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Prey's Tour of Duty For Catsithx By Draconicon

Mike left the recruiter's office still in a daze. Not from signing up for another tour of duty, but for what had sent him there in the first place.

"Hannah..."

His eyes were still a bit hazy, his thoughts bouncing around as he lost his sense of time. Pop. Pop. Pop. Moment to moment in different places. Out of the recruiter's office, up on the gangplank to the shuttle, then back off of it, looking at the hangar bay of the big ship that would carry them to the outer rim. The lynx took the uniform that the quartermaster and his assistants were passing out, then kept walking.

Things finally seemed to settle down when he reached his quarters, sitting down on the edge of his bed and taking a few deep breaths to settle himself. He looked down at the camouflage-patterned uniform, as well as the rifle that lay on top of it, and the sudden urge to take it back down to the planet hit him hard.

He threw the weapon to the head of the bed, knowing it was unloaded, and then leaned forward into his hands, huffing and puffing as he forced himself to stop thinking about that.

"Hannah."

He groaned under his breath, thinking of his gryphoness on the bed, thinking of her spreading her legs for a male gryphon. She'd been cheating on him, using other men while he had been away. And he hadn't missed the egg-bump in her belly, either. She'd gotten pregnant.

So much for being done with military duty, he thought, staring through his fingers at the floor until he was able to sit up straight again. Looks like it was a mistake to be with her...a huge mistake.

Not that he would have thought of that before seeing her that way. Not that he would have ever thought that she would cheat on him, not when he loved her that much. But apparently, love didn't mean much when there was that much distance between them.

Shaking his head, the lynx got to his feet, kicking off his shoes and socks, pulling off his trousers and his t-shirt. They'd all be held by the ship until it was time for him to go back to civilian life again, and until then...

He pulled on the heavier shirt, feeling the familiar weight of the armor-weave through the fabric, and pulled his pants up to go with them. They were both heavier than civilian wear, but he had seen them stop bullets and laser blasts alike when they were worn properly and kept in good condition.

The heavy-duty socks went on next, meant to keep out moisture and ventilate the paws so that there was no chance of athlete's foot, no chance of foot fungus taking off a limb in the watery worlds out on the rim of the Alliance territories.

Then the boots. Heavy, hard, and fitted with every sort of grip imaginable. There were even slats along the side to allow for broader shoes in snowy or sandy settings so that the soldiers didn't start sinking into the terrain.

The Alliance took care of its soldiers. It was a fucking pity that the civilians didn't think to do the same.

He shook his head, pulling his uniform tight before turning around. The door opened as he reached for it, and to his complete lack of surprise, his partner stepped through.

"Shakarri."

He wanted to sound less dead inside than he did, but there was no way that he was pulling good emotions out of his soul right at that point. He was still too angry, and the feline doubted that he'd feel better about that for a while.

Not that the Rotheri noticed.

Shakarri chuckled as she sat down on the edge of his bed, her uniform as tight to her body as his was to his. It did very little to hide anything, and she didn't do anything to help it, considering that the top two buttons of her uniform were always undone.

Rotheri were genetically created soldiers, more animals than people, and they were used in the way that K9s had been used in the past. They were hunters and trackers, things that made hunting down the higher-ups in the enemy army that much easier. They were faster, stronger, and a great deal nastier than even a special-ops soldier, and they were intentionally made to be as aggressive as possible in the field to take advantage of all that tracking ability, ensuring that their prey never got away.

They weren't the most intimidating looking on first glance, of course. They were vaguely feline in facial shape, having that sort of boxy muzzle, and they continued the theme with the same feline slenderness. However, that was where the similarity ended and the dangers started to show.

Their heads had curled horns that went back around their ears, looking like a ram's horns, and their tails were longer than they were tall, almost like a separate entity. For all the fluff on it, he had seen that tail crush another soldier with a single innocent wag, and he knew that Shakarri had the power to crush him, too, if she got pissed off with him.

The species had a pair of long, tendril-like whiskers that ended in leaf-like strands, too, and while he had never seen them in use, he knew that the Rotheri could use them to produce various drugs or chemicals, soporific or poisoned as they chose, or even depending on their mood.

She looked down at her fingers, flexing them and making her claws pop in and out. Unlike a lot of anthro species, the Rotheri were made to have two sets of claws. One for handling things, one for ripping people apart. Right then, she was using the civilian pair, as they were called, slightly longer than the average anthro's claws, and definitely sharper, coming to a more deadly point.

