FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

One

The fraternity of Mu Delta Rho was known publicly for its wild parties, drunken sex scandals, and athletics-driven admission policies. In short, it wasn’t anything at all unusual, at least on the surface, and if it ever got any attention from the campus police, it was only when the elderly neighbors living across the street called in with yet another noise complaint. The frat club certainly never showed up on the news, or in the local paper.

The Eye, however, painted a different story.

The Eye was an anonymous online blog that Sho had stumbled across a few months ago which claimed to investigate various local businesses and operations that its writers suspected of criminal activity, from the black market to the drug trade, to human supremacist rallies and anthro trafficking. Normally, Sho would have ignored the whole thing as a bogus conspiracy theory site, but the first article he read was about a donut shop across campus that supposedly had a meth lab in its basement. That should have been a dead giveaway that the blog was just another fake trollnews site—Sho had loved that shop’s donuts—but three days after he read the report, the shop’s owners had been arrested.

Of the seven suspected businesses the blog reported on in the months since, five had been visited by the police, and two of those visits had resulted in arrests that were reported on the evening news, all after the blog’s initial report, which did no more than blow the whistle on suspected activity. Two days ago, Sho had read an article written suspecting Mu Delta Rho of human supremacism and heavy drug activity.

And Xumaada, Sho’s twin brother, had been dying all summer to be the first rabbit ever accepted into Mu Delta Rho.

Clinging to a roof’s slanted tiles beside a sheltering chimney, Sho peered over the building’s peak, his ears lying flat back on his head. There was Xu now, standing on the fraternity’s front porch two houses over, wearing his preppy green shirt unbuttoned over a white tank top—the university’s colors, of course—and standing with his thumb tucked under the strap of his backpack. Xu wore loose fitting green jogging shorts over his toned legs—as loose-fitting as shorts ever were on rabbits—and was speaking to a brown-haired human in the doorway who was easily twice his height, not counting Xu’s ears. The difference in size wasn’t at all uncommon for rabbits, but this human was sporting quite a bit more muscle than Sho was used to seeing, and by the number of cars in the street, there would be more humans inside.

That was okay, though. Sho was already calling himself twelve types of idiot for worrying so much; judging by the human jock’s expression, Xu was about to be turned away at the door. Sho would just wait around long enough to make sure the human didn’t try to kick his brother, and then he’d get himself back home.

Only, the human wasn’t shooing the preppy rabbit off. The human was turning and talking to someone else inside the building, and when he faced Xu again, it was to give the gray-furred rabbit a begrudging nod and stand aside. Xu returned the young man’s scowl with a polite smile, but his excitement couldn’t have been clearer if he’d been jumping in place. His tail was wiggling a mile a minute on top of those green shorts.

Sho ducked back behind his roof’s peak, snarling under his mask and panting through his nose. Now he had to get himself inside the frat house, and after that… After that, he had no idea what to do. He’d only been winging it so far, and he had been lucky to get anywhere without being spotted, running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop like a lunatic. He was sure he’d know if he was seen. There would be enough laughter to knock him off his perch if anyone noticed him, as stupid as he looked.

But it was the next part that he had dressed up for. If any of the frat boys recognized him as Xu’s brother, Xu would be screwed. If The Eye was right about Mu Delta Rho, just walking into the building might have been a one way trip for a rabbit. So Sho rolled over the peak of the roof he clung to and slid down the far side, heading toward the frat house to get himself inside, too.

It would have been easier if Sho actually had super powers, but he still didn’t have too much trouble. Rabbits were natural jumpers, and standing at just shy of three feet tall, Sho’s legs could spring him a great deal farther than a human’s would be able to manage. When he reached the gutter at the bottom of his current roof, he launched himself toward the next tiled housetop. It was only five or six feet away; he cleared its ledge by nearly a yard and was scrambling quietly up and over its peak, as well, a few seconds later. Three stories high, his jump to the fraternity house was just as easy.

