FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

There were two things Slate liked above anything else. The first thing was shiny trinkets. The second thing was shiny trinkets that happened to be cheap.

It had been a while since he'd gotten his paws on a nice accessory to carry around. The hyena was always looking for new things to tweak his outfit or enhance his vibes - things that would match his general tough aesthetic and look well on the black denim jacket he always carried around. He was very proud of the skull-shaped buckle on his belt, for instance, which he had gotten a long time ago and now had practically become part of his identity.

Of course, his fixation on shiny, cheap accessories meant Slate knew every single pawn shop in town. He'd go from one place to another trying to haggle out some nice deals for the better looking items in stock. He'd learned that most sellers were willing to lower their prices if he insisted a little. His looks usually helped with that, so he didn't even have to push too far.

There was a pawn shop he hadn't visited yet. The owner was a black wolf that Slate had never seen around, so he had a feeling his appearance wouldn't help him so much this time, but it was worth a try.

As he walked into the shop, Slate noticed that there were far more shiny trinkets than he had anticipated. Most pawn shops gathered them in a single section, whereas in this establishment it looked like the owner had decided to scatter them all around the room. Finally, the hyena thought, a shop made just for me.

"Let me know if I can help," the black wolf from behind the counter said. He'd been reading some kind of magazine prior to Slate's entrance, and his amber eyes had merely glanced at the hyena before turning back to the page he was on.

Slate nodded in response. There were so many things in the room that he didn't know where to start from. He walked through the broad alleys as he tried to find something that caught his eye - the problem being, of course, that there were too many things that did just that.

The silvery sparkle of a collection of brooches caught his attention. Most of the designs he saw were rather boring or didn't match his aesthetic at all. The hyena was beginning to feel slightly disappointed when his eyes came to rest in a particular brooch that was shaped like a fang and neatly enameled. It wasn't silver, unlike most of the other brooches on the shelf, but it glimmered pleasantly when exposed to the light.

Slate picked it between his fingers and admired it for a few seconds, rotating the small contraption and letting the light hit the smooth surface. He was pretty sure the brooch would look great on his jacket, joining the other pins and decorations he'd been hoarding. However, he could tell that the quality of that product would most likely come with a big price. The fact that there wasn't any tag in sight only seemed to confirm his theory.

Getting ready to use all his repertoire of techniques, the hyena walked back to the counter and placed the fang-shaped brooch in front of the clerk.

"Hey, buddy," he greeted the wolf with a half-smile. He'd learned in the past that going from nice to rough usually worked better. "How much for this?"

The black wolf glanced at the fang brooch and returned his attention to the magazine.

"Thirty-five."

Slate had been expecting to hear something like that, so he made sure his smile grew only wider.

"Really? Could you, er, double-check that for me, friend?"

The black wolf's amber gaze moved to Slate again, as if considering his options, and then down to the fang brooch.

"Oh," he said then, smiling back. "Yeah. Let me do that for you."

The black wolf closed his magazine and turned to the screen next to him. Frowning, he typed a few words on a keyboard under the counter. Slate waited patiently, claws tapping on the wooden surface.

"Uh. Hm... Yeah, sorry about that. It's thirty-five, I checked," the black wolf replied, still smiling.

Slate chuckled awkwardly, trying to change tactic.

"Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting it to be so... pricey, heh."

"Mhm, I hear you. It's great quality, though."

"Yeah, yeah. I would love to buy it, if it were cheaper," the hyena insisted.

"That's a shame." The black wolf's gaze moved to Slate's jacket briefly and seemed to notice all the decorations attached to it. "Huh, I see you've got a whole collection there. You do like shiny things, don't you?"

"Is there a problem with that?" Slate asked, ready to switch to rough mode in case it was necessary.

The black wolf chuckled.

"No, not at all. As you can see, I'm a bit of a collector myself, too. Feel free to roam around and see if there's anything else you like."

Slate frowned. It didn't look like he was walking out of the shop with the fang brooch. The clerk was probably right - he was bound to find other things he'd like in the extensive collection on display. The only problem was that now he had his mind set on that particular brooch, leaving the pawn shop without it would feel like walking out empty-handed, and walking out empty-handed was absolutely unacceptable.

He cleared his throat.

"Say, what's your name?"

The black wolf tilted his head.

"Kodi. Why?"

