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Firestorm

Discovery

Kyroo Echos had enjoyed his outdoor reaction at the pond on the edge of the Academy grounds and was now sleeping. But Zac Ember was having less fun at the moment, hanging a hundred meters off the ground in a Swiss seat that was squeezing his balls uncomfortably.

The night time infiltration and extraction exercise had begun with a fifteen kilometre evening hike along one of the trails in the Gatineau Park north of Ottawa. Knowing that the trails were closed after dark his senior agent, Delores "Babydoll" Johnson, had placed booby traps at several spots along the route. Zac had found and avoided them all. That was followed by seven kilometres of cross-country navigation through thick bush and over jagged terrain to reach the fire tower that was the objective for the exercise. Delores, acting as a sniper, was prepared to shoot at him with non-lethal but very painful munitions, but he managed to approach without being spotted. Then he had to disarm several traps and bombs and search the tower for her and other useful items before being allowed to carry her limp body off as she switched to playing the hostage he had to free.

The exfiltration route was shorter, but more difficult. Zac had to follow the ridge of the escarpment where there were no trails until he came to a sheer rock wall several hundred meters high. Then he had to rappel down the vertical surface with Delores slung over his shoulder in a modified firefighter's carry. She had only allowed him to use what he could find in the tower to make the descent, which consisted of a knife, a few carabineers and several lengths of rope. At the top of the cliff he rigged the longest rope using most of the carabineers and one of the medium-length cords to anchor it to a sturdy tree. He used the remaining rope to tie a chest harness and Swiss seat for himself securing Delores' ankles and wrists inside the later so she would not fall off. A locking carabineer and a Munter hitch completed his improvised descending gear. A quick trip down, a short jog to the finish line in the village of Luskville where Delores had left her car for him to "steal" and they were done.

He had descended less than half way when Delores, abandoning her unconscious hostage role, spoke up.

"Not bad so far Zac." She complimented the big wolf. "I guess I didn't make it challenging enough."

"Oh well, next time." He grunted, stopping their descent to adjust his Swiss seat so he might one day have children.

"No, I think we can do better right now." She said, and he could tell that she was grinning evilly even if it was too dark to see her face. "Let's say that you sustained an injury from some stray sentry before dispatching him on the cliff and you can no longer use your legs."

The night was growing late and Zac was tired. "Oh come on!" He complained. "What kind of injury could allow me to rig all this up and push off the cliff with a body tied to me before taking the use of my legs from me?"

"A groin injury." She replied, and gave his package where it was outlined by the "vee" of the Swiss seat a squeeze. It was hard enough to make him gasp, but not enough to make him release the rope.

"Here," she said as she unzipped his fly and groped about inside his shorts, "I'll simulate a painful distracting injury for you."

She pulled his flaccid penis out of his pants and the tightness of the ropes that made up the Swiss seat forced his balls to follow. The chilly three a.m. air made them shrink into acorn-sized orbs. She cupped them with one warm paw while she kneaded his cock with the other. Shifting herself around on his shoulder she brought her muzzle closer to his crotch. He could feel her hot breath on his prick.

"Let's go down, shall we?" Delores quipped before she stuffed his cock into her maw.

Zac had to concentrate as he worked the rope. Without his legs to push off from the wall the descent was slow and the chance of banging her head on the unseen rock was high. He could imagine what that would do to his cock considering it was inside her mouth and her jaws were likely to slam together on impact, so he went very cautiously, keeping his back to the rock and using his ass as a bumper. He only dared lower them half an arm's length at a time for fear of losing control of the rope.

Delores, meanwhile, was proving to be quite a distraction. They had barely gone three metres by the time she made Little Zac forget that it was sticking out in the cold night air halfway up a rock face. Of course it was inside where it was warm now. Even his balls, those twin traitors, were enjoying the massage they were getting. He looked cautiously down. It was hard to tell in the dark but he guessed that they still had more than a hundred meters to go.

Delores was oblivious to their progress, or lack of it. She continued to display her considerable oral skills upside-down in the dark by taking in all of his cock as it became fully erect. She wrapped her long tongue around it and slathered it in saliva as she bobbed her head back and forth, penetrating her throat as her lips sealed around the base. The warm tightness of her throat felt good, and If he hadn't of needed both paws to lower them he would have pressed her head against his crotch to show how much he liked it, but as it was he just arched his back so that is cock pushed farther in. She responded by massaging the sensitive space between his anus and balls with one digit.

Delores was considerably shorter than Zac, and she had wiggled down his chest to reach his prick. Now he was hanging on with her legs wrapped around him, her ankles crossed behind his head. Her fluffy tail hung down along her back, out of the way, and he could see the twin globes of her perfect ass in the starlight. Descending by sense alone and with nothing else to look at except the distant lights of Ottawa, Zac studied her butt. He had seen it before, of course, without the shorts she had worn for the exercise, and he had tasted it, but the way it trembled and clenched as she fought to maintain her position against the lurching of the rope fascinated him. Then he noted something strange about the shorts; the exposed zipper of the fly went all the way around to the base of her tail. There was also a damp spot that was growing right over where her vagina would be.

The scent of female fox fluids was too much for him. A soft moan escaped his lips as his balls tightened in preparation for the main event. Sensing his nearness to cumming, Delores pulled back of his cock and said: "If you cum before we touchdown you lose. And then we'll have to start the exercise all over again from the start." Then she added: "Unless you make me cum first, that is."

