An HFY Tale: Drop Pod Green

Rhidi sighed out happily, looking around at her new NCO barracks room.

While she may have only been a Corporal, she was a Dropper Corporal, which rewarded her with a higher status than Regs that bore the same rank as her. This meant that she was able to enjoy her own personal barracks room that had a couch, a bed, a desk, and its own kitchenette.

This did not mean she was usually alone, as female Kafya were always hanging out or going back and forth from the room while Rhidi was there, including their usual movie nights. Morris also made many appearances at her new barracks room, but that involved shooing a bunch of giggling Kafya out of the way and sweeping the place for any bugs that they may have installed.

While not luxurious by most metrics, having a queen sized bed to share with Morris felt like the most decadent thing in the world to her after sharing her little berthing on the Wild hunt.

Rhidi looked at her data-slate and scrolled through the calendar, noticing that their shadow arrival was due up in a few hours. For some reason, the UAA military command was making each unit stay quiet for two weeks upon arrival back at Earth. This had included their entire fleet having to make their own arrival into Earth’s voidspace on their own skip-drives, travelling around the dark side of the Moon and then arriving at a military dock with electronic warfare destroyers flanking them.

The whole thing had felt rather odd to Rhidi, but she was ready to just get back down to Earth and relax for a little while.

Two weeks of base-arrest passed by quickly thanks to Morris… entertaining her, movie nights with the female Kafya, as well as just sleeping in late and going to the gym in the evenings.

Honestly, she was quite ready to go and see her family, as she was sure that by this time, her mother was likely tuned up like an explosive.

Rhidi sat on her couch, which still smelled like Inthur and Quinnit after their sweaty little battle playing a game called “smash brothers”, and idly chewed on a protein bar as she watched the clock.

Her family had been rather quiet while she was up in space, except for her sister anyway, and she was wondering what they were up to.

She had expected a slew of angry messages from her mother, or at least a message or two from her father, but they had been oddly quiet.

Tyllia had been talking back and forth with Rhidi since she had left, including the two discussing “horror subjects”. According to Tyllia, she was pretty sure that someone named “Carmine” was either a vampire or a werewolf, which caused the two of them to deep dive the subject together.

Morris being rather shady about the idea of vampires caused Rhidi’s blood pressure to skyrocket at the thought of a vampire being near her sister, or just the threat of a possible vampire at the least. She had tried everything she could to find out who Carmine was, but all she could find out was that he was some kind of government official that had a partner named “Kindred”.

She had grown rather bored of the whole thing and instead just talked shop with Tyllia, though she wouldn’t say much about their parents except that “they were fine”. To stave off boredom, Tyllia had joined up with her little white fur friend in some kind of quasi-government role, something that caught Rhidi by surprise.

Tyllia had never been one for paperwork… or helping anyone with anything, really, so hearing that she was heading up the fashion and appointment department for some random, scarred by white fur threw her for a loop.

It was still really annoying how long it took to get the messages in the first place. Communications between tears in reality was hard enough as it was, but having to wait for communications relays to bounce things around was a pain in the neck. Micro-stations that were purely communications arrays were becoming quite common, but they had their own side effects.

Space roamers, or “the planetless” as some races called them, were either disjointed children of the stars without a world to call home, or had fled their home planet for one reason or another. To gain signal for their own ships, they tended to loiter around the micro-stations, which had an unfortunate tendency to turn into black markets.

This forced the communication stations to have a small police force, which of course butted heads with those that ran the black markets, which in turn caused a bit of drama resulting in more police and roamers to arrive. The whole thing caused each station to turn into a weird neutral zone, the station itself off-limits and doing its duty, but causing nano-stations to be built around the main station.

Offering food stalls, berthings, bars, dance houses, and the best nightlife around, nano-stations were an oasis to space roamers and pirates, which in turn just caused the infection to grow. The UAA had far less patience for nano-stations, and when one well known micro-station named “Deep Throat” began to become threatened by its nano-stations… they took a few of them to the sword.

Destroyers and gun boats identified the ones most infected by pirates and black market runners, and blew them to slag, stringing the frozen bodies by cables across the perimeter of the communication station as a warning.

To say that Human communication stations were treated differently would be an understatement, and nano-stations that surrounded them had their own ramshackle police force to make sure they didn’t end up as frozen bodies tied to cables.

Such a thing would have horrified Rhidi before she had joined up in the UAA Army, but now… now she saw it as a justified warning.

A lot of things that would have worried Rhidi, or caused her pause, now didn’t affect her at all. The longer she spent with Humans, the more she realized just how weak the other civilizations were.

Humans had the ability to just… make the hard decision, the one that always got the point across without any pussy-footing about feelings, or how others would think about it. In their past, Humans had nailed the hides or bodies of predators to fence posts, trees, or hung them from fencing to make sure those predators knew they weren’t welcomed. On their castles of old, heads had been placed upon spikes, and that tradition did not fade in time.

Humans decorating the walls of military bases with Ur heads had been an issue since they arrived, causing much distress in the other races that fought beside them. Human armor crews went as far as to chain dead Ur bodies atop the guards of their tracks, while rapid assault armor units had gone as far as to chain living Ur to the front of their vehicles. This had been seen as barbaric, but there was a reason why anyone who knew of Humans called them the Butcherers of Iron.

These screaming, cursing Ur “survivors” were the first thing Ur warriors heard or saw as the sounds of roaring engines split the air, the Human crews preparing to fight and die within the armored vehicles that ferried them to their enemy.

Effective, so much so that the Ur themselves did not find comfort from their cybernetic bodies. The Humans reached past the steel, wire, and feathers to wrap their spectral fingers around the remnants of their souls, one of the only races the Ur dreaded to meet.

