FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Dorey didn’t normally smoke.

In truth, she hated the taste of a cigarette. The scent of tobacco was a painfully obvious giveaway to any creature she might be hunting. The taste was abhorrent, burning the back of her tongue with an acrid flavor that she never seemed to get used to. It had been a habit of her father growing up. That was reason enough for her to keep the tradition going.

After a successful hunt, he would partake in a cigarette that he rolled himself. She still remembered watching him roll out the paper, wetting his fingers to smooth it down before he spread the finely ground tobacco along the interior. He always gave her a sly smile and a wink, asking her not to tell her mother about this.

She never had. It was their little secret, of course. When they were bringing in their quarry and loading it in to the back of the truck, he would even allow her a puff. Back then, she had thought she was so cool getting to do what he got to do, even if it had left her feeling like she was going to cough her lungs up.

Dorey drew her hand to her mouth, taking another slow, deep inhale and allowing the smoke to collect in the back of her throat before she released it in a billowing cloud.

Coming back to Altera Islands sent shudders down her spine. Like someone was stepping on her grave, as if the specter of death Giratina himself had dropped his gaze upon her. When she had been standing on the deck of the boat, she had felt nauseous, worse than anything seasickness could ever do to her.

It had been in the back of her mind the entire time. The way the ship captain didn’t seem to want to meet her eye. The way the crew members held hushed conversations behind her back, ones that seemed to amuse them when they noticed how red her face was getting. It was the same no matter where she went, it seemed.

Not since that damnable mightyena.

Five months had passed since that night. The last time she had been on the island, and the last time she had been seen as anything other than a laughing stock.

Her live stream had almost become an urban legend on the shadier corners of the internet. Where perverts gathered in dens of inequity to share their unnatural desires with each other. No matter how hard Dorey tried to get the video taken down, it always seemed to spring up somewhere else.

The Hoenn Huntress and her mightyena ‘lover’.

Even now, standing on the beach with a pack slung over her shoulders, she swore she was being watched from the departing boat. The trees on the island had lost some of their foliage, revealing gnarled, brown branches that stretched towards the slate-gray sky overhead. Past the coastline, more densely cropped trees had managed to shield those further inland from the worst of the ocean’s winds.

Dorey took a sharp drag from the cigarette, harder than she would have liked. It came back on her instantly, and she coughed loudly, smoke escaping from her mouth in a plume that raised heavenwards. The sound seemed so out of place, especially with the creaking metal of the boat fading away behind her.

That left her with just the lap of the waves and the strong breeze fluttering through what remained of her once long, golden blond hair. It was cut short now with there being nowhere near enough to form the ponytail she once had. Instead, her hair hung just past her ears, coming around in her face to form a set of bangs.

Cutting her hair short had been for two reasons. One was that it provided some little comfort at the thought people may not recognize her. The second was that she never could forget how it felt when her ponytail had been co-opted by a canine to better breed her.

The fallout from her disastrous hunting trip had been swift and brutal. Any sponsorship she had dropped her before she even left the island. Dorey supposed she didn’t blame them. Of course they wouldn’t want their brands associated with a dog fucker.

That was what some people had taken to calling her on the internet. It seemed far more amusing to them to paint her as some kind of degenerate that actively sought out this kind of abuse. That’s what the messages she received told her. The ones that held invitations from men to hook up with them, unsolicited pictures, even the occasional video of a male pokemon presenting for her.

One of the first messages sent to her was one she always had in the back of her mind. It had been right after she got back from the trip and had been holed up in her apartment for a little over a week. The phone had buzzed constantly, and no matter how hard she tried to fight it, she never could ignore it.

It was an email, one that had an innocuous video attachment. The subject line was simple: A Business Opportunity. She would have dumped it in the trash folder if she had the normal fiery passion she used to be able to conjure up.

