Author's Note: Hello Lads and Ladies

Happy new Year, Enjoy the new chapter. Don't have too much to tell today, there is a commission of the Jugosi family in the works. Coming soon. Happy new Year, a belated merry christmas and best wishes. :)

Edited by: SuperAverageFoxyboy, The Dude who likes Tanks
Enjoy!
-Portal

Legosi held the frame of his rifle in his hands, looking over the parts of his rifle spaced out on his table. Never once had Legosi been a tinkerer. His fable lay in observing more so than disassembly and then reassembly. Because of that he still struggled to remind himself of the parts of his gun, following the instructions in the manual laying in front of him.

A group of fellow privates sat at a table deeper into the community room, playing cards, one among them Barkley. It had been a pleasant surprise to see a friendly face in this endeavor even if to Legosi's knowledge, it simply meant that Yahya's mind gymnastics worked better than he at first had thought.

He picked up the next part, the casing on which the iron sights laid, and shifted it over the frame. A satisfying click and the casing was fixated. He looked over his gun and grabbed the next part. Slowly but surely, he was becoming familiar with the build-up of the state-issued weapons that could take a life with the convenience of a strained index finger.

He ingrained the process in his mind as he slowly finished building "Matilda," some of the war veterans said naming your gun made it easier to learn how to deal with it. Something along the lines of giving a soldier's most trusted tool a personality made it easier for the mind to cater to the object. Legosi was suspecting it was a joke, but still, he tried the unconventional method of bonding to the weaponry that was now part of his daily routine.

Captain entered the room, the others turning for him and raising their hands in clear submission.

"At ease"

Captain was maybe in his late thirties or early forties, however, he managed to hold an extremely refined handsomeness that reminded Legosi of actors that were out of their prime but still managed to look extremely appealing in all the magazines and all the interviews.

"What'cha doing, Private?"

"Training gun assembly, Captain."

The older wolf sat down beside the younger and looked over the table, Legosi almost being finished. He chuckled in his charming ways, and Legosi while looking at him became convinced that Captain was an actor before being part of the military.

"You wanna know how I learned how to assemble my rifle?" Captain's question was answered with an eager nod.

"I got into the military through weird circumstances. A job offer fell through, and Sublime Beastar Yahya came knocking on my door. And then I ended up here, training to become a fighter just like you kiddos are now." He had a wistful look on his face while retelling the start of his military career. Legosi figured the captain had at least partial regrets connected to taking up Yahya's offer.

"The trick is having a rhythm. First, you lay out in which order you build the gun, and then you hum a beat in your head. And then to the beat, you slide in, screw tight, lock in place, and next piece. Slide in, screw tight, lock in place, next piece." He spoke to a simple beat that any person could easily follow.

Legosi followed the instructions and to the beat locked fast the next few pieces while committing the process to memory. A few moments later Legosi grabbed for the table, only to find no more pieces laying on the top. He beheld his rifle and looked at the smirking wolf opposite of him.

"Thanks, Captain."

"No worries, Kiddo. You do that exercise a couple of times and you'll be able to build your gun from memory." Captain rose from his seat and wandered towards the other privates.

Legosi had to at least admit to himself that the comradery was nice, the union between him and his fellow Canine soldiers was life-giving and felt purposeful. But then he reminded himself that that was his instincts talking, his mind not fond of working for a dictator in the slightest. But perhaps that was another reason why he chose dogs. Even if one of them got wind of what truly was happening they couldn't leave, bound by their instincts.

Legosi wasn't even pure-blooded, and he could already see how the canine mind would react to this trap.

He grabbed his rifle, keeping the barrel pointed at the ceiling. He went to the lockers and placed his rifle into the rack beside his fresh laundry. He went back to the community room, sitting down beside the other privates playing cards, quietly observing Captain walk along the room talking and socializing like a benevolent leader.

"You want to join in, Legosi?" Barkley asked, Legosi scanning the cards for a moment.

"I'm fine. Thanks for asking."

Barkley tended back to the game while Legosi observed the room again.

