This is Chapter 3 to a commissioned novel. It is set in my Caretaker Universe, and is universe canon. The story follows Rooky, a young male tanuki (basically a raccoon with some panda thrown in there :P), who has made some extrordinarily bad life choices, but eventually goes off his better judgment and makes a very poor choice indeed... One that sucks him into the clutches of a certain secret society.

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Story Text: (FA formatting is crap. Download to read it the way it was meant to be read.)
Against the Grain: Chapter 3
You don’t need it, you don’t want it. So get rid of the damn thing and be done with it.
The voice repeated itself over and over again in Rooky’s mind, only a sliver of his consciousness remaining as his limp body was manipulated by many hands, dragged around, carried, once he was put on a trolley, then doused in water for what felt like an eternity and given a shot in the back of the neck that stung, then itched intolerably, but couldn’t move his arms to scratch at it. All this passed in the milky haze of drug induced sleep, the tanuki’s mind swimming in tranquilizer, but his tolerance for most sorts of drug keeping him from fully passing out. His perception of time distorted hours into minutes, like a broken montage in a bad B-movie. The last few sensations made the least sense to his muddy, senseless brain, and that’s when the voices started. It was when he was dressed, or, at least, that’s what he thought was happening in retrospect, something soft and snug being pulled over his arms, legs and torso, then zipped up the back. It felt simultaneously comfortable in the extreme, and brought back the memory of things best left forgotten.
“N-nnnnghh…” Rooky groaned, some shreds of his mind returning to consciousness, horribly headachey from the overwhelming dose of tranquilizer, which was aggravated by the light in his face. Natural light from the sun, not synthetic, which flooded through the windows like water through a broken dam. He squirmed, trying to bring his hands up to cover his face, but found that he could barely move at all, he was stuck, wrapped around some sort of soft, warm furry object, but with wrappings around the rest of him so tight that he could barely squirm, let alone struggle, and only his head was free, but even that wasn’t fully emancipated from the bundle of fabric he had been put into. It was uncomfortably hot inside, though the chill, air-conditioned breeze on his face made it bearable. Still not conscious enough to awake fully and realize his entrapment, Rooky rocked back and forth until he could roll the whole bundle over onto its side, getting the bright light out of his face and eliciting a giant yawn from him, though his muzzle wouldn’t properly open or close, like there was something in his mouth keeping him from clamping his jaws shut, and something strapped around it to prevent him from properly opening it, too. His fingers were the same, wrapped in their own layer of firm, soft leather or something similar, with silk linings on the inside. The tanuki was vaguely aware that his teeth and claws felt odd, too, but was too far gone at this point to pay it much mind.
Regardless of all that, there was a strange comfort in how he was bound, something familiar and inexplicable that, as much as he tried, he couldn’t place. The firm, cold, repeating voice from his heard earlier, echoing that one, soulless phrase, You don’t need it, you don’t want it. So get rid of the damn thing and be done with, repeated one last time, all the more commandingly, then went silent, allowing Rooky to settle more comfortably in his swaddle, and, perfectly content, cozy up for a nap, hoping that, when he did wake up, the world would make sense again.
A few hours passed without notice, Rooky laying still and cozy in his bundle, hugging the pillow or plush or whatever it was that was in the wrapping with him, until, rather unhappily for the recently kidnapped tanuki, he felt his bladder cramp, hours of confinement and not having relieved himself for nearly twenty four hours having coagulated to break his falsetto sense of comfort and safety, and leave him squirming, head slowly clearing of mud and allowing clear thought to process again, and experience all the cramped, confined discomfort of his situation in addition to having not had a hit of his present addiction in two days, left Rooky as one royally pissed off tanuki.
As the episode in the cop car had shown, Rooky was something of an expert at breaking out of things intended to confine him, but that was handcuffs, this was something entirely different. Opening his eyes, the fully fluffed up and snarling car theif saw that he was, indeed, muzzled. The shiny plastic straps were colorful, alternating red and blue, and were securely set around his snout and head in a harness sort of fashion. He kicked and squirmed, but saw that the thick linen wrappings had some sort of belt contusion to keep it from unraveling, and he couldn’t even open his hands. When, in desperation, Rooky tried to clamp down his jaws and claw at the insides of his mittens, but they wouldn’t bite home into the leather and tear.
