FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A newspaper vending machine flew through the air and crashed through the ground floor window of a high-rise bank. The crowd on the sidewalk bunched together, reeling away from the anthro tiger woman who stood straight-backed with hands on hips. She laughed, a sharp cackle that cut through the din of the escaping crowd.

“That's right," she yelled. “Run! Run for your lives!"

A couple more seconds and the street lay empty save for a handful of people at the ends of the block. A sheet from a newspaper blew across the asphalt, the rustling deafening in the quiet. The tiger squinted her eyes and waited. They were usually faster than this. Now there wouldn't be anyone left except for the cape-chasers to witness her fight.

She stood alone in the street, tail whipping angrily. Her whiskers twitched and she let out a roar. She cut herself short—she sounded piteous and she didn't like that one bit. Maybe she should have taunted a hero directly, instead of shouting a challenge in the middle of the road after stealing a bunch of food from local businesses. She sighed. No, of course that wasn't evil enough for a proper response. The Association would end up sending some lame duck like Quackman or Justice Man to stop her. She turned around. There was always the bank behind her. She could poke her nose in their vault for a bit, pretend to be stealing some cash. She wouldn't take any—she wanted to have a fight, not get fucked in the ass by the taxman.

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. Of course they would make her wait around on the anniversary of her official acceptance to the Index of Villainy. She had even worn her favorite black pants and green vest for the occasion.

Heroes had no tact.

She had half a mind to smash a couple more windows and throw some cars. She eyed the small crowds at both ends of the street. Heroes came faster when there were people to save. It was anybody's guess when they decided to show up for a situation where only they would get hurt. Bunch of selfish cowards.

The tiger grunted and threw back her head. To think they would stand up her was infuriating. Unthinkable. She clenched her fists in anger. She was Nightfang. She was top twenty in class C of super villains. So what if there were five classes above her, she was not to be trifled with. She had worked for that rating, dammit!

So much work that she hadn't talked to any of her friends in years. She crouched, swept her arms around her knees, and plopped down right there on the street. So what if no one had shown yet. She could wait. Waiting was her thing. She had waited for years.

Time ticked by. She flopped onto her back, one leg over the other, hands behind her head. She was the best at waiting. There was no one better at it than her. She bounced a foot. What was another couple of minutes to her? Child's play.

There was a time she wasn't this good at waiting, as impossible as it might seem. She hated waiting around back when she was younger, eager, ready to change the world. She'd complain, kick some rocks through windows, break a guy's arm. Normal teenager things. Back then she didn't appreciate what patience could do, where it could get you.

That reckless impatience brought a sad smile to her face. How dumb had she been! To think charging head-on to the enemy was always the best choice of action. He smile widened. Here she was, all those years later, doing the exact same thing.

Or trying to, at least. Sometimes heroes weren't very cooperative, and today was looking like one of those days. It would be just like them to ruin her chance at honoring her younger self.

Not that they were totally to blame. She had, in a fit of childish glee, knocked over a couple hot dog carts and food trucks—figuratively speaking of course, she wasn't the kind of person to ruin food like that—in the hopes of drawing out a hero while also getting a free lunch. Several free lunches, in fact.

Her stomach churned, and she placed a hand over it. Her smile vanished, replaced with a grimace. Even if she was paying homage to her younger self, she should have known better than to pack away so many hot dogs and tacos. Her stomach flipped angrily. She would be feeling that tonight. Stifling a burp, she pulled a face from the burning sensation in the back of her throat.

The mechanical snap of a camera shutter bounced off the pavement, sounding as if it came from right next to her. Her ears twitched in the direction of the noise. She picked her head up and saw a man crouched right beside a blue mailbox that had been repainted several times. The shutter clicked off again, rapid fire. She frowned. The man lowered the camera, revealing the impressive length of his lens. It reminded her of the telescope her dad got her for a birthday present, and the subsequent night of star gazing. The lens wobbled in the air, and she could see Saturn again, rings fuzzy but distinguishable as a bulging blob around the planet itself.

She sat up, heart pounding. The man glanced up at her, brow furrowed, eyes alert. She knew who he was. That was Cam, the photographer. He shot all of the fights between heroes and villains. Or most of them, anyway. Usually White Wolf wouldn't be too far away when he was around. They were more or less confirmed to be a “thing."

“Hey," she said, “where's your—"

Something hard and small and shaped like a pair of paws slammed into her back. Her nose bounced painfully off the road. Her vision disappeared into a blur, tears bubbling out from her from her eyes and down her fluffy cheeks. She whined, grasping her head.

“That fucking hurt," she said. She blinked furiously, her vision refusing to clear up. The white blur in front of her rippled, slowly coming into focus. It was definitely white, and maybe a wolf. “Ah, finally some real competition."

