise at best, rarely extending beyond ten or fifteen stories, and instead bloated outwards in a strangely organic sprawl of glass, steel, concrete and the occasional biomaterial. No, the only skyscrapers that had survived had been the ones that were exotic enough that somehow the portals didn't like there, but the ones in this city had been disappointingly rote, and there wasn't a single spire to tower over everything - just shifting clouds of drones below a clearing sky and a moon edging troublingly towards its maximum intensity, just the slightest sliver of a shadow slicing across its outermost edge.

Nice as the night was, and while part of me certainly would have been more than willing to pull up a stool at one of the barbecue stalls and spend a leisurely early morning chomping on something smoked and watching the throngs stroll by, the sound of Banton clearing his throat, a sound not unlike scratching actual metal nails across a chalkboard, was enough to snap me out of my momentary lunar reverie. No, whatever of my various instincts might be wanting, we had a job to do, and a particular sort of streetside salesman to find.

The first soda hawker we spotted was standing on a cramped corner edged in between two food carts. The guy looked... normal enough, in a corporate-branded T-shirt and slacks, although the fact that the guy was wearing wraparound specs after midnight meant that he was either an idiot, or happened to have a permanent case of demon-eye. The slight red glow behind the glasses when he turned to face us seemed to indicate the latter. He seemed to sort of look me over impassively, but saw Banton and gave him a slow, strangely respectful nod.

"I bet I know why you're here," the man said as we stepped closer.

"Word's been getting around then, I take it?" Banton replied, his hair seemingly energized by the man's presence, whipping and writhing incessantly atop his head.

"Yeah, and no offense, it's pretty obvious you're cops."

"I take it the badges hanging off our belts tipped you off?" Banton said snidely, but the guy shook his head.

"Nah, man. I can... see shit, you know? And your aura, if it makes sense to call it that... no mistaking that kind of thing. Afraid I can't help you, though. All the guys I know that do this legit, we meet up all the time before our shifts, and I'd... know if one of them was fucking around like that. Turning people into dogs, that's pretty fucked up-" As he said that, though, he seemed to notice me, and half-choked on his words. "Um, seriously, man, I meant like actual dogs, not like... look, man, just don't fuck up my face, all right? I need it to hawk this shit..."

"Look, if I wanted to punch you, you'd already be on the ground. All we're trying to do is catch the guy who's doing this - and if it isn't someone legit, trying to horn in on your business, then catching him helps you too, right?"

"Yeah, true enough. Dunno who'd want to do this, like, counterfeit, though. Not exactly like we're rolling in dough handing out free samples on the street, but from what I hear, every time it's someone handing out samples of this stuff, and nothing else." He paused, scratching his chin. "I wonder if, like, it's someone who hates the soda, and wants to make people think it's gonna transform them? I don't think it's working, but..."

"You never know," Banton chimed in. "I doubt someone hates some particular soda enough to do that, though, especially considering this one hasn't been on the market long enough to stir up that much hatred. Hatred for the company behind the soda, though... that's a motive I could see."

"I guess? Sorry, though, that's all I can think of. I'll tell you what, though, if you actually care about it, I'll track ya down if I see any impostors around here. Gotta keep it real, you know?"

He reached out a hand to high-five Banton, who poked at the palm with one of his strangely articulated fingers and then walked on, leaving me to quickly sprint to catch up and leaving the soda hawker standing there awkwardly with his arm in the air.

"Not a fan, huh?" I said, falling in beside Banton.

"Meh... I don't really give a damn either way. But the writhers... I think even someone like you can guess that they're not exactly fond of demon-eyes. First time I've ever heard of them actually letting people see anything useful, though."

"Yeah..." Considering that from what I'd heard, demon-eye made your surroundings look more like some demented conception of hell than anything else, I supposed it had to at least be better than the alternative.

"Maybe, but who knows what he has to put up with alongside them. Really not my problem, though. That being said... words jived with thoughts, so he's not yanking our chain. And if he's right about the word getting out, and reading his buddies... well, chances are that the guilty party isn't out on the street. If they are, though, safe bet is that anyone who's jovial when we approach is clean..."

"...and anyone who bolts means I get to have something approaching actual fun." Which meant that, if anything, tonight was actually looking up.

"Don't get your hopes up," Banton replied, starting to zero in on another soda-hawker. "Anyone intelligent would have taken off hours ago."

"The counterpoint, though, is that most anyone with intelligence and the motivation to use it wouldn't be advertising soda on a random street corner."

As expected, the next hawker, a compact, sturdy woman with purple hair and fingers that resembled octopus tendrils, had completely normal thoughts and therefore knew absolutely nothing that was useful to the investigation. About the only thing she managed to do was ignite an apparently latent craving for some takoyaki, but there weren't any relevant stalls in sight, leaving me grumbling a bit.

"Well... third time's the charm, right?" I finally said, scanning the crowded street ahead of me.

"Hardly ever, in fact. Given the fact that your food cravings are starting to drive me crazy, though, if the next one doesn't pan out, we can go ahead and take a meal break. I'd rather have you satisfy those cravings before they move on to... something different."

"Hey, it's the moon, right? What am I supposed to do?"

"Have some self-control... but again, I'm quite sure that's asking far too much of you."

The third hawker, set up at the entrance of a narrow alleyway between two restaurants, didn't look all that fascinating - baseball cap above close-cropped dark hair, adorned with a pair of tawny feline ears that might or might not have been real. He was leaning against the corner of the restaurant, seeming to watch the people go by as he waited for someone to approach him. He glanced over in our direction, looked us over for a moment, then glanced away again, his slouch untouched.

