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Kael cringed at the sound of Laura's fork tines as they scraped against the ceramic plate. The curvaceous white wolf was trying to get as much of the alfredo sauce as she could. Not that Kael could blame her; the cafeteria pasta was uncharacteristically delicious. Still, there were few sounds in the world that the kangaroo liked less than the screeching of utensils at dinner.

Matt pushed his own empty plate aside and rested his forehead against the table, his muzzle hanging off the edge. The grey-blue husky groaned loudly. "Ugh, linear algebra two sucks sooooo much. Seriously, why am I majoring in math again?"

"Dude, it's not that bad!" Kael pointed his own fork at Matt. "I'm there, and I kinda like it, man. And you shouldn't have been a math major if you didn't like math."

"I like math, just not linear algebra. It's weird."

Shaking his head, the 'roo went back to eating his broccoli. He was behind the other two, and he didn't want to hold them up. He glanced around at the cafeteria. It was a little strange eating there since it was mostly dorm kids, but it was still cheaper than eating at the student center. And sure, with the wood panel walls and maroon tiled floor, it looked like it was built in the seventies, but if the food was improving, he wasn't going to complain too loudly.

"So, Laura," Matt said. "How's your job going?"

The kangaroo nearly choked on the broccoli he was swallowing.

"Oh, it's going well enough. I had to cut my hours down with classes starting again. My boss wasn't too happy with that, but he knew it was coming."

"How unfair is it that you have to pay your own way through classes, dudette?"

"I'm okay with it," Laura said, brushing her long hair from her face. "I didn't want to go to law school like my parents did. They're lawyers, and very, very boring. You got another scholarship, right, Kael?"

"Yeah, I did. Some Michael Whertor Scholarship for Physics Majors, or at least I think that was the dude's name. The 'rents are helping me with the rest."

"That must be nice," Matt said, lifting his head from the table and fixing the spikes in his blue hair. "I kinda blew my scholarship chances with all that 'narcolepsy' stuff at the end of last year."

Kael gave Matt a lopsided smile. "Yeah, but you're totally training police officers, and those dudes are paying hella good cash."

"Way more money than the library paid, for sure," Matt said. "My parents got me another bank line of credit, so I'm socking away my training money and still using the line of credit while it's interest free."

Laura put down her fork, to Kael's relief. The scraping noise had finally stopped. "That's pretty clever. Do they know about your new job?" Matt shook his head at Laura. "Hmm, well, hopefully it doesn't bite you in the butt later."

"Are your 'rents still as crazy as ever, dude?"

"Yeah." The husky's face darkened as he brought his brows down. "But I'm pretty much never home, so it's pretty easy to deal with. But I'm going to have to go home for Christmas. They won't take no for an answer. They've even already bought plane tickets, and it's barely September!"

"I'm probably going back around then, too, dude. Let me know what flight you're on, and I'll try to get on it. You going back at all, Laura?"

The white wolf shrugged. "No, I'm going to save my money and stay in town. Get some more work done."

"And put the moves on Axel, eh?" Matt said as he batted his eyes at his canine friend.

"I... I won't be putting the moves on Axel at all!" she stuttered, pointing her gaze at the tiled floor.

"Oh, come on, I've seen you two flirt," Matt said as Kael shot him an angry look. "It's clear that he's into you, at least."

"What about Jay? Are you going to take him home to meet the parents?"

Laughing, Matt said, "Nice deflection, Laura! I don't think so, though. I'm not even out to them yet, and besides, Jay's been acting really distant lately. I'm worried about him -- about us. He won't tell me anything."

Tired of watching his friends, Kael stood up and brought his plate over to the racks to deposit. Matt and Laura followed suit. "Dude," the kangaroo said over his shoulder, "You should take him out on a nice romantic date. You guys haven't done anything like that for a while, right? Maybe the dude's just feeling lonely?"

"Like a fall picnic, on a hill, watching the sunset!" Laura interjected in her sing-song voice, waving her paws in an arc in front of her.

Matt smiled. "That's a great idea! At least dinner, anyhow."

The group finished clearing off their plates and said goodbye as they left the cafeteria to go to their respective classes.

* * * * *

The house was completely silent but for the beating of Jay's heart in his ears. The cougar reflexively reached up and fiddled with his colored studs. He was always proud of his earrings, three in each ear. Put together they made a pride rainbow: red, orange, and yellow on his left; green, blue, and purple on the right. Jay knew that things weren't nearly as bad as they were a couple decades ago, but he still enjoyed making his pride in who he was a visible part of his identity.

'This is it. I'll help Matt out, and we'll be happy again.'

