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Percidere, puer, moneo; futuere, puella;
barbatum furem tertia poena manet.
Femina si furtum faciet mihi virve puerve,
haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates.
-- From a statue of Priapus
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo...
Gaius Valerius Catallus, 84BC - 54BC
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CHAPTER ONE
Perceptions
Norma Larson, a rather ordinary gray fox lady, was busy in the kitchen, her paws in the messy mix of a meatloaf. She swiveled her ears at the sound of a vehicle outside, and called out, "Was that the mail?"
"Yeah Mom, I'll get it." Melissa trotted out the door and down the walk to the mailbox.
"He's early today," Mrs. Larson muttered as she loaded the meat into a pan, then washed her hands. Much as she might have enjoyed the taste of blood, she didn't want to get red-brown fingerprints everywhere. Plus that ground meat was painfully cold.
Since being withdrawn from school Melissa tried to be helpful. Anytime something needed doing, she'd do it; then go inhale another doorstopper of a book - she'd already read through most of her parents' old college textbooks, and the public libraries were fast running out of books.
The little gray fox kit walked back in the door sorting a thick stack of mail. "Electric bill, junk, get-rich-quick scam, junk, water bill, letter from cousin Jeff, new pizza place? Oh, yuck, fire that photographer and the chef!" Melissa editorialized as she went down the hall towards her parents' office. The Larsons' jobs in real estate meant that they spent more time on the road than anywhere else, so keeping an office at home worked out quite well. "...Birthday card from Vinnie, phone bill, real estate magazine, foreclosure auctions, bank statement, more jun..." she suddenly went silent and dropped almost the entire stack of mail. The rattle of papers hitting the floor got Mrs. Larson's attention.
"Melissa?" She came around the corner to find her daughter looking absolutely terrified at a flier that was near the bottom of the mail. "What...?" Mom came closer and waved a hand in front of the trembling kit's eyes. "Hey... You okay?". That seemed to break her gaze, but not whatever had given her the sudden fright. Melissa held out the flier as if it were a delicate container full of nerve gas.
Norma took the flier from her daughter's trembling paws and gave it a quick look. The flier appeared to be a rather ordinary ad: Safe Harbor center for Troubled Youth. A quick perusal found a lot of glossy ad-speak, describing the place as a "psychiatric hospital" where cubs that "need correction" could receive "proper treatment".
"Proper treatment? They mean pumping 'em full of drugs?" Melissa's voice could scarcely convey the revulsion she felt. She must have read the one about the Cuckoo's Nest.
Mom sighed. "They probably do. This sounds like an insane asylum." She'd learned to see through this kind of jargon a long time ago when cousin Jeff had to be committed after his suicide attempt. She put the document on the floor, then put her hands on Melissa's shoulders. "Listen... look at me. Look at me. Those are bad places. Some are worse than others, it may be one of those. You're not going there. Long as I have anything to say about it, you're not going there." She hugged her daughter with the fierce protectiveness of a mother whose cub is in danger. Melissa broke down in tears as she hugged her mother.
Tom Larson looked at the flier later that evening. "They must have gotten her name off a list. Gods know how they get that info from the schools." Melissa had been out of the public school system for barely two months. Word must travel fast among advertisers.
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Any time Tom and Norma Larson had time alone, they frequently had long discussions about their kits. They had always been fairly open about bodily functions with their little ones, and were pretty casual about nudity around the house, but never tried to force anything. Usually they let the kits ask about anything that aroused their curiosity. That wasn't the problem.
Sharon, the eldest, was the closest to normal; she was interested in trying out for the dance team and cheerleading squads at school, though she needed some help with her studies. Her grades were adequate, but not stellar. Robert, their third cub, always seemed to have his mind off somewhere else, though the boy frequently made intuitive leaps that surprised everyone.
Their youngest kits, twins Victoria and Veronica, were an oddity. They spoke readily to everyone else, but almost never said anything to each other. They seemed to struggle with the idea that they were separate from each other, and never really seemed to strive for individuality the same way that most other twins did. Melissa once joked that her little sisters were "One brain between two bodies; half a brain here, and half a brain there." That time, the twins demonstrated excellent aim and a clear understanding of flight times - even though Victoria was further away than Veronica, their cups of pudding hit Melissa at the exact same moment.
But their second kit, Melissa... Good Gods, Melissa. She had been a problem to her family from the start, but she wasn't a problem child in the normal sense.
Medically she was a puzzle. Their family doctor noticed that Melissa's scent glands were unusually large; for example, the violet gland was normally just a small spot on a vulpine's tail, but Melissa's violet covered almost the top half of her tail. Blood tests showed that her endocrine system was more active than normal. What really made this baffling was her slow growth rate: at age five, she was still the size and strength of a three-year-old. She also smelled completely wrong for a five-year-old fox - her scent could easily be mistaken for a mature vixen in heat, though it faded away so quickly that tracking her by smell was difficult.
The Larsons noticed that she didn't seem to care for the play that is a cub's first and best education. Sure, she was playing with her sisters, but Melissa seemed to be instructing the twins more than playing with them. She'd also taken to sneaking off to hide quite often, and her hiding places were getting harder to find.
The trouble schools had with her... Great Gods that was a story in and of itself.
Mentally she was so far ahead of any normal development schedule that her parents started her in school right after her little brother was born, several months before she turned five. Most kits start school at the age of six. She spent only two months in first grade, got moved to a second grade class, and by the end of the school year was deemed beyond third grade, possibly fourth. Beyond fourth grade at an age when most cubs are just starting school. In just a few months she'd read almost every book in the school's library, leading to bafflement all around. Where and when did she learn to read so fast? How was she able to retain and comprehend so much that quickly? How can she see right through all the standard intelligence tests?
Beyond academics, her experience at school was not good. Melissa had a bad feeling about one of the teachers she had been assigned to when she was moved to third grade, a Mr. Wilson. Something about the woodchuck just set off warning alarms in the little vixen's mind; the way he patted kits on the head, occasionally on the back, tail, or butt, just seemed to linger a little too long to be a casual touch. Melissa told her parents about her concern, and told of how Mr. W seemed to particularly enjoy paddling a naughty student. "The way he smiled made me feel sick." After a conference with Mr. W, Mrs. Larson agreed with her daughter's feelings about him, and quietly went to the principal.
Before Melissa could be transferred to another class, Mr. Wilson tried to make a move on her. He asked her to stay for a few minutes during recess... and that set the vixen's hackles on edge. She made sure the music player she'd snuck into school was on and recording.
She didn't like what he tried to do. He liked what she did even less.
After fighting Mr. Wilson off, she ran to the principal with the recording, the bloody evidence on her face, and provided the lock that sealed the quickly-ex-teacher in a prison cell. The principal, superintendent, and four union representatives had all been suspicious of Mr. Wilson, but they couldn't do anything without hard proof. Testimony from a child would be enough if it could be had, and Melissa was the most reliable witness brought up. She did break a rule by sneaking the music player into school, but the principal was willing to let that go since there wasn't any music on it. They'd heard similar accounts from other kits, but it became one's word against another (And, of course, who would be believed? Many of the cubs in question had frequently been caught lying, stealing, and cheating, among other things.) The other teachers' accusations might have held up to scrutiny, but all they could prove was that he was just a slimy asshole who knew how to sleaze his way out of damn near anything.
Mr. Thompson, the public defender, really didn't want to handle the case. The staff of the school - from the principal to the janitors - were all against Wilson, and Melissa effortlessly sliced up the lawyer's maneuvering. "No, Mr. Thompson, I didn't use 'words to that effect.' It's on the recording. What I said was, 'If it's out there," she pointed around the courtroom, "you can have it. But if it comes in here," she snarled, pointing into her mouth to show off her predatory teeth, "it's mine.'"
The recording she had made of the incident, the samples of Mr. Wilson's blood taken from her mouth, her toothmarks on his penis, and the lack of damage to his clothing were the real clinchers. The jury handed down a unanimous guilty verdict after only a few minutes of deliberation. After the judge's gavel fell, Mr. Thompson broke Mr. Wilson's nose and stormed out of the courtroom. "FUCK these court appointed cases!" That wouldn't be the last time Mr. Wilson experienced a rabbit's punch.
Through it all, Melissa was calm and cool headed; remarkable for a kit only six years old. She didn't let herself cry until after the case was closed and Mr. Wilson was learning what the kits he'd abused felt like.
Mom gave Melissa a hug when she came down for breakfast. "Did you sleep well? How are you feeling?" The trial had been rough, and the kit's eyes were still red from crying.
"Mom, I had a dream about Mr. Wilson... I cut his penis off, put it on a hot dog bun, added mustard and chili, and ate it." She smiled. "It tasted like victory."
She rarely had problems sleeping after the case was closed.
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The city of Conway only had four private schools, and they had just as many problems as the public schools. One school refused to admit Melissa after she completely aced their placement tests; she had to give her parents a crash course in statistics before they could understand what the teachers said about her scores.
Trying to home school Melissa proved a real challenge. Most of the local tutors were accustomed to working with slow or uneven learners, not prodigies. One tutor was promptly fired when he tried to fondle the kit - her unceasing sexy smell must have set him off. Mom put another potential tutor in the hospital. Word of advice: NEVER threaten to hurt a kit, especially with her mother in earshot. Several other tutors had to admit they didn't have the training. The only other homeschoolers in town were problem children in the more conventional sense, so the educational co-op was all but out of the question.
"Hi, I'm Tim Douglas, you'd contacted Forward Learning regarding our home school program?" This guy was going to be the last resort. Hiring a lawyer would be next on the Larsons' list - their real estate careers meant that they dealt with a number of attorneys to handle closings, and someone had to know how to deal with schools.
Melissa kept an ear open from the next room while she read one of Dad's old college textbooks, The United States of North America. It was a fascinating read, but she couldn't quite focus on the book. Her name had been mentioned too many times already. Mr. Douglas spoke with the Larsons for quite some time; from what Melissa caught he mostly wanted to know about her reading skills and learning habits, and if she had any kind of social or developmental difficulties. Then they called her in. She brought the book along.
Mr. Timothy Douglas was an old gopher who seemed to be of an even older school. Dressed in a rather ordinary suit, pudgy build, glasses, well-worked voice, his mane trimmed to match the rest of his fur, he was the very image of a nerdy academic. The only thing that would complete his image would be a bow tie and the attitude of an insufferable know-it-all, but that wasn't the case. He was friendly and personable.
Tim Douglas noticed the scent. Even when his wife and daughter were in heat, they never smelled that sexy. He also noticed that Melissa seemed far better coordinated than any cub he'd ever seen. She moved like a dancer. And was damn sexy for looking so young... He blinked the thought away; that might be how she caught Mr. Wilson.
Introductions went around, and he asked why she was reading that history book.
"I read that one before, it's quite grown up for a kit. Please, call me Tim."
"How old do you think I am, Tim?" She still wanted to call him Mr. Douglas.
The gopher was taken aback by her manner of speech. "Five, maybe?"
"My eighth birthday is next month. Did you tell him about my growth disorder?" she asked her parents.
"We wanted you to tell him." Mrs. Larson replied. "You said it better, last time anyone asked."
Melissa launched into a thorough description of her most noticeable condition: she grew and aged slowly, and still had some infantile traits - for one example, she still hadn't lost all of her baby teeth, and her fur still had the muted soil colors found on infant foxes. That was the first time during the interview that she used words that Mr. Douglas didn't know. Her definitions were as concise as a medical dictionary.
The phone rang, and Mom excused herself. Dad sat to one side, perfectly placed to notice that Mr. Douglas had a raging stiffie, but the gopher seemed to be ignoring it.
"I have a few placement tests to give you. Before we can talk about any study plans, we need to know where to start," he pulled out a sheaf of papers as Dad got up to go to the kitchen. "Your father tells me you're a little ahead of the curve."
Melissa quickly scanned over the tests. "I can see the reason for some of these, math, reading skills, familiarity with culture and history, yadda yadda. You certainly cover the range on the math test: two plus seven equals nine, sixteen plus twenty-nine equals forty-five; twelve times eight is ninety-six, X squared plus four X plus four factors out to open paren X plus two close paren squared; number sixteen comes out to 19.63495 square meters; integral of four pi R squared DX comes out to four-thirds pi times R cubed plus some constant, though the constant is usually assumed to be zero since that's the volume of a sphere. Problem nineteen has no answer, since the denominator comes out to zero regardless of X and Z..."
Mr. Douglas shook his head and took the math test back. Her pace was of an auctioneer trying to sell dubious goods, no wonder she was skipping over large chunks of the test. She hadn't even written anything down. "Care to give geometry a try?"
Melissa continued to astound Mr. Douglas. She quickly improvised some tools from the lined notebook paper he gave her for scratch pages. Measure, mark, fold, fold, measure, mark, measure, then a deft cut with her pocketknife, and she had some serviceable reference angles to make a crude protractor. She almost bragged about this, "It's as easy as one, two, square root of three."
The gopher gaped at her ingenuity, but made a note about her having a pocketknife. And she solved the first proof in record time. The next two problems fell just as quickly and accurately.
"What, no vector calculus?" Melissa grinned. She knew there were some subjects that she didn't understand, though she considered it a matter of finding the right book.
The gopher tried throwing Melissa an impromptu curve, making her spell an unusual word and use it in a sentence. "C-A-L-L-I-P-Y-G-I-A-N." The little vixen tried not to laugh, "From Greek kalli- beauty, and pyge hindquarters; possessing a beautiful posterior. When Ned described the waitress as callipygian, his wife punched him in the face." Norma had walked into the room just in time to catch that exchange, and she sprayed a mouthful of water on the wall before she could let her laughter out. Dad nearly fell off his chair.
"You okay, Mom?" Melissa asked.
Norma coughed in between peals of laughter. "I'm *cough* fine! Hee hee hee!" She left to get a towel.
"Okay, we can skip that one," Mr. Douglas sighed and put the vocabulary test away.
"Where did you learn that word?" her father asked when he stopped laughing long enough to breathe.
"What chapter were you up to in United States of North America?"
"Chapter 21, what happened during the Asian Economic war. Russia's economy had gone through a meltdown; Korea had a complete crash of their own after they finally reunified, and Japan took them under their wing; and then China launched what had to be the first-ever financial offensive against Japan. China started by revaluing their currency, and it quickly outran the foreign trade markets; for a while, the Yuan threatened to replace the Euro, Yen, and Dollar as primary international trade currency. Then they started working on leveraged buyouts, aiming to get Korea under their control and away from Japan, with an eye toward taking Siberia after that. The Japano-Korean empire wasn't about to put up with it, and launched their own counter-offensive - Oh! Thanks, Dad!" Melissa took the glass of water from her father, lapped at it, then continued, "The authors credit a united North and Central America - One nation under Canada, as they put it - with having the industrial, financial, and military might to make China take a step back from launching any actual invasions, though I think there was more to it than that. The European and African unions seemed to have the political will, but I think they would have needed more time to get coalition forces together to be effective. I haven't finished the chapter yet, though I suspect several other nations had a big part in settling the whole mess. South America was tied up in its own conflicts, although Chile and Brazil did a pretty good job of keeping anyone else from getting out of hand. India had tried to stay out of it, but their currency came under attack as well; they had the military, but not the will. The mere threat of NBC - that's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical - warfare would have made everyone take a step back, and I doubt Israel, Iran, or Australia would have hesitated to let those fly," she drank a little more water, "Amazing that a global war was almost started with money."
Mr. Douglas stared in astonishment before he put away the tests on reading comprehension and social studies. Melissa hadn't even looked at either of them, and she'd already rattled off more than both tests covered. That monstrous textbook gave many undergraduates and graduate students headaches. But, Hell, the little vixen talked like she was there.
"What's the point of this test? It looks like a questionnaire from a nutty paranormal website - Inexplicable cold spots? Clairvoyance? Reincarnation?" She flipped a page. "Come on, where's the part about UFOs and Men In Gray Suits?" Her tone was getting snarky.
The old gopher sighed, took the rest of his tests back, gathered his materials, and got up. He'd have to go over his recording to make a full report.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Larson. I don't think I can handle Melissa either. I personally think she'd be better off with a proper school, though none of the ones I can refer will admit anyone under the age of fourteen. I'll send a list of recommendations along with a copy of my report. There's no charge for this session." He turned to Melissa, "You, young lady, are going to be an utter vexation to any educational system."
Melissa smiled sweetly and asked, "Are the systems unable to learn?"
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A week after meeting with Mr. Douglas, Melissa had an accident... how to put this delicately... she lost her virginity to the frame of her bicycle. Melissa swerved to avoid a car speeding down their road, and crashed into the neighbor's mailbox; she fell off the seat and her crotch hit the frame. If Mom hadn't seen the accident and only saw the results, she would have gone on a rampage and castrated every male in a ten mile radius. With her teeth.
That car must have been stolen, since the license plate was missing. The driver also wiped out another neighbor's mailbox and sideswiped a fence before speeding out of the neighborhood.
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Several more advertisements followed in the mail. Safe Harbor, Wall Center, King's Orchard, and Dawson Regional had similar layouts and copy - quite possibly all run by the same company. The photos of Lewis Academy showed a place that looked like a hospital. Lighthouse Educational showed no pictures, but the description made them sound more like a prison. The Waldorf School sent a booklet about "unconventional cubs, unconventional education," advertising a boarding school that let students learn entirely at their own pace and choice, but they had to petition to graduate. That sounded promising, but it was on the other end of the country, and hideously expensive despite all the financial help available.
Melissa wrote to The Waldorf School asking about their diploma process. She got a phone call in reply, and the school administrator had a hard time believing that he was talking directly to an eight year old. She set up a video call over the internet to see if a face to face conversation would help. Once again this came to naught: the school was dedicated to handling troubled kits. The administrators were not certain they could handle a prodigy like her at all.
Melissa was pretty nonchalant and even laughed about most of the scholastic mailers; but Safe Harbor, Wall Center, and King's Orchard all scared her. They sent several duplicates.
