Dog Chapter 5: Strangers.

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Johan had the WORST dream.

...He’d been working at a road camp setting up the infrastructure for a diamond mine; when life had decided to jump up his butthole and make a sucknest.

There had been exploding rooms, fucked up mind-touchy-muppet-monsters, talking fox people…

He couldn’t wait to get out of the trailer and take a bar of soap down to the riverbank, get a hot meal in him, and just relax. Maybe Manuel would do those awesome spam tacos of his for dinner tonight. Oh, and drink at least 10 beers. But that could all wait until he’d had a nice refreshing 18 hours of uninterrupted sleep…

Sadly, it was not meant to be.

Intruding on his fantasies of junk food and soap, were three unpleasant realities.

Reality One; he was slowly becoming aware that his body hurt. Like… all of it.

Reality Two; The floor was cold.

And BULLSHIT number C; People were talking while he was trying to sleep… Which was... super fucking rude!

Welp, he’d just have to wake up and give them a piece of his mind!

----

Surfacing from the depths of blissful slumber, the voices slowly grew clearer.

“…o idea, built like a load drone, tho”.

“Alv maybe?”.

“Naw, no Alv I’ve ever heard of can do that Sienna, whatever he IS, he’s definitely not an Alv.”

The tone of the conversation was casual. One of the voices sounded like a kid’s, the other sounded like a young women’s. She had an accent; it was vaguely Irish…

Johan groaned as he emerged into full wakefulness.

Eyes still shut tight, he tried to roll over on his side and quickly realized, that wasn’t happening. He was waaay too stiff to get that ambitious yet.

Instead, he settled for turning his head …very slowly.

Did it feel like trying to turn a battleship turret with rusted bearings? Yes, yes it did.

But his head was moving… barely.

Head tilt achieved he decided to go for opening his eyes next. His eyelids felt like lead curtains welded to his cheeks. But they too obeyed him (with some protest) and opened.

Everything started out fuzzy…

He could make out shapes but not much else. There were two blobs: one small, one big. Then colors.

The big blob was orange, black and red… the little blob was tan cream and… neon blue?

As his bruised brain started clearing the visual static of the adrenaline crash, all hope that the day’s events were a bad dream evaporated.

Because 6 inches from his face were two sets of interested eyes. One set was frost blue, the other a shocking shade of violet.

Both sets of eyes were attached to what he could only describe as ‘fox people’.

…Today was just gonna be one of those days.

The big one he’d mistaken for a ‘dire fox’ was sitting with her legs curled under her. Her fur was patterned almost like a fire fox from earth. The mostly black fur on her face and body contrasted with bright orange accents on her ears, running down the sides of her head and along her neck. He suspected it ran down her back to her tail, but he couldn’t tell from this angle.

She had hair too.

Bright red hair in fact; done in a kind of butterfly cut, with a single long braid in the back. Oh, and she also had curves… Like curves, curves.

‘Yep those are boobs. On a fox girl person. Fox boobs…. Foobs?’ He sighed internally. ‘…The fuck is wrong with me…’

Unsure how to mentally process the discovery of foobs, Johan decided to focus on her clothing instead.

She was wearing what looked like a molle system, dark colored carpenter’s shorts with knee pads, and black canvas-looking arm guards.

She had a carbine of some kind, on a sling under her good arm. It looked like a square plastic tube with a handle and a butt plate. It reminded him of a bullpup rifle but the frame was too thin.

A movement pulled his eyes away from the strange gun. The little Fennec from earlier had crept to about an inch from him and was sniffing him cautiously. On closer inspection, she wasn’t exactly like a Fennec fox tho...  Now that he wasn’t having his brain scrambled; he was noticing several details about the smaller fox he’d somehow missed earlier.

Little things.

Like how she was larger than a desert fox from earth. Maybe double the weight… Or the fact she was wearing a tactical vest with a shoulder mounted derringer looking thing on some kind of articulating rig.

The Neon blue accents on her ears, back, feet, and tail…

The pixie cut complete with fucking bangs! (She was even wearing holey little leg warmers!) Even a little necklace that reminded him of a dream catcher. Just small details like that. Nothing shocking really. The aesthetic was very… puppy punk tacticool.

Johan fell back on what he’d been taught. He started breaking down what he was seeing. ‘Ok. They talk. They have clothing. They have technology. These are people. With foobs… stop staring at the foobs! …Aliens? If I’m not hallucinating these two are aliens. What does that mean? How did they get here? Why are they on earth?’

As Johans head spun with possibilities he realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with theory crafting. There was a much more obvious solution. 

He took a deep breath to center himself and engaged in the age-old art of conversation. “I don’t suppose you two are figments of my imagination?”

They looked at each other then the bigger one shook her head; and the smaller one started talking. “Fraid not friend… uh, I mean, you are a friend, right?”

The sheer absurdity of the question made him laugh. A laugh that turned into an involuntary groan as his bruised ribs throbbed in IMMEDIATE protest.

They had guns… and he could hardly move. Were these two serious!?!

“Well… that kinda depends, hun. Are you two gonna to eat me, if I say no?”

The little one paused for a second and then snickered. The big one let out a musical laugh before grabbing her arm and groaning just like he had.

Smiling through her pain (at least he thought she was smiling) the bigger fox girl replied. “Na. Too much gristle from the look of ye.”

It took him a few seconds to register that she was joking. But once he did, he started laughing again, pain be damned.

The banter went a long way to relieving the tension in the room. “Well, that’s good. I prefer myself unchewed… Also, the wording is weird but... I can understand you now? …How?”

The two shared another look.

It reminded him of that weird thing twins do: the one where they have a whole non-verbal conversation in a few seconds.

