Open The Docks Hazing Out for a Hero

[Tizzi Poof]

It was a glorious day for Tizzi Poof and the seagulls of Bully Harbour. In the wreckage of the Non-Fish Fishstick stand, they basked and squabbled and stuffed themselves. Where once they had been natural enemies, the guttersnipe and the gull, they were allied in their task of cleaning house.

Briefly. So very, very briefly.

It was Tizzi who started it. The feral little scavenger had begun hissing and spitting, war-dancing and challenging the seagulls who were idly pecking. Despite a full belly and a full mouth, and arms full of fishsticks greedily clutched to its chest, Tizzi could not bear the thought of sharing this bounty. It ran back and forth, charging at groups of gulls, scattering them. The gulls, nonplussed, only took off for a moment before settling back down to peck.

Then the Big Gull appeared, and regarded Tizzi, it's fur covered in grease, crumbs from the batter sticking all over it, as a miracle of nature. A walking, talking Non-Fish Fishstick!

And this was how Tizzi found itself flying high above the harbour, its tail caught firmly in the beak of Big Gull. Its armload of fishsticks rained down on the riot below. It took some concentrating, but eventually Tizzi managed to chew up the fishsticks in its mouth and twisted around to bite the neck of its captor. Weasel and Gull spun in the air, both refusing to let go of the other. Feathers disengaged from Big Gull like an explosion of eiderdown.

Big Gull gave up first, but Tizzi didn't. Focusing on flying despite the needle-teeth burrowing into its neck, Big Gull flew higher and higher, until finally -

"Tchk! Tizzi never share! Tizzi is - "

Tizzi is no longer gripping onto Big Gull, Tizzi realized. The weight of the little beast's own hubris brought it tumbling back down to earth, plowing through the cloud of drifting feathers, which stuck to its greasy, matted fur where the fishstick batter hadn't already. Tizzi rolled over, limbs spread wide, catching the wind against its belly and paws, and the feathers did what feathers had evolved to do.

"Tizzi is not falling with style! Tizzi is flying!"

The air filled with excited zheeping as Tizzi performed a loop-de-loop, and promptly crashed into the back of the skull of whoever needed reinforcements the most. This development quite infuriated Tizzi, and the beast's eyes and ears took the brunt of the feral guttersnipe-gull's claws and teeth.

 

[Calara Driftsong]

It was when the next strike grazed Wiley and another left a new gash along Calara's own rudder that she faced awareness of their own mortality with violent certainty. This wasn't a scuffle in the Bilge or a mess hall argument gone overly enthusiastic. The Vulpinists wanted blood and would take it by any means necessary. The debt-collectors may have been less blindly murderous but were no less viciously inclined. The big otter felt a twinge of shame; she should have recognized the full danger sooner. It was one thing for death to be a possibility. It was another thing entirely when it was your opponent's explicit intention.

Calara redirected another questing blade with her buckler and slammed the haft of her javelin against the knee of a Vulpinist who got too close. At least the debt-collectors weren't so focused on anybeast but the Alkamarians. Small blessings.

"Aye, good to move. Best we do it quick-like, I think."

She grinned again, a show of sharp, white teeth with less feral mirth in it now than there had been a minute before. So far she had done what she could to avoid applying lethal force of her own. That wouldn't last. The price they would have to pay to see another day, then.

"Shame we don't have another beast or two at our backs."

Clang. Thock.

One step forward. Then another. Sideways. Backwards.

The fox was clearly an old paw at watching a companion's back, and Calara had done enough of the same that she was more of a boon than a liability to her ally. Yet the odds were terrible and it was only a matter of time before the dice came up adder eyes. They weren't moving fast enough. And it seemed a few of the Vulpinists had marked them as easier targets, isolated as they were from friendlier bodies. Any number of angry foxes were converging on their position and forward progress gave way to desperate defense.

Then, a strange and eerie sound coming from above. Above? Calara had the presence of mind not to spare it a glance. Presence of mind or focused panic, perhaps. The opponent standing in front of her wielded a long saber with a skill and precision that spoke to actual training and he had already carved a half dozen new cuts into Calara's hide.

It did nothing to help him when zheeping chaos struck him from the sky and wreaked bloody mayhem on his eyes and ears.

Calara shouted out a string of curses that could have only been learned over decades on the sea, and the otter felt the tiniest wash of pity for her fallen attacker. The wave of gratitude (and fear) that followed lasted somewhat longer. The creature's timing was impeccable. Now they just had to make sure to keep the critter on their side. Or at least to stay out of its way.

As if sent down from heaven, a fishstick tumbled through the air in a parabola providential enough some beasts might, with straight face, claim a miracle. The bit of mysterious, breaded protein(?) lodged itself just near the pawhold of Calara's buckler, and the otter knew what to do.

"Aye, beastie, fishstick?"

It may or may not have been the sort of thing to bite the paw that fed it, but it was worth a try. It looked very much like the sort of creature to rip reality itself apart in the name of a little bit of food, and so Calara threw the fishstick into the throng of beasts standing most obviously between them and the way away from the docks.

 

[Wiley Briggs]

The docks had passed the point where momentum favored anyone still standing.