Melissa's reaction to the letters worried her parents; no matter how they looked at it, they came to the same conclusion: their daughter was wise far beyond her years. She always showed great disdain for stupid mistakes, more so when she made them. They were left with more questions than answers - how could she just KNOW what those fliers were before she opened them?
College would be cheaper than most of the boarding schools, and probably easier to get into. The problem was that most of them, even the local community college, required at least a GED for admission.
The school board initially denied Melissa any access to the GED program. They pointed to her being withdrawn from school, regardless of her part in the Wilson case, as the excuse for their refusal. They wanted proof of tutoring in the form of receipts and reports. Melissa flippantly suggested getting a lawyer, and then the board backed down to reconsider.
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The Larsons tried to get Melissa into martial arts to give her some physical activity; although she welcomed the classes, tales of how they backfired could fill a bookshelf. Three karate studios were all shut down due to allegations of sexual abuse from the other students' families (somehow nobody ever connected Melissa's arrival to the incidents, nor was she ever involved) and several claims of cub-on-cub sexual contact. A rumor circulated that an eleven-year-old girl had gotten pregnant, though details were sketchy.
Melissa never found any substance to the rumor about the pregnant girl, although she did find out that some sexual activity was going on and one dojo was being used as a front for several illegal activities, the least of which was money laundering. Too bad that place got shut down by the police, she really did like the defensive styles of Aikido and Wing Chun.
During that year she turned up another problem. Her extremely slow growth also meant very slow healing; cuts and scrapes that would disappear in two weeks on a normal cub took Melissa well over a month. However, she seemed to heal without scarring. She got a cut on her face when she was hit during one sparring session; it would have left a mark on any other kit, but when it finally healed up two months later, there was no trace of her ever having been hurt. The family doctor was stumped again.
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During her attempts at martial arts, one old master of Kung Fu agreed to give Melissa a try on a one-on-one basis, but he stopped after one month of almost daily practice. "She learn too fast, her body can not keep up. I know of no teacher for her." Her parents noticed the instructor's enormous boner, and figured that was part of why he wanted to stop the lessons.
Melissa said something to him in Mandarin Chinese, followed by a very proper bow. Mr. and Mrs. Wu's expressions made the Larsons wish they had a camera ready.
After the red panda and his wife were out of earshot, her parents asked her what that was all about. "I heard him say that to someone on the phone one day. I still need to figure out what it means," Melissa lied. She knew EXACTLY what it meant. And it was something to blush over.
Melissa had learned quite a lot in such a short time, and the training gave her a great boost in confidence. And a great boost in other things.
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CHAPTER TWO
Thigmotropism
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Tweedledeedle. Tweedledeedle. Tweedledeedle. Click. "Hello, Larson residence."
The voice on the telephone asked, "Hello. Is Norma Larson available?"
"Just a moment." Melissa covered the mouthpiece. "Hey, Mom? Your doctor's on the phone."
The young vixen paused. How the heck did she know it was Mom's doctor? She didn't recognize the voice, and this extension didn't have a caller ID display.
"I'll get it in the office," Mom yelled back. Melissa waited until Mom picked up, then hung up.
Melissa rolled her eyes and sighed as she took another load of bedsheets out of the dryer. These odd feelings and sudden knowledge were getting more commonplace; she'd have to be sure to write it down in her journal later. Her computer was busy compiling parts of a new operating system, and probably would be for the next hour or two, so she needed something to do in the meantime. Laundry was boring, but it had to be done; and it kept her hands busy while her mind processed through the last book on Assembler Programming she'd inhaled.
Foxes are known for their keen hearing; being in another part of the house didn't keep Melissa from overhearing her mother's excited tone on the telephone. She couldn't make out a word of the conversation, but she didn't have to. She just knew. The kit shook her head again and went back to folding the linens.
When Mom came into the laundry room, Melissa said, "You're pregnant again." Her tone was neutral, much like asking for another dryer sheet. Not even a question, just a statement. She didn't even look up at her mother.
Mom's jaw fell open. She was taken completely aback by Melissa's completely calm, seemingly out of nowhere comment. "How..."
"That's why your doctor called. She sounded like she had pretty important news."
After the laundry was finished, Melissa and her mother had a long talk. The kit revealed what she knew about sex and when she'd learned about it - she had found several books during her many visits to the library, and read through them before the librarians even knew she was in that part of the stacks. She rattled off stories of sexual abuse and how to spot the signs - part of how she managed to seal Mr. Wilson's case. She clearly knew the biomechanical ins and outs (and in and out and in and out...), and even recited part of a book on techniques - "oh, you and Dad would love that one, it's on the third floor, back in the northwest corner. I found a lot more stuff back there, including a full illustrated translation of the Kama Sutra. Mom, I'm surprised that a public library would have books like those, let alone leave them where little kits can find them!"
Norma blushed to the tips of her ears when Melissa pointed out, "You and Dad haven't exactly made a secret of your sex lives. I've caught you guys yiffing about every other month. I can hear you clear across the house, especially when you forget to pull the bed away from the wall. I'm surprised these bedsprings are still holding up."
Their conversation about sex and sexuality went several places that neither expected, one thing led to another, clothing came off, hands went on, things got snuggly, and... Dad interrupted them. The adults completely lost themselves in Melissa's scent, nuzzling and licking their daughter while they were plugged in.
It got real awkward when Sharon found them an hour later.
Things felt more awkward the next morning. Her brother hardly paid any attention, since his mind was somewhere out in left field, as usual. The twins knew something was up with their parents and eldest siblings, but seemed to accept it with hardly any reaction - they looked at each other, nodded, then went back to their pancakes.
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Mom miscarried a couple months later; her OB/GYN said that this had damaged her uterus, and getting pregnant again could easily kill her. To avoid any mishaps, Dad got a vasectomy and Mom had her tubes tied. Each wanted to surprise the other with the news. Oops.
Melissa felt responsible for that for quite a long time, although it didn't hurt the Larsons' sex drive at all.
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Around Melissa's ninth birthday, her growing psychic ability became really hard to ignore. Her tendency to Sense and Know things was becoming so common that she often knew what someone was about to say before they spoke. The bigger surprise came when Mom, Dad, and Sharon started answering to things that Melissa was about to say, but hadn't yet put voice to. The twins frequently reacted to Melissa's unspoken thoughts. When she realized that the twins were talking back to her the same way, she freaked.
"Don't all kits do it?" Tori asked, probably the first time in three days that she had actually spoken aloud to her older sister.
Melissa needed to go hide after that.
Melissa became determined to find out just what was going on, and if there was a way to control this... thing. Would certainly explain a few things that had been happening, such as how she knew Mom was pregnant, Robert's knee was fractured rather than merely sprained, and Dad and Sharon had food poisoning rather than a virus. Not to mention the weirdly silent conversations she was having with her little sisters.
The public library wasn't much help. Any books they had about psychic phenomena were either sensationalist and full of salt and unanswered questions, or skeptical, dismissive, derisive, and shorter yet on facts. The internet wasn't much help either - every time she tried to search for any information about psychic phenomena, she kept getting referred to sites that were loaded with spyware and bad code. Some of them did have some information, but again it was so sketchy as to be completely useless.
Another letter from Safe Harbor arrived, and this time she KNEW what was giving her such a fright. The place seems to be a nut house, she thought, but it's worse than that. Death lurks here. Research into Safe Harbor, Wall Center, and King's Orchard netted more advertisements; but there were no reviews, nothing about actual treatments or cures, no mention of what doctors worked in the place, or placement for anyone after they were released from "treatment". But Melissa had no way to prove what she felt; all the hard data she could find presented a blank slate. What really bothered her was how she knew these things. Plus she couldn't find much about that Dawson Regional place.
After getting a lawyer involved in her educational program, Melissa breezed through the public school's GED program and finished just after her tenth birthday. Her older sister was taking French at the regular school, and her younger brother had started on Spanish. She borrowed their books and study materials, blazed through them in an afternoon, and pretty much had the basics nailed down in a week. She had to do some reading and a ton of listening to fill out her knowledge of the languages, but that didn't take long; she found a shortwave radio at a garage sale, and used international broadcasts to practice. Melissa had decent command of both languages after just one year of helping her siblings with their homework.
Once she had her GED, the local college agreed to admit her on a light course schedule. They'd never had anyone so young as a regular student, and all involved were worried about her keeping up. She quickly showed that their concern was academic.
The logistics of getting to and from the college proved to be the only real problem. Her parents' jobs meant that they had to keep some really wild appointment schedules, and with four other kits now in school they couldn't reliably get her there. For one example, the Russian Language class she wanted was in a late afternoon time slot, and most of her classmates either had lots of other classes earlier in the day, or their schedules went on late into the evening. The answer came from a classmate who had a Calculus class two hours before Russian 101, and nothing else that day. Mr. Darius Roger, a raccoon, agreed to pick her up from his house; he lived about two miles away from the Larsons, an easy enough ride for a kit.
Mr. Roger (he often went by his last name, since few could remember Darius) and Melissa turned out to be a real boon to each other: he was having problems with the math classes required for the advanced engineering degree he was aiming for, and she helped him with that. He provided transportation, and both worked on the language classes. Russian was required for his career, since much of the scientific literature that he needed to study and refer to had originally been published in that language; for Melissa it was just for the challenge. She didn't mind auditing the math class, and had considerable fun pointing out errors, both from the professor and the textbook. Melissa noticed that her handwriting was far better in Russian than English, partly due to having to learn a different alphabet.
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Access to the college library helped settle Melissa's concerns about her growing psychic ability. Several books offered a very scientific approach, including one that told of how experiments were structured to find psychic abilities, and offered suggestions on how to improve the experiments; it looked like a graduate student's thesis. She found a dusty old tome that surprisingly answered most of her questions, and even offered exercises and techniques for developing psychic skills. That book wasn't in the library's catalog, but it had an anti-theft security tag on it. The book itself seemed to have a strange vibe - its presence seemed to say, Learn what I have and leave me here. Take me and bad things will happen. Just reading the book felt like taking bait - it read like a reference work, as if it were meant to be a handbook. It had been placed in a really out of the way corner of the upper floor, very odd. She carefully copied as much as she could, and as much as she felt relevant. One of the things she highlighted in her own notes was that physical contact could make psychic abilities far more effective. Much like grabbing a radio antenna, she thought.
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Along the way Melissa learned other things.
Mrs. Teresa Roger was a nurse and a serious survivalist. Melissa learned about evacuation preparations (also known as Bugging Out) from her, caching supplies in various locations, learning wilderness survival skills, and so on. Mrs. Roger invited Melissa's family along on camping trips - ostensibly as vacations, but these were as much to practice field craft. Her brother loved fishing, but didn't much care for the rest of the activities; the rest of her family took to it well enough except during winter. Sharon was the only one who didn't seem to mind cold weather.
This also led to a small change in Melissa's normal clothing choices. She always hated carrying a purse, her backpack wasn't always appropriate attire, and wallets were far too bulky for her liking. After some hunting, she found several nice vests that were easily modified to add a large number of spacious pockets. The vests were a bit big for her, but the little vixen liked them that way.
Her parents offered to buy her a new bicycle for her birthday; she selected a work bike that was designed for rough off-road riding, geared for low speed and high torque, with wide tires for riding in sand or mud. She wasn't out to win races, she wanted to be able to go cross country with a large load of stuff. It turned out to be a great camping bike.
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CHAPTER THREE
Chemotaxis
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When Sharon hit puberty, she started sneaking to Melissa's room at night; mostly to snuggle, but snuggles soon turned into makeouts. Melissa didn't seem to object.
The Larsons suspected a sexual relationship between their daughters, and were quite worried. They couldn't rightfully reproach their daughters, when they'd gotten it on with Melissa that one time, and the usual sibling discord between them had all but evaporated. They wondered how to broach the subject with the girls, but then it promptly got worse.
Sharon had serious problems when she went into her first heat. Her symptoms were not a good sign for anyone in Mom's family: chronic low fever, constant uncomfortable arousal, clouded judgment, massive shifts in appetite, wild mood swings, and a real short temper; almost every vixen that had those symptoms either ended up pregnant before she turned fourteen, disappeared and were never heard from again, or in prison after committing violent sexual crimes - most often rape. Dad was astonished to hear about the last bit, and wondered aloud, "How? I mean, can a female even force a male..."
"If you know anatomy--" Melissa interrupted, and Sharon snarled, "Don't give me any ideas."
Doctor Frasier, their new family physician, was very understanding. She explained that Hard Heat showed up quite often in skunks like herself, but was nowhere near as common in vulpines. "Mrs. Larson, good work remembering your family history and catching this early." The doctor turned her attention to Sharon, "Listen... I know this is going to be rough; I've been through it myself. I'm going to have you take two weeks off from school, then you be back for another check, all right? I'm also going to put you on birth control pills. They will help even out your hormones and settle you back down for the longer run, but they won't make much difference right now. I'm sorry, you'll just have to tough this round out." She gave Sharon a reassuring pat on the knee.
The doctor turned back to Mom, "Her sex drive will be extremely high for at least a week, and she may not have very good judgment for a while after that. About the only treatment anyone knows of involves mating as often as possible or getting pregnant. I recommend getting her a dildo or two, as a trustworthy sex partner for someone her age may be rather hard to find; I'm really surprised that she's this... calm... Oh." The doctor noticed how Sharon was leaning and sniffing in Melissa's direction.
Melissa noticed as well, and focused on ramping up her scent. She came over to the exam table and hopped up next to her sister, and the difference was quite plain to see: Sharon relaxed considerably when her little sister sat beside her. Melissa looked to her mother.
"If she needs to have lots of sex, I'll do it."
Mom's jaw hit the floor, followed by Doctor Frasier's. Sharon's eyes went wide, and then she planted a very hungry deep kiss on her sister.
When Sharon finally let her up for air, Melissa laid out her reasoning. "We're both female, so there's no chance of accidental pregnancy. You know my history. Sis, do I smell good to you?"
"Yes..." Sharon nodded and murred, her nose buried in Melissa's neck fur. Her movements quite clearly said, if you don't mount me right now, I will mount you.
Melissa answered with a soft purr, "Enjoy," as she accepted another tongue-tangling kiss from her sister. The room started to reek of sex as the little vixen let her scent go, and both adults found themselves getting hot in the pants.
"She makes a potent case..." Doctor Andrea Frasier read Melissa's file when she took over the practice, and from that info figured she'd better get Norma Larson out of there before they both lost control of themselves.
-------
Dr. Frasier suggested that Tom and Robert might be better off out of the house for the time being. Melissa had saturated her family with The Come Fuck Me Scent to the point that Sharon's raging hormones hardly registered in their noses; but even so, keeping men out of the house would be a priority. The doctor's concern was that Sharon might assault them. She didn't want any of her patients to have to go through what happened to her own family.
During the first week Sharon and Melissa made out a great deal. The younger kit's scent helped ease the older vixen through tough moments. Mom was still worried, but she gave each of them a present that normally would have waited until they were at least fifteen - toys for Big Girls. As per the doctor's orders.
The younger vixen made a rather surprising discovery after six days of such intimate contact. One afternoon Melissa had playfully tied Sharon down so she wouldn't try to pounce the postman. Instead of releasing her sister after getting the mail, Melissa used her own scent to tease Sharon for a bit, getting her even more hot and bothered.
Melissa noticed that Sharon was responding to her unspoken words again. After carrying on her half of the conversation without saying a word out loud for a few minutes, the younger fox gave a mental push, focusing on a feeling. Her older sister moaned in ecstasy, then yowled as she came to climax.
Puzzled, she let her sister up to go use the bathroom and clean up. Sharon seemed more clear headed after having an orgasm; maybe she could catch up on some more schoolwork now?
Despite the dry subject of algebra, Sharon started getting hot between the legs in less than an hour. All through that time she'd been answering unspoken questions and math problems that weren't completely read out loud. Melissa focused on the feeling again, and her big sister squawked in climax. Melissa didn't even have to touch Sharon to bring her off again.
And again. And again. Sharon's appetite for the experience seemed insatiable, and her younger sister had just found a very easy way to satisfy.
Melissa was surprised when she gave Dad an unexpected orgasm; he figured that was from all the hot sexy vixens in the house, then he cleaned up, grabbed what he came for, and left. She set Mom off later that afternoon.
Then she felt a serious need to go hide for a little while.
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Melissa had a crisis of conscience that evening. And a bit of a headache.
Sharon had just dozed off after a good makeout, still snuggling Melissa. What did I do? Why do I feel so right, when it seems so wrong? ... My sister... Dad... and Mom... oh wow.
She let Sharon slip into a deeper sleep before disengaging herself. Melissa quietly got up from her sister's bed, padded over to the window, and opened it just enough to let in some moonlight and fresh air. Gods above and below, the room stank of sex.
She looked out at the moon. Goddess... what am I? Why does it feel good and frighten me? Melissa brought one hand up to the wetness between her own thighs, and had to struggle to keep from making any noise or collapsing to the floor as a colossal orgasm overtook her. She hadn't realized that she was that severely aroused after being so focused on her sister. A group of nonev squirrels in the tree outside launched into an orgy as Melissa came.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Memento Mori
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Shortly after her Eleventh birthday, Melissa killed a man. A creepy whitetail buck at the College thought he could use the psychology he'd been studying to make a move on her. The buck always felt sexy when that little vixen was around, and had difficulty concealing a boner whenever he saw her. He took some time to figure out what was going on, and found that her scent was the real source of the sexy. Follow the boner, and find the kit almost every time. He wasn't sure if the little vixen was a student or just a tag-along kid, but he was determined to find out.
Her classes were much later in the day than most of the other students, so he had to think of a good excuse to be in the building at that hour - he found another class in the building, and asked the professor if he could audit a few sessions. It was a bit of a distance away from the Languages wing, but defensible if he parked on the other side of the building.
Stalking a predatory species was a lot trickier than he expected. Over the next three weeks he only caught sight of the cute vixen a handful of times, and never got close enough to start a conversation. And she hangs around with a raccoon. Hmm. How to earn her trust enough to separate them...
The buck got a stroke of luck one evening. The class he was auditing had been canceled for that evening, and as he headed back to his car he saw Melissa in the hallway, headed for the nearest restroom.
