by Loki Renard
I am fluffy, but I am also utterly terrifying. The suit’s snout has four rows of vicious teeth, and when I open my mouth, I see myself snarl. It’s weird, like wearing a puppet. A really dangerous looking puppet.
From the moment I met Tarkan, he has made me feel small. It’s not something he does on purpose, it’s just him. He has a strength I can’t begin to relate to. He is hard, and I am soft. He is big and powerful and made to destroy. I am squishy and made to… I don’t even know what I’m made for. But in this suit, I feel a little stronger, a little more of a match.
“Cute,” he chuckles, making me smile. In this costume, my smile is a fearsome snarl which pulls my lips back from my teeth and exposes vicious canines. Hell yes. That’s it. I’m never taking this off.
I thought I’d have to crawl on hands and knees, but I find I can walk upright normally and somehow the suit transforms that into a four legged motion. So I take a step, and the beast moves with a prowling gait, then pauses.
I turn around, and the animal turns too. It’s so much more graceful than I am, so lithe and powerful. I lift my hand up and see the front paw move up too. When I make a claw with my fingers, scimitars come out, sharp blades capable of tearing my real flesh easily.
I can’t talk, that’s the only problem, but I don’t know that it is truly a problem anyway. I never know what to say. Better to growl and to rumble and maybe hiss than to have to string a sentence together which can never express what I feel inside anyway. Talking to Tarkan is the hardest part of my day. He wants to know about me, but there’s so little to tell. I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know how I feel about anything. My only memories are ones of pain and hatred, perfect for this beast I now inhabit.
Pulling away from Tarkan, I turn around several times, catching something out of the corner of my eye. My god. Is that my tail? I must have it.
Tarkan
She’s spinning on her axis, trying to catch her tail with her big paws. She’s slightly ungainly in the suit, which only makes the scene more adorable for it, the legs of the suit a little too long for her body, the ears of it flopping around with every bounding motion she makes.
I’ve never seen her so happy before. I’ve never seen her so relaxed, so carefree, so… unafraid.
I didn’t think this would be the outcome when I gave her the suit to put on, but I can understand it. We used to wear human suits when we visited Earth, and we’ve worn others since, so I know how strange and how fun it can be to immerse yourself in another creature. I played many different human characters during my visits to the planet, everything from warlords to accountants. I’d complain about the suit every time Reaper insisted I wore it, but secretly I enjoyed it immensely, blending into a world so alien to our own, one that embraced us completely. I loved humanity. I don’t know what happened to cause the decline which left the planet ravaged, but I know it was my own foolish impatience that hastened its final end.
She bites down on my calf. I feel her teeth actually penetrate the outer layers of my skin and let out a yell of surprise, yanking the leash hard as I do.
“No! Bad girl!” The stern censure leaves my lips before I can think about being careful.
She lets out a coughing, snarling sound, which I quickly realize is her laughing. The little brat thinks that this is funny. She bounces, her back feet staying down, her front feet leaving the ground with excited bounds. 42 fits this suit perfectly. I could have chosen any number of aliens for 42 to hide inside, but something made me pick the Boolean mastiff. I needed something that would compliment my ferocity, something that wouldn’t be too tight for her.
“Don’t bite me,” I tell her firmly. “You wouldn’t want to get into trouble, would you?”
She lets out a yapping sound.
A Boolean mastiff is a dog and or a cat, depending on the state it is in. It is something like an earth wolf mixed with an earth tiger. A true Boolean mastiff is a terrifying creature, not the least because of its unpredictability. It might claw your face off, or raise you as its own cub. Their capacity for violence is only matched by their deeply loving nature.
I have effectively armed 42 with the strength and power to be able to inflict real damage if she wants to. That’s where the leash comes in. I plan to keep her close and securely captive in my grasp. This suit is a risk, for sure. One thing I know about 42, she’s mentally capable of far more than she is physically. If it were up to her, she’d tear worlds apart in her rages. But right now she’s content to back to chasing her tail until she collapses at my feet, panting happily.
“Good girl,” I praise, bending down to pat her belly. The suit will translate the touch into something she likes, and it’s working well I think given that she’s kicking her hind leg out in a repetitive happy motion.
“You’re ready,” Reaper says, sounding surprised as he steps in. 42 stops kicking and wriggling around on her back, and sits beside me. I feel a little rush of pride, knowing that she is learning to trust me enough to be silly around me. She’s still very wary of Reaper, and completely indifferent to One.
“Yes, we are good to go. Where’s One?”
“One won’t put the suit on. She says it’s demeaning.”
“So what are you going to do with her?”
“Something less demeaning,” he gestures behind him. I didn’t notice it at first, possibly because I couldn’t believe it was actually there, but Reaper appears to have a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He looks like a human about to go on a nature walk. I didn’t know it was possible for a Scythkin to actually look geeky and completely non-threatening, but apparently a canvas bag is the secret. He’s had to retract his rear dorsal ridge in order to allow it to sit against his back without shredding the contents, and he’s pulled his shoulders down too for the same reason and the overall effect is just weird. We are a dominant, fearsome warrior race. We travel with battle hounds and we destroy worlds. We don’t walk around like hobos who lost their stick.
