Author's Note: Hello lads and ladies

sorry for the delay

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

By the time they reached the black market, Bill had returned from the morning walk around the block, the usual end of his shift. But now the clinic was full of animals.

Tokugawa was on the phone, calling every part of the capital's criminal underbelly to life while Juno, Legosi, and Louis, as well as two reindeer that Bill didn't recognize, were conversing in the living room that had the lights turned out, Louis the only one without proper night vision.

Gouhin sat at the corner by the window, keeping watch of the clinic's backyard, even his beige work shirt seemingly becoming parts of the blacks and whites of his fur now.

"So the Plan is figuring out where Melon is and then pinning him down before he can do any more damage." Bill addressed the group.

"With an unknown number of bombs on an unknown timer." Louis sat at the edge of the room, identifying people simply by voice.

"How many bombs have been found and disarmed then?"

"Four. The others are still looking." Legosi replied.

"besides the state building, what kind of Targets would he have?"

"The hybrid clinic behind the Edo mountain range," Yajuu replied; the most well-hidden hybrid Bill had ever seen.

"You sure?" Legosi asked.

"There is no other place he'd go to first. That place was built to lock us in... of course, he's gonna knock it down." Yajuu's face was full of tragic and somber knowledge of what was to come.

"So what are we waiting for?"

Legosi pointed at the cougar standing by the window having a clear but silent conversation by the window. Bill watched for a moment and then looked at the side of the room, Gouhin sitting staring carefully at the outside world in the backlot of the clinic.

"How are you, doctor?"

"Great... just doing great." Gouhin grinned without humor.

"Never thought we'd come to this," Bill said as he looked outside, feeling the cold metal joint at his prosthetics wrist.

"Before becoming a doctor I used to be a cop. No use in trying to keep it a secret." Gouhin watched the outside world in melancholy that was almost impossible to see from the stoic black and white fur.

"So much time has passed since then I can hardly remember what I even became a cop for... I can only hope that I did it because I wanted to do the right thing, but knowing the person I was back then I think it was status. Just the next thing to do in terms of rising up... I was good at it, plenty good actually. But back then I had no idea what I was doing it for."

"Why did you open the clinic?" Bill looked upon his mentor, the seasoned veteran stoically reflecting upon a long-lived life.

"I went with a friend to the black market, helping him pick some meat for some celebration. His cub's sixteenth birthday if I can recall it. Some meat addicts rushed us while exiting the shop, he was fatally wounded and bled out in my arms." Gouhin stared outside, watching the first sunbeams crawl up the canvas over the horizon.

"Five diffused now." Legosi piped up, listening to the radio. The group looked dimly at him, except for Gouhin who continued to watch the awakening cityscape.

"Life sneaks up on you. You only see what you want to see until one day life is done waiting and bites you. It's perfectly impersonal, could've happened to anybody. But that day it happened to me... and after that I couldn't continue being a beat cop for a state that left its most struggling denizens to claw each other's throats out... The most dangerous beast is the state that is separate from its people." Gouhin scoffed after finishing.

"Things are so bad you got me monologuing." He smiled a little in a way that only someone who knew him as much as Bill had would be able to tell.

"It's good when you do it. You are a teacher with lessons worth learning."

"Don't you start brown-nosing, your honesty is one of the things I liked about you." Gouhin chuckled.

"I mean it," Bill replied cool, unwavering, and serious. Gouhin paused for a moment, holding his rifle by its middle, pointing straight up.

"I know... might be the one thing that concerns me most."

"How?" Bill cocked his eyebrow.

"I don't want to be responsible for the death of you kiddo."

Although Bill couldn't see his eyes he could feel the gaze lay heavily on him.

"What makes you think that you are responsible? We would fight even without you."

Gouhin chuckled, grabbing a cigarette that wasn't in his mouth, cursed himself a fool, and then chuckled some more.

"You should know by now, the mind is something that can't be tamed by logic alone... I am one of the adults here. No matter if you are the instigator or waging this war without me I will still feel responsible if anything happens to any of you..." Gouhin fell silent afterward, looking off into the sky which had finally broken into a new day.

"I called everyone that needed calling and now we'll be on our way to the state building." Tokugawa stepped into the room.

"Any reason for that?" Bill asked.