Kyroo looked down, having to twist his head around to see past her ass. There was still more than fifty metres to go, and she had redoubled her efforts on his prick. The prospect of another hike and crawl through the park did not appeal to him, but he did not dare to descend any faster on the improvised rig. He would have to distract himself, but her undulating butt and the smell coming off her sodden shorts was not helping. Then he remembered the zipper.

Clutching the ropes in one paw so they would not slip he reached up with the other and found the tab on the silver zip that held her shorts closed. He pulled on it and a gap opened in the shorts. The farther he pulled the tab the wider that gap got. When he reached the base of her tail it separated so that the shorts looked more like tiny chaps, leaving her exposed from clit to tailhole.

Zac could not make out much detail by starlight, but he knew what it would look like. Her inner lips would be flaring out like a moist, miniature, pink heart. The hood above her clit would be sticking out also, waiting for a questing digit or exploring tongue to penetrate its folds. The downy fur around it would be slicked down from sweat and the sweet nectar that was driving him crazy. He let the scent guide his muzzle in on the target as he wrapped his arms around her waist, took the ropes in his paws and squeezed his elbows in order to hold her in place with his strong upper arms as he worked the line.

The descent was less steady than before as Zac worked her cunt with his mouth and tongue. With only his forearms to work with they dropped only about ten centimetres each time, and the stop was sudden when paw slammed into paw against the carabineer. But the effort to concentrate on the ropes and her twat at the same time was providing the distraction he needed to keep from cumming in her mouth. Not that she would mind, he had seen her swallow a double bull load in one of those old porno movies she had made before entering law enforcement, and she would enjoy making him run the exercise again.

This was no time for subtleties, so he worked her cunt as hard as he could. At this awkward angle it was difficult to reach her clit, but by working his lower jaw between them he was able to get first his tongue and then his lips on it. He alternated sucking and licking it with nibbling on her vulva and tongue plunges into her love canal. Meanwhile he wiggled his muzzle against the tender skin under her tail and around her anus. She squeezed his snout between her butt cheeks as she tried to draw it in deeper. Zac gave her tail hole a quick lick and penetrated it just a bit to tease her before returning to service her clit, which he knew was a quicker route to orgasm in her case.

Three feet below Delores had also abandoned subtlety for speed. Her head was moving so hard fast and far on his cock that he had to wonder if she had some kind of freak neck deformity. It was getting harder to resist the thorough mouth fucking that she was dishing out, especially with her rolling and rubbing and pulling on his balls to entice them into early orgasm. Zac grunted and slurped and waggled his head in a effort to bring her off first, but she was a pro, or had been, and she had kept in practice. Zac was afraid that he was going to lose this race.

Suddenly his feet slammed into something and a jarring pain shot up his legs and along his spine. They were down, but even though he landed on both feet the extra weight of Delores and their gear made it feel like he'd missed a step in the stairs. He was sure that if he fell over or dropped her it would count as a failure so he struggled to stay upright as the muscles in his back cramped in reaction to the unexpected impact. They teetered left as one foot came off the ground, then they leaned right as he over corrected, but he found the wall behind him and he dug his ass into it, holding on by sheer will and clenched butt cheeks until he had his balance again.

Safe on the ground, freed from the worry of having to do the exercise over again, Zac relaxed. That was enough to release the hold on his balls and they immediately contracted and retracted as they emptied fresh sperm up the tubes. Joined by a few spoonfuls of lubricating and nourishing fluid from the seminal glands higher up inside his pelvis the whole mess shot back down to his cock and through it. Zac groaned with pleasure and relief as it pumped out of him and into Delores' throat. She paused enough to slurp it down and then with tight lips around his shaft began to milk the last few drops from him.

Now Zac was moaning and gasping with pure ecstasy as she drew her lips across his super-sensitized prick. But after the initial intensity abated he went back to what he had been doing to her, although a little slower and gentler. Soon it was her turn to gasp for air so she abandoned his prick and hung on to his thighs as he tickled and teased her toward nirvana. Her legs tightened around his head, forcing him to clamp down on her twat as his tongue lapped and licked and lashed her clit. Snorting air through his snout he closed his eyes tight and fought to keep his aching oral appendage moving at the same rapid pace until she came. It was not easy, as her thighs were cutting off his circulation and he was beginning to feel light headed but he was determined to finish the job before he passed out.

He succeeded, so much so that he almost gagged as his mouth was filled with the fiery fluids of female fulfilment. Zac gagged, but managed to swallow most of it. Her legs separated as they flexed to grind her clit against his protruding tongue. He experienced a rush as blood flowed once again, bringing fresh oxygen to his brain. His licks became lazy laps as his lips sucked her retreating clit back up for more. She shuddered with miniature orgasms at each contact. After several of these she put her paws on his hips, spread her legs and back-flipped to a standing position on the small patch of level ground in front of him. Turning around to face him she pressed herself up against him and drew his head down to hers in a long, lingering kiss that tasted of both their cum.

While their lips rolled against each others she tucked his penis back into his shorts and zipped him up. Then she reached behind her and refastened her split shorts, pulling the zip up between her legs and doing up the button at the waistband. When she was done she broke off the kiss and stepped back with a sly smile on her face. A smile he recognized as bad news for him.

"What?" He asked, perplexed. "You said get us down before I came and I did, get us down first, I mean. You can't make me run the whole exercise again."

"No." She said, but her grin grew as she pointed back up the cliff. "However you were supposed to escape with the prisoner without leaving a trace and yet there is a rope the pursuers can use to follow you. You'll have to get it down before we can proceed, and you only have thirty-four minutes left to complete the exercise on schedule, otherwise ..."