Padding softly down the stairs, Jay moved towards Matt and Kael's section of the house. To the right was the workout room that Chris had so meticulously put together, but to the left was Jay's destination. Instead of heading into Matt's room, however, Jay carefully pushed Kael's door open.

'Okay, good, everyone really is in class. It's probably in here.'

The room was washed in the low light of the fall sun filtering in through the basement window, giving everything an eerie glow, like it was perpetually twilight. The kangaroo's desk was in the corner under the window, clearly to ensure no glare would ever touch the marsupial's sacred screens.

Kael's bedroom was a tad tidier than Matt's. Where Matt and Jay both had the bad habit of throwing clothes on the floor wherever there was open space, Kael actually had a dirty laundry hamper by the door.

Jay shook his head. The comparison to Matt's room wasn't what was important. Moving in, the cougar began to carefully dig through Kael's bookshelves, opening each of the binders and checking the notes.

'Physics 101, nope. Eigenvalues? That's linear algebra, nope. Hey, what's this?'

One of the binders contained a map of a hand-drawn fantasy world. Flipping through the binder, Jay quickly realized this wasn't what he was looking for when he realized that some of the pages contained statistic blocks for monsters. Jay had never role-played, but he knew what a 'd8' was.

Putting the binder back carefully, the cougar sighed. 'Where could he have put it?' Jay glanced around again, noting the plethora of posters on the wall, with buff males and buxom females alike, in various states of armor (or in the ladies' cases, states of unarmor). The kangaroo's desk was relatively clean, as well. Jay assumed that Kael would've taken his class notes with him.

'What if it's on him? That can't be right, though. What if Matt needed it but Kael wasn't around?'

The cougar slid over to the bed and looked at it carefully. The sheets were a dark green, and a complete mess, hanging over the edge where Kael would have rolled out of the bed in the morning. A flash of inspiration struck, and Jay lifted the mattress carefully. After resting it on his head to free up his arms, he reached down and grabbed the white binder hidden away. It had been there for quite some time, judging by the large divot that was left in the bottom of the mattress where it had laid on the binder.

'Bingo!' Jay thought as he dropped the mattress back in place. The cat yowled as the sheet got caught on his ear, the falling mattress pulling on it violently. 'Ow, ow, ow. Thank god no one's here. Time to get out.'

Once he had ensured the room was the same as he found it, Jay stuffed the binder in his book bag and closed Kael's door. The cat was nearly home free when Chris walked in the front door, his bulk taking up a majority of the landing. Jay froze under the massive moose's gaze.

"What are you doing here?" Jay asked as he frowned. He couldn't slip by Chris at all.

"I was coming to work out between classes," Chris said, his voice rumbling in his chest. Stepping forward, he placed a large paw against the wall and leaned in, his muzzle a few inches from Jay's. "Why are you here?"

The cougar was trying his hardest not to shake. He only half-succeeded, as his ears began to lay flat of their own accord. "I, uh, had forgotten my, my reading assignment. I just, uh, came back to pick it up." Chris was intimidating as hell. Jay knew the moose didn't like him that much, and the way Chris was bunching his arm muscles was enough for Jay to know that the moose might be on the verge of throttling him. Chris hadn't been violent a few months back, but he'd been moody as hell recently, and Jay had been trying to avoid him because of it. "Anyway, I live here too! I pay rent for the weekends, I've got a key. I've every right to be here!"

Chris blinked once and then stepped back, the tension in his posture melting away. "Oh, right."

Jay took the opening to bolt through the front door, past the moose. Thankfully, Chris didn't interfere, but that didn't keep Jay from running for a couple minutes to put as much distance from the house and the hostile housemate as he could. Once he was exiting the Dalhousie area, he slowed his run to a walk, panting and shivering.

'I need to help Matt, somehow, but why am I so scared and sneaking around if I think what I'm doing is right?' The cougar reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card, flipping it over and over in his paw. 'No, I'm right. Matt's already working with the government through the police, and they need to know what's coming to help Matt protect us. He's too stubborn to ask for help. And Chris needs to back off and know his place. He can be friends with Matt, but I'm the boyfriend.'

He tapped the number on the card into his cell phone and held his breath as he heard the line ring twice. Someone answered the phone.

"Hello? Zachary Knowles? This is Jay Richardson. You said to call if we could help each other?"

* * * * *

Matt was getting really tired of seeing the marble amphitheater the Council held its meetings in. Oh, sure, it was beautiful, with the twenty-eight black marble chairs and the walls of colored cloth that were the other three Orders, but frankly Matt was done. He had played the neutrality game far too often, keeping the balance of power precariously even. He lucked out that any time there was an imbalance of new Council members, his vote (or not voting at all) kept the status quo. Thankfully his pupil-tutor relationship with Rhisanth and Kazar kept him shielded from harassment by the Dark and Valiant Orders, but Tarnak and his lackeys had no such restraint.

