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Terror Hunting

Chapter 2: Hiding

The transition to the Slip was less remarkable than Tobias expected. The actual Slip itself, though, was another matter. It was a roiling mess of madness. Victoria looked at the human worriedly. Not every person reacted well to the Slip, and she hoped that Tobias would not have another seizure before they got out. For her, the Slip was a dangerous place, but also home. She was born from the Slip, a child of someone's dreams and thoughts. Maybe not a person, though. Non-sentient organisms like dogs or cats or wolves also could have a subconscious pressure on the Slip. It was one of the theories about why so many people that originated from the Slip were anthropomorphic animals. The dragoness put a clawed hand on the shoulder of the dazed human, and began to get a feel for where they were.

She examined the ground below her feet. It was a solid plane of glass, maybe fifty feet thick, resting on top of a swirling, glowing, blue liquid that defied all attempts to identify as a conventional substance. Victoria groaned at the landscape. The fluid beneath their feet was likely something that was hazardous to touch, if not for her, than definitely the human. Probably some mutagen or other,_ she thought. _That seems to be the standard for this area of the Slip. And the glass wouldn't make things easier. It seemed unusually slick, and combat would be near impossible. _Combat or keeping this guy upright... _ Indeed, the human was loosing his footing on the slippery surface, and instead of just supporting, Victoria was having to haul the human upright.

Not that she expected combat. It was almost unheard of for a Terror or swarm of them to chase a person back to the Slip--

A screech that only a Terror could make.

_ Son of a bitch... Only the most dangerous Terrors would manifest in the Slip. It was dangerous to everyone, and only rarely, _extremely rarely would a Terror brave the Slip to get to their prey. The fact that Tobias would inspire such zeal from the pair's pursuers made the dragoness nervous. She generally counted the Slip as a safe zone. Well, not exactly safe, but a place where the only thing that could kill you was random occurrences. Not an enemy actively hunting you down.

_ _ "Alright, Tobias. Get your ass moving. We have to cover a lot of ground before--"

"The world is so... Bright, and shiny, and blue, and shiny..." Was the mumbled reply.

The dragoness was frantic now. When frantic, she tended to yell.

"MOTHER OF HELL, GODDAMN IT, GET YOUR ASS MOVING!"

The human noticed that. Tobias did indeed get his ass moving, the combination of the Terror's screech and Victoria's outburst had finally worked its way into the haze of first-time multidimensional travel. But he had to concentrate to avoid falling to the Slip's dazing effect, already he was losing concentration, the buzzing in his limbs returning, the strange brightness of everything enveloping him... He shook his head. Life or death. He had to hang onto that, for if he failed to keep his mind in shape, it would be death. He knew that. So why was the all-encompassing lullaby of this realm slipping back into his head... Tobias was jolted back to clear-headedness as a burning sensation enveloped his fingers. Victoria, decided that him simply not resisting her was enough, had sent a ball of spell-flame to dance around his fingers, touching them if she deemed his concentration was slipping. The resultant thoughts of the human were hazy, interspersed with spikes of finger-burning. The colors, this place... is... beauti- OW. Dammit, slipped off again. Won't happen again. Won't happen again. Stay focused. Stay focused. I'm slip... ping off... OW. Dammit!

They were making good progress; the Terrors seemingly on the edge of catching up, when Victoria would breath a spurt of flame and send it as brightly burning missiles back at the oncoming hoard. They were making good progress, until the glass ground shattered in front of them. Vapors of the bluish fluid beneath them boiled up, an almost tangible barrier that blocked the fleeing pair's progress. Victoria grabbed the human, and spread her wings, and jumped. They almost cleared the barrier. Victoria did, as she carried the human below her, however, an almost-tangible tentacle of the vapor reached up and brushed his foot, melting through the shoes he wore, and burning off his right sock. Tobias went limp. Victoria decided that having to carry an unconscious human made the original goal of getting to world alpha-3A5KH-gamma-6, the HQ world of the Terror Hunters, no longer an option. World theta-4D1GS-omega-2 was the best choice to rest and recuperate before going on another transition through the Slip. A transition point would be somewhere ahead, she could sense it in the peculiar sense all people who regularly transitioned through the Slip developed. She desperately tried to remember what information she could about the world, information she thought she would never need, but was drilled into every Hunter's head as part of the long register of worlds that were safe for habitation.

Victoria finally remembered what the characteristics were, running through them in her head: Instead of a nuclear bomb in World War Two, the American government (Actually the British in this world) had invented a type of explosive that sped up time in an area, causing buildings to crumble to dust and mountains to erode. World War Three had been started by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the world was now mostly a wasteland. However, what humans remained were building up again, and high-tech towers would stand tall and proud next to rural farms. Also, the world was littered with bunkers. A byproduct of the rapid time acceleration was a period of mutation, and while there was cancer here and there, most of the mutations were benign. Even beneficial. Denizens of the world could have a minor amount of telekinesis, be able to change the color of their skin, or move at tremendous speeds, among other things.

There! Directly ahead was the transition point. Victoria was a good fighter, and with crossbows, fire magic, and the martial arts training she went through, she was a more than formidable opponent. But there were more Terrors than she had ever seen, and they were wearing her down, and she had to carry the unconscious Tobias. The transition point was a barely visible shimmering sphere, with motes of light floating about that would temporarily form into images of the realm on the other side before flying apart again. Victoria plunged in, and turning her mind like a key, slipped through.