What had begun as a furious surge of bodies and blows had thinned into knots of violence that refused to break, each step forward answered by two more beasts surging in from the sides. Wiley felt it in the drag of his boots against the planks, in the way Calara’s movements had shortened and sharpened, less about clearing space now and more about simply keeping it. They were fighting well. Too well, perhaps. Fighting well, but not fast enough.

A blade rang off Calara’s buckler, close enough that the vibration sang up Wiley’s arm as he shifted to cover her flank, shoulder dipping as he checked a fox hard enough to send him stumbling back into another. No time for flourish. No room for pride. Just pressure, measured and relentless.

They were moving too slowly.

The thought came unbidden, unwelcome, and impossible to ignore.

Something shrieked overhead.

Wiley spared it half a glance at most, just long enough to register feathers, flailing limbs, and the unmistakable sound of chaos deciding to take a personal interest.

"Aye," he muttered under his breath as something small, greasy, and furious slammed into a Vulpinist’s face a few paces away, claws and teeth doing what blades could not. "That tracks."

No time to watch it work. No sense pretending it would last.

A fox lunged in too close, eyes wild, swinging without thought. Wiley stepped inside the blow on instinct, shoulder driving up, forearm snapping out in a tight, brutal motion that dropped the beast like a sack of wet sailcloth. The fox hit the boards hard and didn’t get back up.

The flagon bounced once beside him, miraculously intact.

Wiley blinked at it.

The press surged again. Calara shifted. Still no opening.

With a huff of breath that might’ve been a laugh in another life, Wiley scooped up the flagon, tipped it back, and downed the contents in one unceremonious pull. The liquor burned sharp and fast, more defiance than comfort, and he wiped his muzzle with the back of his paw as he tossed the empty aside.

"Right," he said, voice steadied rather than lifted. "Back to it."

He was already moving as he spoke, boots scraping, shoulder settling back into place beside Calara’s, eyes scanning for the next threat. The chaos from above bought them seconds. Maybe half a minute if they were lucky.

Not enough, but it was something.

And for now, something would have to do.

 

[Hashwin 'Hazie' Freemont]

Hazie’s muzzle closed. There was a kind of relief in his eyes, as though his regular flow of chipper banter only existed to fill a preferable silence. He signed back a quick acknowledgment, and took the lead back into the fray. His face resumed a glazed impassivity, though there was something colder about it now blood of Vulpinist, dockworker, sailor and soldier alike mingled on the cobblestones.

Tucking his injured left arm behind his back, Hazie fought one-pawed. In the blur of a few minutes of chaos, the pine marten came mask-to-mask with the fistfighting vigilante who had saved him from the sniper. He returned the fox’s nod, and for a moment there was just the three of them, not a word needing to be said. Then, Hazie noticed that his pugilist ally had brought a friend, a vixen who was having a perfectly reasonable and expected reaction to battle.

An encroaching line of Vulpinists, who had been coming frighteningly close to flanking the whole melee and mopping up everybeast missing pointy ears and bottlebrush tail, were given a surprise practical demonstration in the dangers of ropes under tension. Hazie’s ears and whiskers twitched as he saw foxes go flying - some swept from their paws, others making the jump of their lives from a welt-raising smack to the buttocks.

“That’ll do,” Hazie muttered, before raising his volume to an ear-pounding bellow of command. “SEVENTH! SEVENTH TO ME! CLEAR THE WAY!”

Hazie gestured to his new ally, a hand thrust forward like the chop of a knife, followed by a raised index-claw twirled in a circle, then outstretched claws brought into a fist. Push through and regroup. The direction? Well, even with his cross-fox fur, Wiley Briggs might have been hard to spot in such a piling-on of vulpines. A large otter however…

“Briggs! Otter! We're with you!” Hazie shouted, dropping the formalities as his motley band barraged their way to the woodlander warrior and Navy officer, with only seconds to spare before the Vulpinists overwhelmed their position. Besides the pine marten, he had brought along the wildcat whack-ball star, the caped fist-flinging fox, the vixen with the upturned stomach, and five of his best (and roughest) green-jackets. Hazie smiled, in that untroubled way a young officer does when the enemy misses his shot, and confirms in the young buck’s head that he’s invincible. “We’re almost through! The cat’s deaf and the vixen’s sick, but…”

Hazie’s ‘but’ was interrupted as he caught sight of… It. It was a tiny waif, a delirious speck of energy in twisting musteline form, it was utterly filthy, and it was wrecking somebeast’s face. Time might have been slowing down for Hazie, judging from the bewildered look on the pine marten’s face, as the Non-Fish Fishstick left the big otter’s paw, and twirled end-over-end through the air.

It plonked into the fantastically poofed up, fluffy tail of a fox, and stuck there in its own grease.

Soft tail. Delicious tail?

Hazie’s eyes made contact with Wiley’s, and the corners of his muzzle twitched. “We ought to rescue that little firebrand on the way out, oughtn’t we?”

The pine marten gave one more paw signal, known to all the military beasts present.

Charge!

 

[Lily Lesse]

Lily Lesse still felt dizzy as she was pulled to her footpaws by the wildcat. Only her lingering nausea and sense of being overwhelmed kept her from pushing the cat away with a snarled racial slur. The supremacists on the dock were in chaos, and Lily felt an odd sense of deja vu. Was this how they'd always looked from outside: violent and disorganized? No wonder Scythe was always harping on that the worst enemy of the movement was their own lack of structure. It was a humiliating demonstration of the principle in action.

