FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Mmm, slow and steady..."

Beneath the covers of a comfy bed two long, mismatched rudder tails wiggled out into plain view, their rustling masked only by their owners' moans and grunts. "Goddess, Ari... You sure? You know I--Ah...--finish faster that way."

Ilaria rolled onto her side, using her larger body to force Carbon around. "If we're connecting like this, it feels better slower." She finished the roll until she was atop her friend, the sheets falling free and allowing the cool air to kiss her bare fur. "Cum if you want; I'm still riding you either way."

"Oh, ho. I like the sound of ~that~."

Suddenly the door cracked open and Fleur's head popped inside, only to quickly retreat in embarrassment. "P-Pard-don M-Monsieur... but Mademoiselle Rose iz--"

"Carbon!" Rose burst into the room with Prisma in tow, not at all realizing what she was witnessing. "We might have a problem! Prisma here was telling... me..."

Carbon pulled out from under Ilaria and reached for the sheets in a play for at least a modicum of modesty. "Wait... Are the girls out there?"

"They're Linking with Sprite..." Rose tried to remember what she was there for, her mind blanking out with the sights and scents of sex finally registering with her brain. "Sorry about that, but-- Wait, are you two Linked too? During sex?"

"Yeah, we are. It... makes Eve happy." Carbon sat himself up and scooted between Rose and Ari protectively out of instinct,. "Now what's so important?"

"You know that message Sentra sent out five months ago?" Rose tried to reach out a tendril for a Link of her own, but Carbon refused to sever his existing one to her frustration. "We finally got a ping back. A really big ping, chock full of shitty news."

"Wait, you were ~expecting~ a return?" Carbon looked next to Ilaria at a panting Evelyn and tried to keep his query simple for his new love. "Is that how Yangurran comms work, packet-toPacket?"

"Uh... Yeah, from what I can gather. Long range is pretty, uh..." Eve took a moment to get herself better situated for questioning rather than sex and tried again. "Long range sucks for their systems. If the return came back now, they're just over two light-months away supposing they used a radio standard."

"Rose, was it radio or... whatever else?"

Prisma smiled and answered first. "They used a modulating entropic particle network."

"Oh... well I'm going to have to do quantum probabilities for that then." Eve squinted in thought as she crunched some numbers. "Rough estimate is... wait, also considering travel speeds and known acceleration rates..."

"Take your time, Eve." Carbon reached over the side of the bed and found his boxers, but Ilaria groaned in protest. "We'll finish this later, Ari. Protecting the planet sort of comes first."

"Bet I can make you cum faster."

Carbon guffawed at the joke and pulled up his underwear, his perma-hard cock fighting to find a comfortable position. "You know I can't stay like this for long, hon. Don't worry; you'll get your fun as soon as we're done."

"Oh, alright..." Ilaria sighed as her own erection started to waver, then reached for a set of spats she was using as underwear for her sirat. "Might as well help then."

"Sorry about that, Ari." Eve gave the otter a rub on her back as she fumbled with getting dressed. "Oh, I think I've got a decent approximation now. If they started rolling out ships immediately, they'd reach us in in another month to three years. The weighted average is eight more months."

Carbon went bug-eyed as he heard that. "How in the goddess's name can you call that approximate?"

"Well I started with immediate proximity up to about four parsecs in range, but that's not helpful. Your father had a lot of known bases and potentially useful planets in his memories though, so..."

"Gotcha. Throw out bad systems first and you get that number." Carbon slid out of bed and looked for his pants next, severing his tethered Link with Ilaria in the process. "We don't have much time then. See if you can get that bracket more exact please, Eve. Until then, we're assuming we might have an attack in as little as a month. Well, unless they sit back for scouting or something."

Ari stood up herself, wrapping her sirat about herself. "They?"

"Yeah, um... The guys Sentra was leading were only an expeditionary force." Carbon soon had his pants as well as a shirt on his person, which was enough for him to leave the room with Rose while still raising his voice for Ilaria. "Normally they just keep an eye on us and try to fuck up our progress as a civilization. There's a chance that Sentra transmitted that he discovered his process to replicate nuclear weaponry though, and if that's the case an extraction team will probably come for that information."