"Oh, Hello," he called out to her. She paused, looked back, and then went right on walking at a slightly faster pace. Earn her trust? How the hell could he do that if he couldn't even speak to her?
"What's that scent you're wearing?" he called out. Crud, it was also making him loopy. All pretense of seduction was quickly lost as he took off running after Melissa. The only coherent thought he could muster was MUST. FUCK. NOW.
When he tried to grab her, she acted on what felt like an instinct. The buck collapsed, losing four points off his antlers when he hit the floor, blood trickling from his ears and nostrils. The loud crack was enough to garner attention in a hurry.
She dashed off to a different restroom and hid while a massive commotion erupted into the hall from a nearby classroom.
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Melissa was quite shaken for the next several weeks; the police were questioning nearly everyone at the college, but they all seemed to skip her. She was about to activate her incomplete bug out plans and go hide somewhere in the woods when the report came back that the creep had suffered an aneurysm that led to a massive cerebral hemorrhage, attributed to some questionably-legal drugs in his system. The trace evidence crew said an unknown female (species not absolutely certain, fox suspected) was present at the scene, but since it happened in a hallway it wasn't conclusive. Witnesses said the scene stank of a female in heat. "Whoever she was, I hope she gets to a therapist," the chief wrote in the Police Blotter column of the local newspaper, "and gets on birth control pills that'll suppress her heat cycle." Right then she felt much relieved, the police were looking for an adult, not an apparent kit.
The Rogers started to treat Melissa like she was part of their own family after that incident. They were trying for a cub of their own, and welcomed her presence in their house. Especially if she sat in their bedroom for a while...
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A few weeks later, Melissa's ne'er-do-well Uncle Fred dropped in unexpectedly, and demanded a place to stay for a few months. The Larsons were not about to put up with him, as Dad never liked his brother. The reason became all the more clear when he chased Melissa down and tried to do more than just fondle her. This time, she thought through exactly how to set the scene - let him get his pants open...
Uncle Fred wound up in the hospital, savagely beaten by his brother and permanently suffering severe hallucinations from Melissa ripping through his brain. One neurologist thought Uncle Fred's strokes came from the numerous repeated blows to the skull, and opined that he might never completely recover. A family shakeup was expected but never happened. "If the law would permit it," said Grandma, "I'd castrate the fucker myself. I'll defend you if he doesn't survive."
Norma quietly admitted, "I'm just glad he didn't get here when Sharon was having problems."
Fred didn't last long after another inmate recognized him. Grandma spearheaded the effort to get the murderer acquitted. She knew her son's rap sheet better than the police did, and had been trying to get him properly jailed for years.
Thomas Larson's side of the family has some real characters.
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Case #6685531982 "BROADCASTER"
Subject: Unknown
Entry 20443:
Psi Search Division
Seeker 51 reports being overloaded by powerful psionic burst in region centered on grid B931c. Seeker stated that the emitter was extremely powerful, to the point where it could not be localized; events of this magnitude can have similar effects for hundreds of kilometers, often further.
Short term: Continue monitoring region to see if emitter repeats.
Long term: Capture recommended, priority to be determined by Head Office.
Priority: HIGH
Keep this area under surveillance as work load permits. This individual may have the ability to remotely injure Seekers. Psi Search is on alert.
Entry 20821:
Psi search division reported another blast in the same area. Sixteen possible sources have been identified, case nos. 5997219547, 6553546445, 66568573492, 6659192857, 6694832721, and 6724698125 are most high probability, all are in the same grid square. Psi search will monitor as workload permits. Investigation started.
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By Autumn of that year, Melissa's evacuation plans were finalized and tested. She made her parents aware of her preparations, and brought them in on the plan. At first her family thought she'd been hanging around the survivalist Mrs. Roger a bit too much over the summer, but after her encounters with Mr. Wilson, the whitetail buck at the college, and the incident with Uncle Fred, they were very understanding. They even asked her to help with their own supplies and plans.
Melissa hid caches of supplies in various places around town, locations she could easily get to without being noticed. She kept her main emergency supplies at home where they could be grabbed for camping trips or major emergencies. One bug-out bag went to the Rogers' house, they agreed to keep that one up with their own bugout supplies. She hid a second one at the College, but keeping that one ready for use was problematic. A third went to her grandmother's apartment across town, and she even put one together for Grandma. Dad found a place outside of town where they could put a much larger cache of supplies in case of bigger emergencies or any need to stay gone for a longer period. Melissa thought this was a bit much, but agreed that there's no such thing as being too prepared. They were worried about keeping firearms in the hiding place, since Dad's family had so much of a criminal background. They did accumulate a collection of knives, and Melissa found directions for building bows and arrows - she found that making a lethal weapon was depressingly easy.
------------
Setting up extra lines of communication proved to be almost effortless. Her parents had given her a cell phone when she started at the college, but she didn't feel comfortable relying on that alone. Melissa coached her parents through getting Amateur Radio licenses; they all did reasonably well on the tests, and thanks to a good eye for bargains the family soon had a good backup means of keeping in touch.
Mom got a bit worried when Dad and Melissa worked out some very thorough signal plans - including subtle means of each letting the other know if something was wrong. They made sure the whole family knew which signal meant what.
Melissa played games with her family just to practice the codes and signals. The twins learned the quickest, and seemed to enjoy it. Robert didn't really care about anything his geeky sister came up with, but learned the signals just because Dad told him to. At times the young tod seemed to be trying to distance himself from his family, but Melissa was convinced he was really That Far Out There. Left field comments were always his style.
-------
Mrs. Roger just had a pregnancy confirmed after months of trying. She called her husband with the news as they were on their way to the college, and said she'd meet him at the indoor gun range after she got off work.
Melissa called home after class. And promptly found she had to use a different call entirely.
Her hand held radio was capable of transmitting on three of the frequency ranges set aside for amateur radio operators. Two were pretty strictly local VHF and UHF, not able to get terribly far without the help of repeaters, a really good high spot, and really screwy conditions; but the third band, six meter, could go much further under more common conditions. The dinky antenna that came with the radio was the first thing the little vixen replaced, and the antenna currently stuck to the roof of Mr. Roger's car was better than the replacement. She tried a VHF repeater first.
"Kilo niner zulu mike alpha tango, this is Kilo niner zulu mike delta sierra, mobile."
She repeated the call four more times. Getting her mother to the radio usually took a few minutes; the cheap scanner she used to monitor their usual radio frequencies was quite often hard to hear. Plus Mom probably unhooked everything before the storm.
"K 9 Zed-{static}-head K 9 Zed M {static}."
"Mom? I can barely read you."
"Same here - {static}losing your sig-{long burst of static}-ter has emer-{static}-fic. Can you - {static}"
Melissa pressed a button on her radio to check the frequency Mom was transmitting on.
"{static}-at all? You're keying up the repeater, but I can't understand much."
She made some very fast changes to her radio to be sure Mom could follow.
"I can hear your transmission without the repeater. Simplex plan four, plan four: change frequency to one four six point four two five, QRO and QSY to one four six point four two five. I repeat, simplex plan four, simplex plan four."
"QSL, {static} four. {static}RO and QSY {static} six four two five."
They were talking in a common code: QSY meant change frequency; QRO meant crank up the power.
A minute later the foxes were finally talking to each other.
"K9ZMDS, K9ZMAT, Romeo Sierra?"
"K9ZMAT, K9ZMDS. Reading you three by four, still got a fair bit of noise in your signal."
"Same here, same problem. Lot better than the repeater, though." her mother answered, sounding much relieved. Speaking to her daughter with the call signs still felt weird, even after months of doing it at least once per week. Today had already been more than a little odd.
"This will have to do. I think the repeater in Red Hill is acting up. I'm fairly close to it, you were keying it up, but I couldn't make out much of what you said. Did you have the big antenna disconnected during the storm?"
"Yeah, I just now hooked it back up, that's why I took so long to reply. You usually radio on Mondays; Is your telephone working?"
"Nope. I have no cell signal right now. I think that thunderstorm took out some towers. The regular phones here are acting up, nobody can get an outside line. I heard the emergency traffic on our usual repeater, someone said power was out around there. I can't hit any of the repeaters in Springfield either."
"I heard that too, and I knew you'd try our first fallback. The news mentioned a tornado in the northern part of the county earlier this afternoon. Did the power blink out there?"
"That might explain Springfield. Yeah, we saw the lights flicker several times during class, that must have been the campus generator plant kicking in. K9ZMAT, K9ZMDS."
"Where are you right now?"
"QTH? At the college; it's raining, but not bad. Traffic's not moving very fast, I think there's an accident on the highway. We need to make several stops on the way home, one of them for groceries if the store's still open, so we're going to be quite late. Do we need anything?"
"Depends - what do you want for dinner?"
"Do we have any of that roast chicken and spinach left?"
"{chuckle} Maybe - if your brother didn't beat you to it!"
"Then I'll grab something. {laugh} I ought to be home by eight, might be a bit later."
"All right - oh, did I do that right earlier? 'QSL' means 'I got it'?"
"Yep. You got that right, QSL, 'acknowledged'."
"I missed a lot of those questions on the Morse ex--" Mom's transmission abruptly dropped for a few seconds, then came back on. "Hey, I gotta go, someone's at the door. K9ZMDS, K9ZMAT, eighty eight, clear on your final."
"Love you too, Mom. K9ZMDS QRT." Melissa felt weird about that last bit. She and her mother were both fairly well known in the ham radio community, and it wouldn't have been the first time they'd been called upon for help during an emergency. Still, something got Melissa's hackles up enough that Darius Roger noticed.
The rain let up half an hour after their radio conversation. Almost two hours later, Mr. Roger dropped Melissa off at his house so she could pick up her bicycle, and then he headed off to meet his wife.
Something set the little vixen even more on edge, though she couldn't put nose on what. Her unease grew as she got closer to home.
From clear down the block, Melissa saw unfamiliar vehicles in the driveway at her house. She had a real bad feeling about them, fear - the very same fear that she had felt from the Safe Harbor flier. Mom would have called if everything was okay. She turned at another street to avoid going anywhere near home.
She promptly went back to the Rogers' house to grab her bug-out bag from their shed. She transferred her computer and radio to the bugout pack, took a repair kit for her bike, and left a note for them: Tell my parents the dog escaped. She took the time to add a layer of code to this by writing the note in Russian.
The dog escaped was one of the code phrases Melissa and her Dad had arranged as a special alert: I'm hiding. Please call me in the exact last way we spoke. Time is code. They'd practiced this a few times before on the numerous occasions she'd felt a need to go hide, right down to practicing fairly covert "danger" and "all clear" signals.
She couldn't go to the family's supply hideout until morning, and Grandma wouldn't be home until sometime after midnight; so she headed to another hideout (she called it number five) on the roof of a nightclub halfway to Grandma's place. The thudding bass coming from under her feet didn't allow her to get much sleep, but she tried to rest despite her nervousness. The quietest yet still well-concealed place she could find was right next to one air intake of their ventilation system. Which led to her scent getting wafted into the club...
-------
The joint was jumping; Friday night was always like that. Furs were having fun shaking what their mamas gave them and rubbing against one another on the crowded dance floor.
boom thud budda-boom boom thud
boom thud budda-boom boom thud
boom thud budda-boom boom thud
boom thud budda-boom boom thud
The dancers' dry humping soon got wet. Very wet.
The club's floor was covered with a colossal mess of sticky undergarments by the time the police closed the place down at 2:30 AM Saturday morning. The staff figured (and found) that someone had snuck in an aerosol drug known as 'Milk Bonze' that would make most canids get frisky. The only things that didn't match the effects of the drug (which was illegal to possess in this jurisdiction) was that everyone was affected, including the tiger and wolverine bouncers stationed right outside the door. The quantity of the drug needed to affect the entire club would have been several liters released as an aerosol; the individual arrested for having the stuff only had a few milliliters, and his bottle was still sealed when he was booked. Even so, possession was the greater part of that law.
Morning-after contraceptives became scarce that weekend. Doctors wondered how a minor venereal disease outbreak could be so well contained. Police and City Council members were rather glad that The Orgy At Gyrations Nightlife never made the news.
Nobody, not even the janitors, ever thought to check the roof.
-------
As Melissa left her hideout around sunrise Saturday morning, she saw several of the same cars that were at her family's house the night before. Something about them just gave off a vibe of menace, all the more scary because of their anonymity: plain white vans with no windows in the back, much like work trucks. No logo or markings to suggest who they belonged to. Tinted windows. Driving perfectly in accordance with the laws, if a bit slow, like they were searching. These couldn't have been the police, they had all left by 4:30 AM, and the forensics team's vans were all plainly marked.
Her first choice was to head to her grandmother's apartment, but that turned out to be a bad idea. Two of those white vans were parked in front of the apartment complex. When she got within a block or so, the doors of one van opened. Out stepped a wolf and a deer, both wearing sunglasses and rather nondescript suits. BAD feeling again. One abrupt turn later, and a tabby cat in a similarly nondescript suit and sunglasses blocked the sidewalk. Like the others, this one had an air of competence and prepared intimidation. And a small, easily concealed earphone that must have been connected to a radio hidden under his jacket.
"Where are you going, little girl?"
Melissa snarled back, emphasizing every word, "Get Out Of My Way."
She jammed on the pedals hard enough to make the back tire spin. He ran after her, reaching out to grab the little vixen or at least slow her down. She jammed on the brakes, spun the bike around and reacted on what felt like instinct when his hand touched her arm.
Melissa pedaled furiously off while the cat lay in the middle of the street, groaning and twitching as though he had a taser jammed into his crotch.
-------
She went to the family storehouse in the woods outside of town. They'd stocked up this cache two weeks ago, so she'd be able to hide for a while if necessary. The well-concealed shed was just big enough for the whole family to (rather uncomfortably) sleep for a short time, so it was a great hideout for her, at least for the day.
Dad was on the radio that evening - yep, he got the message.
"K9ZMDS, K9ZMQD, come back?"
What time is it? Melissa checked the time on her telephone. 7:28PM. Oh Shit. Bottom of the hour plus the phrase "Come Back" meant Something Is Very Wrong Here - Dad was warning her to stay away. This is NOT a drill.
After Dad called again at 8:30, Melissa keyed her radio three times without saying anything, waited a few seconds, keyed three times again, and waited. Dit dit dit ... dit dit dit. Morse for the letter S, the last letter of her own call sign. She'd practiced this with her parents plenty of times: Message received.
"K9ZMQD, QRT." The announcement that he was going to stop transmitting was all the acknowledgement Melissa needed. After picking out the stuff she would need from the storehouse and grabbing a rolled-up wire antenna as an afterthought, she organized her supplies, got on her bicycle and set out on her journey.
Fifty miles were no challenge to the kit, but she knew she had to get much further than that. And fast.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Pursuit
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Her secondary evacuation plans were to go to some of Mom's family in the next town, but that turned up more trouble. Mom's relatives had visitors in bland suits and windowless vans, and a few of them had police cars in attendance. One truck looked like Fish and Wildlife, but that might have been Joey's new job. She didn't know her third cousins all that well, and had difficulty even getting in touch with them at a holiday. The windowless van and police car in their driveway cinched it.
She thought she was caught when a similar van blocked her path, but the four guys that got out were old, fat, and wearing paint-splattered coveralls. One of them noticed Melissa and barked something in her direction, but she shifted gears and got the hell out of there. She hadn't noticed a rack on the van's roof, its rather shabby condition, or the scaffolding around the house that was still being painted.
------------
Dad's side of the family had less trustworthy folks, but their underground connections proved far more helpful in putting distance between causes and effects. Getting in touch with them resembled some of the games Dad had devised - much like getting into the Speakeasies of legend, you had to know the right passwords. Their criminal expertise also meant that they knew how to hide and transport stuff, skills perfect for getting her around. Quite a bit of night time driving and one bus trip were involved, since one of the family's contacts had been arrested three weeks ago.
Melissa took advantage of the travel time to wipe the commercial operating system off her computer's hard drive and switch to the customized Linux she'd set up on a different partition. She had restore discs at home, just in case; but she'd have to get home first. Until then, a harder-to-hack operating system would be her best choice.
------------
Her second cousin Vinnie helped her get some more cash and a disguise. She could stay in touch with him, since he was good at concealing things from the police, despite how many times he'd indirectly helped the cops. He clearly understood what Melissa was trying to do, even if he had to ask why.
"Kit, why da fuck you got the fuckin' heat on ya fuckin' case? Somebody after you for that fuckin' sexy smell ya give off? Or ya fuckin' Kill some fuck?" Vinnie asked. His Brooklyn accent was genuine, but he'd picked up the cussing habit somewhere in fuckin' Ohio.
"I think I did. Why they want me... is for how I killed him."
Now Vinnie was impressed. "Fuckin' A! You got fuckin' killer instincts! Here, Ya might want this. Got it off a a fuckin' pusher I helped fuckin' knock over two fuckin' weeks ago, dis fucker ain't even fuckin' registered." He rooted around in a drawer while he spoke, and brought out a 9mm pistol and several boxes of ammo.
Melissa initially declined the firearm. "The last thing I need is an excuse for an officer to arrest me. Besides which, I'd probably hurt myself trying to clean that monster. Those butterfly knives, on the other paw, I know I could use."
Some careful application of fur dye also helped; she had never completely grown out of her babyish dirt-colored fur, so concealing her species wasn't that difficult. By the time Melissa got done with the dye, she could have been mistaken for a very young red fox, a gray fox, or even a coyote. Her markings weren't completely concealed but it was enough to throw most searches. Her biggest problem, though, was hiding her scent. Air fresheners didn't disguise it, perfumes didn't do anything, and it was back in full force in scant minutes after a bath, long before her fur had finished drying. Vinnie had a rather odd answer for that.
"I got something that might fuckin' do it, least while we're together. I'm tryin' ta give up the fuckin' smokin', and these fuckin' things help." Vinnie held up a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes. Melissa caught a whiff from clear across the room, and he hadn't even taken one out to light up.
"What the hell?" Melissa took a more careful sniff. "Sage and clove?"
