FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Cheng flung his door open only to come face to face with his nosey swampert neighbour. The swampert was male, and in his fifties. He was usually quite nosey, which was probably why he got smart vision too. "What the fuck do you want?!" Cheng angrily exclaimed.

The swampert threw up his hands, he only wanted to know what was going on, and here he was confronted by an angry lucario wielding a gun. "I-I'm sorry! I just saw you and the little miss passing and I thought you might be in trouble or something!" He hastily spoke, pretty much rapid firing his words in a desperate effort to explain himself so he doesn't get shot.

"No, no trouble. I just thought I would start dating amputees." Cheng sarcastically replied before sighing and lowering his gun. He quickly began to calm down before speaking again. "Look, tonight has been a bad fucking night. I'm giving her a place to stay... Tell you what, if you see anyone strange looking around the place, I want you to give me a call. There's one hundred credits in it for you if you come up with something good. Tell you what, how about I give you fifty in advance?"

The swampert was stunned. He didn't like the sound of this, but it was easy money. As soon as the lucario handed fifty credits over, the swampert nodded. "Don't worry, I will keep an eye out! Err, talk to you later." The swampert then awkwardly shuffled away.

Cheng wondered why that swampert hadn't gotten that shuffle of his fixed yet. It should be a pretty easy fix at a L.I.M.B clinic. L.I.M.B clinics specialized in augmentation for all types of people, those with the money to afford it anyway. Come to think of it, what was that swampert's job anyway? He never seemed to leave his house all that much. Then again, he never paid much attention to him. He closed the front door and walked back over to the jolteon, who stared at him with those strange green eyes of her's. "Just my neighbour." He said as he sat down next to her.

"Can you trust him?" She asked the lucario.

"Trust him? I barely even know him, but he's nosey and there's money in it for him if he spots any one suspicious. And what's more suspicious than a harvester? Nothing. All their people look like they just strapped magnets to themselves and ran through an outdated L.I.M.B clinic." Cheng replied with a smile.

The jolteon frowned as she looked back up to him. "And what about me? I was one of them. Do I look like some augmented mess to you?" She nearly spat back at him.

"You were never really one of them, that's why they tried chopping you up. How long were you with them anyway?" Cheng inquired.

"... Three days." She honestly replied.

"Three days? They waited three days to chop you up? They should've held out longer, they could've got some free labour out of you. But harvesters aren't the smartest bunch are they? All that are on their minds is strapping more shit to their bodies and settling old scores with the smaller gangs." The lucario replied before letting out a sigh.

That last part got Jiao's attention. "They're going to come after us, aren't they?" She asked him.

"... Yeah. I have gotten myself into some deep shit before, but this... If they catch us, they will kill us. They're no pushovers, but I don't need to tell you that do I?" The lucario replied to her.

"They've got so many guns and people... Where will we go to?" She asked him.

"We? Is it we already?" Cheng replied to her as he stared right back into her eyes.

"Are you just going to leave me here, on my own?" She asked him, sounding as if she was hurt by his words. She had nowhere to go, no place to hide, and right now the only person she could even remotely trust was this lucario.

"You are not my responsibility... But you can come along if that is what you want. You owe me a lot." The lucario replied to her as he stood up, and looked around his home. He lived here for the past five years. Everything he owned was right here. "I'm going to miss this place... The thing I'll miss the most about this place, is all the fucking money I put into it. Could sell most of this stuff off at some of the pawn shops though, should get us enough to buy a ticket out of here."

Jiao felt bad about all this. She knew it was her fault he had to move, her fault that they were both in danger, and her fault that she was missing a leg. But at the time, it seemed like she had no other choice. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this shit..."

"You can apologize later, but right now I just want to buy that ticket out of here." He firmly told her, before then watching her lower her gaze back down to the floor. He guessed she really did feel bad about all this. It was her fault that they were in this mess, but he knew making her feel like shit by blaming her wasn't going to help either of them. "Are you hungry?" Cheng asked her in a more sincere tone of voice this time. He still had food in his fridge, and seeing as she looked like she hadn't gotten a good meal in a while, he decided to use up that food while he still could.

"Yes..." The jolteon replied before watching the lucario walk away. "What do you have?"

"How does kung pao chicken sound to you?" Cheng asked as he walked towards his kitchen.

The jolteon's face immediately lit up with a bright smile. Compared to what she's been eating recently, kung pao chicken was a blessing. "Sounds perfect!"

An hour later, they were both sitting on the couch with empty plates in front of them, and full bellies. Cheng looked back to Jiao with a big smile on his face. "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"

Jiao giggled loudly as she looked back to him. "Best food I have had in a loooong time."

"I hope you chewed slowly, because that might be the last bit of good food we get for a while." The lucario told as he looked back into those strange eyes of her's. In a way, he thought they were kind of cool.

"What's the plan anyway? You sell all of your stuff, and then what?" She asked, curious to know how he was going to get them both out of here.

"Then we get a boat across the Yangtze river, and get to Shanghai. It's too dangerous to stay in Hengsha... They will want to make an example of us. Good thing is that outside of Hengsha, the harvesters are basically nothing. When we get to Shanghai, we should be safe. We find some place safe and start a new life." He told her, hoping she would like his plan.

"Is it we already?" She replied with a slight smirk.

Cheng chuckled as he stood up. "Let's face it, you need me." He replied as he walked towards his bedroom. "We best start selling off all this stuff. I know some places I can bring all this stuff too. Can you watch over the place while I sell it all off?"

"Shouldn't be too hard to do." Jiao replied whilst smiling. Having food in her belly at last certainly raised her spirits.

Cheng began gathering anything of worth, anything at all he could sell. He then made his way out of the apartment. Over the hours, he made at least seven trips down to different pawn shops. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black cargo trousers. He didn't usually opt to wear clothes, but he figured he should seeing as he was carrying a gun on him. He didn't want to alarm anyone by carrying it around in plain sight. He was walking through the streets at one in the morning, coming back from his eighth trip. Most of the pawn shops were now closed, so he decided to finally call it a night. He was about halfway back to his apartment, when he got a call through his infolink. Already, his augmented vision allowed him to see the details of the caller. It was the swampert. He decided to take the call. "What's wrong?" He quickly asked.

"Err you said to call you if I saw someone weird, right?" The swampert responded.

Just then, Cheng's heart sank. He knew something bad was about to happen.

---

Author's note: Again, big thank you to Zarfy and BigBossSonic for editing this! Got some awkward mistakes out of the way before putting this chapter out. And thank you to all the readers out there! :)