{ "submission_id": "3555742", "keywords": [ { "keyword_id": "17266", "keyword_name": "1990s", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "124" }, { "keyword_id": "11734", "keyword_name": "90s", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "599" }, { "keyword_id": "9981", "keyword_name": "adolescent", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "805" }, { "keyword_id": "128411", "keyword_name": "adult magazine", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "4" }, { "keyword_id": "469269", "keyword_name": "age 10", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "50" }, { "keyword_id": "489863", "keyword_name": "age 9", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "9" }, { "keyword_id": "678", "keyword_name": "anthro", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "225362" }, { "keyword_id": "22745", "keyword_name": "anthropomorph", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1153" }, { "keyword_id": "5471", "keyword_name": "anthropomorphic", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "27812" }, { "keyword_id": "792609", "keyword_name": "before the fall", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "36" }, { "keyword_id": "104183", "keyword_name": "black market", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "17" }, { "keyword_id": "61", "keyword_name": "boy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "82206" }, { "keyword_id": "48116", "keyword_name": "boy/boy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1526" }, { "keyword_id": "154814", "keyword_name": "boy/boy/boy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "84" }, { "keyword_id": "15", "keyword_name": "boys", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11540" }, { "keyword_id": "606888", "keyword_name": "btf", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "38" }, { "keyword_id": "236430", "keyword_name": "casual masturbation", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "22" }, { "keyword_id": "1403", "keyword_name": "child", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11653" }, { "keyword_id": "3844", "keyword_name": "childhood", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1131" }, { "keyword_id": "147169", "keyword_name": "childhood friends", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "48" }, { "keyword_id": "6017", "keyword_name": "children", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2691" }, { "keyword_id": "1195", "keyword_name": "club", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2731" }, { "keyword_id": "100586", "keyword_name": "club house", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "4" }, { "keyword_id": "61097", "keyword_name": "clubhouse", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "55" }, { "keyword_id": "840776", "keyword_name": "colin coll-boy hall", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5" }, { "keyword_id": "3833", "keyword_name": "crew", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "112" }, { "keyword_id": "37", "keyword_name": "cub", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "284731" }, { "keyword_id": "5307", "keyword_name": "cub porn", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "12182" }, { "keyword_id": "448", "keyword_name": "cubs", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "19503" }, { "keyword_id": "79", "keyword_name": "cum", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "196549" }, { "keyword_id": "831004", "keyword_name": "cum in penetrable sex toy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1" }, { "keyword_id": "5452", "keyword_name": "cum inside", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "37832" }, { "keyword_id": "413955", "keyword_name": "cum in toy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "7" }, { "keyword_id": "2015", "keyword_name": "cumming", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "44203" }, { "keyword_id": "840774", "keyword_name": "dominic crocutto", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "9" }, { "keyword_id": "840785", "keyword_name": "donnie logan", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "3" }, { "keyword_id": "831003", "keyword_name": "enterprising youth", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1" }, { "keyword_id": "10208", "keyword_name": "escape", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "638" }, { "keyword_id": "3043", "keyword_name": "excessive cum", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "7258" }, { "keyword_id": "71584", "keyword_name": "fappable", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "76" }, { "keyword_id": "1413", "keyword_name": "fiction", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "918" }, { "keyword_id": "1557", "keyword_name": "furry", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "124426" }, { "keyword_id": "3242", "keyword_name": "gang", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "622" }, { "keyword_id": "169121", "keyword_name": "group masturbation", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "111" }, { "keyword_id": "831005", "keyword_name": "group wank", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1" }, { "keyword_id": "27898", "keyword_name": "heist", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "108" }, { "keyword_id": "195157", "keyword_name": "hooded rat", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "39" }, { "keyword_id": "322904", "keyword_name": "hustling", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "3" }, { "keyword_id": "840777", "keyword_name": "jerry belly bellick", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "7" }, { "keyword_id": "840778", "keyword_name": "kelly kellogg turner", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "6" }, { "keyword_id": "840794", "keyword_name": "leo pridemore", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2" }, { "keyword_id": "840796", "keyword_name": "luke slater", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2" }, { "keyword_id": "165", "keyword_name": "male", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1212891" }, { "keyword_id": "10308", "keyword_name": "male/male", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "127692" }, { "keyword_id": "47260", "keyword_name": "male/male/male", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "9504" }, { "keyword_id": "1853", "keyword_name": "marsupial", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5007" }, { "keyword_id": "23557", "keyword_name": "noogie", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "54" }, { "keyword_id": "30102", "keyword_name": "nostalgia", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "449" }, { "keyword_id": "125439", "keyword_name": "nostalgic", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "107" }, { "keyword_id": "22619", "keyword_name": "nudes", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "992" }, { "keyword_id": "177888", "keyword_name": "nudie magazine", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2" }, { "keyword_id": "831002", "keyword_name": "one last job", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1" }, { "keyword_id": "3541", "keyword_name": "opossum", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "4670" }, { "keyword_id": "247514", "keyword_name": "penetrable sex toy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "248" }, { "keyword_id": "28111", "keyword_name": "pornography", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "620" }, { "keyword_id": "7855", "keyword_name": "poverty", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "42" }, { "keyword_id": "16249", "keyword_name": "prequel", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "623" }, { "keyword_id": "83263", "keyword_name": "procyonid", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "844" }, { "keyword_id": "123928", "keyword_name": "procyonidae", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "188" }, { "keyword_id": "152", "keyword_name": "raccoon", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "37356" }, { "keyword_id": "452", "keyword_name": "rat", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "23811" }, { "keyword_id": "840795", "keyword_name": "richter mcropus", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2" }, { "keyword_id": "166472", "keyword_name": "scam", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "38" }, { "keyword_id": "41817", "keyword_name": "shenanigans", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "248" }, { "keyword_id": "3364", "keyword_name": "shirtless", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5003" }, { "keyword_id": "626757", "keyword_name": "shirtless boy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "476" }, { "keyword_id": "252616", "keyword_name": "shirtless male", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1174" }, { "keyword_id": "7916", "keyword_name": "short story", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1165" }, { "keyword_id": "548", "keyword_name": "sleepover", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1640" }, { "keyword_id": "831001", "keyword_name": "stolen bikes", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1" }, { "keyword_id": "948", "keyword_name": "story", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "14256" }, { "keyword_id": "10144", "keyword_name": "story progression", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2041" }, { "keyword_id": "3012", "keyword_name": "story series", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1967" }, { "keyword_id": "801795", "keyword_name": "straight jorking it and by it well lets justr say my peanits", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "60" }, { "keyword_id": "20984", "keyword_name": "suspense", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "230" }, { "keyword_id": "15121", "keyword_name": "sweat", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "22346" }, { "keyword_id": "10968", "keyword_name": "theft", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "307" }, { "keyword_id": "20513", "keyword_name": "trailer", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "242" }, { "keyword_id": "342559", "keyword_name": "trailer park", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11" }, { "keyword_id": "48300", "keyword_name": "tree house", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "69" }, { "keyword_id": "23798", "keyword_name": "treehouse", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "328" }, { "keyword_id": "39831", "keyword_name": "virginia opossum", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "411" }, { "keyword_id": "1334", "keyword_name": "wrestling", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2968" }, { "keyword_id": "1493", "keyword_name": "young", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "70233" }, { "keyword_id": "101699", "keyword_name": "young boy", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5264" }, { "keyword_id": "840775", "keyword_name": "zach pussycat felix", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "8" } ], "hidden": "f", "scraps": "f", "favorite": "f", "favorites_count": "15", "create_datetime": "2025-02-21 23:36:18.637792+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "22 Feb 2025 00:36 CET", "last_file_update_datetime": "2025-03-16 04:14:26.275508+00", "last_file_update_datetime_usertime": "16 Mar 2025 05:14 CET", "username": "beforethefall", "user_id": "1271311", "user_icon_file_name": "344782_beforethefall_balootodd.gif", "user_icon_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/large/344/344782_beforethefall_balootodd.gif", "user_icon_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/medium/344/344782_beforethefall_balootodd.gif", "user_icon_url_small": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/small/344/344782_beforethefall_balootodd.gif", "file_name": "5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumb_huge_x": "300", "thumb_huge_y": "280", "thumb_large_x": "200", "thumb_large_y": "187", "thumb_medium_x": "120", "thumb_medium_y": "112", "files": [ { "file_id": "5482521", "file_name": "5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.doc", "mimetype": "application/msword", "submission_id": "3555742", "user_id": "1271311", "submission_file_order": "0", "full_size_x": null, "full_size_y": null, "screen_size_x": null, "screen_size_y": null, "preview_size_x": null, "preview_size_y": null, "initial_file_md5": "29d24076418bb8e80a0858e6fc862f31", "full_file_md5": "29d24076418bb8e80a0858e6fc862f31", "large_file_md5": "", "small_file_md5": "", "thumbnail_md5": "b16dd8808f23edef7abe1b91e5932cb5", "deleted": "f", "create_datetime": "2025-03-16 04:14:26.275508+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "16 Mar 2025 05:14 CET", "thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5482/5482521_beforethefall_bikes.jpg", "thumb_huge_x": "300", "thumb_huge_y": "280", "thumb_large_x": "200", "thumb_large_y": "187", "thumb_medium_x": "120", "thumb_medium_y": "112" } ], "pools": [ { "pool_id": "95584", "name": "BtF Canonical Shorts", "description": "Short stories from the canon Before the Fall universe; a horny, mostly good-vibes romp with kid-core 90's summer break vibes. Check out the BTF World Primer for notes and details on the setting.", "count": "20", "submission_left_submission_id": "3410784", "submission_left_file_name": "5513633_beforethefall_treehouse.doc", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/5513/5513633_beforethefall_treehouse.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5513/5513633_beforethefall_treehouse.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5513/5513633_beforethefall_treehouse.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_left_thumb_huge_y": "280", "submission_left_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_y": "187", "submission_left_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_y": "112", "submission_right_submission_id": "3566276", "submission_right_file_name": "5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.doc", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_right_thumb_huge_y": "280", "submission_right_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_y": "187", "submission_right_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_right_thumb_medium_y": "112" }, { "pool_id": "97777", "name": "The Treehouse Gang", "description": "Content featuring the Treehouse Gang. A scrappy little group of misfits who can do ANYTHING so long as they put their minds to it.", "count": "9", "submission_left_submission_id": "3488277", "submission_left_file_name": "5323175_beforethefall_beforethefall_comission1_v3.png", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/5323/5323175_beforethefall_beforethefall_comission1_v3.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5323/5323175_beforethefall_beforethefall_comission1_v3_noncustom.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5323/5323175_beforethefall_beforethefall_comission1_v3_noncustom.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_medium_noncustom_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_noncustom_y": "114", "submission_left_thumb_large_noncustom_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_noncustom_y": "190", "submission_left_thumb_huge_noncustom_x": "300", "submission_left_thumb_huge_noncustom_y": "285", "submission_right_submission_id": "3566276", "submission_right_file_name": "5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.doc", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5483/5483064_beforethefall_btf-home.jpg", "submission_right_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_right_thumb_huge_y": "280", "submission_right_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_y": "187", "submission_right_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_right_thumb_medium_y": "112" } ], "description": "A year before Zach moved to Fallow Acres, the younger Treehouse gang inducts a new member into their ranks.\n\nThe second part of the incipient \"prequilogy\" of the Treehouse series. This story is a prequel to Treehouse.", "description_bbcode_parsed": "A year before Zach moved to Fallow Acres, the younger Treehouse gang inducts a new member into their ranks.