"That's the fuckin' stuff. I ain't smoked none in a while, but these things hit the fuckin' urge for nick o'teen. Heard about 'em from a guy who was quittin' the fuckin' reefer, and they work just as good for regular tabacca."
"Is that what I've been smelling?"
"Sorta. Landlord told me, no fuckin' smokin' on the fuckin' premises. So I gotta go down the fuckin' street for a toke. Hey, while I'm out, want me to get'cha one a them fuckin' cheapass prepaid phones, in case you need somethin'?"
--------
Thanks to his "gray hat" approach to a life on the edge of the law, Vinnie had connections to the "above ground" in Littleton, where some things that were illegal elsewhere were perfectly legal, provided that they followed a few rules. He'd taken plenty of advantage of that gray area to get other people out of danger; he told her where to go and who to contact, but Melissa would have to cross the state line under her own power with nobody watching. Vinnie would pick her up in a week at one of his remote hideouts, although she couldn't take her bicycle. He could conceal that easily enough for quite a long time.
Melissa surprised, astonished, and impressed Vinnie with her knowledge of how to prepare for evacuation and hiding. His version of hiding out was all about guns and ammo and being ready to shoot any fuckers in the face; hers was about food, water, shelter, and living off the land. She agreed that both sides had merit, and finally took a small .22 caliber pistol that she could handle without too much difficulty.
When he dropped her off at a national forest that straddled the state line, Vinne gave her one request. "Kit, when the fuckin' heat's off, you teach me 'bout 'dis fuckin' shit, an' I'll considda the fuckin' favor repaid, Okay?"
She replied with a straight faced nod, "Fuckin' A, Vinnie."
------------
Vinnie helped Melissa hide out in a brothel - an arrangement that worked out remarkably well.
Prostitution was legal in Littleton, regulated, and even had unions. The Prostitutes Guild had their own requirements as well as the regular legal scrutiny, mostly to make sure medical examinations were more up to date than the law required. Union: Street wasn't as well organized, but they had more members. Brothels were easier to handle and enforce, and got a few breaks because of that.
The Madam of the house was a very dominant mountain lion who insisted on only being called Madam. She always kept a weather eye on the news. Her house may have been bawdy, but it was perfectly legal and licensed. The only thing that was a bit in question was the ownership of the property - the developer had put up several large houses and showed signs of making this into a nice neighborhood, but the developer, their lawyers, and the escrow agency completely vanished just after Madam had purchased the house, and all her checks had been returned unopened. Proper inquiries went nowhere, Vinnie couldn't find anything or anyone, and a judge ruled that as long as Madam was able to prove that she could pay for the property until the developer and financiers could be declared in default, she could stay.
Madam and her stable agreed that this was the perfect place for Melissa to hide: she's right under the nose of the law, and yet this was the last place to look for a runaway kit of her apparent age. Teenage kits might have been expected in some of the seedier and questionably legal houses, but not here. Plus that sexy smell she gave off made everyone's job easier and more enjoyable, and it really didn't seem at all out of place that a whorehouse would smell like nookie.
The hookers were a grab bag of about a dozen:
Jennifer, Jennifer, and Jennifer, respectively a raccoon, cottontail rabbit, and a hamster (whatever ideas you just had, she's done it) were frequently hired to do "gangs", if only for sharing a first name so that nobody had to worry about calling out the wrong name.
Tania, a silver fox, was very much a submissive, or maybe she was just tame.
Sharon, a cat, and Amy, a mouse, were often hired together for "shows".
Ashley, a male norway rat, was willing to do near anything for money. He was a member of a different Sex Workers' Union than the rest of the crew, selling himself to pay his way through law school. Prostitution law was his specialty - he often helped Madam with the paperwork.
Ashleigh, a fennec vixen, had an extensive collection of dildos on display; she's much more Butch than the other Ashley. She routinely gave lectures on the history of masturbatory aids.
Freddie, a male Afghan Hound, was as queer as a $3.42 bill, to the point where he nearly refused to service female clients. Unless they did his hair first, then he was putty in their paws.
Samantha was available to any customer man enough to handle a mule deer, but don't piss her off. She typically worked as a bouncer since few customers were willing to hire a woman that could easily beat the stuffing out of them. If not for sizable breasts, and enough fat to soften her appearance a bit and give her some curves, she could have been mistaken for a male - her hobby of weightlifting yielded forearms that were bigger than Madam's thighs. One regular customer said that sex with Samantha had more in common with a kickboxing match.
Inali was an odd breed, a "cross" fox. She rarely wore any clothes while on the job, as she liked to show off her body and unusual fur. She claimed that she didn't suffer from hypersexuality, she revelled in it. Younger than most of the staff, she loved acrobatics and running in addition to sex, a natural for the sport of Parkour. She reminded Melissa quite a lot of her older sister Sharon.
Elizabeth, a jackrabbit, was the longest serving of Madam's crew. She knew Jujitsu or Krav Maga or something similar, and often doubled as a bouncer when staff was a bit short. More than once Melissa got to see the rabbit demonstrate her fighting prowess on unruly customers.
------------
Melissa was just getting used to the routine when something strange happened. Her usual hiding place was right in front of the return for the air conditioning system, well concealed behind furniture and potted plants; the flowing air spread her sexy smell around the place. More than once she fell asleep in this hidey hole.
That night she had just dozed off when a voice cut through her dreams, an echoing howl that seemed to come from a long way off:
HELP!
Melissa snapped awake, instantly alert, sharpest knife drawn. She needed almost three full minutes before she remembered where she was and why she needed to stay hidden and quiet. Fortunately it was a busy evening and nobody noticed her sharp intake of breath. Considering the number of customers that evening, it's a major surprise she'd stayed asleep for long.
She didn't get much sleep for the rest of that night, and was on edge for the rest of the week.
Madam noticed Melissa wasn't her usual self; the little vixen had been more nervous and paranoid lately, and it was affecting her scent. The cleaning expenses that week were a lot higher than usual, patrons and staff were cumming all over the place.
"Madam, I know I sound nuts by saying this... I heard something a few nights ago, I don't know what it was. Far as I can tell, nobody else noticed. It sounded far off, yet it was right in my ear. It might have been a dream, but... it felt like something else... that's what's bugging me."
The puma did something rather unexpected right then: she hugged Melissa.
------------
Melissa tried to contact her parents via an anonymous email relay. Words and phrases that looked like spam aimed at a little kid were codes that Melissa had worked out with her parents. Seems to have gotten quiet, still laying low. She got a lengthy coded and encrypted reply stating that the police were still visiting them, saying that they just wanted to "take Melissa in for questioning", and a midnight caller that threatened to "Find a Meth lab in your house if you don't turn the girl in."
Six weeks after she hid at the brothel, and one week after that strange night, a news article about a place called King's Orchard got Melissa investigating. She'd seen that name before.
Her parents had noticed a coincidence with the story about King's Orchard. Two days after they filed a missing fursons case on her, the nuthouse went kaboom. After that, the harassment had suddenly and abruptly stopped. No phone calls or guys in dark suits visiting in the middle of the night. They'd found several surveillance cameras planted in the house, but taking them out had no repercussions, and the cameras had never been replaced. The Larsons still suspected that their phones and computers were bugged - don't risk open communications yet, we're borrowing computers right now.
The Larsons and their friends the Rogers made some discreet, cautious inquiries, and they soon suspected that whoever was involved at King's Orchard was after her as well. Stay low. No telling if phoenix will rise. Be safe, we love you.
From the tone of the messages she got a feeling that her parents were about to activate their own Bugout plans, but decided to hold off when that happened. Running away would have brought even more suspicion on them.
During this time, the Larsons found out what Uncle Fred had done that warranted disowning, and agreed with Grandma that murder was justified. The family all agreed that they would never speak of Fred or his crimes again, it was THAT heinous.
------------
During the next few months, Melissa learned more about the extent of her pheromones and mental abilities. The prostitutes loved her and let her practice on them. She found several states that she could use to help out the hookers, make their customers easier to handle. Her genius intellect also made quick work of the often draconian paperwork involved in running a legal brothel. Ashley was glad to have someone that smart going over his work, though he had to correct Melissa about things that involved legal precedents rather than common sense. She asked if he had any copies of the precedents, and that gave her something to read during business hours.
Vinnie offered to help keep Melissa in touch with her family, but he pointed out that he couldn't do so on a reliable schedule. He also offered to help pay for keeping her out of sight, but Madam wouldn't have any of that. She claimed that she still owed him a bigger favor, and this kit earned her keep admirably without the customers even knowing she was there.
Melissa found that when she meditated her scent got milder but more "sticky", as Madam described it; she could also tell exactly what everyone nearby was thinking during these quiet times. When she was more awake and alert, the smell was stronger but not as persistent; Inali said that it didn't circulate through the building as reliably, but it certainly made the customers come a lot quicker. A gentle mental prod made Freddie get an erection far sooner than his customer expected. Before business hours, she tried out her stronger focus and scents, the ones she'd used on her sister. Elizabeth described the experience as "Awesome" but very tiring. When Melissa pushed quite hard, her scent faded very quickly, but even mighty Samantha was taken down for the count.
------------
Madam quickly developed a Mama Bear complex about Melissa. One cold night a rabbit who stank of illegal drugs busted in right as Madam was closing up, caught Melissa in the open, and tried to grab the little vixen... that didn't end well. For the rabbit.
The judge said that Madam really deserved a bounty for taking that asshole down, and jokingly offered her a job. "Would you consider joining SWAT?"
Melissa started to come out of hiding, and met a few other kits in the nearby neighborhoods. One whitetail doe told her the story about the Aspirin plant and strange drug - Melissa saw that story on the National news before it got squelched - and who was behind the attack. "Kids who... can do strange things, cool things... Someone's been out to get them, and now they're fighting back."
Melissa listened carefully to the instructions about the website that followed, and investigated further.
On the Secret Site, she found a couple of faces that she recognized despite the blurring - two cubs who lived in this neighborhood, and as many as five from back home. She wasn't sure about the ones from back home, since the pictures were so bad. But the description of what they could do certainly sounded familiar. She heard the "brown note" that Belch burped out - from around three miles away; everyone else thought that was an earthquake. Lithophage pretty much spoke for himself; she swore that preppie aardvark had a future as a geologist, what with the things he could taste in the rocks he liked to suck on. Shred's ability to tear through almost anything with his hands sounded familiar.
The second most recent entry caught her eye: Skywave? There was no picture next to this one.
My name is Skywave. My ears are radio antennas. Melissa had to think about this one for a while before she realized who Skywave was: Terri, the very Whitetail Doe that had told her about this website, the same girl that was so interested in radio and broadcast technology, was able to HEAR radio transmissions directly!
Melissa spoke to Terri about the website later, and got a very startling demonstration: the doe pulled a portable radio out of her pocket, and asked Melissa to choose a preset. Then she closed her eyes, started singing, and then told Melissa to turn the radio on. She was a little off key, but that was the song playing, and she was singing in time with the song. "Now, before you go to the next station, I'll say what's on." Next station up: commercial for Doctor McFly at Midtown Eye. Next one: Talk radio, she said that the usual host wasn't on and his fill-in guy was yelling at a caller for being an idiot. Melissa picked a frequency way the heck up the dial. Right then the station was giving their ID: KRZY-FM, followed by a sound bite from an old movie, "These guys are NUTS!"
"Something in the area lets off a burst of static at 105.880 at random times each day," Terri continued, "and it's really annoying. That's why there's no station on 105.9 in this area." Terri went on to give considerable detail about the local ham radio operators, and how they had so far failed to find the source of that radio burst. One incident that helped the girl get her Amateur Radio license involved tracking down some illegal transmitters that were messing with emergency communications.
Terri alerted Melissa to a rather scary development: the previous summer, someone had set up spy cameras in various places around her neighborhood, in places that didn't make sense for home security. They were mostly watching streets, not houses and yards. Plus the transmitters were not on the usual frequencies for wireless security systems, and far too powerful. She mapped the cameras one Saturday while she and her family were out walking their pet capybara, and plotted several routes around them. She quietly asked a couple of her friends in the amateur radio club for help, and they confirmed everything she found. One of the hams pointed out three paths that were not covered, and two of them went to investigate - figuring that hardwired cameras or battery operated "traps", like the kind used by some hunters, were installed there. Not long after she had her friends find the cameras, there was an incident involving some criminal in her neighborhood. The news never published the specifics, just that someone was arrested not too far from her home. Then the cameras just disappeared. Terri was suspicious at the time, and had been far more worried since she found that website.
Now the fox was convinced. She had to find out more about the Dangerous Lunatics, and the next time she was online she looked the site up again.
Melissa thought about her capabilities, and had a great bolt of confidence. One paw slid down inside her pants while she typed with the other, a cloud of instant orgasm building in the air as she swished her tail.
My name... is Seduce.
Inali came in the door right then; after she recovered, she decided that she wanted some more of whatever just happened. Melissa was happy to oblige.
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CHAPTER SIX
Recordare
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Case #6685432206
Theresa Jaye Milhaus
Auto 10112: school requested psych eval mail+
Entry 10194: Interview evaluation confirmed that subject has mild abnormal ability. Will need to field test, parents will not release.
{Options mail-}
Entry 335248:
Request resources to investigate. List of equipment and plans are attached.
Auto 10221: FCC issued subject Extra Class Amateur Radio Operator license
Entry 346921:
Field Report
Subject located all the wireless cameras planted around her neighborhood, even the well concealed ones. Subject was not fooled by dummy cameras. Subject found the transmitters sending test patterns easily, but paid them little mind. Subject did not locate any of the hardwired cameras placed in the areas not covered by the wireless cameras. Subject was also extremely careful about her safety, only going out during daylight hours, and making sure she had company.
Images 35, 110, 241, 368, 429, 532, 1061, and 1143: The trap camera was not fast enough to avoid motion blur in the lighting conditions; image enhancement doesn't help. Features suggest a grey-furred canid(?) riding a bicycle. Repeated passage at the same time each day and probable speed suggests that he(?) regularly uses this route. Aside from nonevs, no other traffic was observed on that trail. Subject's avoidance of this area suggests that she does not know about this trail.
Two days after her exploration, three other fursons also located the transmitters; the clearest pictures of them are images 942, 976, and 981. Image 976 is from a wireless camera. That individual did not investigate the areas covered by wired cameras, note the antennas on their vehicle. The license plate shown in image 989 is an expired dealer plate, XX195843? (last two digits are not clearly visible), probably stolen or salvaged just for this visit. Vehicle description from DMV does not match, records show plate expired last July. The ram in image 942 has been identified as Wallace "The Wall" Reynolds, Amateur Radio operator N0P9F. Image 943 shows his call sign on the back of his jacket; also note the receiver in his hand and the antennas attached to his horns. According to FCC database Mr. Reynolds' mailing address is out of state, possible he and the others were called in. They did not attempt to tamper with the cameras, but may have reported their presence to other authorities. Mr. Reynolds is well known and liked by police and emergency services in several states, he helps coordinate events with them; questioning or removing him will cause problems. Attempts to further trace the vehicle have turned up nothing, possible this individual was also from out of the area. We have no ID on the rodent in images 942, 943, and 976, though he(?) is clearly in disguise. Driver never exited the vehicle, we have no other information.
Recommendations: Capture of this subject may not be possible. Subject is well known in several communities. She has not caused any disturbance, and her parents believe this is a talent. Her disappearance will bring too much notice.
Short term: prepare and stage a police incident before removing cameras, cover story E.
Long term: continue monitoring through public channels. Capture if and only if opportune, do not eliminate unless an airtight fall guy can be had - MILA would be too suspicious.
Agent 119084
Priority: MINIMAL
------------
Case #6685531982 "BROADCASTER"
Entry 22181:
Psi search reports activity similar to this case in area that Recovery 184 is operating.
Entry 29402:
Activity in Grid B94A5. Only one strong blast, numerous less intense emissions have been noted.
Correlations with following case file strongly suggest that Case #6659267483, Subject Melissa Larson, is BROADCASTER.
------------
Case #6659267483
Subject: Melissa Larson
Auto 10382: school flagged special condition
Auto 10387: legal involved in sexual assault case against teacher AgentCheck+
Agent 010948: This cub is definitely worth watching. Copy of court records is in the attached file.
Auto 10491: school grades skipped
Auto 11056: school removed mail+
Agent 010948:{Options mail-} Probable that parents will not release subject for examination willingly. Dispatch covert investigator.
Entry 13742: Attempt to place investigator as a tutor failed. Investigator reports that subject is clearly a prodigy; standard academic battery was inadequate to assess her capabilities. Transcript of interview suggests that no tutor is available for her capability.
Subject saw through Project Questionnaire #4 and did not address any of the questions; results left inconclusive.
Parents continued to decline suggestion of boarding schools. Investigator also noted strong impression of Female in Heat in the house; probable mother or older sister is fertile? Both were in attendance.
Auto 11522: school GED file opened
Auto 11531: school GED file closed, graduation
Auto 14451: college enrollment AgentCheck+
Agent 010631:
This is highly unusual for her age. Dispatch Covert investigator. Elimination not recommended, we need this kind of talent.
Agent 203700: Subject is definitely a prodigy. Her course schedule is not heavy, but the classes she selected are of extreme difficulty. I only have requisites enough to join one class with her, I'll have to see if the prof will let me audit another class. I recommend keeping watch on her academic records.
Field interview was impossible to conduct; she didn't believe my cover, and declined to answer any questions. Her exact words, and you can check my recording, were "No. I'll just make a mess of your survey results." I suspect she has psi ability but have no way to confirm or measure. She has been avoiding me ever since the interview attempt. I planted Book P and Book B in the library - we might get lucky that way.
I almost managed to be her taxi to the College, but she had already found someone to ride with. I definitely don't like where that's going, the guy seems military or something. Could I get a background check? I'll send some identifying info in my next dispatch.
I also noticed that she carries a very strong aura of female in heat, though it seems wrong somehow. Subject is a gray fox, but her scent isn't right, lacking the characteristic musk of vulpines. Most foxes, the instructor of the Russian class for one example, tend to leave a lingering aroma. I couldn't detect any hint of subject's scent on her chair five minutes after she left. She might be a pheromone emitter, or she might have been doused with artificial fragrances. Can we get a trained nose here?
