Chapter Text
Bouncing your leg rapidly, clutched hands held close to your lap, you looked around the unnerving room. Photos and drawings of old school dentistry equipment, including one with a chair that had leather straps on the arms and a shivering boy being ushered towards it by a grinning dentist, lined the walls, interspersed with fake potted plants and windows with the blinds closed.
A faint thrill of fear that you hadn’t felt since a child ran down your spine. You really hoped that this visit wasn’t going to involve a chair like that.
You had tried, honestly tried, to keep up with your dental health over the years. But stress, poor eating habits, and a back breaking workload had throughly destroyed any habit you had managed to start. Your last dentistry visit was seven years and two states ago.
But a aching tooth that was worsened by a cheap steak dinner at a roadhouse had finally convinced you that you couldn’t put off a visit any longer. And the cleaning last week had alarmed Doctor Craigshead that he had cleared his schedule of several cleanings to fit you in a few days later.
You grimaced. Looking away from the pictures and tacky plants you ignored the pang of self-directed anger with practiced ease. A root canal wasn’t the end of the world, or your savings. The biggest hangup you had with the whole affair was you had to turn down several potentially lucrative shipping jobs. Being a trucker with a class A cert meant lot of high risk jobs with good payouts. Which were all going to be on hold until you recovered.
Losing your license, or worse yet, your truck, because your head wasn’t in the right space and a cop threw the book at you wasn’t an acceptable risk. You were just three payments away from owning your 579 outright, and losing a brand new Peterbuilt might be just too much for you to handle.
“Mr Anonymous?” The click of a door handle proceeded the dental assistants graying hair and call. You stood up quickly, wiping sweaty palms on your pants and nodding at the woman.
She held the door open for you as you crossed the threshold between waiting room and office.
Turning around the woman led you around a corner, past a room marked X-ray and into one of three rooms with “dental treatment” written above their doors.
“Please have a seat, Physician Random will be here shortly.”
Before you could say anything in reply she gently pulled the door behind her with an unpleasant squeal, barely keeping it cracked open. You closed your mouth and swallowed the generic comment expected in transactions like this. Looking around the room gave you mild relief. There was no rigid chair with leather straps to hold you down with, just a normal gray reclining bench with disposable coverings on it.
With a grunt you sat down, maneuvering your leg over the seat.
You were trying to decide if sitting with your legs resting on the extension of the chair or having one hang on other side looked less silly when the assistants words caught up with you.
“Wait, Random?”
Twisting to look back over your shoulder was difficult with the gut you’d cultivated and swore you would loose at some point and ultimately useless. The assistant was gone and you couldn’t hear or see anything though the hair crack in the door.
“Damn it.” Where you here at the wrong time? A glance at your phone showed that no, Dec 17 at 9:00 AM was highlighted as “dental appointment, God have mercy” with Craigshead as the the torturer to be. Nerves came back at the unexpected hiccup. One that you hoped would be rectified quickly.
Several minutes passed in uneasy silence. The office was quiet, either due to it being the middle of the week or because of Craigshead canceling on everyone for some reason. God you hoped not…
Out of boredom, you were in the midst of trying to play through the fire and flames using your gut as a drum when a voice made you shriek in surprise.
“Not bad! Need to work on your pacing a bit though.”
Heart hammering you whipped around so fast you almost fell out of the chair. The door was still a hair closed. What?
“Still for an impromptu jam session pretty fucking good if you ask me!”
Whirling around you laid eyes on a man standing near your feet, clad in a white over coat more at home in a lab than a dental office. Under it a button up purple shirt and a orange bandanna around his neck. Embarrassment made your face redden only for it to start fighting with a sense of unease as you locked eyes. One bright lupine yellow eye bored into yours, and an over white one looked slightly to the side lazily.
The shaved undercut and wild spiky hair only served to make his lopsided grin even more frightening.
“Uh, hello?” You managed.
The grin evened out as the man thrust his left hand you. Forced of habit made you grab it in a halfhearted manner, the latex glove covering did nothing to stop the unnatural chill of his hand. You shivered as you parted, unconsciously wiping your hand on your jeans. Was this guy half dead or something?