Getting in was another story, though. On all fours, he crawled his way to the back of the house and lay on his belly to peer over the edge, scanning over the windows. None were open, but they all had shallow windowsills, and if he was careful…

He swung himself over the roof’s edge and clung to the gutter by his fingers, aiming his fall carefully, but not wasting any time. After letting go, he caught his toes on the windowsill four feet down, but just enough to slow his fall so that his hands wouldn’t be hurt when he stopped himself entirely with his fingers. Gritting his teeth, he braced his feet against the wall, and pulled himself up enough to peer into the window, clinging tenaciously to the sill. There was a curtain blocking his view, but he could make out a bedroom on the other side, and it looked empty. After a few awkward pushes at the window itself, though, trying to nudge it upward, he realized that even if it was unlocked, he would never be able to get it open. The fabric covering his fingers was too slippery.

Breathing heavily, Sho looked down. There was a tile-roofed awning covering a small back porch that bordered a sidewalk leading to the frat house’s two-car garage. The awning was a story below Sho, a good ten feet, and maybe six feet off to one side, as well. He could make it, so long as he landed right, but it wouldn’t be quiet.

He looked from side to side, fingers aching from holding on to the windowsill’s narrow ledge despite the slick gloves covering them. He didn’t have any other options, and waiting wouldn’t do him any good.

He swung his body from side to side, toward the porch and its awning, away, then toward again, and while holding his breath, he dropped ten feet through the air, able to feel the wind of his fall even through his suit.

His aim was spot on. He hit the far side of the porch’s roof with his feet and immediately started rolling, tumbling sideways down the tiled slope with a series of loud thumps from his feet and shoulders, and an instant later he fell off the side, barely managing to get his feet under him to land on the frat house’s back lawn. He rolled again, shifting his momentum from downward to sideways, and he had to break into an immediate sprint just to keep from sliding through the grass. Hastily, Sho darted around the building’s corner and flattened himself against the wall.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he’d never heard of other rabbit traceurs or freerunners before. As light as they were, they could fall long distance without getting hurt, as long as they landed on their feet, and they were natural jumpers. Maybe that was it. No rabbit wanted to be known for hopping around all over the place.

Hearing footsteps clomping toward the house’s back door, Sho made sure he was panting in shallow enough breaths that he wasn’t making any noise. He could hear the back door swing open, and those footsteps clomped onto the back porch. Humans and their shoes. The rabbit’s ears were covered with thick fabric, but he could have heard the frat boy with cotton balls stuffed in them. They didn’t leave the porch, fortunately. Those footsteps just thumped around from side to side for a couple moments as the human surveilled the back yard, then thumped inside again, and Sho could hear someone call out, “What the hell was it, Jeffreys?” before the door clicked shut again.

Whatever Jeffreys answered, no one else came out to investigate, and after a full minute of waiting, Sho crept around the corner and darted up the back porch’s stairs. He reached up and tried the doorknob, roughly at head level to the rabbit. For a wonder, Jeffreys had been kind enough to leave the door unlocked.

Sho slipped it open, just a hair, and peeked inside. There was a hallway leading to the building’s small entry room, with an open doorway on the left and another on the right, along with a closed door closer to Sho on the right, as well. No one was visible, and no one had spotted him, but he could hear voices from the room on the left.

“Right, so that’s all that’s to it.” That was one of the frat boys, his voice casual, offhanded, and bored.

“Just make a delivery?” Xu’s voice asked. “I thought there’d be more to the initiation than that.”

Holding his breath, Sho squeezed into the building and gently, ever so carefully, closed the door behind him.

“Oh, the delivery’s not initiation. It’s just part of the admittance fee. You run this envelope over to the bar, and then we’ll talk about whether or not you’re Mu Delta Rho material.”

Sho crept closer to the open doorway along the hallway’s left wall, sidestepping with his back against the wall, and was grateful these buildings were fairly new. They were all classic Victorian architecture, but the floorboards didn’t squeak at all.

“You know I’m up to snuff,” Xu was saying. “Star receiver on the state champs’ team three years straight? You wouldn’t have let me in the front door if you didn’t already want me in.”

It was all Sho could do not to roll his eyes. His brother had just met these people, and he was already showboating? Typical.

