FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Journal: J. Doom, Mission Time +32 Kiloseconds

Well, it appears that my last journal was a case of "be careful what you wish (or are simply curious) for." Though, to be honest, in the aftermath of last night's encounter, I feel fantastic. I suppose it's some side-affect of what I got blasted with. Damn disgusting, but I'm convinced there was dopamine or some other chemical in the stuff that's made me lighter than air. Of course, I'm perplexed how those... Squiddogs, would know the specific chemical key to the human pleasure center.

I mean; we are the first humans here, aren't we?

***

Tan smiled to himself, he'd finally gotten his jeans clean!

He hauled them from the rock on which they'd sunned and took in the more subtle smells of Briin... the ones not clearly linked to naughty acts. The air was full of dusty, esterous sweetness, contrasted by the smell of new mud and rain. Even though his body was tuned to this planet, his mind wasn't. So, those smells brought memories of flower laden meadows and sims of Sweden bulb fields he'd participated in. Of course, Briin looked like neither of these. Whatever made those smells was far more subtle... or more integrated into the environment around him.

Of course, it was only a hunch.

He'd snuck a few extra pairs of clothes and (thank the makers) some skivvies from the Kazemaru's link-forger. Meaning he could now be discreet. The last thing he wanted now was to be naked in front of the girl he saw naked...

He heard a rustle behind him.

"Why are you so freaked?" Predictably; it was Julia. He reluctantly turned to face her. Her hands were on her hips and she wore a smug smile all across her body, from her stance to her actual lips. "You seemed fine last night." One of her ears twitched restlessly.

He coughed nervously. "It's uh, not really how I felt that's the problem."

"Oh, really?" she said, leaning in to challenge his statement. Damn, he wondered if he could lie about this much longer.

"Yeah... umm," he bit his lip. He tried to keep himself from glancing over her hourglass stomach and over her toned breast. Suit didn't leave much to the imagination, in spite of all the techno-bits he sheathed Julia in. Maybe it was really some testament to her looks that her vivacious, physical beauty showed through Suit regardless â€" bugger, what was he doing?! "I'm sorry about looking-"

She interrupted him; "Don't say it, you twit," she said, her mouth drawing into a pouting ‘w' shape. "I forgave you about a minute into that ordeal. Do you think I really expect absolute privacy in a place like this?"

The question was obviously a trap. If he agreed, she'd tell him he had no scruples. He'd been through a billion neo-vic cautionary sims when he was abducted by the Better Christian Thinking network. "B-but, you obviously don't like me that way..." he let out a limp laugh, trying his best to soften his stammered words.

"You know," she said. "Some people aren't just off or on." He thought he heard trumpets blaring off an exalted chorus in the clouds. "No," she barked, pointing her finger accusingly at him. "I did NOT mean friends with benefits." He then noticed he was smiling stupidly and promptly ceased. "Just relax about this whole mess. Otherwise; I get the feeling it's going to get worse before it gets any better."

That was quite the rant, he thought. Tan nodded wordlessly.

"Anything else?" her pout morphed into an instantaneous smile.

"One; why are you so chipper. Two; we have to finish packing."

"Done." She said, smiling and flourishing her tail with an authoritative flick.

"Really?" he asked in disbelief. She nodded vigorously. "Uhh, how are you doing? You know you just packed an entire campsite in under five minutes."

"I feel great, and yes, yes I did... do you hear a crackling sound?"

"Uhh, did you get Suit or HSO or someone to check over your vitals? Tox reports? Do you hear a crackling sound?"

She growled in sudden frustration. "That's what I said!" She then practically yelled; "Suit!"

"Yes, Madam. You know, your brain activity is registering higher than normal. I'm logging your vitals for future scientific reference... does Madam hear a crackling sound?"

"I do! Now PLEASE activate wide area Ping and RADAR motion tracking."

"Of course, Madam, without further delay."

The data came up a moment later, prompting her face to suddenly grow rigid.

"Big thing," she said. "There are big things coming this way!"

"What?" Tan was suddenly drawn along with her into panic.

"Where's the buggy, we gotta' go!"