Rhidi looked at the clock, then stood with a sigh, slapping the tops of her thighs with her hands.

She would go and see Tyllia after seeing her mother and father. It would be nice to speak without waiting for a relay to piece their messages together.

Figuring she should wear something other than panties and a tank top to go see her parents, Rhidi slipped on a pair of jeans, buttoned the strap above her tail, then pulled on a lightweight milkmaid top.

The hem stopped right along the waist of her jeans, and was covered in a little rodent monster that Humans were quite fond of. Rhidi pulled the top out, looking down at the rodent’s jagged tail and red cheeks, and smirked.

“Either this thing is extinct or Humans made it up like they did their monsters.” Rhidi murmured, pulling on a light pair of paw boots before grabbing the rest of her things to toss into a sling bag.

She figured that her mother would at least be distracted by her fashion choices, or at least hoped she would.

Rhidi hopped out of her barracks room, stepped down the stairs, and made her way along the sidewalk that ran around the NCO barracks building.

Rhidi smiled and waved to the other NCOs who saw her, as Reg Sergeant and Staff Sergeants were always friendly to her and likely to chat. The Reg Corporals however avoided her gaze, either pretending they were on their data-slates or suddenly interested in the grass below their boots.

They may have all been Corporals, but she was a Dropper Corporal, which means she outranked them in a way that no manual could explain.

She pulled out her data-slate and tried to link up with a tarry-lift, but none of them were available. Rhidi checked their main site and they were all down for some kind of AI holiday, and she let out an annoyed groan.

As Rhidi made her way down the sidewalk, she spied a familiar Kafya tinkering in the adjacent parking lot, the olive drab green Yiwa having gotten a new mode of transportation.

Rhidi jogged over, sling bag jostling against her hip as she called out to the Kafya. “Is that what all that paperwork you put in was for?!”

Yiwa looked up from her BMW R12, perking her ears up past the bends in her ears with a smile. “Hallo Corporal! Isn’t she pretty?!”

“It only has two wheels!” Rhidi exclaimed, jogging up to the motorcycle as Yiwa stood and rubbed her hands with an oily cloth. “The fuck are you going to do with only two wheels?”

Yiwa shrugged. “Ride it, of course.”

Rhidi laughed as she looked down at the old heritage motorcycle; These were known as “bumble beemers”, painted black with yellow pinstriping that ran along the bike in artistic lines. The vehicle was archaic, two wheelswith an engine design that relied on two opposing pistons in a horizontal position. A pair of handlebars was the only way to steer it, with nothing to protect the rider from the world should the world act upon them.

“This thing is going to kill you, Private.” Rhidi chuckled, bending down to sniff lightly near a cap. “And it runs on pre-space liquid fuel? This isn’t a warmachine, how do you know it’s not going to just blow up on you? You’re sitting right on top of the engine!”

“Oh please!” Yiwa guffawed, tossing the rag into one of the bike’s softshell saddle bags. “Humans have been riding these since before and after the Pactless invasion! This model is based off of one from that time!”

Rhidi furrowed her brows as she glanced up at Yiwa, then back down at the bike as she stood up straight. “Who the hell is making a vehicle that existed before their first invasion?”

“Little group of AI that have a few factories around Earth.” Yiwa said matter of factly, dusting off her pawed hands with a few quick swipes. “I was able to get this for only ten thousand Earth credit-dollar-thingies!”

Rhidi stared wide eyed at Yiwa as she crossed her arms and held the palm of a hand to her mouth; Ten thousand Earth dollars for an E-2 was not a small amount of money, and Yiwa, coming from a poorer planet with only a bag of clothes to her name and a can-do-attitude, likely didn’t have much money left in her account after such a purchase and helping out her parents.

“Yiwa… how much money do you have left in your account?” Rhidi muffedly asked into her palm, blinking her eyes at the olive drab Kafya.

Yiwa suddenly looked worried, her smile faltering at the edges as she quickly switched subjects, gesturing to the R12. “Did you know these things have built-in speakers?! The bike is quite smart, see, and the modern electronic suite can link up with my data-slate and play any music I que up!”

“... Yiwa, how much-”

“And! And it has a modern gyroscope in it! Makes it waaay harder to fall over and it can stand up all on its own! Watch!”

Rhidi continued to look at Yiwa as the Kafya stood the motorcycle up, the gyro humming to life and keeping it standing straight up and down with ease.

“Yeeaaahh! Look at that!” Yiwa cried out with extra enthusiasm, all to hopefully mask her sudden unease. Her ears were now fully rigid with nerves as she wilted under the iron gaze of Rhidi. “S-Safe as could be! As far as… m-motorcycles… go.”

Yiwa slowly raised her gaze with haltering eyes as she met Rhidi’s, her Corporal’s eyebrows raised as high as they could go and mouth still hidden behind her angled palm.

Yiwa lightly tapped the pads of her fingers together, then rubbed her wrists together at chin level.

Rhidi recognized the slang gesture, having worked beside quite a few fringe-world Kafya during her time in the Kafyan military. Yiwa was asking for silent forgiveness, a “I’m sorry!” without having to directly address what she was sorry for.

“How much money do you have left?” Rhidi said, less a question and more a demand.

Yiwa looked at the bike, to Rhidi, then to the ground with a ducked head, rubbing her wrists near her ears now.

“Fuck’s sakes…” Rhidi growled, now rubbing at her temples with a spread thumb and middle minger. “How bad is it?”

“... Payday is soon…” Yiwa said quietly, her ears now flat and tail lightly tucking. “I was just… we just got back, and I had lots of dollary-ditties…”

Rhidi leaned her head back, looking up into the lovely blue sky with a sigh, then looked back at Yiwa. “While the money is yours, you still have to maintain a balance that will allow you to take care of emergencies.”