The second part of the incipient "prequilogy" of the Treehouse series. This story is a prequel to Treehouse.", "writing": "Content Warning: Cub/cub/cub, group masturbation, criminal activities, slurs, poor-kid life, arcade games & other scams, 90'S VIBES, a pig serving bacon to unsuspecting children.\n\n\n \n\n\n\n[center][t]Before the Fall[/t]\n\n[i]“Bikes”[/i]\nby beforethefall [Inkbunny][/center]\n\n\n \n\n[t][center]Chapter 1\n\"Lead\"[/center][/t]\n\nThe dusty gravel of the access road crunched under each footfall as Colin “Coll-Boy” Hall, age 10, and Jerry “Belly” Bellick, age 9-and-a-half, walked into town with backpacks slung over their shoulders early in the morning. Colin clutched their last $20 in his pocket as the raccoon boy walked alongside his opossum friend, close enough that they'd occasionally bump shoulders.\n\n“I still don't know why you're going to waste our last twenty bucks on boring stuff like copies and mailing,\" Belly said, unimpressed at the scheme that had been proposed. The chubby opossum hiked his backpack straps up on his shoulders to redistribute the weight as he walked.\n\n“Ask me again in like 2 weeks,” Colin said with his usual cocky grin, “My brother's spent years building this list, and he guaranteed me it'll pay back double what we put in at least. Besides, it's not [i]our[/i] last twenty bucks, it's the [i]Treehouse's[/i] last twenty bucks. I'll split the change with you when we're done.” the raccoon urged, firmly bumping his shoulder to Belly's once more.\n\n“Whatever, you know what I mean. I've only got five bucks left of my own money,” Belly mumbled, kicking at a slightly-too-tall mound of gravel on the road and sending it scattering.\n\n“I'm near broke,” Colin laughed, “Don't worry, dude. There's always fruit on the tree, we'll figure out how to get at something. Hey, did you hear Bobby Montgomery's selling toys you can jerk off with now?” This prospect caught Belly's attention immediately, and he looked skeptically over to Colin.\n\n“What do you mean, ‘toys’?” the opossum asked, casually shifting to Colin's other side to distance himself a bit further from a choker-chained pitbull that was barking at them through a backyard fence that didn't quite meet Belly's standard of quality for the situation.\n\n“Like, some sort of thing you can stick your dick into that feels like a pussy.” Colin laughed, “I heard some rich kids talking about it the other day.\" \n\n“Bullshit, dude. That's not real,” Belly said, sneering at the idea. “It's probably a scam anyway. I'd expect better from you, Coll-boy,\" Belly dismissed, causing Colin to look, exasperated, at Belly.\n\n“You think I don't have a good nose for a scam, Belly? [i]Me?[/i] Nah, this is legit, they were pretty excited over it,\" Colin grinned, before he tipped his head and urged Belly to follow him onto one of the feeder streets that led into the little commercial strip along the main road through town, situated on the other side of the tracks.\n\n“Who was it that was even talking about this?” Belly asked, not so easily swayed by Colin's charisma. Colin had always appreciated Belly's healthy skepticism, even if it was exhausting at times. It was a good check and balance against his own more impulsive instincts.\n\n“Dom and Donnie, but I think it was Luke who got one; they were on their way to hang out with him.” Coll-boy said, rolling his eyes. Luke was one of the Fallow Acres resident coyotes, and on any given day it was a coin-flip's chance whether he'd be tolerable or not. As far as Fallow Acres was concerned, Dom and Donnie were a package deal; they were rarely seen around the trailer park and only ever showed up when they were together. Luke was always at his worst when he had the hyenas backing him.\n\n“Shit, you're going to believe [i]anything[/i] that any one of those three says?” Belly laughed, “You [i]are[/i] a rube.” Colin punched Belly in the shoulder surprisingly hard, making Belly wince and rub the spot.\n\n“Shut up, dude!\" Coll-boy laughed, “Of course not if any of them were talking to ME about it. I just overheard them talking to each other. It's legit, man, [i]trust me[/i],” the raccoon said in that infuriating way he did, hauling the door open of the air-conditioned copy shop and gesturing for Belly to go in first. The opossum did so, and Colin followed.\n\n“I'm just saying, those guys are sketchy, and not sketchy how we're sketchy,” Belly said as he put down his backpack on the big worktable and pulled out the folder, gingerly lifting their original, hand-penned document to the glass of a copier as Colin loaded the short stack of scavenged postcards he'd scored from a dumpster-dive a couple weeks back, double-checking to make sure they were oriented properly. “They're like, stab-you-in-the-alley-and-steal-your-bike sketchy.”\n\n“Yeah, yeah, I know. But [i]Bobby's[/i] always come through for us, right? Last I checked, there's only like two pages left in that Hustler magazine you've got stashed in the treehouse that aren't basically glued together, and you got [i]that[/i] from him,\" Colin teased Belly, who blushed a little but also playfully swooned, not denying it.\n\n“The centerfold, ugh; cocker spaniel girls are so hot, dude,” Belly laughed, “If those pages ever get ruined I'm just going to hang myself from the treehouse tree, Coll-boy, mark my words,” he teased, “Nothing to live for after that.” Colin rolled his eyes.\n\n“You don't get to kill yourself unless you kill your dad first, dude. Hey copy guy; it's only 4 cents if I do 51 copies right?” Colin called across the shop.\n\n“Yeah, whatever,” came the response of the teenage grizzly bear that was clearly more interested in writing in a composition book than working or eavesdropping on them as he leaned on the counter.\n\nA matter of minutes later, Colin and Belly were sat on stools at the counter handwriting in the addresses on the postcards, each with a page from the Master List that Coll-boy had acquired from his older brother to reference.\n\n“How'd your brother get these addresses anyway?” Belly asked, penning as carefully as he could. He didn't have the best handwriting unless he took it slow; Colin was breezing through comparatively quickly with his pickpocket's dexterity.\n\n“This is every mark he's been able to finger since he was our age,” Coll-boy beamed. “Could be anything. Girl scout cookies, fundraiser candy, bake sale donations, yard work or car washing, people that let in door-to-door salesmen, people that reply to publisher's clearing house, basically anyone that's got a looser grip on cash in town.”\n\n“Pretty cool that he'd give you that,” Belly admitted, to which Colin just grinned and nodded in agreement as he kept penning addresses.\n\n“Keeping the Hall family tradition alive, I guess,” Colin said with a smirk. Both boys wrote until their hands hurt, and once finally finished with the addresses they shook out their sore wrists and stacked the post-cards, paid up at the counter and headed back to the street. Colin was flipping through the post-cards, double-checking them as they walked down the sidewalk toward the post office that was still a mile away.\n\n“Do you think this will really work?” Belly asked, reading the text on one of the postcards. “It's so short. ‘Hi, friend! Just writing from my new lake house in Leviathan Holler to let you know that I make $500 an hour using one easy trick that you can do too. For more information, send $5 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Box 9, Fallow Acres, Aardvark Heights, Missouri,’\" Belly laughed. “It even sounds like a scam. The Leviathan Holler postcards are a nice touch though,” Belly admitted as he flipped the post card over to check out the goofy cartoon lake monster on the front.\n\n“Nah, not to the sorts of people we're sending this to. That's why we use the mark list,” Coll-boy explained, “To them, it just sounds like easy money. They won't think twice about buying in.\"\n\n“This better work… I don't want to have to mow lawns or beg to return shopping carts at Aldi for quarters all day again,\" Belly grumbled, “Or even worse,” the opossum trailed off. He didn't need to say more, Colin already knew. Belly's home life was insecure and hostile enough that begging neighbors or grocers for a meal was a common enough occurrence that Belly had grown to resent the practice.\n\n“Never, man. You stick with me and you'll never have to mow another lawn in your life,” Colin reassured him. “Hall family motto; it's better to have strong brains and loose morals than a strong back and clean conscience.” Belly rolled his eyes, before he spotted familiar rusty-red-and-white fur a block ahead; definitely one of the Montgomery brothers, though which, it was always hard to tell from afar. It didn't help that there were at least nine of them, and maybe more. Nobody ever could seem to get a fixed number. They had a big farm outside town, but there were supposedly pockets of Montgomeries scattered throughout the region.\n\n“Hey, is that Bobby?” Belly asked. Colin shook his head after barely a moment's hesitation.\n\n“Nah, that's Red; he's got the truck, but he might know where Bobby is! C'mon,” the raccoon said, picking up the pace to catch the aptly-named red squirrel as he was stacking crates of produce on a hand cart. “Hey Red!”\n\n“Hey, kid. What's up?” the later-teenage sciurid said. Out of all the Montgomery boys, Red was always the best-dressed since as the second-eldest brother, he was in charge of handling their daily deliveries to the local grocery stores, households and restaurants that their family farm sold produce to. He'd also come by Fallow Acres and sell discounted produce every Friday during the growing season.\n\n“Is it true that Bobby's selling jack-off toys now?” Colin asked without hesitation. Red laughed, hard, at the abrupt bluntness of the question.\n\n“Straight to th' point, huh? Word gets 'round quick in town, don't it?” the red squirrel laughed in his country twang.\n\n“So it's true? Are they any good?” the raccoon asked, as Belly looked on in astonished disbelief at the vague confirmation. Red didn't confirm Colin's question one way or another, however.\n\n“Hey, I don't judge, Coll-boy, but that's his side hustle, not mine. I couldn't tell you if they're worth it or not.\" the squirrel laughed, “That sorta' thing ya' gotta' figure out on yer' own.”\n\n“C'mon, man. Anything?\" Colin pleaded, making Red laugh even more. “Is Bobby gonna' be at the mall today at least?”\n\n\"Aw, probably yeah, but later though. He's got a heap a' chores back home today. Should I let 'im know you're lookin' for him?” Red said with a crooked smirk as he hefted the crates on the hand cart.\n\n“Yeah! How much should we bring?” Coll-boy asked, his striped tail twitching.\n\n“Forty bucks ought'a do it, kid. Last I heard at least. I'll tell ‘im you kids are lookin’,\" the red squirrel said as he wheeled the crates inside without so much as a goodbye, but somehow making their dismissal clear all the same.\n\n“40 bucks?! Aw, c'mon, Coll-boy,” Belly exclaimed, astonished as he watched Red disappear through the entryway to the local grocery.\n\n“Must be pretty good if it's worth that much,” Colin simply said with a big grin at Belly, “C'mon dude, we've gotta get this shit in the mail and make some real money, and we gotta' do it quick.”\n\n---\n\nUpon arrival at the post office, Coll-boy and Belly discovered they had arrived at the late-morning rush, and wound up standing in a long line. Belly fidgeted; he wasn't the most comfortable in crowds, and Colin kept close-by as a reassurance. \n\n“Dude, if this works out,” Colin started before Belly interrupted him.\n\n“I thought you said it was a sure thing,” the opossum said, nervously wringing his tail as he looked around the lobby of the post office.\n\n“Nothing's for certain dude, but if it works out we should re-invest half of whatever profit we get out of it into running it again, on a bigger scale,” Coll-boy finished, stepping forward as the line grew one person shorter.\n\n“How many names are on your brother's list?” Belly wondered. “We couldn't run this on the same people over and over…”\n\n“Well, no, but there's a couple hundred names, still. We can work on the list ourselves too to expand it.” Coll-boy grinned, thumbing the stack of postcards and fanning them. “This is the start of a new era, dude; every single one of these that comes back we're going to keep track of and put them on the short-list.\" He and belly stepped forward again.\n\n“Yeah, yeah, I get it…but only if it pays off,” Belly said, looking up at the bulletin board. “Huh. Bike thieves,” Belly commented, drawing Colin's attention.\n\n“Whuh?\" the raccoon wondered, before he saw where Belly was looking. \"Oh, huh. Where at?” Colin asked, anxiety building as he waited for the dog in a business suit ahead of him to finish his drop-off.\n\n“MallyWorld, of course. Looks like they got…” Belly looked around at the other fliers on the bulletin board in a quick survey, “Three of them, two days ago.”\n\n“Could be more. Not everyone posts fliers,” Colin said, before the salamander at the counter - and the man standing behind them - cleared their throats simultaneously to draw his attention. “Oh, hey! I'd like to mail these please. There's fifty.\"\n\n“Fifty-one,” Belly reminded without so much as looking Colin's way. He was already reaching up to pull the three fliers down from the bulletin board.\n\n“Oh, right. Fifty-one,” Colin said with his usual big, charismatic grin.\n\n“Ten dollars and twenty cents. Lots of friends out there in the world, huh?” the friendly yellow-and-black salamander asked. Colin couldn't tell if they were a male or a female.\n\n“Yeah, something like that,” the raccoon said as he handed over the money and postcards, and got his five cents in change.\n\n“Good to see kids still writing each other. Have a good day,” the salamander said as Colin hurried out of line and dug in his pocket for a quarter as he walked out of the post office.\n\n“You got the posters, dude?” Colin asked Belly as they pushed back through the door and out into the heat outside.\n\n“Yeah, looks like they were all stolen at the same time. Cash rewards, too,” Belly said with a wave of the fliers at Colin who snatched them to look through the three. One Huffy mountain bike with a $30 reward, two Dynos with a $50 reward each. They had all been stolen from the local mall between 3 and 4 o'clock two days prior. “Think we can find 'em all?”\n\n“Piece of cake, dude, common thieves are universally dumb as hell. We're gonna be rich by sundown,” Colin grinned to Belly, dropping a quarter into the newspaper machine outside of the post office and opening it up, pulling a paper from the stack. They walked around to the alleyway and Colin laid out the paper's Classified section with the posters. \"Alright. Only the cheap-o ads for bikes with no prices or selling for way less than what they're worth, dude.\"\n\nIt was a mere twenty minutes before Belly and Colin had circled a half-dozen suspect ads in the daily paper. All had few details, were short, recently-posted ads, and were offering bikes below the going rate, or had no advertised price; Colin particularly liked those, because it means the seller was either up for haggling, offers, or had no idea what they had was worth. Colin counted out change, and offered Belly three quarters, taking three out for himself as well. They folded up the newspaper with the ads on the outside and headed down the alley toward the train station; the most readily-available bank of payphones in this part of town.\n\n---\n\n[q]“Morgan residence!”\n\n“Hey, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike? What kind of bike is it?”\n\n“Oh, it's an 18-speed Gazelle road bi--”\n\n [/q]\n\n\n\n[q]“Y'ello?”\n\n“Hi, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike; what kind of bike is it?”\n\n“Oh, yeah, it's a GT 21-speed wi--”\n\n[/q]\n\n\n\n[q]“Yeah?”\n\n“Hi, uh, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike. What kind of bike is it?”\n\n“Oh, it's a Huffy mountain bike. Red.”\n\n“Aw, man… I was looking for a Dyno.”\n\n“Oh, well, I've got a couple of those too.”\n\n“Woah, really? Why so many bikes?\"\n\n“Uhh… I fix up old bikes I find at yard sales.” “Shut UP, I'm on the phone!”\n\n“Aw, that's cool! You don't have a chrome one, do you?”\n\n“Yeah, chrome with yellow decals.”\n\n\"Oh, awesome! How much?”\n\n“…Sixty bucks?”\n\n“Rad! Can I come check it out?”\n\n“Sure, come to 617 Treeline.”\n\n“Seeya in like a half hour dude!”\n\n[/q]\n\n\n“Got 'em!” Colin called after he slammed the receiver back down the final time. Belly hadn't even mustered the courage to drop the first quarter into the payphone yet.\n\n“No way, dude. Like for sure?” Belly wondered, marveling. \n\n“Without a doubt, man. Teenagers by the sounds of it. They've got the Huffy and the chrome Dyno, [i]and[/i] another Dyno, all bundled up with some lame bullshit about fixing up old yard-sale bikes. There's no way they aren't our mark. I'm gonna go check it out, they're all the way out on freaking Treeline though, ugh.” Colin sighed. His feet were already sore from walking today, but the allure of supposedly-easy money was too good to pass up over a few more miles of walking. “You know that rat kid that lives in lot 9? Kelly Turner?\" Belly nodded his head, he and Colin had seen him only a few times, despite Kelly having lived in the neighborhood for years. He was a little younger than Belly was and, so far as they knew, he rarely roamed the park which often frustrated their efforts to get him involved in their hijinks. \"Get him too, and show him the treehouse, we're going to need a third.”\n\n“Can we trust him?” Belly wondered, making a face. Colin laughed.\n\n“He'll be cool.” the raccoon dismissed, “I don't know why, yet, but my scav-sense says he'll be useful.” \n\n“Oh, shit,” Belly groaned, “Why do I always get a bad feeling when you're scheming?”\n\n“Because for one, you're a [i]chickenshit[/i] and we're still working on breaking you of that. For two, you haven't tuned your sense for trouble yet. [i]Trust me[/i], dude. This is gonna be great.”\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 2\n\"Case\"[/center][/t]\n\nThe end of Treeline Drive was a long walk, even for Colin. Clear on the other end of town, it was about as far as it could possibly get from Fallow Acres in distance, altitude, and class simultaneously. This was the neighborhood where kids lived in two-story houses with pools, almost every block had a house or two that owned shiny black Cadillacs and Mercedes, and it was a neighborhood that Colin felt so distinctly out of place he could barely stand it. That, however, was part of the appeal. The thought that he might be pulling one over on what he perceived as ‘the rich kids’ from the other end of town eased the pain in his legs as he climbed the big hill, and took the right onto Treeline Drive, stopping at the split-level house with an attached two-car garage, fresh pavement driveway and tasteful landscaping that boasted the house numbers, ‘6 1 7’, in large brass numbers arranged at a declining angle beside the front door. The garage door was open, and three teenagers were sitting around in the garage with the local pop-punk station playing. Colin had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.\n\n“Uh, hey guys! I'm here to check out the bike?” Colin called as he walked up the driveway, eyes darting around as he cased the place. No cars, meaning no parents. Colin wondered, briefly, why these kids would even need to steal anything, living in a place like this. They were probably spoiled. It just made him that much more determined. They had a basketball hoop mounted to the garage, and the back yard had a privacy fence. No trash cans along the curb or on the side of the house; that meant an alley gate was all but guaranteed.\n\n“Oh, you the one that called?” the later-teenage horse asked, brushing bleached-blonde hair with black roots out of his eyes. He was wearing basketball shorts and a tank top; Colin recognized the voice.\n\n“Oh, yeah, hey dude! I'm Colin,” the raccoon said, maintaining a perky ‘kid’ persona as best as he could. It wasn't hard, he was used to being underestimated.\n\n“Dave. C'mon back and I'll show ya' what I got,” the horse said, waving Colin into the garage. Colin followed, cautiously at first before his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light in the garage, where the other teenagers were sitting around an old card table smoking cigarettes and eyeing him uncomfortably; one deer, one goat, both male, both doing fairly well at being perceived as sketchy, teenage delinquents. The horse led Colin to the back of the garage, where Colin scoped a door with two stairs up that would have had to lead into the house, and a back door that stood open to the backyard with a fan in the doorway. Dave pulled back a tarp to reveal the three bikes, exactly as Colin had suspected; two Dynos and the red Huffy mountain bike.\n\n“Aw, man, look at it!” Colin feigned marveling over the chrome Dyno, “It's so cool,” he laughed. “You said you find these at yard sales? Lucky… I've been looking everywhere trying to find a half-decent bike,\" Colin tried to chat the horse up as he knelt down beside the chrome bike, feigning inspecting its front brake and the tire tread. In actuality, he was using that moment to scope the back yard. In-ground pool, no signs of a dog, privacy fence gate with trash cans beside it. The gate was locked with a padlock from the inside.\n\n“Like I said on the phone, eighty bucks,” the horse said. Colin had been counting on him trying that scam; it was one he, himself, tried on almost every indirectly-agreed-upon transaction. “You interested?” the horse asked, sitting on the stairs to the interior door.\n\n“Aw, I thought you said sixty, dude…” Colin feigned disappointment. “Uh…Yeah, I still want it, but I have to go get more money I guess. I'll be back in a couple hours alright?”\n\n“If it's still here when you get back, it's yours dude.” the horse said. “We'll be around.”\n\n“Sweet, I'll hurry back!\" Colin said, and hastily took his leave, running with as much of his spare kid-energy as he could until he was out of sight, where he was comfortable slowing to a far-less-enthused walk. His legs really hurt, now. Colin circled down the street and ducked into the alley-way, taking it back around and behind the house. He looked between the slats in the privacy fence to scope the house. Nobody seemed to be home; there was a solid path from the back of the garage to the gate, and he confirmed no dog-landmines in the yard, as well as that privacy gate was actually locked, though the lock looked cheap. It was a safe neighborhood, Colin knew; generally, the use of locks was only an illusion of security at best on gates anyway.\n\nColin was thankful for the hill on his way back down to the main road, and not five minutes after turning onto the wider sidewalk, he saw a familiar rusty pick-up stuck at the stop-lights outside MallyWorld's main entrance. He ran up to it and stuck his head in the passenger window. \n\n“Hey, Red! You're empty. Headed back out of town? Can I get a lift?” Colin blurted, laughing as Red jumped. The squirrel rolled his eyes, laughing.\n\n“Sheez, man! Give a squirrel a fit why don'cha! Yeah, c'mon, hurry up, kid!” Red urged as the light turned, and the sedan behind him honked. Colin scrambled straight through the window and landed on the passenger seat's cracked vinyl with a whoop of celebration.\n\n“Woo! You're a lifesaver, dude! My feet are killing me and I still gotta' make it all the way back here from …hey, wait a second,” Colin said as Red started back down the road, headed for downtown and the highway out of town that would take them past Fallow Acres. “…You wanna' make a few bucks, dude?”\n\n“Kid, knowin' the sort of stuff you and that 'possum kid get up to? Might be just a little too hot for a farm boy,” Red laughed, and Colin did too as he hung half-out the window in appreciation for the breeze.\n\n“Nah, nothing like that, dude! I'll give you…” Colin thought to the change in his pocket still, “…two bucks if you pick me, Belly and Kelly up at Fallow Acres and give us a ride back to Treeline. I'm trying to buy a bike,\" Colin lied, “And just need to go home and get some money. Belly and Kelly were, uh…going…to help me?” The raccoon grimaced, definitely not his finest moment of conning.\n\n“Now that story adds up ‘bout as well as a broken calculator,” Red laughed, “But, sure, kid, s’long as you don't mind squeezin' in ‘round the next load of deliveries. Won't be late, don't be late.”\n\n“Deal, dude! Thanks Red, you're the best!\" Colin said, beaming as he bounced on the springy seat of the old pickup. “So…like, guy-to-guy, are Bobby's toys really as good as people say?” Colin asked, making Red laugh again.\n\n“Kid, when I was your age I was happy to use a banana peel I nuked in the microwave for a few seconds. Th' hell you need to go accessorizin' your tug sessions with more'n that?\" the red squirrel joked, “Ta' answer your question though, guess it's better than doin' it the old-fashioned way. Y'know Bobby based ‘em on what we use for the horses, right? It’s nothin' like the real deal.”\n\n“I knew it! You [i]have[/i] used one!\" Colin laughed, pointing an accusing finger at Red, who laughed even harder.\n\n“Kid, I ain't had to shoot in socks for five years at least, y'all need to find a girlfriend ‘fore you back up so bad yer nose starts runnin’.”\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 3\n\"Crew\"[/center][/t]\n\nBelly drug his feet along the dusty gravel access road on his way back to the trailer park. The walk home always felt longer when he was on his own, but the familiar dread of ‘home’s impending arrival returned all the same as he squeezed through the gap in the chain-link fence and ducked around behind the trailers to stay out of view of his dad, Mikey, who was working on his stupid piece of shit car in front of their tiny travel trailer they called a home, near the front of the main Fallow Acres property. Belly knocked a few times on the side door of the Turners' trailer and waited, anxiously, on the little landing at the top of the stairs. The door opened and Belly about fainted at the gruff rat in a stained tank-top undershirt and briefs answered the door. Belly froze, as was his tendency.\n\n“Yeah? What do you want?” the rat asked around the butt of a smoldering cigarette, snapping the opossum out of it.\n\n“Uh, s-sorry to bother you,” Belly's mind raced, thinking maybe he should leave it at that and walk away; but steeled his resolve, “Uh…can Kelly come out to play? Me and Colin were going to--”\n\n“Kelly!\" the older rat shouted, disappearing back into the dark of the trailer's interior. “Your friends are here! Go the fuck outside and play like a normal kid for once!”\n\nBelly fidgeted, awkwardly, on that landing for a moment before the younger hooded rat appeared in the doorway, dressed in BDU pants and a camouflage tank top.