The experience of transitioning was... odd. It always was. Having every molecule of your body disassembled and re-assembled through a dimensional rift? The brain didn't know what to make of that. It tried, though. It would throw out what it could best approximate it thought should be the appropriate sensation. A twinge of pain here, a vicious tingling there, a hint of lemon on the tongue, and the sound of bells. It was always confusing. Finally, after what felt like an hour or two, couldn't have logically been more than half a minute, but could have been anything in-between because the Slip screwed around with time and space in odd ways, they were through. Victoria hit the ground running. A bunker. We will be safe in a bunker. They are supposed to be friggin everywhere... The odd feeling of space rippling that was the sure sign of something going through a transition point. Frustratingly, the pair had landed in a place that looked like a desert. Mountains rose in the distance, and a quick look around confirmed the vast desert was in fact a basin.

The Terrors screeched again. Quickly, the dragoness dug a hands-free headset out of her pocket before hurrying off again. She tapped a button on the side, prompting the slender device to wake up. First order of business: connect the headset to her communicator, currently a smart-phone with a tiny radioisotope thermoelectric generator and a Slip-transmission capable internal antenna.

"Headset: voice command: connect to communicator wireless." A beep answered a few seconds later, confirming the command was carried out. "Communicator: voice command: scan for information networks. Prioritize emergency shelters." Another five seconds, and the beep sounded again, and began reading out the results of her query.

"Nearest shelter: five-point-seven-three kilometers west-northwest. Supplies: twenty year's worth of food and water for one individual." That would be doable. And much easier if the human didn't spend so much time unconscious.

---

Tobias opened his eyes warily. He felt like he was being carried, and the fact that his vision was the orange expanse of the dragoness's back confirmed that. He twisted, trying to glimpse where he was being carried to. A circular metal hatch was set into the side of the slope they were climbing, a keypad next to the door covered by a thick plane of plastic. Victoria put him on the ground, leaning against a rock, and the dragoness melted the plastic, then the keypad, then began fiddling with the revealed wires. Five minutes later the hatch slowly shuddered open. The orange dragon glanced at her charge, and seeing he was awake, asked him a question. Tobias didn't quite get it, and muttered a sleepy "Wha?"

"Can you walk? Do you need my help to stand up?" The dragon was impatient. Tobias fumblingly lurched to his feet, using the boulder he had been propped up against provide him support. The reply was slurred, but intelligible.

"Yeah. I can walk. And get up."

"Good. Into the bunker. Come on."

The human limped into the bunker. Lights turned on automatically to stop him from falling down the steps, which he nearly did anyway due to his hangover style headache. He tiredly noticed his right foot was asleep. Dang pins-and-needles feeling. He hated that. Victoria followed him in, shutting the door from the inside with another keypad. At the bottom of the stairs was an airlock, again opened an closed by fiddling with wires, and past that was the main installation. It looked like an average hotel room, only instead of a refrigerator there was a massive room filled with canned food and bottled water. The surfaces were strangely clean of dust, and Tobias took off his burned socks and flopped on the bed. Victoria frowned at him.

"Show me your right foot." The human opened his eyes.

"What? What do you want to see my foot for?"

"In the Slip. You came into contact with a material that was a mutagen. I want to make sure you are not going to lose the foot."

He took the covers off of his feet, and gasped. His foot had changed. It was covered in jet black fur, and the nails had been replaced by claws. As he watched, there was another burst of tingling and the foot became more bestial. It started to look like a paw. Victoria made a 'hmph' noise.

"Just as I thought. You are becoming an anthropomorphic. There is a reason so many people from the slip are anthros. Animals exert their own pressure on the slip, just like sentient people. It is the leading theory why so many people born from the Slip are anthropomorphic animals. Like me." The dragoness leaned down to sniff the slowly changing appendage. "Smells like a panther." She stood back up, and put her hands on her hips. "Alright, I can probably use some magic to help this out. You have a few options," she ticked them off on her fingers as she went over them. "One: I can revert you back to fully human, for a while. But, when you would reach full transformation, it will happen all at once. That may cause some mental side-effects. Two: I can fully transform you to, and when it is done your health will be fully stabilized, mentally and physically. Three: I do nothing. The transformation will continue to progress, and it may have some effect on your mental faculties as well. However, at Terror Hunter HQ, they will fully be able to transform you back, but that depends on us reaching it in time. For options one and two, I need your input soon. Within the next day. I need to take a shower." With that, the dragoness walked to the bathroom, and closed the door.

Tobias thought, as he heard the shower turn on. He thought about his parents. His brother. His friends. What would they think if he got out of this mess and he was some strange cat person? But could he afford to risk losing his mind, just to preserve his form, and not be able to recognize them? He waited until the shower turned off. Victoria walked out, smelling of some sort of floral soap. Tobias had made his decision.

"Option one."

"Noted." She paused, and took a deep breath. "Alright. Stay on the bed. Face up. Stay still." She started by breathing a glob of fire into her hand, then using her fingers to make floating runes around him. They burned, but he tried to remain still. His foot in particular was burning, in an inferno almost, and then... Something happened. The fire still hurt, but he was distracted from the pain by an understanding of the fire... An understanding of the magic that was being weaved around his form.

The understanding slipped away, and the magic ended. But still, like the wispy remnants of a forgotten dream, he felt bits and pieces bubbling up from his subconsciousness. He could barely ask what had happened.

"What was that?"

"You felt that as well?"

"Yeah. What was it?"

Victoria paused.

"Well, remember when I told you about pressures? About how some pressures can sort of fit together?" Tobias gave a hesitant nod. "Well, magic is basically an extension of a person's pressure. And our pressures touched. Apparently, they fit together very well. We... are linked together. We can't really just go our separate ways, in any case."

Tobias pondered the implications, trying to understand what she meant. For better of for worse, they had been pushed together, by either fate of circumstance, but still undeniably joined.