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FOXRECRUITER by Limewah Commission for Ciara, featuring her sona 18+} SNEAK PEEK

This is set in the same setting as FOXTOY; reading it beforehand is not essential to understand this one.

(author's note; any text within brackets {like this} is spoken in Vulpine, the official language of New Vulpes.)

Ciara had not been bound, nor had she been bolted down to a table the way non-foxes were when they were brought to an Education Centre.

She was, however, locked up.

The room was about 4 square feet, and didn't even have a bed in it. It gave Ciara more room to stalk around. She had a great deal of frustration to work through; she couldn't have it clouding her mind the moment one of her captors walked through that threshold.

She still wasn't quite clear on why she was allowed to walk relatively "free"; even if she was still in a cage. The grey-furred, red-striped folf hadn't even been stripped down; she was still wearing a sheer red dress that was, ostensibly, her date outfit - she'd picked it out to bring out her green eyes.

Some date this had turned out to be.

Ciara was trying to remember the route she took to get here, or more accurately the route she was taken along; the hallways, the lifts, the topology of the building.

It was bizarre just how trusting they'd been of her. No blindfolds, only a perfunctory pair of handcuffs that had been removed as soon as she arrived. She half expected the foxes who had "escorted" her to leave the door unlocked.

There was no way the jackbooted New Vulpes thugs would have offered a non-fox the same sort of courtesy.

Ciara was "only" half-fox, betrayed by her wirier tail and her taller frame, but that was enough for the city-state's regime; one drop of fox-blood in one's ancestry was enough to make them a first-class citizen. It had allowed Ciara to pass through the streets un-noticed, with one of her resistance members posing as her 'Foxtoy'. Dark glasses hid the lack of spirals and ripples behind them, and they generally avoided drawing attention. It had worked decently well, and she was able to help aid the pockets of resistance throughout the city - getting supplies in, getting people out - without getting caught.

Until recently. Until her stupid, stupid lapse in judgement.

Being a quasi-leader of a resistance cell was a very lonely, frustrating thing. Especially when those who she'd been quite close to, very intimate with, had fled the city quite early on, before things got really bad.

She couldn't blame them for seeing the writing on the wall… but they didn't wait for Ciara to join them. She wasn't as decisive as them. But she wished they'd have pushed harder to have her escape with them. Had they ever trusted her to begin with?

Damnit. Her mind was getting ahead of her. She sat down on the floor, pressed her hands against her face, and breathed slowly.

Back to the task at hand. Back to the map. Back to plotting her escape-route. Her muzzle moved as she spoke to herself, silent save for the odd pop of her lips and click of her tongue.

She felt the cold floor beneath her, heard the soft fluorescent buzz of the lights, and was able to start to ground herself at last. She thought of her opening moves. If they were this trusting, this lax, they'd likely be lightly armed. She hadn't been much of a fighter before this all started, but now she was quite capable. Not to mention, her size was a significant advantage over the generally much-smalller foxes. Good at getting the drop on someone and knocking them out cold before they knew what was happening.

She thought she might be able to disarm someone, or at least shove them away before making a break for it.

Or maybe she could play along for a while, let herself be escorted to her ego-death, and find another opportunity to break away. Riskier. It wasn't exactly the devil she knew vs. the devil she didn't. Both were full of uncertainties.

But if she kept her mind clear and her focus sharp, she'd surely be able to find a way out…

When the door opened, and the Minister of Peace stepped in, all those plans she was building slid out of her mind.

There she was, looking as beautiful as she had the last time Ciara saw her in person. The person she last wanted to see - the reason she'd gotten captured in the first place.

The arctic fox was tall for her kind - almost as tall as Ciara. She was dressed in a sleek, black-knit turtlenecked jumpsuit, with a brooch of New Vulpes keeping her hair pinned into a tight bun. A far cry from the sharp uniforms she'd seen most of the guards wear.

Speaking of… she didn't see any. The Arctic fox had come alone; clearly, she didn't deem that necessary.

Áine's fur was even whiter than Ciara remembered; it made sense, she must have had access to the finest product money could buy, especially considering her position in the government.