'Well, at least he hasn't thrown another mage at me, like he did with Terrance.' Matt's shoulder twinged with the thought of the dead doberman. He still had nightmares of that attack, but he never told any of his friends -- not even Jay -- what had happened.

The boar in the sparkling blue robes harrumphed until the crowd was quiet. With all of the new magi inducted into the Council, the room could get pretty noisy. The marble floors, walls, and ceiling just amplified every whisper into a headache-inducing buzz.

"Three months ago," Tarnak started. The boar was a little on the short and pudgy side, but his voice certainly carried a ring of authority to it. Or maybe it was the tusks. "A glass tower appeared in the Galdovian Plains. Lucent investigated this and shortly thereafter, according to the reports of young Matthew, he had perished at the paws of a demon on Earth."

Matt shuddered, remembering the explosion of fire and ice that prefaced the former Head of the Council's death.

"A few days later, another such incident occurred nearer to Easthaven. This incident went unreported until recently, but the timing coincides with the second demon attack on Earth."

The husky nodded, confirming the boar's words. He didn't really like Tarnak that much, but he was an effective speaker, at least.

"Two months ago there was another pair of incidents: one of a stone strip covered in metal carriages, and another massive and broad building with hundreds of furs milling about."

"A shopping mall," Matt interjected. Some of the junior Council members eyed him askance, reaffirming that there was apparently some rumor floating around that he was making all of this up. Given that none of them knew what a 'shopping mall' was, he wasn't really surprised.

"Indeed. In the past month, five such incidents have occurred."

Rhisanth cleared his throat, ripping attention away from Tarnak and causing the boar to glare at the elderly lion. "There is clear evidence that the encroaching darkness is related to the convergence of our respective worlds. We should expect the frequency and duration of these events to increase until the merge is complete." The lion stroked his grey mane as he spoke, staring down Tarnak as if he were challenging the boar to contradict him.

Matt knew that Rhisanth held no love for Tarnak, and in fact had told Matt privately that he didn't believe that Tarnak would make an effective leader for the Council as a whole. On the other hand, Matt didn't think Kazar was in it for the greater good beyond survival. No, the dark jaguar definitely had his own aims. On the other paw, even with his own agenda, there wasn't really any other reason why he'd be bad for the job. Kazar had proven a capable teacher and confident in his own abilities, so perhaps he'd be fine.

The husky stood up, brushing off his maroon coat that marked him as part of the Earthly Order. "Each event has also come with a demon attack on Earth. If that's the case, as time goes on and attacks occur more and more often, my group of friends will become overwhelmed rather quickly. In fact, that's already the case, as the most recent attacks have started happening in other parts of the country, outside of our reach."

With his magical mentoring job at the police station, Matt was getting used to addressing groups of furs older and wiser than him. Which was good, because barely a year ago a presentation in one of his classes used to be enough to make him a nervous wreck.

"I'm working with local law enforcement to try and get magically trained forces out to other areas, but even then, once the attacks and 'hallucinations' go beyond my country's borders, there's not a thing I can help with. It's likely that Earth will be entrenched in open war with Apollyon's demons for quite some time."

"You're teaching magic to an army?" Tarnak said. Matt watched the flecks of spittle sputter from the boar's mouth, not even flinching at the outburst.

"To a police force, not an army. They aren't military."

"How could you be so reckless, teaching so many in your world magic? Especially given the technology found on Earth, surely you don't need -"

"I'm not going to sit and watch demons rip my friends, my family, or my world apart, Tarnak," Matt said, his hackles raised and his voice lowering to a growl. "Our technology helps, but it's not a catch-all. Magic's a better tool a lot of the time." The husky's shoulder injury ached.

"I agree," Rhisanth said quickly, his clear voice cutting off Tarnak before he could reply. "If Lucent was capable of traversing to Earth in whole, rather than a projection of self like Matthew here, perhaps we can help out on Earth if we can figure out how to cross that boundary. If the worlds are to be one eventually, starting out with a demonic invasion does no fur any good."

Kazar coughed, the dark jaguar standing to match the other leaders' posture. "It's interesting that Matthew and previous furs have been capable of being in both worlds simultaneously, whereas furs from Ameranth haven't been able to do the same in reverse. I agree that we should investigate this."

Matt sighed, his shoulders sagging with the effort. 'At least I've got some support.'

Tarnak grimaced, pointing his tusks at Matt and shaking his head. "Something for the Council to think about. And now, to vote for the new Head of the Council."

Jumping down from his seat, Matt didn't bother to stay for the election. He knew the outcome. It would be a stalemate, yet again.