Agent 008543: Will dispatch when resource is available.
Background check on Mr. Darius Roger (sp: Raccoon)
Married to Mrs. Teresa Kopiwak Roger, no dependents.
Tax record: unremarkable.
Credit record: unremarkable. Only loans open are one student loan and one car loan. Their house is paid off. Further searching on those finances revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Political Affiliation: Libertarian party (Charter member of his home town's chapter.)
Criminal record: Minor traffic infractions. One arrest, charges of property damage were dropped. Wife only has one traffic infraction (speeding) on record, warning issued.
Mr. Roger is Licensed to handle single and multi-engine, fixed and rotary wing aircraft; also has concealed carry permits for several classes of firearms. Wife has similar weapons permits.
Military service: Air Force, 6 years, unremarkable record. Wife served in the Coast Guard, 5 years, also unremarkable.
Employer: McDonnell-Wright-Marietta Aerospace. Attending classes with financial assistance from employer.
Wife employer: McCloud Regional Hospital.
Agent 203700: Thanks for the background on her taxi driver. That might explain why Melissa trusted him so quickly; I got a chance to interview Darius Roger with the cover of a class project, he's very honest, tough-minded, and conservative. I feel they'll be hard as hell to turn or buy off. If we do watch them, let's use public channels. He comes across as just paranoid enough to make surveillance extremely difficult. I tried to tail him after class one day, and he got away very fast.
Agent 203700: Her GPA is amazing: 3.7 against Honors level coursework in the middle of her second semester. I found several notes in the school records regarding doubts about her admission to the college. There's a letter from the Dean in her file - short version, he's glad that his doubts about Melissa were completely wrong. Were I in personnel, I'd offer this kit a job!
Agent 203700: Book B was removed from the stacks, but the tracker indicates it's still somewhere in the library building; it might have been moved to an archive or an office. Book P has been disturbed, but it's still in place. No telling who might have done either one, the shelves didn't have enough dust to trace, and I lack the hardware for latent prints.
Auto 20445: police seek witnesses to death at college AgentCheck+
Agent 008543:
We have probable cover to bring subject in for examination. Have recovery team on Standby.
Agent 203700: I do not recommend moving on this case. Police are questioning, and everyone is checking police credentials before they answer any questions - the students and staff here have a cautious mistrust of authority. Anyone that suddenly went missing even for a few days is a prime suspect, subject's disappearance might compromise project security. I've been questioned as well, though my cover seems to have held up. Again, do not move on this case!
Auto 20509: police cancel search for witnesses AgentCheck+
Agent 203700: Subject has been far more skittish since the police have been around. I feel that she was involved or witness to the recent death in some way, but I can not give any evidence. Can the Brain Room add anything?
Agent 008543:
Recovery on hold. Psi Search also suspects she was involved, but the link they perceive is more tenuous than Agent 203700 suggests. Continue monitoring.
Auto 20829: police report relative hospitalized AgentCheck+
Agent 008543:
The time and date is very close to when Psi Search reported another blast in that grid square. The details of the relative's condition suggest we may have a match to the BROADCASTER case. Schedule Recovery Team to investigate and collect subject.
Recovery Control: Orders Acknowledged, team will be released when available.
Entry 22991:
Recovery 184:
Phase Alpha, Research: Time required, twelve days.
Warren Mental Hospital was very cooperative. Autopsy records of Larson, Frederick L., were readily provided; cause of death appears to have been extensive brain damage, aggravated by blunt trauma and stab wounds. Family names and addresses were also readily provided, though nearly all were out of date. Most of his relatives move around a great deal, quite possibly due to their extensive, though usually mild, criminal records; and quite possibly due to additional relatives such as F. M. Larson.
Phase Beta, Capture: Incomplete
Group 1 had no contact with subject at home. Cover story of being private investigators aroused suspicion. Telephones were down due to a storm, family reported having only brief radio contact with subject and were quite upset by our presence and subject's absence. Overnight surveillance negative, radio monitoring also negative. Radio channels were taken up with emergency traffic until quite late. Landline telephones were down until midnight, cellular intermittent until the next morning.
Group 2 sighted subject the following morning at nearest relative's home, only one agent got close.
Report from Agent 093363 strongly suggests that Melissa Larson is Case #6685531982 "BROADCASTER". Date, time, and location of Entry #22181 match when Agent 093363 was incapacitated. Agent described her as "smelling like she'd doused herself with Heat"; the sensation of her attack as "Orgasm cranked up so far past eleven that there may not be a number for it;" and the effect as being "like I was trying to ejaculate my spine". He required surgery to repair a ruptured prostate. Subject and agent did not have much physical contact during the encounter, indicating psi ability.
Agent 093363's dermal injuries were consistent only with falling on pavement, no surface contusion or ecchymosis accompanied the ruptured prostate. Muscles around the gland were severely strained with some evidence of rupture, but again no suggestion of impact or any other avenue of injury.
Agent 281365 and Agent 194221 confirmed the subject's scent, also noted that the scent faded quickly and would be hard to track. Agent 194221 also received the psionic emission from a greater distance, though he was not as traumatized, requiring only a moment to regain his footing and notice that he needed a change of underwear. Group 2 did not have resources to pursue.
Two agents from Group 1 were sent to question friends of subject. Friends were astonished that she had disappeared. The last one to see her explained that he had dropped her off at his house so she could pick up her bicycle to head home. A neighbor confirmed their story. Subject will be very hard to capture if she has been taking lessons from these friends.
Subject's father tried to radio the next day. The only response to his call was a pulsed signal that did not last long enough to track. Team was not expecting to need radio direction finding equipment, and the signal was too brief to follow.
{Options Elint+ Police+ Hospital+ PublicService+ Shelter+ Obit+}
Entry 28992:
Subject has effectively vanished. Overt and covert surveillance of family continues, so far negative. All they discuss is how much they miss their daughter, no mention of her whereabouts. Computer surveillance has turned up nothing unexpected.
Agent 203700: I have not seen the subject in two weeks. The college staff are asking questions, and her classmates are threatening to launch an investigation of their own. I have not been able to get much detail, they probably see me as a suspect. I will finish out the semester to maintain cover, but may not have any more useful information for this case.
Entry 29481:
Subject continues to evade capture. Last certain location was her home town.
ELINT negative. Her computer remains untraced, and apparently she has not used her telephone since the first capture attempt. No amateur radio operators have reported contact, although few have been cooperative.
The Missing Furson report suggests that her family does not expect her to return for some time. She has made no overt attempt to contact her family; Sci/Tech has not found anything that suggests covert communications as yet. Police have not been able to help.
Psi Search division reports no further activity of the observed magnitude in her home town of Conway. Similar activity has been observed in an area centered on Grid C08Z1, just outside Littleton, over two hundred miles distant.
Correlations strongly suggest that Melissa Larson is BROADCASTER.
Short term: Continue overt surveillance of family, including wiretap and internet trace.
Dispatch Search Team 220 to Littleton.
Long term: Capture is necessary, resources will need to be released by head office.
Priority: URGENT
Locate and capture. Send materiel request.
Global Entry 20280
ALL CASES RE-PRIORITIZED: HOLD
Project is in danger of exposure from KO incident. All resources allocated to damage control.
Entry 41685
Agent 008543:
Psi Search division has confirmed location. Capture may now be possible.
RE-PRIORITIZED: ALERT
Not enough agents are available. Weapons will be supplied, hire as needed.
---------------------
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hazardous Sanity
---------------------
"Karen..."
Ever since that day at King's Orchard when she met AlwaysJimmyNeverJames, Karen Willard had not been disturbed by her dreams. But tonight was not quite going to end that way.
"Karen..."
She came into the lucid state that allowed access to the World Between Worlds, and looked around. The place was uniformly gray, like a foggy night in the middle of a field.
"Hello?"
"Karen... Someone needs your help."
"Who are you?"
"She seeks you and your friends. ...I am a messenger. This is urgent."
"Where are you? I can take the message more easily if I can talk to your face."
"I know I am dead and no longer have a face. She seeks you and your friends. You will know her by a feeling..."
Karen Willard awoke with a start, as she felt the muscles between her legs squeezing up tight. She reflexively reached down, and almost exploded again at her own touch.
The little raccoon got up from her bedroll and quietly snuck off to the nearest bathroom. The house the group had commandeered wasn't perfect, but it would do for a short while. At least it had running water, if no electricity, and a garage big enough to hide Monsoon's monstrous machine. Alf's small car was remarkably easy to conceal. Cora Maplewood had joined them, although she had gone ahead to scout out their next hiding place.
Karen tried to clean herself up, but discovered that trying to wipe between her legs was almost useless. She was too sensitive to touch without... ohhhh... Karen sat gasping for a few minutes until the spasms subsided, then tried again, and had to wait until it subsided again.
Alf woke up when he heard someone whimper and pant. He looked at his watch, 2:14 AM. In the weeks since rescuing the children from King's Orchard, he'd learned to trust these odd wakings and strange feelings. He would have sworn that he never had any super powers like the kids did, but something was rubbing off.
The fox got up and moved as quietly as possible to the bathroom. He heard gasping and panting, and realized what was going on. Either someone was getting lucky, or getting off... but at this hour? Suspicious. He carefully scratched at the door and whispered, "Hey, you okay in there?"
A soft, startled gasp was the first reply. "Alf?" More panting. "I... had another... visitor from... from beyond..."
He quietly entered the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the dim flashlight that they'd used as their only light source in this windowless room. He was taken aback to see that she looked like she was in the throes of really good sex.
Her breathing was still rather fast as she answered, "Someone needs to find us, I would know by a feeling. Then I woke up... like this..." Even as she took her hands off her crotch, she exploded again. A small amount of liquid escaped from her to drip into the toilet. Alf hugged Karen, hoping she'd start to relax; but she responded to his touch as if her whole body had become an erogenous zone.
Her sexual experience didn't let up until around 2:40. Alf was startled (but then not surprised) to find Zeek waiting right outside the bathroom door. "I had a feeling," said the fennec, "that this would be important."
* * *
Morning. And it also meant moving out. They couldn't stay here for long, as the water use would soon be discovered.
Over breakfast, Karen told the group about her visitation. Zeek and Alf confirmed the event. The rest of the group decided that searching this one out might be worthwhile, as it's on the way to their next safe house.
Benjamin got a message via their website from someone who said her name was "Seduce": a cryptic location with the instruction to Send The Wraith. Tyler agreed that he had to check this one out, and only Keith was close enough to catch the mouse before his body hit the floor. The rodent's astral projecting ability still weirded his friends out at times.
------------
Some time ago, Alf and Benjamin scored a deal at an auction for a heap of walkie-talkies. They had an advertised range of three miles on a frequency that required no license, though Benjamin had found they could be modified to allow greater distances. At higher power the radios ate batteries like a mulcher going through grass clippings; today, the original rated power was all that was required.
They planned the contact mission pretty throughly. As a cover story, Alf and Monsoon (they didn't bother with aliases) were looking for hookers for a bachelor party - it's three months away, and it'll take that long to order enough beer kegs; might as well make arrangements for the entertainment while they're at it. The real objective was to get Sherri into the brothel to execute a more thorough search and perhaps make a face-to-face contact with "Seduce."
Kuri and Will would cover the front. Holly and Ruby would cover the back. They weren't expecting much to happen, but there was another road behind the place; a bit harder to get to, but still accessible on foot. Victor and Keith each covered an end of the street; skateboards provided them a good cover activity, and the walkie-talkies gave them a means to conceal any real messages in casual chatter. Karen, Tyler, Brad, Zeek, and Benjamin were to hide behind two unfinished abandoned houses across the street. Brad also had a skateboard and radio so he could also provide some warning, but his position didn't have the best view.
Madam welcomed the men in, listened to their story, and calmly laid out the rules: they can make a reservation for a night and bring their party to the house, but the hookers would have to stay on the premises. The guys agree if they can review the goods. Madam turned out to be very knowledgeable of sports, and the conversation with Monsoon derailed to football while the girls got themselves together. They got quite a show; Samantha seemed impressed with Monsoon - and even made a offer to him only, because so few were man enough for a big doe like her.
Two rooms away, awkwardness ensued. Melissa felt that there was someone else in the room with her and drew a knife. When Sherri dropped her "cloak" and let herself be visible, Melissa was looking about ninety degrees off to her left from the rabbit. The fox jumped and bared her teeth as she whipped the knife around to the rabbit's direction.
"Who are you, and how did you do that?" she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. They could hear the men and women in the front room from here.
"My name is Wraith..." Sherri started, and paused.
Zeek grabbed his radio and called a warning. Keith gave a coded call about two vans coming down the front street.
Melissa noticed a small radio on the rabbit's belt, and a tiny earphone clipped to her fur. "We have to get out of here. Now."
Holly and Ruby hid when they heard a car coming down the back street, and Holly radioed a warning as well.
The three anonymous vehicles, old white work vans, all came down the respective streets at a pretty fast clip - they would have been ticketed if the scarcely developed neighborhood had any speed limits posted. The van on the back street stopped first, and four men jumped out. Hard to tell species, they were all wearing gas masks and black jumpsuits, and carrying some kind of slab-like carbines. The two vans in front disgorged a total of eight, similarly dressed and similarly armed.
What happened next is rather hard to tell, since everything went down so fast. It could also be summed up as the final player arriving, known in military parlance as "Charlie Foxtrot."
Kuri and Will dealt with the soldiers in the front. Superior numbers and military training made them a tough match; their guns turned out to be stunners, but they were almost useless against the kittens. When the soldiers tried to fall back on regular firearms they ended up shooting each other. Thank goodness for Kevlar and small caliber pistols. Hand-to-hand combat came to a fists-a-flying stalemate. The kittens were clearly trained to handle a melee a trois. Or more.
Holly popped out of hiding and took down one of the men in black before he got into the back of the building - he never knew what hit him. The layout of the house meant that the remaining three ran right into...
...Monsoon, Madam, and a half dozen startled hookers. Monsoon's victim had the best chance of survival. You don't WANT to know what Madam did to the second. Or what Samantha did to the third. Three of the hookers absorbed fire from the first soldier's stun gun, and wouldn't wake up for a while. Alf needed clean underwear.
The driver of the van in back spotted Ruby, and floored the accelerator in an attempt to run her down. The driver (unfortunately from Ruby's POV) didn't survive getting a rusty abandoned car in the face.
In the confusion, Sherri and Melissa got out of the house. Melissa had helped Madam plan and re-engineer for sudden escapes, so it was remarkably easy. The rabbit was impressed.
The driver of one of the front vans spotted Melissa running away and took off, intent on chasing her down. The chase didn't last long before Victor wrecked the van with his signature Power Poot. The vehicle flipped end over end before coming to earth nose first and landing on its roof.
Something was making Melissa's head hurt and ears ring. She saw a black box on the sidewalk; her headache got worse when she got close to it. She tried to push her thoughts outward, and found that it seemed to clear the discomfort some, enough that she noticed a power switch on the box. The fox had to back away, and when Victor caught up with her he also had to keep his distance from that odd device. Sherri stepped right on it before she realized what the fox and skunk were looking at, and for an instant thought she'd just caught a stray round in the head.
The commander of the Men in Black realized then that some squad had attacked them at the same instant that they were going to move, and tried to order a pullout...
...only to be answered by a boy's voice. Somehow, during the fight, Benjamin dashed out to touch the vehicle, scanned it HARD, then ran away and hid - both groups had the exact same make and model of radio. Brad took advantage of the same blind spots to get underneath the van and damage whatever he could - he managed to disable the brakes, air conditioning, and the tail lights.
Melissa, Victor, and Sherri ran back to the house. Melissa took two of the soldiers down with her mind blast, despite something else near them giving her a monstrous headache. Sherri knocked one of the soldiers down with a kick to the knee, and Kuri finished him off without a second thought. Will was bleeding from several superficial cuts on his face and arms, but had little trouble dispatching his remaining two opponents.
The Commander ordered his driver to flee. They were doing about seventy when he found out about the brakes... and they got well acquainted with a light pole. Keith had a fireball in hand, ready to fill the gas tank with explodium, when something inside the van blew up. Why the heck were they carrying explosives? And why was the smoke making him dizzy? The fiery fox collected himself and fled the weird-smelling smoke.
A young doe charged into the area on a bicycle, frantically looking for Melissa. When she saw the fox, she breathlessly screamed that ambulances and police were on the way, get out! NOW! The Lunatics and their new friends fled once the attackers were all down for the count.
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Madam wanted to keep the surviving Soldiers in Black for a nice chat with the real SWAT team. She'd dealt with the cops enough to know that these guys were definitely paramilitary, but not legal. The prostitutes all knew how to tie knots that would not come undone easily, and the Ashleys always kept plenty of rope on hand.
The cubs vacated the area, but Alf and Monsoon were caught at the house. Oddly enough, their cover story held up to police scrutiny. They were treated as "Anonymous Witnesses", thanks to a provision in the prostitution laws. Madam and her crew truthfully claimed the two kills made on the premises, and that these were made when the guys came busting in. They could offer no explanation about the bodies in the street, since they (truthfully) said that none of them saw it happen. Monsoon hazarded a guess that some gangstas wanted a bit of action - he'd seen some kids on skateboards earlier - but the kills were too clean, too professional, for street gangs. Madam could offer no speculation on the invaders' objective either, "Why in any hell would soldiers want to knock over a whorehouse this early in the day when there's hardly any cash on the premises, with fancy guns like these? And where can I get some of these marvelous toys?" Madam asked, as she leered at one of the stun guns like she had the hots for it. The police were left with too many unanswered questions.
The four surviving soldiers were all mercenaries, guns for hire, and despite the fact that they sang like canaries to the police, had no useful info. They explained that their boss was the only one that knew who hired them, and the only one that their employer would speak to. Payment was made half in advance, and the hiring agent provided the weird guns; the other half of their payment would be made on delivery, with a real big bonus if they got their target alive. Their customer didn't say why or give a name of who they were looking for, just a description and a mission: seven year old gray vixen with a unique scent, find and retrieve, she's hiding in this house. Casing the joint a week before showed that the building had plenty of good hiding places that could conceal a full grown Moose. There was something in the air that caused nearly instant erections, but no sign of any fox kit. Most of the soldiers thought the dark furred vixen was the source of the scent, to them she looked like the sort of slut that would dose up on hormones to make herself sexier; one said he thought the proprietor had a recipe for that smell.
