FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

If not for the sporadic dips and bends in the metro track, Hadley may very well have fallen asleep standing up during the commute back from employment, kept steady only by holding onto the hand bar above her head. There were no benches on the tram. Passengers occupied more surface space sitting than standing, more space meant more cars, and more cars meant more total operating cost for the transportation of labor. Labor, meanwhile, was cheap, having been nearly entirely replaced by automation. Just being lucky enough to be selected for an employment rotation was enough for most creatures to put up with whatever lack of comfort that would inevitably entail.

Hadley yawned, the rabbit shifting the weight on her long digitigrade feet to give each an opportunity to flex. It was her feet more than anything that was sore, given how little physical activity her rotation had involved. The Company didn't need slow, inefficient, and squishy "organic labor" for heavy lifting; that was reserved to be performed by a cheap machine. Instead, live workers were used to do things that for some reason or another were nigh on impossible for a computer to do for them. Hadley, for instance, had found herself assigned to a prefabricated workstation, repeating strange and repetitive tasks. The workstation could gauge her speed and accuracy, and move her on to a different task whenever it detected that she was near the mental "burn out" point for that particular activity. Hours were spent where she was shown images of random objects and asked to label them, or did her best to match the subject of surveillance stills to a grid of ID photos. She watched countless grainy, five second clips of street surveillance to label small clusters of people as suspicious or normal. One day, she was given an endless stream of sentences and asked to judge the context of an ambiguous word in each of them.

Whether these tasks were meant as sample data as part of research efforts to automate them, or simply a stopgap effort until they could be, she had no way of knowing. Some of them gave Hadley a fair bit of uneasiness, wondering whether or not the samples she was being shown were mere hypotheticals or she was being used to track and gather data on real people and conversations, but the alternative was to forfeit her spot on this and any future employment rotation she might be eligible for. Universal wages only really covered shelter and food, and only just barely; wages were needed to pay for medicine and safety.

The light blue workman's-style jumpsuit of a work detail uniform covered her mostly-gray fur, the outfit as much a reflection of her world's strange duality as the contrast between the sprawling mansions of the oligarchs and the cramped quarters of the workers: brightly colored, yet plainly shaped; symbol of the added financial power of someone earning a wage, and the submission of someone subject to the whims of a company.

"You up for a bit of a wind-down, hon?"

The stranger jarred Hadley from her fatigue-addled thoughts, bringing her back down to earth. She was a hyenamorph, all black-spotted browns and rounded edges with the usual black-dipped muzzle and "glove" pattern, and as per the stereotype a rather intimidating attempt at a friendly grin. Compared to Hadley she was at least a head taller, perhaps even another half, easily holding the hand bar with her arm bent as opposed to Hadley's veritably hanging from it.

"Oh..." the rabbit responded, biting down on her bottom lip as she glanced back over, and above, her shoulder at the hyena. Not long after the conversion from a municipal to a corporate society, city zones had become gender-segregated to prevent overbreeding in the already-crowded workforce. Anthro instinct, however, didn't care for the lack of available mates, and a growing culture of situational homosexuality was the natural result. It seemed to Hadley that she was the target of a rather direct propositioning. "I'm flattered and all, but..."

The woman shushed her with the light touch of two fingers from her free hand against Hadley's nose, earning her a frown from the smaller female, though that expression faded when she gestured again, drawing a trail from the rabbit's eyes to her own left side collar bone. "Aww, but a cute little bun like you deserves a little attention after a hard week. Come on, hon, you're sure to regret it if you miss out."

Hadley's eyes widened, shifting back and forth between the woman's face and neck. In the realm of brain versus computer, it was the primitive one could recognize an image obscured by the shifting of fur on flesh on bone, and that made collar brands a useful tool for any group that wanted to identify itself to others without being flagged by the web of passive computerized surveillance blanketing the planet. This hyena bore the brand of the Underground. Perhaps the coy suggestions and innuendos weren't a sexual proposition, but instead a means of masking the real offer from the tram's voice parsers.

"I mean... I suppose it couldn't hurt to enjoy a little warm company, right?" Hadley offered the woman a nervous smile, playing along with her mode of speech.

The hyena grinned back at her. "Oh, don't you worry, bun. You're in good hands."

Hadley wasn't convinced. She had no idea what the woman, or her movement, wanted with her, but it wasn't likely to be anything safe. If not for her own curiosity, see likely would have simply backed out; if this was some sort of recruitment call, why her, the underfed, unassuming, timid rabbit? Surely the Underground needed tougher critters than her.

It wasn't much more than sixty seconds later than the metro began braking for its next station, and the hyena ran her free hand down Hadley's arm, causing the rabbitmorph to startle for a moment. She glanced back and up at her guide with suspicion; they were in a fabricator district, not a housing or leisure zone, or any other place that she'd have thought would be good for a meeting. Nonetheless, she allowed her hand to be held and the rest of her person to be led to the exit doors of the tram section.

The pair found themselves on the walkways of a practically floodlit block of city, so bathed in harsh light that the stars above were all but hidden despite the clear night sky. Hadley wasn't familiar with the area, but she could tell from the amount of energy being poured into blasting the concrete with photons that something valuable must be produced there, at least enough so that the company that owned the building wanted full-color surveillance at all times. Walking hand-in-hand with the taller female earned her a fair few glances and smirks from the other foot traffic, though as usual most kept their eyes to themselves while she was led down the street.

