But recently, Toxy had been exploring. He wasn't so much mapping as sight-seeing, poking into places that nobody had been since the disaster that created the Land. Far north of what he called home, he discovered a shopping mall that bore an incredible resemblance to one from a certain Romero movie. In fact, it seemed to have been ripped straight from the 1970s, leisure suits, disco balls and all. (It didn't make sense, but little in Deadland did.)
Toxy had never fully explained what had happened there. All that Snowy knew was that he'd found a black cat there, one who said he'd always lived there, and had even been human Before Things Changed. And with him were... girls. Oh, Snowy was familiar with what they were -- they had innies where boys had outies, supposedly, although most he'd known up 'til then had tended to have outies anyway -- but he'd never really encountered that many.
Then the cat came to visit. Sedric was his name. Toxy had said he was hairless when they'd met, but had quickly grown his fur out. Indeed, his hair was long enough to be bound up in a pony tail. Along with him were a handful of girls. Sirocco, Mistral, Asha... there was even one lizardy girl who said she didn't have a name at all.
He and most of the other boys took things in stride. Sandy -- sweet, innocent little Sandy -- couldn't handle such a big change. He'd grown pouty and stompy. He was used to getting a lot of attention, attention the newcomers had taken away from him.
Snowy himself had a wait-and-see attitude. Life was an adventure in Deadland; this was just a new chapter. Besides, making new friends was always fun. And they were all kinda cute, even the lizardy one. Right now, though, he was trying to think of things to occupy his afternoon.
"Hey, Snowy," he heard, and his cheeks blushed a solid blue. "Can you show me some of your magic now?" A quick glance behind him revealed it was Mistral -- a mousie, like him -- and she was completely nude.
Snowy had faced down literal armies before -- a forest of blue statues not too far away, most intact, still remained as warning -- so he shouldn't have been unnerved by one single cub. "Now that we're far enough away from anything or anyone we'd want to keep around, I'm going to try a little target practice."
As he wove up a ball of cold fire, he felt Mistral's tailtip curl around his as she giggled. She wasn't an innocent schoolgirl, he knew. While staring up at the night sky together as the magnetic fields of Deadland scratched manic auroras through the heavens, she'd told him what she'd had to do to defend herself from the Mercs. Unlike her supposed twin sister, Sirocco, she was ruthless. The warning she'd left behind was... very red.
Yet here she was, waving his spell away so that she could step 'round to his front. She beheld his shirt and giggled again. He peered at her, curious. Touching noses, she murmured, "You know I've already had kits, right? So how about we make things literal."
He quickly wriggled out of the shirt, carelessly tossing it on a leafless sapling before taking her into his arms. He wondered just how loudly he could make her squeak.
(Snowy, Sandy, and Toxy are \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
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