He gazed at the clock, an advanced digital clock that encapsulated time, date, and temperature. It was a breezy summer day, in early June. Outside of the walls erected around him, there was a city that was staring into the void, sitting on the margin of perdition.

Legosi propped his leg up on the seating by the wall, leaning back while letting his mind wander just a bit. It was his way of relaxing when the world got just a little too much.

He was frightened by how easily he could be distracted by the order and imposed rules at his job. The mind of the dog clutched to the routine like moths and mosquitoes to light. He was an insect blinded by the blue dazzling lights, telling him all was fine. Here he was safe from the worry that Louis carried with him day in and day out, of the residual trauma of mother and that tremendous guilt.

Here he was safe. Here there were friendly faces, and here he was a good person. Someone that did as they were told, someone that was useful and wanted.

He needed to force himself to remember that his friends needed him just as much and that in fact all the dogs here were blinded by the same light, blinded by the lord of the city. The tyrannical lord, ready to pull the city down into the dark depths of depravity and then pull it out polished and cleaned. You don't have to worry about keeping a city in check when the inhabitants do your work for you.

Mind control was the right word. Yahya presented an image and the citizens swallowed it whole, no questions asked. They themselves were blinded by the blue light, marching towards the horse's ideal of a clean world. No spots of dirt, no imperfections.

Legosi returned to reality, the friendly talking turned to talk of concern as they poured out of the room. Legosi got up from his seat and followed obediently, curious as to what was happening.

They reached the television in a room over, people surrounding it like a statue in a temple. Legosi had no issue looking over most of them, seeing the screen telegraph something wildly different from its normal programming.

"Citizens of Edobutsu..." The figure on the screen was in full light, a featureless white wall behind him. This had been planned for a long time, Legosi knew. He was unsure anybody else did.

"Yahya has declared war on our kind while you sit by and let it happen. So, this is your only warning."

Legosi smelled fear, anger, and the acidic biting smell of stress. This was suffering, this was not normal. Although he challenged that the people in this room were not the ones suffering.

"Sooner than you might think, the roads will be blocked, and the places of safety you believe to know will become false sanctums. There will be no place safe from our wrath." The hybrid had a mad glint in his eye. And soon everyone recognized him to be Melon.

"Turn that off, turn that off!" Captain's voice was meager in comparison to the television. The revolution had just begun.

"Leave while you can. If you decide to fight for a tyrant, then you shall pay the same price as a tyrant."

The television flicked, the message repeating itself as Captain fought through the crowd, finally turning the TV off.

"All of you back to your barracks and await further instructions!" Captain's anger was a clever cover for fear. Although it failed to truly fool anybody, they looked at him with doubt and the fear intensified.

"GO!"

Legosi saw the blue light of order and routine flicker and blip out for a while. His brethren stood there, peeking behind the giant light bulb to see the shadow hand hold it. And naked and bare, it looked frail and barely holding on. It was an illusion, of course, the hand behind this being much stronger than this image, but it showed that that strength was meaningless if the foundation it was built upon was brittle and ready to crumble.

They returned to the barracks, Legosi sitting on his bed while the others looked around. The veterans talked normally among each other on one side of the room, the privates quietly losing their minds.

"You think he meant it?" One of them asked, Legosi lamenting their naivety. The Veterans turned around. An older of the bunch chuckling.

"War is a time-sensitive thing. That hybrid just started the clock."




Carol sat silently among the group of fellow researchers, all of which were herbivores. They were summoned to the state-of-the-art research center just outside the city, hidden in the thick greenery surrounding Edobutsu.

The fact that no carnivore was on the team was telling enough of Yahya's non-scientific and biased motivations. Carol debated leaving early but couldn't bring herself to move.

People's voices became quiet, and the door opened. Out walked Yahya beside a very clinical moose. The long, lanky man in equally long Doctor's apparel was called McMillan, and anyone that ever talked to the head researcher knew directly that he had no place in science. The moose was opinionated and completely and utterly abandoned by curiosity. Regarding the world, he thought he'd seen enough, and he wished to not change his views anymore. A perfect candidate for Yahya's brand of mind washing. Even though, in this case, it was just a suggestion.