Delores did not have to tell Zac what otherwise meant. He turned on a small red light and placed it on the ground between his feet. Then he steadied his legs and called on all of his strength to scale the cliff as fast as he could. At the top he dismantled his anchor, tied the lengths together to make a longer single rope and looped that around the tree closest to the edge that could bear his weight. Glancing at his watch he threw caution to the winds and wrapped the rope around him in a fashion that would make his fur and skin the brake for the rappel down. Then he turned his back to the open air and leapt off the cliff.

Hardly able to see anything in the dark, he felt his feet contact the wall about a third of the way down. Checking the light he had left below he calculated his next moves. Two more leaps and he was back on the ground beside her, with just a few centimetres of rope to spare. He let go of one cord and pulled on the other to bring the rope down, ignoring the whipping he got as it cascaded down on him. He coiled it around his shoulder quickly and then he picked up the light and stowed it.

"Eight minutes to get down the slope and to the village." Delores said dryly.

"Then let's go!" Zac said as he scooped her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder in a dead run.

It was three kilometres to the village if he stuck to the trail and the roads, but only one and a half if he went directly, cross-country. With the weight of the rope and Delores he could not hope to make the easy route in time, so he headed straight for the light of the village's single street lamp bounding from furrow to furrow as he crossed a farmer's field, leaping the narrow river that fed a nearby lake, and skidding down a grassy slope that ended behind the first house he came too. Flying around it he spotted her car, an antique Buick roughly the size of a barge, parked in the shadows by the fire hall and he made a bee-line for it. He saw the wire fence separating the property he was cutting across and the street just in time. With a mighty leap he was over it and onto the pavement. He landed hard, stumbled, but got his legs under him and made the last few metres to the car, where he slapped his paw down on the hood hard to cut their momentum.

"Time!" He called.

Her voice came from behind him after a short pause. "Six seconds to spare. You pass. Now put me down, this position is giving me gas."

Zac lowered her gingerly to the ground, and then the cramps hit him. He grit his teeth and worked his way around the car with his weight on his paws as his legs rebelled. He had to turn around and lean on the door as he fished the keys she had given him earlier out of pants pocket. He opened the door and dropped into the driver's seat but he could not get the key to go into the ignition, his paws were shaking so.

Delores strolled around to the driver's side and plucked the keys from his fumbling paws. "Shove over, I'll drive." She said in a voice that sounded gruff but had undertones of compassion. "You've done enough to kill me for one night."

Zac lid across the leather bench seat of the old Buick gratefully. He tried to match her tone as she drove away. "You're a cold, heartless vixen, Miss Johnson."

"Then you'll have to help warm me up when we get back to the Academy."

Zac opened his mouth to reply in kind but just then his legs spasmed in a charlie horse that lifted him off the seat and drew a scream from him.

He did not notice much of the ride back to the Academy, but it turned out that Delores was the one that did the warming up, by immersing Zac in a deep Jacuzzi bath. Afterwards, she also massaged his legs, walked on his spine to ease his aching back and then flipped him over for some more intimate treatments. Before they drifted off to sleep around dawn she proved to Zac that she did have a soft spot for him, as long as he had something hard to fill it with.

* * * * * * * *

Silver arrived back in Ottawa early in morning two days later. Having gotten all that he could out of Muzzle and with Miss CC still in a medically induced coma he had decided to leave the investigation to his NATO colleagues and return to F.O.X. to oversee the investigative effort there. Although there was a thousand things to attend to his first order of business was to go see his common-law mate to inquire how she and their kit Leslie were doing.

He found her in the gym, where she was demonstrating to Kyroo Echos how to escape common holds and come-alongs. When Silver waked in she had made the younger arctic fox put her in a hold popular with prison guards in Turkey and environs. A hold meant to be used on males, it involved leaning over the kneeling victim with one arm across their chest and the other up between their legs. Silver could care less about the intimacy of the position, he knew of Vikki's history with the young fox but he was not worried about her, however when he saw the look of panic and embarrassment come over Echos' face he frowned. The lad needs to work on suppressing his reactions, he mused.

Kyroo abandoned the lesson and jumped to his feet. He interpreted the Chief of Staff's frown as displeasure with finding Kyroo's paws on his mate once again. He did not know if Silver was the jealous type, but he did know how many infiltrators and double agents the old silver fox had taken out over the years. He knew that he would not stand a chance against him should Silver decide eliminate any possible rival for the tall vixen's heart. At least he didn't catch me with a hard-on again, he thought thankfully, having pawed off in the shower while thinking about Ruth before the lesson to prevent just such an embarrassing occurrence.

Vikki stood up and turned to see who had interrupted her lesson. "Oh, hi dear." She said as she bent to kiss his cheek. "How are Gray and Miss CC doing?"

"As well as can be expected." He answered as he stared at Echos, studying him. As Chief of Staff he was constantly evaluating and testing his agent's abilities and fitness. He wanted to know who was suitable and ready at all times in case a short fuse mission came up, as they often did. His blue-grey eyes held those of Echos as if he was trying to draw the answers he was looking for out by force of will.

Kyroo found the older fox's unblinking stare disturbing. Most folk did. At night in the lounge older agents would reminisce about he stares the same way that cancer survivors talked about their tumours. Seasoned assassins were known to break down crying for mercy after being subjected to Silver's full wattage for several minutes. Kyroo breathed a sigh of relief when the big fox finally looked away.

"How's Leslie?" He asked Vikki. "How is he managing the loss of his EA?"

"He's taking it okay. It helps that he really likes his new EA."

