FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Cybe brought the heel of her boot sharply against the door. The sturdy wooden portal crashed backwards, swinging on its hinge, impacting against the soldier with a brutal thud.

Luke was already on the ground in a split second, his heart slamming in his chest. The soldier slumped back heavily against the wall beside him, stumbling to his knees only a few inches away from the fox. To his right, the pizza box clattered against the old carpet beside Luke, tumbling open as it did. The fox's eyes grew wide as his gaze fell upon the box's contents - a short, snub-nosed pistol. Think I'd rather have pizza, thought Luke.

A roar of gunfire tore through the air above the fox's head as the soldier at the far end of the hallway, an exact biological duplicate of the one that had been knocked off his feet and controlled by the same puppeting mind, levelled and unleashed a burst of rifle fire. Cybe moved fast, grabbing the front door and pulling it back defensively over her.

Reaching out, Luke grasped the pistol from the empty box. It felt heavier than he had expected. Moving and half-rolling across the hallway floor, he brought the gun-sights to bear on the ranged assailant and fired a few shots. Each one gave a shimmering damp burst of neon-blue heated plasma as they tore through the air.

"Holy shit" wailed Luke, his mind racing. He hadn't even had to think about firing this time - the reaction had been quick, almost instinctive. The soldier slumped to the ground, collapsing in a charred mess, half his upper body burned to a semi-cauterised crisp.

No sooner had that one fallen, though, than the bruised one beside the front door began to rise. Luke turned, trying to bring his pistol to bear on this one; but the stallion moved too fast, his finger squeezing on his own weapon's trigger.

The bullet embedded into Cybe's shoulder as she moved, her speed almost a blur, hurling herself over Luke's prone form. She pounced upon the soldier, arms outstretched. As she did, a thin blade shot forth from the wrist of her right hand - a small, dark knife that sunk down into the stallion's throat. She pulled her arm back, the assassination blade slipping back flush into its compartment. The stallion twitched once, then slumped to the ground.

Luke started to move, trying to scramble to his feet. He had to move fast, before the other soldiers got in here, and -

Cybe grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, pulling the boy to her. Luke's eyes widened as she kissed him, forcefully. The strength of her kiss was almost enough to make him lose his balance. It was strong, wild and intensely passionate - and over in all too short a time. In a second, she leaned back. "Hey cute fox" she said, "I'm the rescue wagon. Like the new clothes?"

He blinked a few times. "Cybe?" he asked, his jaw hanging open loosely.

Luke couldn't believe it. It was him - well, in a sense - right here with him again. The fox had been convinced that it would take months of rebuilding the damaged android before it would be up and running again, but here they were.

The fox was torn from his thoughts as an explosion rippled through the room. Behind them, an antique wooden cabinet erupted into scattering splinters, covering the wall with pieces of wood and the cabinet's tattered contents. Cybe turned, glancing at the bullet-ridden cabinet, before turning her eyes towards the source of the gunfire. "Hey!" she snapped, "that's my eight-track collection!"

The troopers scrambled down the hallway, three in total. For a moment, Luke wondered where the captain was.

Reaching into the old cabinet, Cybe grabbed a handful of pieces of what had once been an old eight-track player, now a ruined hunk of metal. WIth a snort, she hurled it at the oncoming soldier. "Move your cute buns, fox-boy!" she snapped, motioning to the door.

Luke blinked. "Move my what?" he stuttered. Had Cybe actually just said that?

Wasting no time, he scrambled through the doorway, with the android in hot pursuit. Throwing the door shut behind her, Cybe motioned for him to keep moving. The fox sprinted a few steps further down the alleyway. Turning his head to glance behind, he saw Cybe crouching at the side of the doorway, securing a small device to the foot of the door. Oh crap, he thought.

She pulled back from the doorstep and made a frantic dash down the hallway, clasping ahold of Luke as she hurried. The two had barely got to the mouth of the alleyway before the troopers reached the front door and threw it open. The resulting explosion tore its way through the alleyway, blooming in a huge superheated mushroom cloud.