It had been a newer video, filmed under bright lights in what appeared to be the interior of a house. Laying on a couch next to each other had been a man and an arcanine, a female, from her more slender build and glossy fur. Everything just seemed slightly off, and it didn’t take a genius to realize just what she was watching. She made it to the point where the man had begun to reach below her tail and unbutton his pants before shutting it off.

The memory of watching her own ‘performance’ had been too great. The words accompanying it had been simple.

‘We are always looking for talented performers. Big money is there to be made.'

She remembered laughing at that. It hadn't taken any talent for her to be fucked by a pokemon. If there were those willing to pay for the privilege of watching it, well, she didn’t want to meet those people.

The scars he had left on her were more than she could bear at times. From the bite marks around the back of her neck which had led her to wearing high-collared shirts to the scratches around her hips that mocked her whenever she bathed. These she would trace her fingers along gingerly, that memory of his commanding grip on her, his hot, pungent breath in her nose…

She shivered, independent of the cold wind that danced across the choppy surf. There was no point in trying to deny it happened. Nor, that some part of her had enjoyed it.

It was clear to her that she wasn’t going to get over this unless she came back. Nature had always called out to her in a voice she had once believed beckoned her forth from an oppressive civilized life. Now it seemed to mock her, drawing her in only to remind her at every moment that she had been so thoroughly taken advantage of.

Dorey wrapped her arms around her shoulder, staring at the smoldering remains of her cigarette, half-buried in the sand. She bent down slowly, picking up the discarded butt. It felt wrong to just leave it here, purposefully tarnishing the pristine beauty of the island. For that, she thought herself a fool.

There was nothing she owed this island or its inhabitants. The way she saw it, she should have been happy to desecrate it, like it had to her. Regardless, she ashed the glowing tip of the cigarette and slipped it into her pocket.

Some habits, like her father's lessons on leaving only footprints, were harder to break than others. There was one lesson she was able to ignore, one that she couldn't bring herself to obey. It had been an oft repeated phrase from him whenever she would get angry at someone else. For those moments when her emotions got the best of her and the call of nature was too far off to stifle her, she had come to expect the words.

If an eye for an eye made the world go blind, she'd happily pay the price to have her pride restored.

---

It shouldn’t have surprised her when she found her camp was in shambles.

The area had been just as she remembered, placed at the top of a large hill overlooking the valley. That this was hers she was certain. One look at the tree in the center, the same Captain had marked after taking her was enough to tell her that. She felt like she could still catch a whiff of that acrid odor, the memory of his laying claim to her territory fresh in her mind.

The wooden platform she had originally placed for her tent was gone. The generator and the box that protected it from the elements were gone. Even the rocks surrounding the fire pit had been scattered, leaving nothing more than the hint of a divot in the ground where it had been.

That there were no traces of any of these additions, no signs of paw prints - new or stale - told her enough. Captain hadn't done this. It seemed the island's caretakers that had leased her the campsite made a decision on her future hunts for her. It shouldn't have surprised her. It had been nearly impossible to reach the island through official channels. The captain of her boat, however, didn't ask any questions when she offered to pay twice the normal rate as long as he kept it off the records.

Just like her sponsors, the island caretakers wanted nothing to do with her as well. They had sent her a politely worded letter that said in no uncertain terms how her sordid behavior painted Altera Islands in a negative light. The letter had gone on to say that after a series of improper inquiries about future expeditions from various sources, they had decided to request she seek hunting grounds elsewhere.

She felt her fingers twitch, the sudden urge to turn back hitting her far harder than it had so far. It was another reminder she wasn't supposed to be here, that what little claim she had once exerted over the natural world no longer remained.

It had been a while since she needed to set up a campsite from scratch. Not since the days she used to hunt with her father, at least. As soon as she had grown old enough, she had been required to help out however she could. That meant chopping fire wood, which was made all the more difficult with the small handaxe they brought. That meant setting up the tent, which had more often than not left her tied up in a jumbled mess. It meant so many small tasks that had stuck with her far longer than she would have thought.