Another human let out an incredulous laugh. “High school football’s pointless, bunny boy. ‘Sides, I bet your team just won so much because your quarterback threw you into the end zone along with the ball.”

“Hey!” That was the first voice. “You wanna get racist, Jeffreys, you can write it all down in your bitch diary, get it out of your system.”

“In my what?”

“Listen,” the first human said, his voice bored again. “We don’t let just anyone join up. There’s a waiting list a mile long just for guys who want to be standing where you’re standing, rabbit. You make that delivery. That’s step one. After that, we’ll move on to step two.”

“And how many steps are there?” Xu asked, his voice cocky as ever.

“At least one.”

Sho was at the edge of the doorway, but he didn’t dare peek inside. He felt too exposed where he was, already. Maybe past the closed door across the hall? That was probably a bathroom…

“The envelope’s tiny,” Xu said. “Why not just text whatever you wanna say?”

Jeffreys laughed again, and said sarcastically, “Because pen and paper is more classy, bunny boy.”

“Jeffreys,” the other human muttered, sighing, then told Xu, “You don’t have to worry about that. This really isn’t that complicated, kid. Just get it to the bar. And remember. You open that, and you can forget about joining any fraternity on campus. Open it, and you might as well start looking for work flipping burgers.”

“If you can reach a stove without a step stool,” Jeffreys added helpfully.

Sho heard his brother heave an aggravated breath. “Fine.” And then near-silent footsteps were padding toward the front of the house, where the living room must have met the foyer.

This was it. If Xu left the frat house carrying anything from Mu Delta Rho, he might get caught up in whatever criminal activity the fraternity was up to. There were probably drugs in that envelope, and everyone knew that if a human and an anthro were both at a crime scene, it was the anthro who wound up in jail. Sho had to put a stop to this now, but if the frat boys thought for one moment that someone Xu knew was trying to throw a wrench in their operations, Xu could wind up worse than jailed.

Hence the asinine superhero costume.

Sho somersaulted past the doorway and ran down the short hall into the entry room, no longer bothering to step silently. This was the part where he was supposed to be seen, and the more the frat boys thought he was a lunatic, the better. His brother was certainly bemused, as Sho slid to a stop in front of him, the hardwood floor slippery enough that he skidded all the way into a small sofa set against the front wall.

“What the hell?” Xu said, looking back over his shoulder. “If this is some kinda racist joke, it doesn’t make any sense.”

The humans were only then clomping their way to the front of the living room, where a wide archway connected to the foyer. Sho didn’t wait. He darted toward his brother, but Xu backpedaled toward the living room and jerked his arm away too quickly for Sho to grab the envelope out of his paw. So Sho tackled his brother while Xu was off balance, and star receiver or not, Xu went down.

Sho planted his knee on his brother’s chest, grabbed at Xu’s wrist, and got ahold of one half of the envelope. His gloved hands were still slippery, but he grasped that end relentlessly and gave it a deliberate downward twist. Xu held on just as tightly to the other half, which worked just fine for Sho. The envelope and its contents ripped down the middle.

There wasn’t any illicit powder falling from Sho’s half of the envelope, just a small slip of paper that he ignored. He hopped away from Xu and stood in a ready crouch, looking back and forth from the other rabbit, cussing his way back to his feet, to the humans in the living room. There were three of them, not just two: the musclebound jock who had greeted Xu at the door, Jeffreys, and a more slender young man with a dark red shirt unbuttoned over a black tee shirt. They all looked bewildered, at first. Then, just as Sho had expected, Jeffreys and the other brute started laughing.

“Who the hell is this, bunny boy, your girlfriend?” Jeffreys guffawed.

Sho recalculated, but he was already moving. He’d been planning on launching himself at Jeffreys first, but after that comment, it would have seemed like Sho had taken offense. Sho did have a thin hide. He wanted to hit Jeffreys with a crowbar. And that was why he leapt up and aimed a kick at the other jock’s head instead, because he had to be as different from Sho as he could be. These frat boys didn’t know him—they didn’t even really know Xu—but he needed every measure he could find to appear to be someone else. He was a rabbit, and Xu was a rabbit, and that was the only connection they would need, but hopefully he could make his brother so confused that these humans wound up believing Xu really had no idea who Sho was.