The android stumbled free from a charred black cloud of smoke at the periphery of the explosion, her fur scorched and smouldering, her leather jacket giving off small wisps of blackened smoke. Clutching against her, Luke staggered, dazed and confused.

Slumping against a half-bent parking meter, Luke caught his breath. As he inhaled heavily, Cybe brushed her fingers through her spiked purple-dashed hair. "What a blast" she said. "Can't believe I had to lose all my old junk, though."

Lifting his head up, Luke stared at her. The android seemed utterly different to him - almost entirely alien. She moved loosely, swaying her limbs freely and with far more comfort than the android had in its male chassis, a picture of uninhibited satisfaction. My god, thought the fox, it's like a whole new person. Does she even feel the same way about me as she did before?

Almost as if to answer that question, the wolf locked her gaze with his. "Now" she said, "can we have reunion sex?"

Luke blinked, and let out a timid yip. "Oh. Uh, sex..." he muttered. "I hadn't, uhm... how would that work?"

Cybe reached out, clapping a hand around the fox's shoulder. "Very well, I hope" she smirked. "Look, Luke, I'll be honest with you here. Every gigabyte of my processing power is just screaming at me to drag you against the hood of that car over there and bone you until you're an exhausted puddle."

The fox gave an almost audible gulp, and felt his cheeks redden.

"And I" continued the android, "do entirely understand if the difference in sexual organs is a bit confusing for you, and recognise that you want time to get your head around it - again, that is, remember that I've already gone through this with you before you had your memory wiped."

"Oh" exclaimed Luke. "Yeah. Uh, how did I react to it before that?"

"Extremely happily" she said, "but your cock gets a bit sore after a while."

Luke stepped back, feeling a nervous rush flood up through him. My god, he thought, she's so much more forward than she was when she was riding a male body. "Did..." he stuttered, "did you always feel this, uh..."

"Do you mean before you lost your memory, or when I was in my male body?"

"Both" said the fox, a little unsurely.

Cybe nodded. "Yes, to both" she explained. "But when I'm riding my male chassis, the body's behavioral inhibitors are in place. But trust me, when I'm him, I want to bone you into the middle of the next week just as much as I do right now. Are you okay with that?"

Luke felt a lump form in his throat. The overwhelming sense of strangeness that he felt towards the android, he thought, was something that wouldn't be easy for him to deal with. It would take him a while to figure out how he truly felt. But he realised that if he didn't at least voice some of his thoughts now, they might struggle to be expressed later. "I, uh" he said, "I don't like him more than you."

The wolf looked at him. "You don't?"

He looked down the street, glancing back towards the alleyway. "I don't want to lose him" said Luke, "but I don't want to lose you either. For a while there, I didn't think I would get the chance to see you again, not after you took that much damage. I don't want that to happen again."

"You realise" she said, "that I'm still the same person, right? I mean, he's got..."

"Behavioral inhibitors?" said Luke, eagerly, interrupting.

She snapped her fingers. "Yeah, you got it, fox-dude. Think about it like this - the me that's in front of you right now, that's the real deal." Cybe motioned to herself. "In terms of my, I dunno, soul or mind or personality or ghost or whatever, that's who I really am. And when I'm in captain boring's body back there..." she jabbed her thumb towards the smouldering alleyway.

"Wait" said Luke, "Captain what?"

"He's not going to be able to shake those inhibitors, not unless I can coax a certain little mouse to go digging around inside his skull. As it stands, when I'm him, he will be the same person as I am when I'm me. You follow?"

"When you are you, you're you" said the fox. "Just more cautious."

She snorted. "More like he's got a stick up his butt. And I'm not talking about your cock - which, by the way, I intend to give a full test run of later on." She grinned. "There's a practice that we that have digitally encoded minds can perform called forking. It's similar to the puppeting that the clones back there perform, but different in that it involves copying enough data and splitting it between cybernetic bodies. That means that, with some practice, I can control both bodies simultaneously."

Luke blinked. "I... don't understand."

Cybe drew a little closer. "Let's just say that between the two of me, I can make you very happy."