By no means did that make it easy or fast, though. The wind was blowing hard, and the urge to light a fire was stifled. She was on high ground, the light of the fire could be noticed for miles around her. She half expected to look out to the forest and see a pair of glowing eyes staring back at her, slavering maw hung low, a bright, red prick standing between his hind legs.

Dorey tried to control the feeling of tightness building in her stomach. She hated herself for thinking of him like that, but that image had seared itself in her brain. There was no refuge, as soon as she let her guard drop and her mind began to wander, she would see him.

Dorey had wondered why she felt this way. He was a pokemon, a furry, four-legged beast that held no dominion over her. That didn't stop her from feeling like she was intruding. Every time she walked past the marked tree, she was reminded that she was on someone else's land.

It was something she should have realized a long time ago. After she first saw Captain, after he had stolen her first sawsbuck from her, she should have known she was intruding. The canine had a claim to this territory, and her presence on it without paying homage was a spit in the face to him.

Maybe she was wrong to humanize him so much. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine somewhere in that feral brain lurked a malevolent intelligence, one that would put him on par with his more, to excuse the term, evolved brethren. As it was, Captain was a far cry from the pokemon of the city that had learned to talk and were able to perform most tasks on par with humans.

It was growing dark by the time she finished setting up a small tent, far less impressive than the one she possessed on her last foray. The intent was to travel much lighter, especially when she didn’t know just when or how she would find him. Around the base of the camp, tied to the marked tree in the center and around a few scattered poles, she led a long length of rope. It was a little more than thigh high on her, slightly slack and hanging down, but not enough that it would swing in the wind.

The last thing she wanted to do was risk him sneaking up on her again. Call it paranoia, call it learning from her last lesson. She didn’t feel any sense of foolishness attaching the small bells along the rope at odd intervals. It was going to be a hell of a night trying to forge some peace of mind knowing what lurked out there.

That fear of eyes watching her had never faded, at times leading to the hair on the back of her neck to rise and causing her to spin around rapidly in place. Each time she expected to see more than the loose leaves or the branches that had been shaking in the wind.

Tomorrow couldn’t come quickly enough. At night, it was the mightyena’s domain. During the day, she could at least pretend that she belonged here, go about her work with only an inkling that she couldn’t handle a repeat encounter with him.

Dorey shivered, biting back the sigh that threatened to betray her attempt at silence.

It would be spring soon. That was a bittersweet thought to be having at a time like this. When it warmed, she would have returned for fishing. She had already passed a few of the streams she normally frequented, the ice having already faded away under increasingly sunny days. She would have had a whole video series on it, probably would have premiered a new Master Rod, if the company had decided she was worth the cost of supplies.

Her pokenav sat on a log next to her tent, the screen dark for once in the past months. It wasn’t the fancy, new Mark Six she had been promoting for Devon Corp five months ago. They had demanded that back less than a week after the incident. This was a Mark Three, with spotty connection and a battery that seemed to drain after three hours of use.

She made sure to keep it off for now, she would need it later.

The chill wind was what finally chased her in to the confines of her tent. It was at least slightly warmer in here, made even more bearable after climbing in to her sleeping bag. The thought of undressing struck her only once, but she couldn’t follow through with it.

If Captain showed up in the middle of the night…

She looked towards her backpack slung in the corner of the tent, the top unzipped so she could reach it quickly if she needed to. There was no shotgun for her to defend herself with anymore, an iron tail from Captain had seen to that. Her pistol was replaced with a smaller version with a longer, narrower barrel. It was matte black, looking almost like a toy compared to the hardware she was used to.

The shopkeeper had promised her it would handle anything up to two hundred or so pounds, barring rock types of course. It would work, it had to work. That was what she kept telling herself.

In the distance, the silence of the night was broken. It was accompanied by an intense wave of coldness that sucked out what little warmness had built up in her chest. It was a howl, melancholic and deep in pitch. From far away it sounded, echoing off the surrounding hills and trees, leaving her to wonder just what direction it came from. The last time she had heard it, it seemed to relay a sense of power, dominance.