"Oh? They found a replacement already?"

Vikki was about to tell him of the older rabbit named Ruth Pawstone but Silver's phone began to ring insistently. He shrugged, made a 'next time' gesture and turned away as he put his phone to his ear.

"Problems with your kit?" Kyroo asked as he watched the big fox stride toward the exit while he talked on the phone.

"The Educational Assistant in his Kindergarten class died last week." Turning back to him and dropping to the floor in the position she had been in when they were interrupted. "Now, take your place and I'll show you how to break this hold. Then we'll switch around and you can try it. Get a tight grip now." She instructed as his paws settled on her breast and crotch. "I'm not made of glass."

No, you are not, Kyroo thought as he did as instructed. _Most definitely not. _ He swallowed hard, tried to ignore the feel of silken fur over firm flesh and hoped that Ruth would call soon.

* * * * * * * *

Silver arrived at the headquarters to find several strangers waiting there with the head of administrative services, a badger named Ziggy Wilson.

"What's all this about, Wilson?" Silver frowned as he eyed the creatures that were standing in the Academy lobby looking put out. They were a typical mix of the types he associated with Government employees and he could smell bureaucrat on them. Despite his current role in managing one of Her Majesty's Civil Service agencies Silver had never considered himself either civil or a servant.

"This is the transition team from Agriculture Canada." Wilson explained nervously. "I sent you a text about their visit, remember?"

Silver's frown deepened as he thought back. "I do recall something about a meeting, but I didn't realize it was being held here, or that it was today. I'm sorry folks." He said, addressing the group. "My Secretary has been, uh, indisposed these last few days. We'll have to reschedule. Lots going on today." Silver made to go around them but one of the group stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

"Now see here!" The creature, a thin female feline in a business suit and frame-less glasses pressed forward. "We have come all the way across town for a meeting that has been exceeding difficult to arrange in the first place." Her paw disappeared inside her jacket and so did Silver's. The cat produced a business card in the government format, plain white with a small Canadian flag in one corner and the government logo across the bottom. Silver released the butt of his Glock and let it slide back into its holster before he extended his paw to take the card.

The card claimed that the bearer, one Silvie Roy, was a Director General from Corporate Services in Agriculture Canada. That would make her roughly the same rank as Silver, something that the silver fox was certain the feline had determined before arranging the meeting; since becoming Chief of staff he had found that many of the senior bureaucrats put a lot of emphasis on that sort of thing. He passed the card to Wilson and offered his paw. She gave it a single firm pump but continued to block his access into the Headquarters. Behind her back Silver could see the guards passing five-dollar bills around as they took bets on how long she would live.

"Mister Wilson here can handle all of the transition details." Silver informed her. "I've instructed him to make every accommodation possible for your team." He emphasized the word 'possible'.

"That is not acceptable Mister, uh, Silver, was it? My team," she waved a paw over her shoulder somewhat dismissively, "can manage the detail work with your clerk here, but you and I need to negotiate timings and deadlines, transfers of funds and services, contracts and fees. We can't have my Deputy Minister and your, Director, was it? We can't have them signing any papers without thorough oversight, knowing that the best interests of our department and your ... whatever it is have been seen to, can we?"

Silver could read the disdain in her voice. He turned towards the badger. "Do these folk have the appropriate clearances to be here?" His tone said that he was hoping the answer was no.

"Yes sir, they do." Wilson gave him a pleading look to not to blame it on him. "We confirmed it through their Security Officer and double checked with the RCMP."

"We're wasting time." The feline complained. "Let's move this into the boardroom so we can get this started."

The furrows in Silver's brow deepened. "Boardroom?"

Wilson's head sank between his shoulders. "Our transition team is there ... waiting."

Capitulation seemed to be the quickest non-violent way of dealing with this so Silver gestured them towards the inner double doors with an open paw as he nodded to the security guards. One of the guards smiled and took a paw full of fives from another.

"Did they turn in all of their cell phones and other electronics?" Silver inquired.

"Yes." The happy guard answered as he unlocked the doors electronically.

One of the team from Agriculture, a short black beaver, looked up at the guards, who were much younger and much larger than the usual crop of Commissionaires, and much better armed.

"You seem to have an excessive amount of security here." He commented.

Silver turned to face him. "Do you even know what we do here?"

The beaver swallowed as cold blue-grey eyes drilled into him. "Uh, no."

"Good. Let's keep it that way." And with that Silver swung on his heel and continued down the hallway.

Rushing to catch up, the beaver whispered to Wilson. "What DO they do here?"

"Oil-seed research."

"And that's so secret?"

"Oh yeah. It'll replace fossil fuels any day now, but the government doesn't want that to get out until we suck all the profits out of the oil sands."

"Ahhhh! I see. Of course." The beaver made a zippering motion across his mouth. "Hush-hush. You can count on us."

One side of the conference table in the boardroom was occupied by employees of F.O.X., mostly from the support staff. Silver saw the head groundskeeper, the facilities engineer, someone he thought was from finance and, to his surprise, Kain Algorath. He was a bit perturbed by the young arctic fox's presence as it would be taking him away from his efforts to track down leads on the computer, but then he remembered that Kain was the Information Systems Security Officer for the agency and was likely there for that reason. Two chairs had been placed at the head of the table and Silver dropped himself into one of them. The feline from Agriculture took the other.