"This facility will be used to house the new line of testing. Now that the clinical trials have been rolled back, the true work of the presidium will start." The monotone voice of McMillan was infuriating. His words were horrifying to more people than just Carol.

"This place will treat all ails of the hybrid mind, mental illnesses, behavioral issues, sicknesses, and other defects as they may arise." McMillan turned the page of the folder laying on the lectern at the front of the lecture room. "Mandated stay for hybrids will be first set to three months but can be prolonged based on the required intensity of the treatment."

Carol had heard enough. This place was no medical center. It was a farce for Yahya's twisted needs. Her hand cramped around her knee as she prepared herself to leave, building up the courage as the speech continued. She didn't pay it anymore mind, knowing that the same things were bound to crash and burn.

"Your involvement in this new era of medicine and treatment will be observed, and hard work will be rewarded."

Oh no.

Frozen in her seat she realized what they were saying.

"This project will be remembered as a cornerstone to the modern treatment of hybrids and mental illnesses."

The black horse standing beside McMillan, the very same state leader who probably wrote the speech the moose was reading out right now, wasn't trying to lie his way into this. He was blocking them from leaving.

Crafted carefully and with a detailed idea, the speech was dancing around, insinuating, reminding that whoever left the project would have their professional reputation shredded and burned.

Carol had to give it to the horse. He was honest. There were no backdoors. He stated outright, in code, of course, how he would end you if you disobeyed his order.

Carol sat there between other helpless researchers, realizing that she was stuck between professional ruin and aiding the construction of a horrible thing in the name of science. She mused that perhaps this was how the doctors in the mid-twentieth Century felt when they heard about the interesting new procedure called a trans-orbital lobotomy.

The speech ended after a grueling 20 minutes, Carol leaving while feeling like she had just signed a paper stating her an accessory to the committing of a crime.

She hung up her white lab coat and slipped back into her jacket. While returning to the routines of a normal world outside her professional hell, the faces of the hybrids she interviewed flew past her vision. And she found that all of them had one thing in common, this unabiding sadness that pulled a fine thread through all their stories. When she looked at them, she felt like society had failed, and that she was a bystander, helping the one who wished to destroy them cover exactly that fact up.

She left the hospital, driving back into the city. Her hand gripping the steering wheel, directing the car through the forest as her mind began to wander again. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to run away. If she did that now she would just shrug her shoulders and imitate her mother.

"Such is life," She said to herself and felt the strong urge to drive the car into the next ditch. The one person she never wanted to be was her mother. With her maroon cardigan, nose in the air, imposing her higher education upon me.

She steadied her hold on the steering wheel and stopped herself from thinking about the place of her birth. She had stopped calling it home the moment that she left that part of the country. But even then, this place is no home to me either... I'm just a migrating parasite.

It was mean but true. This place would become the fruitful nesting place for her studies, and for her hard work to finally blossom into something. And once Hybrids had been stripped of all their rights, number one being the one to exist, she would move on. She would forget this place and settle into the new normal of genetically pure people in her life. But only then it would be too late. Her emotional investment in lying to herself was too high to acknowledge the crimes she helped commit.

She drove the car to the side of the road and cupped her hands in front of her face. No perspective, no prospect, and no ideas on how to help this situation. One bad move and her position was gone, meaning that even if she tried her best to help she wouldn't have any ability to. She wiped at her eyes, her vision giving the world a blue filter for a while.

She grabbed her journal and flipped through the pages. Information in neat stacks, little timetables, and dates marked down. In retrospect, she didn't know what she was looking for, but whatever needed to be seen presented itself. Flipping the page she came upon a slip of paper on which an address was written.

"The Weindeer..."

When she continued her journey back into town she no longer cared about what she was doing. The idea of companionship in a time as stressful as this sounded like it would finally douse her mind in cool relief. The drive to the beast's complex was over in a breeze, and she parked her car on a road beside the building.