Now all she could think was how lonely it sounded against the backdrop of the wind.

---

The morning came with the stark realization that she was still alone, that at no time during the night did anything chance upon her. Laying in her sleeping bag, staring at the roof of her tent, she found herself falling to uncertainty.

What if she found Captain and she wasn’t able to take control of the situation? Regardless of her preparations, her confidence she knew just how smart he was, there always was the chance he would be just too much for her to take. What if he drove her to her knees, ripped her clothing from her and forced her through a repeat of their last meeting?

Her face reddened when she remembered how he had slapped his wet, softening cock against her face after he had finished breeding her. At the time, it seemed like the only thing to do to avoid his ire was to follow his lead and clean him.

The taste had lingered for days afterwards, salty and bitter, contaminating everything she ate with a feral aura. What if he drove that thick shaft into her mouth and down her throat? She had plenty of commenters take displeasure with the fact she hadn’t given her ‘boyfriend’ a proper blowjob.

That would have made them happy, at least, for the moment. They probably would have demanded more after that, wanting her to stoop to even deeper levels to satisfy their sick urges.

She realized her heart was beating quickly, enough that she knew she couldn’t lay there any longer. Her father had always chastised her for starting too late in the day. If you weren’t in the tree stand before the crack of dawn, you might as well pack up and head home. It still annoyed her to think of that asinine rule. If he ever saw her current predicament, she could only imagine what he’d tell her to do about her unwanted ‘fans’.

She wanted to believe their words hadn’t affected her. That it was something she could just brush off. She had never owed them anything, that was something she always held true to when she was still The Hoenn Huntress. There were always those viewers that wanted to see more.

Bigger guns, bigger hunts, greater risk.

It didn’t surprise her this new crowd she had seemed to muck up from the darkest dredges of the pokenet wanted more from her as well. Some of those things they had requested she do to him…

The only thing that did surprise her was the request from the creator of the footage that had been sent to her. They hadn’t requested more, nor did they chastise her for what she had done. They had simply asked her for the original footage, all while hanging a rather generous sum of money above her head. Biting back her revulsion and disgust at selling herself out like that only lasted for so long, especially when she realized she had stooped lower for product placement.

Still, to hand over the file to them was hard. It was made easier when she checked her bank account and saw that, true to their word, they had deposited every last cent. Off-handedly, she had made a bitter comment in the email that she didn’t know why they were paying for it, especially when they could pick it up off any porn site..

Their response was as simple as the first one had been. They would handle it. Whatever that meant. Holding her breath against it wouldn’t have seemed to be much use.

Claiming to be a legitimate business was the biggest joke she had ever heard. Before Captain, she had never heard of pokemon and human having sex, let alone there being a market for it. Even their webpage, as disgusting as it was, had been rather barebones. They claimed to be a new arrival on the scene, one intent on procuring ‘talent’ wherever they could.

Her video was there, thankfully bereft of any indicator of whom she was. It had been front page for a while, flanked by advertisements for male enhancement pills and ‘hot, horny fire-types in your area’.

Ever a glutton for punishment, she found herself browsing the site, that feeling of self loathing coalescing when she realized that some part of her, some small, infinitesimal part had curiosity that she couldn’t deny.

This was when she pulled up the video with the man and his arcanine. After shutting out of it the first time in disgust, she had laid back in bed, pokenav pulled close to her face and the volume completely off. She was certain someone, somewhere would know that she was looking at pokephilia porn, that this would just prove everything her ‘fans’ had postulated about her over the past few months.