"Let's do a round table." She said cheerily. "I'm Sylvie Roy." She pronounced it 'Ru-ah', halfway between the English and the French versions of the name. "I'm the Director General in charge of the transition of properties from Agriculture Canada for this project. And these folk are my team." She gestured with a paw and the remainder of the guests introduced themselves. Silver studied them as he did everyone he met. Most displayed the blank cheerfulness of mindless bureaucrats with secure jobs and guaranteed pensions. One struck him differently, however, a wolf with the blank stare that Silver associated with heartless assassins. The wolf was staring back at him. When it was the wolf's turn to speak he did so without shifting his eyes away from Silver's.

"Brian Jones, Audit."

Ah, Silver thought, that explains it. Auditors were selected from the coldest, most impartial and non-partisan creatures that each department could find and they were feared by civil servants far and wide. Silver found himself wondering if he had taken any office supplies home by mistake.

The team from Agriculture was finished and Silvia Roy turned to Silver. "And yourself?"

Silver shook his head to clear it and break the contact with the wolf. "Sorry?" He replied.

"Your name, introduce yourself." The feline repeated as if she were speaking to a slow witted child. "What is your name and what do you do here?"

"Silver." He replied. "Just Silver. I'm the Chief of Staff."

Chief of Staff was one of those titles that disguised the substantive level of the holder. The bearer of such a title could be very important or not important at all. Ms Roy frowned at the uncertainty of it. Silver gestured for the rest of the F.O.X. employees to introduce themselves. Not being agents, except for Kain who was only an agent part-time, they used their real names. None of them mentioned F.O.X.; as far as the folks from other government departments were concerned, they were an orphaned research agency that somehow ended up subordinated to the Justice Department.

Sylvia Roy snapped her digits and one of her minions pulled a sheaf of papers from a briefcase and began passing them around. The top sheet was an agenda with more than twenty items listed for discussion. Silver slumped in his chair; it was going to be a very long day.

"Very well," the feline said, "shall we begin?"

* * * * * * * *

At five o'clock Vikki was surprised to find that Silver would be joining her for the drive home. Normally after getting back from a trip he had to work late to clear up a backlog of operational and administrative matters. His availability could mean one of two things: either there had been no progress on the courier attack and no new problems had come up while he was away or he was so frustrated that he needed to get away and unwind. As soon as she saw his face she knew it was the latter.

She met him by their silver Porsche Cayenne. They had chosen the SUV from the F.O.X. car pool because the back roads they used to get back and forth from their rural home were sometimes snow covered. Vikki normally drove so that Silver could answer routine emails on his Blackberry during the trip but today he headed for the driver's side, another bad sign. Driving was one of his ways of releasing tension, as was gardening. But he hardly had time to work on the rock garden he was building around the pond by the gazebo anymore, so occasionally he drove the family-friendly Porsche like it's sportier kin. It would be a quick drive to Leslie's school, she supposed.

"So," she said as she tightened her seat belt while he gunned the engine, "how was your day?" One of the perks of being the chief of Staff for a secret spy agency was that their car was fitted with electronic and audio suppressors and it was swept regularly for listening devices. They could talk freely, providing that Leslie was not in the back seat.

"Our investigation into the Belgium attack is going nowhere, and I was ambushed by group of career bureaucrats from Agriculture." Silver said as he raced out of the parking lot, taking the parkway through the Experimental Farm instead of the busier avenue. "I never realized how complicated it could be, moving from here to Shirley's Bay. Getting ready to build is bad enough; what with Public Works, Defence, Justice, us and the National Security Authority all involved. Did you ever try to get the technical security guys from five departments together for a meeting? Believe me, taking out a head of state is easier."

Silver continued to rant about the complicated process of transferring property from one department to another as he cut into the traffic on Fischer Avenue and swung left onto Carling. Vikki, hanging on to the roof handle with her real paw and griping the console with her artificial one, decided to change the subject. "There's no progress at all on the courier hit?" She asked.

Silver shrugged as he shifted up and cut into the centre lane so he would not be caught behind a buss when it made its next stop. "Practically none. Algorath searched all the security and traffic camera feeds for five kilometres around the European Parliament and only found a few partial shots of creatures that may or may not have been associated with the attack. He has been trying to match them to image files in a number of restricted databases but so far he has had no luck. It doesn't help that he has to go to these transition meetings as our IT Security rep. That's the problem with us being such a small agency; we don't have the depth to match the big departments when it comes to bureaucracy. Everything comes to a standstill while we piss around with boundaries and building codes and ..."

And Silver was off on the subject of moving again. Vikki let him rant and tried to ignore how close they coming to the other cars as horns blared and brakes squealed. Silver knew what he was doing, and there was no danger of impact, but the other drivers did not know that and so they tended to overreact. It seemed like he was moving fast but Vikki, who was keeping one eye on the speedometer, noted that he was rarely breaking the speed limit, he was just getting there very quickly and changing lanes to take advantage of every hole like a Grand Prix driver. Swinging around the curve where Carling exited onto the highway he saw a sea of brake lights so he stayed on the avenue and continued to rant and weave.

They arrived at Leslie's school in two-thirds the normal time Vikki now knew more than she ever cared to know about title transfers for Federal property. She was relieved to see that Leslie was waiting for them by the main doors among a group of students, all under the supervision of the rabbit, Ruth Pawstone. Bunny, Vikki corrected herself; Mrs Pawstone refers to herself as a bunny, not a rabbit. She wondered if that was a cultural thing or just a regional habit.

Silver had dropped the speed of the Porsche as they turned onto the school drive and they rolled sedately up to a stop beside the group. Their kit spotted the big silver SUV long before that but he stayed the safety of the patio, as he had been taught, until the EA in charge of pick ups for the day verified that the occupants were bone-fide guardians or their designated delegates. The bunny approached the vehicle as Vikki and Silver got out.