Yiwa’s green tail swished back and forth with hope. “But the UAA takes care of medical, and food! I have my uniforms, and the insurance is really cheap!”

“You still need to keep money around for your family.” Rhidi chided, reaching forward and taking the center of the Kafya’s nose between her thumb and forefinger. “For clothes, for shoes, for things the Army doesn’t provide.”

Yiwa squeezed her eyes shut, sagging at the shoulders and taking her “punishment” from Rhidi. Getting pinched on the philtrum was the kind of reprimand a child would get as a kitling, and getting it done as an adult was akin to sending a full grown Human to go and sit in the corner.

“At least you bought it outright and didn’t get locked into some fucking loan like the rest of the Kafya on this base have.” Rhidi said with a bite to her voice, though she was impressed that the bike was still standing upright, and let go of Yiwa’s nose. “There’s some male Reg that is paying nearly thirty percent in interest on a brand new truck. Honestly, why do Humans still have these stupid things?”

Rhidi turned and gestured to the parking lot next to them. “Trucks, cars, motorcycles, SUV’s, why not just have a public transit system like the rest of the races?”

“Not as fun.” Yiwa said quietly, then cracked a smile as Rhidi’s yellow tail gave an angry swish.

… She had a point, and Rhidi didn’t like it.

“Can that stupid thing carry two?” Rhidi asked, turning to look over her shoulder. “I see the seat is long.”

Yiwa nodded happily, rapidly stomping her feet in excitement. “It does! I just finished the last of my classes this morning!”

“You haven’t ridden this thing seriously yet?” Rhidi asked, now unsure about the question she had been wanting to ask.

Yiwa blew air past her teeth. “Pssh! This thing is easy pissy! Besides, it was the classes the UAA Humans make their soldiers do, drove around cones, studied signs, all that good stuff.”

“Easy peasy, Private.” Rhidi rumbled in her throat. She had been planning to walk to her father’s new house, which she found odd that he had in the first place, but a ride would be faster. “Mmm… can you give me a ride to my dad’s place?”

“HELL YEAH I CAN!”Yiwa screamed with balled fists in front of her chin, but the look from Rhidi made her draw back and clear her throat. “... I mean, yeah, sure, no problem.”

Rhidi considered the long way about this, but there still weren’t any tarry-lifts available for the entire day.

“Just… don’t get us killed, okay?” Rhidi asked lowly, but the replying giggle from Yiwa did not build her confidence.

After having to manually input the address into Yiwa’s motorcycle with voice commands, due to the holiday, Yiwa pulled on her helmet and got onto the bike with a whoop.

Rhidi swung her leg over the bike and sat on the seat behind Yiwa, the bike’s suspension automatically adjusting to it detecting a passenger.

“When we get moving, the gyro is going to turn off so we can lean into turns.” Yiwa said through her helmet, then patted her chest. “Wrap your arms around me and snug up close!”

Rhidi wrinkled her nose. “Wrap my arms around you?”

“Yeah! Keeps all the weight center.”

“Can’t I just put them on the seat? Or my thighs?”

“It’s all about safety, Corporal!”

Rhidi made a low, angry noise in her throat, but shifted up until her thighs were snug against Yiwa’s buttocks and thighs. She then wrapped her arms loosely around the Kafya’s chest, and Rhidi felt an awkward flush as she lightly jostled Yiwa’s breasts.

“Yokie dokie!” Yiwa called out, kicking the unused stand back into place and then clicking the BMW into first gear. “Off we go!”

The horizontally opposed, flat-twin cylinder motor hummed to life with a twist of the throttle, and Rhidi’s bent ears perked up in alarm as the motorcycle surged forward.

Despite Yiwa’s excellent score in her classes, she craved speed like any other Human on a motorcycle, quickly clicking through the gears as she exited out onto the roadway.

Wind licked and pulled at Rhidi as she squinted, barring her fangs as Yiwa leaned hard into a wide turn.

“Slow down, Private!” Rhidi bellowed, her tail fluttering behind her as her bag thudded against her thigh in the wind. “The speed limit is forty, not fifty five!”

Yiwa, unable to turn her head towards Rhidi in order to watch the road, laughed happily in her helmet as she clicked up into another gear, twisting the throttle with a growl of the engine. “Not to worry Corporal, I qualified for a speed endorsement!”

“Why the fuck would they even offer that?!” Ridi howled as Yiwa pushed the bike up to sixty miles per hour, the olive drab Kafya laughing under her helmet as the wind grabbed at them.

As Yiwa leaned left and right through vehicles on the road, Rhidi began to fully hug the Kafya in front of her and kept her boots planted on the pegs. “You can’t do that!”

“Of course I can!” Yiwa called back. “I got a filtering endorsement!”

“This is bullshit!” Rhidi screamed as Yiwa took them between two large trucks, the noise deafening as Rhidi pinned her ears back. “How many fucking endorsements do you maniacs even need?!”

Yiwa down shifted and zipped forward behind a cattle car, quickly looping around it to avoid traffic on the other side. “About ten! I didn’t manage to qualify for the stunt endorsement, but I may go back-”

“You are banned from getting that endorsement!” Rhidi screeched, shrinking into Yiwa as she slipped along behind two cars and shot between a truck along the dotted lines. “If you get that endorsement, I am going to beat your ass!”

Yiwa, her Kafyan ear-helmet shaking back and forth with her giggles, nodded her head. “Yes, Corporal!”

By the time Yiwa brought the bike to a calm, gentle stop in front of Kohan’s house, Rhidi had her face down in Yiwa’s shoulder and she was shaking like a leaf.

Careening through the atmosphere in a drop pod? Rhidi could handle that while chewing bubble gum.