"Kodi. Okay. So, don't you think you can make an exception for me?" Slate asked, leaning closer and lowering his voice. "I would... er..." The hyena's gaze moved to the tip jar on one edge of the counter. "I would come back and tip you from time to time, if you lower the prices for me. Just this once."

"Ah. I'm afraid I can't do that, sorry," Kodi answered.

Slate growled a bit, displeased.

"Oh, come on, don't be like that. I'm offering you a great deal! Look, I'll even come once every month. It's like a subscription. What do you say?"

Kodi held Slate's gaze, a faint smile still on his face.

"You really want this brooch, don't you?" the wolf asked.

"I mean, well, I could probably find something else, somewhere else," Slate lied, "but it certainly caught my attention. That's why I'm willing to come back every month if you sell it to me for, uh, let's say, fifteen. But I won't insist if you're not interested. Still a chance you're missing, if you ask me."

Kodi's smile grew slightly wider and his eyes sparkled with something Slate couldn't identify. He was certainly hoping the wolf couldn't see through his ruse - it was clear Slate was never going to come back to that shop - but the next words the wolf said caught him off-guard.

"I have something in the backstore that might interest you. It's shiny, it's classy and I promise you won't be able to think about any other accessory as soon as I show it to you."

And what about the fucking fang brooch, moron? Slate thought to himself, trying not to betray his calm façade.

"And it's way cheaper," the wolf added.

"Oh, really? How cheap are we talking about?" Slate asked, suddenly interested.

Kodi chuckled softly.

"I'll let you figure that out. Follow me, please."

As the wolf walked to the backstore, Slate hesitated. Something about that situation felt shady enough that he'd take some time to consider his options. What if the wolf was taken him to the backstore just so he could beat him up without nobody seeing him? Perhaps he was one of those jerks that got offended for being asked to lower their prices. Well, that won't work, Slate thought to himself. He might be a wolf, but I could easily beat him up in a fight.

He followed Kodi to the backstore and waited patiently near the door.

"Well?" he asked. Although he had accepted the wolf's offer, that didn't mean he was feeling any more patient for it. "What is it?"

Kodi turned to him holding a golden pocketwatch in his paw. Slate wasn't entirely sure where it'd been before the wolf had simply... produced it out of thin air. He hadn't looked in any shelves or boxes. Had the pocketwatch been in his pocket all this time?

"Shiny, isn't it?" Kodi asked.

Slate had to agree. The pocketwatch's golden surface glistened and gleamed under the scarce sunlight that poured into the backstore from the colliding room. The effect only seemed to intensify as the black wolf raised his paw and let the pocketwath dangle from a thin chain.

"It's classy alright," Slate noted, his eyes mirroring the dangling timepiece. "Perhaps too classy for what I'm looking for."

"Do you like it?"

Slate wasn't entirely sure. He certainly couldn't look away from it.

"How much do you think it costs?" the black wolf asked.

It was then when Slate realized the pocketwatch had begun moving left and right at some point - which was weird, since the wolf's wrist had remained mostly motionless. The hyena's eyes tracked the movement back and forth, attracted by the alluring sparkle of god.

"Huh," the hyena said, shaking his head. "You're telling me this is cheaper than the brooch?"

Kodi chuckled again. Under any other circumstances, that would have been enough for Slate to turn around and walk out of the shop... or perhaps, punch the wolf in his face for making him waste his time like that. But the pocketwatch kept moving and Slate stared as it moved left and right.

"Way cheaper," Kodi confirmed. "In fact, you could say I couldn't be selling it any cheaper than I am selling it to you."

What's that supposed to mean?, the hyena thought.

"Okay," he muttered. "Just say a price."

Kodi nodded.

"Alright then. Let's just start at... ten."

"Ten?" Slate asked, a bit confused. That seemed cheaper than he would have thought possible, although he had the weird feeling that the wolf wasn't talking about the pocketwatch anymore.

"Mhm!" the black wolf confirmed. "I think it's a fair price, but feel free to negotiate if you want."

Slate blinked. For some reason, the movement felt slower than usual. When his eyelids lifted, his eyes were still fixed on the swinging pocketwatch.

"Negotiate?" he asked. "Well... uh... What about five?"

Slate heard Kodi chuckle at the other side of the watch.

"That's a bit quick, isn't it? No, just say the next lower number. Nine, for instance. How does that sound?"