Only minutes later, she knocked on his door.

The door opened a few moments later to a very surprised but very appreciative hybrid.

"Come in..." He smiled at her, revealing the sharp teeth in the corners of his dog-like muzzle. She found it endearing.

"I'm sorry for not calling... I don't want to overwhelm you."

"It's fine," Yajuu said calmly, grabbing a bottle of juice to put on the table, two glasses beside it.

"I don't get visitors too often. Nonetheless, people like you." She had no idea if his words were an insult or a compliment. She went with the latter, realizing that perhaps years of isolation would make anyone rusty when it came to talking to others.

She hung her jacket around her chair and sat down. She looked at the apartment around her. Boxes were neatly stacked in every corner, one side of the room fully decked out with boxes, being a storage space of some kind, to someone at least. She hardly figured that Yajuu would have so many things laying around for no reason. His bed was well kept in the other corner of the room, the storage side and the living room side being divided neatly by the décor.

"Ran out of basement space?" Carol's jab was more friendly than feisty.

"Oh... those... I'm keeping them for a friend, no big deal I hope." He sat down, looking at the many boxes.

"A rich friend, I'll take it."

"Business oriented." Yajuu tensed up a bit at the mention though Carol didn't notice, too caught up in her own mind and anxiety.

"Anyway... are you alright? You look a bit disheveled," he spoke.

Carol fell silent upon hearing what Yajuu observed. She didn't realize until now that the reason she came here was that out of all the citizens she'd treated not one had seen past her facade. Not until Yajuu. He had peeled back her layers. He had embraced her and warmed her heart.

"To talk..." She remained silent for a moment, her hands balled to a fist in front of her chest, pressing against her heart.

"I have no one to talk to about this... I've put all this work into becoming a Doctor that I've neglected to make friends." She chuckled, the pain within apparent.

"Well, we got time. If you want me to, I can be your friend."

She looked up, and the Rein and Weindeer locked eyes for a moment.

"I'd love to be your friend Yajuu."

Conversations passed by as time began to fly. The same feeling of kinship that Yajuu had felt outside the clinic now spread to her as the afternoon soon began to set, and the clock ran its course. She lifted part of the boulders off her heart. Not all of it, not in one night, part by part. She felt lighter when they noticed how much time had passed that felt like half an hour.

"I enjoyed this a lot... Can I come back tomorrow?" Carol asked, standing in the doorway.

"Sure. It felt good to talk with a friend."

"I liked it too," Carol replied and approached the hybrid.

She enveloped him in her arms, reversing the roles to what happened last time. He melted into the hug and patted her on the back. They broke the hug and held eye contact for another moment.

"Until tomorrow Yajuu." Carol sheepishly said, closing the door and vanishing from his view with a smile.

Yajuu stood in the hallway, his heartbeat shooting blood through his veins at the speed of a bullet train. He saw her in his mind, her smell, her eyes so loving and accepting. The distance between them inching closer and closer until-

He stumbled backward as if his world had started shaking, grabbing for the oils. He opened the mint one and took long and deep breaths until he had renewed control of his senses.

He looked at the door and giggled. First adulthood crush... first time for everything.

Yajuu sat down on his bed and began a breathing exercise he had gotten from the internet. He calmed down and saw the clock turning on its axis. He remembered how long until his next guest would arrive and stood up, readying himself for the arrival of his best friend.

About twenty minutes later, Yajuu wore the only dark clothes he owned. Black pants, black sports shoes, a dark blue shirt, and a black jacket. He'd bought them reluctantly six months back. But when a childhood friend asked you to do something, you could never say no.

Two short knocks, one tapping of claws against whatever material his front door was made of. He looked at the clock and sighed. He took his sunglasses and put them on while walking to his door.

Melon wasn't one for long pleasantries, never wasting any time that needn't be wasted. A short hug between long-time friends and he walked in, Omnivora men following behind. In an expression of perfect synchronicity and fine-tuned efficiency, the men carried the boxes out of the hybrid's home into the service elevator, one for which Melon inexplicably had a key, in five batches.