His foot swiped through air. The other jock was faster than he looked. When Sho landed, though, he simply sprang right back up, and this time the human stumbled back into Jeffreys when Sho kicked again. The rabbit’s blue-clad foot landed on the human’s burly chest, hard enough to almost knock both jocks over. Which meant that Sho had pushed himself through the air in the other direction, almost all the way to the far wall.

He didn’t stop, not for a second. The masked rabbit lifted a foot to the wall behind him and pushed off with that, ran to pick up speed, then jumped again, this time toward the third, skinnier human. Skinnier, but still twice Sho’s height and width, which had to make the young man around eight times Sho’s meager twenty pounds.

The slender human didn’t say a word. He just swatted the back of his hand against the middle of Sho’s body, sending the rabbit careening right back toward the other two frat boys, who by this point were laughing hysterically.

Sho couldn’t quite get his feet under him this time, and it hurt when he crashed into one of the other humans’ legs, but he pushed himself to his feet even faster than the jock could recover, and used his momentum to swing his own leg around hard into the back of the frat boy’s knee.

“Oh god, she dead-legged you!” Jeffreys hooted, laughing so hard he looked about ready to fall over on his own. The man Sho had kicked was laughing, too, even while reaching toward the masked rabbit. Sho ducked under his hand, back into the foyer, turning to stand between the three of them and Xu, facing off against the humans again.

“You two think this is funny?” the slender frat man said in a quiet voice, and Sho blinked. That wasn’t the voice he’d heard before, which made the muscle-bound college student the one who had been speaking to Xu the whole time, while this third human had evidently been sitting in the room without saying anything.

“No man, no,” Jeffreys said, wiping his eyes. “It’s not funny. It’s fuckin’ hilarious.” Sho made some more mental adjustments. The third human wasn’t laughing at all. Maybe it was time to get out of there…

A shoeless, anthro foot suddenly planted itself between Sho’s shoulder blades and kicked him forward, hard. He sprawled forward, and would have fallen all the way into the living room if Jeffreys hadn’t reached out and grabbed his upper arm. The human lifted him into the air with one hand without any visible effort. His arm didn’t even seem to be flexing, any more than it did while at rest. “Seriously, who’s Superbunny here?” Jeffreys asked. “Bakers, you pay some rabbit girl to dress up for us?”

The thick-chested human shook his brown head, and his voice was indeed the one Sho recognized from before. “Wasn’t me. Patrick?” The third human just crossed his arms over his black tee shirt and leveled a silent stare at Bakers. “Wasn’t Patrick, either.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Xu began, but Sho cut in by grabbing Jeffrey’s hand around his arm with his free paw and swinging up to kick Jeffreys in the bicep. It was the only part of the frat boy he could reach.

“Ow!” Sho kicked him again, but Jeffreys only laughed harder. “Goddamn, that actually hurts.” Sho’s third kick was batted away by the jock’s other hand, and his fourth was caught, thick fingers snatching around the rabbit’s ankle and squeezing painfully. “The hell’s the matter with you?” Jeffreys shook his head, holding Sho sideways out in front of himself and ignoring the rabbit’s other foot when it kept swinging up to kick the hand he held around Sho’s leg. “All right, for real, who put you up to this? Was it Zane? I bet it was Zane.”

“Zane does have a weird sense of humor,” Bakers put in, and Jeffreys nodded.

“Yeah, and he’s a kinky fucker, too.” Sho’s ears tilted backward. Kinky? “You think he paid for her up front?”

Bakers shook his head. “I don’t think she’s a prostitute. Look at the way she’s glaring at you. Take your dick out, and she’ll just bite it off.”

“Nah, she likes me, I can tell.”

Dammit, they both really did think Sho was a girl!

“Both of you shut up,” Patrick said calmly, and surprisingly, the others did, though Jeffreys kept laughing every time Sho kicked his wrist. That was getting the rabbit nowhere. “Xu,” Patrick went on, and Sho twisted around, trying to get a good look at the skinnier college student. The human didn’t say anything else for a moment. He just looked at Xumaada, who was staring at Sho with such a confused expression, it looked like his brain had been scrambled. Good. Patrick huffed a quiet laugh of his own, shaking his head. “Xu doesn’t know anything about this, either.”