The hyena nodded.

"Yeah. Okay. Nine."

"Much better than five, isn't it? Now it's my turn." If Slate hadn't been so busy keeping track of the pocketwatch, he'd easily noticed the mischievous gleam in Kodi's amber gaze. "I say eight."

Slate snorted weakly. It was a bit hard to think about the negotiation when he was so focused on the pocketwatch in front of him, but something about that number didn't make sense.

"Aren't you supposed to say a higher number now?" he asked. His voice trembled a bit. He wasn't entirely certain he'd got that right.

"Of course not. The numbers keep on going down, don't they? That's why it's called negotiation, so that we get to the lowest number possible and you get a good deal out of this."

It sounded like a solid argument. Slate was pretty sure there had been some kind of logic behind his previous assumption that Kodi's number didn't make sense, but he couldn't find it before the wolf kept talking.

"So, I've said eight, and you say..."

"Seven," Slate guessed. Something about how quickly the number came to his lips felt... off.

"Of course you do. See the pocketwatch in front of you, buddy? That's the prize you get for being such a good negotiator. Getting this shiny trinket all for yourself, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I told you you'd like it. I say six. The number's going down, one by one, and you know what you must do, right?"

"Five...?"

Kodi chuckled softly, as if he was participating of a joke Slate wasn't invited to.

The hyena's eyes were getting slightly tired now, the never-ending movement of the pocketwacth making his eyelids wish they'd just simply close down, but it was easier to pay attention to the movement and Kodi's nice explanations than it was to worry about it.

"Good boy. See? We're already there, right where you wanted to be before we started this negotiation."

"I'm not a... good b?"

"Of course, of course. Four," Kodi quickly interrupted him, placing a paw on one of Slate's shoulders. The motion made his relaxed body sway a bit on his feet.

A part of Slate wanted to get rid of that spell he seemed to be under and yell at the wolf, but wherever that part was, the hyena couldn't find it. It had been long lost in the swinging, golden glisten in front of his eyes. Instead of a protest, the only thing that came out of his lips was a soft word.

"... three..."

"Aaah, and now we're getting closer to the final stages of the negotiation," Kodi assured him, a grin on his face. "You'll soon have that pocketwatch all to yourself, swinging forever in your mind. Isn't that right?"

"I..."

Slate struggled one last time, but it felt like his body and everything inside it was being pushed down by strong, relentless currents. He wasn't even sure where he was anymore. Kodi's voice was reassuring and the pocketwatch kept swinging, and his eyelids were so, so heavy.

That was all that mattered. Heavy.

"You thought you could trick a wolf." The words came to his ears and made him shudder helplessly. "Well, it turns out this was out of your league, friend. A lesson I'll make sure you learn soon enough. Two."

".... Uh... one..."

This time, Slate didn't even register his mouth moving to form the number. Someone chuckled, very close to him. Everything around him was blurry and fuzzy. It was so tiresome to keep looking at things, registering them as things being there, letting his brain work. Sinking into the creeping darkness felt like a much better alternative.

And Kodi kept talking.

"That's a good boy. Now, when I say the next number, you're going to drop into deep sleep for me, aren't you?"

Slate nodded automatically. Most of his reactions had been feeling that way for several minutes now.

"And afterwards, when I tell you to get on your knees and serve this cunning wolf that you just tried to trick, you won't be able to do anything but comply, isn't that right?"

Slate nodded.

"And when we're done, you'll leave a generous tip on the jar, right?"

Slate nodded.

"And then you'll leave, but you'll come back every now and then, just like you promised, won't you?"

Slate nodded.

"And I'll bring you here, and I'll show you the pocketwatch, and you'll be a good boy for me and drop deep for me, because that's exactly what you must do. Right?"

Slate nod?

"Zero."

The hyena's mouth parted open and his neck relaxed. His heavy eyelids must have closed at some point, but he had no idea when that'd happened. Black-furred arms kept him from collapsing on the floor as his knees gave into the unthinkable pressure forcing his body to go down, down, down.

Somebody brought Slate down to his knees, but by then it was too late for his brain to register it.

Outside of the dark abyss his customer was quickly and helplessly sinking into, the black wolf chuckled one more time.

"I can't believe it," he whispered as he swiftly removed his belt and prepared to have his fair share of fun with the deeply hypnotized hyena. "Works like a charm every single time..."