FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

II

To tell the truth, I really didn’t spend much time thinking about the opposition, just another small team out of Battersea, they were supposed to be the hot new stuff on the scene, a beastie with nineteen consecutive victories.

The arena was enormous, converted from the ruins of an old football stadium from before Ebola 2.0 crashed through Europe and most people moved to the domed cities. Just as before, I would just watch it from the comfort of my apartment, no need to face the sweaty, loud crowd just to watch our victory.

I’d just settled down on the couch with a glass of wine and soy-fish steak, when a message came from our fighter, Adam.

“Some problem?”

“We’ve been listening some stories about the other team, they have had some surprising victories since they brought on a new fighter...”

“Yeah, I expected that, Adam,” I replied with a roll of my eyes, these kinds of people could be surprisingly superstitious. “Still, there’s nothing to worry about, your beastie is superior to anything they could have built, your bioware processors are not even on the market yet.”

“Fair enough,” he groaned. “But there’s something weird about this fight, I don’t like the vibe.”

“Yeah, sure. Pop up some mood stabilizers. Not much I can do about it. Can I go back to my dinner now?”

He severed the connection with a grunt, and I took a swig of my wine. Those people could get too superstitious if one allowed it. Some teams had gone so far as to bless their beasties with complex rituals before each fight.

The trouble is, I couldn’t enjoy my food. Damn it, I never spooked easily, but when I saw that beastie walk into the arena I could only stare in almost entranced fascination as the fight progressed. The opponent was different from your regular beastie, it was slim and fast, an exoskeleton polished until it was smooth as ice and black like obsidian, four tentacles lashed behind it almost rhythmically and the head was sharp, covered in armor.

The fight started and the creature jumped to action in a split second, unleashing hell with claws and talons in vicious, brutal attacks, moving fast to dodge our beastie’s attacks. The tentacles, ended in sharp bony talons, pierced the armored plaques, spilled blood with each strike.

The crowd was going crazy, cheering and howling as they seemed infected by the bestial rage in display. I was fascinated by it, entranced by the barbaric spectacle.

Violence for entertainment was common on the corporate cities, but most of the time it was a sanitized, cleaned version of violence that you could find in most games or movies, but this was something else. It was brutal, messy, primitive.

We were taking part into something profane, but at the same ever so purely human.

There was something profoundly visceral in it, a pleasure that couldn’t be matched by the ascetic virtual reality of a game. The beastie jumped out of reach from the claws and immediately impaled it with the four tentacles in a single strike, a spray of vivid red blood covered the arena as the talons pierced the heart.

I couldn’t believe it, despite all my work, all my effort it had ended in about ten minutes. The victorious beastie roared as if it could feel the lust of battle.

Data was pouring through my monitor, but in that moment, I only had eyes to the creature that had defeated me. I had seen many beasties before, seen the fights until they made me sick, but this was something different.

Khanivore, I whispered the name.

I tried to get some sleep after that, there was little I could do outside of my laboratory, but now I knew that I had to defeat that beastie or it would consume me.

In my dreams I walked into a cave, entombed by darkness and surrounded by sharp rocks, some ethereal light seemed to come from glowing mushrooms that grew on the walls. I dragged myself forward, my heart beating fast as if I could sense the presence of something amidst the darkness.

I wished for an escape, for the light of the sun and the fresh air. I don’t know how long I walked in the cold darkness. The sensation of inhuman eyes upon me following my every step.

The sound of clawed feet tapping against the bare stone echoed in the darkness.

I could hear the beast picking her way toward me. The sounds broke off abruptly, her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, getting a good look at me.

I stumbled back, deeper into the cave, but the beast took demanding steps towards me, coming forwards in a crouch, as if ready to pounce me.

I tried to run, to scream. But somehow, I couldn’t.

Khanivore stopped just a few steps from me, tilting her head to one side to look into my eyes, a tentacle moved forwards with agonizing deliberation, the bony talon caressing my cheek.

Even that one simple touch sent a shiver of fear through my spine, made me conscientious of the strength contained in that beast. I couldn’t help myself, I moaned softly.

The khanivore seemed to purr content, his tentacle hovered over my cheek again but didn’t quite connect. The creature took a step back, retreating into the darkness, until only her eyes were visible.

“Wait!” I protested as I bent toward her.

The khanivore let out a confident growl as two of her tentacles gathered around me with surprising gentleness. I couldn’t stop a moan escaping my throat; the immediate contact was too wonderful to deny.

There seemed to be no time in the dark cave. Just the sound of our breathing and the powerful thunder of Khanivore’s heart in my ear. I could smell her, dark and cold. I breathed it in gratefully, let it fill my lungs, sooth my mind.

I could scarcely understand the sensations flowing through my mind. The three tentacles coiled around me were sparkling the familiar tingle of sexual electricity sparkling from my womb.

The tentacles tightened their grip on me, an involuntary squirm coming out of my mouth as I looked in the eyes of the Khanivore, felt the hungry lust behind those dark eyes.

A tentacle coiled around my neck, gripping tight, the bony talon pressing against my cheek and forcing me to look into the Khanivore’s eyes. The great beast pulled me against her, the darkness enveloping us so completely until the only light came from Khanivore’s bioluminescence. She was holding me so tightly that I could feel the hard talon of one of her tentacles branding my thigh. Primal lust was rolling off her in waves.

“Kha…” I started to say, and then her tongue invaded my mouth.

I gasped at the sudden flare of heat that went through me. Hardly knowing what I was doing, spreading my lips open to feel the rough, large tongue.