Yajuu stood in his now much emptier apartment, his things having been placed to fill out the space where the boxes had been, safe for just one sitting next to his dinner table.

"What about the last one?" He asked, and Melon sternly looked at it.

"That one stays for now. I hope I haven't exhausted the favor yet." Melon looked at Yajuu who shook his head.

"No, of course not." He knew better than to ask. He knew vaguely of Melon's organization, and just as well that Melon wanted to spread the information out as little as possible. He didn't share with Yajuu not out of malice or mistrust but more so out of love. If Yajuu was involved then Yahya would have reason to torture him.

"Let's get going." Melon turned around, walking to the door.

Yajuu looked again at the single box, grabbed the keys in his pocket, and followed.

Melon and Yajuu were on the last van of the six parked in the parking spots lining the side of the apartment building. Like clockwork, the vans scattered along the road, seemingly unrelated, every single van a different shade than the last. Melon's rules were strict about any sort of identifiable feature. No uniforms, no same colored vehicles, no bandannas or other sorts of knick knack.

Even the symbol had at first been a problem to him, Zass arguing that they needed something of a calling card. A matter without a symbol was just terror.

Yajuu again stayed silent most times, on the occasion that he was present in the meetings. He had no affiliations with Omnivora besides knowing Melon for the better part of the last two decades. He knew that Melon wanted him by his side, his longest friend, but Yajuu was no fighter. If he ever so much as bared his teeth at anyone he would feel no better than his mother.

"You feeling ok?" Melon asked, sitting opposite the Weindeer in the back of the truck. One of the many perks of being public enemy number one was that everyone recognized your face. The drawback was that most citizens called the police when they realized why they recognized that Hybrid specifically. Hence the reason both sat in the back, the minimal street light throwing muddled shadows onto Yajuu's face.

"Under the circumstances, I'm fine."

"And in a perfect world, Juu?"

Amidst the depressing routine of his own life, the Weindeer had forgotten those hypotheticals. He remembered vividly the first time, back when they had first met.

"Are you ok? You fell pretty bad."

"Ow... I'm fine."

"...If you hadn't fallen but felt like this, would you be ok?"

"...No... i would be bruised."

"Scared."

Through the darkness, both saw with nocturnal eyes the other indignantly lament their positions. Yajuu didn't know every thought of Melon, the leopard part of the hybrid hiding his intentions well, but he knew that this sadness made his blood boil. The reaction that they just shared was one that Melon did for the sympathy of his feelings, not because he thought the same. That was the difference between the two. Yajuu was no fighter, and Melon was a warrior.

The short stint on city roads leads outside of town. Dirt pathways in between tightly packed forestry. The truck took another turn, and as Yajuu peeked past the driver's seat he saw in the distance the destination of their stint. A large pipe tunnel, constructed to allow access to the main pump system of the city's water treatment plant.

The water treatment plant was where it all started, Yajuu remembered that part clearly. Melon worked for a year in the plant, back when he had hopes about integration into the system, of living a life among the people as Yajuu did now. Management changed and sooner or later Melon was let go for false errors accounted to him.

Falsified information made by corporate because they realized that seeing a mixed species worker man the machines responsible for keeping the water supply clean wasn't such a good idea.

Melon was called up to them and handed the letter of termination. Now Melon, in the deep red of his rage, lashed out. Broke the execs arms and quite a few ribs. Ended up in a prison outside of town, from which point on Melon's continuous hate of the state started to build. Two years into his eight-year stay at the facility and he met Zass, a few months later the morning shift found a few dead guards and cracked open cells, making Melon and Zass violent offenders who had stepped over the line to Predation, the most heinous charge any Carnivore could ever be stuck with.

Yajuu never knew any of these things, living life as he usually did, sending letters to a mailbox in a run-down apartment block, collecting dust as no one read them. A year after their escape and the state had said that they most likely fled the country, Melon returned to Edobutsu with a small group of abandoned Hybrids that would eventually form the backbone of Omnivora.