"Oh, well that's definitely bad. Come up with a plan while I uh... yeah..." Ari walked out of the bedroom with her dress barely set, then smiled and headed straight for her apparently-teenage kids. "Hey, sweeties!" She tried to sign as she spoke, taking the twins aside so they didn't see the conversation. "You two need a good bath before your bedtime. Want to use Carbon's or the ship's?"

Rose watched as the three left for one of Carbon's guest bathrooms. "I'm glad you managed to salvage something so precious as those kids from that battle."

"Yeah, they're great. I'm sort of against them calling me their uncle though."

"So... when did you and Ari start...?"

"Earlier this week." Carbon adjusted the bulge in his pants and then walked over to a holographic panel on the wall. "She's in a minor heat and wanted some help. I assumed she'd go to... uh... ~someone~ she's got but she came to me first. Lucky for Eve, huh?"

"Oh. ~Oh~, that's right. You mammals have those estrus cycles." Rose sighed as she heard the otter in question laugh from the other room. "Still, that's a bit soon after losing her wife. Right?"

"I can't fault her. The reason she has those fii inside her blood is because of a strong heat. Maybe she just has it bad compared to others." Carbon tapped a control and spoke into the panel for a moment. "Anyone down there right now?"

"Well... She seems to be happier now, in any case."

"Yeah, she's doing better. She cries at night though, and... her dreams aren't very--"

Iolvin's voice sang back from the panel's speaker. "Carbon? What's up?"

"Hey, Yoyo. Don't make a big deal out of it, but tell everyone we're on armed alert from now on." Carbon paused as he clarified that enigmatic message. "Just carry a weapon at all times. Got it?"

"Well Zoë and I always do, but I'll get the others armed too." Yoyo paused for a few seconds before clicking the signal back on for a question. "Is it important? I can wake the others."

"No, no. Go get some sleep with Dee. I'm just... being overly cautious. Good night, Little Yoyo."

"I'm twice your size, you know." Carbon chuckled at the way that nickname frustrated the otter. "Yeah, yeah... Good night, Carbon. Take care of Lulu for me."

"I'm working on it." Carbon tapped the projection and shut off the panel. "Alright. Ladies, it's time to talk shop."

"I'm never getting used to this, sis."

Ilaria chuckled as she kicked off the floor and glided weightlessly to her brother. "Well the girls love it so you'd better try."

Iolvin caught his twin as they met, then used her momentum to find a wall and brace against it. "That's better... So what are we doing up here anyway? I thought the Major had us on alert."

"He's using the science bay for something. I think he's trying to pinpoint the enemy's location or something."

"Oh, then I guess that makes sense." Yoyo worked his way down the wall and held himself so he 'stood' on the floor. "At least he's not jumping your bones while doing that."

"Seriously, Yoyo?" Ari kicked off again, this time landing so she was in a similar position as her brother, but nauseatingly on the ceiling. "Who I fuck is none of your business."

"Actually it is when ~we~ fuck, Lulu. I don't need to be catching something bad." Yoyo rolled his eyes and conceded his ground on this matter, not wanting to rock the boat any further. "Not that I'm saying you sleep around or anything. I'm just trying to look out for you, sis. Your heats scare me ever since that first one."

Ari spun about so she was on the same plane as her twin, not wanting to toy with him any further. "Well I think the nanites are doing the trick still."

"Yeah, I see that." Yoyo turned to check the Earth out of a large porthole. "But why him, and so soon after we lost...? I'm here to help too, you know."

"One, you don't have to censor her name for me. I'm a big girl, bro." Ari pushed off her side and floated over, holding herself horizontally to to window. "And two... I sort of felt bad for the guy. He's spent the last pawful of months doing everything he could to help me and... he's only got a girl in his head to keep him company. That's just cruel for them."

"So you fuck him? I thought he didn't like to do that with his team."

"Yeah, but he couldn't say no to a widow. Puppydog eyes help too." Ari set her hindpaws down and gave her brother a light hug. "I just thought Carbon and Eve needed some help. Sorry I didn't let you know first, Yoyo."