“You’re damned right I don’t!” Xu agreed.

“It’s too weird, though,” Patrick went on. “I don’t like it.”

Xu shook his head, lifting his paws up placatingly. “Oh, come on, man, you’re not gonna turn me away because of this, are you? I have no idea who that other rabbit is! She’s got nothing to do with me!” Great. Even Sho’s brother thought he was a girl.

“No. We’re not going to turn you away.” Without another word, Patrick reached behind him and pulled what looked like a gun out from the holster that was hiding behind his back, under his dark red shirt tail.

Sho’s eyes went wide, and he almost cried out in warning, but before he could, Xu whirled toward the front door with a squeaked, “Shit!” At the same time, Patrick pulled the trigger, and two prongs shot out from the front of the weapon. They nailed Xu in the back of his leg, just past his shorts, and there were a series of loud clicks. Then the rabbit dropped like a sack.

“Damn,” Bakers muttered. “Is he still breathing? Those tasers pack a punch on a human, let alone a little rabbit.”

“He’s breathing,” Patrick said calmly. Sho started kicking with his free leg again when a clicked button swiftly retracted the taser gun’s prongs, pulling them home again for another charge. “Might as well just bag him here. Take him downstairs, Bakers. I think John’s old cat cage is still down there. That’ll work.”

Sho’s eyes were going wider by the moment. Cat cage? Bag him? He thought the frat boys here were just racist drug dealers.

Bakers had his hands under the other rabbit’s armpits, and Sho was relieved to see Xu look up as he was hefted easily off the ground. He was dazed, for sure, but still conscious. Then he felt two points nudge against his back through his blue costume, and he stopped kicking.

“Finally,” Jeffreys muttered. “Damn bunny girl’s making a bruise.” He still sounded more amused than anything else.

“You know,” Patrick said quietly, keeping his taser gun in place against Sho’s back and stepping around to get a look at the masked rabbit’s face. “Don’t you?” The human tilted his head inquisitively. He didn’t look angry at all, just curious, but there was a steeliness in his eyes when he asked, “Who told you?”

“She can’t know anything,” Jeffreys said. “Nothing except that you just tased someone. None of us would have told anyone. You know that, Patrick.”

“Maybe.” Patrick pushed the taser’s prongs a little harder against Sho’s back, making the rabbit swing a little toward the human holding him. “Answer me, bunny. How do you know about us? Did you see something?” They didn’t know about The Eye, then. Sho wondered just how many people had clicked into that link. Not too many, it seemed. He’d only seen it the once, himself, on the university’s associated website page. “Come on, girl, I don’t have all day. Speak up, or you’ll get the same as your boyfriend.”

God, Sho wished he was flexible enough to kick Patrick in the head. As it was, he could only glare.

The humans exchanged glances. Then Jeffreys said, “Not while I’m holding her.”

Patrick shrugged a shoulder and stepped back with a smirk. “Some skeet shooting, then.” Sho blinked. What was a skeet? The word sounded familiar, but he didn’t remember until Patrick called out, “Pull!”

Then Jeffreys tossed Sho into the air, nearly to the ceiling, and it was too late. He managed to turn his midair tumble into a more controlled flip, saw Patrick aiming at him mid-twirl, and then—

Getting tased hurt so badly, he couldn’t even tell when he landed. He was just suddenly on the ground with tears in his eyes and snot in his nose, and he couldn’t make his arms or legs move right. They were still shaking. Was he still getting electrocuted? No, he didn’t think so, but he hurt everywhere. His ears were ringing, too, but he thought he heard one of the humans ask, “Downstairs?”