"Good afternoon, Ms Beausoleil. How nice to see you again." Mrs. Pawstone took Vikki's good paw in both of hers. Then, seeing Silver come around from the driver's side she turned to the large fox. "And this must be your, uhm, partner. Mister Silver. I'm Ruth Pawstone, Mister Silver, Leslie's new EA."

Silver took the offered paw and mumbled some polite greeting. He noticed a hard gleam deep in her eyes, the type of gleam that one gets when assessing an enemy. But he was not surprised. He had gotten that look before from doctors and nurses and day care operators that tended to judge fathers, or unmarried male partners, by their appearances. His large frame, rough good looks, prominent scars and perpetual frown did not help the first impression he made with those sworn to protect innocent youngsters. The time at the ER when Leslie had fallen from a tree from which he was attempting to retrieve an errant kite had been the worst. Everyone assumed that the big silver fox whose last name was different from that of the kit's had given him those upper body bruises. They did not even believe Leslie when he told them different, as children often cover up for their abusers. Silver thought that he might have to shoot his way out. Fortunately the doctor had found enough bark in the wounds to corroborate his story.

"Mommy, Daddy, look what I made in school today." Leslie was already digging in his school bag, pulling out papers and spare clothes and empty lunch bags and trying to keep it all from flying away in the breeze while he searched for whatever it was he wanted to show them. Mrs. Pawstone and Vikki immediately knelt beside the kit and relieved him of the scholastic detritus and tried to stuff it back in his bag while he continued to pull more out.

"You can show us when you get home." Vikki assured him. "But we have to go now. There are more parents waiting to pick their children up and we're blocking the driveway."

"I've almost got it ..."

"Now, Leslie." The bunny took the young fox by the shoulders and turned him to face her. "What did your mother tell you? You're not one of those kits that do not listen to their mother, are you?"

Leslie let his bag drop to the concrete. "No, Ms Ruth."

Pawstone gave him a tender tap on the cheek. "Good boy. Now help your mother repack your bag and run along."

Leslie hurried to comply. Silver readied the booster seat and stood by while Vikki strapped the kit in. He felt someone watching him and he turned to find Pawstone's eyes on him again. They still held that inquisitive, slightly hostile look.

"Nice meeting you, Mrs. Pawstone." He called as he walked around the SUV to get into the driver's seat. He used a neutral tone, suspecting that she would detect any false cheeriness or friendliness and interpret it as an attempt to cover up a malicious nature. She would come to trust him in time, he believed, or at least conclude that he was no immediate threat to any of her young charges.

Leslie talked about school and his new EA most of the ride back, filling Silver in on everything he had missed in the last few days. He only fell silent when they neared their home and he spotted a group of horses working in a farmer's field.

"Maybe one day I'll work on a farm." He said in the tone of voice that made it sound like the equivalent of traveling to Mars or curing world hunger.

When they arrived home Vikki told Leslie to wash up and unpack his bag before showing them his latest creation. She unlocked the door, disabled the alarm and let the kit inside, saying "Give me a moment alone with your father. We'll be right in."

She turned to Silver and gave him a big hug, which he returned.

"What do you think of Leslie's new EA?" She asked from the comfort of his broad shoulder.

"She's very protective of the children." Silver said through her thick red hair. "But anyone who can make the kits behave like she did with Leslie back there is okay in my book."

* * * * * * * *

It was supper time, but Kain Algorath had just gotten back to the Ops Centre after a series of mind-numbing presentations and discussions with the transition team from Agriculture Canada. The frustration of being stuck in those meetings while the mystery of who had attacked Gray and Ms CC was almost unbearable. He needed to unwind, and since he was here and Ophelia was not the best way to do that was to throw himself into the task of tracking down the assailants.

He did not have much to work with. The video he had managed to collect of the attackers was poor. The angle was bad and the lighting worse. He had cleaned it up as much as he could, using some of the filters that Joel, the lemur that had cornered the market on voyeurism, had developed for enhancing his clandestine porno tapes, but the best he could do was to create a short movement model of one of the assassins. It was too short to be useful in a general video search, so Kain set it aside and concentrated on the fur sample that Gray had snatched.

It was definitely tiger fur, and Sumatran tiger at that. The bulk of that rare species lived on their native island of Sumatra, in Indonesia, but there were a few colonies of immigrants in Europe and Australia. But since Indonesia held the bulk of the population Kain began his search there.

Interpol had done a DNA sequence on the few strands of fur and Kain was able to download the sequence with no problems, however, comparing it to Indonesian records was a different matter. The country had no intelligence sharing agreements with Canada or any of her allies, so he would have to hack his way into their systems. Fortunately his skills in that area were unparalleled.

Once he had access he had a choice of databases to exploit. He could access the national health records, the military records, and even the security ministry's files. The actions of the assassins seemed to have the precision of a well-planned military operation, but the island nation had a very professional criminal element also, of which one gang was mainly Sumatran tigers. Then again, there was the special security forces to consider. Kain decided to check all of the databases at one.

That task was a little too much for the F.O.X. servers however, so he used some backdoors he had left around during his hacker days. He took control of one of the NSA's big Cray computers, at least one would be idle at the moment as the electronic activity in the priority target countries of Asia and Middle East were at their lowest at this time of day. He should be able to get a couple of hours out of it before anyone noticed, and by then he should be done. He uploaded the Interpol DNA sequence and set it to searching the Indonesian databases for possible matches.