This time, she watched as the man moved his hands to the arcanine’s chest, rubbing and stroking her tenderly. Their mouths met in a facsimile of a kiss, made difficult by her long muzzle but no less passionate because of it. It let her see their tongues dancing expertly across one another, leaving no doubt in her mind this wasn’t the first occurrence between the two of them. The arcanine was the one to take control, taking the hem of his shirt in her strong jaws and simply ripping it away as if it were nothing. Her strength was incredible, something she shouldn’t have been surprised to see from such a large pokemon.

If she had a pokemon like her at her side...well, she would have loved to see what she’d do to Captain if he tried to treat the arcanine like he had her.

Her focus had fixated entirely on the video at this point, her death grip on the pokenav only loosening when one of her hands slowly began to creep down her chest. It had been a while since she last touched herself. Her fire of passion had been snuffed out by dog drool and sharp claws, leaving her with a sense of emptiness that she hadn’t had desire to fill.

Now, watching these two perform on camera, she realized she was feeling it again. Her hand gingerly traced the edge of one of her breasts, one finger tracing so close to the pronounced bump of her nipple. She could no longer watch them in silence, she needed to hear them, to hear their rapturous pleasure tearing through them, robbing them of sentient thought, leaving them lustful, shaking messes, and-

Dorey shivered.

This time, she forced herself to get up. She had a long day ahead of her, and laying there wouldn’t do her any good. Not when she had a mightyena to track.

Breakfast consisted of little more than an energy bar and a handful of mixed nuts. Dorey would have killed for a warm meal, even one of the Devon corporation’s Arceus-damnded instapot meals you could make over the fire. Like most of her endorsements, they were shoddy, usually falling apart in her bag or ending up under cooked. She had eaten them for so long that to go without on a hunt just felt weird.

Before leaving, she made sure to double check her gear, laying them out on the ground in front of the tent one by one. The length of rope she had used to secure her campsite the night before laid in a loosely coiled pile nearby. That was the very first thing she put in her backpack. Joining it was a small, circular ring. It caught the sunlight, twinkling faintly before it was lost to the bottom of her pack.

Her pistol lay in a holster next to it, and this she attached to her belt, making sure it hung off her right side. The last thing she wanted to do was waste even a millisecond reaching across her waist to draw it. During a hunt, a millisecond was all the difference between making a shot and missing.

The thing she was most careful with was a small, glass vial. It was something she had picked up from the same store she had purchased the pistol from. Urine from an eevee in estrus, guaranteed to draw the attention of quite a number of different male pokemon. She had initially balked at its usage, but the man swore by it, and she had certainly used scent baiting in the past during hunts with sawsbuck.

Of course, it wasn’t something she had ever told her viewers about. They didn’t need to know she took unfair advantages. Sometimes Mother Nature made it too easy.

Tucking the vial into her front pocket for safe keeping, she finished loading the rest of her supplies into the pack. She wouldn’t risk cracking it open until she was in position, it had a pungent aroma to it that made her curl her nose up in disdain. She could only imagine why it would be appealing to a pokemon.

With her preparations complete, there was nothing else to do but take that first step, however hard it might be. Prodding and urging herself ever onward, she moved slowly down the hill, leaving the relative safety of her campsite lookout behind. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t be coming back.

---

The forest enveloped her in a warm embrace, the trees acting as a buffer on all sides. It cut out the wind but with only marginal new growth of leaves overhead, the sun was able to filter down on her. She didn’t move quickly, nor with a sense of determination. To rush would be her undoing, every step she took needed to be measured, leaving no trace behind her. No longer would she think of Captain as anything less than what he was.

A skilled hunter, a proud beast, something that would take full advantage of any carelessness on her part. Underestimating him had gotten her into this situation.

That was why her hand dropped to the hilt of her pistol every time she heard a noise. From the rustle of the underbrush to the snap of a branch underfoot, her concentration didn’t falter even for a moment. Her approach into the forest was a long one that went around the edge of the deeper reaches.

With her compass in hand ensuring she didn’t lose her way on these unknown paths, she traveled tirelessly. She didn’t truly know where she would find him, but she knew her best bet was to gauge it by the lands the sawsbuck typically roamed.