If Rooky had been pissed before, now he was furious, and, ignoring the plastic bite bulb in his mouth, he started thrashing uncontrollably, kicking, growling, pushing with his arms and legs, but he only managed to slightly stretch out the fabric, giving him some room to move. It wasn’t nearly enough for him to squirm out, but it was an improvement. But the muscle relaxants were still in his system, and they’d wear off soon enough unless someone came and re-administered them to him, which Rooky was counting on them not doing. By the sun, it was still early morning and he could probably smash the window and run for it if he could only get out of this cage thing…
Six foot bars in the same colorful plastic as Rooky had seen on his muzzle and the harness around the swaddle stood over him, but the cage had no roof, meaning he could climb out of it easily enough, even if the thick top bar would be nearly impossible to grip. He’d have to get the mittens off first, but it was doable. Escape plans thundered through the badly anxious tanuki’s mind as he squirmed, looking around the room for the first time, beyond the bars, and hoping to see some weakness he could exploit.
Is this… Rooky thought, putting a word to the cage-thing he’d been shoved into, a… crib? Am I in a giant goddamn crib?! If he wasn’t muzzled, his black and white furred muzzle would be hanging open in astonishment.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
The tanuki went still for the first time after five minutes of thrashing, looking confusedly around the room with equal parts astonishment and fear. It wasn’t just a crib in an empty room, it was a crib in an honest to god nursery. He was looking up at a mobile with stars and planets hanging above his head and twirling in comforting circles. The walls had painted-on murals of everything from diapered cubs to blocks and toys. Rooky spotted three large stacks of diapers next to a wall counter that could only be for one thing, and the room’s dresser, the only thing remotely adult about it, was covered in childish blue pokadots.
It was, needless to say, nothing like what Rooky had expected after being kidnapped by the Illuminati. Dingy black dungeons with rats scurrying across the floor? He could have taken that. Medical steel and concrete underground bunkers with brainwashing holo-decks? Weird, but doable. But a fucking nursery? Rooky rubbed at his body, having squirmed around the giant pillow that took up the extra space in his bundle and managed to touch himself, but found that he was covered from the head down in what felt like layers of different padded fabric. Everything felt oversensitive and limp as a wet noodle, still coming down off powerful tranquilizers as he was and still badly wanting for a few hits of white powder. As the painkillers in the dart wore off, Rooky moaned for all to hear past his pacifier gag, the headache and muscle pain associated with cocaine withdrawal hitting him full force in the face.
Rooky promptly went from humiliated and angry to absolutely miserable, the lack of even rudimentary alcohol, or a small hit of coke to stem the discomfort left him a cold, shivering mess. He wished he could retreat back into that comfortable haze that he’d been in up until his bladder had started aching, curse it the damn thing, but that option still eluded him. Clamping down on the pain to keep it from making him do something stupid, Rooky focused on keeping his bladder under control, since that was the least painful of his problems at present. It wasn’t easy, what with the muscle relaxants fighting him every step of the way, but Rooky willed himself past it, knowing that things could always get worse, and having to sit in a puddle of his own urine would definitely fall within the bounds of what could be considered worse.
He fought with all his strength, panting and moaning and squirming, but, alas, it was for naught, and Rooky eventually felt his bladder fail him, but the expected smell of fresh urine and warm, running sensation down his legs wasn’t present. Instead, he just felt a squishy, bulky mess between his legs where the plush, full body garment was at its most heavily padded, and it didn’t penetrate any further into the clothing or wrappings than that. Confused, Rooky pushed at his crotch with his mitted hands, hoping to figure out what mystery had kept him from having to sit in a puddle of his own piddle for however long it took for someone to come and take charge of him, but it was the familiar crinkle of plastic underneath the sleeper that gave him his last clue.