"Well... it's not like I've got exclusive rights to that fine pussy of yours, Lulu." Yoyo kissed his sister on the cheek. "If you're just being nice, I'm fine with that. You got through your heat anyway so whatever."

"Yeah, well that doesn't mean we can't go to my bedroom right now and--"

Adrian came floating through one of the hallway doors with a concerned expression. "Uh, Ari... Don't freak out but... I tried to uh..."

"Gods, what did they do this time?"

The twins followed behind Dee, gliding paw in paw through the command center. They came to a stop near their favorite seats and played around as they got in them, not at all addressing a certain change in their appearances. Ilaria's eyes narrowed in mild anger as she stared at her daughters' hair, the twins having just buzzed the sides of their heads so only long, red mohawks of sorts remained.

"Girls!? What the hell did you do!?" Ari moved over to her daughters and practically snarled, but repeated herself with rudimentary sign language. "What did you do to your beautiful hair!?"

The two girls looked to each other with a few nods and then bolted for the door.

...Only Ilaria anticipated the move and snagged one by the arm. "Don't you run from me, young lady."

The other of the pair fought with the air in an attempt to turn back, desperate to reconnect with her twin. She looked to her shoes and a plane of glowing yellow materialized for her to vault against, the otter slamming into her sister and stealing her back. They bounced off the pilots' seats, the rescuer signing a quick, <Are you alright?>

"...Huh..." Ari watched as the two wrapped their tendrils together and calmed down, signing her own apology across the room once she realized what had happened. "I'm sorry, girls. It's just that you're still young so I want you to, I dunno... just pass any bodily modifications by me first, please."

The twins stared back before one signed, <What? We don't do ~what~ without your word?>

"Fuck..."

"Sis." Yoyo stepped in, or floated in anyway, and clarified for his own twin. "She wants you to get permission before changing yourselves like that. Is that okay?"

The girls looked back ponderously and worked a complex line of thought with their paws. <Our goal was one to emulate the one you named Punk. She's our best of Ashe and we wanted to do something to celebrate that renewal for her.>

This time Iolvin quirked his head in confusion. "Could you... try that again? Sorry."

The twins groaned and gave the message another go, but this time one of them focused on the paw motions while the other decided to spell out their words overhead with glowing yellow letters. <We wanted to have a surprise for Punk for her birthday. She's our favorite Ashe so we thought we'd be like her for a while.>

This time was definitely much clearer, thanks to the closed captioning. "That's actually very cute, girls. Now go apologize to your mother and promise to ask her first next time."

<Okay.>

Ilaria sighed as her brother settled things and opened her arms for a hug. "I'm not angry, girls. You just surprised me."

The twins glommed onto their mother for a hearty embrace. <We're sorry.>

"It's fine. Go on and have fun with your birthday plans. Oh, and keep an eye on the wall panels. We might be landing soon." Ari gave each of her whelps kisses and shoved them gently towards the hallway. "I didn't realize it was Ashe's birthday."

"Those girls are being oddly nice, too."

Dee spun through the air and reached for his love. "They don't exactly have allowances or anything to buy gifts. I can't blame them for getting creative."

"But did you see the way Mik freaked out when they were split up?" Ari huffed as she thought about her fast-growing children. "They'll need to learn to be apart from each other sometime."

"I wouldn't count on that anytime soon." Carbon pulled himself into command through the other hallway door and lashed out his vines to anchor himself in place. "They're talking when they touch each other, and they'll probably keep it up as long as they're together."

"That 'Link' thing you were telling me about?" Ari threw out a tether of nanites and pulled herself close to the hybrid. "Wait, is that anything like what... thing we did together?"

"Sort of. It's different when you've got someone else in your head to handle data transactions for you." Carbon took everyone's confused stares as a sign to change direction. "They've got their own versions of Evelyn, and it's healthy for them to chit-chat with each other."

"Oh. Well that's not exactly bad, I guess." Ari gave Carbon a smooch and pushed away to the pilots' seats. "So you do what you needed to do?"