“Hello hello hello! I’m Doctor Random, filling in for poor mister Craigshead.” Random ignored you quietly saying ‘doctor?’ to yourself as he dramatically threw one hand over his brow. “I told him, told him sooo many times not to eat at Carlita’s, but he ignored me! And now his unfortunate restroom will be paying the price. A tragedy I must say.”
Okay, this was too far. It was too far when he dropped the professional facade to curse. When was the last time you ever heard a dentist or doctor curse? NEVER. That’s when. Everything about this creepy dude screamed unprofessional. And you wanted a professional for this!
“O-oh, I see. Well I was hoping for Craigshead, you know? He, uh, he did a really good job explaining the process of the procedure-‘ you awkwardly rambled, dentist or doctor Random nodding emphatically along hands clasped in front of him, ‘and I’d -no offense intended-, feel more comfortable with him preforming the operation. You see?”
He was silent a moment while you held your breath and tried to shimmy your legs over the side of the bench.
“Weeellll. No.”
You paused mid-motion.
“No what?”
He smiled. “No I don’t see.”
Suddenly you didn’t feel very safe. “O-oh that’s…” You trailed off, and Random clapped his hands together making you jump.
“But that’s no reason not to get you through this as quickly and painfully as possible! Nurse! Come come!” Before you could open your mouth to protest or stand he grabbed the leg that you had managed to get off the bench and with strength that his twiggy frame didn’t look capable of lifted it and place it back on the bench, straightening you out.
At this point you were full of terror, fear of what might happen if you were to sit there a moment longer filling your mind. Before you could commit to leaping out of the chair the door opened with the hideous squeak from before and a bored looking lady with a tray in hand walked around you.
“Don’t you worry good sir! I might be crazy but when it comes to story telling, drama and licensed medical procedures I’m one of the best in the business.”
You were eying the tray the woman had just sat down, covered in what you assumed were typical dental instruments. She looked up and cocked an eyebrow at you. She was very pretty. Your face bloomed warm a second time, and you self consciously looked away and tugged your clean but stained and faded tee-shirt as far over the mound of your belly as far as you could. It didn’t go very far.
Really need to loose this stupid fat. Another promise you weren’t likely to stick to.
A clap startled you, in the few seconds you had been distracted Random had somehow sealed up the white over coat and put on a surgical cap and mask with splash shield. As you stared up him he stopped rubbing his hands and reached up and flicked on a headlight that made you wince and look away. Stars danced in your vision as you blinked.
“So, that belly of yours something you don’t like, hmm? Not surprised most men don’t like how they look. Don’t worry, once you wake up you’ll look like a million bucks!”
Wake up? “What do you mean by that?” You demanded, embarrassment chased away by a return of the escalating dread. “Wake up?”
The weird man nodded. “Yep! Gotta put you under for the procedure, and when you wake up your gonna look great. Oh, and your teeth are gonna be perfect.” He added the last bit with a hand wave.
A jab of pain made you twitch. You stared wide eyed at the woman, still with a bored expression as she tapped a glass bottle suspended upside down from an IV stand. You followed the plastic tube with horror as it snaked its way to your left arm where the elbow bent and the IV catheter that she somehow set up in less then ten seconds without you noticing.
She met your wide eyes and cocked her eyebrow again.
You leapt to your feet! Or tried to. A sense of weakness and vertigo made your vision fade slightly as you leaned forward before falling back against the chair. “Oh shit.” You mumbled. You jerked as the chair leaned backwards with a weening noise.
With great effort you rolled your head to stare horrified at the man beside you. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You know while we’re at it, how do you feel about your dick? You like it as is? Ever wanted it bigger or thicker? Ah who am I kidding. Of course you do!” He exclaimed, ignoring your moan of terror. “Every dude is dissatisfied with themselves in some way.”
You whimpered as he leaned down, and with a tenderness that belied the insane gleam in his eye, squeezed your shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t worry, you’re in the best hands of your life.” He said. “You can thank me later big dawg, nighty night!”
And with a wave of his hand you felt your consciousness flee and you fell into darkness.
()
Steadily increasing shaking and rattling slowly brought you from the depths of oblivion. Each bump and jerk causing you to make moans of pain as your body throbbed. You blinked leaden eyelids open and stared at the dull gleam of dimly lit metal inches from your face in confusion. Where were you? Another shake make you groan, the sound echoing strangely around you. What happened? It was like you were a in tin can or something.