When the police asked the soldiers about the firearms, they proved that they didn't know much. "The guys that hired us gave 'em to the boss, he showed us how to use 'em, ya point and shoot like any other gun. We don't know squat else about 'em." No sense asking them what those odd black boxes with just a power switch, indicator light, and "pitchfork" symbol were, none of them knew. "Boss said we had to have 'em with us. Didn't say why."
Two of the soldiers told of being attacked by a pair of teenage tabby cats, and how they got knocked out early in the fight. Another didn't remember much after getting quite solidly clocked over the head as he came up to the back door. The fourth recounted entering the house from the back, coming through a back bedroom, then fired his stun gun a couple times as he burst through another door, and then this... wall hit him, corroborating Monsoon's story.
None of the four surviving soldiers had personally seen their target, so they didn't know if this would even net anything. But the commander and second in command were really confident that she would be there at the time they attacked.
One of the mercenaries elaborated about how they had thought of using knockout gas, and pointed out its lack of effectiveness in a house that size; it's best used at point blank range in confined spaces, and the flaring grenades would fog the place up too slowly. Plus they'd need to bombard the place with gas grenades for that to work. There was a bit of confusion about whether or not to use the gas, so they all opted to wear gas masks anyway. The same survivor identified the burnt bodies of the commander and 2IC, and also confirmed the crate of gas grenades found in their vehicle.
After the medical examiner was done and the cops were clearing the scene, Madam collared Monsoon. "I'd like to make it a bachelor party to remember, but I'll have to charge you for any deaths or property damage that might occur!"
------
Kuri and Will had hurt themselves worse during their own training, but the burns on their clothes from those weird guns were something entirely new. Monsoon was a bit bruised, but he'd sustained far worse in a normal day's work at King's Orchard.
The Lunatics used their radios to round up their scattered group, and arranged a rally point about a half mile away from the brothel. A few introductions followed as they gathered. Seduce and her friend Skywave formally met Incinerate(Keith) Thunderblast(Victor), and Wraith (Melissa had already had a kind of introduction to Sherri).
Sherri volunteered to go find Extinction(Holly) and Strongheart(Ruby). The squirrel had badly sprained her right shoulder and hip when she fell on the guy and landed a bit hard, though she was already on her feet and would be back in fighting shape in a few minutes. Ruby scraped her paw when she stumbled and fell in the street.
Conduit(Karen), Warp(Brad), Spark(Tyler), and Access(Benjamin) took a bit longer to catch up, more introductions and demonstrations followed. Benjamin commented that scanning the van during the fight felt a lot like getting kicked in the head, and offered to show off his ability later.
Zeek "Seek" stayed behind at the car to wait for Alf and Monsoon, since he knew he could keep himself out of trouble.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Pedagogy
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Over the next few months, Melissa and the Lunatics learned a lot from each other.
She brought everyone together for a really frank and earnest discussion about sex and sexuality that made Monsoon's ears turn red. Cora Maplewood was astonished that a kit that seemed so young could be so experienced and speak like a grownup; she thought Melissa's discussion of the birds and the bees was interesting in that she took the whole story of mating and pregnancy in reverse order. When Melissa announced that she would be willing to have sex with all the Lunatics, adults and cubs, Alf needed clean underwear - this time for a different reason.
Once the whole group picked their jaws up off the floor and Alf had changed pants, she explained to the Lunatics that they need to get used to her bombing, and perhaps get some idea of how they react to her abilities. She set aside a couple weeks worth of evenings to give each of them a chance to experience her. And yes, if they wanted to make out or have sex with her during or after the session, she would welcome their advances.
As the most normal, Alf, Monsoon, and Cora provided a baseline to compare against the cubs. Monsoon's stamina counterbalanced some of Melissa's physical effects, but when he blew they had to get out the mop. Once Cora got over her initial shock and hesitance due to Melissa's age, she actually enjoyed the experience. After Alf explained a few things and went through his test, Melissa grabbed every opportunity to sit on his lap.
Karen was quite strongly affected due to psi ("I see dead people") sensitivity; less strongly by scent. She also talked about why she was a little put off by Melissa's seeming to advance on Alf, and the vixen changed her approach somewhat: she took any opportunity to snuggle the raccoon too. "I really wouldn't want to come between you," Melissa explained, then sneakily smiled, "unless you both come with me."
Holly seemed to be affected the same as a normal, except she had an extremely short recovery time: she was back on her feet in seconds to minutes, where a normal would take a couple hours to recover. She took around half an hour to recover from being murdered this way, and said that Melissa's attack left her "feeling stupid" until she came all the way back. Finding all this out made for a fun night.
Melissa noticed that the plump squirrel had been losing weight. "No, I'm serious, look at your belt. It's practically brand new. The holes at the end show no wear at all, this one is pretty stretched out, these look like they've only been used a little bit, and these four improvised ones suggest that you changed circumference rather fast. Have you grown any taller recently?"
"Not much, but I've been hungrier than hell the last couple weeks."
"Menstrual period or heat cycle?"
"Haven't had one yet."
Melissa thought, Okay, so she's probably not pregnant. She and her boyfriend are both awful young... wait. "Have you been hurt a lot lately?"
"Yes. Damn near got killed twice in the week before we met up with you. The fight with those guys in black, when we met up? Nothing compared to those."
"I'm going to sound nuts by saying this," Melissa ventured, "your healing ability must use up lots of calories. You're fortunate to be plump."
Holly was surprised to find herself laughing about something that was once a berserk button. "Now I wish I'd known about this years ago!"
Melissa's scent seemed to have variable and unpredictable effects on Tyler; but the lightest push from her mind knocked him out of his body. After learning that, she used it to silence the motormouth mouse. It didn't take long for him to learn that when she scowled at him and said, "Knock it off," he'd better shut the hell up. Brad was amazed, and Monsoon was impressed.
Benjamin was quite strongly affected by Melissa's mindblast; his reaction to the scent appeared normal but more persistent. They were both foxes, after all. He demonstrated his ability on her laptop computer; while Benjamin got what he was after (the root password) he also got a headache. "Why did you encrypt everything?"
"Huh? I used a custom Linux so I could have something more secure for 'net access, but I didn't encrypt the file system. I used the latest version of BtrFS when I partitioned the drive. Why do you say that?"
"That might be it. What I got feels kinda jumbled."
Keith's response to Melissa was pretty normal, with slightly shorter recovery time (he could come again quickly) but with rather persistent arousal. He also had to admit she was the first girl he'd ever felt any sexual attraction toward, though his feelings on those matters were still a bit scrambled. She offered to have sex with him right then.
"That was really great, but, um... I'm pretty sure I'm still gay. Mostly."
"Even mostly is good enough," she said, and kissed him full on the lips. With a bit of tongue.
The rest of the night involved a lot more than that.
Zeek did his level best to avoid her, mostly because she seemed determined to live up to her moniker, despite knowing what she did with some of the others. Melissa teased him like she was going to yiff him silly rather than just have him lie down so he wouldn't get hurt. She never really found out how the fennec would respond to her abilities, and he always seemed to be well out of reach whenever she absolutely HAD to go off.
After Victor got over his reluctance and agreed to her test, he accidentally blew a hole in the floor (that was a really crummy old building they holed up in that week!) Fortunately nobody was in the downstairs room. The skunk's response to Melissa's abilities was otherwise fairly normal, although he took longer to recover.
Brad's reactions were also close to normal, and Melissa introduced him to what she could remember from the Kama Sutra. She figured he'd be a natural for yoga, but decided not to mention some of the other things she'd read about just yet.
Kuri and Will were affected the same as the adults, although their training kept them on their feet despite Melissa bombing away at near full strength. They were hampered by her effects; however, by the time the two kittens were appreciably slowed down, any opponent would be on the ground and out cold. Kuri lasted a little longer than Will, but not by much. Melissa asked them if they'd be willing to teach her their fighting techniques, and help her practice using her abilities during a fight. The lessons she'd had before were a good introduction.
Ruby was not affected by Melissa at all, even when the vixen made physical contact and let fly at murdering power; the tiger said that the fox merely "smelled funny" when she used her strongest scent, and felt nothing from the mind blast. Melissa asked if the tiger would mind being her roommate any time they were in cramped quarters.
"I can't turn this off," she explained. "I've caused accidents before... you and Holly are the only ones that could really be safe around me." Ruby understood all too well.
Sherri's reactions to Melissa were inconsistent and all over the map from one run to the next. The bunny was initially nervous about the tests, but got over it quick once she got used to how it felt.
Melissa could detect Sherri's presence while the bunny was "cloaked," though she wasn't reliable or very good. Near as the fox could figure, "I can only tell you're within twenty feet or so. Beyond that I can't tell where you are."
She had no explanation for Sherri and Ruby, but did notice something during their tests. Melissa claimed that she often heard an "echo" from blasting at someone. Sherri echoed, but not clearly enough for Melissa to use that to defeat the rabbit's invisibility. Ruby didn't echo at all - perhaps something in the tiger's retarded mental development made her immune? The two of them left Melissa with more questions than answers.
-------
Melissa discovered a problem after testing the Lunatic Squad: after performing about a half dozen bursts apiece on each of over a dozen individuals, she found that she could hear thoughts. Usually she had to be in deep meditation to actively read someone's mind; but this time it wouldn't turn off, and she was fully awake. Unsurprisingly most of the thoughts she overheard were about money or sex.
She needed to go hide for a little while.
-------
Her psychic hearing hadn't faded in the least when the group had to take care of some errands. Karen took Monsoon and some of the heavy hitters on one of her Ghostly Quests, while Alf, Cora, Ruby, Sherri, Melissa, Ben, and Zeek went shopping at the local Giga-mart. The cubs agreed to fan out and search for what they need, everyone travel in pairs to look a bit less suspicious (save Sherri, she often works alone. Today she gets sent for condoms. Yes, condoms. They have lots of uses besides the original.) Each pair has one of Benjamin's walkie-talkies to keep in touch. Just in case.
Ruby and Melissa paired up, their shopping list for bleach, water, and drinks. Ruby effortlessly loaded their cart with a half dozen five-gallon water bottles and two jugs of fruit punch concentrate. Melissa found a water filter that would work well enough to keep them resupplied in an emergency, and added it to the haul to ask the adults about later. The cart may have bent slightly under that load.
Two young-ish cubs walking through such a large store was not that unusual; one of them smelling like a sex goddess, however, was going to attract attention. Sure enough, a male bloodhound came up to them in the detergents aisle, dressed so that from a distance he could have been mistaken for an employee, and the fox plainly heard what he was thinking: Wow, such sexy little girls. Wonder if...
"Is there something I can help you girls find?" he asked in a really friendly tone. Wow, she's really cute... smells good, too. Wonder what she'll fetch on the market... Something about the touch of that mind set her hackles on edge. Ruby had the cart between herself and the dog.
Melissa had a sudden inspiration when one of the more fragrant detergents tickled her nose: She made herself sneeze. Hard. Repeatedly. And messily. By the time she seemed to regain her composure and looked up at him, her muzzle was liberally decorated with snot.
"You okay?" he asked in a concerned tone. Eww, gross! I've seen them do worse, but if she's really sick...
She noticed right away that his eyes were cold. "Ugh. I godda ged oudda here, where's dthe - uh, there, bleedj." Ah CHOO!
Melissa picked up two bottles of bleach, put them on Ruby's cart, then started walking away with an obviously strong tiger effortlessly pushing a very heavy load. The fox took out her walkie-talkie and keyed up, "Hey Dad? We goddid all. We're odd the way. Ndo, Ibe ogay, I had doo sdeeze."
The dog smirked and moved off, thinking Cute little thing. Hope she'll be here again with someone else. Her tiger friend looks fucking strong, just not terribly bright. Wonder if she'd be trainable and a good lay? Melissa heard everything that went through his mind as he walked away.
She turned her attention to a sheep who had just walked out of another aisle, and listened for a moment to the blather about unfaithful wives and husbands and boyfriends who couldn't keep their pants zipped -- good enough, that cleared her head for now.
"Ruby? Let's get out of here," Melissa said quietly as she fished out her handkerchief and started wiping her face. Ruby nodded and followed Melissa toward the group's rally point near the pharmacy. The creepy dog was headed toward Toys. When they passed a store employee, Melissa tried something that she'd never done before.
About ten minutes later, while they were wading through the checkout lines, a security guard and police officer quietly escorted the creepy dog out of the store. Alf muttered curiosity, Melissa quietly explained what happened in aisle 19, and Ruby confirmed. "I tried sending a memory to one of the staff," she added in a quieter voice. "An image of that hound's face on a Wanted poster."
Melissa really needed to go hide after that. She didn't know for certain if it was really her sending a thought to the employee that got the creepy dog arrested, but it was close enough to spook her again.
-------
The house the Lunatics commandeered that week was a rather tall three-story affair with dormers, little attic rooms jutting from the roof of the house. None of the Lunatics wanted those rooms, even for a cub they were rather cramped. Perfect place for Melissa to hide when she needed to be alone.
Today, she just couldn't meditate. Normally meditation would open her extra-senses up, and she could hear thoughts; but now, after pushing herself for that length of time, and especially after what happened at the store earlier, she couldn't stop the voices from getting into her head. Getting a little distance helped somewhat, but not enough.
She stared through the dingy window at the sky for a little while, letting her thoughts roam. She felt a little thirsty, and when she reached into her ever-present backpack for a bottle of water, her hand happened across her radio. How long has it been... She pulled the radio out along with the water bottle and a rolled up wire with a connector on one end.
Six meter is a strange radio band. Atmosphere conditions have to be just right to get beyond a few dozen miles; but when it opens up, stations can hear each other from hundreds of miles away, just like the lower frequencies where ham radio operators talk across continents and oceans.
Getting the dormer window open was a bit of a struggle, but she got her wire hung from the side of the old house without incident. Batteries are still at full charge, excellent. Up here on the roof is about the best I could hope for. Who can I hear...
A few minutes later her expression went from pensive to ecstatic. Who can hear me...
--------
Terri Milhaus hadn't seen her fox friend in weeks, and wondered what might have happened to the girl. Crazy ideas the vixen had seemed to work - Melissa suggested that Terri ought to get up high to hear radio signals better. She'd also flippantly mentioned that an antenna tuner could help narrow in on specific frequencies more clearly. A real surprise for Terri was finding that she only had to hold said piece of equipment for it to work. Melissa said that it might be something to do with sympathetic resonance.
The deer had climbed up on the roof of her house, and brought along her antenna tuner, a notepad, pencils, snacks, and a few bottles of water. For most of the afternoon she listened to amateur radio and broadcast stations from as far away as Nunavut and Oaxaca - a real surprise, most of the time she didn't hear much on fifty megahertz. Conditions were just right for signals to travel a great distance.
Most of the ham radio operators were using single sideband voice... except for someone that let fly a blast of very fast Morse code just now, It was so darn fast that Terri could barely copy it. She only caught part of the call signs, something-MAT from K9ZO-something-H? Or was that MDS? Next question, if that was aimed at K9ZMAT, why would anyone use Morse to reply to a station transmitting single sideband voice?
Whoever the sender and receiver were, Terri thought they both ought to enter Morse Code speed competitions!
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K9ZMAT MAT DE K9ZMDS MDS DNR DNR MOK XPK DCV EML 88 MDS SK
The portable radio's low power meant Melissa would not be able to use voice; but she could still easily send a message in Morse, using a few of her own abbreviations and a couple standard ones: Mom, it's Melissa. Do not reply, do not reply. I'm okay. Expect a direct (coded) email. Love Melissa, signing off. Despite using the radio's buttons instead of a morse key, she sent that pretty darn fast.
"CQ six mater, CQ six mater, Kay 9 Zed Mike a-ditdit *cough*" Signal dropped for a moment, "*ahem* K9ZMAT, Kilo Nyner Zulu Mahke Alpha Taingo, cawlin' CQ..."
Norma Larson always got a Southern twang after drinking a glass of wine, and it got worse the more she drank. She could copy morse code at an impressive rate after two glasses; however, she had trouble remembering what abbreviations meant when she had that much alcohol in her system. Melissa figured that her Mom must have had at least three before getting on the radio that afternoon, as her drawl could almost pass for Tennessee. A moment later a station from Florida answered, and K9ZMAT had a nice chat with W4ZZR before the signal faded out.
Melissa broke down in tears of joy. Dit Dit, two morse dots, was a common acknowledge and sign off. Mom wouldn't have done that bit with the cough if a) she hadn't heard, or b) if trouble was still afoot. The covert response was what she really needed to hear; mom hopefully jotted her transmission down to translate later. Melissa could hardly believe her luck: an opening on six meter, Mom listening, and a clear answer.
She was still smiling and crying when Zeek found her an hour later. He knew he would find her in a very small room. He wasn't expecting her to hug him.
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"Where are we going next?" Melissa asked when Karen, Cora, Alf, and Monsoon announced that they had to head out to their next safe house. Benjamin and Tyler walked in with an update to their plans.
"After we meet with Darksight this weekend, we're heading up toward Lewiston. We have a safe house ready there," Cora explained. "We're going to have to find somewhere to belly up after that, since we won't be able to get into the house in Springfield for another month after that."
Melissa smiled. "How many of you have gone camping?"
The more the group thought about it, the more they agreed it was a far better cover than what they'd used so far. Bunch of kids with a handful of adults, diverse species? Suspicious, though a school trip might hold water. Add tents and coolers to their cars, and every once in a while someone launch a discussion of religion? They're a church group on a camping trip. Those adventurers can turn up in the weirdest places.
"How the hell did we miss that?" Monsoon asked with a laugh. "We're going to need tents, though."
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Benjamin was a bit puzzled why Melissa wrote a really long maudlin email to her mother about how she was never returning home; particularly why she had such explicit descriptions of some male's size in inches. It made more sense when she explained her code.
