Acquiring a New Friend
"Koyu?" He questioned back. "You too, huh?""Yeah... I guess so..." I replied."Better than you becoming one of those things, I guess."
Reasoned the now anthropomorphic white tiger Frost."Yeah," I continued. "So what now?" I asked "From the look
of things, you had a run-in with your 'new' family too..." Frost gave a slightly
saddened look away."Yeah..." He said quietly.After a brief pause for whatever mourning we decided to
risk, I finally blurted out, "Hey, I assume this didn't just affect us. We
should look for other survivors, if there are any."I noticed that Frost hadn't grabbed nearly as much stuff as
I had, probably because unlike my parents, his never seemed to care that
eventually there could be a nuclear apocalypse that destroyed all life on
earth. Or in this case, turned everyone into either mutated freaks we finally
just referred to as "The Corrupted," or us, which we just called "The Altered."I tossed the anthro-tiger Frost one of my bags, which I had
filled with cans of food, and we headed out down a third street, which
intersected the one both our houses were on.As we walked, we noticed that there was almost no one left.
Apparently we were two of the few lucky people that weren't killed by whatever
type of radiation was still passing through here. I assumed that we must have
been made immune to whatever effects the radiation had. We were walking as
silently as we thought we could. Although we hadn't encountered anyone or
anything so far, we still both knew it might be better if we didn't bring too
much attention to ourselves. I then noticed something and tapped Frost on the shoulder."What, Koyu?" Asked Frost with a bit of edge in his voice."Look, there!" I said as I pointed to a tree off in the
distance.Frost sighed, and with a hint of sarcasm pointed out, "Koyu,
look, I know you're a dog and all now, but this is no time to mark your
territory."I punched him in the arm, hard."No you stupid house cat! There's one of us over there! An
Altered!" Even from the distance we were at, we could tell that the Altered in
question was a chipmunk. He looked young, scared, and sad. He was also crying.He was calling quite a bit of attention to himself, and was
quite out in the open. We could both see that something was moving toward him.
It was slow, and we could most likely get to the chipmunk before whatever that
corrupted thing was did."C'mon." I told Frost as I started running toward the
corrupted. Frost matched my speed, and I was almost sure he could pass me if he
needed to. We were headed to a parking lot, outside of what looked to be a
Wal-Mart Supercenter. This could be bad, places like this were usually crowded,
even at night, so there was definitely a possibility of some Corrupted in
there.I nodded Frost over to the Chipmunk, as I continued heading
for the bloated, legless Corrupted. I drew the katana from my back, and in one
swift stroke beheaded the monster. That probably wasn't my best move. Almost a
full five seconds after I killed it, it's already bloated body started to fill
with air. I knew what came next. I quickly jumped out of the way as the Corrupted
burst, throwing its insides and vile stench everywhere. I have played too
many video games to not +know that what comes next was going to be bad. I ran back
to the tree where Frost and the chipmunk were. Frost barely had time to tell me
the name of the chipmunk before I cut him off. "We should probably get out of here. Place is too open, and
I'm pretty sure that stuff that just spewed everywhere is gonna attract more of
them.""Good idea, but that might be a problem." Frost told me. He
pointed at the side of Charlie the chipmunk's leg, and I noticed that he had a
long bleeding scar running down it."Corrupted?" I asked."No, from what I got, he cut himself on some metal." Frost
mentioned.I quickly replied, "Damn, he won't be able to run on
something like that, but right now we have a problem." Out from the doors of
the Wal-Mart, as well as a nearby tree line, we could see several Corrupted
headed our way."Well we could carry him..." I suggested. We seemed to have a
bit of increased strength with our new forms, so it wouldn't have been too
hard."Nah," Replied Frost. "There's actually not that many of
them, and plus, it gives me time to try this.""Wha--?" I tried to manage before Frost stood strait up,
facing the group of corrupted making their way to us. Frost seemed to have his
eyes closed, maybe he was concentrating but on what? "Frost! What are you doing?!?" Nothing was actually
happening, I don't know what Frost thought he was doing, but apparently it was
having no effect. I pulled him down to the group, waking him from whatever
trance he was in. The Corrupted were now all focused on what movement Frost had
made. Most of them were small, and wouldn't put up much of a fight, but there
was one huge monster among them. Apparently, the Corrupted's idea of
figuring out what the movement was was to throw a two ton truck directly at
us. It just barely missed us by sailing over our heads. It must have been a
powerful throw; however, because it completely broke the tree we were next to in half."Greaaat... Now they know were here." I sarcastically told
Frost. "Ugh, I know your itching for a battle Frost, but c'mon, you nearly got
us all killed!" I could see the anger building up in Frost. He seemed confused
for a moment, but mostly just angry. "Damn it's getting cold. Is it just me,
or--" I stopped and looked at Frost for a moment. Most if not all of his black
tiger stripes were now glowing a cool cyan color. The closer I got to him, the
colder it was."What the--" I questioned again. Before I could say another
word, Frost had stood up again, this time with a bit of purpose. He reached out
next to him, and almost as quickly as he had, what looked like ice had formed
in his paw. It wasn't just a block of ice. No, it had formed itself into a sharp
piece of freezing atmosphere. What came next was even more amazing. Frost held
it for quite a while, slowly making it longer and sharper. It was still a
dagger, but now it more resembled a throwing knife."Well... That's new." I mentioned."That's nothing, Koyu. Watch this." Frost told me as he
moved his arm into a position to throw the blade he made. I noticed his stripes
were now almost fully cyan, and the air temperature was getting fairly close to
-20 degrees or so. The moment he threw the blade, he had already begun to form a
new one, this time quicker. The blade he had thrown at one of the smaller
Corrupted struck it directly in what was left of his head, but that wasn't all.
A mere second after it struck the foul thing, it exploded inside the skull of
the monster turning everything around it into ice."Well..." I continued, "You know that's only one right?" I set
down a few heavy tools and my backpack, and drew my katana. Even if we did have
an altered freezer with us, there was quite a few Corrupted still headed our
way, including the big one. I decided to take the left side, while I left Frost
to take care of what he could. With all of the extra weight off of me, I was
able to run incredibly faster, and reached the first corrupted in no time at
all...