\n\n“Oh, uh…hey,” Kelly said quietly, stepping outside to find Belly wringing his tail. The opossum smiled awkwardly.\n\n“Uh, hey, dude. Me and Colin were, uh…well. You wanna hang out with us? We've got a treehouse in the woods,” Belly offered. Kelly cracked a crooked grin.\n\n“Yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's not really a treehouse, is it? Kind of a fort…maybe. But it's not really in a tree, more…under one. There's a spool as a table and an old couch. And a hustler magazine between the boards that prop up the wobbly end of the couch, but most of the pages are stuck together. You and Colin are like always out there, even after dark. I saw you guys stealing tiki torch oil from the Henderson's patio for the lamp you use…” the rat said, showing his hand in a desperately awkward attempt at warming up the new kid who he'd only observed from afar, up to this point. Belly just stared at the rat with a vague sense of awe, as Kelly stepped down the stairs alongside Belly. “You're, uh…you're Belly, right? Coll-boy said you were just a few months older than me,” he said with an awkward, bucktoothed smile, “You guys seem nicer than Luke and his friends.”\n\n“Shit, dude. Are you like a spy or something?” Belly laughed.\n\n“I'm a rat, dude,” Kelly said with a rapid little laugh. “…Don't worry, I don't go into the treehouse when you're sleeping in there,” he said with a little grimace. “I'd…probably sleep out there too if my dad was as much of a dick as yours seems like he is.”\n\n“Fuck Mikey. I can already see why Coll-boy had a good feeling about you though, dude,” Belly laughed. “Uh…so we're working on something right now…you wanna make some money with us?” Belly asked as he lead the way back to the treehouse, not that he seemed to need to. He pushed open the door and let Kelly in, then stepped in as well and let the door clunk shut behind them. Kelly prowled around, seeming to take stock of the place without really touching anything.\n\n“Uh, yeah, I guess. What do I need to do?” Kelly asked, eventually settling atop the log that served as a stool beside the old spool table.\n\n“I…don't know, yet. Planning is kind of Coll-boy's thing, He just said to get you and bring you here. Want a fruit roll-up?” Belly asked, already digging into the box of expired fruit snacks, the last remaining food from a recent dumpster-dive. This was to be his lunch for the day.\n\n“Nah, thanks though. This is a pretty cool place though, did you and Colin build it?” Kelly asked, still looking around. It wasn't big, but it was enough for a few kids to hang out in and feel like they had their own spot. It was also mostly-dry.\n\n“Yeah, uh… I started it when I was little, and Coll-boy helped me make it good enough to sleep out here most of the time,” Belly said, scuffing his toes on the packed dirt floor. “At least when it isn't storming really hard and stuff. I got other places to go then though.”\n\n“Like the old box car in the rail yard, right?” Kelly asked with a grin.\n\n“Okay, now it's getting creepy,” Belly laughed, which made Kelly laugh along with him.\n\n“Sorry, dude. Recon's my thing I guess. Dad taught me a lot of stuff about it,\" Kelly admitted.\n\n“Oh yeah? Tell me something I don't know about the park, then,” Belly challenged. Kelly rolled his eyes and thought for a second.\n\n“Oh, uh. Okay… Mister Vernon; the otter guy with the bathrobe that lives alone? The blue and white trailer in the roundabout- he's a total perv-oid. He has bookshelves full of porn in his living room. Like a lot of them. He spends most nights watching it. He likes little kids too.” Kelly said. “Did you know that?”\n\nBelly, genuinely, didn't know anything about the middle-aged otter guy that lived in the blue and white trailer next to the empty lots. He just slumped back into the couch wordlessly and stared for a long few moments at Kelly, who fidgeted uncomfortably.\n\n“…Okay, uh, Luke got some kind of new thing to jerk off with. It looks like a Pringles can, but duct-taped up. He and his stupid hyena friends were messing around with it a couple days ago.” Kelly continued, thinking he hadn't made his case well enough. Belly let a grin slowly stretch across his face.\n\n“Colin is gonna love you, New Kid.”\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 4\n\"Plan\"[/center][/t]\n\nRed pulled the rusty truck over in the wide gravel entry of Fallow Acres, sliding the last six feet and kicking up a cloud of white dust that made Colin laugh as he climbed out of the truck.\n\n“Seeya' in a little bit Red! Thanks for the ride!” Colin called as he slammed the door shut on the truck and Red peeled out in the gravel, sending rocks flying and Colin scampering out of the way. He hurried around the side of the trailer park and straight into the woods, following the trail until he was able to duck through the treehouse door with the tensile twang of the spring announcing his arrival.\n\n“About time, dude,” Belly said as he sat across from Kelly as the two talked across the spool table.\n\n“Welcome to the gang, New Kid,\" Colin grinned at Kelly. “Twenty minutes and we go, listen up,” Colin said, all business. Kelly shot a worrying look to Belly, who shook his head - this was normal Colin behavior before a heist. Colin continued, grabbing their trusty salvaged fireplace poker to draw in the dirt floor of the treehouse. “These guys are the perfect marks. Cocky teenagers that think they're way smoother than they are. They hang out here; in the two car garage. Basketball hoop out front, paved driveway, privacy fence, pool in the back. Alley behind the house, gate to the alley, locked - Masterlock padlock, keyed but cheap. New Kid, somethin' tells me that's where you come in. You ready to earn a name?”\n\n“Uh…” Kelly stalled, barely able to process it all so quickly.\n\n“Make it or break it, New Kid…\" Belly said in a playfully ominous tone.\n\n“Yeah, I can get it open,” Kelly decided. “I need to stop by my house before we go though.”\n\n“Done; Belly, you still got that five bucks right?”\n\n“That's [i]my[/i] five bucks,” Belly argued. \n\n“It's a [i]prop[/i] that we need, if you lose it I'll pay you back out of my share,” Colin reassured.\n\n“Deal,\" Belly said.\n\n“Keep it on hand. You're going to bet these idiots you can beat them at a game of HORSE; we'll grab my basketball before we go. Try to get the game for bragging rights, but if they hesitate I've got it ten-to-one that they'll bite just to scam a kid out of five bucks.”\n\n“Why am I always the face?” Belly complained, his stomach already flipping in his guts. He wasn't that good at basketball, not that it mattered, but he hated the eyes on him, especially.\n\n“Because you're fucking [i]good[/i] at it, Belly, you got this. We just need you to keep these guys busy. Try to get all three of them playing,” Colin said. Kelly fidgeted nervously when he saw Belly's anxious squirm. “Once me and New Kid hear you playing we're going in,\" Colin drew on the map, “…through the back gate. We'll come up around the side of the pool and in through the back door - it's standing open with a fan in it. I'll move the fan over, the bikes are under a tarp. We'll sneak the bikes out from under the tarp and take them out the back - Except for yours,” Coll-boy pointed to Belly.\n\n“What? Why?” Belly asked, wringing his tail again.\n\n“Because you're going to out us to make your own opening,” Coll-boy said. “You'll get in position,\" Colin indicated a spot from which Belly should be able to see them, \"and call us out once we've got the bikes ready to go. We'll bait them into chasing us, and all you gotta' do is go grab the last bike and get out on the street,” the raccoon grinned. “So idiot-proof that either of you guys could pull it off, right?” Colin asked. Belly punched him in the shoulder for that.\n\n“You're the idiot; what if they catch you before you're ready?” Belly grimaced.\n\n“Plan B!\" Colin reassured.\n\n“Which is..?” Kelly asked, squinting. Belly rolled his eyes, mocking Colin as Colin said it.\n\n“Just follow my lead, it'll be fine,” Colin said, catching Belly mocking him halfway through. He punched Belly in the shoulder, and both laughed. Colin continued, “We split up at the end of Treeline. I'll go uphill, New Kid - you go downhill. Belly, path of least resistance - head downhill too. We meet up at the top of the [i]big[/i] hill on Bendy Road.” Kelly didn't like the sound of that last part.\n\n“That hill's freaky, dude,\" the rat grimaced.\n\n“Exactly!” Colin chimed, “If we haven't shook them by then, we'll all get enough speed on the hill to get away from like [i]anyone[/i] that's chasing us on foot,” the raccoon grinned.\n\n“I hate you, and I hate your stupid plans,” Belly groaned. Kelly just cast a suspect look between them both.\n\n“I hate you too, dude. So are you guys in?” Colin grinned, putting his hand out between the three of them. Belly sighed, but put his hand in the middle of them.\n\n“Yeah, I'm in. New kid?” Belly asked. Kelly seemed a little hesitant, but eventually relented, putting his hand in the middle as well.\n\n“Yeah, I'm in I guess,\" The rat muttered. Colin grinned.\n\n“Then - on three, cash is king! One-two-three!\" the raccoon coached.\n\n“Cash is king!” the trio broke, before rushing out of the treehouse on their varying missions. Two minutes later and the trio was anxiously waiting by the rusty Fallow Acres sign as Red pulled the freshly-loaded pickup truck back into the gravel lot, stopping much more carefully with a full load of crated produce in the back. Colin and Kelly piled into the front, Belly climbed into the truck bed, squeezing between the crates and the tailgate, and soon they were on their way.\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 5\n\"Heist\"[/center][/t]\n\nBelly dribbled the basketball as he trudged up the slight incline of Treeline Drive. He was getting his sense for at least dribbling the ball back, and trying some of his special moves, dribbling between his legs and around his back. He'd been getting into character for the last fifteen minutes, and even he could tell he was carrying himself with more surefooted confidence than usual. Sure, he had to go chasing after the ball as it got away from him a few times, but by the time he approached the house at 617 Treeline, he felt confident enough to take a few steps up the driveway and shoot at the hoop that was mounted over the garage doors. It bricked, but did good enough at announcing his arrival that the teenagers all got up from their table and stood across the open garage door.\n\n“Hey, nice hoop, guys! You play?” Belly asked, dribbling a few more times in the driveway as the teenagers looked, confused, between themselves.\n\n“Uh, yeah,” the horse said, “But not with little kids. Beat it, dork.\" He cast a few more unsure looks to the others, who shrugged dismissively.\n\n“Pff, sounds to me like you're scared of losing your ass,” Belly took another shot, and sunk it after a couple bounces in the rim. He straightened his back and tried to stay cool as he caught the ball mid-bounce as it came back down the driveway's incline. The horse scoffed, and the others laughed.\n\n“I'm JV, kid, I'd wipe the floor with you, now scram! We got better shit to do,\" the horse laughed. Belly didn't let them intimidate him.\n\n\"What, sitting around in a garage like a bunch of Melvins? You're scared. Five bucks says I can whip you and your mute friends at a game of HORSE, horse.\" Belly grinned a wickedly pointy opossum grin at the older kids, before he passed the ball at the horse with a solid bounce at the midpoint between them. The horse caught the ball and laughed again.\n\n“Now that's just easy money. You're on, nerd. If you don't pay up your underwear are going to be wedgie'd so far up your ass you'll be able to taste them for a week.”\n\nFor a moment, Belly had to appreciate the fact that Colin was right. These guys really were the perfect marks.\n\n---\n\nColin and Kelly approached in the alleyway, careful not to make too much noise as they crouched and waited with cautious ears out for the sound of the game, hunkered close to the fence and staying as well out of view as possible. Only a matter of minutes later, the familiar pace of called shots and attempts to reproduce them secretly gave their cue. Colin gestured to Kelly, and the rat dug in his pocket, producing a carefully organized keyring from which he fished out the group of Masterlock keys, and he gingerly reached up through the gap as Colin helpfully pulled on the wooden gate to flex it away. It was obvious that Kelly had some experience with this, and before long he found the right fit for the lock - a remarkably generic key that resulted in an affirmative click from the lock as the hasp popped out of the body. Kelly hastily took the lock down and dangled it from a finger wordlessly in front of Colin's nose. Colin grinned.\n\n“I knew you'd come in handy, New Kid,” Colin whispered, before reaching up and clicking the gate latch open, carefully swinging the door just wide enough for himself to squeeze through, with Kelly following close behind. The two prowled along the fence line, as well out of view of the garage's open back door as they could stay, until Colin and Kelly both were pressed against the garage's siding beside the open door and Colin leaned to get a covert look into the garage. The goat and deer were standing in the garage's open door, backs to the garage interior, and waiting on their turns. Colin reeled back and crouched low, carefully scooting into the garage. The fan was running on high, doing well to mask the careful movements, and Colin carefully slid it out of the way, keeping it blowing in the same direction as best as he could. Abruptly, the goat moved, turning into the garage, and Colin froze behind the fan, partially obscured by it and partially by a workbench the fan stood beside as he watched the teenager walk into the garage, lifting a soda cup from the card table inside and taking a drink, before putting it down and heading outside as his name was called to take his turn.\n\nColin steadied his nerves, taking a slow breath in and out to slow his pulse as he crept across the few-foot gap to the tarp and lifted it, looking underneath. Three bikes, same as earlier. Colin gestured Kelly into the garage, taking painstaking care to stay as silent as possible as they moved in unison to lift the tarp, carefully raising it to expose the bikes with an ear always turned toward the driveway for the sounds of approaching marks. Belly's turn came up in the game outside - Colin was confident that Belly was well capable of buying them time and leading the marks as far from the garage door as possible. The crinkle of the tarp froze both Colin and Kelly in place several times as they carefully unveiled the bicycles, timed only to the talking of the others in the driveway or the rattling of the backboard against the wall to mask their sounds in chorus with the fan's drone.\n\nOnce the bikes were uncovered, Kelly carefully lifted the kickstand on the green-and-black Dyno and moved it to the back doorway, and Colin followed with the mountain bike, lifting its back wheel until, maybe a bit early on his cue, both boys heard Belly's familiar voice, even in character, shout out.\n\n“Hey, are those kids taking your bikes?!”\n\nKelly froze in the doorway, wide-eyed, before a second, “Hey!” was called into the garage and he hurriedly threw his leg over the bike and pedaled out into the backyard, only barely steering clear of the in-ground pool on his way to the back gate, which still stood open. Colin had not hesitated and was hot on his heels, shouting to him.\n\n“Go, go, go, go!” Colin urged, pedaling the bike and hurriedly downshifting into a quicker gear to get up to speed in as the sounds of scampering teenagers were hot on his heels. It didn't help that two of them were famed athletic species; not that that meant everything, but a horse and deer were bound to be quick, and horses had natural stamina that Colin secretly hoped he could outpace. Still, the raccoon couldn't resist as he rode just behind Kelly, and shouted over his shoulder, “Serves you losers right for stealing bikes, ya' fucking cretins! Lucky we didn't just call the cops on your ass!”\n\nBelly froze, standing alone with the basketball still in his hands in the driveway as he heard the commotion rushing down the alleyway, then realized he was wasting what window he had. The opossum ducked into the garage and squinted, before catching sight of the chrome Dyno, marveling at the shiny bike's nearly-brand-new finish and coveted brand. He kicked the back door of the garage closed and locked it before hopping astride the bike and smacking the garage door opener on his way out for good measure, pedaling down the block in the opposite direction from where he heard the others headed, with the basketball tucked under his arm. Path of least resistance, after all. Even in the heat of the moment, Belly realized that would probably never be able to afford a bike like this, and despite the fear of getting caught that gripped his guts, he was soon relishing the ride.\n\n---\n\nBelly and Kelly converged at the top of the hill, stopping in the middle of the quiet suburban intersection. Both boys were panting and sweaty already after just a few minutes of desperately hard riding under the summer-afternoon sun. Kelly still had a panicked look in his eyes, one that Belly had visceral familiarity with- and he only barely managed to ward off his own to try to help put the new kid at ease in spite of the adrenaline coursing through his blood.\n\n“Where's Coll-boy, new kid?” Belly asked between labored breaths, fingers nervously working at the front brake of the chrome bike as his tail clung in a coil around the frame, warded away from the dangers of the chain and back tire. Kelly had his oriented similarly.\n\n“I don't know! He split off and went up the hill. I lost the goat kid a few blocks ago,” Kelly panted, “The horse and the deer went after Colin,” he admitted with a nervous fidget on the green dyno's saddle. A tense few moments passed, before Kelly spoke up again, “We should go look--”\n\n“No way; if he got caught it's on him,\" Belly interrupted, “Cash is king, remember? We're riding a hundred bucks between us,” he wobbled the bars of the bike he was astride demonstratively, “If he lost his, it's lost, we can't risk the rest on the chance we might be able to save him from an ass-kicking.\" Belly said. It was a sacred pact they'd made a long time ago; the job's success came first. Kelly grimaced, and was just about to speak, before they heard shouting echoing through the neighborhood. It was hard to localize, at first, but then both naked-tailed boys' heads turned up the hill to see Colin emerge from the sweeping curve in a blind panic, pedaling as fast as he could down from further up Bendy Road. The horse was still hot on his tail, and the deer lagged only fifty yards back.\n\n[i]“The hill! Rush the hill!”[/i] Colin shouted ahead of himself, pedaling madly as he rapidly approached. He must've been doing forty miles per hour already. Kelly and Belly exchanged a quick glance between themselves, and simultaneously stood on their pedals to urge their bikes into motion, aiming straight down the Bendy Road hill. They barely got up to speed before Colin shot between them on the mountain bike, screaming in a combination of blind terror at what followed him and what stood ahead. Belly reflexively checked his shoulder and saw the horse was losing ground as they sped up, but was showing no sign of slowing. \n\n“Shit, book it, New Kid!” Belly shouted, pedaling even with the gravity assist, ducking low and trying his hardest to streamline himself, soon finding himself and Kelly matching pace with Colin as they soared down the hill. Belly had never gone this fast before, his hands were white-knuckled on the handlebars, Kelly was still pedaling hard with his tongue set between his lips and eyes squinted in determination, the dulled clop-clop-clop of the teenage horse's road-shoed hooves pounding on the pavement growing more distant. The trio followed the long, sweeping curve down Bendy road as the horse faded back and eventually disappeared behind the curves of the road, as the trio accelerated into the steepest part of the hill, their shirts whipping in the wind. \n\nKelly was the first to try his brakes, and the back tire of the Dyno only drug behind him; the front caliper brake squealed in protest and was, generally, ineffective. Belly was soon trying the same, as was Colin as gravity drew them ever-faster toward their fate at the T-intersection at the bottom of the infamous road.\n\n“Shit, shit, shit!” Colin muttered, “This is gonna hurt..!” he winced, simply trying to hold it together until the last moment when he locked his back brake, as did the others, and each kicked their bikes sideways in a desperate attempt to bleed as much momentum as they could as all three boys skated clear across the T intersection at the bottom of Bendy road.\n\nBelly, miraculously, caught enough traction with just the right line through the sharp corner that he managed to power-slide clear through the intersection and merely wipe out, low-siding in the grass. Kelly and Colin were far less fortunate; they skipped straight through the gravel at the edge of the road, sailed clear over the ditch and high-sided on the opposite side of the dip, their momentum hurling them both into the chain-link fence beyond. Colin first, and Kelly right in behind him, piling atop the raccoon and knocking the wind out of both. The chain link fence arrested their momentum, but only by tearing itself clear off of its frame, which partially collapsed along with the metal mesh around them, entangling the boys along with the bikes. \n\nBelly shook his head and sat up in the grass, dazed for a moment before he saw Colin and Kelly's predicament. He scrambled himself up and began to pull the bikes off of them and disentangle the handlebars from the fencing as, still wheezing for breath, Colin and Kelly similarly reeled, dazed far worse than Belly had been.\n\n“Shit, guys, get up! Get up! We gotta keep going!” Belly said, the opossum grabbing Kelly's hand and yanking him to his feet, then doing the same for Colin, finding it easier than he'd expected thanks to the rush of adrenaline. The teenage horse came into view, a long-striding gait down the hill and only a couple hundred yards back. “Shit, go, go!” Belly shouted before he broke for his bike, leaving the unsteady Colin to pick up his bike on his own, as Kelly hopped onto his and rode back off the grass. Colin shook his head a few times before managing to balance back atop the bike and pushed off, the three splitting up again. Belly looked over his shoulder just in time to see the horse and deer standing in that T-intersection, hands on their knees and breathing heavily, finally winded enough that they'd given up.\n\n---\n\nOnce Belly found Kelly aimlessly roaming the bike along the main road, he lead him to their secret rendezvous - the one they'd use whenever something went wrong, or they got spilt up, or if they just wanted a quiet place to lay low for a while. It wasn't particularly stealthy, but just out of the way enough that they could settle down and wait for the other to join them. They hid their bikes behind the building and found Colin's there, then headed in through the side entrance and straight for the back booth of the Slingshot Diner, where they found Colin already waiting. \n\nThe Slingshot Diner was one of the few establishments in Aardvark Heights that genuinely appreciated the Treehouse gang. The owner and cook, Jim, grew up in Fallow Acres as well, and had taken a liking to Belly and Colin when they'd tried to scam him out of a lunch and, failing that, Belly offered to wash dishes in exchange for a sandwich instead. Every once in a while they'd stop in and make use of the pay-what-you-can arrangement they'd struck for cups of water and whatever Jim felt like whipping up for them. Belly reflexively emptied his pockets of the little cash he had, pooling it with the bit of Colin's meager change at the end of the table as he slumped into the booth's seat. Kelly followed suit, pooling in the thirty-five cents he had in his pocket and fidgeted a little as the waitress, a later-middle-aged badger with coke-bottle glasses wandered over with big glasses of ice water that she set down on the table. She was sturdily built and her tits were so enormous that as she leaned in to plant a cup of water in front of Belly, one squished against Kelly's shoulder. Atop the left one, her name tag read “Janie”.\n\n“You boys look like you've been through the wringer,” she said with a perky smile. “Never an easy buck in town, is there? The usual, or you wanna' change it up?”\n\n“Hey Janie, the usual,” Colin said, echoed immediately by Belly. Kelly froze.\n\n“Uh…”\n\n“He'll have the usual too,” Colin spoke up.\n\n“Three usual's, I'll let the boss know. Good to see you boys again,” Janie said with a little wink. “You two,” she gestured to Colin and Kelly, “You know yer bleedin', right?”\n\nColin looked at Kelly, who looked back. Both had a moment of realization dawn upon them that they had quite recently crashed very hard and were, in fact, still bleeding from various scrapes and scratches. Belly had fared much better, sporting only grass stains in his fur.\n\n“Oh, uh…thanks,” Colin said, abruptly. “We kind of wiped out on our bikes earlier.\" Janie sucked her teeth playfully.\n\n“You boys ain't gonna be invincible forever, better make good use of it while you can,” Janie called with a wink as she headed back to put in the order. Colin shuffled out and tipped his head toward the bathroom.\n\n“C'mon, New Kid. Let's get cleaned up.\"\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 6\n\"Payout\"[/center][/t]\n\nBelly was hunkered by the pay-phone by the back booth making calls when Colin and Kelly emerged from the bathroom. He was dutifully working toward their payday, arranging for the bike owners to meet them at MallyWorld, just down the street from where they were now. As Belly finished the final call, the trio returned to the booth and slumped into the bench seats. To their delight, they were met with the near-immediate delivery of full plates as Janie handed them down one by one.\n\n“Boss said you boys looked hungry today so he set you up,” Janie said, as the older pig waved through the window. Colin and Belly waved back their thanks, and Kelly mimicked a moment later when Colin kicked him in the shin. Belly wasted no time in digging into the truck-stop style burger on his plate, ravenous. The other boys followed suit soon after as they realized how hungry they really were as well. At least it was a problem that would be easily solved by a smash-burger patty, bacon, a fried egg and cheese between pieces of grilled toast, and a heap of shitty crinkle-cut fries dusted in seasoned salt to round out their food groups.