The scent of lilac hit the folf's nose shortly after. It made her shiver. Ciara remembered her nose being drowned in that scent as it was buried in the snowy nape of Áine's neck, and with that, the memory of lowering her head, the arctic fox reaching up to… and as the arctic fox opened her mouth, Ciara found her ears pricking and her head leaning forward, as if hoping that the first words out of her mouth would be…

"{Good to see you again, FoxComrade,}" Áine said, in perfectly fluent Vulpine. She sounded bubbly, happy, so very casual. Like she was greeting a friend she'd run into on the street.

Ciara exhaled and caught herself again.

Fuck. Would she have cracked if she heard those words? Overwhelmed by the memories?

"{I'm… not happy seeing you,}" Ciara responded, her own speech halting, stiff, and very obviously accented; she couldn't hide the half-lie.

"Would it be easier if we used lesser language?" Áine asked, switching to the language Ciara was more used to. 'Lesser' was the predominant adjective for anything that didn't come from the Foxes. Language, culture, and of course, people.

This constant, taken-for-granted supremacy made Ciara's skin crawl and her fur bristle.

"I'd be happy to give you lessons once you're a little more settled," Áine continued.

I'd love that, a traitorous part of Ciara thought.

"I don't think that's going to happen," Ciara said, her voice thick.

"Only if you want to," Áine said. "I know a lot of good tutors, as well. Some Foxes like to have little conversations with their Foxtoys, and there are plenty of volunteers for that sort of work."

Ciara kept her mouth shut. She didn't know what might leap out of her mouth if she didn't.

"But… oh, what am I doing! I'm being too formal!"

Áine opened her arms and she smiled widely, as if she was greeting an old friend. Before Ciara could pull away, the full-blooded fox moved in and wrapped herself around the folf.

Time stopped.

Ciara's hands shook. She felt electrocuted.

She wanted to return the embrace, to stroke her paws along Áine's tail, to feel the curve of her lower back, to clutch her face and stare deep into her eyes the way they did, between the sheets, in that moon-lit hotel room, the happiest moment of her life…

But she didn't.

"Sorry, hope you don't mind," Áine continued, "It's just… I mean it, it's really good to see you, Ciara. You look great! Have you lost weight?"

…What was going on here?

Was this the preamble to torture? Was it an attempt to make Ciara let her guard down?

Well, if so, it wasn't working.

Probably.

…Maybe.

…No.

Áine was still beautiful. Like a princess from a fairy tale come to life, camouflaged in modern clothing.

Ciara was a romantic, too. Her mind and heart had a tendency to orbit and swirl around whoever the object of her infatuation was. And now that she'd come close to this planet again, she was caught in its gravitational pull. Thoughts of Áine - the things she'd said to Ciara, the things Ciara wanted to say to her, the things Ciara wanted to hear back… they occupied a disturbingly large section of her mind.

"Maybe," Ciara finally answered.

"Well, that makes sense," Áine said, with a concerned little frown. "You've probably been working way too hard. Come on, let's go for a walk together. I want to show you around."

Áine stepped through the open door. Ciara followed, slowly and cautiously, as if expecting a booby trap.

But no. She saw the way she'd come from. She recognized the twists and bends of the hallway. She could even see orange-tinted signs up above, with arrows, and a symbol of a running fox.

Her escape route couldn't be easier.

All she had to do was run the opposite direction, turn left as Áine turned right.

Ciara exited the room, and turned right.

She couldn't help herself. There was a psychic shackle around her heart, one that tugged taut and kept her moving just behind the fluffy-tailed creature.

Even the back of her head was gorgeous, she noticed.

Áine looked over her shoulder, and slowed down.

"C'mon, walk beside me Ciara!" she said, flashing another bewitching grin. "There's loads of room!"

"O-ok," Ciara croaked, unable to stop herself from moving alongside.

"There we go~" Áine said. "Still good at following directions, I see."

Ciara huffed. Just the suggestion of those directions threw her mind back in time, made her remember flashes of the last time they'd been together.

***

"I had a really great time tonight, Ciara…"

"Yeah…"

"Did you say you have work tomorrow?"

"Well, the bar doesn't open till 6, I can sleep in a bit."

"Well… the blue line stops near me, and it runs till 3."

"…So…?"

"So… maybe you could ome back to mine."

"I was hoping you'd say that!"