"I got I.N.C.H. from our emergency preparations - one layer is to be ready to leave with the prospect of never returning, I'm Never Coming Home, hence I.N.C.H. That's the equipment pack I took when I left, since I didn't know how long I would be gone. Telling her that I'm not coming back on an open channel like this is how I say I'm returning home. If her reply says 'I forgive you please come home', then the place is compromised and I'd best stay away. If Mom sounds like she's absolutely furious at me, then I know all is well. Then I'll send another message later telling her when and how many."
The reply she received a few days later could have been condensed considerably if the word Fuck was replaced with a punctuation mark. There was one paragraph that had a lot of CamelCased words (AssLicker and DickSucker being favorites), another with really obscure references and bizarre invective that didn't seem to make any sense; a third paragraph accused her of being a boyfriend-stealing slut. Melissa chuckled in astonishment and muttered, "You kiss with those mouths too?"
Tyler had to ask. Holly wanted to see.
"Looks like my whole family got to contribute," Melissa said as she turned her computer so they could read it. "It's an all clear."
The two rodents swore that they would remember those insults, and to never use some of them. Particularly the part Tom Larson contributed - the old man laid it on pretty thick.
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CHAPTER NINE
Defensive Posture
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North Riverford Mall
The place wasn't terribly busy on a Saturday afternoon, just a modest crowd remained after the lunchtime rush was over. Empty seats weren't hard to come by, but privacy would be a bit harder to get. Tyler and Holly just looked at each other and tried to restrain a laugh. "Chubblybubblykins, you want to grab some seats?" "Right-o, grimy sugar-guts!" Normally Holly and Tyler played Sickeningly Sweethearts by trading insults; but some time ago they found out that they could clear a good sized area of a crowded room by randomly switching back and forth between sugary schmoopiness, gross-out, and their usual friendly insults. This made the fourth time they'd used that trick in public. Melissa had seen them do it once before, and it actually made her nauseous. Especially when they switched from sugary subjects to nasty without changing their tone. This time Melissa made sure to stay out of earshot, since she didn't want to spoil her lunch.
"My Name is Darksight; I see everything through shaded eyes." And I really need to see you. The instructions that followed his private message on the website gave a very public location, where furs of a wide range of ages often congregated: the food court. Tyler, Holly, Ruby, and Brad offered to be the first contact team, and Melissa volunteered to join them. According to Darksight's instructions, two of the Lunatics had to wear something distinctive - it didn't have to be readily visible or out in the open, but it had to be fairly large and metal. Concealing sheets of aluminum foil in the girls' jackets wasn't hard to do. The plan was for the rest of the group to scatter into the mall, they had some things to get. Rendezvous at the food court in an hour and a half, radios on channel 7, monitor for calls and alerts.
Melissa, Brad, and Ruby went for food while Holly and Tyler claimed the table. Tyler and Brad both wanted pizza. Holly asked for two hero sandwiches, double everything, unless this branch of Zeppelin offers the Super Hero Sub. Ruby got a cheesesteak sub. Melissa wasn't sure what she wanted, but once everyone else had their selections the little vixen went over to the Black Thai and got ginger chicken stir fry. Sure enough the mouse and squirrel had done exactly what was needed: they had a table surrounded by vacant tables. "How the hell can you two stand each other doing that?" Melissa asked.
Tyler answered in a remarkably sexy voice, "Love can do straaange things." He and Holly immediately collapsed in a fit of giggles.
"I think that's him, over there," Melissa murmured as she sat down. An ordinarily dressed teenage tabby boy leaned against a large planter near the Frank 'N Stein. He had a pair of metallic-lensed sunglasses hanging from his collar. His expression was a bit odd, as if his eyes refused to come completely into focus. His eyes looked a bit weird.
"If he can do what he said, he may have already spotted us," Brad said softly. From what Tyler, Melissa, and Benjamin could decipher, Darksight could see just about all forms of light, from far infrared to soft X-ray. That would explain the "distinctive metal objects" request. Tyler wondered aloud just how the heck the guy could use a computer, and Melissa answered that sunglasses could filter a lot of stuff out, but he would have to get his computer and glasses pretty heavily customized. He might have had to learn braille - if he couldn't read conventional print, he might have been diagnosed as legally blind.
Sure enough, the tabby looked at Holly and Melissa again; then he put his shades on, got up, unfolded a blind man's cane, went to the Steak and Shake for a drink, then moseyed in their general direction. He settled at one of the vacant tables surrounding the Lunatics.
---------
Meanwhile, Benjamin and Zeek shopped their way through an electronics store. Zeek picked up a bag of really heavy duty cable ties. When the red fox gave him a questioning look, the fennec answered with a shrug and a wink. They had other things to pick up while they were here, and the cable ties were not too expensive, but now Benjamin was worried. Zeek had done that kind of thing before with a hammer and a bag of cookies, but something about this put the red fox on edge.
---------
Melissa came up with a fast way to open the subject and draw the new kid in: comic book and movie superheroes. As they all sat down to their food, the vixen launched the conversation with a question about how Superheroes could make daily use of their powers, or even use them for a job. Her voracious reading habits and the boys' knowledge of the genre got the chatter rolling.
When Holly suggested that someone with X-ray vision could work in airport security, the tabby took interest and finally joined their conversation.
---------
"I like just now found words for what I've been like seeing. With X-ray back scatter, I can see through like, clothing, fur, and like skin if the light is like strong enough. That's why I said bring metal." The tabby had a like, bad case of like, California, dude? Melissa was right about him having to use a braille computer, since his focus - no matter the wavelength - was terrible.
Doug "Darksight" Wallace took his sunglasses off to reveal cloudy, metallic gray eyes, "Yeah, I look like, weird? I can like see things in other kinds of light, y'know? So if, like, someone turned off the lights, I can still like go through a room without like tripping over stuff, even without my cane, 'cuz I'm like seeing light you can't see."
"Infrared?" Brad offered.
"Yeah, man, that's one of 'em. Even so, I can't like focus on nothing, so the doctors said I'm like legally blind." His eyes seemed to change colors, going from a metallic gray through iridescent shades of blue and purple to almost white. Holly thought it was a trick of the light, but then the tabby boy couldn't seem to keep his head still for long either.
"Whoa..." He stared at Ruby, then said in an admiring tone, "Girl, you got awesome bones."
Holly was about to make something of his ogling the innocent tiger, but Tyler nudged her under the table. The tabby leaned closer to look at the tiger's hand.
"..and muscles. Wow."
"What spectrum are you using right now? What kind of light?" Melissa asked.
"Huh? Oh yeah, X-ray. I can't see skin, if you're wondering. I can see bone and like hard stuff. That vixen working at the Steak'n'shake has like totally fake tits man, the sheep dude over there has a roll of wire in his pocket, old deer lady has like a bunch of metal in her right leg..." he squinted, his voice dropped quite a bit of volume, and took a serious tone, "and three dudes over at the Pizza Shack are carrying guns... there's like another one at the Thai place... oh fuck... more..."
Melissa already had a hand on her radio, and used one of her emergency signals: dash dash dash dit dit dit... dash dash dash dit dit dit... dash dash dash dit dit dit. Morse code. She then locked down the transmit key, a feature that her radio didn't normally have.
The radio's microphone wasn't completely overpowered by the sound of gunfire.
---------
Summoned by Melissa's call and the additional sounds they heard through her radio, the rest of the Lunatics quietly and quickly returned to the food court. They needed only moments to see that Holly and Melissa were being carefully restrained, and Ruby looked like she was coming to from a daze. Brad and Tyler were nowhere to be seen, and the cub they were supposed to meet could have been anywhere. Her radio provided some clues to what their captors wanted, and from their professionalism and subtlety they were clearly after the Lunatics. The vixen's message made more sense now: instead of SOS, she only sent the letters O and S. Oh Shit. The cubs and their adult companions withdrew to a nearby curiosity shop.
"We don't know how many of them there are..." Karen abruptly keeled over when a strangely familiar sensation hit her like a ton of bricks.
---------
Karen belatedly realized that what she felt must have been a lot like what boys experienced when they got kicked in the testicles.
Nearly everyone in the food court had collapsed to the floor. Ruby, Melissa, and Holly were surrounded by twelve burly men of varied species, they must have had most of their guns aimed outward. Everyone else had backed away from them, forming a fairly large space around the gunmen and their hostages. Several light fixtures and security cameras had been shot out - when Kuri jumped down from the top of a wall, she almost landed on the remains of a camera.
Ruby seemed to be getting over whatever she'd been gassed with; she hardly had to struggle to get out of her captor's grip, and she soon dumped him on the floor. Holly was also down, but showed signs of coming to. A few people at the edge of the food court seemed to be coming to as well. Benjamin noticed the smell, and surmised that there wasn't a dry seat in the house.
Melissa walked over to her friends, but paused when she saw what had just fallen out of Zeek's shopping bag.
"You're a really handy kit to have around," she said as she picked up the cable ties, and gently nipped the fennec's ear. With some help from the other cubs, they quickly had the gunmen tied up. Ruby asked Monsoon to help her hog-tie the moose that captured her, he was a strong SOB.
Melissa whipped out and donned a pair of rubber gloves before she searched each man for additional weapons.
When the police arrived, they were astonished to find that a small group of grade schoolers had mostly sorted out the scene. Two of that group, a vixen and a squirrel, took turns explaining what happened. "Someone set something off, and a lot of people collapsed all at once. The tiger and fox weren't affected, we don't know how -- what the hell?" Holly said right as one of the tied-up men suddenly chomped on something, and he began to twitch and shake. His mouth was foaming.
The little vixen barked, "Check their mouths!" She jumped to another of the tied-up men, and quickly took a glass capsule out of the buck's cheek. He very nearly bit her fingers in the process, and put up a major struggle to get loose from the ties binding him when he realized she'd stolen his final escape.
---------
By the time the paramedics arrived, four of the twelve gunmen were dead. Many of them had bitten their tongues when... whatever... happened; one of the dead ones had accidentally chomped down on a poison capsule right then. When the authorities arrived, most of the survivors were barely conscious, intact capsules full of poison concealed in their cheeks. The one Holly heard must have awoke enough to realize his mission failed. Two more crunched their capsules before the cops could take them away, bringing the total dead to six.
Fortunately for everyone else in the food court, the dead gunmen were the only ones affected by cyanide.
--------
Just out of sight, though near the gunmen, a hyena in a janitor's uniform was coming to. He pulled a small music player from his pocket, pressed a button, and spoke in a low voice, "Failure... someone... was more... than noisy normal... failurrgggh" he threw up in his mop bucket and collapsed on the floor.
Sherri was the only one to witness the seventh death of the afternoon. One of the paramedics heard the barf, but the bunny grabbed the recording and stayed invisible until a cop who looked trustworthy could be found.
One of the radios used by the mall staff caught a message, even though it was barely readable through the static, "Charlie foxtrot." Nobody noticed four nondescript work vans leaving from different parts of the mall parking lot moments after the "janitor" died.
--------
The police could only draw one conclusion: these were hit men, probably working under duress of some sort. They'd have to wait until the rest of the survivors woke up to question them.
The police had far too many questions to let anyone go. Who were these guys? None of them had any ID or keys, just a modest amount of cash; they all had cheap pre-paid cell phones (a quick check of the billing info turned up three vacant buildings and a new restaurant) with wireless earpieces; and their weapons all registered as stolen. The one that woke up at the mall either didn't speak English or had the presence of mind to pretend that he didn't, and finding someone who spoke Croatian would take a while. What did they want? Why did they grab these youngsters in a bid to hold them hostage in such a public place? And why in any hell did they have poison capsules?
Next on their list: who were those kids? The little vixen wearing the vest with a bazillion pockets behaved a lot like a cop, right down to rubber gloves!
The cops wanted to take Melissa in for questioning, but she explained that she couldn't go with them. Her parents would have to give permission for her guardians - she pointed out Monsoon - to release her for any length of time, and they're out of the country at the moment. A gentle push against the cops' minds helped plant the suggestion that she didn't know anything else relevant to the case.
After the police were finally done taking notes and the medical examiner had cleared the scene, Melissa was tired out and sorely needed to hide for a while. The camping gear the Lunatics had purchased provided a perfect excuse.
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CHAPTER TEN
Fallout
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Case #9999975564-multiple "TASKFORCE"
Agent 008543:
Attempt to follow Subject #7215531204 to set an ambush for TASKFORCE failed. Surveillance footage, police, and forensic reports suggest that it was a partial success, that some of the subjects were captured, but the hired agents were disabled before subjects could be collected. Reports suggest that BROADCASTER was involved, death of Agent 561898 by cerebral and abdominal hemorrhage has been attributed to her.
Subject-31204 escaped the capture attempt and has gone to ground. Family has disappeared, friends don't consider that unusual; common assumption is that they went surfing.
Recommend using military personnel for future capture operations. Mercenaries are not working out at all, TASKFORCE are becoming formidable fighters. Unless we can make dramatic expansion of our security, all facilities are at risk.
Further evidence and activity suggests that groups besides TASKFORCE are active.
Entry 69-9842-2975-GLOBAL
Loss of the KO and SH facilities have compromised our ability to contain subjects from regions NA4 and NA5. The incident at GZ and loss of the associated tracker facility has all but destroyed our ability to monitor and track potentials in regions NA2 and NA3. The Med03 incident has brought more public scrutiny than we can deflect. Continuing Police investigations indicate that our databases have also been compromised. Med02, Med04, WC, EN, AS, DR, CH, QB, and PA facilities are on alert. Timetable on Med01 shutdown has been accelerated, Med05 construction has been delayed.
--------
The camping excursion was relatively uneventful. Melissa got the secluded rest that she needed, in between teaching the group how to survive in the woods. They all had fun figuring out how to apply their unique abilities to living in the wilderness.
The only real surprise that they had was an encounter with Melissa's cousin Vincent Larson. He saw the smoke from their campfires, and caught a whiff of Melissa when he went to investigate.
The group had coincidentally set up camp barely four miles away from his hideaway, where Melissa had hid back in the fall - she thought the woods were vaguely familiar, but she had not seen this particular forest in the spring.
He'd been using Melissa's bicycle to ferry supplies from where he hid his car to his hideout - two wheels were a lot better than four in this terrain, and the bike was made for it.
Introductions went around.
Vinnie noticed Melissa's changes in attitude and demeanour, and said she was "speaking from between her legs" now. (Queried about the phrase, he got it from a coyote woman that he'd helped get into Witness Protection.)
Then demonstrations went around.
When Melissa explained that her abilities involved more than the sexy scent he knew so well, and offered to show him the rest of her capabilities, the group gave them lots of room. The notable exception was Ruby.
Vinnie's response to Melissa's power: "What. The. Fuck. Was. That?" He orgasmed so hard he went crosseyed for a couple minutes.
--------
The Springfield in question was the very same Springfield that had been hit by a tornado most of a year ago. Tyler's folks would be meeting them there. A little side trip would be no problem.
Melissa got a very ...enthusiastic welcome home from her sister. Sharon greeted her with a really deep kiss and almost immediately started undressing herself and her little sister - completely ignoring the fact that they had company. Sharon amply showed off the fact that she had developed quite a lot since Melissa ran off to hide.
Greetings and introductions took most of a day. The Larsons were surprised to discover that Melissa wasn't that unusual, and pleased that she had made new friends. But they were astonished to see that the odd abilities were that common and that extreme. Melissa was wide eyed to find that her family had amassed a small arsenal of pistols and rifles in such a short time. "Did Vinnie stop by?"
Sharon revealed a surprise: temperature extremes didn't bother her any more. During practice the previous August, at a point when even the reptiles were begging for cooldown breaks, she wasn't bothered by the heat. One of the playoff games in November was postponed on account of severe cold weather - even the yak on the offensive squad said it was too damn cold - Sharon was comfortable in her short-skirted summer uniform. "When we had that severe cold snap in January and it got down to ten below, I went outside in my underwear," she shuddered in delight at the memory, "all I needed after that was a good fuck."
During the day of demonstrations, the twins admitted and showed their own telepathic abilities. "We've kept quiet about it as much as we can. Melissa, we found your notes."
They gave her a moment to let that sink in, "Thank you. You gave us a shadow to hide in."
-------
Melissa went to visit the Rogers the next evening, and they all got a bigger surprise when Mrs. Roger went into labor. Melissa promptly called to get Alf and Monsoon over; even if they were orderlies, they must have had some training in this. Mr. Roger called their doctor.
Mrs. Teresa Roger, RN, didn't remember much after her water broke. She tried to coach Melissa at first, but then heard the vixen's voice answer her. And a song started in her mind that wouldn't go away, something she'd heard from the choir her parents were in.
My life goes on in endless song
Look at me.
above Earth's lamentation,
LOOK AT ME. Melissa's mouth didn't move when she spoke.
I hear the real though far off song
You will see, hear, and feel things. You are not hallucinating. I am doing it.
that hails a new creation
"Lube, please?" A fox with blue hair handed her a really big tube. Mrs. Roger recognized the personal lubricant from her bedside stand.
No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging
"When you feel the next contraction, pant... pant... pant... good." Blue hair said this.
It sounds an echo in my soul
She felt hands on her belly. "Come on, little one, where's your head... come on..." Melissa again.
How can I keep from singing?
"Oh no you don't, now get that out of the way... leggo... come on..."
No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging
Now push.
While love is lord of heaven and Earth
"PUSH." Excellent.
How can I keep from singing?
When the doctor got to their house, the baby was almost out. Melissa cradled the cub's head and shoulders until Mrs. Roger's next contraction came.
The little vixen pronounced, "Congratulations; it's a boy."
------
Doctor Suchitra (the mongoose insisted on using her first name, as her family never figured out how to pronounce their last name) hardly had to get her hands dirty, but she was ready to help deal with the afterbirth and care for the mother. Alf quietly stepped out of the way to let the real doctor handle things from there, but he soon ended up with an armful of newborn.
Monsoon and Ruby gladly provided extra muscle to help Darius Roger get his exhausted wife cleaned up and to bed. Alf kept the now sleeping newborn in Teresa's sight the entire time.