You sucked in a breath though your teeth as it all came rushing back to you.
The tooth ache, the appointment. The freak who fucking drugged you! You remained motionless for a brief moment before another, stronger, shake made you start thrashing and yelling.
“Help! Someone, HELP!” You were tied down, or strapped down, to something with a steel cover. Your head had a strap across the forehead holding it down. Another rattle like a car going over a rough road with bad shocks made you grunt. Kidnapped? You screamed and and wiggled until you were hoarse and out of breath. You laid still, sucking in increasingly dry and warm air.
You blinked and tried to twist your head as a drop of sweat flowed into the corner of your eye-socket and burned. “What the fuck, what the fuck!” You grit your teeth, you felt an ache at the root of every tooth, penetrating deep into the recesses of your skull. You licked dry lips and tried to think of a way out.
You looked around as best you could, ignoring the stain it put on your eyes. You were fairly certain you were some steel box roughly as long as you were tall and about as wide. You couldn’t look down very far, but you could tell you were missing at least your shirt. Rubbing your legs together returned the feeling of skin on skin. Even were you not strapped down you doubted you would have been able to move much, the top of the crate was so close it would have been impossible to roll over.
A sudden sense of claustrophobia came over you, not even a coffin was this tight.
Okay. You had been drugged, stripped naked and strapped down with what felt like soft ratchet straps to… hmm. You wiggled your shoulder blades, feeling what you were laying on. It was cool, slightly giving but overall firm. Almost like a gel seat pad you could find at the occasional truck stop. “Guess that’s one silver lining.” You grumbled, your voice raspy from the shouting and lack of water.
You cleared your throat. There was more moisture on your skin than in your mouth at the moment. You were sweating like a pig in the Mojave. You blinked, a stream of sweat beading in your eyelashes. It was getting hotter. A sharp jolt made your bit your tongue and you cursed. And getting much, much rougher.
Were you off road? Probably with how much the vehicle was shaking. But where? The heat was far too intense for Oklahoma this time of year, were you in Texas?
“Oh no.” You whispered. Cartel. If your mouth wasn’t already bone dry it would have gone so when the thought of being in the hands of psychotic murderers made itself welcome. It made an unsettling amount of sense. The weird dude wouldn’t look too far out of place in a cartel propaganda photo if you squinted. And the woman had looked slightly Hispanic…
“I’m fucked.” You laid still, feeling your flesh glue itself together with sweat as the binder. You were really starting to feel the heat.
Beep-beep
You were about to start cursing or crying, you weren’t quite sure, when the high pitched beep pulled your from your increasingly dark thoughts. It sound like it was right next to your head.
Beep-beep-beep
You winced at the volume, it sounded like a cheap watch was being held to your ears as it went off. Was it some sort of temperature alarm letting you know you were approaching baking temps? That would be pretty fucked up if it were the case.
Beep-beep beep beep-beep-beep beeeeeep
The last long tone ended with a variety of mechanical noises from all around you. You swallowed dryly as the shaking and rattling reached a new fervor. Bile rose in the back of your throat as you suddenly felt yourself lose gravity and the lack of external stimulation made your brain freak out.
Three inches from your eyes, the steel plate above your face suddenly slid down with a shunt and you could see the impossible.
The queasiness was forgotten entirely as you choked on air. You were in space.
A tiny screen with strange writing and letters along its edges showed a dry green and blue planet below. The center of the major landmass’s all had a strip of dark green running through them on the equator. Above and below increasingly dry and tan land stretched out only to terminate in white ice caps.
Another shudder shock you and it dawned on you with increasing horror this wasn’t a crate and you saw white vapor around what you realized was a camera pointing down at the planet below. A planet which was certainly not earth.
The shaking got worse and bile returned to your throat, choking you. You wanted to scream in terror, curse in anger and gibber in animalistic terror as it became clear that you were very, very rapidly descending towards the world below. The color of the air slowly changed and grew steadily brighter.
Any hope of overcoming your mute fear faded as you entered the atmosphere and your whole world became a confusing and blinding cacophony of violence.