Tan started running for the Mud Wolf, the last object remaining on the ground, aside from themselves. It remained poised on its four, articulated wheels. "Is it like... a super typhoon or something?" he asked. The pair of them ran on from their stupidly distant starting position. Tan really hadn't been prepared for this. "Or, is it like a giant space dragon? That's the only thing that could really freak me out at this point."

"It's a herd!" she gasped as she ran. "And it's coming on fast... can I drive? That would be fun!"

Tan glanced back at her in disbelief. "Who here do you think is certified to do that?"

"....both of us?"

"I'm the machinery guy here, remember?" When he glanced back again, she stuck her tongue out in sour defiance. "I'm driving... can't you uh... research them from the passenger's seat or something?"

"Ooh!" the surprise in her voice was palpable. He imagined she was beaming, but he was too busy jumping toward his extra-strength car. "Yes! That is a grand idea!" Tan grasped the Mud Wolf's roll-cage and pulled himself over to the driver's seat. He'd done that enough times to know the act by heart. "Shotgun!" Julia yelled from 20 feet behind. He heard the gritty scratch of shoes on mud, then felt the buggy shake.

When he turned around, she was smiling innocently in the seat behind him. "What?" she said, seeming to chidingly pat suit. He turned and pulled a data line from his neck and plugged it into the seat behind him. Moments later, he saw exactly what had gotten Julia so panicked... for a short while at least.

"That leap was a particularly dangerous one, Madam. One notes it involved hard metal and potential collisions involving your skull-" Tan floored it.

The hydrogen turbine engine whined as the vehicle lurched painfully forward. He'd forgotten how Wolfie performed in an oxygen-rich biome. Luckily, it had been a short estimation. He'd be able to get plenty of distance from the oncoming swarm of galloping animals, maybe even circle back around them.

Now that he was wired into the buggy (and driving without twitching a finger, thank you very much) he could call his personal support cloud from the Kaze Maru.

He began to think deliberate words down the line. "Cameras, visual, LIDAR scan, motion tracking, Kuang-grade sensorium-"

"Your luddite command-line interface is wholly unnecessary, Sir," Suit said in his head. He barely suppressed a shiver that would have made Mud Wolf spin out. "Allow me to deploy a full Science Suite."

"What are you doing in my interfacing?" His output was likely devoid of emotion because he'd spent years of mission time learning low-level memetic-assembly commands â€" known for their simplicity and utilitarianism. Of course, in reality, he was feeling hair-splittingly distraught.

"Assisting the outcome of this mission, Sir. Do not take my actions personally. One does not seek to offend Sir."

"Fine, just do what I say, no fancy stuff please."

"One comprehends Sir's trepidation completely. He will seek to provide all forms of directness and simplicity in his command responses. One will use low-level dialog systems only in response to Sir's commands. However, Sir should expect much optimization-"

"Shit!" he inadvertently thought to himself as they sailed over a small cliff.

"One will now excuse Sir." The impact was smoothe and rolled like a wave. Tan thanked the shock-absorbing smart-body system for its sudden utility in the situation.

"Thanks." He eased the throttle, making the engine roar behind his seat. After he choked the throttle again, he heard a sound in the relative quiet.

It was a stacatto clack of hooves, more piercing than what he'd expected from a herd of chunky space buffalo.

He committed part of his vision to the rearview. The images he received in the hijacked processing power of his visual cortex were... not as he expected. He magnified the view and saw a solid tidal wave of lanky, tan limbs smacking against the soft ground. Thin necks bobbed and bowed. Their green eyes were like the sea of lighters he'd seen on the reconstruction of a System of a Down concert, during the peak of the show. He sensed a similar fervor here.

"Ooh!" Julia exclaimed. "Oh my! How interesting, yes! Very interesting."

"I didn't know you could perform a verbal interpretation of science at work."

"Well," she said over the blasting air. "You learn something new every day, don't you?"

"Do you notice how crazy they are? I'm practically flooring it and they're gaining." As he said that, his drones came streaking from behind the herd. The initial, tenuous tones of Ride of the Valkyries laid into his mind as if the violinist was next to his ear.