\n\nWith half his burger down, Belly spoke up. “The bike owners are gonna' meet us at MallyWorld in like a half hour. I said we'll try to be there by four at least.” Belly said, stacking french fries into the other half of his burger as Kelly thought out loud.\n\n“Were any of them suspicious? I know I would be if someone showed up with my bike wanting reward money after it'd been stolen,” the rat said, smearing a few fries through ketchup that had been speckled with too much pepper mixed in.\n\n“Yeah, I had to tell one of them we jacked them back from the thieves for the reward money,” Belly snorted, then laughed. Colin grinned.\n\n“We can talk our way out of anything, New Kid. We'll get ‘em to pay up. Just follow my lead when it comes time to do business,” Colin said, already having finished his burger. He shoveled his remaining fries onto Belly's plate, where they were accepted readily. Kelly tapped out next, and offered his remaining fries to Belly too, who devoured them as well. Everyone present was able to easily assume that, out of the three of them, Belly was the least likely to know where his next meal was coming from, after all, and Belly seemed to have plenty of room for it all.\n\n---\n\nThe MallyWorld main entrance was a bustling place in the later-afternoon, even on a weekday, thanks to summer break. As the trio sat on the benches beside the main entrance, bikes in hand, they anxiously waited for the arrivals of the owners. \n\n“Oh, shit; you actually [i]did[/i] find it!” said a late-teenage coyote dressed in full stoner grunge regalia replete with a ratty old baseball cap and a heavily worn canvas backpack as he walked up to the boys, inspecting the green and black Dyno, “You dudes are lifesavers. Where was it?” Everyone waited for Colin's cue.\n\n“Some shithead teenagers up on Treeline were trying to sell them in the classifieds,” Colin said, simple and honest. “We…recovered them for their rightful owners. You know. As a service to the community. If I remember right, the poster said there was sixty bucks for its return?” the raccoon said, not letting go of the handlebars. Kelly and Belly watched on from the bench, their own bikes secured.\n\n“Ha! Nice try dude, it said fifty. And I got it, fair and square,” he said, pulling the cash out of his wallet and offering it over. “You guys look like you earned it, ha, gnarly road rash dude,\" the teenager laughed as he paid Colin and hopped astride his bike. Colin, of course, didn't argue the facts and simply grinned as the teenager rode off.\n\n“Nice doing business with ya'!\" Coll-boy shouted after him, handing the cash over to Belly to hold. They sat for a few more minutes with Belly half-dozing against Colin's side thanks to the summer heat and a full stomach, before a high-school kid showed up. It was a light-furred male lion in matching white-with-blue-trim baseball cap, sneakers and shorts; his t-shirt was off and half-tucked into his shorts' waistband, dangling beside his tail. His mane hadn't fully grown in but it was getting started, and he had the signature trail of longer, darker fur down the midline of his belly already.\n\n“I guess you're the kids that said they stole my bike back from some bike thieves?” he asked, more guarded. The gang wasn't about to pick a fight but it looked like the lion kid was ready to at a moment's notice. Colin was undeterred, but, surprising Kelly and Belly both, matched his energy immediately.\n\n“Sixty bucks and you can have it back, man. We didn't do it out of the goodness of our hearts. Your poster's reward plus expenses - I lost a basketball and me and my friends bled for these bikes,” Colin said, swelling a bit with confidence. Or, at least, he sold it well.\n\n“Fuck off, kid. Lucky I don't call the cops on your scheming little ass,” the Lion said, grabbing the chrome Dyno's handlebars. Colin didn't let go, and Belly still had a hold on the back tire as well.\n\n“You want their address? Descriptions? You probably know them… I bet they know you, too. Maybe it was targeted,” Belly suggested. Kelly, with wide eyes, watched Colin simply feed off Belly's interplay.\n\n“He's right; ten bucks and we'll out who it was. They're assholes anyway, they'll probably kill someone some day if they don't get straightened out,” Colin mused, unable to help a little smirk that grew at the corner of his mouth. The lion rolled his eyes and dug in his pocket, pulling out a fold of cash. Belly's eyes locked immediately on the money. The lion kid was [i]definitely[/i] a rich kid.\n\n“You know what, kid, I bet I already know who based on that, but yeah, if you can confirm it, I'll throw in ten bucks,” the lion said. Belly's grip didn't falter on the back tire, nor did Colin's.\n\n“617 Treeline. Big place, pool in the back, 2-car garage. Horse kid that plays ball named Dave, two idiot friends that are afraid to speak out of turn, a deer and a goat? They hang out in the garage? Shitty pop-punk music? Sound familiar?” Colin asked, reaching out for the cash. The lion relented and let Colin take the three $20's, and almost on reflex the raccoon and opossum both let go of the bike, leaving the lion to catch it before it fell.\n\n“Shit, jeez guys. Yeah, I know them. Thanks, I guess. You kids better watch out though if you really pulled one over on them, those hooved fuck-wads will hold a grudge,” the lion said, hopping astride his bike and pedaling off.\n\n“Thanks for the heads up, nice doing business with you!” Colin called.\n\n“What do you think he means about them holding a grudge?” Kelly wondered, nervously.\n\n“It's fine, dude,” Belly said, dismissive. “We'll probably never see them again,\" he reassured Kelly, not entirely buying the line even as he said it. Colin's baseless confidence was rubbing off on him.\n\n“But…” Kelly started, before realizing a calico kitten boy who was just a little younger than him was walking past with an older-teenage cat, maybe an older sibling or his aunt.\n\n“Hey, cool bike, dude!” the calico kitten said with a big smile, pointing out the red Huffy that Kelly was hanging onto. The rat thought quick, but not quick enough, and simply muttered out a lame response.\n\n“Uh, thanks, man, but it's not mine,\" Kelly said, though he returned the smile to the cat as he watched the kid disappear into the mall.\n\n“'ey, yeah. Cuz' it's mine, mate,” came a uniquely accented voice nearby, followed by a laugh as a kangaroo gestured to the bike. “I talked to, uh…Belly on the phone a little while ago? S'at right?” he asked. The trio was a little taken aback at first, as the tall, despite being only adolescent, kangaroo's fur had been dyed deep grape-kool-aid purple head to toe. He was wearing black-and-white athletic shorts and a white tank-top.\n\n“You could've said you were [i]purple[/i]. That would've made it easier to spot you,\" Belly teased. Colin laughed, but picked up immediately when Belly trailed off.\n\n“Forty bucks and it's all yours, mate!” Colin mimicked the kangaroo's accent, poorly.\n\n“Thirty, ya' dodger; I wrote th' poster myself,” the kangaroo laughed. He did, however, produce the promised sum and offered it over, before he took his bike and hopped onto it. “Thanks, [i]mates[/i]. Good lesson to get a good lock, not a cheap lock, eh?” he laughed as he pedaled off, leaving the others sitting flush with a fresh infusion of cold, hard cash outside the empire of capitalistic excess, MallyWorld. The trio looked between themselves, shrugged, and got up to head inside, confident they still had hours before the streetlights came on.\n\n---\n\nThe trio headed straight to The Tilt, their local mall-arcade. Colin had done the math already; if they used $40 to buy a toy from Bobby Montgomery - which would be considered treehouse property for all intents and purposes - and spent $10 of their cash pool on quarters for arcade games, they'd each have an equal share of $30 left, which to them was a hefty sum of money for a day's hard work, if not the most honest of work. The Tilt wasn't the best arcade in town, but it was convenient, less-supervised than most, and Bobby Montgomery was known to peddle his wares there more than anywhere else in the mall.\n\nBelly and Kelly were wrapped up in a 2-player game of G.I. Joe [i](A Real American Hero)[/i] as Colin spotted a familiar rusty-red tail in the arcade and broke away from where he was spectating.\n\n“Bobby!” Colin called as he pushed his way through the modest crowd in the arcade and toward the back of the space, amidst the pinball machines. Bobby Montgomery was just finishing up a sale to two teenagers who were hastily stuffing baggies into their pockets as Colin approached.\n\n“Hey, dude. Red told me you were schemin' today. How'd it go?” the fifteen-year-old squirrel said with a grin. Of all the Montgomeries, Bobby was certainly the least ‘country kid’ of them. To Colin, he was a role model; always hustling and finding a new way to earn a few bucks. Where Colin and his crew excelled in heists and scams, however, Bobby Montgomery was the guy that could somehow always find what you were looking to buy - or find a buyer for something you were trying to get rid of.\n\n“Every day, dude. We did good enough to get us to tomorrow,” Colin joked, and Bobby laughed as he turned his back to the rest of the arcade and crouched down, opening his backpack.\n\n“Yeah, that's the way to go, dude. I know what yer lookin' for, though. Forty bucks, little man. I'll even throw in a brand-new magazine to help ya' put it to use,” Bobby said, holding his backpack open so Colin could look inside. It wasn't particularly exciting looking; a Pringles can that had been MacGyver'ed into something only barely more interesting at first glance. It looked like it was lined with sponges, and a sandwich baggie had been rubber banded to the end, tucked down into a hole in the squishy yellow sponge.\n\n“Woah,” Colin marveled. “…How about two secondhand mags? Frequent flier discount? C'mon, man,” Colin bartered, offering Bobby the money. Bobby laughed.\n\n“Shit, Coll-boy. Just because you've got the balls to ask, sure,” Bobby laughed. He took the money and wrapped that toy in two of the older, secondhand nudie magazines from the stack he was carrying, deftly transferring it to Colin's backpack. “Just make sure those sponges don't get wet, dude, or they'll get stiff and that's that, no more fun. Sandwich baggies are cheap n' easy enough. Maybe buy some baby oil at the corner store on yer way home too,\" the teenager offered. Colin took note, and after zipping his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder, he bumped knuckles with the teenaged squirrel and ran back off to find Belly and Kelly locked in a tiebreaker round of Mortal Kombat. Belly was getting frustrated at the endless flurry of bicycle kicks Kelly's Liu Kang was delivering.\n\n“Aw, come on! That's bullshit dude and you know it!” Belly shouted as he lost the round, and Kelly laughed at him, taunting.\n\n“It's not my fault you suck at fighting games! You should've picked someone better than Johnny Cage,” Kelly teased.\n\n“You both are total nerds. I got something better than some stupid video games,” Colin teased them as he threw his arms around their shoulders and squeezed the other boys in against his sides. “What ya' say we blow the rest of our quarters and head home? I'll call home and ask my mom if you guys can come over for dinner and stay the night since it's a special occasion,” the raccoon offered with a big grin, and Colin and Kelly shared a brief look, before they shrugged and headed for the skill games to try and rack up some tickets.\n\n\n\n[t][center]Chapter 7\n\"Initiation\"[/center][/t]\n\nBy eight o'clock, Colin, Belly and Kelly had finished dinner and were holed up in a blanket fort in Colin's bedroom, the bed's mattress overturned to serve as a wall, and the bedframe upended to support a sheet wall at the other end. A box fan was blowing in one end of the fort, causing the bedsheet roof and walls to billow lazily in the breeze provided, and the bedroom door was shut and barricaded against unwelcome intrusion from Colin's siblings and parents. Colin's secondhand radio was plugged into a scavenged A/C adapter, and tuned to the local metal station's full-album feature of Faith No More's [i]King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime[/i] as the three boys busily sorted out their sleeping arrangements in Colin's cramped trailer bedroom.\n\n“Hey, uh; thanks for inviting me to sleep over by the way,” Kelly said as he sat cross-legged on the couple blankets stretched out on the floor, “Most kids don't want to hang out with the weird rat spy.” Colin grinned and shoved Kelly over as he flopped down beside the rat.\n\n“Hah! Don't mention it, New Kid, we aren't ‘most kids’. You did good today. Definitely earned a name,” Colin remarked, tugging his shirt up and off over his head. “Speaking of which,” the raccoon said, hurling the shirt into the dirty-clothes pile in the corner of his bedroom, “I think we need to talk about your initiation, dude.” Belly looked up from the Tiger brand electronic baseball game he was playing with.\n\n“Oh, yeah, you're right. Someone's got to come up with a name though,” Belly said, grinning to himself. “Can't be part of the crew without a name,\" the opossum grinned as he leaned back against the wall at the back of their fort. Kelly looked suspicious, but drug his t-shirt up and off as well, and flopped back on his pallet, thankful for the fan's breeze.\n\n“How do I get a name?” Kelly wondered.\n\n“You get initiated, and the first member of the crew who figures out a good name ‘names’ you,\" Colin grinned his sly grin, digging into his backpack, “That's how Belly got his name. And he named me. You'll know it when you've got it,” the raccoon teased, tossing the Pringles can he'd recently acquired from Bobby to the rat. Kelly caught it, confused at first as to what he was looking at before his eyes widened in realization.\n\n\"Wait a minute…\" the rat hesitated, looking between Colin and Belly nervously. “I don't get any say? And… [i]this[/i] is my initiation?” Belly grinned his needle-toothed grin at Kelly.\n\n“If you're gonna be part of the crew, dude, you've got to trust the crew, and prove you've got nothing to hide,” Belly said with a grin, “Hey, Coll-boy, gimmie' one of those magazines.\" Colin held one out, and Belly took it readily, before laying it out in front of himself and pulling his t-shirt up and off as well.\n\n“Belly's right, dude, we're brothers, here. No secrets,” the raccoon mused, tossing the other magazine to Kelly who caught it, flustered. Belly was already flipping through the magazine he had, marveling at the precious and rare treasure he held; a whole magazine full of pictures of tastefully-posed nude women. Colin pointed Belly's way, “You better get started, dude, or Belly's not gonna make it ‘til his turn,” he teased, drawing Belly's attention away from the magazine. A moment later, the opossum processed what Colin said.\n\n“Dude, shut up!” Belly laughed, throwing his wadded-up t-shirt at Colin, who dodged expertly and flipped the opossum off.\n\n“This isn't a trick, is it? You're going to make fun of me or something?” the rat mumbled, even as he probed a finger experimentally at the opening of the toy, and pushed it in before Colin offered over the baby oil he'd pilfered from the bathroom cabinet.\n\n“Dead serious, dude, it's not a trick. We're totally gonna' make fun of you, though; just not outside the group,” the raccoon grinned his charmer's grin again as he leaned back and shuffled his shorts down and off, leaving him in just his briefs. Belly was soon doing the same. “C'mon, I don't wanna have to wait all night for my turn.\" Kelly fidgeted awkwardly and closed his eyes, and sighed.\n\n“…Fuck it, alright; if you swear what happens here stays here,” the rat said, and Belly and Colin both laughed and agreed immediately. Soon, the three boys were sitting crosslegged in a circle around the two magazines in naught but their underwear as Kelly hunted for just the right material to pay tribute to, flipping through the pages before settling on a petite mink stretched with characteristic boneless confirmity along the contours of a high-powered racing motorcycle's back. Colin saw Kelly marveling at the magazine and gave a low whistle, tipping his head for a better vantage point on the photo.\n\n“Dude, she's [i]hot[/i],” Colin teased, “She's the one, yeah?\" the raccoon laughed, nudging the pringles can playfully into Kelly's lap and probing it playfully at the tenting peak of the young rat's heavy-sacked package through his underwear. “Give it to her, dude!” Kelly laughed and swatted Colin's hands away, snatching the toy and smearing the baby oil onto the baggy liner.\n\n“Dude, don't make it weird,” the rat laughed, “She [i]is[/i] really hot though,” he said, deftly pulling his underwear's elastic down in front and fidgeting with it until it rested under his balls, and he nervously guided his growing erection into the opening of the makeshift toy. Kelly was half-expecting a mousetrap to snap down on the end of his dick once he pushed deep enough, but as he sunk deeper, the snap never came. Instead, he found himself simply sliding into a snug, slick, complaint confinement lined with an obvious layer of cheap plastic baggie. He sucked his teeth and pushed deeper, briefly forgetting about the others there as he watched himself slip into the toy.\n\n“What's it like?” Belly asked, voice hushed to a conspiring whisper as he leaned in to watch Kelly's dick slip in against the yellow sponge. Colin was watching over the rat's shoulder, his own underwear modestly tented. Kelly snapped out of it as he heard Belly speak, and laughed.\n\n“Dude, not so close!” the rat laughed, pushing a hand at Belly's face, who recoiled playfully, “You're getting into gay territory, nerd. You too!\" he shoved Colin to the other side, trying to make some room for himself from the oppressive oversight of the other curious boys. \"It feels…weird. Cold and smushy,” he grinned as his hand worked the toy back and forth. “It's…kinda good though, yeah,” he said, closing his eyes as he worked the toy a few more times, trying to evaluate it as it warmed up from his body heat. He was finding a rhythm, and before long a steady slick slip back and forth accompanied the rat's faint panting as he stared at the photo. \n\nThe other boys anxiously awaited their turn as they did their best to share the spare magazine and flip through it nonchalantly. Herculean efforts were made to not stare at Kelly enjoying himself with their new collectively-owned novelty, despite their desperate curiosity about the new toy. Kelly was well lost to the toy's siren song by now, though; his eyes were unfocused as he stared down at the magazine, working the can back and forth and bruxing as he worked steadily faster. Abruptly, catching Colin and Belly's attention, the rat gasped and vocalized faintly as his eyes shot open wide, slightly-crossed and the toy was pulled tight to his lap, the rat freezing in place for several long seconds as Colin and Belly both laughed.\n\n“He did it!” Belly exclaimed under his breath, grinning excitedly as he watched Kelly tense and shudder. Colin reached in and shook the toy in Kelly's lap, making the rat jerk and grunt and short-circuit a little at the abrupt over-stimulation. The other boys laughed at that, and Kelly just clutched the toy tighter into his lap for the remaining few seconds as Colin grinned, play-fighting him for it.\n\n“C'mon dude, fork it over! It's Belly's turn, before he splorts his shorts. He's leaking already,\" Colin teased. That comment drew Belly's attention to his own tent, where he realized he'd already welled up a drizzling of precum through the tight, dingy-white fabric of his briefs.\n\n“Shut up, man, you're sporting one just as bad!” Belly teased Colin, reaching over and bapping the raccoon's prominent underwear-tent with his hand, causing Colin to laugh and kick at Belly playfully, the two getting into a playful kick-fight even as Kelly's final, wracking throbs of climax faded, leaving the rat panting and all-too-ready to yank himself out of the toy, overstimulated. He held the Pringles can out to Belly with a laugh.\n\n“You wanna get sloppy seconds with her, dude?” Kelly asked Belly as he tugged his underwear back up despite the messy glazing of pearly fluid on his length. He used a foot to push the magazine over toward the opossum, still laid out to display the mink babe on the motorcycle. Belly took the toy and swiftly uprighted it to keep it from dribbling the mess onto his leg.\n\n“Yuck, dude. Okay!” Belly laughed, getting up and tugging his underwear down to his ankles, letting his erection spring up into the air without so much as a hint of shame. He knelt and shuffled his knees apart, sitting back on his feet as he delicately surveyed the toy, nudging his tip up against its opening before sinking in, with an evaluating roll of his eyes as the opossum's naked flesh delved into the snug toy and the freshly-deposited mess from the rat. “Oh, gross, man, it's still so warm,” he laughed as he tested the toy with a slow push in until his sheath was smashed snugly to the opening.\n\n“Dude, it's [i]supposed[/i] to be warm, you can thank your crewmate for that! Good job, New Kid!” Colin teased, abruptly headlocking Kelly and giving the rat a vigorous noogie, forcing Kelly to wrestle his way out of the raccoon's grasp and slug him in the side for good measure, laughing the whole while. Colin spoke back up as he saw Belly sawing his hips back and forth into the toy. “Better than your hand, dude?”\n\nBelly nodded, but didn't reply. He simply stared down at the magazine page, that slinky mink stretched on the motorcycle. His muzzle parted and he panted quietly, working his hips at the toy for barely a minute before he shuddered and his hips jerked with an awkward, stuttered rhythm, the opossum's breath caught, utterly silent as he tensed against the toy, with Kelly and Colin watching on with big grins; Kelly's due to solidarity and Colin's just beaming with pride, confident that his assessment of the toy's quality was accurate from what he'd gathered on rumors alone.\n\n“It's good, isn't it?” Kelly asked, poking his tongue out playfully at Belly as the opossum trembled and pulled himself out, nodding sheepishly despite his secret embarassment that he couldn't have lasted longer. Belly offered the toy to Colin, grinning a little dopily.\n\n“Wanna' give her thirds? I think she wants you, Coll-boy,” Belly grinned, slumping back and using his tail to push over the magazine at Colin, who accepted the toy eagerly and wasted little time. Colin tugged his briefs down in front and shoved the entirety of his dramatically curved raccoon dick down inside, squinting playfully as his natural curve wedged his tip against the sponges tightly.\n\n“Oh-ho, fuck,” Colin mumbled, sitting crosslegged still as he worked the toy in his lap, a messy, squelching slick noise arising from it as he fixed his gaze on that model, panting faintly. “And…nnh…and you were worried it wasn't gonna be worth the money, dude,” Colin teased Belly, making the opossum laugh and reach over to swat the end of the toy, making Colin yelp and laugh.\n\n“You're just lucky it paid off!\" Belly argued, \"Now hurry up and do your motorcycle-mink so we can get back to figuring out what to call New Kid,” the opossum laughed, bumping his shoulder to Kelly's playfully as he slumped in beside the rat to watch Colin enjoy himself. Kelly grinned sidelong at Belly and pulled his tail up between his thighs, starting to stroke it like a giant dick, and Belly clued in, soon doing the same. Both kept it up, unnoticed by Colin as the raccoon bit his lip and squinted, his ears pinned back. They could tell Colin was getting close; and just as the raccoon gritted his teeth and lunged into the toy, Belly and Kelly both fake-moaned and abruptly stole the raccoon's attention to get him to look their way. When he did, the raccoon beheld the cursed display of Belly and Kelly tugging on their own tails as they mimicked Colin's orgasm-face, soon trading off and jacking each other's tails in an absolutely ridiculous, homoerotic display while pantomiming ejaculating all over each other, while Colin was busy pulsing slick ropes of his own much more real climax into the back of the toy in spite of his attention being robbed by the others' debauched display.\n\nAbsolute horror crossed Colin's face as his orgasm faded to the latent pulses and throbs and half-shots of post-climax, his eyes wide. Furious realization at what he'd just witnessed followed.\n\n“You [i]mother fuckers[/i],” Colin hissed, pulling out of the toy in spite of the fact that he was still messily drooling the final shots of his climax. He turned the can's orifice outward and abruptly slung the toy so centripetal force hurled the three boys' mingled loads out in a solid arc across the entire vicinity of Belly and Kelly, spattering them both thoroughly with a near-uninterrupted streak of mingled semen. “[i]Fuck you BOTH[/i], what the fuck, dude!” he laughed, slinging the toy again to shake out the last couple teaspoons of collected slime at the two. Belly and Kelly were shouting and exclaiming in disgust, and positively rolling with laughter at the same time.\n\n“We knew it! You're the gayest raccoon!” Belly laughed, collapsing under Colin as the raccoon outright tackled him, and Kelly piled in, trying to gain the upper hand on the raccoon whose dick was still sticking out prominently.\n\n“Totally the gayest! Watching two nakedtails tailjacking when he gets off! Who even does that!” Kelly cackled. Colin delivered several punishing punches to both Kelly and Belly's shoulders before smashing the toy's opening against both of their faces to the delightful sounds of horrified disgust.\n\n“You fuckers are the [i]worst[/i], remind me again why I hang out with you queers?!” Colin laughed, abruptly breaking away and flopping back, leaving the others laughing and wiping fruitlessly at the smeared messes in their fur, making faces the whole while. “I can't believe you guys,” Colin sulked. “I go first next time. That one doesn't count,” he laughed, and the others didn't challenge it. \n\nMoments passed as the three caught their breath, still laughing in fits and starts. Colin happened to have looked down at the magazine page, where he finally noticed the logo that was emblazoned on the fairing of the racing motorcycle that their shared lover of the night was sprawled atop.\n\n“…Ah, fuck it. Welcome to the gang, Kellogg.”\n\n\n\n[center]-END-[/center]", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Content Warning: Cub/cub/cub, group masturbation, criminal activities, slurs, poor-kid life, arcade games & other scams, 90'S VIBES, a pig serving bacon to unsuspecting children.