It was intimidating to look at, but he knew better than to look away. A Rotheri's handler - which was what he was to Shakarri - was only the handler so long as they continued to show confidence, to keep their image up as someone that was able to handle whatever the genetically created creature could throw at them. He'd seen some handlers get ripped to shreds before, and it was an accepted adage that if you accepted a job like this, you were eventually going to die. If it wasn't your first Rothari that did it, then it would be the second, or the third. If you didn't get rotated off-duty before it killed you, or if it didn't die in the field, then it would eventually kill you.

So far, that hadn't happened with Shakarri, but he didn't know if that was by luck or for some other reason. At this point, he wasn't sure that he cared any longer.

"So, you signed up again, huh?" she asked, looking down at her fingers still. "I thought you were going home to your wife."

"She...was busy."

"Busy, huh?"

He nodded.

"Well, all the better for me. We've got another assignment, and I wouldn't want my handler busy handling someone else."

"You'd have gotten another one. Probably someone that would be better fitted to the assignment."

"Not important. Besides, now that she's getting off with someone else, I get to have you focused on the mission again."

Mike's ears twitched upright at that, his eyes going wide. Shakarri looked up at him, smiling.

"What, was it supposed to be a secret?"

"Nobody knew. Nobody was there."

"Uh-huh. And you smell like jealousy and rage because..."

He just stared at her. She'd never talked to him like this before, never taunted him about his home life. Sure, she wasn't happy about him leaving before, but this was the first time that she'd ever talked about it.

And more to the point, how did she know that something had happened at all? It was an accepted fact that the Rotheri had an enhanced sense of smell, yes, but this was something that was far and beyond different to that. She was smelling emotions, or so she claimed, and that was downright impossible.

They stared at each other for a moment or two, then she shook her head, getting to her feet and stretching her arms out over her head.

"The officers will be down to brief you soon, I bet. I think that you better get some sleep and calm down from whatever didn't happen. You don't want them to start thinking that you need to be discharged for emotional difficulties, do you?"

"What happened to you, Shakarri?"

"Nothing that you need to worry about. Just glad you're back, Handler."

She smiled and left the room, leaving him as confused as he had ever been.

The mission came down from on high shortly after she left. He and Shakarri needed to hunt down one of the coordinators of an enemy raiding party on the edge of Alliance space so that the fleet could move in and wrap up the rest of the raiders. Once the coordinator was down, they'd send a signal for pick-up, and then join the rest of the fleet in mopping-up operations.

He knew how the sort of mission worked, and he had been on enough of them to not be bothered by the ethical considerations of assassination and the semi-wet work that they had to do here, but it was not something that he had expected for his first mission back. As for his Rotheri partner...

Well, the way that she acted was not making him feel better about their chances for the mission, particularly as she kept eying him up in the shuttle down to the planet.

"What are you looking at?" he asked for the third time.

"Just studying you."

"The last time you said that, you were studying someone before you killed them."

"I'm not planning on killing you, Handler. Not yet."

"It doesn't feel good when one of you start talking like that."

"Well, it shouldn't. We Rotheri are meant to be killers...or at the very least, hunters." She smiled. "We get what we want, eventually. Whether it's one of us, or another."

"That's why you're here. And that's why I hold the leash."

"Of course, Handler. Just like you tried to hold the leash with her."

He glared at the Rotheri for that, shaking his head as the shuttle rattled around them. It was almost more of an escape pod, considering that it was designed for one-way trips, sending them flying hither and yon across the universe, pushing them to this place and that place. It was meant to get them there, and then give them a beacon to get back at the end of the mission, nothing more.

It rattled about them as they descended through the clouds of the planet below. It was one of the mistier ones, having a single-biome structure that meant that they were going to be dealing with a swamp for the entire time that they were down there, but they were equipped for it. He hoped.

The shuttle rattled one more time, and then started to vibrate steadily. They had broken through to the lower part of the atmosphere.

"Brace for impact," he muttered.

"Don't have to tell me twice."

They landed and set to work immediately, spreading out from the crash site and making their way towards the location intel had pointed out. Apparently, most of the signals were coming from the hills towards the middle of the largest swamp of the equator, and there were power readings coming from underground in that area, too. It was pretty much a guarantee that the enemy coordinator was using them as a base.