“You’re wearing her as a backpack?”
“She’s inside the pack,” he says. “She doesn’t like the suits, but being stuffed inside luggage is apparently dignified.”
“I can hear you!” His backpack yells at him.
“You should have tried the suit, One,” I call out. “42 looks cute in hers.”
There’s a rumble of discontent that almost sounds as ferocious as my Boolean mastiff who has scooted back to sort of hide behind my legs. Everything 42 does is adorable, even in animal form.
“One doesn’t love it when you compare her to 42,” Reaper explains. “She’s a little insecure about her.”
“I am not!”
“She is,” he mouths quietly.
“Am not!” She calls out even louder.
“We should just dress up as elbublians or something,” he sighs. “Traders respect traders”
“We only had enough material to make disguises for the girls. We’ve been pumping out skin suits at an unprecedented rate and we’re out of lubricant. Plus, I don’t want to. I’m tired of hiding. It’s a about time we started showing our faces again.”
“Our supposed to be dead faces?”
“That’s a deal you made. Not me.”
“It’s a deal that keeps us alive.”
“No, it’s a deal that stops us being hunted by the Scythkin empire, but it doesn’t keep us alive. You know we need to make a show of casual force with this trader. If we show up looking weak, we get nothing. And right now, you look goofy with your suspicious canvas bag.”
The trader’s station looks like a little dark moon orbiting a much larger moon which is in turn orbiting around a planet which is 99% sulfur and methane according to our scans. We take separate shuttles, partly because fitting all four of us inside one is a very tight squeeze, but mostly because we need as many points of redundancy as possible. This is more like a hostile invasion than a shopping trip. We just have to pretend it isn’t.
Dark traders are
not to be messed with. They deal exclusively with criminals, warlords, and renegades. Every day of their lives is a bad one, filled with bad people. They know how to defend themselves, and they’re happy to kill their customers even if it means losing a sale. But that’s what we’ve come to now. If we want to follow the stars mapped on 42’s arm, we need to upgrade our transportation.
I talk to 42 on the way down, tell her that everything is going to be okay, all she needs to do is just stay with me and try to be as calm as possible, and to do everything I say as soon as I say it, because disobeying me could end in death.
As far as I can tell, she’s agreeing. She’s not saying no, but then again she couldn’t say no if she wanted to. Her usual sass has been covered by fur and fang and I’d never admit it, but I kind of like the quiet. Keeping up with 42’s agile mind is not easy. I have always been the sassy, argumentative broodkin. Now I know how Reaper must feel when trying to deal with me.
We touch down on the surface without incident. I keep a very tight hold on 42’s leash as she goes bounding out through the door, showing every sign of wanting to bolt.
“NO!” I growl down at her.
She whimpers and comes back slightly toward me, only to yank away again seconds later. I do wish I could understand what she was trying to do, run away in panic? Run away because she thinks it would be fun to do so?
I crouch down in front of her and wiggle the head hood off just enough to break the technical spell that the suit casts when it is in one piece. One moment, she is a flailing mastiff, the next she’s a human girl wearing a stellar blue robe.
“I thought we talked about this,” I say.
“It’s not my fault!” Her blue eyes are wide and so very innocent. “It’s hard to control this suit. It does things.”
“It doesn’t run off a ship and into danger,” I tell her. “I know what it’s like to wear one of these. They only do what the wearer does, there’s not going to be any getting away with anything, understand?”
“Fine,” she pouts. “But you don’t need the leash.”
“My experiences over the last five minutes tell me otherwise,” I say. “I’m putting this back on, and you’re going to be a good girl. What we’re doing today isn’t safe. After this, you can disobey me all you want. You can spend the next three weeks telling me to go fuck myself. But now. Today. I need you to behave yourself. And I’m keeping the leash.”
“Fine,” she says again. “One condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I get to keep this suit. And wear it whenever I want.”
“Yes, and maybe.”
“Good enough.”
With that negotiation out of the way, I push the hood back down and the suit activates, transforming her back into the ferocious beast I know she is on the inside.
I take the leash and together we walk over to where Reaper planted his shuttle. He is outside, but not without trouble either. His bag is complaining that everything smells like farts.
“It’s not me, human,” he growls. “Scythkin don’t fart.”
“Smells like you ripped a big one,” One complains, her bag moving around uncomfortably as she clearly tries to find some air to breathe that isn’t rotten egg tainted.
42 isn’t bothered, but that’s because her suit contains an air filter. I’d point out that One should have agreed to wear a suit, but it’s too late for that.
Reaper is looking around. I look around too. in the near distance, there is a very large neon lit sign flashing: PROFITO
That’s the entrance to this den of commercial iniquity. This entire moon is approximately the size of a large Earth mall, and it is packed with what seems to be an endless array of items. None of them are new, and I doubt any of them are legal.
I don’t know why I keep comparing things to how they were on Earth. Guilt, I suppose. Some part of me still hopes there is a way to undo what has been done, but realistically I know once a planet is atomized, that’s the end of that.
