FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

**Title Here

By: VeronicaFoxx

For: Arrow**

Richard saw it coming. He saw the chunk of raw meat arch up over the crowd and begin its descent, and it felt like things were moving in slow motion. Melody probably saw it, too, but the expression of frozen horror on her face told him that she was not going to be able to react in time. He could only watch as it came down towards her, but then his hands seemed to move on their own, altering the cant of his sign so that it sat between the flying chunk of bloody flesh and his friend. It smacked into the poster board with enough weight to carry it back towards her, smacking her in the face, but the meat didn't touch her. It left a bloody splatter on the front of his sign, but it didn't touch her. That was what was important.

He flung the sign to the ground and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, dragging her back away from the front of the protesting crowd, and away from the counter-protestors in particular. She was still frozen at the moment. He knew that she was stuck back in her parent's basement, and all he could do was hug her tight with one arm, squeezing her shoulder with his other hand, while he pushed his way towards the back so that they could get away from the line of fire. He could feel her skin pulse and ripple through her shirt, saw the way her lips began to harden and the feather plumes that began to sprout from her hair, and slapped a hand over her eyes. The harsh panting of her breath began to slow almost immediately, and he kept it there until they were well free of the crowd.

He got them up a hill behind the protest and sat her down beside him on one of the park's benches, then held her as she began sobbing uncontrollably. It always took her a few minutes to get herself back under control when this happened, and he knew the best thing to do was to let her just cry herself out. She'd get past it, and the anger would come back to fuel her determination once more, but she had to find her way back out of the torture chamber that had been indelibly ingrained into the back of her mind first. She clung to him, fingers curling to grip at his shirt, flexing open, then curling again, teeth gritted as she tried to bite off the sobs like they were a physical thing that she could fight, every muscle in her body tensed. Richard held her, and he only put his hand back over her eyes when he saw or felt her starting to shift again.

If he had it in him to do so, he would have hated the humans that stood across from the protest. He wanted to hate them. They deserved it for the things they did to his people, the things they had done to his friends and loved ones, but all he could ever manage was a bewildered sadness. He didn't think that he would ever be able to understand how they could hate so deeply and violently for something outside of anyone's control. It wasn't like you chose to be a shifter; you were born with it, the same as being gay or trans or of a different skin color or anything else. It was just part of who you were. He supposed people like that just needed something to hate because they would otherwise have to hate themselves. It was the only way that he could rationalize it.

Eventually, Melody pushed herself away from him, scooting a few inches apart on the bench and held out a demanding hand. Richard unzipped the fanny pack around his waist and extracted a pack of tissues, which he handed over. She mumbled her thanks before vigorously blowing at her nose and wiping her eyes, trying to erase the evidence. It wasn't the first time, and it probably wouldn't be the last, but he didn't hold it against her. In his line of work, he saw all kinds of trauma, both physical and emotional, and it wasn't something that was ever gotten over easily. He always felt most sorry for those who had it forced onto them when young because it always seemed to cut the deepest. It became embedded into their minds as "the way things are" and took years and years to fight free of. It was even worse when the trauma was caused by those who were supposed to love them, as in Melody's case, tending to cause severe issues with self confidence and self esteem, self destructive behaviors, and worse.

Richard himself had been very lucky. His parents had been accepting, if not exactly understanding, but they had done their best to support him and learn about the condition when it came out. He didn't have the kind of horror story that so many other shifters did, and he made sure to let his family know how much he appreciated it whenever it came up. Melody interrupted his train of thought with a gentle bap against his upper arm, and he glanced at her with a lifted brow and a sympathetic smile.

"Thanks..." she grumbled, sniffling again and glaring out towards the crowd opposite the protesting shifters. "I just... froze up again..."

"Hey, what are friends for? If I can't swat some hamburger out of the air, I think I should have my feathers clipped, huh?"

That got a snort of laughter, which unfortunately had the side effect of shooting a glob of snot out of her nose and onto the leg of her jeans. She gave him a slightly harder punch to the bicep and began trying to scrape the slime off of her clothes with the last of the tissues from the small pack while Richard did his best to stifle the laughter that threatened to overwhelm him. He turned his gaze back towards the protest to save her dignity as much as he still could, and ran a critical eye along the front line.