Taking a deep breath, Lily focused. She'd wound up on the wrong side of the moment, yes, but she just needed to get out and get away. Snarling, she charged at the group, her home-field advantage immediately coming into play. She recognized a number of the Vulpinists, memories of a bum knee or a vicious but slow right hook coming back. She dove in, letting her memories of what some of these males had done to her, what she'd let them do out of a reluctant desire for inclusion plus more than a little fear, fuel her rage as she struck, tore, and bit at them with a fury she'd kept caged for years.

 

[Jill (The Beast)]

Beast didn't have much time to regroup or recoup when, suddenly, the vixen they had just rescued charged madly into the fray. Alarmed, Beast ran after her. Gaining speed, Beast spotted a particularly riled up todd with an axe stalking towards Lily. Locking onto their target, Beast lept through the air, kicking out their leg and slamming their foot into the todd's head before landing behind Lily, watching her back. Raising their fists, Beast swung at anyone who got too close, but more and more of them were coming with weapons. The situation was getting precarious, and fast.

 

[Oreva]

Oreva cheered on the vixen who turned out not to need a weapon after all. The cheer was cut short by a fist plowing into the side of her face from behind her vision. A moment's distraction...

She grabbed the offending beast by the front of their shirt and headbutt them straight in the snout, following it up with a knee to the gut and bodily lifting the creature over her head and throwing it into the crowd.

Oreva did not like being punched.

It took her a moment to realize it was not a fox, but a ferret. She didn't care to understand why this was - she didn't care to understand why it was mainly foxes, or why they had decided she was a target in the first place, or why some of the beasts on her and the marten's side were also foxes. It was a lot of trouble to think about, and Oreva was not a big fan of thinking too deeply. Thinking led to realization, and realization led to anger, and oh no she was doing it, wasn't she?

She spat some blood off to the side, wiped her cheek off on her shoulder, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a stoat jill and a curly-headed rat in fine green uniform. A roar welled up in her throat, and pointing to the two vixens who had rushed off, she signalled her intent to charge; the soldiers charged with her. The docks thudded underfoot, and blood and spittle splattered her face like raindrops. Her fist and whack bat fell a lot harder.

The important thing was space. When there wasn't room for a swing, she was pulling rather than pushing, so they didn't have the room to take a swing at her or those next to her either. And then altogether she was bundling the smaller beasts up like the ferret, using the numbness of pain and frustration and the bitter cold air to crumple them up and hurl them away, and it only took doing this once or twice before those who witnessed it were making quite a lot of space, and this was progress.

It was not long at all before the soldiers had Lily and the Beast's backs, and the drooling, growling, towering tortoiseshell wildcat with a badger's bloodlust glinting in her eyes gave the vixens room in front of themselves to breathe - and take their next swings.

 

[Tizzi Poof]

It was a fox's head whose head had interrupted its flight, and so it was foxes that had Tizzi's ire. Plus, the tall, greyish-brown, roundish weasel-looking one had offered a fishstick. Well, thrown, but that was how most beasts gave Tizzi food. And then it had landed in a fox's tail floof, and memories of joyous moments wrapped in the warm, tumbling fuzzball of winter's molt came rushing back.

Tizzi zheeped with joy and threw itself to the ground, spasming uncontrollably around the feet of the adults. Every time it seemed it would get stepped on, surely... another twist of the spine, a jolt of footpaw, would send its noodle-like body curling around in the opposite direction of danger. It was in this manner that it made its way through the crowd towards the tail dangling the delectable non-fish snack.

For as much height as Tizzi had lost in its fall, the fox gained when Tizzi's jaws clamped around the base of his tail. The vulpinist sailed heads over the crowd, arcing with a whoop, falling and smashing into two of his comrades, knocking all three down. There was a horrible, terrible, wretched scream, a great thrashing of limbs, and Tizzi burst from the cloud of cussing and fisticuffs, holding a prize in its mouth.

It trotted back towards the woodlander, climbed up her back, where it draped itself over her shield shoulder, and spat out the fox's tail, in order to delicately nibble on the fishstick it had now clutched in both tiny paws.

"'Gates! The demon's tore off my prosthetic tail!" came a mournful howl from the collapsed trio of vulpines.

"Since when did you have a prosthetic tail?" was a muffled retort.

A sad whimper: "Now..."

Tizzi grinned at Calara, with a face full of innocence and non-fish pulp. Its teeth were red.

"Poof."

It climbed up to Calara's head and leapt off, back into the fray, where its size meant it was immediately lost track of - save for the occasional yelp and squeal of indignant pain.

 

[Calara Driftsong]

There was an energy as the tide of battle shifted, and Calara rode it like a skiff breasting a wave. The battle wasn't over. They weren't out of the proverbial woods. But what had moments before been grim and hopeless was now exhilarating.

"I'm all for takin' it with us, marten, but I don't think I'd call it a rescue. Not a rescue of the beastie, at any rate."

Any further quibbling was lost in the literal fray. They charged, fierce and ferocious, armed and dangerous and so very close to escaping the docks. It was a truth she'd seen proven again and again: psychological warfare could let you do the same work as a crew twice your size; never underestimate it. And Tizzi Poof was the purest incarnation of psychological warfare the otter had ever seen. She was very, very glad the creature seemed to have decided to be on their side.