The vessel you were in bucked and shook like a living being, the heat from before that you were sure was about to cook intensified until your skin became as pink as the plasma outside. Your eyes rattled in your skull and bile streamed from your gasping lips as you were beaten to within a inch of your life, the world below growing to fill the whole screen above your nose.
The strip of green changed shades as you hurtled towards the upper edge. Features grew more distinct. Rivers, lakes, valleys and mountains grew and grew as you approached. A flat plain of sparse trees and green on the edge of a mountain suddenly locked in the center of the screen, and distantly in the depths of your mind not consumed by pain or fear understood that was the vessels chosen impact zone.
Whether you would live through it or not was impossible to know.
A brief moment of calm, where the bone aching rattle ceased, the heat began to lessen and the angle of the plunge evened out gave rise to a single thought. This was going to hurt.
Just outside the view of the camera, rockets kicked in, and you could have sworn the sudden decrease in velocity reduced your height as you gained several tons. You had a matter of milliseconds to come to terms with your probable demise before the world went dark with the sound of armageddon.
)(
Corell snorted as the unsettling racket of the long range sensors woke her from her half-asleep daze. Wiping a string of slobber from her muzzle with a paw she looked up at the wide green-grey screen.
There was a pod coming down.
That alone wasn’t of much interest. Pods were used by everyone on Xander in some fashion. The few traders willing to head this far from the core vastly preferred to to drop into the upper atmo and slingshot pods with trade goods from a safe altitude. The threat of anti-orbital weapons even out here was a real and present danger.
But this pod had the canine on her hind legs and leaning over the 45 degree screen with faint excitement.
A life pod. And it was going to pass over head and land out in the badlands to the north. That could only mean one thing.
With cream and coffee colored paws she quickly tapped through the buttons along the right side of the screen. The ancient computer whirred itself awake, clicks and thunks echoed in the tiny communications room as it reached out and scanned the sky high above.
Eyes dancing side to side Corell felt a frown growing on her slim muzzle. Life pods really only meant one thing. A ship. Or ships. Out here in the rimworlds the most common reason life pods came down was from space battles, often close enough debris fell into the gravity well. Enriching those lucky enough to be close enough to reach the chunks that survived entry. Damning for those that lived where they impacted.
But there was something strange.
“Where are the ships?” She muttered. She expanded the scan radius again. And then again. And again until it maxed out its range. She pursed her narrow lips and ‘hmm’ed’. More button taps with nimble paws and she was peering at the sky with different parameters, and felt herself grow stumped. No ion trails. No tachyon particles. Nothing that indicated a ship ever entered the system.
The vestigialint grew uneasy as she watched the life pod slowly enter the highest level of atmosphere. “Where did you come from?” She whispered, nose nearly pressing against the screen.
The pod lost momentum over the course of the following few minutes took up a pseudo orbit a few dozen kilometers up, and Corell retreated to her usual sitting position on the floor, one of her forelegs and paws anxiously bouncing up and down in a rapid beat. Something about this whole situation had her on edge, and she couldn’t put her claw on why.
Nearly half an hour after it was first pinged the pod finally started moving again. To Corell’s mild shock, it accelerated. Right at the planet.
She watched wide eyed as it screamed down at a speed dangerously close to burning it up and an angle that she realized with a tingle of that uncertainty responsible for her feeling of unease, its course set its impact site less than a hundred kilometers away from the colony.
Okay I need another opinion on this. She thought. Last thing we need is some biological agent or worse landing nearby.
She sat upright, and with a paw toggled the colony inter-comm. “Hershay, if you’re available I need you in the communication room. Something weird is happening.” The comm let out a sharp crackle-click as she let go of the button. Another minute passed befre she heard and felt the rapid thumps of the colonies de facto leader hurrying down the stone hall.
The door behind her opened with a whoosh of air, and Corell shivered slightly as the cold air of the hallway rushed in.
“What’s going on?” The deep gravely voice of the horse woman made Corell glance upwards, past the large swell of the mares bust to the the focused orange eyes.
She looked back at the screen and reared up on her hindlegs, pointing a claw at the bizarre pod that was still screaming down at speeds far beyond normal.