Sho didn’t hear the answer. He almost threw up when Jeffreys grabbed his ankles and lifted him off the floor upside down. Sho was forced to stretch out, when all he wanted to do was curl up into a little ball from the pain. He had to close his eyes. The rooms were spinning around like crazy in his vision, jostling up and down with each of the human’s loud, clopping steps. There was a kitchen, Sho thought, and then a door opening to a stairwell down to the house’s basement. It was carpeted and furnished, a game and movie den, judging by the three sofas and the huge TV, but Xu and Bakers were nowhere to be found.

“Damn,” Jeffreys said. “I can almost see why we get such good offers for you bunnies.” He was holding Sho’s ankles in one meaty hand, and to the rabbit’s horror, the human’s free hand suddenly cupped right over Sho’s upside down bottom, thumb forcing a wedgie in the stretchy fabric between his cheeks. “Soft in all the right places.” And he squeezed, his fingers a tightening cage around the rabbit’s right butt cheek. Sho squirmed, still hurting badly from being zapped, and Jeffreys laughed. “Hey, see? You’re still alive. Something to celebrate.”

He carried Sho into a tiny storage room in the side of the furnished basement, its shelves filled with barbells and other weights, suitcases and boxes full of old Blue Ray discs. Who even used those anymore? Sho had just enough wits about him to note that the door didn’t have a lock, and then it was swinging shut behind them.

There was also an empty litter box at the back of the storage room, on the floor, and in front of that, a three-foot long pet carrier. It was a cage with a handle on top and newspapers spread out on its floor, and Xumaada was lying and moaning inside it.

Bakers was there, too, of course. “Hurry up. Xu’s starting to come ‘round. We’d better stuff her in there with him before they can move.”

“Y’know…” Jeffreys still had his free hand on Sho’s rump, squeezing the soft muscle hard. Sho managed to ball one paw into a fist. “Why don’t we keep this one? Just for a day or two, then we can sell her off, too, give the buyer a discount for a little light wear and tear.”

Bakers shook his head. “Just shove her in, Jeffreys. You know Patrick won’t take any chances.”

“I’ve got some handcuffs in my room, and a ball gag. Where’s the chance?”

Bakers crossed his arms and tapped his shoe impatiently. Inside the cat carrier, Xu groaned again, reaching feebly out its open door with an arm.

“Come on, Bakers, just look at this booty! I bet she’s tight, too, as tiny as she is.”

“Yeah, she’s got a nice ass,” the other human said, making Sho’s face flush even more with a mortified blush. Thank goodness he was wearing that mask. “You know what she doesn’t have though?”

“Big melon tits?”

“Any tits at all! She’s probably like, twelve or something.”

Jeffreys’s hand stopped groping the rabbit’s rump, just cupping around it now. “Wait, you think so? But rabbit girls can be flat-chested, too. Y’know, just petite, however old they get. I think this one’s old enough.”

“When they’re all that little, how can you tell?” Bakers shook his head again. “But it doesn’t matter, because if we let either of these bunnies out of this room, Patrick’s gonna sell us along with them.”

“Patrick’s not our boss,” Jeffreys said, but after a pause and another regretful squeeze around Sho’s squirming backside, he added, “But you’re probably right. We can’t go and take any unnecessary risks.” He started carrying Sho toward the pet cage. Sho tried to give his leg a little twitch, but it just turned into another wriggle.

“Jesus, if you’re that torn up about it, you can peel that costume off her first, get a little eye candy,” Bakers suggested.

Jeffreys looked down at the rabbit, then shook his head with a grin. “Nah. She looks cute like this.” Crouching down next to the other human’s legs, he finally moved his hand off of Sho’s butt, but only to take Xu’s arm in his grasp instead, tucking it back into the cage and against the groaning rabbit’s body. “Settle down, now, Xu, this is gonna be a tight squeeze.” He took Sho’s shoulder in his hand, angling the masked rabbit’s face toward the cage.

“Feet first,” Bakers abruptly said.

“Huh?”

“We can open up the front to put in a water bowl. There’s no door in the back, though, and who knows how long we’re gonna keep them here? Can’t have them shriveling up on us.”