She stood up, grumbling about cheap shots and a general lack of respect for proper fights. The wolf anthro woman in front of her was large for a wolf—nearly as big as herself. So this was the famous White Wolf. Nightfang smiled. The wolf didn't look all that tough. Sure, she looked built like a brick shithouse but she was still just a wolf. She was at least a head shorter than Nightfang, and looked ridiculous in that white leotard. The wolf's fur bunched out from underneath the material—didn't she know that long fur didn't pair well with tight clothes?

“You're punching above your weight class, Nightfang," White Wolf said. She shifted a foot, relaxing into a stance. “Give it up now, and I promise I won't break all your bones."

“Big talk from someone who has to play dirty to get the first shot," Nightfang said, shaking her head and blinking away the last of her tears. A tingle of excitement resonated through her spine, the tip of her tail flopping from side to side. The camera clicked away, and Nightfang dropped into her signature pose—arms out, claws bared, and a confident smirk showing one of her fangs. She made sure he could get her good side.

White Wolf coiled for the attack, then burst into motion. Nightfang barely had the reflexes to see her approach angle, and even less speed to block. White Wolf hit her like a brick through a windshield. Got you, Nightfang thought. She shifted her smarting arm, let White Wolf slide closer, and punched her in the stomach. Her knuckles crunched painfully together—it felt like concrete under that leotard. Nightfang grunted and went for an uppercut.

White Wolf threw her head back, dodging the blow. She disengaged, took a step back, and threw her own punch. Nightfang saw it coming, knew it was going to land. She'd overextended herself, didn't have the speed to block. White Wolf's fist hit Nightfang in the stomach, slightly off-center and right at the bottom of her rib cage. She felt something pop and all her air hissed out of her mouth. It hurt.

The hit twisted her around. She expected another blow, but it didn't come. She let her momentum carry her back around to face White Wolf, arms back to a defensive position. She struggled to hold still, her arms and legs quivering uncontrollably.

“P-pretty good," Nightfang said. White Wolf smirked, tensed a raised fist.

“Don't tell me that's all you've got?" White Wolf said. “You got me all excited for nothing."

“You've punched me once, bitch." The tiger struggled to keep her face neutral, her eyes watering. This was really not good. She'd come all this way and White Wolf had to be the one to show up for the anniversary fight. One punch, and Nightfang was already at the end of her rope. Try as she might, the tears slipped out from slitted eyelids. She would be lucky if she got out of this fight without a punctured lung.

Nightfang shifted, unable to stifle the wince that came with the twang of pain radiating from her gut. As much as she even hated the thought, she would have to throw in the towel and make a run for it. She shed another tear for her ruined anniversary and slowly reached for her emergency stash.

“There you are, tiger!" a young man said, from above and behind. There was a grunt followed by the sound of shoes hitting the pavement. White Wolf's bemused, disarmed face gave Nightfang the courage to take her eyes off the monster wolf to see the newcomer. She briefly glanced over Cam—camera raised and plugging away—to find Justice Man standing in the middle of the road, hand outstretched, finger pointed directly at her. Of all the people, it just had to be Justice Man.

“Get lost," she said, coughing. Damn, she really wouldn't be able to take another hit.

“Nightfang, female tiger, rank nineteen of class C villains," Justice Man said, striking a pose. Arms outstretched, legs crossed, he grunted like a tennis player. “Now," he said, striking a second pose, “it is time for justice!"

“Give me a break," she said, rolling her eyes and letting her shoulders sag. Glancing back at Cam and White Wolf, she estimated their distances from her. White Wolf was still too close for comfort, but distracted by the arrival of the idiot man. Cam had crept out from the cover of the mailbox. Tch, so he thought she was defeated, eh? The wolf was still focused on Justice—this could be Nightfang's chance.

“You can never escape Justice!" She groaned internally, then leapt into action. A moment later came a grunt from White Wolf jumping after her but it was too late. With Cam close by, the wolf couldn't go all out for fear of harming him. She could see her reflection in the lens of the camera, arms outstretched, claws unsheathed. If not for the rumpled fur and creased clothing, it would make quite the impressive photo. The stupid boy didn't even move, still shooting away.

Was this a trap? It couldn't be, he was just a normal human. A very foolish normal human. Her claws closed around his shoulders, and they collapsed to the ground. She smothered him under her chest while wrapping an arm under his armpit and over his opposite shoulder. Heaving the two of them up, she placed her other hand on the top of his head, claws delicately prickling his scalp. Slowly spinning around, she found the wolf a couple paces away, fist drawn back, a look of utter contempt on her face.

“Stop right there," Nightfang said, “Or your boyfriend here gets the claws." A tad melodramatic. Unnecessary, even, but her back was against the wall. She flexed her hand, hair flowing around her fingers.