A predator like him would want to maintain close and easy access to prey, fresh water, and have a relatively easy to defend home. An old, experienced mightyena like him would unquestionably have land he claimed long ago, unwilling to give up to the encroachment of his kind.

Before taking another step further, she hesitated, allowing her hand to fall on the bulge in her front pocket. She didn’t want to do it, the raw pheromones would make her stomach turn, but every step she took reeking of a human gave her away.

Steeling herself, she took a deep breath and gritted her teeth before popping the cork on the vial. There wasn’t much, so she knew she needed to use it sparingly. That unfortunately meant she had to go for the long haul. Dribbling a bit of it onto her fingers, she muttered a quick curse to Arceus before dabbing it along her neck.

There were worse things she could have done, she supposed. This ranked high on the list, though. It probably would have been something some of her viewing audience would have enjoyed. That alone made her despise it.

Her father would have chastised her for taking unfair shortcuts like this. It wasn’t very sporting. That was certainly what he would tell her. Even when things became more difficult and taking long hikes was out of the question, he made no attempt to change his ways. Stubborn man, always had been.

A few more dabs behind her ears, on her wrists, and the rest poured along her pants and the vial was empty. The sour scent permeated the air around her, blanketing her in an air of stuffy camouflage.

Now was the time when she grew really nervous. If she had been jumpy before, now she was a tightly wound coil, ready to spring at any second. Even the bird pokemon seemed to take offense to her cloaking aroma, their chirps and calls growing softer with every step she took. There was one place she wanted to check, the trees swallowing her up, becoming more densely clustered around her the further inland she went.

Her father had always warned her never to enter somewhere you knew a dangerous pokemon was waiting, especially when you didn’t have an escape route in mind. The sun that had been so welcoming earlier in her travels had diminished before ultimately leaving her behind with one last kiss on the top of her head. Beneath towering pine trees, she headed for the northern edge of the island, where the land was rockier and less hospitable.

There had supposedly been good mountain gogoat hunting in this terrain, not that she ever had the urge to come here. It was hard traveling, made all the more difficult when the terrain began to shift upwards.

The Altera Islands didn’t have a mountain range, rather, the island was covered with raised areas, great plateaus that looked down on deep valleys. It gave the ample array of pokemon that lived there plenty of natural places to hide from the humans that hunted them. Mother Mew herself protecting them as best she could through the lay of the land.

Dorey’s belief was that this was exactly the kind of terrain Captain would want to make his den in. A high vantage point, deep pines with a lack of vegetation to keep out herbivorial pokemon. It seemed like the perfect place for a predator to live, and soon enough, she found evidence that she might be right.

It was when she came across a small, natural spring bubbling up from the ground, trickling freely downhill and blessing the dry, cracked earth with moisture. The earth was softer here, and her hand immediately reached for her pistol when she saw it. In the mud along the bank of the stream formed by the spring, she could see a large, canid pawprint.

To see it reminded her of those paws wrapped authoritatively around her hips.

She stooped down on one knee and looked over it, allowing her view to linger before passing around the surrounding area. Among sparse pine trees, she found herself alone, not even the cry of bird pokemon to accompany her.

The rocky path upwards was treacherous, and on more than one occasion she feared she might slip. Her boots weren’t made for this kind of terrain, but following the tracks ever upward had become a fixation. To see where they led, to make sure she found the mightyena’s den, that was all that mattered to her.

With the increasing altitude, the trees became less densely packed. Those that did stand were tall, solitary entities, bereft of companionship. Their roots forced deep into the rocky earth, drawing life from land that couldn’t support more of their kind. To welcome more of their own would invite their own death, competition leading to attrition and ultimately failure.

She could see why Captain liked this part of the island.