“Oh. All right, but that’s gonna be more tricky. She’s getting all kicky again.” The human tucked Sho’s upper body in the other direction, and Sho wasn’t about to prove him wrong; the rabbit was kicking with all the strength he could summon, despite the cramps that kept trying to seize up his legs all over again. “Just…” Jeffreys squeezed hard around Sho’s ankles, wedging his big feet into the cage in front of his brother’s face. “You know what, you can kick Xu all you like, but you’re going to be sharing a room for a while, so you might want to make nice.”

Sho didn’t listen. He thrashed around madly, despite a grunt from the other rabbit when his foot broke free and smacked into the side of Xu’s head. Jeffreys just kept pushing his legs further into the cage, though, and when Sho swung his fist up and punched the human in the chest, Jeffreys only let out a distracted chuckle. “You really are crazy, you know that?”

Sho’s next punch landed squarely under the man’s jaw, and for just an instant, that shut him up. With all of the masked rabbit’s lower body squeezed into the cage beside the other rabbit’s, Jeffreys let go of Sho’s legs and planted a palm over his blue side. Then his other hand crashed into the side of the rabbit’s head, knuckles first.

Stars filled the rabbit’s vision, and he went limp. He was vaguely aware of the human stuffing him the rest of the way inside the cage, and he vaguely heard a grumbled, “Bitch made me bite my tongue,” but by the time he could move again, both Jeffreys and Bakers had left the storage room and shut the door behind them. At least they left the light on.

But then, all Sho had to look at was his brother’s accusing glare.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Xu asked, and it was a struggle not to flinch. Xu had asked him that question many times before, in almost the same tone of voice, and for an instant Sho thought he’d been recognized. But then his brother went on. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve ruined everything. Everything! Do you know how hard I’ve worked to…” Xu shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment while breathing deeply through his nose, but Sho almost head-butted him. The idiot had just been tased and stuffed in a pet cage, and all he was worried about was not getting into Mu Delta Rho? Sho should have just left him, let him make that delivery and get himself arrested as the corrupt fraternity’s scapegoat.

Xu shifted his leg, his knee rubbing up against Sho’s. The carrier was three feet long, a perfect fit for one of them so long as their ears were folded down, but it was only a foot tall and a little more than that wide. Lying on their sides, they were pressed up against each other from their chests to their toes, their faces only inches apart.

It was a good thing Sho had put in his new contacts before unpacking the superhero costume. They were tinted a deep purple, and even if his brother was close enough to easily see that Sho had contacts in, Xu wouldn’t be able to guess what color the other rabbit’s eyes actually were. Sho was wearing a floral shampoo, too, that masked his scent. Ferret-grade scent removing shampoo, the smell of roses and tulips wasn’t very strong, but its main purpose was to strip the user’s natural scent away, not just cover it up, and it seemed to be working so far.

“Still not going to say anything?” Xu demanded irritably, and Sho shook his head without saying a word. The other rabbit squirmed again, trying to free his arms from where they were pinned between them. “You don’t…hmph, have to tell me who you are if you don’t want to. I don’t really care. Just…” Xu managed to pull one arm up from between their bellies, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He barely had room to tuck it up along his side, his hips broad enough that his green shorts were almost touching the cage’s ceiling and floor at the same time, with next to no room to squeeze his paw beside his leg. “Just, it’s gonna be awkward enough in here if I’m the only one talking.”

Sho shrugged. That was Xu’s problem, and he was just going to have to live with it. Except his brother did have a point; Sho was far from comfortable, himself. Grimacing, the costumed rabbit gave a squirm of his own, slipping his arm up, as well, and trying to tuck it between their chests. There just wasn’t enough room, though, and he wound up having to rest his forearm on top of the other rabbit, their chests and bellies still rubbing up against each other. Their legs were just as trapped. Digitigrade, they couldn’t straighten them out completely, so their knees were practically stacked on top of each other, all four big rabbit feet flexing and shifting against the cage’s back wall.

“Have it your way,” Xu huffed. “Just as well. If you’re quiet enough, maybe I can think of a way to get us out of this. Just, nf, stop moving around so much, would you?” He was one to talk. He still couldn’t seem to decide where to put the one arm he had free, first trying to slip it behind himself and out of the way, then, when that quickly became too uncomfortable, reaching past Sho’s side and bracing his paw against the cage’s wall behind the other rabbit. It didn’t take long for that to get tiring, though, and he eventually let his arm rest on top of Sho’s waist, the two rabbits practically hugging each other in the tight confines.