"See, just like I-" Banton began, but as he spoke, the man glanced up again, appeared to do a double-take, and Banton clammed up as a strong though apparently accosted him. I didn't need to be a mind-reader, though, to note the shocked expression on his face, the way his body shot up ramrod-straight, or the motion of his hand darting to his waistband and returning with the squat, dark oblong shape that quickly resolved into a compact saturday-night special. Probably just a twenty-two, which usually wasn't that much for me to shrug off, but with the crowd bustling around... yeah, better not to risk that, I half-thought, as my muscle memory was already drawing my behemoth of a revolver from its holster.

The hawker, glancing across the crowd, also seemed to think better of the idea, and instead kicked off on one foot and rabbited down the alley with a speed that would have been incredible if it wasn't for the fact that it was probably supernaturally augmented.

"Fuck!" Banton yelled, as foot pursuits weren't exactly something he relished, especially with the way it made his hair whip about behind him. "Of course you would have to pick something like this to be right about!"

"Hey, it's just probability," I replied, easily loping past him. I heard him muttering something about stopped clocks also being right occasionally as I kicked my feet into gear, eyes locked on my quarry to the exclusion of everything else as my legs exulted at the chance to give them a good stretch. It wasn't... arousing, exactly, but on a night when the moon's up, it's the kind of thing where all of a sudden you have boundless energy, and fleeing prey is something more visceral than just a criminal waiting for handcuffs. If and when I did catch up with him, there probably was no telling exactly what I'd end up doing to him - at least until Banton caught up. I was well and truly into the pursuit, though, and the part of my mind which usually handled the police-procedure side of things was way beyond caring.

The only problem was, I didn't really have enough time to get all the way up to speed - after I rounded another couple of corners, hearing a disconcerting series of roughly .22-caliber pops on my way, the alleyway emptied out into a small-ish dirt lot surrounded by the organic sprawl of nearby apartment buildings and their attendant wraparound tubes. There was another alleyway leading back out the other side, but instead of glimpsing a blur darting down into its darkness, the hawker instead had his back flat against the opposite wall, and when his eyes darted over towards me, they were pin-pointed with terror.

"Oh, thank god you're here! I don't care anymore, man, fucking arrest me, kick my ass, whatever! Just don't let that motherfucking thing anywhere near me! Those slugs are supposed to be silver-capped, but they didn't do fucking anything to it!"

I glanced at the alleyway, but I couldn't quite make out what seemed to be approaching in the darkness. My ears could pick up a low growl, though, and my nose... whatever was out there, it was undoubtedly canine, and I was just as certain that the moon had to be affecting it in a similar way.

"Yeah? Then the only thing I want to see is you facing the wall, with your piece on the ground next to you. One false move..."

"I get it, I get it!" The gun clunked into the dirt, and the hawker turned to face the wall, crouching down for a moment. That should have warned me, but at the same time, the low growl turned into a more pointed snarl, and while a quick glance didn't reveal much more than a leg emerging from the darkness, the second of inattentiveness was enough. Running wasn't the only trick my prey apparently had, as he expanded into a standing high-jump that allowed him to easily vault up onto the rooftop, twisting in midair with his catlike spine and ducking down below the roof ledge before I could swing the ponderous barrel of my weapon over and take proper aim. Tensed like a spring as I was, I knew that I was half-tempted to try and follow... but even as Banton came puffing around the corner, a far more pressing threat had loped its way into view.

Unlike whatever it was I'd gone through that had turned me kinda-were, there was nothing half-hearted about the transformation the figure before me had gone through. Pretty much a straight-up wolf, this one, albeit with fur that was closer to black than grey, and with almost feline eyes that gave a reflected green-yellow glow. Not as creepy as the red variety, but then again, nothing about the situation was particularly creepy to someone like me. Still, I had to give him some style points for the tattered scraps of jeans and what might have previously been boxer briefs holding together just enough to keep him reasonably modest, while still screaming "I just turned into a giant wolf beast" in the clearest possible terms. And if that was the case... yeah, probably no point in trying to make him listen to reason, and far better of an idea to put my revolver away and give my arms a good pre-combat stretch.

Sure, the guy probably was a good foot over my own height and a few pounds besides, but my blood was up - and when that happens, I can't usually even bother feigning intimidation no matter what I might be going up against.

Besides, the moon was out, which meant that this could go in all sorts of interesting ways. Sure, if the big furball came at me hard with tooth and claw, like he was trying to take me out, then I'd probably have to get serious - might even have to pull the old hand-cannon back out and give him a couple if it really came to that. But if he didn't do that, if he went to get in close and grapple instead... well, that just might mean he had something else on his mind entirely. Kind of the same thing I realized wasn't too far back in my own mind, either.

No, I decided, I was going to get in a workout and blow off some steam one way or another. As the wolf stalked back and worth in front of us, snarling, I slid my revolver out from its holster, spun it until the handle was reversed, then proffered it to Banton, who looked at me dubiously.

"Don't tell me you're actually gonna to hand-to-hand with... that..."

"Heh, you've known me for how long? Pretty sure you already know the answer to that..."

Banton sighed, but took the revolver nonetheless, tucking it away beneath his jacket. "And the lead we were pursuing?"

"Ah, that jerk's long gone by now. Besides, we let this one roam around loose, who knows what mischief he'll get up to. We're here, so we might as well subdue him before someone gets hurt..."

"Fine, whatever, but if you think I'll be joining you in that particular fray-"

"Of course not. Wouldn't be sporting, not would it? Trust me, I've got this..."

Banton looked between the two of us, staring especially askance at the were, as I did my best to keep any thoughts of potential... friskiness... buried deeper in my subconscious. No sense in letting Banton in on the possible game just yet. Before even considering that, I had to let the wolf make the first move, see just what exactly his intentions were...