"Some of it. It'll take a few days to check all I have to check." Carbon undid his anchors except one, then pulled to a porthole. "There's only a small window we can use where the Earth and Luna block Sol together for us. Solar flares are the enemy here."

"Oh, well that sucks. At least we get some family space time out of it."

"Oh, that's easy to say." Dee giggled at Ari's comment. "Your is the only family with their own spaceship."

"Ooh, speaking of family..." Ilaria tapped a few virtual keys but didn't commit to the new heading just yet. "I was thinking we'd visit Wildebrooke, if everyone's cool with that."

"I'm down with that. Your mom's been wanting to... err, nevermind." Carbon checked out the heading via a console nearby and nodded in agreement. "Trying a ground landing this time, huh? Good. Can't rely on the lake all the--"

The various hologram consoles lit up with about eighty different warnings, prompting Ilaria to kick out of her seat and into one of the engineering ones. "The hell is that? Turbine blockages? Magnetic field misalignments?"

Carbon snapped a queo onto a nearby panel and grabbed the data directly. "Eve, what's all this shit mean?"

"Someone's changing the configuration of the engines... But why tweak both so little out of their safe ranges?"

"Not important. You say someone's doing this?" Carbon checked out the window for signs of life. "Have we been boarded? Sitrep, Eve."

"Someone?" Ilaria rolled her eyes and headed into the hallway. "The girls. Dee, follow me. You're the next best thing I've got with Pillow gone."

"Ari?" Yoyo followed the two, but Carbon stayed behind to man the controls. "If you need me to help, just use the intercom."

"You got it." Ari paused for a moment as a pulse of some unknown force shook her, then she collapsed on the floor as a few seconds of regular gravity pulled her down. "What the... fuck?"

"This is pretty strange, Ari. Here..." Dee came up from behind and helped Ari back up, only for the gravity to cut out with a shudder of the hull. "Okay, now I'm scared."

Yoyo flew past and Ari snagged him to start moving herself. "Unless there's some super secret gravity generator project hidden on this thing, those girls are doing something way out of our leagues."

"And theirs." Yoyo braced himself in the engineering room's main doorway and stared at two terrified teenage girls. "Lulu, check what they've damaged. I'll ask them."

"Damn... Yeah, try to find something out." Ilaria kicked away and floated over to the main stellarator engine and pulled up the controls. "There's... nothing changed here. It's even got all users logged out. Dee?"

"Atomic physics isn't my specialty." The fairer otter looked about, then spied a flashing warning near the jerry-rigged secondary drive. "I've got... Huh, that's wrong. They broke a sensor or something."

"What?" Ari moved out of the control room and over to the makeshift control consoles for the extra fission engine. "The fuel density... That's more than the center of the sun. What's throwing off the readings?"

Dee climbed to a higher platform and checked the output that connected the two drives. "There's no overflow, but this side's definitely pushing more power."

"Shit. We need to manually re-balance the--Woah!" Suddenly Ilaria was once again on her knees under a mysterious gravitational field, but she looked upward and found Adrian was crumpled against the ceiling. "Dee? What the fuck...? Are you alright?"

Again the gravity ceased, though luckily Iolvin was fast enough with a slanted barrier of nanites to deflect Dee's fall. "Ouch. Thanks, hon."

"Might want to get down from there before it happens again, babe." Yoyo gave the much calmer girls a set of pats to their heads before turning to address the others directly. "Lulu, they say it'll all stop itself soon. They pulled the plug."

"Good." Ari tapped a wall console and pulled up the internal communications channels. "Carbon, start setting us down once the ship stops misbehaving."

"Will do."

Yoyo threw up a paw in protest but didn't get noticed in time. "Actually, we need to stay still until it stops. Can you--?"

The Starbreeze shuddered again following a spool up of the engine vents. This time there was no accompanying shift in gravity, but rather the whole ship lurched backwards harshly. Then the gravity returned, though not in the abrupt manner as before. They were falling closer and closer to the Earth's surface and Sir Issac Newton wanted to teach them a few intense lessons. The ship remained more-orLess upright through the whole ordeal, but it wasn't clear exactly how fast they were moving or the status of the Starbreeze.