 



Before the Fall

“Bikes”
by beforethefall [Inkbunny]



 

Chapter 1
"Lead"


The dusty gravel of the access road crunched under each footfall as Colin “Coll-Boy” Hall, age 10, and Jerry “Belly” Bellick, age 9-and-a-half, walked into town with backpacks slung over their shoulders early in the morning. Colin clutched their last $20 in his pocket as the raccoon boy walked alongside his opossum friend, close enough that they'd occasionally bump shoulders.

“I still don't know why you're going to waste our last twenty bucks on boring stuff like copies and mailing," Belly said, unimpressed at the scheme that had been proposed. The chubby opossum hiked his backpack straps up on his shoulders to redistribute the weight as he walked.

“Ask me again in like 2 weeks,” Colin said with his usual cocky grin, “My brother's spent years building this list, and he guaranteed me it'll pay back double what we put in at least. Besides, it's not our last twenty bucks, it's the Treehouse's last twenty bucks. I'll split the change with you when we're done.” the raccoon urged, firmly bumping his shoulder to Belly's once more.

“Whatever, you know what I mean. I've only got five bucks left of my own money,” Belly mumbled, kicking at a slightly-too-tall mound of gravel on the road and sending it scattering.

“I'm near broke,” Colin laughed, “Don't worry, dude. There's always fruit on the tree, we'll figure out how to get at something. Hey, did you hear Bobby Montgomery's selling toys you can jerk off with now?” This prospect caught Belly's attention immediately, and he looked skeptically over to Colin.

“What do you mean, ‘toys’?” the opossum asked, casually shifting to Colin's other side to distance himself a bit further from a choker-chained pitbull that was barking at them through a backyard fence that didn't quite meet Belly's standard of quality for the situation.

“Like, some sort of thing you can stick your dick into that feels like a pussy.” Colin laughed, “I heard some rich kids talking about it the other day."

“Bullshit, dude. That's not real,” Belly said, sneering at the idea. “It's probably a scam anyway. I'd expect better from you, Coll-boy," Belly dismissed, causing Colin to look, exasperated, at Belly.

“You think I don't have a good nose for a scam, Belly? Me? Nah, this is legit, they were pretty excited over it," Colin grinned, before he tipped his head and urged Belly to follow him onto one of the feeder streets that led into the little commercial strip along the main road through town, situated on the other side of the tracks.

“Who was it that was even talking about this?” Belly asked, not so easily swayed by Colin's charisma. Colin had always appreciated Belly's healthy skepticism, even if it was exhausting at times. It was a good check and balance against his own more impulsive instincts.

“Dom and Donnie, but I think it was Luke who got one; they were on their way to hang out with him.” Coll-boy said, rolling his eyes. Luke was one of the Fallow Acres resident coyotes, and on any given day it was a coin-flip's chance whether he'd be tolerable or not. As far as Fallow Acres was concerned, Dom and Donnie were a package deal; they were rarely seen around the trailer park and only ever showed up when they were together. Luke was always at his worst when he had the hyenas backing him.

“Shit, you're going to believe anything that any one of those three says?” Belly laughed, “You are a rube.” Colin punched Belly in the shoulder surprisingly hard, making Belly wince and rub the spot.

“Shut up, dude!" Coll-boy laughed, “Of course not if any of them were talking to ME about it. I just overheard them talking to each other. It's legit, man, trust me,” the raccoon said in that infuriating way he did, hauling the door open of the air-conditioned copy shop and gesturing for Belly to go in first. The opossum did so, and Colin followed.

“I'm just saying, those guys are sketchy, and not sketchy how we're sketchy,” Belly said as he put down his backpack on the big worktable and pulled out the folder, gingerly lifting their original, hand-penned document to the glass of a copier as Colin loaded the short stack of scavenged postcards he'd scored from a dumpster-dive a couple weeks back, double-checking to make sure they were oriented properly. “They're like, stab-you-in-the-alley-and-steal-your-bike sketchy.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But Bobby's always come through for us, right? Last I checked, there's only like two pages left in that Hustler magazine you've got stashed in the treehouse that aren't basically glued together, and you got that from him," Colin teased Belly, who blushed a little but also playfully swooned, not denying it.

“The centerfold, ugh; cocker spaniel girls are so hot, dude,” Belly laughed, “If those pages ever get ruined I'm just going to hang myself from the treehouse tree, Coll-boy, mark my words,” he teased, “Nothing to live for after that.” Colin rolled his eyes.

“You don't get to kill yourself unless you kill your dad first, dude. Hey copy guy; it's only 4 cents if I do 51 copies right?” Colin called across the shop.

“Yeah, whatever,” came the response of the teenage grizzly bear that was clearly more interested in writing in a composition book than working or eavesdropping on them as he leaned on the counter.

A matter of minutes later, Colin and Belly were sat on stools at the counter handwriting in the addresses on the postcards, each with a page from the Master List that Coll-boy had acquired from his older brother to reference.

“How'd your brother get these addresses anyway?” Belly asked, penning as carefully as he could. He didn't have the best handwriting unless he took it slow; Colin was breezing through comparatively quickly with his pickpocket's dexterity.

“This is every mark he's been able to finger since he was our age,” Coll-boy beamed. “Could be anything. Girl scout cookies, fundraiser candy, bake sale donations, yard work or car washing, people that let in door-to-door salesmen, people that reply to publisher's clearing house, basically anyone that's got a looser grip on cash in town.”

“Pretty cool that he'd give you that,” Belly admitted, to which Colin just grinned and nodded in agreement as he kept penning addresses.

“Keeping the Hall family tradition alive, I guess,” Colin said with a smirk. Both boys wrote until their hands hurt, and once finally finished with the addresses they shook out their sore wrists and stacked the post-cards, paid up at the counter and headed back to the street. Colin was flipping through the post-cards, double-checking them as they walked down the sidewalk toward the post office that was still a mile away.

“Do you think this will really work?” Belly asked, reading the text on one of the postcards. “It's so short. ‘Hi, friend! Just writing from my new lake house in Leviathan Holler to let you know that I make $500 an hour using one easy trick that you can do too. For more information, send $5 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Box 9, Fallow Acres, Aardvark Heights, Missouri,’" Belly laughed. “It even sounds like a scam. The Leviathan Holler postcards are a nice touch though,” Belly admitted as he flipped the post card over to check out the goofy cartoon lake monster on the front.

“Nah, not to the sorts of people we're sending this to. That's why we use the mark list,” Coll-boy explained, “To them, it just sounds like easy money. They won't think twice about buying in."

“This better work… I don't want to have to mow lawns or beg to return shopping carts at Aldi for quarters all day again," Belly grumbled, “Or even worse,” the opossum trailed off. He didn't need to say more, Colin already knew. Belly's home life was insecure and hostile enough that begging neighbors or grocers for a meal was a common enough occurrence that Belly had grown to resent the practice.

“Never, man. You stick with me and you'll never have to mow another lawn in your life,” Colin reassured him. “Hall family motto; it's better to have strong brains and loose morals than a strong back and clean conscience.” Belly rolled his eyes, before he spotted familiar rusty-red-and-white fur a block ahead; definitely one of the Montgomery brothers, though which, it was always hard to tell from afar. It didn't help that there were at least nine of them, and maybe more. Nobody ever could seem to get a fixed number. They had a big farm outside town, but there were supposedly pockets of Montgomeries scattered throughout the region.

“Hey, is that Bobby?” Belly asked. Colin shook his head after barely a moment's hesitation.

“Nah, that's Red; he's got the truck, but he might know where Bobby is! C'mon,” the raccoon said, picking up the pace to catch the aptly-named red squirrel as he was stacking crates of produce on a hand cart. “Hey Red!”

“Hey, kid. What's up?” the later-teenage sciurid said. Out of all the Montgomery boys, Red was always the best-dressed since as the second-eldest brother, he was in charge of handling their daily deliveries to the local grocery stores, households and restaurants that their family farm sold produce to. He'd also come by Fallow Acres and sell discounted produce every Friday during the growing season.

“Is it true that Bobby's selling jack-off toys now?” Colin asked without hesitation. Red laughed, hard, at the abrupt bluntness of the question.

“Straight to th' point, huh? Word gets 'round quick in town, don't it?” the red squirrel laughed in his country twang.

“So it's true? Are they any good?” the raccoon asked, as Belly looked on in astonished disbelief at the vague confirmation. Red didn't confirm Colin's question one way or another, however.

“Hey, I don't judge, Coll-boy, but that's his side hustle, not mine. I couldn't tell you if they're worth it or not." the squirrel laughed, “That sorta' thing ya' gotta' figure out on yer' own.”

“C'mon, man. Anything?" Colin pleaded, making Red laugh even more. “Is Bobby gonna' be at the mall today at least?”

"Aw, probably yeah, but later though. He's got a heap a' chores back home today. Should I let 'im know you're lookin' for him?” Red said with a crooked smirk as he hefted the crates on the hand cart.

“Yeah! How much should we bring?” Coll-boy asked, his striped tail twitching.

“Forty bucks ought'a do it, kid. Last I heard at least. I'll tell ‘im you kids are lookin’," the red squirrel said as he wheeled the crates inside without so much as a goodbye, but somehow making their dismissal clear all the same.

“40 bucks?! Aw, c'mon, Coll-boy,” Belly exclaimed, astonished as he watched Red disappear through the entryway to the local grocery.

“Must be pretty good if it's worth that much,” Colin simply said with a big grin at Belly, “C'mon dude, we've gotta get this shit in the mail and make some real money, and we gotta' do it quick.”

---

Upon arrival at the post office, Coll-boy and Belly discovered they had arrived at the late-morning rush, and wound up standing in a long line. Belly fidgeted; he wasn't the most comfortable in crowds, and Colin kept close-by as a reassurance.

“Dude, if this works out,” Colin started before Belly interrupted him.

“I thought you said it was a sure thing,” the opossum said, nervously wringing his tail as he looked around the lobby of the post office.

“Nothing's for certain dude, but if it works out we should re-invest half of whatever profit we get out of it into running it again, on a bigger scale,” Coll-boy finished, stepping forward as the line grew one person shorter.

“How many names are on your brother's list?” Belly wondered. “We couldn't run this on the same people over and over…”

“Well, no, but there's a couple hundred names, still. We can work on the list ourselves too to expand it.” Coll-boy grinned, thumbing the stack of postcards and fanning them. “This is the start of a new era, dude; every single one of these that comes back we're going to keep track of and put them on the short-list." He and belly stepped forward again.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it…but only if it pays off,” Belly said, looking up at the bulletin board. “Huh. Bike thieves,” Belly commented, drawing Colin's attention.

“Whuh?" the raccoon wondered, before he saw where Belly was looking. "Oh, huh. Where at?” Colin asked, anxiety building as he waited for the dog in a business suit ahead of him to finish his drop-off.

“MallyWorld, of course. Looks like they got…” Belly looked around at the other fliers on the bulletin board in a quick survey, “Three of them, two days ago.”

“Could be more. Not everyone posts fliers,” Colin said, before the salamander at the counter - and the man standing behind them - cleared their throats simultaneously to draw his attention. “Oh, hey! I'd like to mail these please. There's fifty."

“Fifty-one,” Belly reminded without so much as looking Colin's way. He was already reaching up to pull the three fliers down from the bulletin board.

“Oh, right. Fifty-one,” Colin said with his usual big, charismatic grin.

“Ten dollars and twenty cents. Lots of friends out there in the world, huh?” the friendly yellow-and-black salamander asked. Colin couldn't tell if they were a male or a female.

“Yeah, something like that,” the raccoon said as he handed over the money and postcards, and got his five cents in change.

“Good to see kids still writing each other. Have a good day,” the salamander said as Colin hurried out of line and dug in his pocket for a quarter as he walked out of the post office.