"Doc, will you help me clean up? Having the baby in the bathtub made cleaning mom up a bit easier... ah, hell, it's a warm night, just turn the garden hose on me. I'll give you the full report while we straighten up. Ooh, my knees!"
The mongoose was a bit taken aback. This kit spoke like someone easily three times her age, with lots more experience.
"Teresa said she lost the cervical mucus plug day before yesterday; Darius said that's one of the few times he's ever been grossed out. I suspect he was giving her oral at the time, but I didn't ask. They knew she would be due any day."
"Ew! They told me about the plug," Dr. Suchitra made a disgusted face, but couldn't quite suppress a laugh as the two of them gathered up soiled cloths and straightened up the bathroom. "I knew they wouldn't be able to lay off when I told them to stop having sex!" Melissa had her own reasons for laughing along with the doctor.
"She started having contractions right before Darius called you. Other than the plug, she hadn't had a single sign that the baby was ready. Her contractions started pretty abruptly around seven o'clock, and they were coming between three and four minutes apart. My friends Monsoon, Alf, and Ruby arrived a few minutes after her water broke. Monsoon worked for a long time as an orderly, and Alf is a nurse; this was covered in his training, even if it was the first time he ever had to assist with a birth. Teresa knew what she had to do, that made the biggest difference. The umbilical cord got a bit tangled up in the baby's arms, but I had enough room to reach in and get it out of the way."
"I'm glad you were here, and someone had training. You've got the perfect little paws for it. Teresa is a rather small gal, and I'm really surprised it wasn't a breech birth. Her cub turned around at least twice in the last couple months."
"I'd say most of the competence was really on the patient's part. She coached me while she could -- Gah! Amniotic fluid really stinks!"
Dr. Suchitra and Melissa piled the bags by the back door before they headed outside.
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen." Melissa shucked her bloodied undergarments and tossed them aside. She'd stripped down some before getting in the oversize bathtub to assist Mrs. Roger.
The doctor looked a bit surprised. "You don't look any older than eight."
"There's something wrong with my response to growth hormones. I've taken twice as long as any normal kit to get to this size; I may not hit puberty until after twenty. Water on?"
The mongoose nodded again as she wet Melissa down, then handed over the soap. "That explains a lot. I have seen it once, but not quite as severe; one of my classmates could have passed for a teenager, but she was twenty-four."
While Melissa lathered up, Dr. Suchitra blurted, "You're a really sexy girl," and immediately looked rather guilty for admitting that. 2:15 AM is not a good time for keeping thoughts restrained, especially when you got up at 4:30 the previous morning.
The little vixen wasn't startled at all. She slyly grinned, and made a sensual show of working the lather through her fur, across her thighs and shins, down her tail, then up her hands and arms.
She could still smell blood and amniotic fluid in her fur, but at least the mess was taken care of. Mom had better shampoo for that at home.
--------
The Larsons and Cora Maplewood had their hands full with a house full of cubs and teenagers that night. The basement wasn't all that spacious or comfortable, but a house big enough for a family with five cubs had more than enough bedrooms if nobody would mind sharing. Or if Robert would at least clear the floor of his room, there'd be plenty of space.
When she got home just after sunrise, Melissa took a proper shower. She had just gotten out and was dressing for bed when the doorbell rang.
Melissa followed her father to another room, and he clicked on an intercom with a display. Wow, they took paranoid to a whole new level here: the intercom showed who was standing at the door. Two obviously well-built furs, both wearing suits, and holding something in their hands. Dad keyed up the mic.
--------
"Hello?"
The wolf and hyena were a little taken aback by the presence of an intercom at the door of what appeared to be a completely ordinary middle-class neighborhood. They held up badges and announced who they were, "Hello, we're agents Diane Muller and Frederick Skelton from the FBI. We're following up on a Missing Furson case, regarding Melissa Larson?"
"Hold your badges up to the speaker, please, we're going to check those numbers before we let you in. Muller... hyena..." he must have let go of the talk button. "Okay; Skelton, please... wolf, up a little more? ...six eight five. All right, give us a minute."
The agents were a bit puzzled. A few minutes later, the voice came up again, "Sorry for the caution, agents. I'll explain when I let you in. Be there in a moment."
When the Larsons explained the reason behind their slightly paranoid greeting, Agents Muller and Skelton accepted the apology - they were getting used to mistrust, but would feel a bit more comfortable if Mrs. Larson would at least put down her shotgun. "Tell you what, officers. You put your guns on the coffee table, in plain sight, my gun will go there as well. Okay?" She had her twelve gauge broken over her arm, with neither hand anywhere near the trigger - as close to a loaded safety as a double-barreled shotgun could have. The agents cautiously agreed, unloaded their guns, and gestured for her to do the same. She gave them a chance to put their ammunition away before taking out the shells and putting her gun down. The agents weren't afraid of doing that since they both had backup weapons. Given that greeting, the lady of the house probably had a pistol hidden in her loose, feminine clothes as well.
"We know there's more than following up on our daughter. Last week we got word from the local police that they were going to cancel the case." Muller and Skelton exchanged a look. That suggested that a judge was involved.
"Was there any suggestion that she was abducted?"
Dad answered, "No. She left a message with her friends that she was going to hide for a little while. Melissa loves camping, and sometimes she'd leave messages that she was camping out for the night. I helped her establish a few hideouts, but I don't know what others she might have had."
"How often did she 'go off to hide?' And how did she let you know?"
"On average, about every three weeks. Let me back up a bit..." Tom Larson told their side of the story, from the point where Melissa was taken out of school, the time with private tutors, and the repeated fliers they got from King's Orchard, Safe Harbor, and Wall Center; he brought those out to show to the FBI agents. Muller and Skelton's eyes went very wide. This was only the fourth time they'd actually seen any of the advertisements, despite interviewing over sixty families; and the first time they had seen this many of the fliers side by side. Skelton made a note that Wall Center must have been fairly new, they hadn't seen that one before. The documents were practically carbon copies, the only differences being the pictures, addresses, and contact names, as if someone used the same template for all of them. One particular name caught Muller's eye: Beatrix Beverly. She had seen that name before.
Mom picked up the story. "The day Melissa left, I had spoken to her on the radio - oh, you saw the antennas on the roof, right? We're licensed ham radio operators. Shortly after we spoke, we had a threatening group show up. They demanded to know where our daughter was, and said that they had to take her in for questioning. They wouldn't show badges, give reasons, or engage in any conversation beyond asking where she was; the phones were messed up due to a storm, so we couldn't call the police. They basically held us until the time that Melissa should have been home, and then one of them got on his radio and called someone. We thought they were police, but their refusal to show badges, give credentials, or any more information got my hackles up. I told the lead guy, 'She's my daughter, I have a right to know what kind of trouble she's in.' He pulled a gun on me and said that if I didn't shut up and hand her over, that we'd be in bigger trouble."
Sharon came into the room during the first part of the conversation, and had waited silently while Mom and Dad talked with the FBI agents. She picked up the story from that point. "The so-called cops left the house around midnight, but they had one of their vans parked outside all night. We got a phone call from her friends the Rogers the next morning, that was the message Dad told you about. Dad tried to call her on the radio, but didn't get a clear answer. We didn't hear anything else from her, but the so-called cops didn't leave until evening. Made me late for practice that day, too."
Robert and the Twins quietly came into the room as she continued, "It got worse after that. We had more calls from those people demanding to know where Melissa was. One of them even threatened, and I quote, 'we're going to find a drug lab in your house if you don't turn her in.' Mom recorded that off the voice mail, if you want a copy."
Dad gestured to Robert, and took up the next part of the story as the boy went over to the TV. "After the threatening calls, there were reports of break-ins around the neighborhood, and our house got broken into. The alarm went off one afternoon when we weren't home; all we had was a broken window, but nothing was missing. A week later, a guy from the ham radio club brought over a couple radios that he wanted to try out. I found almost constant interference on the upper edge of the five gigahertz band, and when I called him back over he helped us search around. We found these hidden in our house."
Robert brought out a metal box, and opened it to show the FBI agents: three tiny cameras and eight microphone transmitters that could easily have been mistaken for stray wires. Dad described the hardware, "Arguably legal transmitters due to their low power and loose licensing on the frequencies they used. That thing on the end came from a neighbor who found it under his eaves, I think it's a repeater of some sort, disguised as a hornet nest. We don't know if the batteries have given up yet, that's why we kept 'em in that box." Robert closed the box and put it away. Dad hoped he could use them as evidence if he ever found out who had planted them.
"Did you try to contact the police?" Muller asked. She seemed genuinely astonished at this. Skelton took out his smartphone and took pictures of the devices.
"Yes, and the first thing they asked is where Melissa was. I asked if there was a warrant out for her, and the officer hung up on me. We got several calls that the caller ID recorded as being from the police department, asking if we'd heard from our daughter. We had to file a Missing Fursons report just to acknowledge that we had no idea where she was, and the detectives damn near arrested us on the spot. They also demanded to know where we had hidden Melissa." Dad sighed. "We demanded to know why they wanted her, but the cops never answered. We demanded a lawyer, and then they let us go."
Mom again, "This is where it gets weird. I saw one of the detectives at the grocery store the very next week, and asked him if he'd had any more information on our case. He acted as if he'd never seen me before. We asked a lawyer that we usually deal with in our real estate work to check around, and he said he couldn't find anything at all. It's as if we were dealing with the wrong police department. He said they couldn't find that case number."
Skelton and Muller exchanged a look, then Skelton spoke, "You all seem really calm about this. Has your daughter contacted you recently?" The FBI agents got their biggest surprise of the morning as a voice spoke from another room.
"At 19:45 local time Friday evening, missing furson case #988215054, Larson, Melissa F., was unofficially closed when the gray fox kit in question returned home," Melissa came around the corner from the kitchen into the front room, wearing only a nightshirt and carrying a towel, her fur still slightly damp from the shower. "I've been in contact with my family the entire time. Agents, there's more going on than what we've already talked about, and I have a bunch of friends who agree with me. What have you found out about King's Orchard, Safe Harbor, Wall Center, and Dawson Regional?" She leaned on the door frame.
Muller and Skelton exchanged a very worried look. Dawson Regional? Where had she heard THAT name? "We're risking our badges by telling you this..." Muller started, and Skelton realized he had an uncomfortable and unconcealable boner. Muller's nipples were showing through her bra and blouse.
------
The investigation launched by Officer Pardy had gone quite high in spite of the agencies acting against it. Investigators often disappeared with no explanation or warning; some of them took up the case and were quite abruptly reassigned or forcibly retired. This lasted until someone made an interstate connection, and then the FBI got involved.
The Director tried to keep it quiet, but they lost a Deputy Director and at least twenty field agents, and had an abrupt and massive mess in the records division. The only agent that seemed to escape notice of whoever was interfering was a rabbit that kept a really low profile, thanks to his CIA training. The director figured that the only way he could continue this case was to keep it as quiet as possible. But he also had an ace in the hole.
Agents Muller and Skelton were relatively low-ranking field agents, usually assigned to investigate truly weird cases, ranging from UFO sightings to strange monsters. They met a human once. But that would be a story for another time.
The agents asked Melissa about any odd abilities, either her own or among her new friends. Melissa silently sent instructions to her little sisters, Tori, Ronnie, go warn our guests, and brace yourselves. The twins nodded to her in silent unison, and left the room. The FBI Agents noticed. "Did you just tell them something?" "Was that it?"
"Agents, will you please remove any sharp objects from your pockets and lie down on the floor? This could cause you to hurt yourselves."
As soon as the twins sent Melissa an "all clear", and Muller and Skelton were on the floor, the agents got their demonstration. And both needed a change of trousers.
"Holy shit..." Muller moaned. Her crotch was visibly wet despite the dark color of her clothing. Skelton came so hard he squirted right through his pants. The Larson family would need a change of underwear, but they knew what to expect and how to prepare for it.
"That's why I warned you to lie down. You smell that? That's not the cum in your pants. That's me. I'm rather glad Dad put that camera on the door, because I could have - and would have - knocked you out the way I just did without talking to you."
"Now while you recover," Melissa continued, "let me see if I've already found some of what you're looking for. Cubs like me have special abilities, some weird, some remarkable. Many of them manifest with abnormal behavior. How am I doing so far?"
Grunted agreement from Muller. Skelton's breath was rather ragged, as if he'd just made an insane run or had incredible athletic sex.
"There are people out there who don't like that. So someone came up with the idea of rounding us up. That make sense?"
"Yeah..." Muller grunted. She seemed to have regained some muscle control, though she was gasping for breath.
"How many kits with special abilities have you met?"
Muller was finally able to speak. "Counting you, eight. We've been interviewing families for four months now; most of them had so many problems with their offspring that they agreed to send them off to--ooohh..." she quivered as another orgasm overtook her.
"Try not to move your legs. You'll be sensitive for a while yet. What did you find out about the institutions?" Melissa handed her towel to agent Muller. He was about to make a puddle on the carpet.
Muller answered first. "They seemed to be regular asylums at first, although they were for younger kits. All could handle teenagers. The families told of advertisements like yours in the mail, and nearly all said that the ads turned up after the cub was reported for some kind of misbehavior."
Skelton added, "They made the news. Oh fuck..." He lapsed into panting and another orgasm as he tried to wipe some of the semen off the front of his pants.
"Deep slow breaths. Made the news?"
"Yeah. King's Orchard and Safe Harbor. Lot of bodies brought out on stretchers," Muller continued. "The PD in Daggett Falls had a real strange problem that fit right in with our usual cases. Nobody could clearly remember what happened the night of the Safe Harbor incident. The records department was missing a bunch of stuff from right around that time. Several officers had been hospitalized, three of the ones we interviewed had pretty serious anterograde amnesia."
"They couldn't form new memories." Melissa murmured. "Did anyone find out what happened to those kits?"
Skelton responded this time. "Most... families said they... got a call, kid died of an accident or drug overdose or something. Many were upset by that. Some just didn't care-igh..." The creamy white mess on the front of his pants got bigger as he tensed up. "A few parents," his voice started to sound angry, "were even pleased about Ward Zero..."
Ah, Ward Zero finally rears its head. Melissa's jaw tightened as Skelton went quiet.
"If I may draw a conclusion, it sounds like this ...agency, for lack of a better word, is dedicated to eliminating anyone with these odd abilities - call them superpowers if you like. Does that seem to follow?"
Both agents nodded agreement.
"Now I have to guess: they may be studying these superpowers to find out what makes them tick. First and foremost, they want to learn how they happen, and if the factors can be controlled."
"We haven't found any suggestion of that." Muller sat up and orgasmed again. Melissa chortled. The FBI agent still hasn't taken the advice of going slow; he seemed to be more susceptible.
"Does it seem to make sense?"
The agents groaned and came again as Melissa's scent wafted over them.
"I can see this agency having several different objectives. If you're the only ones with guns, who can shoot back? If you can make super-powered soldiers, what army can stand against you? If you can convince the masses that bizarre abilities are something to be feared, who will be able to stand against your super soldiers?" Melissa paused to see if they wanted to answer, then continued, "On the gripping hand, if you can't do that, then what do you do? Get rid of them."
Melissa was quiet for a moment.
"Does it seem to make sense?" The agents had no answer to that.
"You said you were risking your badges to talk to me. I suspect this agency has a large number of other people in their pockets, by any means they can get; I think you know this from having to root out spies and traitors."
"I recorded this conversation, no doubt you did as well. I have one thing to finish your report, something I know this 'agency' will want to see," the little gray fox said as she crouched down.
Her voice was velvet covering steel as she spoke, "We know what we are. We will live as we choose. We are getting together. Do anything to us and you will regret it. Melissa Larson, K9ZMDS: My Name is Seduce." She stood back up, giving the agents a great view of the fact she wasn't wearing anything under her nightshirt, and giving them another waft of her scent. Both agents were just about out of cum at that point.
"There's a bathroom in the hall, first door on the right, if you want to clean up. Lingering effects will be eased if you two go have sex a few times. The bathroom's big enough for you to screw in there if you want. In the meantime, I'm going to bed. I helped deliver a baby last night, and I haven't had any sleep since day before yesterday."
--------
EPILOGUE
Shelter
Madam was rather puzzled when Vinnie Larson came by. The fox didn't seem to be as edgy as usual, leading the puma to wonder if he'd gotten laid before coming to visit. That seemed unusual for him, though arriving while the sun was still up was right on target.
"Hey, I got a fuckin' message for ya."
THAT was normal. For him.
"Fucking OK, Vinnie. Come the fuck on back." Madam led him back to her office. The F-bomb was a ritual with him, and a way to say that everything was good. If a conversation went by when he didn't cuss, there was some serious shit going down.
After Madam closed her office door, Vinnie dug a thick envelope out of his pocket and plopped down in a chair. "Someone we both know really fuckin' well wanted to let you know, she's fuckin' okay," he tossed the envelope on her desk, "and said to fuckin' give you that."
Madam realized that Vinnie wasn't relaxed, he's relieved. He was just as relieved when he quit working for a bounty hunter a few years back. She was a bit puzzled about the package. This wasn't the first time he'd rescued someone from forced prostitution and used her brothel as a relay to get the victim to the police. The long-term emotional damage from that wasn't pretty.
She tore the envelope open, and dumped out the contents. Two airtight plastic bags landed on her desk: one was a sheet of paper wrapped around something, the other contained a handkerchief. She opened the bag with the paper first, and found it was a note wrapped around a stack of large cash.
Sorry I haven't been able to get back in touch. Thanks for letting me stay at your place, and I'm sorry for the building damage when I left. I have some new friends that I can stay with now; put this toward the building repair fund.
Thank you thank you thank you!
"Who sent this?"
"She said you'd fuckin' know," Vinnie grinned.
Madam opened the bag with the handkerchief... and then the smell hit her nose. She rubbed her muzzle in the cloth and took a deep breath. She knew that scent, and how it made her feel, all too well.
"Vinnie, you get a freebie tonight..." Madam purred as she loosened her blouse, "...with me."
--------
The End...
...For now.
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