The tentacles caressed the lips of my pussy until I was moaning for her. Other of the tentacles caressed my hard nipples with the tip of their talons, making me dimly aware of their every move against my sensible flesh, drowning me on the sea of emotions.

As her kiss drove me dizzy, I moaned in frustration and disappointment. My nipples were throbbing, and my pussy felt wet, swollen…

The blaring alarm clock threw me back to reality.

I spent the next two weeks in a half dream as I poured over all the data collected during the fight and everything they managed to get about our opponent. The walls of my office became covered in images and photos, probable analysis of blood content, muscle density, bone composition, and a thousand other exams.

Her name was Khanivore, I had thought it stupid to assign a name and a gender to such a creature, they were little more than killing machines, completely incapable of even thinking about reproduction, but the more I researched into her the more I begun to understand the need. There was something strangely alluring about her.

The other part of the mystery was Sonnie, the fighter that controlled Khanivore through the Affinity System. There was even less data about her than about her beastie. She seemed to have been born in some of the regions controlled by the estate gangs, grew up without any identification, doing small jobs here and there, until she was hired as a driver and general helper to a small team called Jacob’s Banshee.

But something had happened, the team would come to be known as Sonnie’s Predators and since them they hadn’t lost a single fight.

During all this time, the two of them kept visiting me in my dreams, Sonnie and Khanivore kept teasing me about my defeat, filling me with an almost obsessive desire.

Either I was letting my imagination get the best of me or I was becoming obsessed with this project. I needed to end this before it consumed me.

Our second beast was named by the PR department as “Demolisher” and it sported a pair of bony maces on the end of strong arms and secondary arms that ended in sharp claws. I had decided to use less bone plating this time, going for speed.

It crushed the opposition on the first match we set up, but when it walked in the arena against Khanivore, the match ended in less than five minutes, Khanivore holding the severed head of our beastie in celebration.

I cursed with my every breath, I concentrated on the flaring rage boiling in my blood with a task that was beginning to seem never ending. Yet with each breath I felt more and more sensitive and exasperated, I was beginning to have the urgent feeling that I needed to do something about it, even though I wasn’t entirely sure if I should.

I could understand getting excited by Sonnie, she had that scoundrel’s charm and the scars made her look like some ancient warrior queen, the fact that she had made a living out of controlling giant beasts in battles to the death only added to her allure.

But, in my dreams, Khanivore had appeared as much as Sonnie herself.

By the time work started on our third model I was sure that if I couldn’t defeat Khanivore it would be the end of it, the Corporation would pull out, close our laboratory, and sell everything. And it seemed that everyone knew about it too, the researchers were in a sour mood, and I could see that they didn’t believe we could ever win.

I was a mess. God, I hated to admit it but those two got under my skin! What was it with them, anyway? Why did I let them get to me so much?

“Drives me crazy,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. Vaguely, I remembered dreams, intense and burning dreams. But those were just dreams, right?

Still, I couldn’t deny they were having an effect on me.

Not that I’d ever get horny enough to try something for real. It was just the idea, a reflex of spending all my days focused on those two. Still, this idea gave me the shivers.

How would I even get in the right position to do that? It made my head spin just to think about it.

Don’t think about it. But the image wouldn’t leave my head. In the dreams it had seemed almost plausible and extremely enticing. But when I awakened… No way in hell.

Sighing, I got up to pace back and forth in front of the wide window, looking down into the corporate enclave. The weather was the same grey chill, for a moment I cleared my mind and focused only on the hum of the environmental systems.

What the hell was I going to do next?

A soft chime on the window interrupted my mental relaxation.

“Yes?” I sighed with resignation. “Charlie here.”

“Hey boss,” a screen materialized on the window, on it was one of the researchers that worked under her. Kate Lockwood, she was one of the kids that had graduated just as the Pope had begun his efforts against biotechnology. She just got unlucky, deeper in debt than she ever would be able to pay. “I just wanted to talk to you, I got the results from…”

“Do you think we can win?” I blurted.

“Um…” Kate coughed and looked down at her boots. Then she looked up and nodded. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither… Tell me, Kate, why are you working for me?”

“It was my idea,” she said softly, looking into my eyes. “When I first read about your Demeter project, I tried to be transferred to work with you, but they denied me. When they transferred you to this, I knew that was my only chance.”

“Shit!” I started pacing again. “Do you know what will happen if we keep losing?”

“Yes,” Kate said in a low voice.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think you know. I’ll try to have you reassigned, something that won’t destroy your career.”

Strangely enough, Kate seemed disappointed. “Thank you, boss.”

“Try to understand,” I stepped forward. “It seems we were charged with an impossible task.”

“Charlie…” she said, not knowing how to continue.

“Send a message to everyone,” I said. “Starting immediately everyone is getting two weeks of paid vacations.”

I closed the communications channel and walked towards the freezer, I needed something to help me calm down. I knew that decision would put us dangerously close to the bottom, but if couldn’t win the next battle it wouldn’t matter.

I tried to forget about it for a few days, to put Sonnie and her Khanivore out of my mind.

Khanivore. Big, sleek, and black. Not all bright and decorated the way some of the other beasties are. Just big and fast, with those long tentacles lashing around.

My heart stopped whenever I thought about Khanivore. I wanted to touch it, see if its leather was as smooth as it looked, but I wasn’t stupid enough to do that. I really shouldn’t even be excited to see the beastie, but I felt a rush watching it fight.

Finally, I had a stupid idea. I was going to see Khanivore personally.