***

Ciara remembered how she'd almost leapt out of her skin when Áine had first invited her back to her place. How a whole new side of that fox was revealed to the folf. A raw charismatic power that made Ciara's knees go weak and her mind open up.

She was pulled back to the present when she realised her dress was tenting. She was throbbing. How long had that been there? Had Áine noticed?

"Sorry about standing you up, as well," Áine continued.

"That's one way of putting it," Ciara shot back. "Were you even there? Were you eavesdropping on me while I was waiting for you?"

"Oh, I'm not talking about today," Áine said. "I'm talking about three years ago."

"Right…" Ciara said, frowning. "Yes. You left me pretty fucked up."

Right. Three years ago. Two years before things broke bad, the city got taken over by foxes, and Ciara had been forced into the role of a freedom righter.

Their second date had never come to pass. Ciara had waited at their meeting point in the park till the sun was on its way down, and Áine never even sent an apology text. Or any texts at all, for that matter, no response to the embarrassing amount of texts Ciara sent.

She spent the next week with a roiling tumour of bile and tears in her throat.

Fucked up was the right way to put it.

"And I didn't want that, believe me," Áine continued. "Things just… got out of hand. There was a lot of work to be done, things had starting moving, and Blanchard, may he rest in peace, needed a lot of help. I swear, by the time I came out the other side of that, the first thing I thought about was you. And honestly, I didn't reach out because I thought you'd just block me or tell me to go fuck myself."

"Yeah, probably," Ciara said, even though she knew that wasn't true. It was a message from Áine that had lead her right into the proverbial honeypot.

She'd ignored every single self-preservation urge she had to go to one of the finest restaurants that was still open for business. She'd sat at that table and waited, twiddling her claws, thumping her foot. She only realised that the maitre'd, the live music, even the other customers were all FoxRecruiters (Trappers, she called them), when it was too late.

If there were three or five of them, she could have fought her way out, leave them unconscious in her wake and go into hiding. But a dozen…

The strangest thing about it all was the way they arrested her. She remembered how, as her hands were cinched behind her back and cuffed together, that the striped fox who did the deed said they were "sorry". They even sounded sincere.

If it wasn't for the cuffs, she could have deluded herself into thinking she was some sort of VIP the way they gently guided her to a waiting car. And even those were removed quickly enough once she was brought to the cell.

"Well, I showed up for the date, anyway," Ciara said. "Where were you? Were you watching from the rooftop or something? You wanted to see me humiliated, right?"

"No!" Áine sounded genuinely hurt. "No, never. I was getting set up here. I didn't want to spoil our reunion…"

"How thoughtful," Ciara hissed.

"You're hurting, I get it," Áine replied, gentle and conciliatory. "But that won't be for long. Believe me, this is going to be a much better time than that restaurant; honestly, it's a little overrated…"

Ciara could still make a break for it. Why wasn't she making a break for it?!

…She was waiting for the right moment. She was keeping her eyes on Áine, not even pausing to look over her shoulder.

She just needed to pick the right moment to flee. Any second now.

Until then, Áine was the biggest threat. Ciara could not - would not turn her back on her.

The way she had done, standing her up all those years ago, not to mention tonight-

Fuck. She was letting it get too personal.

Ciara shook her head and held a curse in her muzzle.

"Here we are," Áine said as she came to one more un-marked, un-assuming door among so many others, labeled 'Interrogation Room 1F' in the cursive scrawl of Fox-language.

The room wasn't exactly spacious. Just barely big enough for a small round table and two chairs, the sort of furniture you'd find in the corner of a sleepy café. A bottle of wine and a vase of flowers sat in the middle of the table. The lights were low, and warm, flickering softly as if there was a candle dangling from the ceiling. It was still obviously an interrogation room, one that had been dressed up. Mutton dressed as lamb.

"Are you hungry?" Áine asked. "Or are you happy to start with wine? I can handle drink on an empty stomach, but what about you?"

"What is this." Ciara scoffed, lingering at the door. "Are you trying to fuck with me? I'd rather we just skipped to the part where you throw me in jail or try to brainwash me."

"No," Áine said. "I don't want to go through all the usual formalities. You don't deserve that. It's why we didn't read you the charges in your room."

"My charges?" Ciara asked. Her back foot slid back. This was it. It was time to make her move to run.

"Yes. And discuss your sentencing. Make yourself comfy, please!"

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