My one hope now is that wherever 42 comes from, there are more humans, and that those humans are happy and free and not worried by the fact that the Earth was destroyed. In my gut, I know that’s not likely. Ever since we came to Earth and found it a deserted wasteland filled with vicious creatures, I’ve been feeling a sense of impending doom which only grows with every move we make.
42 presses up against my leg and emits a low growl, pulling me from my thoughts. Reaper shushes his bag. They’re reacting to a tall specter of a figure looming out of the piles of contraband.
The trader is here.
He is ten feet tall, and wearing the body parts of what I assume were creatures who tried to trade with him in the past. He’s a big boy, bigger than either of us, though not nearly as dangerous. We don’t need to wear corpses to show that we’re capable of killing.
“Not often we get a couple of scythkin here,” he says, looking us over. “What is that? A Boolean mastiff?”
“She’s not for trade.”
“Pity. I could consider taking that vicious thing. She looks dangerous. Like she’d take a leg off. How many throats has she ripped out?”
“Today?”
He laughs at my quip, and some of the tension is broken.
“We got in touch regarding a vessel with a functioning hyper-stellar drive,” Reaper says, changing the subject back to the matter at hand.
“Yeah, I got your message. Question is, you got the funds to pay?”
“We have some funds, and a ship to trade.”
“Your bag has a head,” the trader says, looking up at Reaper. One has managed to push her face up and out of the bag’s breathing hole, so now they make a frankly ridiculous looking pair. It’s as if Reaper has grown an extra female head from the back of his neck.
“It’s a bag head,” Reaper says, smoothly. “It makes inappropriate comments and it’s going to get into trouble if it isn’t careful.”
“Well, okay then,” the trader says. “Don’t have any time for disembodied heads. They’re hard to attach to clothing. I had one in my closet for years, but it never said anything, can you believe it?”
“I can. I really can.”
42 is growling almost constantly, pressing close to my leg. I have to retract all the sharp ridges and spines on that side so she doesn’t accidentally tear herself to pieces. I would not say this aloud to her, but choosing a non-communicative species to fit her into was a good choice. I don’t want to know what she’d be saying right now if she had the freedom of speech.
The trader leads us to a dock. Pickings are slim, mostly small smuggling vessels even lighter and faster than what Reaper and I have been piloting for years. But there’s also a big boat of a thing sitting in dock, a massive space-rusted behemoth which looks like it could carry half the scythkin army.
“I got this,” he says, banging the side of an old freighter.
“We want to long distances, not transport endless amounts of stock,” Reaper says.
“Why not both,” he says. “These buckets are solid runners, they’ve got the hyper-stellar drive, older version, but it works.”
“They have no defensive, or offensive capabilities. They’re essentially sitting ducks. That’s why there’s usually a secondary protection fleet. I guess this doesn’t come with a secondary protection fleet.”
“It doesn’t. But someone welded a gun to the stern, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t. How much did you want for this?”
“I’ll take that Scythkin ship you docked in.”
Reaper balks. That ship means something to him. To both of us. We knew we’d have to trade it, but I don’t think either of us expected it to be so difficult to part with. This is the ship Reaper found his wings on. This was the first ship we bought with our first battle funds. This was the ship which slid through time to visit Earth while it still existed. There are memories piled on memories here - and we’re going to hand it over to this trader.
We look at one another and I
know we’re thinking the same thing. We should just kill this guy and steal his ship.
He knows what we’re thinking too.
“I don’t think so, boys,” he says. “You can pay me out in credits, or you can pay in trade, but you’ll pay, or the security system will take care of you all.”
We hear the sound of a few thousand drones rising simultaneously from their docking points, a legion of airborne fury which can fire at a distance, any one of them capable of taking us to pieces with energy weapons. Scythkin are invulnerable to most physical attacks, but we vaporize like everything else does when exposed to a high charge beam.
Right now, the trader has enough weapons trained on us to vaporize us not only out of existence, but remove us from having been. Hm. I wonder if I’d never been if Earth would still exist. Best not to follow that train of thought for too long.
“It’s just metal and electricity,” I say to Reaper. “It’s not important.”
But it is.
“Tell you what,” Reaper says. “You hold the ship, take the credits we have, and we’ll come back for it when we’re done.”
The trader lets out the kind of snort that tells me he’s about to be very unhelpful and probably not very nice at all. “Do you see a sign over my head that says BROKE SCYTHKIN PAWN AND TRADE?”
“I don’t,” Reaper growls.
“Listen, boys. Give me the ship, or don’t, I don’t care, but I don’t have all day to stand around and chat.”
“Give him the fucking ship already, it’s smaller than this bag,” One grumbles from inside her canvas prison.
There’s another one of those throaty chuckles from the trader, who stands and stretches, dozens of shrunken heads banging against one another with the motions of his grotesque limbs. I thought Scythkin were an ugly species, but this trader has us beat.
“Listen to your bag,” the trader says. “It talks a lot of sense.”
Chapter Six - Ruff