Luke blinked again. His mouth dropped open.

"So" she said, "shall we have sex now, or shall we go pick up my slightly less fun-to-be-around self? Where did you hide him, anyway"

At that, a grim realisation dawned on the fox. He cupped his hand to his forehead. "We have to go back" he sighed.

Cybe spun to face him, shaking her head. "Nu-uh" she quipped, "No way. We don't know how many of them are left back there!"

Pushing away from the parking meter, Luke stood upright. "Exactly. We have to make sure the place is safe."

The android folded her arms. For a moment, Luke found himself staring at the curve of her cleavage. A soft blush threatened to swell up in his face, and he redirected his gaze. "It's safe" she said. "There's nothing there but old antiques and junk. It's a shame to leave it behind, but still."

"What about the data?" asked the fox. "The stuff we stole. Didn't you hide it there?"

"No" replied Cybe. She was already stepping back, motioning for the fox to follow him. "Come on now, before somebody else gets here. We should go, and..."

"Then" pressed Luke, "what about your other body?"

At that, Cybe seemed to stop. "It's intact?" she asked. "You brought it with you?"

Luke gave a small nod.

He hadn't thought about it until now, but Luke wasn't sure that he didn't have a real preference as to which Cybe he preferred. When he had learned that the android shared multiple different mechanical bodies, capable of transferring the data of its mind and encoded persona between them almost at a whim, he had presumed that each of the two would have the same personality.

In many ways, Luke thought, the male Cybe seemed more reserved - perhaps a little bit more methodical. They both had the same carefree appreciation of life, he could see that, and they certainly did seem to share the same affection and tenderness towards him. But after only a few minutes with the this brand new Cybe, Luke could see that she had none of the hesitation of the former. He wondered if her new personality was as much of a result of her different body, and found himself wondering how Cybe felt. Does she feel more comfortable in her current body?

She paced slightly, slowing to a halt. "I, uh" she muttered, "kinda need that, don't I?"

The fox canted his head. "I'm not sure" he replied. "Do you?"

She stepped a little closer, flexing her shoulders. "I can live without it" she explained. "It's had some modifications, but it's otherwise just a factory standard male model. Technically I could re-sleeve into any other one."

"You might need to" explained the fox. "It's missing a head."

Cybe blinked. "What?" she exhaled. "Oh geez. It's basically scrap, then. Unless..." She fell silent for a moment, taking a step back, her head turning down in thought. "You're kinda attached to him, aren't you?"

Luke glanced down, a little timidly.

"Yeah, I get it" said Cybe, grinning. "Right, okay. Let's head back. But let's keep it simple - we go in fast, grab the android, and get out. Fast."

* * *

The entryway back into the flat was a smouldering ruin. Chunks of wall lay scattered throughout the allwayway, and the remains of what was once part of a door lay in several ruptured pieces.

Luke cautiously nudged around the rubble for a moment. Displacing the lower half of a boulder, he found part of one of the soldier's clone bodies. Wincing, he stepped back, averting his eyes. "Uhh" he asked, "so, uhm, death. How does that affect these guys?"

Cybe had already wandered into the hall, her blade drawn from her wrist and gun held ready. "Not well" she said. "Because they're controlled via a puppeting mind which splits its attention between different bodies, any single one of those bodies suffering death causes a moment of confusion for the controlling mind. Whilst the user can overcome this with practice," she said, pushing her way further against the doorframe and scanning the inside of the hallway, "it's still pretty painful for them."

Nodding, Luke stepped back, leaving the scorched remains where they lay. "So he'll be okay? The guy controlling them back at their headquarters, that is" he asked.

"Aside from the psychological trauma, he'll be fine" replied Cybe. "That's why they usually hire war vets."

Skimming his eyes around the area, Luke slipped through the doorway. The hall was just as much of a mess as the alley outside it. Walls that once lead into the bedroom and kitchen were laiden with smouldering holes.

Cybe gave a somewhat weary sigh. "Oh man" she declared, stepping over to an old cabinet that had been incinerated. "My collection of 1970s German porn was in this. Those bastards ruin all my fun."