It was just a matter of rooting through them until they found where in the massive series of hills the enemy had managed to dig in and take shelter.

They wandered through the swamp on foot for three days, making their way closer and closer under the radar. Each night, Shakarri took watch, and each morning, Mike woke up all too aware of the feeling of her eyes on him. There was something going on that he didn't understand, and he didn't like the fact that he didn't understand it. All he wanted was a pleasant, or at least routine mission to take his mind off things.

He didn't get that.

What he got, instead, was a Rotheri that was acting strange, one that seemed to be tracking him more than she was tracking their quarry. Every day, he was the one that pushed them forward, and she was the one that kept her eyes out for the different dangers of the swamp. It was supposed to be the other way around, that she was the one that was taking them where they needed to go, and he was the one that was keeping the dangers at bay.

It got worse as they reached the hills, too. That first night, she actually stripped down to nothing but her underthings, showing off everything that she had, and he had to keep his eyes focused on the ground, the sky, everything but her as she dried herself off from the swamp. The way that she moved out of the corner of his eye seemed to push everything that she had to their limits, exposing herself, flaunting herself.

It was the sort of behavior that the Rotheri would sometimes use when challenging someone or when looking for a mate, showing that they had no fear, showing that they were bountiful and fertile, and it was...strange.

And so very wrong.

Two mornings later, as she was getting dressed, Shakarri cleared her throat to get his attention. He looked up from the logbooks, cocking his head to the side.

"What?" the lynx asked.

"Do you plan on hunting another mate when you finish this tour?"

"No. Not...Well, I don't know."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Don't need another one."

He blinked at her, shaking his head slowly. She still didn't make sense to him, and he doubted that she ever would.

They continued their march through the hills, taking readings to find where the energy signatures were coming through strongest. They avoided the tops of the hills to keep from giving themselves away too easily, but most of the time managed to get at least some intel from the lowlands of the hills.

They searched for hours before they found anything, and it was equal parts Shakarri's scenting something and his instruments picking up a signal. Something was being sent. Something important.

They followed it to its source, a hill just off-center to the middle hill of the cluster. It was dug out just enough for the artificiality to be obvious when they were close enough and knew how to look for it.

They shared a look, then dug into it, pulling out enough earth to make a hole. Shakarii went in first, and he followed.

The facility was bare-bones, obviously not meant to be discovered by anyone anytime soon. If there were security systems, they were all on the exterior with nothing to block the hallways or slow them down. Mike and Shakarri made quick progress through the tunnels, moving from the dirt pathways towards the shell of the hill all the way to the metal-walled corridors that led toward the center.

Once there, they encountered light resistance. Two droids held up laser rifles as they approached, and the coordinator, a middle-aged wolf, looked up from his console as he and his Rotheri came to a stop.

Mike looked around, considered the situation. There was no reason to keep the coordinator alive, and the droids would pose little threat to them once the fight started.

There was no point in holding back.

"Kill."

Shakarri grinned and set to work.

As she lunged for the droids, he pulled his rifle up. One quick shot took out the one on the left before it could do anything to the Rotheri, while she put the other one out of its misery with a single punch of her hand-claws.

The wolf was fumbling with a pistol on his belt, but it was too late. Before Mike could even bring his weapon around, Shakarri had already made the jump, lunging through the air. Her tail swung about, hitting the wolf in the face.

A tail swipe from a normal person would have knocked someone's head around, perhaps knocked them out.

A tail swipe from a Rotheri was enough to decapitate someone.

As the wolf's head went rolling under some of the other consoles, Mike swept his weapon across the room, checking the corners and the walkways above them. He didn't hear or see anything, but that didn't mean that there weren't other security measures waiting.

"Nothing left," Shakarri said.

"You know the rules. We sweep first, rest after."

"There's nothing. Just like there was nothing left for you at home."

He turned to glare at her again. The Rotheri rolled her eyes.

"There was no home. It was in her name. There was no job. You work with me. There was no family. They all left years ago. She was the only thing. Now she's not there."

"...Sweep the room."

"Yes, Handler."

It turned out just as she had said. There was nothing left there, nobody around to threaten them, no security systems to suddenly blow the place up and eliminate them. All that was left was a simple set of computers and communication devices that were sending signals to the different raider fleets in this part of the system.

Now that the wolf was gone, that would stop, but Mike kept the communicators running so that the fleets didn't know something had gone wrong. If it was shut down, all the fleets would realize someone had taken out their brains, and they'd go to ground. They couldn't have that.