“You fiend!" Justice Man shouted from the back. White Wolf narrowed her eyes. Cam was suspiciously silent, but Nightfang didn't dare glance down. The wolf would take even the slightest opening now that her mate was in trouble. Nightfang shifted, moving the lens off the bruise on her stomach.

Cam shifted as well and she tightened her grasp on him. In other circumstances, this embrace might have been rather pleasant. It had been a while since anyone had gotten this close to her. Even longer since anyone had touched her. Now here was a heroine's boyfriend, nestled in her bosom. Granted, he wasn't there of his own free will—but who was keeping track of that? Not this gal.

“Let him go," White Wolf said, a shuddering anger in her voice. She widened her stance, eyes burning with hate.

“Absolutely not," Nightfang said. “What kind of fool do you take me for?" She took a step back. There had to be an out somewhere. The only thing that came to mind was snapping Cam's neck and hoping that White Wolf would stay behind to help him instead of beating her ass into a pulp.

White Wolf snorted. “You harm a single hair on his head and you're dead," she said. Nightfang swallowed. No, that plan wouldn't work. Maybe if she threw Cam at the wolf. Or away from her. Taking a chance, the tiger glanced around at her surroundings. Buildings, more buildings, that mailbox he was hiding behind. Hmm, she could probably throw him through the first floor plate glass of the nearby office block. That might buy her a couple minutes to escape from the wolf.

“Time's up," White Wolf said. She crouched and snarled.

Cam shifted. Nightfang tightened her grasp on him. She felt her claws prick his scalp before something heavy smashed her in the exact spot that White Wolf had punched her earlier. Time compressed, pain blurring her vision, black spots swimming around the corners of her sight. Cam broke free of her grasp and she stumbled back. White Wolf sprung from her squat, dust kicked up from the road—no, that was bits of the asphalt itself gouged by her claws. Justice Man's face warped into a look of dumb surprise.

White Wolf grew larger and larger. It was comical, how far she flew in a single bound. Nightfang had never stood a chance. She saw that now, in how White Wolf flew through the space where Cam had been standing not a second ago and crashed into her with all the force of a commuter train.

The impact hurt, but not as much as the feeling of utter defeat.

White Wolf wrapped her arms around Nightfang, though by that point the tiger had gone limp. There was nothing more that she could do. The fight was over—it was over before it began, if she was being honest.

The two tumbled across the road and slammed into a food cart—of course it just so happened that Nightfang was the one to take the brunt of the impact, her back smashing up against the flat metal side of the cart with a bang that echoed in her skull. She hissed in pain and tried to curl up into a ball, only to have White Wolf squeeze her tighter. Nightfang felt something pop in her back.

Then she was being flipped around and pressed into the grimy sidewalk. There was a black smear of chewed gum in front of her face, and she focused on that spot while her arms were angrily cuffed by White Wolf. Nightfang let out a pained chuckle. In the end, she hadn't done any better than that piece of gum—chewed up, spat out, and ground into the concrete. What a way to celebrate an anniversary. Her ear twitched at the sound of a camera shutter clicking away. At least she would get some good photos out of the endeavor, even if they would show the stuffing getting beat out of her.

There was movement in front of her and she looked up at a female ferret anthro. Nightfang's head throbbed and she wondered where the ferret had been. The street had been completely deserted after she announced her presence—aside from the cape-chasers that stuck around at the ends of the street. Had the ferret decided to move up after determining that White Wolf had everything under control? A hand grabbed Nightfang's head and yanked it back.

“Don't move," White Wolf growled in Nightfang's ear. The wolf tossed the tiger back against the sidewalk with a huff and stood up. Nightfang curled up, the only thing on her mind being a hot bath. She needed one after this fight—what with her ending up laying on the sidewalk. Her fur would be absolutely disgusting. White Wolf stalked off, apparently satisfied that Nightfang wouldn't attempt to escape.

The wolf was replaced with Justice Man, and Nightfang's mood darkened. Her claws twitched in her fingers and it was lucky that he kept his distance from her. There was nothing more hated to Nightfang than a poser, and Justice Man was the most simpering brown-noser she had the misfortune to run into. He wasn't even worth the effort to slash at—though he had provided the distraction necessary for her to capture Cam, if only for a brief moment. She grunted. Perhaps those sorts of fools had their uses after all.

“You see now how foolish you were to flaunt justice?" he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly at the end of the sentence.

“Fuck off," Nightfang said, adding a growl from deep in her chest. He flinched and took a step back. She allowed herself a small smile. A twinge of pain wiped it away. She would be feeling this fight for the next couple of weeks, if not months. Perhaps she should reconsider throwing down with superheroes in the future.

She glanced back up to where the ferret had been standing and saw no sign of her. A part of Nightfang assumed that was because the ferret realized that it was still dangerous. A more rational part knew that was a delusion.