"Melon's one great nemesis is the state and Yahya is the state. But the bigger problem is that should Melon succeed in killing Yahya then he'll die a martyr."

"Melon isn't strong enough to kill Yahya," said Legosi.

"I'd agree if the eagle wasn't with him."

Legosi's eyes widened.

"The eagle..."

"Which eagle?" Juno asked.

"The guy that nearly kidnapped me," Carol answered. Juno answered with a face of shock.

"He's a veteran from the USA turned merc turned terrorist in the name of hybrid freedom. One of my associates had some info as he's employed him before."

"If he's a merc, why don't you offer bigger pay?" Gouhin took only a moment to look away from the window.

"Because the eagle has principles. He finishes a job first before switching sides. He doesn't look kindly on deserters."

"Then we have no time to waste." with Legosi's observation, the group didn't wait much longer and headed out into the early morning.

The sewer covering opened up right in the depths of the parking garage under the state building. From it emerged Melon, the top members of his strike force, and lastly Richard.

"Up is the only way to go."

There walked the riders of the apocalypse, towards the elevators of the mighty.

"The elevator, a modern Jacob's ladder."

"How so?" one of his men asked.

"In our modern state the sublime Beastars is god, so this elevator is the ascent up to his offices, his place of work. His heaven where he proclaims his mighty rule. And now we shall ascend into his heaven and dethrone the judgemental devil in black." Melon watched the lamp at the ceiling of the elevator car like he was looking up into the heavens themselves.

"Cracking now." His technician removed the button panel and started sifting through the wires beginning his own process of vocational magic.

"Why do you do it, Rich?" Melon looked at his first lieutenant. The eagle looked back with minimal reaction.

"I know why all of my men do it, they have to. But I don't know you." Melon looked on at the imposing eagle.

At first, he remained entirely quiet, resting within himself. Melon's eyes stayed on him, however, for the very first time, questioning the true loyalties of his most faithful servant. And after a few moments, he handed Melon a small medal. He weighed it in his hand and viewed the combat knife insignia on it.

"What did you get this for?" Melon looked at Richard who exhaled through his nose.

"Doesn't matter," Richard replied, the soldiers turning their heads to the eagle. It was the first time they had heard him speak.

"It's my calling." He said and the rest of them stared for a little while before Melon noticed the momentary pause in the hacking of the elevator car.

"We don't got time for gawking, go on." Melon's men started concentrating on their tasks but only with a great amount of reluctance did they take their eyes off of Richard.

"We're through." The technician said and shorted the circuitry. The lights blinked and the car rose, the doors remaining open. They watched as the innards of the elevator shaft moved past their vision and Melon watched intently the electric display showing the current level changing to the next higher level.

"So after this, when we're done... you're going to look for another job?"

Richard remained quiet. A truly diplomatic decision. Meanwhile Melon doubted his plans for the very first time.

He couldn't even remember when Richard showed up for the first time. Perhaps he was a merc that someone had hired, maybe his right-hand men had done so. But one day the eagle was just there, acting in this war like a death machine all on his own. He had put his full trust into a perfect stranger. A perfect stranger who had managed to beat Yahya of all animals without as much as a scratch or any showing of stress. His clothing was exactly as it had been before the mission.

"If violence is what you follow, why did you follow ours instead of theirs?" Melon asked his first lieutenant and his lieutenant looked back staring deeply into his eyes.

"Violence has no sides. Matters are either dealt with violently or not, wherever violence is, so am I." Richard answered, Melon pushed his emotions as far down as he could to hide the panic he felt underneath.

"You see no difference between us and them?" Melon and his men stared at the eagle. The eagle looked indifferent towards the door.

"The answer is luck."

"What?"

"You were lucky you gave me the first offer. I don't desert my employers." Richard replied and the conversation was over.

Melon looked at the eagle from the United States, his first lieutenant, and felt at once both the feeling of being cornered and that of fear. Besides going through with what had been planned, with what had been put into stone there was nothing else he could do. His life was now in fate's hands: If the eagle betrayed him or not, if today worked or not, if tomorrow all of hybrid kind would be prisoners or not, if the world deserved to burn or not.

If his mother was dead or not.