“You got the posters, dude?” Colin asked Belly as they pushed back through the door and out into the heat outside.

“Yeah, looks like they were all stolen at the same time. Cash rewards, too,” Belly said with a wave of the fliers at Colin who snatched them to look through the three. One Huffy mountain bike with a $30 reward, two Dynos with a $50 reward each. They had all been stolen from the local mall between 3 and 4 o'clock two days prior. “Think we can find 'em all?”

“Piece of cake, dude, common thieves are universally dumb as hell. We're gonna be rich by sundown,” Colin grinned to Belly, dropping a quarter into the newspaper machine outside of the post office and opening it up, pulling a paper from the stack. They walked around to the alleyway and Colin laid out the paper's Classified section with the posters. "Alright. Only the cheap-o ads for bikes with no prices or selling for way less than what they're worth, dude."

It was a mere twenty minutes before Belly and Colin had circled a half-dozen suspect ads in the daily paper. All had few details, were short, recently-posted ads, and were offering bikes below the going rate, or had no advertised price; Colin particularly liked those, because it means the seller was either up for haggling, offers, or had no idea what they had was worth. Colin counted out change, and offered Belly three quarters, taking three out for himself as well. They folded up the newspaper with the ads on the outside and headed down the alley toward the train station; the most readily-available bank of payphones in this part of town.

---

\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“Morgan residence!”

“Hey, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike? What kind of bike is it?”

“Oh, it's an 18-speed Gazelle road bi--”

<CLICK> \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t



\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“Y'ello?”

“Hi, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike; what kind of bike is it?”

“Oh, yeah, it's a GT 21-speed wi--”

<CLICK>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t



\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“Yeah?”

“Hi, uh, I saw your ad in the paper about the bike. What kind of bike is it?”

“Oh, it's a Huffy mountain bike. Red.”

“Aw, man… I was looking for a Dyno.”

“Oh, well, I've got a couple of those too.”

“Woah, really? Why so many bikes?"

“Uhh… I fix up old bikes I find at yard sales.” <Laughing and talking in background> “Shut UP, I'm on the phone!”

“Aw, that's cool! You don't have a chrome one, do you?”

“Yeah, chrome with yellow decals.”

"Oh, awesome! How much?”

“…Sixty bucks?”

“Rad! Can I come check it out?”

“Sure, come to 617 Treeline.”

“Seeya in like a half hour dude!”

<CLICK>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t


“Got 'em!” Colin called after he slammed the receiver back down the final time. Belly hadn't even mustered the courage to drop the first quarter into the payphone yet.

“No way, dude. Like for sure?” Belly wondered, marveling.

“Without a doubt, man. Teenagers by the sounds of it. They've got the Huffy and the chrome Dyno, and another Dyno, all bundled up with some lame bullshit about fixing up old yard-sale bikes. There's no way they aren't our mark. I'm gonna go check it out, they're all the way out on freaking Treeline though, ugh.” Colin sighed. His feet were already sore from walking today, but the allure of supposedly-easy money was too good to pass up over a few more miles of walking. “You know that rat kid that lives in lot 9? Kelly Turner?" Belly nodded his head, he and Colin had seen him only a few times, despite Kelly having lived in the neighborhood for years. He was a little younger than Belly was and, so far as they knew, he rarely roamed the park which often frustrated their efforts to get him involved in their hijinks. "Get him too, and show him the treehouse, we're going to need a third.”

“Can we trust him?” Belly wondered, making a face. Colin laughed.

“He'll be cool.” the raccoon dismissed, “I don't know why, yet, but my scav-sense says he'll be useful.”

“Oh, shit,” Belly groaned, “Why do I always get a bad feeling when you're scheming?”

“Because for one, you're a chickenshit and we're still working on breaking you of that. For two, you haven't tuned your sense for trouble yet. Trust me, dude. This is gonna be great.”



Chapter 2
"Case"


The end of Treeline Drive was a long walk, even for Colin. Clear on the other end of town, it was about as far as it could possibly get from Fallow Acres in distance, altitude, and class simultaneously. This was the neighborhood where kids lived in two-story houses with pools, almost every block had a house or two that owned shiny black Cadillacs and Mercedes, and it was a neighborhood that Colin felt so distinctly out of place he could barely stand it. That, however, was part of the appeal. The thought that he might be pulling one over on what he perceived as ‘the rich kids’ from the other end of town eased the pain in his legs as he climbed the big hill, and took the right onto Treeline Drive, stopping at the split-level house with an attached two-car garage, fresh pavement driveway and tasteful landscaping that boasted the house numbers, ‘6 1 7’, in large brass numbers arranged at a declining angle beside the front door. The garage door was open, and three teenagers were sitting around in the garage with the local pop-punk station playing. Colin had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.

“Uh, hey guys! I'm here to check out the bike?” Colin called as he walked up the driveway, eyes darting around as he cased the place. No cars, meaning no parents. Colin wondered, briefly, why these kids would even need to steal anything, living in a place like this. They were probably spoiled. It just made him that much more determined. They had a basketball hoop mounted to the garage, and the back yard had a privacy fence. No trash cans along the curb or on the side of the house; that meant an alley gate was all but guaranteed.

“Oh, you the one that called?” the later-teenage horse asked, brushing bleached-blonde hair with black roots out of his eyes. He was wearing basketball shorts and a tank top; Colin recognized the voice.

“Oh, yeah, hey dude! I'm Colin,” the raccoon said, maintaining a perky ‘kid’ persona as best as he could. It wasn't hard, he was used to being underestimated.

“Dave. C'mon back and I'll show ya' what I got,” the horse said, waving Colin into the garage. Colin followed, cautiously at first before his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light in the garage, where the other teenagers were sitting around an old card table smoking cigarettes and eyeing him uncomfortably; one deer, one goat, both male, both doing fairly well at being perceived as sketchy, teenage delinquents. The horse led Colin to the back of the garage, where Colin scoped a door with two stairs up that would have had to lead into the house, and a back door that stood open to the backyard with a fan in the doorway. Dave pulled back a tarp to reveal the three bikes, exactly as Colin had suspected; two Dynos and the red Huffy mountain bike.

“Aw, man, look at it!” Colin feigned marveling over the chrome Dyno, “It's so cool,” he laughed. “You said you find these at yard sales? Lucky… I've been looking everywhere trying to find a half-decent bike," Colin tried to chat the horse up as he knelt down beside the chrome bike, feigning inspecting its front brake and the tire tread. In actuality, he was using that moment to scope the back yard. In-ground pool, no signs of a dog, privacy fence gate with trash cans beside it. The gate was locked with a padlock from the inside.

“Like I said on the phone, eighty bucks,” the horse said. Colin had been counting on him trying that scam; it was one he, himself, tried on almost every indirectly-agreed-upon transaction. “You interested?” the horse asked, sitting on the stairs to the interior door.

“Aw, I thought you said sixty, dude…” Colin feigned disappointment. “Uh…Yeah, I still want it, but I have to go get more money I guess. I'll be back in a couple hours alright?”

“If it's still here when you get back, it's yours dude.” the horse said. “We'll be around.”

“Sweet, I'll hurry back!" Colin said, and hastily took his leave, running with as much of his spare kid-energy as he could until he was out of sight, where he was comfortable slowing to a far-less-enthused walk. His legs really hurt, now. Colin circled down the street and ducked into the alley-way, taking it back around and behind the house. He looked between the slats in the privacy fence to scope the house. Nobody seemed to be home; there was a solid path from the back of the garage to the gate, and he confirmed no dog-landmines in the yard, as well as that privacy gate was actually locked, though the lock looked cheap. It was a safe neighborhood, Colin knew; generally, the use of locks was only an illusion of security at best on gates anyway.

Colin was thankful for the hill on his way back down to the main road, and not five minutes after turning onto the wider sidewalk, he saw a familiar rusty pick-up stuck at the stop-lights outside MallyWorld's main entrance. He ran up to it and stuck his head in the passenger window.

“Hey, Red! You're empty. Headed back out of town? Can I get a lift?” Colin blurted, laughing as Red jumped. The squirrel rolled his eyes, laughing.

“Sheez, man! Give a squirrel a fit why don'cha! Yeah, c'mon, hurry up, kid!” Red urged as the light turned, and the sedan behind him honked. Colin scrambled straight through the window and landed on the passenger seat's cracked vinyl with a whoop of celebration.

“Woo! You're a lifesaver, dude! My feet are killing me and I still gotta' make it all the way back here from …hey, wait a second,” Colin said as Red started back down the road, headed for downtown and the highway out of town that would take them past Fallow Acres. “…You wanna' make a few bucks, dude?”

“Kid, knowin' the sort of stuff you and that 'possum kid get up to? Might be just a little too hot for a farm boy,” Red laughed, and Colin did too as he hung half-out the window in appreciation for the breeze.

“Nah, nothing like that, dude! I'll give you…” Colin thought to the change in his pocket still, “…two bucks if you pick me, Belly and Kelly up at Fallow Acres and give us a ride back to Treeline. I'm trying to buy a bike," Colin lied, “And just need to go home and get some money. Belly and Kelly were, uh…going…to help me?” The raccoon grimaced, definitely not his finest moment of conning.

“Now that story adds up ‘bout as well as a broken calculator,” Red laughed, “But, sure, kid, s’long as you don't mind squeezin' in ‘round the next load of deliveries. Won't be late, don't be late.”

“Deal, dude! Thanks Red, you're the best!" Colin said, beaming as he bounced on the springy seat of the old pickup. “So…like, guy-to-guy, are Bobby's toys really as good as people say?” Colin asked, making Red laugh again.

“Kid, when I was your age I was happy to use a banana peel I nuked in the microwave for a few seconds. Th' hell you need to go accessorizin' your tug sessions with more'n that?" the red squirrel joked, “Ta' answer your question though, guess it's better than doin' it the old-fashioned way. Y'know Bobby based ‘em on what we use for the horses, right? It’s nothin' like the real deal.”

“I knew it! You have used one!" Colin laughed, pointing an accusing finger at Red, who laughed even harder.

“Kid, I ain't had to shoot in socks for five years at least, y'all need to find a girlfriend ‘fore you back up so bad yer nose starts runnin’.”



Chapter 3
"Crew"


Belly drug his feet along the dusty gravel access road on his way back to the trailer park. The walk home always felt longer when he was on his own, but the familiar dread of ‘home’s impending arrival returned all the same as he squeezed through the gap in the chain-link fence and ducked around behind the trailers to stay out of view of his dad, Mikey, who was working on his stupid piece of shit car in front of their tiny travel trailer they called a home, near the front of the main Fallow Acres property. Belly knocked a few times on the side door of the Turners' trailer and waited, anxiously, on the little landing at the top of the stairs. The door opened and Belly about fainted at the gruff rat in a stained tank-top undershirt and briefs answered the door. Belly froze, as was his tendency.

“Yeah? What do you want?” the rat asked around the butt of a smoldering cigarette, snapping the opossum out of it.

“Uh, s-sorry to bother you,” Belly's mind raced, thinking maybe he should leave it at that and walk away; but steeled his resolve, “Uh…can Kelly come out to play? Me and Colin were going to--”

“Kelly!" the older rat shouted, disappearing back into the dark of the trailer's interior. “Your friends are here! Go the fuck outside and play like a normal kid for once!”

Belly fidgeted, awkwardly, on that landing for a moment before the younger hooded rat appeared in the doorway, dressed in BDU pants and a camouflage tank top.

“Oh, uh…hey,” Kelly said quietly, stepping outside to find Belly wringing his tail. The opossum smiled awkwardly.

“Uh, hey, dude. Me and Colin were, uh…well. You wanna hang out with us? We've got a treehouse in the woods,” Belly offered. Kelly cracked a crooked grin.

“Yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's not really a treehouse, is it? Kind of a fort…maybe. But it's not really in a tree, more…under one. There's a spool as a table and an old couch. And a hustler magazine between the boards that prop up the wobbly end of the couch, but most of the pages are stuck together. You and Colin are like always out there, even after dark. I saw you guys stealing tiki torch oil from the Henderson's patio for the lamp you use…” the rat said, showing his hand in a desperately awkward attempt at warming up the new kid who he'd only observed from afar, up to this point. Belly just stared at the rat with a vague sense of awe, as Kelly stepped down the stairs alongside Belly. “You're, uh…you're Belly, right? Coll-boy said you were just a few months older than me,” he said with an awkward, bucktoothed smile, “You guys seem nicer than Luke and his friends.”

“Shit, dude. Are you like a spy or something?” Belly laughed.

“I'm a rat, dude,” Kelly said with a rapid little laugh. “…Don't worry, I don't go into the treehouse when you're sleeping in there,” he said with a little grimace. “I'd…probably sleep out there too if my dad was as much of a dick as yours seems like he is.”

“Fuck Mikey. I can already see why Coll-boy had a good feeling about you though, dude,” Belly laughed. “Uh…so we're working on something right now…you wanna make some money with us?” Belly asked as he lead the way back to the treehouse, not that he seemed to need to. He pushed open the door and let Kelly in, then stepped in as well and let the door clunk shut behind them. Kelly prowled around, seeming to take stock of the place without really touching anything.

“Uh, yeah, I guess. What do I need to do?” Kelly asked, eventually settling atop the log that served as a stool beside the old spool table.

“I…don't know, yet. Planning is kind of Coll-boy's thing, He just said to get you and bring you here. Want a fruit roll-up?” Belly asked, already digging into the box of expired fruit snacks, the last remaining food from a recent dumpster-dive. This was to be his lunch for the day.

“Nah, thanks though. This is a pretty cool place though, did you and Colin build it?” Kelly asked, still looking around. It wasn't big, but it was enough for a few kids to hang out in and feel like they had their own spot. It was also mostly-dry.

“Yeah, uh… I started it when I was little, and Coll-boy helped me make it good enough to sleep out here most of the time,” Belly said, scuffing his toes on the packed dirt floor. “At least when it isn't storming really hard and stuff. I got other places to go then though.”

“Like the old box car in the rail yard, right?” Kelly asked with a grin.

“Okay, now it's getting creepy,” Belly laughed, which made Kelly laugh along with him.

“Sorry, dude. Recon's my thing I guess. Dad taught me a lot of stuff about it," Kelly admitted.

“Oh yeah? Tell me something I don't know about the park, then,” Belly challenged. Kelly rolled his eyes and thought for a second.

“Oh, uh. Okay… Mister Vernon; the otter guy with the bathrobe that lives alone? The blue and white trailer in the roundabout- he's a total perv-oid. He has bookshelves full of porn in his living room. Like a lot of them. He spends most nights watching it. He likes little kids too.” Kelly said. “Did you know that?”

Belly, genuinely, didn't know anything about the middle-aged otter guy that lived in the blue and white trailer next to the empty lots. He just slumped back into the couch wordlessly and stared for a long few moments at Kelly, who fidgeted uncomfortably.

“…Okay, uh, Luke got some kind of new thing to jerk off with. It looks like a Pringles can, but duct-taped up. He and his stupid hyena friends were messing around with it a couple days ago.” Kelly continued, thinking he hadn't made his case well enough. Belly let a grin slowly stretch across his face.

“Colin is gonna love you, New Kid.”



Chapter 4
"Plan"


Red pulled the rusty truck over in the wide gravel entry of Fallow Acres, sliding the last six feet and kicking up a cloud of white dust that made Colin laugh as he climbed out of the truck.

“Seeya' in a little bit Red! Thanks for the ride!” Colin called as he slammed the door shut on the truck and Red peeled out in the gravel, sending rocks flying and Colin scampering out of the way. He hurried around the side of the trailer park and straight into the woods, following the trail until he was able to duck through the treehouse door with the tensile twang of the spring announcing his arrival.

“About time, dude,” Belly said as he sat across from Kelly as the two talked across the spool table.

“Welcome to the gang, New Kid," Colin grinned at Kelly. “Twenty minutes and we go, listen up,” Colin said, all business. Kelly shot a worrying look to Belly, who shook his head - this was normal Colin behavior before a heist. Colin continued, grabbing their trusty salvaged fireplace poker to draw in the dirt floor of the treehouse. “These guys are the perfect marks. Cocky teenagers that think they're way smoother than they are. They hang out here; in the two car garage. Basketball hoop out front, paved driveway, privacy fence, pool in the back. Alley behind the house, gate to the alley, locked - Masterlock padlock, keyed but cheap. New Kid, somethin' tells me that's where you come in. You ready to earn a name?”

“Uh…” Kelly stalled, barely able to process it all so quickly.

“Make it or break it, New Kid…" Belly said in a playfully ominous tone.

“Yeah, I can get it open,” Kelly decided. “I need to stop by my house before we go though.”

“Done; Belly, you still got that five bucks right?”

“That's my five bucks,” Belly argued.

“It's a prop that we need, if you lose it I'll pay you back out of my share,” Colin reassured.

“Deal," Belly said.

“Keep it on hand. You're going to bet these idiots you can beat them at a game of HORSE; we'll grab my basketball before we go. Try to get the game for bragging rights, but if they hesitate I've got it ten-to-one that they'll bite just to scam a kid out of five bucks.”

“Why am I always the face?” Belly complained, his stomach already flipping in his guts. He wasn't that good at basketball, not that it mattered, but he hated the eyes on him, especially.

“Because you're fucking good at it, Belly, you got this. We just need you to keep these guys busy. Try to get all three of them playing,” Colin said. Kelly fidgeted nervously when he saw Belly's anxious squirm. “Once me and New Kid hear you playing we're going in," Colin drew on the map, “…through the back gate. We'll come up around the side of the pool and in through the back door - it's standing open with a fan in it. I'll move the fan over, the bikes are under a tarp. We'll sneak the bikes out from under the tarp and take them out the back - Except for yours,” Coll-boy pointed to Belly.

“What? Why?” Belly asked, wringing his tail again.

“Because you're going to out us to make your own opening,” Coll-boy said. “You'll get in position," Colin indicated a spot from which Belly should be able to see them, "and call us out once we've got the bikes ready to go. We'll bait them into chasing us, and all you gotta' do is go grab the last bike and get out on the street,” the raccoon grinned. “So idiot-proof that either of you guys could pull it off, right?” Colin asked. Belly punched him in the shoulder for that.

“You're the idiot; what if they catch you before you're ready?” Belly grimaced.

“Plan B!" Colin reassured.

“Which is..?” Kelly asked, squinting. Belly rolled his eyes, mocking Colin as Colin said it.

“Just follow my lead, it'll be fine,” Colin said, catching Belly mocking him halfway through. He punched Belly in the shoulder, and both laughed. Colin continued, “We split up at the end of Treeline. I'll go uphill, New Kid - you go downhill. Belly, path of least resistance - head downhill too. We meet up at the top of the big hill on Bendy Road.” Kelly didn't like the sound of that last part.

“That hill's freaky, dude," the rat grimaced.

“Exactly!” Colin chimed, “If we haven't shook them by then, we'll all get enough speed on the hill to get away from like anyone that's chasing us on foot,” the raccoon grinned.

“I hate you, and I hate your stupid plans,” Belly groaned. Kelly just cast a suspect look between them both.

“I hate you too, dude. So are you guys in?” Colin grinned, putting his hand out between the three of them. Belly sighed, but put his hand in the middle of them.