Careening through traffic with only Yiwa to keep them alive?...

Rhidi was not fond of the experience.

As the BMW’s gyroscope kicked into action and kept the bike upright, Rhidi slowly slipped off of it with faltering steps, correcting her twisted milkmaid top and then checking her bag with shaking fingers.

“Everything still there?” Yiwa asked, tilting up the visor of her helmet and peering at Rhidi with smiling eyes.

Rhidi looked at Yiwa with hot, wide eyes. “You are lucky I’m not making you do pushups in front of my dad’s house, Private.”

“Just making sure nothing fell out along the way, Corporal…” Yiwa said innocently, though the wag in her green tail told Rhidi she rather enjoyed her discomfort.

Rhidi glared back at Yiwa while the bike rumbled beneath her, then pointed down the roadway angrily. “Go away.”

“Tally ho!” Yiwa answered cheerfully, clicking the bike into first and then zipping down the road with a roar of the engine.

Rhidi watched her go, then shook her head. “Fool ass fringe-furs…”

Regaining her nerves as she walked up to the front door of her father’s house, Rhidi looked around; The area was built up in the styles of Officer’s housing with non-crowded homes, large yards, big garages, two stories, the usual. Enlisted homes on the base were mostly apartments or duplexes, while Non-Commissioned Officers got their own, single story home in tightly packed neighbourhoods.

“I’m sure it’s not enough for my mother, regardless.” Rhidi muttered, remembering the kinds of places that she used to live in when she was young.

When Kohan and Icirit had been paired for breeding, they had at first hated each other. Her father loved telling the story of how he had to convince her mother to actually mate with him despite the supplements given to the pair of them, having to lure the icy yellow fur to his bed with actual romance and courting.

Rhidi and her sister Tyllia always felt embarrassed when he would tell the story, and he tended to tell it a lot.

Once Icirit understood who Kohan was, they produced Rhidi and Tyllia and were then halted from any further mating from governmental oversight.

It was always funny to Rhidi how Humans produced children at a pace that would likely make the Elder Councils sick, while the Kafya were strictly controlled in population. Too many yellow furs, and there were power struggles. Too few brown furs, and the military would struggle to maintain strong recruits. Too few of the lower colors, and there would be a worker shortage.

Rhidi remembered one of her old friends from childhood, a red fur, having given birth to over eight children, and laughed about it when Rhidi met her before she shipped out during the Ur War.

“Sometimes it feels like all I do is make children!” She had laughed over a light lunch of dessert cubes. “At this point, I don’t think I’ll get any rest until they finally reduce my body to ashes.”

Rhidi grimaced to herself as she mounted the steps to the door, looking up at the clear, blue sky. She was probably on her tenth kid by now, still getting her little stipend from the local branch of the Elder Councils, producing kids just to be another cog in a rigged machine…

The thought of her old home, the things she had seen… it made her stomach pull with a string of old hate.

They had wanted her to be a nurse, to look pretty in front of the cameras and wear her pretty little uniform in front of the wounded and dying. Red furs never saw elevation or rest, always churned to meat with the brown furs in the military, police, or emergency services. Oranges, grays, and the sky colors being passed over for promotions just for being “mixed”, or being left in the shadows of the machine. Then the anguish of the blacks, greens, and blues, toiling under the weight of the yellows, purples, golds, and the Simaphores with their metallic fur.

Now, her people could do whatever they pleased under Human rule, or allegiance, if it made for a better word. Yellow furs were in the military rubbing shoulders with every shade under the Kafyan moon, and any job was open to any color.

With the Elder Councils, it was always “are you allowed?”

Here, with Humans, it was only “do you have the iron?”

Rhidi breathed in deep through her nose, then knocked on the door with a rap of her knuckles. A small camera pod popped out from above the doorframe, peered down at her, then sucked back into its hidey hole.

After a few seconds, the door flew open and her father rushed out, letting out a happy laugh and wrapping his daughter up in his arms.

“D-Dad!” Rhidi stammered as Kohan continued to laugh, spinning around on the porch with a trail of their tails. “Put me down!”

“Rhidi!” Kohan gleefully cried, setting Rhidi down onto her feet and then planting a great kiss on her forehead. “I’ve been waiting forever for you to stop by! Why on Earth did they keep you on lock down for so long?!”

Rhidi giggled, not surprised in the least that her father had taken up Human customs, but placed her forehead against her father’s chest in Kafyan greeting. “I dunno dad, I’m only a Corporal. They don’t tell me any more than they tell the junior enlisted.”

“An aurly?” Kohan asked, surprised that Rhidi had greeted him in the Kafyan fashion of child to father. “Come now, we’re on Earth! It’s not like you used that greeting when I got here anyway! Come now, give your father a kiss!”

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Rhidi looked at her dad with surly eyes as he turned his face, pointing to his cheek with a clawed finger. “Dad.”

“Come on, all the Humans do it.”

“Why are you so weird?”

“I’m not weird, you’re the one being weird.”

“Ugh.”

Rhidi looked left and right, making sure that no one was watching, then gave her father a brief peck on the cheek. It felt weird, since the only kissing she was doing involved Morris, and she was not sure if she was a fan of her father going both paws first into Human customs.

Kohan laughed, hugging Rhidi again and burying his nose in her neck as he gently rocked her back and forth. Rhidi held him as well, letting out a contended sigh as she hugged her father tightly.

“You’ve been gone for too long, daughter.” Kohan murmured, leaning back with a tilt of the head as he took in his daughter again. She looked just as tough as she had before, if tired, and his pearl eyes shined with the color of her fur. “And something tells me you won’t be hanging around for much longer either.”

“Such is the business of war, father.” Rhidi murmured.

