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Leaf Chaser

Somewhere outside Cheyenne, WY

Earth

A loud clang woke Leaf Chaser from her fitful sleep. She was always a light sleeper, having lived in the forest most of the time she could remember, where other animals would not hesitate to take advantage of one's slumber, but the night was filled with waking dreams and sleeping nightmares. She could remember fragments of some of them, but most were just disjointed images. The piece of a dream that she could remember was her looking into a mirror and seeing herself dressed in strange clothes like the ones the People in the village wore when they had first arrived. They were colorful garments that served no purpose other than ostentation. She was younger in her dream, though, and though her face held the innocence of youth, the eyes in her reflection held nothing but pain. She had reached out to herself in the mirror, and there was a single word, a name.

"Sarah."

The name sounded familiar to her, but as if referring to someone she knew long ago. It meant little to her now.

"Up and at 'em, girls!" the man called, his voice ringing through the white room. It echoed off the bare walls, and something about the room made it sound louder than it really was, and as if it came from every direction at the same time.

Leaf Chaser's cage was at the back of the room, furthest from the door, though when it opened, she could see how heavy it actually was, swinging against its huge hinges. It was as thick as the bexookee's paw was wide and metal posts could be seen all along the edges. There would be no way to get through it from this side, even with the strength that was granted to her by the cat. Even all of the captives together would not be able to claw through the door. Perhaps, though, there was another way, through the tile in the floor or the walls. With enough claws, they might be able to get through one or the other and claw their way to freedom. That would only happen, though, if they could get out of the cages.

She could feel the cat in her mind calculating, watching the man come closer, stopping at every cage on his way through. In each cage, the girl inside came to the front of the bars when he stopped before her, each one kneeling and looking up at him expectantly. He would pause and look them over carefully, then he would finally open the door to the cage and toss in a bowl. The metal bowls made a racket in the unfurnished room, louder even than his voice. The girl in the cage would start to eat whatever was in the bowl immediately, not even daring to look to the side to see what was being done to the girl in the next cage.

Leaf Chaser looked to her side at Katie's cage and saw her crawling to the bars in the front, just as obedient as the others. Her movement caught the girl's eyes and she looked back, motioning her head in a quick shake.

Come on, she mouthed silently.

Leaf Chaser shook her head and cringed back in her corner, as far away from the door as she could get. She knew what the cat was planning. She would make the man come into the cage, close enough that she would be able to attack.

Katie must have seen something in her expression, because she shook her head violently and made another motion, trying to get Leaf Chaser to crawl to the door. Leaf Chaser, though, was not simply a lap cat whose will would bend simply for the promise of food. She was a proud cat and she had roamed her territory for many cycles of the moon. The man was not going to have her easily.

"Be still!" the man commanded, his eyes fixed firmly on Katie.

Katie stopped right away with a small squeak, fixing her head forward again, her eyes downcast.

"I might have guessed my little vixen would make friends with you, pussy," the man said, scoffing.

He lowered his head and looked into the cage and Leaf Chaser felt a wave of heated rage wash through her body. She could feel the cat clawing to be let free, to slip the skin of the human and become the mountain cat, the ruler of her forest. The strain made her skin crawl and tore a scream of rage and frustration from her throat. So close was it to the feral battle cry of the bexookee that it caused the man to pause with a puzzled expression on his face.

"It's not nice to scream, pussy," he said finally, reaching behind him to pull a long metal tube from his belt. He stood up straight and walked around the side of the cage. "I need to teach you some manners."

Leaf watched him come, the cat refusing to let her move an inch, despite the human's terror at coming even closer to the man who had trapped her and hurt her. She bared her teeth in a feral snarl, her tongue bunching up in a way that was foreign to the human girl. She expelled a breath of air over it, the hiss a perfect reproduction of the bexookee.

It was the last sound the cat made before the man pushed the end of the tube through the bars. Two cold points poked her bare side and a fraction of a second later, all her breath came away as a force like a crashing tree knocked it from her. Her entire body clenched tightly enough that it made her muscles ache and then burn in pain. She could almost feel smaller muscles tearing with the force of the contraction. She could do nothing to stop it, though. She couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't beg for it to stop. All she could do was watch the cat desperately try to claw its way out of her mind and into her body. It was the only part of her that was not helpless, but it may as well have been, for no matter how hard she tried, she could not slip her skin.

After countless minutes, or possibly only seconds given how little anything around her had moved in the time she'd been immobilized, the pain ceased and she lay panting on the floor of the cage, her soft whimper the only sound she could muster.

"Now," the man said, his voice cold and hard, "let's see if you can learn anything."

He walked to the front of the cage again and picked up a bowl, holding it near the bars.

"Come here, pussy."

Leaf Chaser whimpered again and tried to push herself to her hands and knees. Her hand slipped on the metal floor and she fell flat on her face, unable to stop herself. A sickening crack sounded and her stomach heaved. She gave thanks to the spirits that there was nothing in her stomach to throw up.