“That pod just appeared out of nowhere. And I mean no where. No ion or tachyon trails, no sign of FTL. Nothing.” She looked up, ears flattening slightly. “It entered a slow decay high orbit, and then just a few seconds before I called you entered a burn straight over us.”
Hershey listened with a cocked ear, eyes fixed on the grainy feed from the sensor suite. Thinking. Corell waited patently, dividing her attention between the motionless mare and the rapidly descending pod.
Before her leader could come to a decision they both jerked in surprise as the pods final approach vector suddenly altered, the pod changing its angle in what was probably a stomach churning G-force heavy turn, putting its impact site less than six kilometers away from the colony.
“Code red!” Hershay snapped. “Send the coordinates to everyones padd and get whoever can handle a gun to their stations.” She swept out of the comms room with a ground shaking speed, calling over her shoulder. “Once you’re done meet me outside!”
Corell hurried to obey, her pulse pounding in her ears. As her paws suddenly refused to obey her commands. Cursing in Dorish she hastily sent a wide spreed code red and watched the rapid affirmatives role in. With growing dread she realized only Hershey, Shawn and Mulen were around to deal with any potential threats, and Shawn was already half-way to the western wall and Mulen was way out in the southern fields with several of the other colonists farming.
Racing from the room on all fours Corell approached the T junction several meters down the hall at breakneck speed. With a leap she used her tail to twist midair and land all four paws on the wall, pushing off she ran as fast as she could to catch up with Hershay. Hoping against hope that they weren’t about to deal with a Scyther or Lancer. Or something worse.
With a shudder she shook away the fear. Spotting Hershay’s looming black and white form waiting for her by the colonies small armory door. Corell grit her teeth. Whatever it was, if it was a threat... They would deal with it like they had all the other threats to the colony.
One way or another.
)(
You awoke to the crackling pop of fire, crumpled in the bottom of the metal can that bore you down from the sky.
The flat straps that had held you in place hung loosely around you. A strip of light the length of the wall let in light and the scent of smoke. Groaning you tried to gather your feet under you and stand, pressing a hand against what was the ceiling inches above your nose, only for it to swing open and dump you flat on your face.
Grit and dust clogged your nostrils. It took more effort than it should have to roll onto your back and look up at the cloudless blue sky.
Slight wists of smoke curled upwards in the breeze, lulling your head to the side you followed its trail down to several small dry bushes lightly burning. They were thorny and scraggly, reminding you of the flat swaths of the Mojave and upper Chihuahuan desert in the foothills.
You closed your eyes for a moment, focusing on breathing gently through your mouth. You were fucked. No two ways about it. Denial and logic asserted themselves aggressively opposite one another, with logic taking the floor first.
The thing you had tumbled out of could be fake. The screen could have simply been playing a video to fool you into thinking you were in space while a truck or re-purposed circus ride rattled you half to death before you were dumped hard into the ground. An elaborate hoax by sick in the head jokesters about to jump out with cameras to laugh at you.
Denial took stage.
Why? Who would go though all the effort to adduct a fat balding near middle age man with bad dental habits just to torment them?
You cracked an eye open and looked down towards your feet. Blackened and warped, the thing that dumped you out looked less like a foam and cardboard prop, and more like an aerospace feat of engineering. It had no markings, at least none that survived the heat that turned what looked to your eye titanium and steel into multicolored panes of wavy junk.
No one would go through the effort of making something look that real just for a nobody like you. Let alone the work of getting into a dental office, impersonating a dentist, drugging and moving a fat tub of lard like-.
Both your eyes snapped open as something you spent the last decade bemoaning suddenly registered as missing.
“Wgh muh ga g-ne?” You mumbled through cotton dry lips and swollen tongue. What you meant to say was ‘wheres my gut gone?’
You weren’t rocking a six pack by any means. But the swell of hard rindy fat and hair was replaced with a flat plain of pale flesh slowly turning pink in the sun. You could see your dick flopped over your thigh, a sight so long since departed you didn’t even remember what it looked like.
…
Was it always that large or did the lack of fat make it appear bigger? Did it even matter when you were going to be dead in a few hours? Probably not.