The door opened and the hybrids entered the black stone lobby in front of the devil in black's office. For the time being Richard still was on their side though Melon's mistrust and sudden worry for the future did not pass in the slightest.

They crashed open the doors, looking past the office at the other side of the giant floor-to-ceiling windows stood the devil in black who turned around to watch the invaders with a cool and heartless stare.

"Bombs? Really? You've played into my hand more than anything else."

He was wearing his sleek black suit, the look of a politician ready to give his winning speech. He looked healthy, revitalized, a younger stallion than he truly was.

"How did you know?" Melon shouted at him while his men became noticeably nervous, but Yahya remained cool.

"When they blow I'll have this city in my hands, and if you shoot me now I'll die a martyr. A symbol of why hybrids can never be trusted and why anyone who sires them is a danger to society. And in our stead, others will follow. Animals all around the globe will see the hybrids for the beasts they are." Yahya took a sip of his drink and placed it on the table. He pulled back his sleeve and watched the time on his wristwatch.

"Less than two hours and from this city's rubble, order will arise. You've been a pain in the ass, just like the feathered brute over there but soon that won't matter."

"On the ground now, before we cut you down right here." One of Melon's men shouted.

"No." Yahya looked back with a smile, his face pointed down so his eyes could better look at them.

"I am in absolute control," Yahya stated, taking a few steps forward.

"GET ON THE GROUND." The men screamed and yet still the horse strutted forward.

"No use for beasts in this world. Not letting myself be commanded by them."

Melon watched the devil in black and felt not a single spark of anything. He stared at him with an equal indifference that he viewed his father with. Yahya wasn't his enemy. The people that allowed him to power were his problem. So many symbols, so many hypotheticals. So many different factors and the only vital one was the populace.

Melon pulled the trigger once. The bullet grazed Yahya's hands, sabering a finger clean off, but as anticipated when the bullet made contact with center mass, all the horse did was recoil a step before beholding his bleeding hand.

"All politicians do is bluff. Just like you. Have fun with him Rich, I want to see the world burn and piss on it." Melon turned around and looked into the eyes of the naive little shit that wanted to help with his endless idealism.

Melon pulled the trigger again and this time held it down, had it not been for the damned cougar shutting the door before Melon could even react Legosi would've been no more. The shots hit the door at an angle, the bulletproof outer layer ricocheting the bullets into the window. The glass gained a few impact craters.

"There is a secondary stairwell behind the office block." Melon walked towards the side door holding his gun out at the door. He opened the side door and his men passed him by, the door moved an inch and he unloaded the rest of his magazine.

"Rich, throw him out the window." With those words Melon shut the door, ejected the empty magazine, and replaced it with a full one. Half a minute later they were descending stairs in a mad run.

Melon's mind was blank beside the dull frustration that he came to realize that this was just revenge. There was no great fire, no great revolution. Just a city full of animals that had decided to blind themselves.

Maybe the greatest act of patriotism is knowing when to destroy your country so it can be built anew.

He knew he was lying to himself but at this point, the emotional numbness had driven out everything besides the deep settled rage that all of this was the citizen's fault.

Legosi opened the door, firing his rifle at the empty side door, the bullets once again bouncing off. Only then did they hear the shout of Yahya and the sudden crash of glass.

The group threw open the doors. Richard was picking up Yahya anew who was doing his best to fight the giant eagle but it was pointless as he threw the horse into the window again, the impact crater growing in size and the window sounding more broken.

"Legosi! After Melon, go!" Tokugawa screamed and ran full force at the eagle. Rich grabbed for Tokugawa but simply grasped at the air, a fist suddenly crashing into his face.

He whirled Yahya around like a stuffed toy and flung the cougar off him with a meaty collision, afterward throwing Yahya full force against the window again, the crater reaching a worrying size.

He saw the tiger's fist coming before it could land, and ducked, throwing his own fist to the stomach of the young feline. Surprisingly, like so many of the younglings of this damned little clan he had poked into, the tiger only staggered for but a moment, the muscles of his midsection having absorbed the hit. Next, he felt the metal fist of the prosthetic clash against his scalp and he grabbed for the tiger's throat and threw him at Tokugawa who had righted himself and caught him, throwing him back a few steps.

Richard felt the impact of shots tear through his jacket, hitting his bulletproof vest. He grabbed for Yahya and threw him at the panda.