The lynx touched his communicator, sending the signal back to the beacon to activate. While Shakarri was doing a second sweep at his command, the communicator beeped at him. He tapped it, accepting a message from command.

"Mike here," he muttered.

"Ensure your privacy. This regards the Rotheri."

Regarding Shakarri?

Mike looked over his shoulder as the Rotheri continued to root around through the room under his command, then tapped the communicator again, speaking softly.

"Privacy verified."

"We've received reports that your personnel file has been compromised, and by your Rotheri."

...Well, that explains a lot.

"Verified."

"Psych profile says that she was on the edge in the two days that you were planetside. Her breaking point might be close. Maintain vigilance until you can be retrieved."

"Verified," he muttered once more.

"Over and out."

The channel cut out, as it always did. They were making sure that he didn't get himself in trouble or make Shakarri curious, he knew, but at the same time, a part of him wondered if they were just washing their hands of him, too.

Not that it mattered. His Rotheri might have said it more bluntly or cruelly than she needed to, but she was right. There was nothing for him to go home to, nothing for him to return to other than the military.

She returned from her loop around the communications hub, shaking her head, her long face fronds waving from side to side.

"Nothing. Just like I told you."

"Best to be sure."

"...Something changed," Shakarri said after sniffing the air. "What happened?"

"Communications from command."

"Heh. Oh? And what did they have to say? New orders?"

"No. Snooping?"

"Oh, they finally told you, huh?" She laughed.

Somehow, that was the creepiest thing that she could have done. For all that he was ready to die, he expected anger, he expected sadness, or something that showed a bit of shame for doing what she did. Laughter, on the other hand...

The Rotheri shook her head.

"I've been spying on that file for the last year. When you came back, I thought they'd told you. No wonder you were surprised that I knew about your wife."

"Stop talking about her," he muttered. "It was a good thing while it lasted."

"Please. She hated you from the start. She just thought that there was a chance of getting a high-ranking husband."

"She loved me."

"I can't tell you if she loved you before I met you, but I never smelled love on her when you introduced her to the unit."

"..."

He looked away, taking a deep breath as he forced himself to calm down. Not the easiest thing to do when he was dealing with a rather...temperamental partner, particularly when the partner was acting strange.

The Rotheri were always known to be a strange race, engineered or not. The genetic people didn't know everything about their trade yet, more about how to make things work on the physical level than the mental, as far as he knew, so everyone expected the things they made to eventually go haywire.

He expected Shakarri to be one of those that went into an explosive meltdown, destroying what was near her and then getting killed herself by the rest of the military. This...if this was her breakdown, it was not something that was going according to any plan or process that he had ever seen or heard of before.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

"What?"

"Are you going to kill me? You've been treating me different ever since I got back. Are you in breakdown?"

"Heh, if I wasn't, then that might have put me into one."

Yet another risk with the Rotheri. Push them to explain things, and they could skip right past the other stages and go right into breakdown, right into that deadly phase. It was a wonder that he'd been stupid enough to ask the question.

Instead, Shakarri took a step forward, once more flaunting herself with her movements as she had done every night on watch. When she wasn't looking at him like a snack, that was. Mike took a step back, his hands instinctively tightening on his rifle.

"If you're not in breakdown, then something is going on. Tell me what the fuck is going on? Why were you spying on me?"

"To protect you, of course."

"You don't have to protect your Handler."

"But I do have to protect my mate."

"Your - what? Rotheri don't mate with other species!"

"Heh."

She chuckled, taking another step forward, her clothes starting to pop as she flexed her muscles with an insane amount of control. He took another step back, only to feel one of the communication consoles bump him from behind. He was trapped.

"Do you know how they get us to be loyal to our Handler, hmm?"

"I don't know. I'm not a scientist."

"They tap into the mating instincts," she said, poking the side of her head. "We're loyal to the one that we're supposed to breed with, but you know what happens when they withhold breeding long enough?"

"You snap."

"We have a breakdown. We can't help it. We're not getting what we need. We're not getting the thing that we're programmed to require."

"...Is that what's going to happen here? Is that why you hated her?" he asked.

"It was one reason. But I held back. They matched us better than they did most Rotheri. Your scent, your...presence. It's better for me. It makes me better. But I'm still one of them...and I will have what belongs to me."