"Beck said you didn’t speak Galcom earlier... So we figured you didn't have an implant. We just assumed you lost your Translator during the fight. Thankfully we had a spare headset with a translate app on it.”

Actually, he hadn’t. (Mostly because he had no idea what one was). 

Also…

“Uh…  galcom?” The fox girls shared another twining moment. He could almost HEAR words flying back and forth between them.  

“Galactic Common. You know, ancient universal trade language basically everyone in the galaxy speaks?”

Johan’s growing confusion must have been clear to the furry duo, because the little-r of the two plopped down next to him and made eye contact.

“Ooook, let’s start from the beginning. I’m Beckanie Van-Eyvers.” She bowed slightly then nodded towards the other women. “This is Sienna Van-Eyvers” The bipedal fox woman waved with her good hand “Lo.” He nodded and tried to flash a winning smile.

Beck plowed on with the introduction “We’re delvers from Corridor. And Dass hired us to re-map this tunnel section”

“Nice to meet you both. I’m Johan Sliver-Black. Fixer and surveyor for Hound Logistics incorporated. I was Exploring a potential mining site when I somehow ended up in this room…”

Deciding quickly that his best bet was to explain the events of the day, he gave a full account of what’d happened since he’ been woken up that morning.

----

After finishing his story, he asked the obvious question.

“Can you two help me contact my team? I understand if you don’t wanna be seen or whatever but I’m kinda lost… The guys are probably worried. …Especially my boss.”

Thinking about how Manuel was handling things made Johan’s chest tighten. He was probably worried sick. He was knocked out of his thoughts when the neon blue Fennic pawed his cheek with one of her little beans.

“Um, I think that’s gonna be a problem.”

Of course.

The aliens probably didn’t want to be caught and end up dissected in some black site laboratory. He was bummed but he could understand that. “It’s fine I’ll just have to find my own way back to the surface. I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”

This time Sienna responded. “That’s not the prob… um. I think we’d better go outside, ye? It’d be easier to explain from there. Can ye walk?”

Could he? Probably. Did he want to. No.

Not even a little bit.

But such was life. He forced himself over onto his stomach and slowly got his knees under him. Once he was upright, he took full account of his injuries. 

Cliff notes. It hurt. All the things hurt.

He pushed his body way too hard while defending himself and he would be paying for it for days.

But he could stand. And if he could stand, he could walk.

He toddled over to his pack and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. The punk fox, Beck taking immediate interest in his kit.

“Ooooh wazzat?” He was somehow reminded of a small dog watching a tennis ball and a toddler staring at a set of car keys …at the same time.

“It’s an anti-inflammatory. Helps with pain and swelling. Both of which are things I have too much of right now…”

Beck tilted her head in confusion. “Why, are you sick?”

He pondered the question for a second before responding. “Well technically no. But actually, yes. I was already hurting from the fall I took and then those THINGS beat me like a rented mule. Adrenaline can only do so much for so long, ya know?”

Both Girls froze.

In a blink they were both bombarding him with questions so fast he had no time to respond. “You mean the COMBAT DRUG!?!” “How did you get it past the regulators???” “I didn’t see you take it! When did you take it?” “Is that how you took out the alpha!” “Isn’t it dangerous? I heard it can poison people!”

He had to retreat a few steps and put up his arms to stop the barrage of questions. The two girls were practically vibrating with curiosity.

“Ok. First… Combat drug? No. I didn’t take anything. I have adrenal glands.

Second. Yeah, it can be dangerous. It’s not uncommon for people to injure themselves, cause their bodies can’t handle the sudden rise in strength… Case in point I think I cracked my ribs giving that big bastard a hug.”

He paused when several things occurred to him at once. “Where is the flappy armed bastard…?”

They were all gone. The bodies were just gone.

There was no gore. He could still smell them faintly but other than that there was no physical sign of them anywhere, Beck looked around for a second confused. Then her expression changed like she had a light bulb moment. “OH! They evaporated. Monsters just do that in the under. Nobody knows why. But basically, the how is: there are nanites that come out and break them down. Don’t worry tho, we took trophies for DASS. So, you’ll get a reward!”

DASS? NANITES? UNDER? Johan’s head was swimming. He didn’t know where to even begin asking the right questions to make sense of that casual little information dump…

So, he decided to put it in the ‘later’ file he kept in the back of his head.

He needed fresh air. He needed to get ahold of his crew. He needed to get above ground and think.

Deciding to put all his questions on the back burner until he saw daylight, Johan shouldered his pack and squared his shoulders. “Lead on ladies. I think I’ve had JUST about enough of this hole. And today” He muttered the last part under his breath.

---- 

It was slow going for the strange trio. Mostly because the two carrying everything were beat to hell and exhausted.

But the journey was thankfully uneventful and the progress constant.

In about an hour they were at the bottom of a wide spiral staircase, looking up. It was probably 10 stories up, but the three of them could see daylight above.

The impromptu traveling companions shared a glance, shrugged and started the journey up the stairwell.

Just a little before they reached the top the girls stopped and looked back at him.

Sienna placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ye might wanna take a mo... This is probably gonna be a shock for ye.”

The top of the stairs led to a short corridor leading outside.

The first thing Johan’s senses keyed into was how warm the air felt. As they came out of the tunnel into the daylight he understood why.

And his world crumbled into oblivion as his legs failed him.

AUTHORS NOTES: No world building on this one. I cant wait for the weekend. My bones hurt and I'm ready for a nap. :)

Also I DO NOT give permission to use my works for AI training or Posting on Youtube. I'll hire a witch doctor to curse your junk with stage 5 werewolf ebola.

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