What was less certain was whether or not the creature could understand speech. It was worth a try, she supposed.

"Oy, beastie! If'n you come with us, I'll make sure you get all the fishsticks you can fit into your belly!"

 

[Wiley Briggs]

As the fight continued, what had been an organized, snarling wall of foxes moments before was now coming apart at the seams, fear rippling through it in uneven waves. Some fled outright, scrambling over crates and bodies alike. Others fell back together, glancing over their shoulders as if waiting for a signal that never came.

Wiley felt the shift before he fully saw it. Years of decks underfoot had taught him the difference between chaos that burned itself out and chaos that redirected. This was definitely the latter, and they had better take the opportunity while it was being presented to them.

His gaze slid, briefly, from the foxes pressing in front of them to the beasts moving at his back.

Hazie was still signaling his command. Still being obeyed by the Seventh Battalion with undying loyalty. The green-jackets repositioned without hesitation, flowing around one another with practiced ease despite the blood and noise, already angling their movement outward instead of inward. They hadn’t ever panicked. They hadn’t become overcommitted. And they certainly hadn’t looked surprised when the floodgates gave way and the fighting broke out.

"You all were ready for this," Wiley thought, the realization settling heavy and unwelcome in his gut. "Question is… why?"

A sharp, ragged scream cut through the din, high and panicked, and Wiley’s ears snapped toward it on reflex. Every fox instinct in him recoiled at once, tail stiffening, breath catching as he spotted the tiny feral... weaselly...thing with russet fur and bright red blood smeared in tatters around it.

“It tore off my tail!”

For half a heartbeat, cold dread seized him.

Then came the muffled, incredulous reply, shouted over the chaos.

“Since when did you have a prosthetic tail?”

With a flash of relief, Wiley barked out a rough laugh, sharp and sudden, the tension breaking cleanly as the truth snapped into place. His eyes found the flailing fox, and the ragged stump where his brush most certainly should have belonged. He spared a quick glance toward the path of the feral little terror, a flick of his ears and a brief, unmistakable grin offering tacit approval.

“Ye’ call that rag a brush!?” he hollered, voice carrying with a sailor’s practiced ease, mockery sharp as a knife. “It weren’t foolin’ no beast, matey. Ha-harr!”

Wiley’s focus snapped forward again as the pressure thinned ahead of them. This was it. The sliver of space before the dock swallowed itself whole again. He moved without ceremony, planting himself where the path narrowed, shoulders squared to the action.

“Keep it up,” he growled, the word pitched low but carrying all the same. “Don’t stall. Keep pressin’. We’re through if we keep the energy up!”

Whacking the flat of his blade over the rear end of another fleeing Vulpinist who was clutching their clearly broken paw, Wiley cast one last look sideways, eyes catching Hazie’s for the briefest instant, the name Seventh lodging itself firmly in his mind.

"We’ll talk," he thought grimly. "Once we make it out of this, I ain't lettin' ye go without a good 'n' clear explanation. Something smells fishy here, and it ain't the non-fish fishsticks..."

 

[Hashwin 'Hazie' Freemont]

There were no titles that could be conferred on Hazie that would make him untouchable in combat. The Hero of the Imperium might have been stocking a whole Pyrostoat trauma ward (and several private ambulance services) with new patients, but he had a bad left shoulder, and there was a shallow, if nasty cut on his neck that could have been, all arteries considered, much much worse.

Hazie regarded the members of his makeshift squad with a careful eye. His own favourites amongst the 3/7th seemed to be enjoying the brisk refreshment of a morning skirmish after weeks of cabin fever. They’d bonded so closely on the Cahntinent, he had almost been able to forget the differences of social and military rank between them. They’d called themselves Hazie’s Heroes, the little clique of four that had surrounded him, shared fire and food with him, protected him and depended on his protection. Hazie’s Henchbeasts, he sometimes thought to himself privately. There were other less polite monikers for the group amongst the soldiers - but what else was there to do on a long guard shift but gossip?

None of that would matter very soon anyway, Hazie thought.

The tortoiseshell cat was a born warrior. She was tossing beasts like ragdolls, belting out brains and breaking bones. She had responded so effectively to his signaled commands that he felt certain she had military training.

The vixen was both rage and experience. She had recovered from from whatever pre-battle nausea had inflicted her, and was tearing into her foes with tooth and claw with the manic energy of a seasoned Bully Harbour street scrapper. Beside her, the skinny fox in the mask. Iron Mask, as Hazie was coming to call them in his head was harder to read, but what their blows might have lacked in pure muscle power, they more than made up for in precision.

Then there was the other duo - the otter and the thing. Hazie knew Bully Harbour’s urchins could be vicious, but that little kit had torn off a fox’s tail for a fishstick. It was something closer to a shark than a child - food motivated and merciless. The otter herself had been Wiley Briggs’ pick for an ally, and Hazie could see the older officer had made a wise choice - she seemed as trained a warrior as the cat.

Wiley Briggs… Hazie returned Wiley’s look as the pair of them felt as well as saw where there would be a lull in the action. It was enough for the Seventh to hold, and their group of tag-along strangers to make good their escape. The debt-collectors and the beasts that had joined in on some good old fashioned Alkamarian-bashing hadn’t been expecting a battle, and they were crumbling and fleeing in droves. The Vulpinists were harder to crack - apparently their rank and file really did believe this was their moment to defend the Imperium from a foreign invasion.