Oh you have got to be kidding me… Was the gist of what went through Rooky’s head in the next few seconds, accented with considerably more foul language, of course, and he shuddered involontarily, wondering what the honest hell he had gotten himself into when he agreed to help that stupid, back stabbing mouse steal from these people. The women with the track suits and jeans, and their uniform chrome cars, gated neighborhoods and corrupt cops that helped them kidnap people for no apparent reason. Now with the addition of a soggy diaper to his list of troubles, Rooky felt… oddly emotional for him. He’d been in jail before, whether for drug possession, grand theft auto, assault once or twice, it really didn’t matter. The idea was the same. You’re thrown in a cell, and you’re not allowed to leave until the door opened. Rooky had found all sorts of ways to mess with the cops in jail, like tightening the valves on the showers so that they had to call a maintenance team to come and fix them, which he did daily for the duration of his stay, since they couldn’t deny him privacy or hygiene legally.
The difference here was that, unlike jail or prison, these people worked outside of the law, Rooky was almost certain of it, and that made them many times more dangerous. Cops normally wouldn’t risk their career to beat up a perpetrator that got the better of them, like Rooky loved to do, but these people, whoever they were, the manner in which they’d tried twice to kidnap him showed that they gave no fucks whatsoever what the law said, and the presence of at least some police officers in their number told Rooky that they had good reason not to. If it came down to a cop’s word against a many times convicted criminal, the jury would believe the person who wasn’t in an orange jumpsuit every single time.
The voice of his mentor rang in the back of Rooky’s head, “Don’t complain, Rooky. You’ve found yourself a problem, so fix it.” Tom, his infallible father-figure, had said to him many, many times during their four years together.
Inwardly, Rooky pouted at the command. He’d always hated being told what to do, like he wasn’t capable of living on his own, but he respected Tom in a way that just wasn’t true for practically everybody else. The man had very nearly killed him in a part of town where it was lawless enough to warrant shooting a trespasser, but he hadn’t. Tom had taught Rooky to step outside of the situation, look at things objectively, and take the best of many routs. The tanuki had seriously backslid in the recent years, granted, but, without a commanding presence to keep him in check, it was all to easy to fall back into his older mode of thinking, and the wild abandon that came with it. Clearly, that had come around to bite him in the tail, and no mistake.
Gritting his teeth, Rooky did whatever he could to keep from thinking about the soaked diaper between his legs. His predicament was bizarre enough without that added bit of humiliation to push him over the edge, but, regardless, he hunkered down, taking the long view on things. Sooner or later, someone was going to come in and do something to him. He hadn’t the slightest clue who or what, and, when he tried to distinguish scents from one-another to get some barrings, he ran into a stark wall of infantile odors. There was talcum powder, diaper cream, air freshener, and several females of various species. His normal musk of grease and smoke had been totally stripped from him, and that made Rooky feel all the more degraded. Being filthy was a choice, and one he made with the full knowledge of what people thought of him. He was good at that, predicting people’s reactions, and it made him a surprisingly good manipulator of events. He liked being in control of things, however indirectly, so the idea of being trapped, with no escape, a prisoner of… whatever the hell this was, filled him with mingled terror and the rare opportunity to mess with things from the inside.
No. No. Don’t panic, that’s what they want, Rooky told himself inwardly, and took a few deep breaths, then waited for the inevitable change in his situation.
It was still early morning when Rooky’s ears perked, despite the wrappings he could hear footsteps from outside of the door. Light, but firm, then the nearly silent swinging of a door open behind him. Rooky’s crib faced a wall, and he had unwisely rolled over to get away from the flooding sunlight, not realizing that he wouldn’t have the strength to roll back over again once he’d adjusted. He tried to remain silent, hoping that, if whoever this person was didn’t realize he was awake, she might, however unlikely, unbundle him and give the tanuki the jump on her. The footsteps got closer, and Rooky did his best to relax, hearing the left side bars of his crib side down, and, feeling a hand on his swaddled left side, gentle but with an air of experienced command, heard her voice for the first time.