Just as the go-get-‘em brass line â€" for which the song was most famous â€" began to play, a voice piped in clearly over the music. "The cavalry arrives, Madam and Sir!"

Julia clapped eagerly. "Can we get all angles? The more data I have the better-"

"Let me," Tan said. "Cameras; rangefinding, full dome-scan, 3d mock-up recording. Audio, simulate texture."

"Recognized Sir," Suit said in his head. Tan glanced up at the cameras as they formed into a spinning circle, aiming ever downward at a static point at the center of the herd. Tan imagined the effect would be much as if the world moved under the static mass of animals, instead of vice-versa. It would be a perfect shot.

"Do we know where they're going, yet?" Julia asked to no one in particular.

"Toward the tropical forests of the coastal area of this landmass," Suit said over the LAN to both of them. "The Kazemaru seems to be detecting their movements for miles around."

"Can't go around it," Julia began.

"So we better go through it!" Tan said, simultaneously gunning the engine and swerving around for a pass at the herds.

***

Chapter Three: MIGRANTS

***

"Dear lord," Julia said. "These things are massive." Tan opened his mouth, expecting to speak- "No phallic jokes."

"I was actually going to say your usage of epithets is quite retro." He choked the engine and adjusted direction. The car began to coast right relative to the herd of creatures directly behind them. They were cast in golden relief by the retreating evening sun. "How's the recording going?"

"Swimmingly," she said. "Nothing new... just running and running and running...." She looked the nearest creature over. It was a drab tan. She mused that it looked much like the simultaneously water-starved, yet occasionally quenched terrain around them. They had long, muscular yet lithe limbs â€" five-pointers again. Their necks extended upward, as if they'd committed to being Giraffes but gotten bored half-way through. The mass was nearly homogenous, a sea of twisting tan bodies crashing across the Steppes. "But I still haven't seen any babies."

"Really? How can you see ANYTHING past this mob?"

"Infrared," she said. "Nothing's moving under the tangle. These guys must grow very fast."

"Or this is their breeding season." Tan left her a few moments of serene silence. Then, the Mud Wolf jinked off in another direction with little warning. It nearly smashed her head against the roll-cage, but Suit acted within milliseconds to raise an arm to defend her head.

"Ow!" she said, her voice driven an octave higher by a lethal mix of rage and surprise. "What the hell was that, stunt driver? You trying to kill me?"

"You might wanna' sit down," his voice was wavering and... frightened. She obeyed, knowing the sort of things that happened to scientists standing up in custom made buggies while they ran in front of a herd of giant animals... well, she could predict what happened anyway. She turned to face forward.

She was going to give him a piece of her mind, nonetheless! "What's g- oh..." every bit of energy left her voice. They crested a hill and the oncoming hard-drop came into view. Below were the browns of a mangrove tangle... fogged by distance. This wasn't going to be pleasant.

"Here we go!" he yelled. Just as he said ‘go!' he jinked the steering again. They sailed from the cliff, falling from the great, lethal height of a meter.

"Yes, indeed, here we g-" Julia gasped as the ground underneath them ran out again. Julia didn't accurately recall the next few seconds of freefall as she was too busy screaming at octaves she didn't know she was capable of reaching.

Tan visibly fought the momentum of the Mud Wolf, gritting his teeth as he threw his gaze madly about the objects ahead of them â€" and there were suddenly quite a few. They rocketed into neck-deep water, sending it blasting away in a gigantic wave from the front. The buggy pressed on, stretching its suspension skyward to keep the cab safely out of the mud. But, seeing as there was no windscreen â€" or, indeed, any doors â€" the two of them were still battered by brown gunk.

There was a cacophony of grinding tires and dull impacts that slowly faded. A moment later, they'd stopped.

Julia paused in the sudden, unexpected silence, and then wordlessly rose from her seat.

"Hey!" she said as she looked back. "The herd... it's jumping off the cliff, too!"

"Oh dear lord!" Tan yelled. "Are they heading our way?"