“Step lively now! Push through!” Hazie called with the airy confidence and well-spoken elocution of a gymnastics coach at an Amaronian boarding school. He signaled to the wildcat that they needed to move double-time.

Briggs had something of the same heart-steadying presence Hazie had, if a different flavour of it. The kind bought with decades of service, rather than the blessings of luck and daring. It was tempting to offload the burden of leadership onto the navy officer, especially as Briggs had seemed so keen to take control of the situation.

But that wasn’t what his troops were waiting for. That wasn’t what this evening’s Smelt ought to be printing. That wasn’t the pine marten the most noble House of Freemont wanted to wrap its thorny arms back around. It wouldn’t do for Hazie to be humble. That would ruin the family’s plans for poor, stupid, heroic Hashwin.

So, Hazie played his part and led from the front, cajoling his friends onwards, and taunting his enemies with debonair humour. The thick of battle became the flanks of a skirmish, and eventually even that became little more than a two-way trickle of fleeing foes, and nosy beasts heading towards the commotion to spectate.

“Let’s not linger,” Hazie cautioned, his head turning this way and that as he squinted at every window and door, his ears pricked forward. He was starting to imagine shadowy shapes squatting on the rooftops behind chimney stacks, foes lurking in every narrow alley they passed, or assassins ready to burst out from covered wagons. The pine marten fell in step with Wiley, and spoke in lower tones, “Afraid my urban warfare’s a tad rusty, Commander. Thank you for the timely extraction. I s’pose we pulled our fair share for the crew of La Tortue as well, determined as they were to make a Merith’s Cove Massacre out of it.”

Hazie lapsed into silence for a moment, his right paw drifting to pad tenderly at his cuts and bruises. His snout wrinkled as they repaid him with stinging and soreness. He adjusted his grip on his khopesh, straightened his back, and raised his tail to a more confident height. His expression smoothed out into unperturbed, almost lazy indifference, even as his attention darted from corner to corner, as the group made their retreat through the narrow streets of the Slups.

 

[Lily Lesse]

As the vulpinists retreated, Lily first had an impulse to give chase; then, as she calmed from her rage, she realized that she might be running with the wrong group. What was she doing on the side of all these 'tids and Kharrie-lovers? What the heck had she gotten herself into? Worse, what would happen when word of what she'd done circulated through the vulpinist community?

She found herself leaning on the fox in the iron mask for support, breathing heavily, trying to provide enough air to her pounding heart and swirling head. She was in for a hard time of it, she was sure; she just hoped that Calaisee didn't hear about this.

 

[Oreva]

Oreva was flagging, the rage and confusion inside that burned so violently starting to sputter without energy to fuel it further. Her arms and paws were cut, something had flew into her face and blackened an eye, and her leg was dripping with blood. A numbness had started to spread as she stumbled forward, half the time using her Whack Bat as a crutch. Her sarong hung from her shoulder in tatters, revealing more than it covered. She looked like a beast from some long distant history, who would stumble from caves in some barren arctic desert and swarm massive fantastic animals with spears and stones to feed on their raw meat.

But the end was in sight. The foxes and other ragabouts had finally decided she wasn't worth the trouble, and all it took was a lunge or a lifting and pointing of the bat to cause them to press back and edge around the group. Forward progress was made away from the docks and into the streets proper.

She found her pace slowing, and that she had dragged to the rear, next to the otter, which was good enough. Now and then she would turn about and roar and flash her fangs, which seemed to have kept most of the riot from breaking off with them. Oreva was used to the occasional whirl in the street. Not the paranoid over-the-shoulder glancing of surreptition, but the necessary, cautious scan of a beast who never knew when a runaway cart was barrelling down the road towards them. Get your leg broken once, shame on you...

Something felt... off.

Things flitted distractingly on the other side of alleyways they briefly passed.

Oreva grunted, yowled, anything to try and get the attention of the group, and then tried to sign to the soldiers with cramping, numb fingers:

[Slow down. Danger. Flanks.]

She pointed at the alleys.

 

[Tizzi Poof]

Tizzi ambled after the group, the promise of every fishstick in the universe hanging heavy in its mind. It was a saunter of a proud warrior, a four-legged strut with a waggle of the neck and head. It had somebeast's ear in its mouth as a prize. Most of the feathers greasily stuck to its fur had slipped off in all the carousing, but a few stuck to the head, giving the creature the look of a dashing avian hunter.

It looked up at the group, the strangeness of them... the otter who had promised the world, the green-suited fighters, the wounded wildcat, the old fox, the young vixens...

"Tchk...?"

Head-tilted, Tizzi sniffed the air. Wait a bit... knew that face. Ain't the world a remarkable place?

Tizzi screeched and bounded towards the group, climbing up Calara's back and depositing the fox's ear on her shoulder. Tizzi patted the otter's head.

"Keep for Tizzi promise. Fishsticks for belly."

And then, stretched to its full height and wobbling as they walked along, it made the calculations for a jump towards the vixen in the mask - the one who had chased after it and its apple the other day. Tizzi had seen her a few times around town, watched as she helped, and fed others. Tizzi, of course, needed no one... but there was something, a strange, inexplicable desire, to say hello, to maybe lick the vixen's ear, nibble her tail, to say: Tizzi remembers the apple.