You let your head flop back down onto the hot sandy soil. You tried to swallow, but the dryness of your mouth and throat only succeeded in causing pain. You closed your eyes. You hurt. Bad. Bone deep and everywhere. The increasing buzzing in your head made it harder and harder to think or even care about your predicament.
So you laid there, motionless, feeling the sun slowly bake you alive.
A sound reached you sometime later. The rustling of tough brush being moved aside as something passed through it.
It grew closer, and over it you heard mutters in a strange voice that sounded deeper than any you ever heard. Damn it. It was the devil wasn’t it? Come to drag your soul to hell. You knew you shouldn’t have gone to those shady strip bars that sprung up around every truck stop in the nation. Shouldn’t have banged those hookers either. Or drunk so much, or been a glutton, or been so easy to anger, or so self centered, or so difficult towards others, or cussed so much, or-
“That’s a human!”
The voice snapped you out of your delirious spiraling thoughts. Vaguely feminine, with a coarse almost animal tone to it, full of shock. The words held no meaning to you, not even the faintest understanding.
“Wait! Corell stop!” The deep voice of the devil reached you, closer than before.
The light turning the lids of your eyes a bright red glow disappeared, and something rough and warm was placed on your chest, making the worsening sunburn sting.
“Hershay, he’s still alive.”
It was a monumental fight to force your eyes open, and you stared blankly upwards when you succeed.
There was an animal above you. Vulpine and lupine features clashed together on its face. The slim muzzle of a fox with a white chin, the deep emotional eyes and coloring of a wolf. Two extremely tall and wide ears danced above a forehead far larger than any canines you had ever seen before. Weirdly its parted jaw had thin yet plush lips, and its features were frozen in an expression of awe, its heterochromic eyes wide.
The things paw lifted off your chest and gently cradled your cheek, a stubby thumb like toe rubbing your cheek.
You looked down the length of its leg and sluggishly blinked in surprise. It was wearing a tactical harness festooned with pouches over a kevlar looking vest. A second glance at its head revealed it had a bone conduction headset that wrapped around the ears and a mic sticking close to its mouth.
A loud crash and angry growling made the dogwolf thing snapped its head away towards the noise.
“Damn it Corell! Get away from it.”
“But its a human, look! He’s naked, and I think he’s hurt. He’s not a threat to us.”
“Not a threat directly.” The deep voice said in a tone you could only describe as dark. “Gods only know what he might be carrying.”
You felt the ground tremble slightly as the deep voice approached from your right. You peered past the giant twitching ear of the dog thing up at a horse. Or least something that faintly resembled a horse.
It was female, that much was clear. Two large rounded protrusions from its upper chest were clearly some kind of breasts. Above them a shorter, more expressive equine face than you were used to was angled down at you. A pink nose with flaring nostrils split by a white strip that went up to a full mane of hair. Two dull orange eyes stared back at you with a flinty stare. Your eyes dropped. She was carrying a rifle, a bandoleer of magazines hung from her side and she wore a large dark brown duster over a simple stained and worn white shirt.
Her legs were covered in pair of loose jean like pants as well, but no boots. Just hooves the size of dinner plates. Your lips twitched at the absurdity. A horse wearing pants and a dog like creature with a headset and tactical gear. What next?
“We can’t leave him here.”
You rolled your eyes back to the wolfamabob with the almost lady like voice. It sounded concerned. For what? You? You almost scoffed. Doubtful. You were more than likely its next meal.
“We can’t take him back either.” Devil horse lady squatted down, her flinty glare softening into something more impassive. Fuck you want? A carrot?
“Hershay, he’s a human, we can’t let him die.”
You stared unblinkingly into the things pretty two colored eyes with a slight frown. There was a word in that gobble gook that you recognized. But it was on the edge of your failing mind. Was it getting darker? You croaked. Lips crackling and starting to bleed. Somehow the things already wide eyes grew even wider, and its fan like ears both flattened backwards.
It said something to you, but unlike whatever verbalization that sounded familiar none of it made any sense to you. You were tired and uninterested in what was going on now. You wanted to sleep. So you closed your eyes.
“H-hey! Don’t do that, don’t close your eyes, hey come on, look at me please.”
The thing above you started whining and shaking you. The horse spoke as you rapidly slipped away from the world around you once more.