Kohan chuckled, reaching up and bending Rhidi’s helmet-turned ears straight. “I would agree. I can’t believe they won’t let you have longer ears on your helmets. You look like a hound.”

“A war hound.”

Kohan and Rhidi turned to look at the door of the home, and Rhidi’s hackles raised immediately.

Icirit observed her daughter from where she leaned against the door frame, purple eyes hooded, with a glass of wine in one clawed hand while the other was crossed under her chest.

Rhidi saw with narrowed eyes that her mother was as fashion centered as ever; The Kafya was wearing an absurdly intricately patterned pair of yoga pants, pure sheepskin slippers made for Kafyan feet, and a floral keyhole top that likely costed more than what most Humans make in a month.

“As fashionable as ever, mother.” Rhidi said lowly, even as Kohan smoothed down her hackles. “Didn’t take long for you to get into Earthen leather.”

Icirit sniffed, leaning off the door frame with a light ‘tack’ of her slippers. “I’ve always wanted to try it, we were never able to truly dabble with the edgier materials for fashion. You somehow look like more of a brute than when you assaulted me.”

“Treasures, please,” Kohan said soothingly, reaching over and also smoothing down his wife’s hackles, “Let’s not ruin such a day! First a visit from our Tyllia and now Rhidi! We should be celebrating!”

“Celebrating my arrival or mother’s release?” Rhidi asked, still glaring at Icirit. “Definitely not her sobriety…”

A low growl rumbled from Icirit’s throat as her wine glass creaked with the stress of her grip growing. “You would be drinking too if you knew-”

“Icirit.” Kohan said pointedly, rounding on his wife with a speed that Rhidi had never seen before.

Rhidi’s ears perked and her face lost its glare at the same time as her mother’s, though likely for different reasons.

“Of course, anshuki.” Icirit said quietly, her attempts to wrangle her anger open on her face and body.

Kohan glanced at Rhidi, tapped the side of her nose once, and she nodded.

“Come, let’s go inside and not waste this day!” Kohan said, his voice reverting back to its brightness as he pulled both Kafyan women close to his side. “We have beer and wine to drink, and jerky to eat!”

As the door shut automatically behind them, Rhidi raised a brow. “Jerky?”

“Your father has been spending his free time making… snacks.” Icirit murmured, lightly bumping her hip against Kohan's as she briefly sipped her wine. “Amongst other things.”

“You’re so bored you’ve taken up hobbies?” Rhidi asked, though she did catch a glance that her mother and father shared. She narrowed her eyes, moving one of her padded fingers from side to side between the two. “What… what was that?”

“What was what?” Icirit asked innocently, sipping from her wine again as Kohan chuckled.

Rhidi scrunched up her face as Kohan lightly pinched at Icirit’s flanks, making the yellow Kafya giggle and shove his hand away.

“Oh, ew!” Rhidi gasped, nose and eyes still scrunched in disgust. “Aren’t you two too old for that kind of stuff?!”

“Too old?” Icirit replied with ice on her voice. “I’m not too old at all! I could have six more children if I wanted to, easily!”

Kohan politely looked up at the ceiling as they entered the large, expensive kitchen and released them both from his arms. He moved forward, opening the double door fridge to grab a beer for his daughter.

“Six more children?! You barely managed two!” Rhidi shouted, gesturing with both pawed hands at herself. “Hell, you barely survived me! They had to give you medication to deal with your depression!”

Icirit scoffed, moving multiple trays of Kohan's creations out of the way so her wine glass had countertop space. “I was only depressed because of how brutish you were! I was hoping for a refined, lithe, fine boned child, and I created a…” It was Icirit’s turn to scrunch up her face, as if the word was foul on her tongue. “A tomboy!”

“What is wrong with that?!” Rhidi cried out, though the jerky on the counter top did smell rather good, so she popped a piece into her mouth. “Dad, what’s wrong with a tomboy daughter?!”

“Nothing, my love.” Kohan replied in an even tone, popping the cap off of a beer and handing it to his daughter. “Nothing at all. Besides, your mother found solace in Tyllia.”

“Because Tyllia wore what I made her, and didn’t wear cartoon animal shirts.” Icirit mused, then sucked on her teeth in a click of noise as she watched Rhidi glug her beer, rolling her eyes. “Women drink wine.”

“Yeah, but soldiers drink beer.” Rhidi quipped back, which provoked a laugh from Kohan and a clink of his bottle against hers.

“Ugh.” Icirit scoffed in disgust, sipping from her wine as the two laughed. “I still can’t believe your sister is managing that little roughed up white fur and that man-handed brown fur. I tried to get her to go into fashion consultation with me, and she flat out refused. Refused! Said she would rather create new customs and ‘breathe life into the old ways’! It’s absurd.”

Kohan, striding behind his daughter and depositing more beef jerky into her paw, raised his brows at Icirit. “You didn’t seem to mind us going back to the old ways. Especially last Friday.”

Icirit smiled indulgently at her husband, winking at him in order to make her daughter's skin crawl. “There are… some positives, I suppose. House arrest did get rather boring.”

“You two are fucking gross.” Rhidi grumbled, closing her eyes in disgust as Kohan winked back at his wife. “Seriously, if you make another kid at this age I’m going to file a complaint.”

“We’re not old!” Icirit cried out again, her smile incredulous. “I am well within breeding age for a Kafya! There are black furs that had babies well into sixty seasons of age! Besides, eating all this Human food has done something to us, and I can see why you didn’t want to go back, Rhidi.”

“I’ll say…” Kohan murmured, walking by Icirit and pinching her on the buttocks.

Icirit shrieked girlishly and swatted Kohan on the shoulder, the two laughing while Rhidi rested her elbows on the island of the kitchen.