When she could move her head again, she didn't see the man in front of the cage any longer and she barely had time to turn her head to the side before she felt the two pinpricks against her side. She tried to beg, tried to plead, tried to crawl to the front of the cage, but he didn't give her any time. Again the wand lit to life and she was wracked with pain just as great as the last time, only this time he left the wand on for what felt like far longer.

When it was over, she could barely move even her eyes, but she saw Katie's face behind her bars, her eyes wet with tears. Katie's lips moved as if she was saying something, but the rushing sound in Leaf Chaser's ears drowned out all the sound int he room.

The man must have heard it, though, for after a moment of looking at Katie, he walked to the door to Leaf Chaser's cage, opened it, and then threw the bowl inside. Even the clamoring ring of the metal bowl on the metal floor didn't sound like it should have. All that she could hear was a mewling whimper.

She watched the man close and lock the cage door and then walk to Katie's cage. He opened her door and held it for her while she crawled out, careful not to touch the bars when she did. She looked at Leaf Chaser and then at the man. When she looked back at Leaf Chaser, her hearing had cleared enough that she could hear Katie's words.

"Be strong," she said.

Then she turned and walked to the door, her feet silent on the tiled floor. When she arrived, she knelt on the floor next to the open door and waited while the man finished with the bowls of food. When the last one had been tossed into the cage nearest the door, he walked up to Katie and stood over her.

Leaf Chaser put every ounce of will that she had into getting herself to the door of the cage. Maybe if she could show the man that she was doing what he wanted, he would leave her new friend alone. She couldn't bear the thought that something awful would happen to Katie because she was too weak. Little by little, inch by inch, she crawled to the cage door and to the bowl that the man had thrown in. Looking through the bars, though, she could tell that he didn't care about her any longer, his attention was focused on Katie.

He motioned for her to stay and then took a step through the door. Leaf Chaser couldn't see what he was doing on the other side, but she could hear. She could hear him rummaging through what must have been a chest or a box and when he came back through the door, he held a long, thick hunting knife in his hand. The entire knife was as long as his forearm, the blade taking all but the hilt that was only slightly bigger than his hand. One side of the blade was smooth and sharp and the other was serrated, both gleaming and polished to a mirror finish.

The man grabbed Katie by the hair and dragged her across the floor, and though it must have hurt, Katie merely whimpered, trying to keep up with the man with her feet not quite getting purchase beneath her body. He tossed her to the floor in the center of the room, her head towards Leaf Chaser's cage and put one booted foot on her back right between her shoulder blades.

"You back with us, pussy?" he asked, looking at Leaf Chaser.

Leaf Chaser tried to pull herself up to sitting, but could only manage an upright lean. She nodded, her eyes wide and locked on Katie's. A sick dread filled her chest and the next mewling sound that came from her throat set her own teeth on edge for the depth of the despair she could hear. While the cat could not take over in this place as it once could in her forest, it was still there, and had almost pushed Leaf Chaser's human mind aside. Her awareness was split between the keen eyesight and enhanced senses of the cat and the confused and desperate human.

"Good," the man said, kneeling down. He kept his foot on Katie's back as he did. "Your friend here volunteered to be your little savior."

He bent his head down next to Katie's, her eyes boring into Leaf Chaser's right along with the frightened girl's.

"Now, my little vixen," he said, his voice pitched lower, as a lover speaking intimately to his beloved, "I want you to show her that her disobedience costs dearly."

He lifted his head and brought the knife down, laying the sharp edge against Katie's shoulder. Leaf Chaser watched as the skin parted beneath the blade and as Katie's eyes shut tight. She knew Katie was trying to hide the pain from her, to make her believe that it wasn't as bad as she knew it was.

The brave facade didn't last long, though. Leaf Chaser could smell the silver in the blade and she knew from her encounter with the bars that it was burning as it was cutting. She turned her head, unable to watch any more as Katie's first screams filled the room.

"You watch, pussy, or I'll gut her right here," the man growled.

She didn't want to. With all her heart, Leaf Chaser wanted to look away and not watch what he was doing. But she couldn't let him do worse, and if she had to, she would watch. She would let the cat watch, for the cat was harder and tougher than she. The bexookee would make it through.

"That's it, pussy. This is what you make me do when you disobey."

It was a long, long time before Katie's screams finally died away and the man tossed her back in her cage, her back cut to ribbons and bleeding on the floor of her cage.

When the man had gone, Leaf Chaser scooted as close as she could to the bars of her cage, her tears already having soaked her face.

"Katie, I'm so sorry," she called to her friend.

Katie's chest rose and fell and finally, she turned her head.

"Be strong, Leaf. You have to be strong."

And then Katie was silent. Leaf Chaser watched her breathe for a long time, silent in her thoughts. She would be strong, even if it was just for Katie. She would never let the man do something to her again because she was weak. She felt the human retreating in her mind and the cat swelling to the fore. She might not have her fur, but the cat didn't need it. She would find a way to kill the man and rend his flesh with her weak human fingernails and teeth. He was not deserving of life, and she would be the one to end it.