"No," she said, squinting through the tangle of mangrove roots impeding her view of the muddy cliff face. The creatures seemed to dive headlong off the cliff, like lemmings headed for thoughtless suicide... they were a waterfall of bodies, careening toward certain death. Save the key fact that they survived. Heads were popping up from the muck. Other members of the herd rose in singular, elegant motions, shaking off the grime. "I think they may be where they want to be."

"Okay... well maybe we can call the Kazemaru for extraction..."

Julia lost track of Tan's speech as she looked around the vehicle. The swampy terrain rolled out before her. Tiny fairybugs flitted through the air, glinting white in the waning sunlight. Amidst the scattered and stark shadows, she saw all sorts of brightly colored flora. The roots of the plants twisted every which way and certain ones appeared to be in bloom. Those specific plants were especially bright, clashing angrily against the earthen brown of the islands of cracked peat in which they grew.

"I think we could stand to explore the area," she said, interrupting Tan. Good biologists could smell un-cataloged ecosystems from hundreds of miles away and this one had just fallen into her lap. Thus was the work of a xeno-biologista.

She hopped onto the front of the buggy and down into the mud with a limp splat. Fieldwork was never glamorous, though. So, she wasn't fazed so much by that as by how the plants responded to her presence.

Her heightened senses detected the subtle twist of their rootstalks. All the same, she pressed toward one and managed to sidle onto one of its twisted, leafy branches. It flattened out and merged with countless others around a center rosette, piled with fruit and surrounded with water-laden, padded petals. Amidst the order of the flower-like rosette was a ring of dimples, capped with yellow bubbles of flesh. Their odd, disorderly placement seemed to contrast with the rest of the plant. As if there was some deliberate seperation of time â€" a stark razor cut into the plant's evolutionary history. Evolution as she knew it wasn't full of stark razors.

Of course, she reasoned, step one would involve collecting a specimen. Seeing as there were hundreds there for the picking, she supposed she could oblige herself.

But, as she bent down and picked the fruit, the plant shifted underneath her.

The tiny, blistering pods came alive, disgourging rope-like feelers that immediately moved in her direction.

"Madam!" Suit exclaimed, practically yelling in her ear.

"Any large orifices?" The molecular scans pinged below her. Meanwhile, the tips of the yellowed feelers explored her limbs.

"No," he admitted.

A feeler strummed across her chest. "Any toxic chemical traces from that contact?"

"No, Madam, but-"

"Any pointy objects?"

Suit approximated a sigh. "As you wish, madam." The feelers focused between her legs, showing steady but surprising strength as they raised her off her feet. She was brought gently above the center of the rosette as the feelers idly caressed her. "But I will guard you carefully, Madam. It is my duty to ensure your safety, I was built for this purpose."

"Mmm," she sighed, the sound flowing with a gentle note of anticipation in spite of its intended role of agreement. Her legs were spread before the rosette. She imagined she looked like some wayward offering to the fertile forest itself; still yet poised in anticipation of her fate. Part of her knew where this was going. It seemed to echo the adventures of their first night, which gave her somewhere to start. "Why don't you give this guy some room?"

"Of course, Madam. As is the lot of a true biologist."

"Only this time," she said. "I don't think any planetary population has been quite so intent on screwing my brains out as this one."

"A peculiar case indeed, madam." Suit appeared to be growing apathetic. Of course, Julia had known him to be jealous. But, he obliged her request.

Suit slackened the ribbons of synth-muscle covering her thighs and loins, pulling them away to expose the navy blue, cottony hair of her underside. At the center of her exposure, pink folds lay bare. They were the oldest, rawest and most unaltered part of her biological blueprint â€" save, perhaps, her brain â€" and they were suddenly screaming for attention.

That first encounter had really put the fire in her. But, part of her denied it, gawked at the weirdness of her situation. That vestigial part of her had begun its downfall when she'd first boarded the Higarashi. That was when Earth had ceased seeming secure and started seeming boring... this was just a small step among many others that had marked her life from that first planet hop.

As the feelers began to find their way toward her anticipating flesh, she spoke up over her shoulder toward Tan. "Maybe you should turn around," she said. "Just a suggestion."

"With pleasure," he said. "But, no offense. I don't mean it like that, it's just..."