“I know you’re awake, my little trickster,” came a soft, yet strong maternal voice, distinctly canine, and Rooky wondered how she knew he was awake, whoever she was. “My name’s Riley, little one,” she said, chuckling softly and rolling Rooky over onto his back again, letting him see the woman for the first time.
Unable to speak, Rooky once again cursed his bad judgment, seeing that, indeed, his captor was wearing one of those plain, gray sweater and jeans uniforms, confirming that, indeed, some seriously next level crap was going on with these people. The woman, or, rather Riley, as she had introduced herself, was a new world coyote with a well groomed, if naturally mottled red and brown coat and a smug, playful grin that Rooky recognized all too well.
“Now, are you going to be a good boy while I feed you your first bottle, Theodore?” If it hadn’t been strapped into his mouth with a muzzle, Rooky would have gaped with shock to the point that his pacifier comedically fell out and rolled onto the bed. Nobody, nobody, knew him by his birth name. Off the record and lacking an official birth certificate as Rooky was most of the time, as much as he could manage, the original name he’d gotten from his parents was, as far as he was concerned, only known by Rooky, his parents, and one other person in the world. And, unfortunately for the tanuki, that person had since passed. He didn’t know how to respond to that, and, for the first time in a very long time, Rooky didn’t have any witty retort. Even when she continued with, “But I know you prefer to be called Rooky, so I think I’ll use that. As long as you behave, that is.”
Whatever else she had said went entirely over Rooky’s head. She knew his birth name, and he hadn’t the slightest idea how. Could these people secretly read minds or something? No. Obviously not, you dote. She probably dug it up somewhere in the police records. Rooky had been arrested under his original name once upon a time, and cataloged as such, but that was while he was still legally a minor and that record was thrown out once he turned 18, wasn’t it? In any case, that knowledge cast these gray-sweater people in a very new light as the sort that does their work very thoroughly, and might even have cast a net that even someone as slimy Rooky could be couldn’t slip through.
The coyote pressed down on Rooky’s chest, pinning his bundle firmly to the mattress as she undid some of the straps of his muzzle. She didn’t remove it entirely, but only took off the pacifier and shield that was attached to the front, keeping it firmly stuck inside of his maw. He tried to spit it out as soon as the leather strap keeping it in was removed, by Riley held it there, letting Rooky know that the pacifier came out on her terms, not his, then slowly removed the bulb. He could speak through a muzzle easily enough, if uncomfortably, and he immediately growled as soon as he could do so without looking and sounding like a fussy cub.
“You kidnapped me,” Rooky said, stating the obvious with a slur past his muzzle, and wanting nothing more than to resist in some way, but finding no obvious avenue in his current state. He didn’t want to antagonize her, at least not yet. There would be plenty of time to cause problems once he got out of this swaddle, which he surely wouldn’t if he was too fussy right now, but that didn’t mean he was going to bend to her every whim.
Riley’s reaction was to smile consolingly, and hold up a blue tinted, plastic nursing bottle filled to the brim with milk. Rooky bared his teeth again, shutting his eyes and feeling his face flush with color. This was ridiculous. “Open up for your baba, Rooky,” Riley said, teasingly ignoiring the tanuki’s question in favor of pressing her control over him, and, numb as his lips and teeth were after so many hours sucking on that pacifier, he couldn’t do much to resist as she forced the nipple past his lips, and squeezed it to send a small jet of milk into Rooky’s mouth. He wanted to spit it out, but found it very difficult to do while muzzled, and, regardless of the situation, he was extremely hungry… Rooky hadn’t eaten since dinner of two days past, and even that had just been a box of bar nachos and some chicken wings to wash down with a beer during a pool game. He wasn’t the cooking sort of person, why make your own food when you could well afford to pay someone else to, and it tasted better besides? Life was too short to spend with menial tasks like that, even if Tom had thought very differently.