"Come on" replied the fox, trying to sound reassuring, "you can rebuild. That'll be fun, eh?"

She snorted.

As the pair moved into the hallway, Luke found himself cautiously stepping over a thin splatter of blood that had crossed its way across the smeared carpet. His gaze was drawn back along the trail to the source of the explosion, and he felt a surge of pity again. "So, the soldiers" he said, "there was one in charge, the captain. He didn't seem to share the same mind as the others. I think it was somebody else that was puppeting him."

The wolf nodded, moving to press her back against the wall just beside one of the large holes that had been blown into the kitchen. With her gun ready, she peered around, through the smouldering orifice and into the kitchen beyond. "Damn it" she muttered, "I think my old china tea set has been destroyed."

"You have an old china tea set?" asked Luke.

Glancing at him, Cybe grinned. "No" she said, "I just thought that'd make you laugh."

He smiled, thinking that maybe now wasn't the best time for the android's humour protocols to kick in."The chassis is in the cupboard in the bedroom" he nodded, motioning further down the hallway.

Cybe moved first, shuffling silently. The silence of her movements seemed to catch Luke a little strangely. The pair were certainly being cautious; after all, they didn't know how many of the soldiers would still be alive in the apartment, if any. But yet, the conversation that the two of them were sharing was still quite loud, at a volume enough that anybody would hear them. "Cybe?" he asked, "are you doing something again?"

"You mean wagging my butt?" she asked. "Only to keep you focused on your work."

"No" he said. "I mean, are you masking our communications somehow?"

The android fell back against the bedroom door. Looking around, most of the explosion radius had started to ebb around this area. Small fires that crackled in the first few meters of the hallway had now given way to hurled debris and impact damage. "Remember what Rowan told you" said Cybe, "about your brain having had cybernetic enhancements?"

Luke nodded. He still didn't fully believe that - it seemed fairly impossible to him. His brain didn't feel any different, it didn't seem to be any faster and he still didn't think it had any special features that he had found.

"Well, I wirelessly tapped into it" explained Cybe, "and reinstated your comms relays. I'm not actually speaking to you; that is, these words that I'm saying aren't causing any vibrations through the air. They're being transmitted directly to you over a shared short-range intranet link."

"But..." began the fox, "I'm speaking to you, though."

The wolf gave a slight grin. "No" she said as she came to a halt beside the bedroom door, "you're not."

Luke paused for a moment. He had been sure that he had been speaking - he reached up, touching his fingers to his lips. His mouth had definitely been moving. But now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure that he had actually been pushing the words through his vocal cords and out of his mouth. "That's amazing" he said, noticing that there was indeed no exhalation of breath across his fingers as he said so.

Cybe turned her head and smiled to him. "You're capable of a whole lot more" she explained. "Once I've got the android and get out of here, I'll show you..."

She didn't have a chance to finish the words.

As quick and fluid as a rush of water, a shape moved through the bedroom door. Luke felt a rush of panic as he recognised the heavy, muscular form of one of the soldiers. He opened his mouth to give a cry, but everything happened far too quickly for him to manage to say a word.

The stallion wrapped a meaty hand around the back of Cybe's neck. Clasping a thick palm against her mouth, he pulled her head upwards. Luke could only watch in a split second as the stallion's dark, amber eyes fell upon a small port in the side of the android's neck. With a surprising speed, the trooper clicked the tip of his finger against the port, ejecting the android's memory data-card.

Luke tried to rush forward, but his movements felt as slow as treacle. Before he could even take a step, Cybe's body went limp. Her arms, lifeless, tumbled to her sides, the light in her eyes dimming as she powered down.

A footstep echoed behind him, a single heavy thud. That was when Luke realised that it wasn't only one soldier that had survived, but two. The pair had been caught in a simple pincer movement. Damn it, thought the boy, I hadn't been watching behind us!

The butt of a gun's barrel collided with the back of Luke's head, and he plummeted forward into a warm, comfortable darkness.