Rhidi lightly rubbed at a temple as she let out a sigh, swirling her beer. “I will kill myself right here in this kitchen, I swear it.”

“Oh do be quiet.” Icirit snapped with a rumble to Rhidi, though her daughter was unable to see her lightly drag her nails along the seat of Kohan’s pants from below the counter. “You should be happy!”

“Did that slam into the mud knock something in your head loose?” Rhidi asked with open disdain, taking another long sip of her beer before leaning back up. “I remember for years dad would have to beg and use actual foreplay just to get a cuddle with you, and now you two are necking in the kitchen like newly weds? I used to get so angry when you wouldn’t treat dad right, and now you’re… actually, I don’t want to think about it.”

Icirit’s smile crawled along her bright teeth like a snare line, and now it was her turn to rest her elbows on the island’s counter top. “It’s probably for the best that you don’t. I’ve been reading about Humans and all that, started on house arrest, and it was fascinating to learn what one could do with lips and tongue-”

“NO!” Rhidi screamed, recoiling from her mother and turning fully around while her father belly laughed by the fridge. “Oh, my gawd, shut up! I don’t want to hear about my mother-”

“What? Giving blowjobs to your father?” Icirit asked with a devilish flick of her tail. “Oh do grow up Rhidi, you’re a soldier that drinks beer, you’ve probably given more of them than me by now.”

Rhidi clutched at the sides of her face, turning to her blushing and laughing father with a crazed look. “Make her shut up! Please make her shut up!”

This only made Kohan laugh harder, wiping at his eyes with a yellow knuckle as his wife grinned at Rhidi wickedly.

“My love, please, you’re doing this on purpose.” Kohan said airily as he held a hand to his sides, the other gesturing to Rhidi with a beer bottle. “I think that is enough revenge for your mud plunge.”

Icirit pursed her lips, her eyebrows drawn together curiously. “I do wonder what our daughter has been up to, though. I’m sure you smell the Human male on her as much as I do, and it’s more than cologne from hugging.”

Rhidi froze mid step, her eyes opening wide.

“Darling, there is no need to bring that up. I’m sure by now that she is nose-blind to it.” Kohan said in a chastising manner. “Now you’re just trying to give her a heart attack.”

Icirit, going for the final knife plunge of her revenge, tilted her head prettily and rested it on her palm. “Bring up what? Morris?”

The way Rhidi’s heart froze in her chest nearly made her head fuzzy.

Morris had been her little secret for so long, and while she had tried to tell her father about him long ago in the museum, she had made no mention of him to Tyllia, let alone Icirit.

“... Who?” Rhidi asked weakly, trying one last desperate attempt to perhaps play this off as if she didn’t know what they were talking about.

Kohan pulled another beer from the fridge, leveling his eyes at his wife as he gave her a hard measure of side-eye. “We had agreed to let her come to us, first, my love.”

“She called me old.” Icirit replied in a playfully catty voice, fully relishing her daughter’s discomfort. “Rather interesting thing to say when you are three years older than your little Army boyfriend, Rhidi.”

“There is nothing wrong with Rhidi being twenty six and Morris being twenty three, and it’s not like it really matters between different species anyway.” Kohan said flatly, turning to his wife and wondering why she was being so aggressive today. “And, if I remind you, we had agreed.”

Icirit shrugged a shoulder, swirling her wine glass beside her chin. “Oops…”

Rhidi, her brain and nervous system in full breakdown mode, sank down into a nearby chair with a thump of her rump and tail, her beer bottle loose in her fingers.

They knew? Rhidi whispered in her mind. How?

“Icirit, you broke our agreement on purpose just to get further revenge on our Rhidi.” Kohan sighed, striding around the island to replace Rhidi’s already empty beer bottle with a fresh one… then making sure her fingers were firmly wrapped around it.

Icirit said nothing, merely drinking her wine while glancing out the nearby window with false innocence.

Kohan puffed a bit of air out of his nostrils, then pulled around a chair so he could sit in front of his daughter. He had been trying to gentle down his wife with a fair application of romance and satisfying the days before he assumed Rhidi would arrive, but there had always been this odd rivalry between the two.

Rhidi, still in a state of shock, was numbly drinking from her beer bottle, but stopped when she caught her father’s eyes.

Kohan, perhaps more than Icirit ever had, desired grandchildren. The man loved kitlings, and had been dreaming of the day he got to hold Rhidi’s in his hands. He had said as much to her in an attempt to keep her away from the war, plying at her with guilt, but there had been a lot of truth to the statement.

Rhidi saw that same look in his eyes, the one he had when she had signed up to do her part in cleaning up the Ur remnant forces.

She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes panicked and ears fully pinned back. “Dad, I-”

“What?” Kohan asked her, narrowing his eyes at her with humor. “You think I’m going to admonish you for following your heart? Do you not know me at all, child?”

“I-...” Rhidi began, her throat suddenly rather dry despite drinking an entire bottle of beer. “It’s just… you… I…”

“Your father was crushed, by the way.” Icirit piped up from behind the island, popping the cork on a fresh bottle of wine. “You know he always wanted grandchildren out of you.”

“I know that!” Rhidi screamed at her, coming to her feet in a rage, but then quickly sat back down and took her father’s hands in hers, her voice quiet and soft. “I know that, but, it’s just… I…”

Kohan smiled at her warmly, moving his hands so he held hers instead. “But you love him, I know. You scent-locked onto him, didn’t you?”

“Romantic.” Icirit said with a false romantic air, then snorted as she poured her wine. “And stupid.”

Rhidi jerked her head up and glared at her mother hotly, but a brief touch of Kohan’s nose to hers brought Rhidi back down from her instantaneous rage.

“How can you possibly even know that? How? I have kept everything so secret-” Rhidi began, her voice falling away with the heartbreak that her father knew.