The radio popped on loudly, an intense ringing noise interfering with the speakers. "This is going to sting a little!"

"Hold on!" Ilaria lunged towards her children and huddled over them, forming a protective shell of both nanites and her own self. "It'll be alright, girls... It'll--"

The Starbreeze harshly decelerated, sending all inhabitants forward a few meters. The engines automatically shut themselves down as far as was safe, but with the unknown changes to the fission core the current to the lights and doors was barely enough to provide emergency power. A red-lit pair of faces with glowing yellow eyes greeted Ilaria in the near dark, giving the otter enough relief to relax. However after she dropped her guard, Ari found herself collapsing onto the floor with some sort of warm liquid rolling down the base of her skull. Then, staring sleepily at her children, Ilaria blacked out.

"...hope there wasn't any lasting damage." Ilaria smiled as she heard her brother's comforting voice, taking a moment for herself with her eyes still closed. "I mean, you're sure she'll be fine, Carbon? That was a pretty... Oh, she's awake."

"Damn. Stupid Link thing..." Ilaria opened her eyes just in time for her two silent ghosts of whelps to dive atop her. "Ah! Hey, I barely even know where I am yet. Calm down, you two."

They both simultaneously sat in place and signed, <We're very sorry! We didn't want to hurt you!>

Ari tried to sign a response, but found her her right limbs were missing again. "Uh... It's fine, girls. Yoyo? What the hell's going on?"

"There's a bit of a story to that." The twin's other half sat next to his sister and checked the top of her head. "We pulled you out of the ship after Carbon landed it. The plan was to find a hospital but... that's complicated. The person that found ~us~ though... she required that we disable you a bit..."

"Right. Any chance I can get my arm back at least? I'd like to hug my little girls." Ari looked around the shadowed room and furled her brow at the archaic architecture. "Where are we, anyway? A human outpost?"

"No, we're home... sort of." Content with his sister's status, Yoyo looked around to the door and windows for someone or something in particular. "I don't understand it myself, so I don't know where to start..."

Punk walked in past Carbon in the doorway, apparently waiting outside to leave some breathing space in the small room. "Well I've been through this before, I think. It felt similar anyway."

"Really? What happened?"

"We took a bit of a journey, that's what." Punk paused to admire a handmade art frame on the wall before clarifying. "I think we went to another world again, or however that robot of yours put it."

"Really?" Carbon perked up at that news. "So, does it feel similar or something? Anything different?"

"The colors." Punk looked at the oxydium in Ari's chestpiece and then towards the sky. "That fuel source of yours... oxydium... It glows a different color on this world when I shut my eyes, if that makes any sense."

"You mean the resonance or whatever. I sort of follow that."

"It's demonic sorcery is what it is." Suddenly a clone of Ilaria appeared in the doorway behind Carbon, sporting simple leather guards and a more worn recurve bow than the original. Then there's the little detail of her having all of her limbs. "I don't care what you call it, I'm still keeping her enchanted artifacts."

Yoyo groaned at the more complete twin. "Do we really have to stay in here? I'd like to help repair our ship."

"You can leave, if you can outrun my arrows."

"Fuck. Carbon, talk some sense into her please." Yoyo felt a pang of panic from his real sister and turned around to address her. "Try not to freak out, Lulu. You're already hurt and lost some blood."

"What the hell is this?" Ari tried to reach for her clone, but simply lacked the mobility. "Where are we? Why won't you let us go?"

"Because you're dangerous. I just know you are." The clone backed away, a set of fish strung up in her one paw, and headed the way she came. "Until I figure out what your goals are, you're staying put. I have people to protect."

"So we're prisoners now?" Ari huffed and flipped onto her bad side, just to face away from the door. "Ugh. I'm sorry, girls. We'll have to think of a plan or something."

"She seems... benevolent enough." Carbon walked over and gave the kids a quick double-armed hug. "I mean, I don't sense any real hostility in her. Well, yet anyway."

"Yeah, she's like the old you, Lulu." Yoyo caught his own words and jumped. "Sorry. It's just that she did manage to avoid that whole..."

"Just... shut up."

Carbon chimed in with something to aid them both. "To be honest, there's no cars on this world. It's not like she's better or luckier than you."