The wind buffeted her from the sides, the sound a haunting gale over the rocks and crags that surrounded her. Occasionally she would rest beneath a pine tree, sitting among the pine needles and looking back the way she came.. It was truly beautiful from up here, she realized. The island was laid out before her in all its glory, from the southern beach where she had touched down to the east and west. If she strained her eyes, she swore she could make out the hill that her campsite rested on.

Dotted all over the island were these little encampments, most she noticed only because she knew what to look for. Cleared patches of land on high terrain, the binoculars in her pack confirmed her thought. There were more here than she would have guessed, each campsite thankfully deserted at this time of the year.

As it was when she always came here, that sense of isolation dared to creep in, and she fought it back with everything that was in her. To allow it now would be to admit she needed assistance with this. Her stubborn dismissal of helpers, assistants, anyone that might be able to lend a hand would never change.

She remembered her father, laying in his hospital bed in those last few weeks of his life. At that point she had visited him often, finding little other pleasure in her daily routine. They spoke a lot during that time, of past hunting trips, their shared love for nature. It had always been the joy of the chase for him, his traditions. It wasn’t until that moment she realized he loved it so much in part because he got to share that opportunity with her.

It was after he passed away - lung cancer, something that should have dissuaded her partaking in cigarettes - that she filmed her first episode for the Hoenn Huntress.

Dorey leaned against the sap-covered bark of the pine tree she rested under, her eyes drifting shut for a moment. She wouldn’t let her legacy end here, not with Captain holding control over her. Her father had said it himself, when she got her mind set on something, she was as obstinate as an ornery tauros.

Getting back to her feet, she brushed away the pine needles that littered her clothing. The scent of the eevee pheromones had faded ever so slightly, but she was certain a more sensitive nose could pick it up. Add in the winds scattering it over the island, and she was certain she must have had at least a few interested followers.

That was fine, they could come. It might embolden Captain to try and claim his phantom vixen before anyone else did.

It made her wonder if he had taken a mate before. The mightyena had always been alone when she saw him. Whenever she heard his howls, it was never met by a second voice. It had always been solitary, alone, left unanswered.

Perhaps he preferred it that way.

The slope lessened ahead of her, plateauing on flat terrain that afforded her the chance to catch her breath. Near the summit of this bluff, she was certain she had found what she had been looking for. Amidst the cracks and peaks, before her was a large, dark cave entrance. A musty, sour smell rolled out from the interior, the ominous darkness enough to give her pause.

Captain’s tracks accumulated near the entrance, older but more numerous. What she initially thought to be white stones scattered about the entrance came into light the closer she walked towards them.

Bones, large and bleached under the sun. They had been picked clean, some cracked open to get to the marrow inside. What had been left was meticulously plucked by scavengers. She needn’t wonder just what kinds, as her appearance sent them scattering.

A rattata and a few vullaby, the latter taking to the skies in a flutter of wings and screeches thrown in her direction at disturbing their feast. The rattata watched her from a rocky ledge, bearing its bucktoothed fangs at her and releasing a hiss before scuttling away, its purple fur quickly disappearing in the rocks.

She didn’t realize she was holding her pistol in her hand until she managed to calm her racing heart. When she had drawn it she didn’t know, only that her finger now rested on the trigger, a firm amount of pressure threatening to pull it. Dorey cursed her own fearfulness, if she had wasted a shot that she needed, she wouldn’t have forgiven herself.

With the appearance of those detestable pokemon, she knew the cave had to be empty. Captain wouldn’t permit such slights against him if he were here.

Her heart raced in her chest while she stood here, the ominous, yawning depths of the cavern drawing her, tempting her to step in. She felt she would have fallen into darkness, left broken for Captain to find when he returned. It made her pause, and she took a deep breath.

She needed to do this. For her father, perhaps, to prove to herself that she was still the brave, powerful hunter he had made her into. Her mother had never needed to wonder where she got this trait from, this bullheadedness and the belief that the world was there for those that were willing to take it.