Tizzi saw something else mid-jump.

It landed on Jill's head with a thump, scrabbled at the mask briefly, pulled its legs underneath, and leapt again - a graceful, soaring leap, towards the alley they were passing. It landed right on the crossbow aimed for Jill. The loud twang of it going off filled the air, and the bolt sailed over the group, missing, as the owner screeched in horror at the sudden flurry of odorous teeth and claws in his face.

The assassin threw the crossbow, Tizzi's footpaw caught in the mechanism, and the little creature sailed with the weapon. Both struck the alley wall, creature first, sandwiched between the weight of the crossbow and the stones. They dropped, and Tizzi lay limp, unmoving, silent. The assassin, weaponless, fled back down the alley.

 

[Jill (The Beast)]

Everything was a blur, a mash of bodies. The stench of sweat, the clatter of weaponry. And then- a child. Not just any child. One that Jill thought she would not see again. What was their name-

"Tizzi?!" Jill called out in alarm as the little- weasel? Stoat? Ferret? The little kit leapt onto her Mask, and promptly leapt off, landing onto a crossbow that had been aimed at her. The assassin misfired, and then to Jill's horror, flung his weapon at the wall with Tizzi still holding onto it.

"What in Hellgates are you doing, that's a child!" Jill yelled over the crowd as the coward fled. She surged forward, rushing over to Tizzi. "Oh, Gods." Jill grabbed the crossbow, noticing Tizzi's footpaw caught in it's mechanisms, and she carefully untangled the kit. She gingerly picked Tizzi up. "Oh no, no... no..." Jill felt tears spilling down her cheeks, glad that Mask was concealing them.

"The kit needs a doctor." Mask said calmly. "Breathe, Jill. Remember your training, your purpose."

"Doctor. Doctor. Hospital." Jill nodded, and stood up, cradling Tizzi in one arm. She took off her scarf, creating a makeshift sling in which she could carry Tizzi and keep her hands free. She turned to see three foxes blocking her path. She didn't have time for this. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Jill lunged forward for the crossbow, yanking a bolt from a fallen rat's back and loading it into the bow.

"GET BACK, YOU DEGENERATES!" Jill snarled, aiming the weapon at the three of them.

"Jill, weapons are tools of an unjust beast." Mask reminded her.

"Shut up, Mask." Jill growled. But her paws trembled. She couldn't bring herself to fire. Letting out a frustrated yell, she chucked the crossbow at the three foxes, before pulling out her grappling claws and jumping up the alley wall, scrambling to the roof and making a mad dash towards the hospital. "Hold on, Tizzi!"

 

[Calara Driftsong]

Calara had not realized that the little creature spoke. Not, at least, until it returned to her shoulder for a moment to pat her head and leave its acquired fox ear for safekeeping. The otter replied by reflex in only way she could. "Promise," and her paw retrieved the gory trophy and slipped it into the pouch at her side.

She recognized the tortoiseshell cat's warning for what it was too late. Too late to see the crossbow. Too late to see the danger for the masked fox who had joined their number. Too late-- the cry that tore from the otter's throat was one of horror and disbelief. She tried to follow the Beast when she broke for where Tizzi lay unmoving on the ground but a pair of vulpinists blocked her path and the time it took her to remove them from it (one with the haft of her javelin, the other with a skull-ringing blow from her buckler) was enough that the masked beast was already halfway to the rooftops by the time she broke through.

The otter swore under her breath and fell back in with the rest of her allies. A quiet, sober voice in the back of her mind reminded her that she had been lucky. So very lucky. The vulpinists and other beligerants could have so easily taken advantage of her lowered guard. She glanced over her shoulder as a momentary lull made it safe enough to do so.

"We're following and giving ground support." The look in her blue eyes was worried and feral and threatening to tip into something very like rage. "Aren't we?"

 

[Wiley Briggs]

The shift came not with a shout or a charge, but with a sharp twang. There was a crack against stone, and a sudden, awful stillness where the little terror had been.

Wiley’s head snapped toward the alley, ears pricked high, breath catching in his chest as his eyes found the crumpled shape pinned beneath wood and iron. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single point, and something cold and instinctive twisted hard in his gut.

“They’re pickin’ us off.”

The words cut low through the noise, not shouted, but carrying all the same.

His gaze swept the alleys, the rooftops, the windows half-hidden behind shutters and shadow. The main fight had broken, yes, but this… this had been waiting behind it.

“We don’t scatter,” he went on, voice firming, iron under salt. “That’s how they finish us.”

The masked fox had the kit. That was enough. It had to be.

Wiley shifted, stepping into the flow of the group rather than ahead of it, turning just enough to catch Calara’s eye, and the others besides.

“Stay tight. Eyes up,” he called, sharper now. “Alleys, roofs, windows. Don’t give ‘em a clean shot! Use the walls, keep movin’. We cover our own, we all get out.”

His blade lifted. Not to strike, but to point the safer line through the narrowing street where cover hugged close and sightlines broke jagged.

The chaos had thinned into something meaner and quieter. Wiley felt it settle into his old bones like the roll before a squall.

As they moved, his eyes slid sideways, finding Hazie at his shoulder. He didn’t slow, nor fully turn, but pitched his voice low enough to keep it between them, steady despite the weight behind it.