While it worked he went back to studying the other video footage. Presumably the hit squad, which seemed to be after one specific document, would have had surveillance on Gray and CC from as far back as the airport in Brussels. He ran body and facial feature comparisons on every creature captured by security and traffic cameras for a block around the route the two F.O.X. couriers had travelled. There were no matches, but that could just mean that the team was large enough not to have to move around. He made models of everyone that had not already been eliminated as a suspect the Belgians.

Just when it looked like he would have to work on the transition files or go to his room a 'ping' came from the server he had borrowed from the Americans; it had found a good match. Kain brought the information up on the screen.

He was surprised to find that there were actually two good matches; a Captain from the Indonesian Counter-Insurgency task force and his younger brother, who was with the same unit. The only problem seemed to be that the two of them had been reported killed in action five years earlier. But it would not be the first time that an assassin came back from the dead, he thought wryly as the image of Ophelia as the Perfect Stalker came to mind. Kain checked the Indonesian records for images or video of the two tigers but, as usually for Special Forces operators, there was none on record. But that did not mean that there were none at all.

Reaching for the keyboard attached to the Duty Officer's terminal he began to type out a Request For Information form. When he was done he sent it off to the senior agent for Asia, one Hu Lianmeng. Once the resident agent in China, Hu had been declared persona non grata after the Rogue Sword incident last year. Hu, or Genghis to his friends, now worked the friendlier Asian countries personally and supervised the new resident in Beijing from afar. He was very busy, and even though this would have priority it could be days before Hu replied, so in the meanwhile Kain posted an alert to the international security community with the tiger's description. Someone who recognized them might it and take action, he thought.

In a way, his prediction was correct.

* * * * * * * *

Across the globe, many a duty operator saw the alert and passed it on to the field operatives and border posts. Some wondered why the Canadians wanted to know of the tiger's movements. In a quiet corner of Washington D.C. one wolf in the security section of the US Postal Service did more than wonder. He forwarded the alert to his cousin, who used to be his supervisor, his Union Rep, and his patron, but who had left the postal service several years before. He was still in contact with his cousin, however, and he had a short list of topics and personalities that he had been asked to keep an eye out for on the security channels.

He did not know who his cousin was working for now, but he knew that the monthly retainer that was coming in through back channels was putting his cubs through College, so he did not ask. He suspected that whatever it was, it was not legal. Not that he cared, working for the postal service was not for the sentimental or faint of heart. Maybe one day, if he proved loyal and valuable, his cousin would invite him to join whatever shadowy organization he was a part of now. But until then, he just pocketed the cash and forwarded the messages. What his cousin did with the information, he did not know, and he did not care.

Having sent the information he went back to misdirecting money orders, mortgage payments and birthday cards, chuckling at all the mayhem it would cause.

* * * * * * * *

Runs With Stick was excited after coming face-to-face with the big fox, but she suppressed all signs of it until the last kit, cub and pup were picked up. One must exert self-discipline, she reminded herself. But once all of the youngsters were safely away with their parents or guardians she retreated to the empty Kindergarten classroom and locked the door behind her. Pulling the blinds on the door's window she threw herself against the cinderblock wall and let out a lungful of air as she allowed the repressed exhilaration raced through her. Her breath came in short gasps and her heart raced at the thought of actually touching the paw that had held the gun that had shot her father. The feeling was more than one of elation, it was the thrill of pleasure, of arousal.

She lifted her skirt and stuck a paw under the waistband of her panties. Yes, she was wet down there, just like she always was after dealing with an enemy of the tribe. One digit made lazy circles on her already swollen clit as memories of her and Silver Two Trees, her partner, her lover and her mate came back to her.

She had been just a child when her father had gone off to join his "brothers" at a civil rights protest at the site of the massacre of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In her youthful ignorance she had assumed that the "brothers" must be her uncles, and her mother was amused when she asked why they had never visited. He father never returned from that trip, not for a very long time. For decades they had assumed that he was dead. He may as well have been. Shot in the head and left for dead he had wandered, memory less, for almost forty years. He was not found and recognized until after her mother, his mate, had passed.

When she got older, Runs With Stick, believing that the same people who had been responsible for more than sixty disappearances from the reserve around Wounded Knee killed her father, had vowed her revenge. That was when her mother introduced her to the cleaver.

"We are Cuni, we are not prey." Her mother had said as she explained how the highest honour in the tribe was to serve as one of its protectors. Then she showed her the necklace made from the ankle and foot bones of those who would prey on the Cuni. The oldest were from rival tribes, then came those of European invaders, the American interlopers, and finally a few that her grandfather had collected in the pacific theatre when he was a Windtalker with MacArthur's army. Since then the cleaver that had severed the feet of their enemies had lain hidden in her Grandmother's trunk, waiting for a descendant to take it up in defence of the people.

Runs With Stick had accepted the responsibility that came with taking up the cleaver. Their territory, unceded and under occupation by the Americans as far as they were concerned, straddled several states and parts of Mexico. She and her partner, Silver Two Trees, had run drugs north and cash south as a means of generating income off the misery of the European's descendants. They used whatever weapon was available on rivals and connections that got too greedy. These were ordinary killings. They did not involve any ceremony and did not generate any feelings of excitement in her.

