A chameleon man stood trembling before Blacktooth, holding a pistol towards him. “You get back now.” The man said, his arms visibly shaking.
“Sir, I’m trying to help you,” Blacktooth said, motioning with his biker gloved hands to lower the gun, “I’m a furry, like you. I was captured by humans and I-”
“SHUT UP AND GET BACK!!” The man roared, his teeth clenched. Behind him, his two boys stood cowering.
Blacktooth shook his head and continued, “I escaped and I’m trying to get you and your boys say-”
BLAM! The bullet hit. The two kids screamed, the man roared as it fired then dropped the gun once he saw the impact.
Blacktooth went down on one knee, then rose, breathing heavily. The bullet plinked on the floor, cartridge spent.
“It would have been *gasp* a lot easier if you just put the gun down.”
Blacktooth stood straight and erect, wound non-existent. The three chameleons stood dumbfounded. “Now are you going to let me help you, or not?”
Blacktooth jerked suddenly in many spasm-like twitches as bullets from a submachine gun behind him ripped through his leather jacket. “Dang.” Blacktooth said as he dropped to his knees, the two kids screaming, “that was my favorite jacket.”
Blacktooth took the pistol, who’s owner looked wide-eyed at him, and blind-fired behind him, dropping the man who’d just stepped over the threshold.
“No bullet-proof vest?” One of the kids exclaimed as Blacktooth rose again.
Blacktooth took a breath, and felt twenty bullets fall through his jacket onto the floor. One fell down his pants, which made him excessively embarrassed as he jiggled his leg to get it out. It fell onto the floor. How very anti-climactic.
“This was an easy mission for them.” Blacktooth said, addressing the three chameleons. “they didn’t think they’d be met with resistance. Most furries don’t. Now, come on.” Blacktooth extended a hand. He took the dad’s wrist, who in turn held one of his son’s hands, who held his brother’s.
The four went out to the roof where Blacktooth scanned the street. Two agents were walking side by side into the front door, followed by a woman in a business suit. Barbra Piper. “Listen to me carefully.” Blacktooth said, addressing the chameleon dad. “Get down the fire escape and head for the trees. Two miles that way,” Blacktooth pointed, “is a resort home, the old Crest Auburn. You familiar with that?”
The man nodded. “Good, there’s about five hundred furries in there. They’ll take good care of you.”
Blacktooth turned towards the door.
“Where will you go?” The man asked.
Blacktooth turned around. “Don’t worry about me.”
He expected a ‘thank-you’, but the man was already down the fire escape. Blacktooth smirked. That made things easier.

Barbra surveyed the carnage. Bullets were fired, but they stopped halfway through the room. No blood. Blacktooth.
Blacktooth crept around a book case and peered behind the three agents who’d entered. His tail whipped out, tripping one man. The other turned and fired. Blacktooth lunged out into the open and fired at the other agent, dropping him.
Blacktooth took up the gun the fallen man had and poised one each on Barbra and the tripped agent. “Move and you both die.”
The man on the floor was the only one he was worried about, so, for good measure, he wrapped his boney tail around the man’s throat. “I twitch and you lose your head.” The man gulped. Good.
Then he narrowed his eyes on Barbra. “How long have you been running these experiments?”
“Three years.”
“Well, according to a study done in jobs nowadays, most people only have a job for about two years. Rarely do they keep it for longer so I’d say your due for retirement.” The pistol leveled.
“Do you think killing me will solve anything?” Barbra asked.
“Nope.” Blacktooth replied. “Accept give me my revenge!” Blacktooth fired, the shot entering Barbra’s shoulder. She dropped and yelled. The man on the floor roared but Blacktooth remembered his promise. Before the man could reach for his gun, his head was no longer commanding his hand.
Barbra moaned, rising. “You’ll get over it. It missed the artery, just had a little muscle damage.”
Barbra turned to him. “There’s others, you know. Not just me. Everyone wants a piece of you.”
“Well they can all wait, because you got here first, and your nowhere close to being done.”
Barbra felt confused. Blacktooth felt her confusion.
“I’m keeping you alive so you can send a message. To the big cheese. The very top. Hopefully it’ll make them think differently. If not, I’ll kill every last one of you until I get my point across. WE ARE NO DIFFERENT. We should be treated just like you. Besides, I thought people liked talking animals nowadays.”
Blacktooth reached in a pocket of his jeans and pulled out a thumb drive. “Take it.” He said, tossing it to Barbra. She caught it with her good hand and Blacktooth pointed his gun to the door. “You know your way out.”
Barbra walked silently to the door. “You know,” she added as she stopped on the threshold, “I know about what happened.” She said, referring to the accident that turned Blacktooth into what he was. Blacktooth’s mind flashed back to his earliest memory, the one that was given to him when his brain first became mature enough to have memories like a human instead of a feral animal. He was a simple animal in a cage, studied because he could talk, but then the radiation got to him. Blacktooth grew, both physically and mentally. His body felt like it was on fire.
“We can get your other friends some safety, some freedom, even citizenship. All we want is you.”
“That’s a lie.” Blacktooth said, finger itching to fire, tail poised to decapitate, “or else why would you take others?”
“To get a message to you. Turn yourself in, and we’ll work everything else out. No furry will have to worry about negative human interaction anymore.”
Blacktooth stopped. The implications of that were huge. But he knew he couldn’t trust her. “No. I can’t trust you.”
“I would have called in if I wanted to exterminate you.” Barbra said, then pulled something out of her ear. A bugging chip made into an earpiece. It probably had a transmitter in it. “I could have called in and whether you shot me or not, an army would have hunted you down.”
Blacktooth dropped his arms. “Why do you care now?”
“Because,” Barbra said, suddenly looking sad, “I was put up to this, I was forc-” Bang!
Barbra went down, shot through the shoulder. Blacktooth turned and ran, running for the roof. Behind Barbra’s fallen body, twelve agents stormed the room, running at full human speed.

Blacktooth sat in the country side thinking of what had transpired. So Barbra didn’t even want her job. She was put up to it, to abduct other furries so whomever was in charge could get Blacktooth. That’s all anyone wanted. Who was this group? What was so special about him, besides what they could probably simply recreate through radiation?

Barbra sat at the desk of her executive, a large man with slicked back black hair and a cigar the size of a corn cob. “Barbra,” he said thickly, “you’ve breached protocol today. We take breaches very seriously. If you ever step out of line again, we might just make you one of our experiments.”
Barbra shivered, even with her suit coat and snug shoulder brace. She’d given too little info. Blacktooth knew nothing about the facility’s layouts, or personal directing it. It could have all been hearsay for all Blacktooth knew.

Blacktooth sat with an otter couple, tending to the male’s wounded knee. He smiled and nodded once he was finished and walked outside the resort home. He volunteered here when he wasn’t rescuing someone. Whether or not Barbra’s words were true, he had to figure it out. One way or another, his next target would be the center itself.