“Nnnnghhh…” Rooky moaned past the nursing bulb, wanting desperately to retort, make some sly remark about this coyote’s mother, but she had him in a very awkward position. He was a rogue, not a warrior. His defense lied in evasions and tricks, deceptions, that sort of thing, and, in a position where he had no escape whatsoever, and his stomach was loudly proclaiming to him how wanting it was for sustenance, Rooky was helpless to ignore the milk for long, even if it meant stooping to infant levels of dependence to get. Unhappy at having the better got of him, the tanuki blushed and started to suckle, inwardly taking account of the various drugs that had been laced into the milk, despite its rich, sweet taste. Melatonin, more muscle relaxants, a sensory booster, maybe an upper of some kind…
Rooky’s experimentation with drugs was such that he could pick out most things by the taste and immediate effects, which, with the crowd he spent his time with, was important. It wasn’t uncommon in back-alley bars for the bartender to put something special in your drink, hoping that you’d throw more money at them if you weren’t entirely in your right head, and those skills came immediately useful here in that, while Rooky couldn’t avoid this meal, he stowed that knowledge away for future use.
Despite his strong resistance to most sorts of drugs, his kidnapper had clearly done her research and modified the dosage to compensate. Soon, Rooky’s limbs felt loose and limp again, like they had when he’d been jabbed with that needle by the back stabbing mouse, and, no sooner had Riley finished feeding him the milk, and made sure it had all gone into his stomach and not out the sides of his mouth, than did she start unbuckling the harness on his swaddle and begin unraveling him.
Between the cramped, long confinement and the drugs he’d just been plied quite heavily with, Rooky was still in no shape to actively fight or resist as the wrappings came away, and he could finally stretch out his stiff, noodley limbs, which groaned and complained with every movement. Rooky saw that, under the swaddle, he was dressed in a full-body sleeper suit of some kind, the sort that people put their toddlers in for sleepovers and such. This one was ultramarine blue with white stripes, and had cartoonish planets and stars speckled all over it. Both his hands and his feet were encased in an additional layer of confinement, an external leather cuff attached to a ball that kept him from using his hands as anything more than fists, if that. They even had a degrading paw print on the palms and soles, leaving do doubts that Rooky’s dignity was nowhere on their lists of concerns.
Now more or less free, he could see that the fluffy thing he’d been wrapped around was a long, furry body pillow, and that, now that he could move his legs, the diaper he’d used was absurdly thick, preventing him from bringing his knees more than a forearm’s width apart. It had gone cold and clammy, too, uncomfortably so for Rooky, who was by no means used to the idea of being stuck in diapers, let alone using them. But he had his frustration under control for the moment, and didn’t lash out. Yet.
“Aww, cute little tyke,” Riley cooed, reaching over and scratching Rooky’s belly. Unable to fight yet, he hissed at the baby talking and pouted with his face, wanting no more to be treated like an infant than he wanted to be dead. He was a professional criminal, for the love of hell, he deserved more respect than this, whatever this was supposed to be. “Come on, I think someone had an accident,” the coyote continued, reaching over and gently squishing Rooky’s diaper with a delicate paw, but, all the same, a constant and undeniable reminder of what he had given in to an hour earlier.
“Stooooop,” Rooky whined, slurring childishly and trying to wriggle away from her, but only managed a few inches of backward movement in his disheveled state, even using all four of his limbs for what little strength they possessed.
“Yep, you’re a soggy butt,” Riley said with a smile, reaching out with her right hand and taking Rooky’s left, which she then used to help the very unwilling tanuki up out of the crib and onto his feet, his legs barely sufficient to carry his weight right now, strung out on muscle relaxants and god knows what else right now. He didn’t know if he’d be able to carry his own weight right now, so Rooky relied heavily on his oddly optimistic and playful kidnapper as she led him across the room to the laminated fake wooden counter top on the far side of the room. Easy wipe tiles covered half of the nursery, along with plush carpet on the other side. Rooky also spied with the knowing eye of a thief that the large windows that faced out to the east, judging by the rising sun, and out onto a well trimmed back yard with short wooden fences, were reinforced with thin metal wires, the kind designed to keep the glass from shattering if struck, or to prevent a fire from spreading through a broken portal like that.