Kohan let out a sad chuckle, rubbing the pad of his thumb along her yellow knuckles. “I’m afraid your web was unspun by the UAA military mail system, my dear. Paperwork came to us since you were out in space, and we are next of kin.”

“The mail!” Rhidi groaned, her back bending forward as she hung her head between her held arms.

Normally, her mail had gone to a holding area in the post warehouse, due to Rhidi being the only one of her family on Earth. A lot of paperwork was still printed on paper, hard-copies for safe keeping, including anything involving relationships or promotions, but there was never enough space in the mail warehouses.

If next of kin were available, the Unified American Authority automatically sent the hard copies there to free up space in the warehouse. Since Rhidi never bothered to grab her hard copies, that meant as soon as her father was given a residence, all of her mail immediately went to his home to keep space in the postal warehouse open.

“Your mother was… well.” Kohan began with a waggle of his head, then rolled his eyes as Icirit spoke up behind him.

“I had never seen paper mail before! I was curious and opened them all.” Icirit said brazenly without shame, making little itching motions with her index finger. “Cutting through the top edge was so satisfying, I just couldn’t stop.”

“And she ended up reading a good portion of them, including your form SC-21-31 for you and Morris.” Kohan said sheepishly, scratching at his cheek awkwardly. “It had how long your relationship has been going on for.”

“No…” Rhidi moaned, because if they had read her SC-21-31, then they knew for certain that Morris and her were doing more than holding hands and drinking milkshakes…

Kohan laughed, leaning forward to nuzzle his nose into his daughter’s hair and then shaking her hands. “Darling, please, there is nothing wrong.”

Rhidi looked up at him with narrowed, tear filled eyes, and he let out a tired sigh.

“Okay, at first I was pretty crushed, because I now know what you kept wanting to talk about at the museum, and that it is highly likely that now my chances of having grand kids from you is… well, less than zero...” Kohan said awkwardly, slowly moving his head from his left, to his right. “... Because we can’t inter-breed with Humans.”

Rhidi looked at her father as tears trickled down her yellow cheeks, and she could hear the disappointment in his voice. She looked back down to the clean, tiled floor, sniffing as she spoke quietly. “I know we can’t.”

“But that’s okay!” Kohan said in a cheerful voice, pulling on Rhidi’s hands so she shimmied back and forth. “It’s okay! Honestly. Do you think I would impress my own desires over the desires of my daughter’s heart? Truly?”

Rhidi sniffed again.

In her head, she could remember all the times her father had pointed out kitlings to her, remarking that “I know your children are going to be way more well behaved than those!” or “I hope your children have your spirit! We could use more Kafya like you!”. In some ways, her father had always been more excited than her own mom to see her finally become a mother, even if it came at the risk of it not being with another yellow… though that was more rare than being paired with a white.

What stung the worst were the times he would hold her face in his hands and smile down at her, telling her that she was going to “make a wonderful mother”. She had put that at risk by becoming a soldier, then dashed it against the rocks after falling in love with a Human.

“Papa…” Rhidi whispered, placing his hands on her cheeks as she looked up at him through her tears. “I’m… sorry.”

Kohan scritched at her cheeks with his claws, smiling at her brightly. “For what? For finding love? I will say it again, my little mud-foot,” He pinched lightly at Rhidi’s cheeks and moved them up and down, just as he did when she was a child and he had caught her running around outside without shoes, “There is nothing to apologize for, if you are happy.”

“You could apologize for throwing me into the fucking mud…” Icirit muttered into her wind glass, which made Rhidi smile smugly as Kohan muffled a snicker.

Kohan smoothed Rhidi’s cheeks, brushing away her tears. “Besides, I’m sure Morris’s family was ecstatic that he found love too!”

“... Well,” Rhidi began with a nervous twang of humor, “You may be surprised to hear it… was the exact opposite.”

“The opposite?” Icirit asked, looking up from her glass. “What do you mean the opposite?”

Rhidi let out a nervous laugh as her father let go of her face, and she ran her fingers through her hair. “Uhhh… his… mother, wasn’t happy.”

“His mother thinks you aren’t good enough for some Human?!” Icirit bristled, setting down her wine glass with an angry ‘crank!’ of glass to marble counter top. “She should be thrilled to have an Anili of your caliber servicing-”

“MOM!” Rhidi bellowed, planting her face in her pawed hands.

“-loving her son!” Icirit corrected, struggling to switch from revenge to outraged. “What’s wrong with you being her son’s mate?! You are Anili Kandi! A Kafya of a prime lineage! Any Human should be grovelling for thanks just for you to talk to them!”

“Darling, remember what I taught you about how Humans don’t follow our-” Kohan began, but breathed the rest of his sentence past his lips with a raspberry as Icirit held up an angry, well manicured hand.

“Are you telling me that his family threw a fit?” Icirit asked, both hands now firmly planted on her hips. “They have complaints?!”

“His mother was like… dad.” Rhidi said, rubbing her hands up and down the fur of her face. “She wanted her son to give her grandchildren, and… was upset to hear that her son was dating a woman he could not produce children with.”

“How upset?” Icirit asked, crossing her arms prettily across her top with a pout of the lips.

Kohan flared his eyes, knowing exactly what happened to the poor craft that were trying to transport Morris.

He had searched up the Human after finding out, after all.

“She may have chucked a brick into a shuttle’s engine…” Rhidi said in a pained voice, then realized she had a beer in her hand, and took a fortifying glug from it.

“And faked a few heart attacks…” Kohan said quietly, which caused Rhidi to choke and spew beer foam out of her nostrils.

“SHE DID WHAT?!” Icirit roared, slamming her pawed hands onto the counter top of the island.