“Yeah, I'm in. New kid?” Belly asked. Kelly seemed a little hesitant, but eventually relented, putting his hand in the middle as well.

“Yeah, I'm in I guess," The rat muttered. Colin grinned.

“Then - on three, cash is king! One-two-three!" the raccoon coached.

“Cash is king!” the trio broke, before rushing out of the treehouse on their varying missions. Two minutes later and the trio was anxiously waiting by the rusty Fallow Acres sign as Red pulled the freshly-loaded pickup truck back into the gravel lot, stopping much more carefully with a full load of crated produce in the back. Colin and Kelly piled into the front, Belly climbed into the truck bed, squeezing between the crates and the tailgate, and soon they were on their way.



Chapter 5
"Heist"


Belly dribbled the basketball as he trudged up the slight incline of Treeline Drive. He was getting his sense for at least dribbling the ball back, and trying some of his special moves, dribbling between his legs and around his back. He'd been getting into character for the last fifteen minutes, and even he could tell he was carrying himself with more surefooted confidence than usual. Sure, he had to go chasing after the ball as it got away from him a few times, but by the time he approached the house at 617 Treeline, he felt confident enough to take a few steps up the driveway and shoot at the hoop that was mounted over the garage doors. It bricked, but did good enough at announcing his arrival that the teenagers all got up from their table and stood across the open garage door.

“Hey, nice hoop, guys! You play?” Belly asked, dribbling a few more times in the driveway as the teenagers looked, confused, between themselves.

“Uh, yeah,” the horse said, “But not with little kids. Beat it, dork." He cast a few more unsure looks to the others, who shrugged dismissively.

“Pff, sounds to me like you're scared of losing your ass,” Belly took another shot, and sunk it after a couple bounces in the rim. He straightened his back and tried to stay cool as he caught the ball mid-bounce as it came back down the driveway's incline. The horse scoffed, and the others laughed.

“I'm JV, kid, I'd wipe the floor with you, now scram! We got better shit to do," the horse laughed. Belly didn't let them intimidate him.

"What, sitting around in a garage like a bunch of Melvins? You're scared. Five bucks says I can whip you and your mute friends at a game of HORSE, horse." Belly grinned a wickedly pointy opossum grin at the older kids, before he passed the ball at the horse with a solid bounce at the midpoint between them. The horse caught the ball and laughed again.

“Now that's just easy money. You're on, nerd. If you don't pay up your underwear are going to be wedgie'd so far up your ass you'll be able to taste them for a week.”

For a moment, Belly had to appreciate the fact that Colin was right. These guys really were the perfect marks.

---

Colin and Kelly approached in the alleyway, careful not to make too much noise as they crouched and waited with cautious ears out for the sound of the game, hunkered close to the fence and staying as well out of view as possible. Only a matter of minutes later, the familiar pace of called shots and attempts to reproduce them secretly gave their cue. Colin gestured to Kelly, and the rat dug in his pocket, producing a carefully organized keyring from which he fished out the group of Masterlock keys, and he gingerly reached up through the gap as Colin helpfully pulled on the wooden gate to flex it away. It was obvious that Kelly had some experience with this, and before long he found the right fit for the lock - a remarkably generic key that resulted in an affirmative click from the lock as the hasp popped out of the body. Kelly hastily took the lock down and dangled it from a finger wordlessly in front of Colin's nose. Colin grinned.

“I knew you'd come in handy, New Kid,” Colin whispered, before reaching up and clicking the gate latch open, carefully swinging the door just wide enough for himself to squeeze through, with Kelly following close behind. The two prowled along the fence line, as well out of view of the garage's open back door as they could stay, until Colin and Kelly both were pressed against the garage's siding beside the open door and Colin leaned to get a covert look into the garage. The goat and deer were standing in the garage's open door, backs to the garage interior, and waiting on their turns. Colin reeled back and crouched low, carefully scooting into the garage. The fan was running on high, doing well to mask the careful movements, and Colin carefully slid it out of the way, keeping it blowing in the same direction as best as he could. Abruptly, the goat moved, turning into the garage, and Colin froze behind the fan, partially obscured by it and partially by a workbench the fan stood beside as he watched the teenager walk into the garage, lifting a soda cup from the card table inside and taking a drink, before putting it down and heading outside as his name was called to take his turn.

Colin steadied his nerves, taking a slow breath in and out to slow his pulse as he crept across the few-foot gap to the tarp and lifted it, looking underneath. Three bikes, same as earlier. Colin gestured Kelly into the garage, taking painstaking care to stay as silent as possible as they moved in unison to lift the tarp, carefully raising it to expose the bikes with an ear always turned toward the driveway for the sounds of approaching marks. Belly's turn came up in the game outside - Colin was confident that Belly was well capable of buying them time and leading the marks as far from the garage door as possible. The crinkle of the tarp froze both Colin and Kelly in place several times as they carefully unveiled the bicycles, timed only to the talking of the others in the driveway or the rattling of the backboard against the wall to mask their sounds in chorus with the fan's drone.

Once the bikes were uncovered, Kelly carefully lifted the kickstand on the green-and-black Dyno and moved it to the back doorway, and Colin followed with the mountain bike, lifting its back wheel until, maybe a bit early on his cue, both boys heard Belly's familiar voice, even in character, shout out.

“Hey, are those kids taking your bikes?!”

Kelly froze in the doorway, wide-eyed, before a second, “Hey!” was called into the garage and he hurriedly threw his leg over the bike and pedaled out into the backyard, only barely steering clear of the in-ground pool on his way to the back gate, which still stood open. Colin had not hesitated and was hot on his heels, shouting to him.

“Go, go, go, go!” Colin urged, pedaling the bike and hurriedly downshifting into a quicker gear to get up to speed in as the sounds of scampering teenagers were hot on his heels. It didn't help that two of them were famed athletic species; not that that meant everything, but a horse and deer were bound to be quick, and horses had natural stamina that Colin secretly hoped he could outpace. Still, the raccoon couldn't resist as he rode just behind Kelly, and shouted over his shoulder, “Serves you losers right for stealing bikes, ya' fucking cretins! Lucky we didn't just call the cops on your ass!”

Belly froze, standing alone with the basketball still in his hands in the driveway as he heard the commotion rushing down the alleyway, then realized he was wasting what window he had. The opossum ducked into the garage and squinted, before catching sight of the chrome Dyno, marveling at the shiny bike's nearly-brand-new finish and coveted brand. He kicked the back door of the garage closed and locked it before hopping astride the bike and smacking the garage door opener on his way out for good measure, pedaling down the block in the opposite direction from where he heard the others headed, with the basketball tucked under his arm. Path of least resistance, after all. Even in the heat of the moment, Belly realized that would probably never be able to afford a bike like this, and despite the fear of getting caught that gripped his guts, he was soon relishing the ride.

---

Belly and Kelly converged at the top of the hill, stopping in the middle of the quiet suburban intersection. Both boys were panting and sweaty already after just a few minutes of desperately hard riding under the summer-afternoon sun. Kelly still had a panicked look in his eyes, one that Belly had visceral familiarity with- and he only barely managed to ward off his own to try to help put the new kid at ease in spite of the adrenaline coursing through his blood.

“Where's Coll-boy, new kid?” Belly asked between labored breaths, fingers nervously working at the front brake of the chrome bike as his tail clung in a coil around the frame, warded away from the dangers of the chain and back tire. Kelly had his oriented similarly.

“I don't know! He split off and went up the hill. I lost the goat kid a few blocks ago,” Kelly panted, “The horse and the deer went after Colin,” he admitted with a nervous fidget on the green dyno's saddle. A tense few moments passed, before Kelly spoke up again, “We should go look--”

“No way; if he got caught it's on him," Belly interrupted, “Cash is king, remember? We're riding a hundred bucks between us,” he wobbled the bars of the bike he was astride demonstratively, “If he lost his, it's lost, we can't risk the rest on the chance we might be able to save him from an ass-kicking." Belly said. It was a sacred pact they'd made a long time ago; the job's success came first. Kelly grimaced, and was just about to speak, before they heard shouting echoing through the neighborhood. It was hard to localize, at first, but then both naked-tailed boys' heads turned up the hill to see Colin emerge from the sweeping curve in a blind panic, pedaling as fast as he could down from further up Bendy Road. The horse was still hot on his tail, and the deer lagged only fifty yards back.

“The hill! Rush the hill!” Colin shouted ahead of himself, pedaling madly as he rapidly approached. He must've been doing forty miles per hour already. Kelly and Belly exchanged a quick glance between themselves, and simultaneously stood on their pedals to urge their bikes into motion, aiming straight down the Bendy Road hill. They barely got up to speed before Colin shot between them on the mountain bike, screaming in a combination of blind terror at what followed him and what stood ahead. Belly reflexively checked his shoulder and saw the horse was losing ground as they sped up, but was showing no sign of slowing.

“Shit, book it, New Kid!” Belly shouted, pedaling even with the gravity assist, ducking low and trying his hardest to streamline himself, soon finding himself and Kelly matching pace with Colin as they soared down the hill. Belly had never gone this fast before, his hands were white-knuckled on the handlebars, Kelly was still pedaling hard with his tongue set between his lips and eyes squinted in determination, the dulled clop-clop-clop of the teenage horse's road-shoed hooves pounding on the pavement growing more distant. The trio followed the long, sweeping curve down Bendy road as the horse faded back and eventually disappeared behind the curves of the road, as the trio accelerated into the steepest part of the hill, their shirts whipping in the wind.

Kelly was the first to try his brakes, and the back tire of the Dyno only drug behind him; the front caliper brake squealed in protest and was, generally, ineffective. Belly was soon trying the same, as was Colin as gravity drew them ever-faster toward their fate at the T-intersection at the bottom of the infamous road.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Colin muttered, “This is gonna hurt..!” he winced, simply trying to hold it together until the last moment when he locked his back brake, as did the others, and each kicked their bikes sideways in a desperate attempt to bleed as much momentum as they could as all three boys skated clear across the T intersection at the bottom of Bendy road.

Belly, miraculously, caught enough traction with just the right line through the sharp corner that he managed to power-slide clear through the intersection and merely wipe out, low-siding in the grass. Kelly and Colin were far less fortunate; they skipped straight through the gravel at the edge of the road, sailed clear over the ditch and high-sided on the opposite side of the dip, their momentum hurling them both into the chain-link fence beyond. Colin first, and Kelly right in behind him, piling atop the raccoon and knocking the wind out of both. The chain link fence arrested their momentum, but only by tearing itself clear off of its frame, which partially collapsed along with the metal mesh around them, entangling the boys along with the bikes.

Belly shook his head and sat up in the grass, dazed for a moment before he saw Colin and Kelly's predicament. He scrambled himself up and began to pull the bikes off of them and disentangle the handlebars from the fencing as, still wheezing for breath, Colin and Kelly similarly reeled, dazed far worse than Belly had been.

“Shit, guys, get up! Get up! We gotta keep going!” Belly said, the opossum grabbing Kelly's hand and yanking him to his feet, then doing the same for Colin, finding it easier than he'd expected thanks to the rush of adrenaline. The teenage horse came into view, a long-striding gait down the hill and only a couple hundred yards back. “Shit, go, go!” Belly shouted before he broke for his bike, leaving the unsteady Colin to pick up his bike on his own, as Kelly hopped onto his and rode back off the grass. Colin shook his head a few times before managing to balance back atop the bike and pushed off, the three splitting up again. Belly looked over his shoulder just in time to see the horse and deer standing in that T-intersection, hands on their knees and breathing heavily, finally winded enough that they'd given up.

---

Once Belly found Kelly aimlessly roaming the bike along the main road, he lead him to their secret rendezvous - the one they'd use whenever something went wrong, or they got spilt up, or if they just wanted a quiet place to lay low for a while. It wasn't particularly stealthy, but just out of the way enough that they could settle down and wait for the other to join them. They hid their bikes behind the building and found Colin's there, then headed in through the side entrance and straight for the back booth of the Slingshot Diner, where they found Colin already waiting.

The Slingshot Diner was one of the few establishments in Aardvark Heights that genuinely appreciated the Treehouse gang. The owner and cook, Jim, grew up in Fallow Acres as well, and had taken a liking to Belly and Colin when they'd tried to scam him out of a lunch and, failing that, Belly offered to wash dishes in exchange for a sandwich instead. Every once in a while they'd stop in and make use of the pay-what-you-can arrangement they'd struck for cups of water and whatever Jim felt like whipping up for them. Belly reflexively emptied his pockets of the little cash he had, pooling it with the bit of Colin's meager change at the end of the table as he slumped into the booth's seat. Kelly followed suit, pooling in the thirty-five cents he had in his pocket and fidgeted a little as the waitress, a later-middle-aged badger with coke-bottle glasses wandered over with big glasses of ice water that she set down on the table. She was sturdily built and her tits were so enormous that as she leaned in to plant a cup of water in front of Belly, one squished against Kelly's shoulder. Atop the left one, her name tag read “Janie”.

“You boys look like you've been through the wringer,” she said with a perky smile. “Never an easy buck in town, is there? The usual, or you wanna' change it up?”

“Hey Janie, the usual,” Colin said, echoed immediately by Belly. Kelly froze.

“Uh…”

“He'll have the usual too,” Colin spoke up.

“Three usual's, I'll let the boss know. Good to see you boys again,” Janie said with a little wink. “You two,” she gestured to Colin and Kelly, “You know yer bleedin', right?”

Colin looked at Kelly, who looked back. Both had a moment of realization dawn upon them that they had quite recently crashed very hard and were, in fact, still bleeding from various scrapes and scratches. Belly had fared much better, sporting only grass stains in his fur.

“Oh, uh…thanks,” Colin said, abruptly. “We kind of wiped out on our bikes earlier." Janie sucked her teeth playfully.

“You boys ain't gonna be invincible forever, better make good use of it while you can,” Janie called with a wink as she headed back to put in the order. Colin shuffled out and tipped his head toward the bathroom.

“C'mon, New Kid. Let's get cleaned up."



Chapter 6
"Payout"


Belly was hunkered by the pay-phone by the back booth making calls when Colin and Kelly emerged from the bathroom. He was dutifully working toward their payday, arranging for the bike owners to meet them at MallyWorld, just down the street from where they were now. As Belly finished the final call, the trio returned to the booth and slumped into the bench seats. To their delight, they were met with the near-immediate delivery of full plates as Janie handed them down one by one.

“Boss said you boys looked hungry today so he set you up,” Janie said, as the older pig waved through the window. Colin and Belly waved back their thanks, and Kelly mimicked a moment later when Colin kicked him in the shin. Belly wasted no time in digging into the truck-stop style burger on his plate, ravenous. The other boys followed suit soon after as they realized how hungry they really were as well. At least it was a problem that would be easily solved by a smash-burger patty, bacon, a fried egg and cheese between pieces of grilled toast, and a heap of shitty crinkle-cut fries dusted in seasoned salt to round out their food groups.

With half his burger down, Belly spoke up. “The bike owners are gonna' meet us at MallyWorld in like a half hour. I said we'll try to be there by four at least.” Belly said, stacking french fries into the other half of his burger as Kelly thought out loud.

“Were any of them suspicious? I know I would be if someone showed up with my bike wanting reward money after it'd been stolen,” the rat said, smearing a few fries through ketchup that had been speckled with too much pepper mixed in.

“Yeah, I had to tell one of them we jacked them back from the thieves for the reward money,” Belly snorted, then laughed. Colin grinned.

“We can talk our way out of anything, New Kid. We'll get ‘em to pay up. Just follow my lead when it comes time to do business,” Colin said, already having finished his burger. He shoveled his remaining fries onto Belly's plate, where they were accepted readily. Kelly tapped out next, and offered his remaining fries to Belly too, who devoured them as well. Everyone present was able to easily assume that, out of the three of them, Belly was the least likely to know where his next meal was coming from, after all, and Belly seemed to have plenty of room for it all.

---

The MallyWorld main entrance was a bustling place in the later-afternoon, even on a weekday, thanks to summer break. As the trio sat on the benches beside the main entrance, bikes in hand, they anxiously waited for the arrivals of the owners.

“Oh, shit; you actually did find it!” said a late-teenage coyote dressed in full stoner grunge regalia replete with a ratty old baseball cap and a heavily worn canvas backpack as he walked up to the boys, inspecting the green and black Dyno, “You dudes are lifesavers. Where was it?” Everyone waited for Colin's cue.

“Some shithead teenagers up on Treeline were trying to sell them in the classifieds,” Colin said, simple and honest. “We…recovered them for their rightful owners. You know. As a service to the community. If I remember right, the poster said there was sixty bucks for its return?” the raccoon said, not letting go of the handlebars. Kelly and Belly watched on from the bench, their own bikes secured.

“Ha! Nice try dude, it said fifty. And I got it, fair and square,” he said, pulling the cash out of his wallet and offering it over. “You guys look like you earned it, ha, gnarly road rash dude," the teenager laughed as he paid Colin and hopped astride his bike. Colin, of course, didn't argue the facts and simply grinned as the teenager rode off.

“Nice doing business with ya'!" Coll-boy shouted after him, handing the cash over to Belly to hold. They sat for a few more minutes with Belly half-dozing against Colin's side thanks to the summer heat and a full stomach, before a high-school kid showed up. It was a light-furred male lion in matching white-with-blue-trim baseball cap, sneakers and shorts; his t-shirt was off and half-tucked into his shorts' waistband, dangling beside his tail. His mane hadn't fully grown in but it was getting started, and he had the signature trail of longer, darker fur down the midline of his belly already.

“I guess you're the kids that said they stole my bike back from some bike thieves?” he asked, more guarded. The gang wasn't about to pick a fight but it looked like the lion kid was ready to at a moment's notice. Colin was undeterred, but, surprising Kelly and Belly both, matched his energy immediately.

“Sixty bucks and you can have it back, man. We didn't do it out of the goodness of our hearts. Your poster's reward plus expenses - I lost a basketball and me and my friends bled for these bikes,” Colin said, swelling a bit with confidence. Or, at least, he sold it well.

“Fuck off, kid. Lucky I don't call the cops on your scheming little ass,” the Lion said, grabbing the chrome Dyno's handlebars. Colin didn't let go, and Belly still had a hold on the back tire as well.

“You want their address? Descriptions? You probably know them… I bet they know you, too. Maybe it was targeted,” Belly suggested. Kelly, with wide eyes, watched Colin simply feed off Belly's interplay.

“He's right; ten bucks and we'll out who it was. They're assholes anyway, they'll probably kill someone some day if they don't get straightened out,” Colin mused, unable to help a little smirk that grew at the corner of his mouth. The lion rolled his eyes and dug in his pocket, pulling out a fold of cash. Belly's eyes locked immediately on the money. The lion kid was definitely a rich kid.

“You know what, kid, I bet I already know who based on that, but yeah, if you can confirm it, I'll throw in ten bucks,” the lion said. Belly's grip didn't falter on the back tire, nor did Colin's.