The panda dropped his weapon and caught the bleeding and weakened politician, dropping him to the ground. Rich approached with a furious step and grabbed for the panda's throat. The black and white patterns washed away and underneath was just a bear. Same as the bear that had fucked with him oh so long ago.

Arms thrust themselves around his throat pulling tight. Rich recalled diving exercises in the military. He held on strongly to the panda and threw him at the window. The cougar was running in the way but missed him by an inch. The panda crashed into the glass and it did not hold. The pane gave out and the panda flew out of the window, an expression of horror on his stoic face.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO! You stupid motherfucker!" The tiger screamed into his ear.

Richard grabbed for the tiger and threw him to the window like the damned panda. But when he reached for the tiger on his back the arms around his throat grabbed his arm instead.

"TOKUGAWA, BREAK HIS ARM!"

Only a second of hang time, a moment to realize what had just been said when the cougar came and kicked his elbow with full force into the opposite direction of its natural movement. Pain exploded through his arm as the bones of his arm disconnected, leaving it a useless mace he could fling around if he so wished to conduct even more pain onto himself.

He stared out the window for a moment and knew with a quick realization that just so came that very moment that he could no longer fly. His body was too big, his muscles too dense for a single arm to lift him off the ground.

He threw his arm around with full force, the tiger letting go but the pain slowed him down for a moment afterwards. It was unbearable. He turned for the door, his healthy arm grabbing his bent out-of-shape arm in agony. He hobbled more so than walked, a fraction of the speed to keep any tremor from traveling up his arm. He had been shot before, he was well adjusted to what pain would be like but still, no one could fight the body's defense mechanism of slowing down as soon as it detected major damage.

His eyes befell the horse on the ground. A politician merely now a broken husk lying on the floor of his office. An office so high in the sky.

What he told Melon wasn't exactly a lie but there was something to it that he left out. A personal factor that aided the luck the hybrid revolutionizer had. Richard had worked for plenty of politicians before. And he found every last one of them weak failures that sent good competent soldiers right to their deaths because they had to have everything going exactly the way they had planned for it to go. Even if that involved guaranteed deaths. Richard held the firm belief that there was no honor in animals calling the shots that had no competence to deal with the thing they were controlling.

Politicians didn't make good generals or guerilla fighters. Yet they stole that valor with every speech or address to the nation. They pretended to be what Richard was. An unrelenting, unyielding, neverending instrument of absolute immolation.

He grabbed with his healthy arm onto the collar of the damned politician but a strong grip on his wrist stopped him from flinging Yahya out of the window. The next thing he felt was the same excruciating pain in his other arm and he landed on his knees as he sacked forward.

He looked in front of him and beheld the horribly broken and dislocated arms. He leaned on one leg as he got up but then fell forward with the next kick. He turned on his back and looked back at two hatred-filled people. People whose friend he had just killed. And as with many of those small situations that occurred on the battlefield, the small instances of life and death, Richard knew what was about to happen the moment he laid eyes on them.

He lifted the broken nun-chucks that used to be his arms and tried to stave off their grips. The pain slowed him down, just enough for them to grab onto his side and slide him forward. The next sensation he felt in his world of pain was the pull of gravity, glass shards slicing through his back and wind blowing through his feathers where the office floor had just been.

Richard's expression remained entirely the same. Every soldier knew the day would come when they had to lay their weapons down. The day they had fought their fight to end. Richard just never knew that his last fight would end in a freefall.

Richard never was much for poetry, never much for big words. Ever since leaving the military, he had spoken only a handful of sentences. The explanation to Melon and his men in the elevator was about half of what he said in the last six years. Like his sparse talking there was hardly a thought in his mind when he hit the ground and died immediately. The only and last thought was that he regretted not lasting a few minutes longer to see the first part of the skyline to turn into fire and ash.

Bill lay on the floor of the office mimicking the pose of prayer. However, the emotion wasn't religious awakening but deep deep agony. How could these things always happen to him? The voice of Gouhin echoed in his mind.

The very point is that this doesn't just happen to us. It hurts us all the same but we can take it.

"I know how you feel-"

"SHUT UP!" Bill screamed, hammering his fist into the floor as he was trying to shove the tears back to from where they came. He didn't have the time to wallow in pity as he wanted to.