She had empowered it, built an image on it. In all those podcasts she had played this character to the maximum. Did she truly feel this way, though? That was the question she had been forced to ask herself on more than one occasion since the incident. Spending so long ‘out of character’ had left her trying to find herself, at least, the person she had been before she started filming her hunts.

Her arms wrapped around herself and she shivered, finding it difficult to maintain that air of professionalism. Captain had torn it away from her, reduced her to the most bare reflection of what she was.

She hated him for that, mostly because it revealed just how much she had relied on this part of herself.

Never wanting or needing more than the hunt. To be alone and separate from everyone else. Since her father had died, she had never wanted to get close to anyone when it came to hunting. It felt like it would have sullied all of the memories she had with him.

For the first time in a long time, she felt like that little girl in the sawsbuck stand, holding the shotgun and watching the woods in uncertainty. It wasn’t her desire to hurt pokemon, she never saw it like that. She never allowed them to suffer, and it was only those pokemon that were designated as feral or ‘problem pokemon’.

Those pokemon that migrated in large amounts, that were considered invasive. When she had shot Captain, she had forgotten the very reason she began hunting in the first place. To maintain balance between humans and pokemon.

Now she needed to rectify it.

The floor of the cavern sloped downwards, leading in to a small, enclosed space that reeked of canine. It took awhile for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, leaving her to stand pointedly at the entrance. She didn’t dare look back for fear of prolonging how long she would have to wait, and only when she was able to view the dim interior did she press on.

Every step kicked up pebbles, sending them cascading to the cave floor. It wasn’t as hard to keep a grip in here as it was outside. The path had been worn down by countless, repeated steps by canid paws. Looking around the den, she realized now that the bones had been left near the entrance must have served as a warning, as the rest of his home was free of them.

Leaf litter and various different plants were stacked in one corner, and she had a vision of him making a great many repeated trips to create such a natural bed. The closer she got to it, the more her nose curled up at that familiar scent of raw canine. She wondered how he looked laying in it, probably too big for such small bedding. Getting down on one knee next to it, she slowly allowed her palm to glide along the surface. Her hand came away covered in a few loose strands of dark gray hairs, the result of a canine shedding his winter coat for the spring.

Rubbing a tuft of the coarse fur between her fingers, she recalled the feeling of it grinding along her back. It had been itchy, scratching her and rubbing her skin raw while he had worked himself into a fevered pitch above her. Specifically, she remembered his hairy balls smacking against her clit with each thrust. It had been a feeling she never could forget.

The smooth walls of the cave echoed her footsteps back at her from all sides, leading her to try to silence her motions. A bevvy of claw marks and paw prints decorated the back wall of the cave, where loamy black soil decorated the ground. At one point, it seemed like Captain had tried to expand his den deeper into the ground.

Perhaps he had hoped to raise a family of his own? She pondered this as she looked from the small bedding area to around the confines of the cave. It was a small space, not enough for more than one of his species to comfortably exist in. If he wanted such a thing, he would certainly need to…

She was doing it again, she realized. Applying human traits to little more than an animal. He wasn’t his civilized cousins. He was smarter than a true feral pokemon, but that didn’t mean he was on her level of intellectual thought. To place him on such a high pedestal would make what she was about to do so much more difficult.

Looking back the way she came, she could see the cave entrance overhead, a beam of light cast down and hitting the ground a short distance away from her. With this illumination shining down on her, she had no other option but to wait. It might be a while before Captain returns, after all.

She unstrapped her backpack and set it against the wall of the cave, her eyes falling on the mightyena’s bedding in disdain before she found herself sighing. It was the only soft place in the cave, and she would need to put up with his odor for the comfort of having somewhere to sit. Sinking into the bedding, she sat with her back propped against the wall, her pistol laid out next to her for when she needed it.

It seemed unfair to her, that he might follow the scent of a vixen in heat all the way back to his den. Find her laying in his bed, thinking she was ready and willing to be mated by the alpha of the Altera Islands.

He would find no such comfort from her.