()
consciousness returned for the third time that day in a rush. You inhaled sharply and snapped your eyes open.
A wide square of rough rock was above you. Wires neatly bundled together along one side and attached via u-hooks fed power to two flat hologen like lights spaced evenly apart. You looked around the room under the gentle sun like glow.
You were on a cheap metal fabricated bed, covered in a thin green blanket and white sheet. At the foot of the bed a narrow wooden topped something was pressed against it, and across from that along the entire wall was a counter with over head hanging cabinets. A sink and various medical looking items broke up the off grey countertop.
To your right was a crude looking surgery bed, with several armatures and straps. You felt a little queasy as you looked at what had to be old blood stains. You turned away.
To your left was a door bracketed by a CRT looking box on a wheeled stand and a small stumpy plant with tiny yellow flowers.
Interesting place to wake up. You at least were hydrated and covered in a very thin hospital like gown. You went to scratch an itch on your right hand, only to feel cloth and a twinge of pain. An IV was attached to the back of your wrist. You stared at it, following the clear tube up and over your right shoulder to where a larger than average clear bag of fluid hung. Next to it, a smaller bag with light blue fluid had a tube of its own meet and connect with the tube from the larger one feeding into your hand.
You grimaced, and quickly yanked out the catheter. You had enough of IV’s for a lifetime after what started this whole thing.
Using the bandage that held the IV in place you wrapped the bleed tightly.
Immediate concerns dealt with, you looked around a second time. Nothing stood aside from the polished floor which on closer inspection seemed to be made from some type of silvery metal tile. You could see a vaguely human shaped reflection as you leaned over the edge, something about made you squint slightly. Your hair.
A hand whipped up to your head without conscious direction. Your hair was gone completely. “Oh come, on!” This was bullshit. Loosing your gut was a positive, perhaps the only positive in this whole affair. Loosing the mullet you had carefully crafted over the past decade of trucking wasn’t remotely acceptable.
“Even the muttonchops?” You muttered, rubbing your chin. A glance at your arm made you scowl. “Baby arse smooth.”
Lifting your sheet and blanket first, you tugged the light blue gown up and looked down. Yep. Even your pubes and legs weren’t spared the closest shave of your life. You frowned as something about down below registered as off.
But before you could investigate further the door slide open with a woosh of cold air, and in stepped a rabbit.
In the back of your mind where the events of the past couple hours… days?… lingered and churned you thought that the wolfdog thing and the horse woman were just heat induced hallucinations. You could probably guess they weren’t from what walked in.
You lowered the blanket as you looked at the creature standing there with a deer in the head light stare on its face.
It was a rabbit. On two legs, its left ear bent in the middle due to a chunk of flesh missing while the other was ramrod straight upright. It was fawn colored with a pair of wide purple eyes, in its human like hands it clutched a tablet not too far off looking from a ToughBook.
“Uh, hi?” No response save a rapid twitch of the nose. Ah shit, did it think it walked in on you jorking it? Trying a soft smile you didn’t think reached your eyes you lifted both hands up in a disarming gesture.
“I wasn’t masturbating or anything. Just checking to make sure everything was still there ya know?” It blinked and suddenly inhaled with the sound of someone who had been unwittingly holding their breath. Its ears slowly spread apart and it glanced back over its shoulder into the hallway, which from where you sat you could tell was very roughly cut stone. Guess you were underground then, it would explain the chill in the air.
Clopping footsteps approached, and the rabbit moved closer to you, holding the tablet against their chest like a shield.
Your attention was pulled to the horse woman from earlier as she folded her ears back in order to enter the suddenly cramped room. You swallowed. Without the haze of dehydration and exhaustion clouding your mind you could see just how big the horse was.
Her brown duster was gone, as was the rifle and bandoleer. On her wide leather belt a leather holster contained some form of handgun, which you couldn’t help but notice her meaty hand twitched towards as she laid eyes on you. Not good.
You placed your hands flat on the covers, trying hard not to show how rattled you were at the whole situation.