Yajuu had never asked why he came back or why he knocked on his door all of a sudden and asked him for a long-forgotten favor, Yajuu granted it without thinking twice anyway, but Yajuu returned to the old letterbox. The place he had sent letters to in vain waiting years for a response that somehow still came. The only crime Yajuu had ever committed was breaking open that letter case to find it empty. He somehow knew that Melon had kept every single one, even if he would never ask and Melon would never tell. Perhaps the beauty of true friendship, perhaps the true vision of those inflicted with trauma gained after they grew used to the pain.

The water plant was the first place almost entirely from top to bottom to be infiltrated by Omnivora forces. Even the executive's assistant held a little tattoo of a sheep with wolf's teeth on her hand.

The van rumbled over the drain at the beginning of the tunnel as they entered the system, the ride turning much smoother now that they were driving on concrete.

They turned first at the middle of the tunnel, the fluorescent lights at the end of it shining brightly. The van slowed as they entered the next checkpoint, something that Melon was proud of. They were never subjected to one singular place, if Yahya knocked down any door, they had dozens more to go to.

They left the car, standing in the Storage Depot beside the main pipe junction one stop down to the right. The vans stood in order in the large car terminal, chalk outlines on the ground signaling where every vehicle should stand. Behind it, in the main part of the large room, stood endless crates and Boxes, all specifically marked for which object was within. Pipes, Pump parts, whatever the plant needed to keep the junction running.

Yajuu quietly followed Melon through the storage mania of the depot, ending at the end of the said depot. The Omnivora men silently carried the boxes down a different track, carrying them to the corner of the room where a crate was moved out of the way revealing a door.

"Everyone always talks about accountability, reflection, thinking about what you've done and the consequences of your actions. But when you go dig a little deeper you find that they simply built over what is no longer needed." Melon said while moving towards the doorway, Yajuu following wordlessly.

"They poured concrete over it, we had to break the wall and install the door here ourselves. But that's the advantage of the damned people in this state getting used to simply building over what they no longer need." They opened the door to no longer needed part of the depot. It looked much like the abandoned grocery store in the Black market district.

In the first corner of the room, the Omnivora men were placing the boxes that had a few hours early still been in Yajuu's apartment. Beside that were dinner tables, portable stove tops, and a couple of microwaves. Double beds in neat stacks, weapon lockers. Steel grate plates above them, acting as a second floor, light bulbs hanging from them.

"Why am I here?" Yajuu asked.

Melon turned around slowly.

"I'm no guerrilla fighter, no warrior like you. What help do you need me to do?" Yajuu shrugged, letting his arms hang, his face openly showing that he was at wit's end of what Melon wanted of him.

"I see you deteriorate in that apartment every time I return... sure, I'm always there to do things for the cause, but that doesn't mean I don't care for you. I return and see you that bit more hopeless. That bit more... desperate."

"And what does this bring me, huh? To see that I'm helping you poison the city's water supply?" Yajuu's face was full of exhausted exasperation. Melon looked on with sympathy.

"You might not be as strong as we are, but you are intelligent. And I thought that maybe you'd like to know that we're fighting for a cause." Melon placed a hand on his shoulder.

"We can change things, but I need all the help I can get. It would mean everything to me to see my best friend working beside me. And even if not on the front lines, then help those that seek refuge."

Yajuu let the conversation pause for a moment as he thought about those words. He sighed

"Killing the state won't help us." The hand on his shoulder grew tighter, sympathy disappearing from Melon's face.

"I gave them their warning." The hand left his shoulder, and Melon continued onward, no longer paying the Weindeer any mind. Yajuu again followed, feeling he ruined a moment before it even happened. He was about to open himself, and his dumb advice closed it again.

"Mel... You know I will help out any way I can." Yajuu quietly said, the Leozelle checking maps on the table.

"I know. Don't expect sympathy for the state from me."

Yajuu looked at the table, realizing that he was in a proto-war room, the city map full of tiny markers.

"I won't."