The suddenness with which her host suddenly pulled her into the gap between two buildings left Hadley startled and temporarily blind, going from brightly lit walkways to a dark service path before her eyes had any time to adjust. She yelped, planting her feet in sudden fear of hurting herself in the darkness, though the hyena pulled her onwards, slipping the two of them deeper into the shadows. The rabbit strained to see, stumbling forwards from the ever-present tug of the larger hand on hers, until suddenly she found herself turned with her back forced against one of the concrete walls of the alleyway.

"What are you-" she squeaked, quickly interrupted by the hyena's hand going over her mouth, it's twin rather roughly roving across her body, gripping and kneading though her jumpsuit at the fluff beneath.

"Shhh... just getting to know you a bit better," she snickered.

For a moment Hadley thought she'd been mistaken in assuming they were speaking in lusty code; the close proximity and rough groping making it seem as though the hyena was serious about "enjoying her company." It wasn't until she moved on that she realized the girl was searching her, checking for weapons or perhaps any sign she might be a planted spy. Hadley let herself relax slightly, pulling her hands back against the wall behind her when her guide let go of her maw.

"Why me?" she asked softly. "I thought the- I thought carnivores were more interested in tougher girls, not little rabbits like- hey!" She cut her sentence off, finding the front of her jumpsuit suddenly zipped down to her waist in a single tug.

"Why a bunny?" The hyenamorph giggled, ignoring Hadley's reflexive attempts to cover herself in favor of slipping her hands inside her clothes, feeling over her body from breasts to belly to lower back and hips. "Well, you agreed to come, and that's always a good start. As well, I needed someone with your... 'instincts' tonight."

Hadley frowned, feeling very exposed with the cool night's breeze drifting into her front to be mixed into the fur being fluffed up by the larger female's hands. "T-that's a complete stereotype! Rabbitmorphs are actually very picky about who we mate with!"

The hyena rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to speak, but both of them froze when they were suddenly interrupted by the loud clattering of an object falling from somewhere high up the two tall fabricator buildings they were standing between, deflecting back and forth between the two walls on its way to smashing into the ground. "Ah! What was that?" she stated, releasing Hadley to turn towards the sound despite not sounding the least bit startled.

While the hyena made her way to the fallen object she drew a flat plastic case from her hip pocket, from which came an antiseptic cloth. She plucked the object up from the dusty alley concrete and began to wipe it down before padding back towards Hadley. It was a small, pill-shaped capsule, clear on one end and metallic on the other, not much bigger than her thumb.

"Aww... looks like we're going to have to pick this back up another time, little bun," she she said.

Hadley frowned at the other girl; the hyena reversed her attempts to get her clothes back in order as soon as she returned, putting the zipper back to its lowest point. "What's going on?" she asked. "What was that... eep!" She cut herself off with a high-pitched yelp when she suddenly felt cold metal between her legs, the capsule being shoved aluminum-end first upwards and into her lids.

"You can't hear that?" The hyena whispered, making sure the capsule was firmly nestled out of sight before finally zipping Hadley's jumpsuit back up, giving the rabbit a pat on the stomach.Around them, the grinding sound of omniwheels on concrete began to mix with the harried calls of various species. "Security drones are spooling up. Someone pissed a company off."

Hadley blinked her eyes wider, glancing down her front with ears drooping while the gravity of the situation set in. "... Shit!" she exclaimed, scampering out of the alleyway so frantically that her toe claws scraped against the pavement.

The hyena followed, albeit unable to keep up with the frightened rabbit for long. "Go! I'll find you later if we both get out," she called before Hadley could outpace her completely, peeling off towards a different pathway.

Hadley and her accomplice weren't the only ones burning tracks. With the surface walking paths used exclusively by expendable laborers, there was little incentive to design bots to behave gently. Standard operating procedure was to first cut off as many exit paths from the area as possible, and then detain all persons in the area until each could be cleared of any involvement with whatever crime had been committed. Drones had a tendency to cast a wide net on potential suspects, preferring to err on the side of false positives over giving culprits a chance of slipping through... and the last thing anyone wanted to go through was the experience of being electroparalyzed for a thorough drone search-and-scan.

It was a veritable nightmare for Hadley. Compared to the scattering crowd the electric motors and rubber omniwheels if the drones were inaudible. More than once she bolted down a street or alley on random instinct, only to find the far end guarded and have to escape the other way. A few times she made it out by the skin of her teeth, avoiding becoming a fleshy circuit at the end of a laser-ionised taser bolt only because the drone at the far end choose to "electrically detain" a member of one of the more demographically crime-prone species instead of the panicked rabbitmorph.

Hadley didn't know exactly when she slipped past the half-formed cordon; with images of being electrocuted until her fur burned, zip-tied, and then black-bagged after an x-ray scan inevitably found the capsule in her gut, she ran until she couldn't breathe. The authorities wouldn't believe she wasn't a resistance member after being complicent in the theft; she'd have been tortured to death for information she didn't even have. When she finally had to slow down to catch her breath the night was quiet again, the chaos having been reduced to the faint sound of shouting in the distance. She kept waking, taking a zig-zagged rout to both gain distance from the lockdown and cross to the nearest metro site.

Only when the tram car doors finally slid open in front of her did Hadley allow herself to relax a little, exhaustion sweeping over her in the wake of the fading adrenaline.