With backup now in the room the rabbit calmed down somewhat, rapidly tapping away at the tablet before turning and setting it aside. Once it faced you again you saw the rounded chest and presumed that like the horse it was female. It carefully approached your bed and you felt your pulse kick up a notch. Up close you could see under the fluffy fur a slim figure that you likely heavily outweighed, looking from the weird animal like legs and feet to the top of its forehead you estimated you were at least a head and a half taller than it.
Maybe it was more afraid of you then you were of it?
It frowned when it saw your hand minus the IV, letting out a slight huff of irritation that made your lips twitch. Cute little thing.
It spoke in a rapid high tone cadence, leaving you blinking blankly at it by the end of its sentence. It repeated what it said, slower, with a greater emphasis on the words.
You shrugged. “I don’t understand you.”
This displeases the bun.
It stomped a fluffy foot in frustration, crossing its arms and looking back at the motionless horse woman, spitting out its silly little lingo. Towards the middle of its tirade you caught one word that made you sit up straighter. Human. Perfect understandable.
“You know what I am? Does that mean there are more humans around here?” You asked.
The rabbit spared you a glance before looking back at the horse, who stood there with hips cocked to one side with the universal ‘I’m thinking’ stare off into nothing. The three of you were stuck in the awkward silence for a minute or more before the white and black horse sighed.
You leaned towards her slightly as you focused on her words to no avail. The pair went back and forth for a few minutes before the horse held up a hand, one that you noticed had work worn skin on the bottom, not much different from an apes fur backed hand. A cations glance at the rabbit showed similar, less callused palms. The horse said something and the rabbit hissed in displeasure.
Leaning back abruptly as their attention returned to you you tried to appear calm and harmless. You weren’t sure if it worked.
“Soooo. What now?” You were pretty sure everything you said since you woke up had been some form of question. Should probably stop that. Bad habit.
The rabbit just looked up at you and creased its brow with another frown. It chittered something at you and gestured at the floor with a hand. You looked between the polished and most likely cold floor and the pointing finger for a moment. With a sigh of your own you placed your hands flat and gathered yourself, swinging your legs over the side. You were right, it was cold.
Standing to your full height with only a slight sway you looked over the head of the rabbit at the horse. It had a head and hundred pounds on you easy, that alone was enough to make you want to play nice. The hand now resting on the holstered gun was just the cherry on top.
Looking away from the horses piercing stare you looked down to see the rabbit had taken a step back, ears flat to its skull and its nose rapidly twitching as it stared up at you wide eyed. You swallowed, uncomfortably aware of the hole the horse was burning in your head. So you simply stood still and silent while the rabbit worked up the courage to do whatever it was going to do.
What it was going to apparently was a full body exam. Which it did with a fair degree of professionalism. Professionalism that would have been great in the dentist office. Your arms were spread, your torso and belly palpitated, mouth examined -you really wanted to know if anything had been done in there-, reflexes tested. And more. The strangest part of the exam that left you mouth agape was the completely unexpected return of a fleshy hood that was taken from you at birth.
This discovery sent your mind reeling with questions that settled uncomfortably in your head. Was this even your body? Where were the nicks and scars from the lifetime of hard work you had done? Your palms were as smooth as a liberal arts students.
By the time the bun was both satisfied and calmed by your careful and slow twisting and turning in time to her gestures your toes were numb from the cold. At some point the horse left, confident you weren’t about to do anything. She returned with a pair of cheap looking one size too big shoes and a worn but clean set of coveralls.
You dressed absentmindedly, lost in thought. You only distantly registered both of the female creatures looking down at your exposed anatomy, any embarrassment from their lingering gazes lost under the swirling maelstrom of unpleasant images and ideas of what had happened to you.
Clothed and presumably discharged from the tiny medical room you followed the large mare lady’s gesture to the hallway, leaving the room and standing in the narrow stone corridor. Wires like in the room were neatly bundled up and strung from the ceiling. Lights every ten or so feet illuminated the long tunnel. Several doors like the one you just left lined both sides of the walls each direction.
You stepped aside as the horse came out beside you. You made eye contact for a moment before she pointed down the hall to your left and said something, her voice felt in your chest. Nodding at her you turned and walked down the hall. Her plodding clopping footsteps close behind.
Two thoughts circled in your brain as you walked. Just where the hell were you?
And how were you gonna get back?
You had the feeling neither of those questions were going to be answered for a long time.