They had to push on.

When Bill pushed himself off the floor a noise made both of them look up.

On the other side, a building had erupted into a flaming pillar of desecrated rubble.

"I'm sorry Bill but we need to go," Tokugawa said silently.

Although the agony did not subside he knew that Tokugawa was right. A lot more doctors, teachers, and fathers were going to die.

Shots zoomed past Legosi up the stairway an inch past his head. He threw himself against the wall and made himself flat. They were half a stairway ahead of them and besides Tokugawa, Bill, and Gouhin, the group was intact.

"Don't do this Melon. Please." Yajuu shouted down.

"Fuck you, you traitorous bastard!"Melon screamed back.

They continued their little game of running down the stairs bit by bit with Melon and his group shooting up at them at every few steps taken.

"You can't punish them for things they don't know!" Legosi shouted down.

"They know enough, that was all my work did. And they treated us like parasites... death is what they deserve."

"You're ruining the lives of all hybrids to come!" Yajuu shouted down and the running slowed down a little, his men cursing amongst themselves. Melon came to a stop for a moment.

"What do you know? What do you cowardly little asshole know? You think if I give up, all of this is going to get better? Nothing will change, they will hate us for being different and all hybrid kind will have to hide away just like you do. Because hiding is so much easier than facing the threat head-on." Melon chuckled a moment later. The others were aware now, he was at a wits end.

"You are part of the problem. You and the whole group you're with. Our friendship just clouded my judgment for too long."

At this point Yajuu approached the baluster, grabbed onto them, and looked down at Melon, holding eye contact as his men readied their weapons.

"DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? DO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT?"

Yajuu looked into the eyes of his longest-standing friend, the Lantellope that he had been friends with since he turned about seven. An animal that Yajuu knew had been screwed and cheated out of normal life so many times that his fanatical hatred of the state was the most normal thing to result from this.

"You're just a coward. I want to enjoy the sun on my skin before this damned thing is over."

"Then go outside. Before you committed those crimes you could've gone outside and enjoyed the sun like everyone else." Yajuu replied. And they were still yet again. The solemn suffering of one to the other interconnected.

Then a smile devoid of humor grew on the Lantellopes face. A dry chuckle came next and the smiling face looked upwards at the high and mighty Weindeer.

"For about five minutes before someone calls the police because a suspicious-looking fellow was in their family's way to the market... They shut the door on us long before we were even around, we do not fit into their world. They made it perfectly clear that we aren't allowed to co-exist..." He chuckled some more.

"My entire life all the same. So who's surprised that... the feelings mutual?"

"You can't-" Yajuu tried.

"No." Melon broke him off.

"This is over. You can keep hiding if you want to but I can't and nothing you say will change that. Now because you're my friend I'll give you three seconds before my men shoot you and then we're done."

They locked eyes and Yajuu understood that this was over. Childhood friendships played themselves out, with one friend looking back at a sinking ship and being unable to save another from drowning. Melon looked back up at the damned idealist and then one of his men opened fire, the bluish weindeer stepping back from the edge.

Suddenly there were shots from the side, however, they were quieter than normal. He looked to the right and saw one of his men look at a dart stuck in his calf. And past his worker, he saw that damned wolf peeking around the corner, holding the tranq gun level at him. Melon fired his gun and felt the prick of the tranq on his midsection.

"You'll need more than that, you little shit."

He unloaded the rest of his magazine at the wolf who had ducked out of the way behind the solid concrete baluster.

"You're gonna need more than a single tranq to knock us out! A perk of biology you son of a bitch." Melon's men gave covering fire as they descended the stairs swiftly.

"Please just-"

"TALKINGS OVER COWARD." And the conversation was over. Another ten minutes of covering fire and they reached the bottom of the stairs. the door to the parking garage laying open wide.

"Take one of the armored cars," Melon said to one of his men, continuing the cover fire. By the end of the next 30 seconds, they were in the car and starting to drive.

"Where to, Boss?" Bosco asked from the driver's seat, already flooring the pedals to make as much distance to the door as possible.

Melon looked blankly ahead. Life had lost so much meaning, so much vigor. In somber clarity, Melon figured that he wanted to die.

"Upper-class district. Let's kill the rich ones first."