"No cars?" Ari cocked her head to the side on that cue. "What kind of differences are we talking here, exactly?"

"Looks like late Renaissance to me." All eyes went to Punk as she proposed her take on the alternate reality. "I mean, it's just a guess and all. The building accents and art I've seen so far sort of point to that though."

"But we couldn't have gone back in time or anything. Lulu wouldn't exist, right?" Iolvin laid back as he thought about the possibilities. "But the major turning point after the Renaissance was the invention of the steam engine, right? Maybe they just never invented anything better than gravity engines and they're stuck on a plateau of technology?"

"That's a sound hypothesis." Carbon nodded a few times and appended a slight addition. "I saw two men being openly affectionate when we were heading here, too. That supports the idea that society advanced but technology didn't."

Punk once again spoke her mind. "But to be honest, my world was more advanced than even yours."

"And that was alien technology, not your own." Carbon squinted in thought, then agreed with Eve on something. "Yeah, that's right. Your world was more advanced due to Yangurran interaction... Maybe this one is the same."

Ilaria queried, "What, they're ~suppressing~ innovation or something?"

"On our world, the Sect's sole goal is to stop us from evolving as a civilization." Carbon shrugged his shoulders and left his theory simple for now. "They want to keep us from becoming players on the galactic scale in our universe, so what's to say they didn't succeed in this one?"

Yoyo almost cringed at the thought. "Then that means we need to keep a low profile, right? If they're still here, they might try to take us out if they discover we've got futuristic tech."

"Yeah, good point. This could be a blessing in disguise though." Carbon pulled out his pistol and chambered a round. "Keep on your toes just in case. I'll see if I can guard the place without pissing off this Evil Clone Ari."

"Heeee... Which one is that again?" churred Yoyo.

Ari flailed uselessly with her only arm before generating a tendril to thwack against her brother's head. "Hey."

"Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist, sis." Iolvin stood and moved to the door as well. "I'll see if I can talk some sense into, well... ~you~, Lulu."

Ilaria utilized her tendril to right herself, then started to prop herself into a sitting position with some light assistance from Punk. "Thanks. I like to figure this stuff out myself, but with these circumstances..."

"I totally understand. My own, err... evil clones, I guess, both want to be independent." Punk reached for Ari's stump of a leg and paused for approval, then adjusted the otter's rump to sit flat. "At least we know you're doing alright. Now I'm worried about your Ashe and Adrian in the ship."

"Oh, I didn't know Ashe was with us. I might have to require a role call before launching next time." Ari sighed as she tried to contact Dee wirelessly to no avail. "We're pretty far from the crash site, aren't we? I hope Dee knows what he's doing with my baby."

One of the girls, Chelle from Ari's quick deduction, lightly punched her mother in the shoulder. <We're not your 'babies'?>

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that, precious. It's a colloquial saying..." Ari gave up on explaining her point when the puppydog eyes deployed. "Eh, you'll get it in time. You're my real treasures and nothing anyone does or says will change that, including myself."

The twins roped around their mother for a hug as a message appeared in the air. <We love you.>

"I love you too." Ari finished her hug and rolled her eyes, realizing the kids couldn't see her mouth moving. "I love you too," she repeated with the aid of some basic signing.

The twins smiled and almost went in for another hug, but they stopped when something distracted Ari. There was a voice in the hallway she couldn't quite place at first, but when it did hit home her heart rang true. "So it really is true? You're alive? Oh Yoyo, I thought you'd karked it in that raid..."

Ari started having trouble breathing. "No..."

"You're not... Oh, bugger..."

"...No..." Ilaria shot a tendril out above and grabbed a wooden support beam, scrambling to get to her hindpaw. "That's fucking ~wrong~..."

Suddenly Ilaria was suspended before a figure in the doorway, a wildly confused squirrel. "And this is... Gods, your arm and..." The familiar fur stepped closer for a better look at Ilaria. "...Ottah?"

Ilaria tried to move forward but never knowingly traversed a millimeter. By the time her voice gasped one word she fainted dead flat onto the wooden floor. "Pillow...?"