Mike didn't know what to say. If this was true, if the eggheads had been messing with things to this degree, no wonder the Handlers kept getting fucked over. No wonder the Rotheri started to get possessive of their Handlers.

No wonder Shakarri had been slowly getting more and more strange over the last few weeks...

She took another step closer. She was in pouncing range, and he knew that the only thing that he could do to stop her would be to shoot her. Did he dare do that?

He looked her up and down, stared at her chest, at her hips, at the way that she stood and offered herself right then and there. Shakarri wanted him, wanted him bad, and he was thinking about whether it was right? Despite the fact that she was an animal, something that was made, he was actually debating this?

The decision was taking out of his hands as she pounced him, knocking him to the ground hard enough to push the air right out of his lungs. As he gasped for breath, his rifle was shoved far from his hands, and his armor-weave shirt?

Well, that might as well have been tissue paper.

As the shreds of camouflage went flying through the air, he sucked down desperate breaths of air. He struggled weakly, but she had his arms pinned over his head in seconds, pulling her own clothes off with her free hand.

The sight of her breasts when they came spilling free was as erotic as it was frightening, and the genuine question occurred to him.

Am I being raped?

It was happening so fast and so affectionately, yes, but also so forcefully. He gasped as she leaned down to kiss him, holding her lips against his, stealing his breath as she ground her face against his muzzle.

By the time that she broke the kiss, she'd wiggled out of her pants, her pussy dripping down on the crotch of his pants. She slammed down against him, nearly knocking the wind out of him again, and his cock felt like it was going to be pushed right through the armor-weave fabric of his pants if he didn't get it out soon.

As he squirmed, Shakarri smirked down at him.

"Do you know how long I've been wanting this? Do you know how long your scent has been driving me mad?"

"Too long?" he managed to grunt out.

"Too long."

Another swipe of her hand, and the other claws took care of the rest of his clothes, scattering them across the floor, leaving him completely naked except for his boots. He blushed, her scent, her sight having made him quite hard already.

She pulled herself over his cock, not even bothering to hold back, to be ashamed, to look the slightest bit shy about what she was doing.

And why would she? She'd taking what she thinks she owns...

Then again, could he convince her that it was anything else at this point?

As the Rotheri slid down his cock, encouraging him to slide into her depths, he let out the longest, slowest moan that had ever passed between his lips. The sensation of her warmth, of her slippery depths, was so much better than he had ever expected. He felt the way that she clenched on him, how her inner walls were wrapping around him and begging for more, and he shivered as he realized how helpless he was to her whims and wants.

As she bounced, as she worked herself up and down, riding him and mating him, he could feel his cock throbbing more. He was trying to thrust up out of instinct, but every time that the lynx tried to move, he found himself getting shoved right back down. Her hips kept him pinned, brutalized him when he tried to take part.

This was her show, he realized, and there was no taking the spotlight off of her.

So he stopped trying. He let her take what she wanted, savoring the pleasure that came from being used as her dildo. Every time that her slippery sex came splashing down on him, soaking him, squirting over his balls, he could feel his balls trying to pull up, coming closer and closer to cumming in her.

He held out for as long as he could, but he knew that it wouldn't take much more to get him over the edge. He huffed and puffed, the lynx's ears pulling flat to the side of his head as he clenched his teeth, tensing up against the inevitable orgasm.

And then, Shakarri slammed her hips down, and clenched.

The rippling movements of her inner walls pulled him up to orgasm in seconds, and he panted as he came hard inside of her, flooding her with his seed. She held him down with her claws pinning against his shoulders, and he groaned as she rolled her hips against him.

No sooner had he stopped shooting than she smiled.

"That's one. Rotheri mate seven times their first night."

Seven...

"Move. Let's see you on top."

The next morning, he was laying flat on his back, his dick refusing to wake up, his eyes wide with the look of a man who had seen too much. He stared at the ceiling of the little carved-out hill, knowing that the recovery team would be there in a few hours.

He knew that he needed to move, to get dressed, but the sleeping Rotheri on his chest made it impossible. The way that she weighted him down, he might have been able to fight, but the way that she smiled...

Well, that was impossible.

I love you. I did all this because I love you.

That's what she had said somewhere between the fourth and fifth ruttings, and he believed her. He just hoped that his higher-ups would, too.

If they didn't, he didn't want to think about the pile of bodies that would result from their decision to remove her.

The End