“617 Treeline. Big place, pool in the back, 2-car garage. Horse kid that plays ball named Dave, two idiot friends that are afraid to speak out of turn, a deer and a goat? They hang out in the garage? Shitty pop-punk music? Sound familiar?” Colin asked, reaching out for the cash. The lion relented and let Colin take the three $20's, and almost on reflex the raccoon and opossum both let go of the bike, leaving the lion to catch it before it fell.

“Shit, jeez guys. Yeah, I know them. Thanks, I guess. You kids better watch out though if you really pulled one over on them, those hooved fuck-wads will hold a grudge,” the lion said, hopping astride his bike and pedaling off.

“Thanks for the heads up, nice doing business with you!” Colin called.

“What do you think he means about them holding a grudge?” Kelly wondered, nervously.

“It's fine, dude,” Belly said, dismissive. “We'll probably never see them again," he reassured Kelly, not entirely buying the line even as he said it. Colin's baseless confidence was rubbing off on him.

“But…” Kelly started, before realizing a calico kitten boy who was just a little younger than him was walking past with an older-teenage cat, maybe an older sibling or his aunt.

“Hey, cool bike, dude!” the calico kitten said with a big smile, pointing out the red Huffy that Kelly was hanging onto. The rat thought quick, but not quick enough, and simply muttered out a lame response.

“Uh, thanks, man, but it's not mine," Kelly said, though he returned the smile to the cat as he watched the kid disappear into the mall.

“'ey, yeah. Cuz' it's mine, mate,” came a uniquely accented voice nearby, followed by a laugh as a kangaroo gestured to the bike. “I talked to, uh…Belly on the phone a little while ago? S'at right?” he asked. The trio was a little taken aback at first, as the tall, despite being only adolescent, kangaroo's fur had been dyed deep grape-kool-aid purple head to toe. He was wearing black-and-white athletic shorts and a white tank-top.

“You could've said you were purple. That would've made it easier to spot you," Belly teased. Colin laughed, but picked up immediately when Belly trailed off.

“Forty bucks and it's all yours, mate!” Colin mimicked the kangaroo's accent, poorly.

“Thirty, ya' dodger; I wrote th' poster myself,” the kangaroo laughed. He did, however, produce the promised sum and offered it over, before he took his bike and hopped onto it. “Thanks, mates. Good lesson to get a good lock, not a cheap lock, eh?” he laughed as he pedaled off, leaving the others sitting flush with a fresh infusion of cold, hard cash outside the empire of capitalistic excess, MallyWorld. The trio looked between themselves, shrugged, and got up to head inside, confident they still had hours before the streetlights came on.

---

The trio headed straight to The Tilt, their local mall-arcade. Colin had done the math already; if they used $40 to buy a toy from Bobby Montgomery - which would be considered treehouse property for all intents and purposes - and spent $10 of their cash pool on quarters for arcade games, they'd each have an equal share of $30 left, which to them was a hefty sum of money for a day's hard work, if not the most honest of work. The Tilt wasn't the best arcade in town, but it was convenient, less-supervised than most, and Bobby Montgomery was known to peddle his wares there more than anywhere else in the mall.

Belly and Kelly were wrapped up in a 2-player game of G.I. Joe (A Real American Hero) as Colin spotted a familiar rusty-red tail in the arcade and broke away from where he was spectating.

“Bobby!” Colin called as he pushed his way through the modest crowd in the arcade and toward the back of the space, amidst the pinball machines. Bobby Montgomery was just finishing up a sale to two teenagers who were hastily stuffing baggies into their pockets as Colin approached.

“Hey, dude. Red told me you were schemin' today. How'd it go?” the fifteen-year-old squirrel said with a grin. Of all the Montgomeries, Bobby was certainly the least ‘country kid’ of them. To Colin, he was a role model; always hustling and finding a new way to earn a few bucks. Where Colin and his crew excelled in heists and scams, however, Bobby Montgomery was the guy that could somehow always find what you were looking to buy - or find a buyer for something you were trying to get rid of.

“Every day, dude. We did good enough to get us to tomorrow,” Colin joked, and Bobby laughed as he turned his back to the rest of the arcade and crouched down, opening his backpack.

“Yeah, that's the way to go, dude. I know what yer lookin' for, though. Forty bucks, little man. I'll even throw in a brand-new magazine to help ya' put it to use,” Bobby said, holding his backpack open so Colin could look inside. It wasn't particularly exciting looking; a Pringles can that had been MacGyver'ed into something only barely more interesting at first glance. It looked like it was lined with sponges, and a sandwich baggie had been rubber banded to the end, tucked down into a hole in the squishy yellow sponge.

“Woah,” Colin marveled. “…How about two secondhand mags? Frequent flier discount? C'mon, man,” Colin bartered, offering Bobby the money. Bobby laughed.

“Shit, Coll-boy. Just because you've got the balls to ask, sure,” Bobby laughed. He took the money and wrapped that toy in two of the older, secondhand nudie magazines from the stack he was carrying, deftly transferring it to Colin's backpack. “Just make sure those sponges don't get wet, dude, or they'll get stiff and that's that, no more fun. Sandwich baggies are cheap n' easy enough. Maybe buy some baby oil at the corner store on yer way home too," the teenager offered. Colin took note, and after zipping his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder, he bumped knuckles with the teenaged squirrel and ran back off to find Belly and Kelly locked in a tiebreaker round of Mortal Kombat. Belly was getting frustrated at the endless flurry of bicycle kicks Kelly's Liu Kang was delivering.

“Aw, come on! That's bullshit dude and you know it!” Belly shouted as he lost the round, and Kelly laughed at him, taunting.

“It's not my fault you suck at fighting games! You should've picked someone better than Johnny Cage,” Kelly teased.

“You both are total nerds. I got something better than some stupid video games,” Colin teased them as he threw his arms around their shoulders and squeezed the other boys in against his sides. “What ya' say we blow the rest of our quarters and head home? I'll call home and ask my mom if you guys can come over for dinner and stay the night since it's a special occasion,” the raccoon offered with a big grin, and Colin and Kelly shared a brief look, before they shrugged and headed for the skill games to try and rack up some tickets.



Chapter 7
"Initiation"


By eight o'clock, Colin, Belly and Kelly had finished dinner and were holed up in a blanket fort in Colin's bedroom, the bed's mattress overturned to serve as a wall, and the bedframe upended to support a sheet wall at the other end. A box fan was blowing in one end of the fort, causing the bedsheet roof and walls to billow lazily in the breeze provided, and the bedroom door was shut and barricaded against unwelcome intrusion from Colin's siblings and parents. Colin's secondhand radio was plugged into a scavenged A/C adapter, and tuned to the local metal station's full-album feature of Faith No More's King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime as the three boys busily sorted out their sleeping arrangements in Colin's cramped trailer bedroom.

“Hey, uh; thanks for inviting me to sleep over by the way,” Kelly said as he sat cross-legged on the couple blankets stretched out on the floor, “Most kids don't want to hang out with the weird rat spy.” Colin grinned and shoved Kelly over as he flopped down beside the rat.

“Hah! Don't mention it, New Kid, we aren't ‘most kids’. You did good today. Definitely earned a name,” Colin remarked, tugging his shirt up and off over his head. “Speaking of which,” the raccoon said, hurling the shirt into the dirty-clothes pile in the corner of his bedroom, “I think we need to talk about your initiation, dude.” Belly looked up from the Tiger brand electronic baseball game he was playing with.

“Oh, yeah, you're right. Someone's got to come up with a name though,” Belly said, grinning to himself. “Can't be part of the crew without a name," the opossum grinned as he leaned back against the wall at the back of their fort. Kelly looked suspicious, but drug his t-shirt up and off as well, and flopped back on his pallet, thankful for the fan's breeze.

“How do I get a name?” Kelly wondered.

“You get initiated, and the first member of the crew who figures out a good name ‘names’ you," Colin grinned his sly grin, digging into his backpack, “That's how Belly got his name. And he named me. You'll know it when you've got it,” the raccoon teased, tossing the Pringles can he'd recently acquired from Bobby to the rat. Kelly caught it, confused at first as to what he was looking at before his eyes widened in realization.

"Wait a minute…" the rat hesitated, looking between Colin and Belly nervously. “I don't get any say? And… this is my initiation?” Belly grinned his needle-toothed grin at Kelly.

“If you're gonna be part of the crew, dude, you've got to trust the crew, and prove you've got nothing to hide,” Belly said with a grin, “Hey, Coll-boy, gimmie' one of those magazines." Colin held one out, and Belly took it readily, before laying it out in front of himself and pulling his t-shirt up and off as well.

“Belly's right, dude, we're brothers, here. No secrets,” the raccoon mused, tossing the other magazine to Kelly who caught it, flustered. Belly was already flipping through the magazine he had, marveling at the precious and rare treasure he held; a whole magazine full of pictures of tastefully-posed nude women. Colin pointed Belly's way, “You better get started, dude, or Belly's not gonna make it ‘til his turn,” he teased, drawing Belly's attention away from the magazine. A moment later, the opossum processed what Colin said.

“Dude, shut up!” Belly laughed, throwing his wadded-up t-shirt at Colin, who dodged expertly and flipped the opossum off.

“This isn't a trick, is it? You're going to make fun of me or something?” the rat mumbled, even as he probed a finger experimentally at the opening of the toy, and pushed it in before Colin offered over the baby oil he'd pilfered from the bathroom cabinet.

“Dead serious, dude, it's not a trick. We're totally gonna' make fun of you, though; just not outside the group,” the raccoon grinned his charmer's grin again as he leaned back and shuffled his shorts down and off, leaving him in just his briefs. Belly was soon doing the same. “C'mon, I don't wanna have to wait all night for my turn." Kelly fidgeted awkwardly and closed his eyes, and sighed.

“…Fuck it, alright; if you swear what happens here stays here,” the rat said, and Belly and Colin both laughed and agreed immediately. Soon, the three boys were sitting crosslegged in a circle around the two magazines in naught but their underwear as Kelly hunted for just the right material to pay tribute to, flipping through the pages before settling on a petite mink stretched with characteristic boneless confirmity along the contours of a high-powered racing motorcycle's back. Colin saw Kelly marveling at the magazine and gave a low whistle, tipping his head for a better vantage point on the photo.

“Dude, she's hot,” Colin teased, “She's the one, yeah?" the raccoon laughed, nudging the pringles can playfully into Kelly's lap and probing it playfully at the tenting peak of the young rat's heavy-sacked package through his underwear. “Give it to her, dude!” Kelly laughed and swatted Colin's hands away, snatching the toy and smearing the baby oil onto the baggy liner.

“Dude, don't make it weird,” the rat laughed, “She is really hot though,” he said, deftly pulling his underwear's elastic down in front and fidgeting with it until it rested under his balls, and he nervously guided his growing erection into the opening of the makeshift toy. Kelly was half-expecting a mousetrap to snap down on the end of his dick once he pushed deep enough, but as he sunk deeper, the snap never came. Instead, he found himself simply sliding into a snug, slick, complaint confinement lined with an obvious layer of cheap plastic baggie. He sucked his teeth and pushed deeper, briefly forgetting about the others there as he watched himself slip into the toy.

“What's it like?” Belly asked, voice hushed to a conspiring whisper as he leaned in to watch Kelly's dick slip in against the yellow sponge. Colin was watching over the rat's shoulder, his own underwear modestly tented. Kelly snapped out of it as he heard Belly speak, and laughed.

“Dude, not so close!” the rat laughed, pushing a hand at Belly's face, who recoiled playfully, “You're getting into gay territory, nerd. You too!" he shoved Colin to the other side, trying to make some room for himself from the oppressive oversight of the other curious boys. "It feels…weird. Cold and smushy,” he grinned as his hand worked the toy back and forth. “It's…kinda good though, yeah,” he said, closing his eyes as he worked the toy a few more times, trying to evaluate it as it warmed up from his body heat. He was finding a rhythm, and before long a steady slick slip back and forth accompanied the rat's faint panting as he stared at the photo.

The other boys anxiously awaited their turn as they did their best to share the spare magazine and flip through it nonchalantly. Herculean efforts were made to not stare at Kelly enjoying himself with their new collectively-owned novelty, despite their desperate curiosity about the new toy. Kelly was well lost to the toy's siren song by now, though; his eyes were unfocused as he stared down at the magazine, working the can back and forth and bruxing as he worked steadily faster. Abruptly, catching Colin and Belly's attention, the rat gasped and vocalized faintly as his eyes shot open wide, slightly-crossed and the toy was pulled tight to his lap, the rat freezing in place for several long seconds as Colin and Belly both laughed.

“He did it!” Belly exclaimed under his breath, grinning excitedly as he watched Kelly tense and shudder. Colin reached in and shook the toy in Kelly's lap, making the rat jerk and grunt and short-circuit a little at the abrupt over-stimulation. The other boys laughed at that, and Kelly just clutched the toy tighter into his lap for the remaining few seconds as Colin grinned, play-fighting him for it.

“C'mon dude, fork it over! It's Belly's turn, before he splorts his shorts. He's leaking already," Colin teased. That comment drew Belly's attention to his own tent, where he realized he'd already welled up a drizzling of precum through the tight, dingy-white fabric of his briefs.

“Shut up, man, you're sporting one just as bad!” Belly teased Colin, reaching over and bapping the raccoon's prominent underwear-tent with his hand, causing Colin to laugh and kick at Belly playfully, the two getting into a playful kick-fight even as Kelly's final, wracking throbs of climax faded, leaving the rat panting and all-too-ready to yank himself out of the toy, overstimulated. He held the Pringles can out to Belly with a laugh.

“You wanna get sloppy seconds with her, dude?” Kelly asked Belly as he tugged his underwear back up despite the messy glazing of pearly fluid on his length. He used a foot to push the magazine over toward the opossum, still laid out to display the mink babe on the motorcycle. Belly took the toy and swiftly uprighted it to keep it from dribbling the mess onto his leg.

“Yuck, dude. Okay!” Belly laughed, getting up and tugging his underwear down to his ankles, letting his erection spring up into the air without so much as a hint of shame. He knelt and shuffled his knees apart, sitting back on his feet as he delicately surveyed the toy, nudging his tip up against its opening before sinking in, with an evaluating roll of his eyes as the opossum's naked flesh delved into the snug toy and the freshly-deposited mess from the rat. “Oh, gross, man, it's still so warm,” he laughed as he tested the toy with a slow push in until his sheath was smashed snugly to the opening.

“Dude, it's supposed to be warm, you can thank your crewmate for that! Good job, New Kid!” Colin teased, abruptly headlocking Kelly and giving the rat a vigorous noogie, forcing Kelly to wrestle his way out of the raccoon's grasp and slug him in the side for good measure, laughing the whole while. Colin spoke back up as he saw Belly sawing his hips back and forth into the toy. “Better than your hand, dude?”

Belly nodded, but didn't reply. He simply stared down at the magazine page, that slinky mink stretched on the motorcycle. His muzzle parted and he panted quietly, working his hips at the toy for barely a minute before he shuddered and his hips jerked with an awkward, stuttered rhythm, the opossum's breath caught, utterly silent as he tensed against the toy, with Kelly and Colin watching on with big grins; Kelly's due to solidarity and Colin's just beaming with pride, confident that his assessment of the toy's quality was accurate from what he'd gathered on rumors alone.

“It's good, isn't it?” Kelly asked, poking his tongue out playfully at Belly as the opossum trembled and pulled himself out, nodding sheepishly despite his secret embarassment that he couldn't have lasted longer. Belly offered the toy to Colin, grinning a little dopily.

“Wanna' give her thirds? I think she wants you, Coll-boy,” Belly grinned, slumping back and using his tail to push over the magazine at Colin, who accepted the toy eagerly and wasted little time. Colin tugged his briefs down in front and shoved the entirety of his dramatically curved raccoon dick down inside, squinting playfully as his natural curve wedged his tip against the sponges tightly.

“Oh-ho, fuck,” Colin mumbled, sitting crosslegged still as he worked the toy in his lap, a messy, squelching slick noise arising from it as he fixed his gaze on that model, panting faintly. “And…nnh…and you were worried it wasn't gonna be worth the money, dude,” Colin teased Belly, making the opossum laugh and reach over to swat the end of the toy, making Colin yelp and laugh.

“You're just lucky it paid off!" Belly argued, "Now hurry up and do your motorcycle-mink so we can get back to figuring out what to call New Kid,” the opossum laughed, bumping his shoulder to Kelly's playfully as he slumped in beside the rat to watch Colin enjoy himself. Kelly grinned sidelong at Belly and pulled his tail up between his thighs, starting to stroke it like a giant dick, and Belly clued in, soon doing the same. Both kept it up, unnoticed by Colin as the raccoon bit his lip and squinted, his ears pinned back. They could tell Colin was getting close; and just as the raccoon gritted his teeth and lunged into the toy, Belly and Kelly both fake-moaned and abruptly stole the raccoon's attention to get him to look their way. When he did, the raccoon beheld the cursed display of Belly and Kelly tugging on their own tails as they mimicked Colin's orgasm-face, soon trading off and jacking each other's tails in an absolutely ridiculous, homoerotic display while pantomiming ejaculating all over each other, while Colin was busy pulsing slick ropes of his own much more real climax into the back of the toy in spite of his attention being robbed by the others' debauched display.

Absolute horror crossed Colin's face as his orgasm faded to the latent pulses and throbs and half-shots of post-climax, his eyes wide. Furious realization at what he'd just witnessed followed.

“You mother fuckers,” Colin hissed, pulling out of the toy in spite of the fact that he was still messily drooling the final shots of his climax. He turned the can's orifice outward and abruptly slung the toy so centripetal force hurled the three boys' mingled loads out in a solid arc across the entire vicinity of Belly and Kelly, spattering them both thoroughly with a near-uninterrupted streak of mingled semen. “Fuck you BOTH, what the fuck, dude!” he laughed, slinging the toy again to shake out the last couple teaspoons of collected slime at the two. Belly and Kelly were shouting and exclaiming in disgust, and positively rolling with laughter at the same time.

“We knew it! You're the gayest raccoon!” Belly laughed, collapsing under Colin as the raccoon outright tackled him, and Kelly piled in, trying to gain the upper hand on the raccoon whose dick was still sticking out prominently.

“Totally the gayest! Watching two nakedtails tailjacking when he gets off! Who even does that!” Kelly cackled. Colin delivered several punishing punches to both Kelly and Belly's shoulders before smashing the toy's opening against both of their faces to the delightful sounds of horrified disgust.

“You fuckers are the worst, remind me again why I hang out with you queers?!” Colin laughed, abruptly breaking away and flopping back, leaving the others laughing and wiping fruitlessly at the smeared messes in their fur, making faces the whole while. “I can't believe you guys,” Colin sulked. “I go first next time. That one doesn't count,” he laughed, and the others didn't challenge it.

Moments passed as the three caught their breath, still laughing in fits and starts. Colin happened to have looked down at the magazine page, where he finally noticed the logo that was emblazoned on the fairing of the racing motorcycle that their shared lover of the night was sprawled atop.

“…Ah, fuck it. Welcome to the gang, Kellogg.”



-END-
", "pools_count": 2, "title": "BtF: \"Bikes\" [Treehouse 2/3]", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "application/msword", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "4", "name": "Sexual Themes", "description": "Erotic imagery, sexual activity or arousal", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "9", "views": "443" }