"My self confidence issues aren't a big subject right-" Julia gasped in surprise as the feelers made their first, probing contact.

They caressed over her flesh, drawing in to explore her interior at their leisure. As the other creatures had done before, these seemed to read every millimeter of her sensitive skin. It was an analytical touch with which she was now rather familiar.

They spun over her, exploring the area around her petals as much as that within it. Then, a directive seemed to have been made within the creature and the feelers withdrew.

Julia's eyes widened as a new limb emerged from the center of the rosette. Its massive girth pushed water-fat fruits aside as it rose outward. It uncoiled toward where she was exposed and, about then, she began to wonder what she'd gotten herself into.

She'd likely be lucky if she wasn't spoiled rotten after this entire trip was over.

The limb whipped itself skyward in one sluggish motion. It slithered upward, burdened by its own weight as its tip sought her out. She tensed as it contacted her, then exhaled as it eased against her.

Her breath grew ragged as it pressed against her. It advanced with steady determination, withdrawing only to press slightly further into her.

"Usually this is pre-empted with a candle-light dinner and a movie," she thought. "I suppose I know how to cut out the middle man now."

That was one of only a few lucid thoughts that reached her. Every inch of her was centered on the contact taking her for reasons she couldn't quite explain. Though, the act wasn't like the probing contact of the attentive Squiddogs.

It lacked their intelligent sense of their subject's emotions. This plant seemed apathetic to her, only sparing a steady advance because of some hard encoding that reminded it to be kind to its lovers, lest they run away. It didn't respond to her body as she writhed in the grip of the smaller feelers and didn't seem to derive pleasure from her own.

Instead, it pressed steadily further, gently pistoning against her folds. She arched backward as the sensations reached a tipping point. She lost all restraint and howled in elation.

The tentacle pressed on within her, regardless. She, however, reacted with each press.

Julia arched with the contact, moving her hips in time with the creature. Her breathing was ragged with the passion of the encounter â€" which seemed to remain solely her own.

But the flower seemed to be nearing its own goal. The tree bowed and twitched, manipulated by unseen forces as the flower seemed to balloon outward. As it did so, the alien length within Julia froze. She sighed in the moment of respite then gasped as the length bulged.

A lump forced its way down the throbbing length. It gyrated with the effort of the movement, as if it were more than a peripheral curiosity that the creature fulfilled. Julia threw her head backward and gasped as the bulge reached her petals. It moved them aside and tunneled into her, emitting an audible gurgle as the appendage coiled against her. Moments later, the length's base bulged again, Marking another attempt against her starved insides, even before the first had ceased.

There was a rising, squelching splat as the feeler twisted against her. Milky fluids sprayed from where Julia met her impromptu lover, making her hips jump as she emitted a cry choked with sudden, ample delight.

There was another curdling splat as the next bulge intruded into her, spraying out of her with even greater intensity. It was soon followed by another, leaving Julia's tongue reaching skyward amidst another cry of passion. As the final blast dribbled from her, she let loose a husky mewl of primal satisfaction.

"S-somehow," she began as the fat length slithered out of her, suddenly soft and giving, even amidst her tight embrace. "I think that wasn't meant for me."

There was an unearthly wail from the distance and a squelching splat. "Somehow," Tan said, looking away from the direction of the sound with a knowing, world weary droop to his eyes. "I think you may be right." Tan watched the furred, quadrupedal form, embraced by yellow feelers as it was gently assailed by a fat, pulsating limb reaching between its rear legs.

"Oh dear," she said.

"My my," Suit said.

"Ditto," Tan said.

Julia sighed as the other feelers gently relaxed from her limbs. "Something tells me this planet isn't quite like they said it would be on the pamphlet." She fell to earth in a graceful three-point stance, clothing herself with a simple tightening of Suit's muscles.

"The what?" Tan asked, suddenly oddly curious.

"Ugh," she sighed as she stood. "Twogees."

"What?! What did I do?"

"You were born a unique, post-singular snowlake, that's what you did." Julia hefted herself up onto one of Mud Wolf's overlarge tires. "Now don't bother me, I need to sit still until the world stops spinning around me so fast..."