“You’ve got some serious enemies,” he muttered. “Just who exactly were we in the middle of there?”

It had been a question burning since the first crack in the line, now sharpened by blood, and bolts, and a child pulled from the dirt.

Ahead, the street bent.

Wiley adjusted his grip, shoulders squaring once more, not to the fight behind them, but to whatever was waiting next. Still, one ear stayed turned toward the pine marten, waiting on the answer.

 

[Hashwin 'Hazie' Freemont]

In seconds, the gutter-kit was on the ground, their masked ally was rushing to the rescue, then climbing up a wall with the nimbleness of a squirrel, over the rooftop and out of sight. Hazie was losing allies fast. He recoiled from the feeling of familiarity, the voice in his head that told him, heavy with cynicism, that this was just like being back in the jungle. Fewer agonising diseases and more fishsticks, but the same jolting sensation in the stomach when a beast you were talking to a second ago disappeared into the stifling thick foliage without a trace.

They had been lucky many times today, but they were still far from safe. There would be no calm, orderly march to the Bilge in the Bucket, Hazie realised. The Vulpinists had sent their most expendable in first - he supposed it fit their sick ideology to weed out the weaklings and strengthen the strain. Most of the foxes they’d torn through so easily were the tourists - disaffected youths, or the mentally deranged that joined any gang that would take them. The true fighting core would be former soldiers and sailors. Todds and vixens who had been sleeping with one eye open and a dagger under the sheets longer than the newest recruits had been alive.

Hazie’s neckfur had started prickling as the big otter warrior turned to look at him and told him they were following in the Mask’s wake, only phrasing a question as an afterthought. The prickling only got worse as he strode alongside Wiley, craning his neck to squint at every window and doorway, his tail flicking in alarm every time he thought he detected movement. All his instincts screamed at him, trap! Yet away from the jungle, in a town that dwarfed the largest settlements of the Cahntinent, there was nothing he could do with that warning, other than trust Wiley, walk forward, and spring the trap. He was used to asymmetric warfare, but he had to know the lay of the land to form a strategy.

“Maybe those thugs really couldn’t tell an Imperial Army uniform from an Alkamarian one, Commander,” Hazie postulated, not looking at the cross-fox as he spoke in terse, quiet tones, his gaze roving over the curving street and all its hiding-places. “You couldn’t take five foxes in this town and not have at least three of them be current or former Navy, Army, or any other service branch. So, we’ve been fighting the statistical two left over who couldn’t tell their tails from their toes. That means a lot of this Vulpine Supremacist gang knew exactly who we were, and let the attack happen anyway.”

Hazie considered his next words carefully. “Perhaps it was a test to see who was worthy to advance in the gang. Or a show of force, a public demonstration that the gang decides who may come and go in Bully Harbour. Perhaps a mix of reasons. If you think it’s because I have personal enemies…”

The pine marten’s muzzle twitched. “I do hate to bring attention to it, Wiley old fellow, but I did say my last name was Freemont. That can sometimes be a liability, and it would certainly have been known across the Ministries that I’d been recalled from the Cahntinent. Incidentally, did you know that the current Minister of Justice is Duke Talinn Ryalor? Funny how we’ve not seen a single Fogey all morning, isn’t it?”

Hazie’s stern look quickly broke into his trademark Hero Grin, the one that said See? I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be worried!

“Don’t mind me, just a bit of dark humour, eh? I’m sure-…”

“Captain!!”

A soldier was running towards them. A fresh-faced todd in a private’s green uniform, the insignia of the 3/7th on his collar. Hazie raised his sword instinctively, his muscles tensing for a fight. The todd’s boots crashed loudly against the cobblestone street as he belted towards the group, eyes wide in fear.

Trap! Who is that?! Hazie’s mind screamed. He raised his sword… No! No, he knew that face, it was just the blood streaking down from a cut on the fox’s forehead that had thrown him off. It was one of his soldiers that they had gotten separated from in the melee. He must have heard Hazie’s voice echoing through the empty street and made a break for it.

“Hicks?!” Hazie called back, perplexed at the todd’s hysterical state. “What’s wrong?! Fall in lad, you’ll be safe with…”

His voice trailed off before he could finish his empty reassurance. Where was Hicks’ weapon? A soldier never relinquished his blade willingly in combat. Why was Hicks running with his arms behind his back? Too late, Hazie saw the ropes tied around the body of the lad whose life was under his command. Too late he realised that the Vulpine Supremacists had gotten to Hicks first, and judged him a traitor to his species. Too late he understood the trap as it was sprung, too late for the poor todd to reach them in time.

“Cap’n-it's-a-bomb-it’s-a-bomb-put-it-out-put-it-OUT!”

Hicks tripped with a scream and fell too far from help, revealing the linen-wrapped powder charges snugly tied behind his back, fuse smoking. Navy powder charges, Hazie thought numbly. The kind they used for a cannon. It would take him three seconds to reach the sobbing soldier as he writhed fruitlessly against his bonds on the ground. He’d sworn by his oath to the lad’s parents to bring him home safe. The fuse would go off in two.

As Hazie tackled the nearest beast into the dip of a filthy Slups gutter and covered them with his body, a memory flashed before his mind’s eye. It was of the first time he’d seen Russ Hicks smile at one of his jokes.

The charges detonated.