In terms of real effects, it told Rooky that he was in no way in the captivity of armatures. These people knew how to contain people, whoever they were, and the tanuki had seen these gated neighborhoods before, which he presumed he was in judging by the pristine nature of landscaping. It was urban, certainly, and he hadn’t been out long enough for them to do all this and drive him to another city. The suburbs were privately owned, and had a twenty foot hedgerow and brick wall surrounding them, and the gates had round the clock doormen to keep riffraff like Rooky out, or, now that he’d been taken, in.
“That’s a good cub. See? Walking’s not so hard,” Riley teased, eventually abandoning the hand-holding when Rooky showed that he’d topple over if not supported, and actually had the gall to put her hands under his arms and let him toddle along like a small child. He blushed and cursed inwardly, his pride taking repeated kicks between the legs with every additional moment he spent in this woman’s care. Eventually, with much coercion and squirming from the reluctant pup, Rooky’s badly weakened muscles were allowed a much needed break as he was sat down on the changing table and strapped down with a belt around the waist. There were other restraints, but Riley didn’t use them. Rooky assumed she wanted him to try and kick or hit her, and give her just cause to further restrain him. He had no idea why she wanted that, but that’s what his intuition told him, so he threw her a curve ball and didn’t pay any mind to what she was doing, instead focusing on taking in the lay of the room from this new vantage point, and picking out things that he could take advantage of once he had a bit more freedom.
Riley had a lithe build, not particularly muscular or powerful, but she broadcasted the sort of trained emotional control and dominance that’s typical in professions where assertion is a necessity. Rooky wasn’t exactly a jock, either, but he felt like he could probably take her in a fight, presuming she didn’t have any martial arts training or something similar. He’d been in his fair share of bar brawls and drunken competitions, where everyone involved has more testosterone than sense, and Rooky was under no obligation to play fair, either. Just the way he liked it.
The room itself was big for a bedroom, maybe the size of the average living room, and very spacious. A square of five foot bars enclosed about a quarter of the room behind his crib in a sort of play-pen style area, and they looked to be the same sort as the ones on his crib, and built directly into the walls and floor, but he’d have to check and make sure. The door was a sturdy construction with hidden hinges and deceptive, painted murals all over it. In reality, Rooky guessed it would be at least the thickness of a fire door. He could probably take an axe to it, or any other wall of the room for that matter, and not break it open. He didn’t see a lock on the inside, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get out, at least unless they didn’t kick it old school and have a locking brace on the back, which he doubted. Everything about this room screamed, You’re helpless now. Deal with it, and, while it might be a bit harder than messing with the jail guards and cops by dropping smuggled cocaine in the dinner stew, Rooky was confident he’d be able to get the better of these people, eventually.
While he took all this in, Rooky felt Riley doing some delicate work down around his crotch. There was a small hidden lock keeping an internal fold of the thick fabric, which he could tell was silk on the inside, cotton on the outside, and something thick and durable sandwiched between them, then pulled down a flap around his waist and crotch that revealed his diaper, an extra thick sleeping pamper with the same childish stars and planets prints that were on his sleeper, as well. Riley looked it over, inquisitive, and gave his crotch another squish as though that wasn’t weird at all, and brought Rooky back into the present.
“Hmm, I think this pamper of yours can last through another few wettings, cutie,” Riley said, as though that was as obvious as the color of the sky on a clear day. Rooky bit back another growl. He was pretty tough when it came to enduring pain, but this was a sort of torture that he had no defense against. Emotional, psychological torture, seemingly tailored just for him, being left helpless and having his much treasured independence stripped instantly away from him, leaving Rooky naked and exposed to the world like an infant child, left out in the cold, and the stark contrast was leaving him like he’d awoken to be dumped in an icy lake, arms and legs bound, but unable to swim. His mind slushed and waivered as some of the secondary drugs kicked in, and he felt sleepy again. Riley did, indeed, change his diaper after all, and the added comfort of not being stuck in his own urine was enough that the competing forces of tiredness, despite how long he’d slept already, and anxiety finally broke their stalemate, and Rooky drifted off once again as a new pair of poofy pampers were taped up snugly around his waist.