The counter-protestors were hard up against the plastic barriers that lined their side of main thoroughfare of the park, with his own people standing a few feet back from the ones on the nearer side. That was partly to increase the distance between themselves and the hateful humans across from them, but also to keep space between themselves and the excessive number of police that stood along the paved walkway. It seemed like at least two whole departments had been called out, and there were five facing the shifter crowd for every one that was facing the humans. The shifters were keeping calm, or as calm as possible under the heinous verbal assault being flung their way along with physical objects like bottles, chunks of meat, dog collars and leashes, and the like. It was a disgusting display, but the shifters were sticking to the strict policy that had been set for the protest: no retaliation, no matter what. These humans already called them animals and worse. Any, any, actions aside from purely peaceful protest would only fuel their irrational hatred and be used as proof that their reasoning was sound.

He was glad that only a small percentage of the shifters had taken on their bestial or anthropomorphic forms. It had been strongly encouraged to remain fully human throughout the protest, but the stress was enough to cause anyone to shift. Those that had done it on purpose all stood at the front, proud and unshakeable. These were generally the hotheads of the organization, but they seemed to have taken this particular event as a challenge. No matter what insults or objects were flung their way, the two dozen shifters stood silent and firm, not so much as flicking a whisker. Those who had been forced to it through stress were mostly at the back of the crowd, trying to calm themselves and revert to human form, and Richard saw a few of his coworkers moving among them. As an EMT, he worked with all kinds, though there was only one other shifter on his rotation. He was very proud to see his team here and helping, though he was sure there was at least one or two on the other side helping add to the hate-filled vitriol of the opposing crowd.

Melody said something, too low for him to hear, and he was turning to ask her what it had been when he heard the first pop. It was always odd how strangely soft a gunshot sounded when you weren't right beside the firearm when it went off. His head snapped towards the sound so fast that the world spun a little. He saw the crowd pushing back away from the barriers, on the shifter side, with the rising sound of panicked screams. He was running before that had even finished registering, arrowing towards the forming cavitation in the crowd. And then more pops joined the first, a syncopated staccato that ramped his heartrate into a rapid thump against the inside of his ribs. He hoped, hoped that the red shirt with its iconic white cross would protect him. He hoped, and he ran, meeting the sudden surge that pushed against him as shifters began to flee.

His vision blurred momentarily then sharpened to the point that he could count each hair and strand of fur on those in front of him if he had wanted to. He used it to his advantage, picking out his fellow medical technicians. Those he found were fighting against the push, just the same as he was, struggling to get to the front, to where things had happened, and then the crush of bodies was suddenly gone. He stumbled, caught himself, and raced towards the nearest person who lay weakly writhing on the ground. He skidded to a stop on his knees beside them and slung the pack from his back, doing a quick once-over to catalogue the obvious injuries.

The felinoid shifter lay gasping, eyes wide, one hand clutched against the side of its throat as blood gushed up from beneath, trying to staunch the flow. Melody hit the ground right beside Richard, and he called out for gauze, a peeled pack slapping into his hand almost immediately. He convinced the cat to let him slide it between their hand and neck, told them to keep up the pressure, and held out his hand with a call for tape. It might not stop the bleeding, probably wouldn't, and might not save the feline, but it was the best that he could do. It was the only thing he could do. His mind was in purely procedural mode: identify the problem, determine the best possible solution, implement the solution, then move on to the next problem.

He was surprised when the tape didn't magic itself into his hand, and glanced towards where Melody should have been, seeing no one there. Then a heavy body barreled into him, driving the wind from his lungs, words screamed into his ears. The blows began falling before he even had a chance to understand what was being demanded of him, and he instinctively pulled his hands up over his head to try and shield himself. He felt his ribs crack as another heavy impact crushed down on him, then he was being wrestled onto his stomach, arms being wrenched behind his back so hard that he thought his shoulders would pop out of their sockets. Someone knelt atop him, digging their knee into his lower back as a forearm pressed down across the side of his neck, and he still couldn't understand what was being shouted at him.

His attention was focused on the face of the feline, half a foot away from his own at best, an arm laid similarly across their neck, hands wrenched behind their back, the arterial spurt flowing freely, weakening as the light faded from their eyes. Richard began to understand what it might be like to hate someone, and it sickened him to feel it.

The End

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