 

[Caden S. Freemont]

The riot at the docks caused a shockwave of disruptions through the nearby streets. Foot and porter traffic was stopped and redirected, not by any competent Fogeys trying to prevent loss of life and limb of the citizenry of the city, but rather by sensible beasts simply not wishing to get involved in whatever chaos had ensued. Many of those pushed away from the docks and forced to walk around did not even know exactly what had happened, only that others who had turned and ran advised strongly against going in that direction.

"Complete madness back that way, mate. Best wait a bit before you try the docks," a portly weasel told Caden, thumb over her shoulder as she jogged the opposite direction, wailing child under one arm. Caden frowned and tried to get a good view of what might be happening, but between the crowds pushing against him and low-lying buildings in his line of sight, he could not make out just what had occurred. Just his luck, really. He had received word from a runner that a shipment had come in for him--a new piano to replace his secondhand upright. Prior to it being delivered, the marten wished to inspect it to ensure it had not been damaged in transit. However, it seemed that he would be significantly delayed.

Though part of him wished to delve further, potential violent consequences be damned, the retired mercenary reminded himself he had a daughter at home and a partner and a stable, safe job. He had already been nearly killed several times during the summer by the vulpinists, and the fact that he had been months without incident was a streak of avoiding life-threatening circumstances he thought wise to maintain.

There was nothing for it but to head to the Bilge and wait while enjoying an ale, and perhaps find out just what had happened at the docks. With one paw resting on the hilt of his arming sword (after the incident in the tavern with the vulpinists, he carried it with him anytime he left home), the albino marten picked his way through the streets on a route that avoided the more crowded thoroughfares.

It was when he found himself passing an alleyway that led to another, parallel street, that his hackles began to rise. He heard beasts talking in the opposite street, though they were not loud enough for him to make out their words. A group of five foxes occluded the exit of the alley into that same street. Two had crossbows, three carried swords, all weapons held at the ready, and seemed to be waiting for something. They were not in uniform, nor were they Smudgies. They had the look about them of those who had tried to kill him and Daniil in the tavern. Caden had become wary of armed groups composed soley of foxes, and his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. He should keep walking, he knew. He should not get involved in whatever this was. But there was that pull, his body drawing him instinctively first one step, then two, into the alley behind the foxes. His ears were perked forward, the sudden energy that came before the initiation of a battle coursing through him. Tension brought his hackles fully up.

“Captain!!” The frantic voice rang out from the other street. The foxes in the alley nodded to each other, and Caden could see them tense just the same as he did.

“Hicks?!” Came another voice. Caden slowly drew his sword, still unseen by the foxes. “What’s wrong?! Fall in lad, you’ll be safe with…”

“Cap’n-it's-a-bomb-it’s-a-bomb-put-it-out-put-it-OUT!”

Caden's ears flattened. He saw the foxes duck away from the entrance of the alley, covering their ears. When the explosion rocked through the street, Caden felt it in his chest and in his head like a hammer. Though he had both distance and structures between him and the concussive blast, the marten still had to steady himself on the wall and draw a long breath after the shockwave had passed. His burn scars twinged, as though in sympathetic memory to having been on the receiving end of such a blast at the Opera. Dust and smoke filled the street, billowing into the alley.

In the ringing silence after the explosion, he heard the foxes speak to one another, harsh laughter cutting through to reach him.

"Slaughter the 'tids and species traitors!"

"I don't have a marten tail yet for my collection, so don't ruin it!"

Crossbows loaded, swords at the ready, they ducked out of the alleyway into the street. Behind them came a white-furred spectre dressed in black, red eyes glinting with fury.

The five foxes descended upon those left alive in the alley, bolts shooting through the haze, swords drawn as they ran at whoever was still standing, hoping to catch the victims by surprise. Caden hit one of the bowbeasts first, nearly silent in his execution of the fox, sword piercing his spine and slamming through his chest from behind. Unfortunately the clatter of the fox's crossbow echoed through the alley, but the marten was already on the move through the haze, and when the other bowbeast turned to aim for his fleeting figure, he was out of sight once more, moving towards the swordsbeast ahead of him.

 

[Lily Lesse]

Chaos. Chaos and blood and horror. Lily Lesse felt her ears ringing in the smoke and something on her face. Blood, and an ear draped across her snout. Not her own, nor attached to its owner. She stood, numb, in the street as her hearing and the smoke both slowly cleared, letting her see the vulpinists coming out of the alley. They'd done this, Lily realized. This was cowardice. First shooting a child - a 'tid pup, yes, but still - from afar, then using explosives. Lily had heard tales about Ripper McGnaw, who had been martyred a the Freedom anti-Ryalor rally back in '34 when someone planted explosives under the stage. Every time the method of assassination was decried as cowardly. Now they did this?

Lily had a knife in her paw. She felt like she was outside of her body as she ran at the swordbeast in the lead, her blade coming up to parry the blow as she slipped into his range, feral rage boiling up within her. A dim part of him recognized her from her old gang, recalling past abuses and degredations he'd put her through, that they'd all partaken in because no one would stop them; there was no honor to constrain them then, just as it didn't now. Her mind watched from outside herself as she tilted her head, opened her jaws, and closed her teeth around his throat. Dimly she registered the taste of blood. As she tore through fur and flesh, she could only think that it tasted like validation.