Occasionally they would be called to hunt down and visit vengeance on someone that had wronged the people, usually one of the foreign invaders but sometimes a traitor from among the tribes. On those occasions she and Silver Two Trees would bring their cleavers and apply the pale blue Indamo powder to their cheeks. This was the same powder that their people sprinkled on the mouth and the eyes of the deceased to tell Death that they were on their final journey and to see the way to heaven. The two protectors wore it on their cheeks when they were on the hunt to face Death and show that they were not afraid to die. If they were mortally wounded a quick swipe of the paw would transfer the powder to their lips and eyes, speeding their arrival at the final destination. They prayed that should they die on these endeavours that they would die intact, and appear before Death whole in body and spirit. It was their greatest fear that an enemy would mutilate them by chopping off their right foot before they made the final journey, for who could face Death with such shame on their soul?

When they caught their enemy, which they inevitably did, they used their cleavers to sever their victim's right foot before applying the Indamo powder to their lips and eyes, thus sending them to their gods with a stain on their spirit, marked as prey, prey of the Cuni.

On these occasions Runs With Stick felt powerful emotions coursing through her; pride, honour, fulfillment ... and arousal. After the first such killing she suppressed them, believing it to be the after effects of the adrenaline rush that came with risking your life. She was sure that she would learn to deal with it and that they would go away, in time. After the third mission the sexual desire became irresistible, and she had to make excuses to get away from Silver Two Trees so she could paw herself to orgasm. But by the fifth execution she had to admit that the feelings were only getting stronger, and lasting longer. It was then that she looked at her partner and realised from the sweat on his brow and way he was breathing that he was feeling the same thing. They had rushed into each other's arms and fallen to the floor beside the corpse of their latest victim in a frenzy of love making.

It had been the same after every mission, although they made sure to include a safe place to burn off their passion in their escape plans. They became lovers between missions too, but then their intimate engagements were much more tender and prolonged. Soon enough Silver Two Trees asked her to be his mate and to have no other. She had agreed and their families, who probably knew more than the couple suspected, agreed and rejoiced at the union.

The wedding had been performed by her mother's brother in a hogan that his family had built. After rinsing their paws they had been presented with corn mush in a woven basket. Her uncle had instructed them to pick up the mush with all five digits because "You are a five-digit being, an Earth-surfaced creature, and that is the makeup of you." They served the mush only to immediate family members, saying "You come with good thoughts and good intentions" to each as they did. Afterwards her mother gave her some stirring sticks and presented her new husband a fire stick and an axe. Others gave similar, simple gifts. The gifts were not extensive and did not cover all their necessities, but that was the way of their people; brides and grooms were not given everything one needed to build a home because it was their responsibility as a couple to learn how to build and create their life together.

And they did make a life together, one that lasted several decades. At first they continued to run drugs and money and work in the local restaurant and truck stop as a cover for their more violent activities. Eventually that became too dangerous, so they bought the restaurant. Life thereafter was not all quiet though. There were bike gangs that wanted to make the place their clubhouse, drug runners that wanted to take over and use it for distributing their product, and mobsters demanding protection money. They remained independent, dispatching the unsuspecting thugs and hunting down their bosses. They also continued to be warriors and protectors of the tribe, and their necklaces grew heavy with the foot bones of the predators that mistook them for prey.

The memories of her mate and the work they did for the tribe only heightened her desire. She lifted one powerful leg and propped it on one of the child-sized desks as her paw worked furiously at her twat. But the orgasm, when it came, was short and sharp and unsatisfying. She reached for a roll of paper towel kept in the class to wipe paint and chalk off little paws and used it on her own sodden digits before wiping herself and patting down her panties as best she could. After straightening her skirt she carried the wad of damp paper to the lady's room where she flushed it away. It would not do for the janitor to find such a present in the wastebasket of her classroom.

Nor would pawing off do it for her, she reflected. Not after all those years under the firm but gentle ministrations of Silver Two Trees. She needed the real thing, but she could combine relief with work. She could call up the young Arctic fox Kyroo and ask him to meet her at the garden pond. Since he had not appeared on the road after their first tryst there must be another route from there back to their lair, and a backdoor could be useful. She could cache herself nearby and observe which direction he came from and afterwards, armed with that knowledge, she could double back and trail him to his den.

The feelings of excitement and pleasure began to well up in her again. She felt a momentary pang of guilt. The vows that she and Silver Two Trees had made stated that they would "have no other" and not even their deaths could break that pledge. But, as her mother had explained one day after Runs With Stick had seen a male acquaintance leaving her mother's house in the early morning hours, "We each get one mate for life, but what happens between adults who have lost their mates, or never had one, is an entirely different matter."

She hurried to her car where she could call the number the fox had given her in private, looking forward to the pleasure she would derive from his youthful strength and vigour. But until she was with him she would resist the urges in order to heighten the pleasure. But nothing, she reminded herself, is more satisfying than turning predictor into prey, especially when they did not realize it, not until it was too late that is.

As she pulled out her phone she wondered how the big silver fox might perform under similar circumstances. Would he be better or worse than the young agent? It was just a shame that neither would left alive to satisfy her after her work with the cleaver was done.

The FOX Academy series:

Book I - The New Breed

Book II - The Werewolf of Odessa

Book II.5 - The Love who Spied Me

Book III - The Curse of the Yellow Monkey

Book IV - Wait for No One

Book V - Dawn of Vengeance

Book VI - Unnatural Selection

Book VII - Rogue Sword

Kain Algorath © Marcus X Light

Ophelia Cassidy Sommer © Devil Kitty

Joel Grigori © Joel the Lemur

Geno © Coyotek

Dongo Fett © Dongo Fett

Zachary Ember © EmberWolf

Gray Muzzle © Gray Muzzle

Ruth Pawstone/Runs with Stick © Bunners