Snorting a short breath out through his nose, Sho didn’t stop moving at all. He was plucking at the newspaper with the paw still pinned in front of his hip, trying to catch an edge of paper between his fingers without nudging his paw too much against the top of his brother’s thigh. It wasn’t going very well. The newspaper under their hips was pretty much flat, and his gloved fingers had no luck pulling any up between them. So he grimaced again and pushed his forearm underneath Xu’s waist, drawing an uncomfortable grunt from the other rabbit.

“I said stop moving. Jesus, don’t tell me you’re claustrophobic.” Sho’s paw was between Xu’s elbow and side, now, so Xu tried to move his lower arm, as well, bending it up between their chests, pushing their shoulders back against the cage’s walls. Eventually he wound up slipping it underneath Sho’s armpit, which wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it did give the masked rabbit room to move his own lower arm.

Ignoring Xu, Sho dragged his lower paw up underneath the other rabbit’s side, bunching up Xu’s white tank top enough to show some of his brother’s belly fur. Xu’s fur patterns were a lot like Sho’s, white and gray, only the gray splotches in Xu’s pelt were a couple shades darker and much more visible. His belly, though, was almost all white.

Eventually Sho had his paw up against the front door of the cage, underneath Xu’s fluffy cheek. “The hell are you doing?” Xu grumbled. Sho had begun twisting his paw at the wrist, plucking at the corner of the newspaper under his brother’s head, and this time, he managed to tear a wide strip of it free.

There. Good. Sho slipped his other arm up around his brother’s head, too, blindly rolling the torn paper into a tight, pencil-thick tube, then flattening it between his thumb and forefinger as much as he could. Xu was staring at his face, but he avoided his brother’s eyes, looking instead at his ultimate target: the padlock holding the cage’s door shut.

Once the end of the paper felt small enough, he carefully lifted it up to the front of the cage, and there was just enough room through the wire mesh for him to angle it up toward the padlock’s slotted keyhole. After a few tries, it went in…

“You’re going to pick the lock?” Xu asked, his eyebrows lifting, and he tried to twist around enough to see what Sho was doing.

…But the paper was too thin at the end. Even if it was somehow miraculously the right size and shape, it was too flexible, and when he tried to turn it the paper tube just twisted behind the flattened tip. Grimacing again, Sho pulled the paper back into the cage, folded the end of it down over itself to double its thickness, and tried again. This time, though, it wouldn’t fit inside the keyhole at all.

There was nothing to do but reshape it and try again.

Xu settled down once he realized what Sho was up to, the darker rabbit’s ears trying to twitch where they were pinned back behind his shoulders every time a metallic clink or clatter came from right above them. A minute passed, and then another, time grinding away slowly. Eventually the end of Sho’s rolled up strip of paper grew too ragged to be of any use at all, so he flipped the makeshift lock pick around and started shaping the other side, too. That wound up being every bit as effective as his first attempts.

After another minute or so, Xu tried to crane his neck to look at the lock again. “Maybe if I tried…?”

Sho just shook his head and kept at it. It wasn’t easy working with his forearms around his brother’s face, but he still had a much better angle. He doubted Xu would even be able to twist his arms around enough to reach the lock from his position.

Xu seemed to realize as much, too. At least, he didn’t ask for a turn again, even as the evening stretched on. The later it became, the more the frat house filled up, and it wasn’t long before they heard the TV in the basement den outside get switched on. The sounds of shoes on carpet filled the basement, along with college students talking, but Sho didn’t once consider crying out for help, and he was glad Xu thought better of it, too. He could hear Jeffreys out there, and the human was bragging to his friends about the two bunnies they’d caught. There wouldn’t be any help from the other frat boys.

Unfortunately, there would evidently be more attention than Sho would have preferred. He almost choked on his tongue when he heard Jeffreys’s voice, muffled by the walls, ask, “You wanna see them?”