“YOU KNOW?!” Rhidi gagged out, coughing harshly and wiping at her nose.

Kohan reached forward, lightly patting on Rhidi’s back as she tried to rid her lungs of beer foam with ragged coughs. “I’m afraid that I got a little curious about the man who was in love with my eldest daughter, and a woman who shared his lineage was on the news articles. It did not take much further research to connect the dots.”

“Where do they live?” Icirit growled, picking up her data-slate with a jerk of the hand.

“We’re not going to go bother his family, my love.” Kohan replied, pulling a small cloth off of the dining table and wiping Rhidi’s face with it.

“I’m going to go find his mother and give her a piece of my mind.” Icirit muttered, scrolling through shuttle flights on her data-slate. “I can charter a private-”

Kohan raised his head and fixed Icirit with a look that has always worked on her, mostly due to it being the same look he used when he took away her access to funding, or when he would cancel events.

“Fine.” Icirit snapped, tossing her data-slate down to the counter top with a clatter and then crossing her arms again.

“Since we are already on the topic of bad news,” Kohan said, wiping his daughter’s face again as he raised her chin, “There is other news we have to discuss.”

“Like why you’re in a house?” Rhidi asked, taking a cautious glug of beer to clear her throat.

Kohan nodded. “Yes. The ship was extremely damaged during an attack, Rhidi.”

Rhidi paused in her movement, beer bottle rim just touching her bottom lip before lowering with a jerk of her arm. “An… an attack?”

Icirit looked irritable, and picked her wine back up only to discover she had cracked her glass.

“Yes.” Kohan said, now looking rather tired as he sat back in his chair with a slump of his shoulders. “An Elder Council Shan’dao strike team hit the base, attacking your sister and her friends at the gym, and our ship.”

Rhidi blinked at her father, her voice numb. “The attack on the base… the reason why the planets were given over… it was-”

“I didn’t tell you, nor did Tyllia under my orders, in order to keep you from worrying.” Kohan said, scooting his chair closer to Rhidi. “The last thing I needed you to do was have a meltdown on your ship and cause problems for your command. You are in a very perilous position, my dear, and I thought of your safety before my own. After your command got into contact with me, I told them as much, and they agreed to my request.”

“I’m fine, by the way.” Icirit called out with a raise of her new wine glass.

Kohan chuckled, though he frowned after a tight swallow. “The crew perished keeping your mother and I safe, and it leaves me bitter about the situation. They may not have been the most renegade of Kafya, but they did their duty and died for it. Your sister believes they went after her white fur friend while at their gym.”

Rhidi closed her eyes for a moment, searching her memory for the name, then opened her eyes. “Lirya, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Kohan confirmed, drawing in a deep breath before standing slowly. “Do you remember the stories I used to tell you, when you were smaller? In order to get you to go to bed?”

Rhidi nodded slowly. “Yes, about the people who thought they could talk to the moon.”

“There is more truth in those stories than fantasy, darling.” Kohan said, lacing his pawed fingers behind his back as he started walking back and forth. “I was not exactly discreet in my departure from Kafya Mintulcurr, but I was when I landed our ship here. I had made a deal with the UAA military in keeping my ship hidden, jammed, invisible to scans… yet they found it none the less. Lirya, your sister’s friend, was in a gymnasium on a whim, deciding to go for a late-night workout, and yet they found her as well.”

Kohan stopped, swallowed, then turned around to face Rhidi. “I have studied many things in my life, things that were technically forbidden, because I found them fascinating. One of those things was our past, the Kafyan people, and why we are the way we are. I discovered holes in our history, obvious things that should have been there, and found them to not only be missing, but having been cut away with surgical precision.”

Rhidi looked from her father to her mother, slowly drinking from her beer bottle as Kohan found his words.

“I… I hacked into the Elder Council records with my advanced credentials.” Kohan admitted with a grimace, then held up a hand as Rhidi went to lurch to her feet in outrage. “I know, I know. You should have heard your mother when I told her after we were attacked.”

Icirit pulled her wine glass from her lips. “It was a thorough dressing-down. Your father not only hacked into their data-records, but also found a data-cache and relayed the coordinates to some odd little group that believes they are freedom fighters. I would have been more angry if it wasn’t for the fact the Elder Councils tried to kill us both, and butchered a crew that I had hand-picked for their bone structure.”

Rhidi stared at her mother with a “really?” look, and Icirit shrugged her shoulders.

“What? I only wanted Anili Fret on my ship, they look better in uniforms.” Icirit said matter of factly.

Kohan yawned, then tucked his hands in the pockets of his trousers before leaning against the island. “We’ve been lied to, for a very long time, Rhidi darling. I cannot begin to tell you how much better I feel after coming to Earth, how much better your mother feels, how much your sister has changed… and then there is Lirya.”

“The little scarred up white fur?” Rhidi asked with a tilt of her head. “What about her?”

“I believe she may be a long-lost key to getting our people back to where they need to be.” Kohan said with a gentle smile. “The way we were always supposed to be. Not the kind of people who… well, who don’t leave an entire planet to the enemy for political gains.”

Rhidi looked appalled. “They did what?”

“That, and more.” Kohan murmured darkly, gently shaking his head from side to side. “I had no idea there was so much blood on our hands, let alone my hands. All the weapons, ships, combat armor I designed… the genocides they were used in would turn your hair gray.”

Rhidi snapped her head to Icirit, then glanced to her father. “Does mom know?”

Kohan chuckled as Icirit flipped the back of her hand at Rhidi.

“Honestly, do you think I was stupid enough to believe your father was an accountant?” Icirit asked, running her hand along Kohan’s yellow tail. “That was just something we told you children. When your father told me you had figured it out long ago, it’s how I knew you were truly my daughter. I just played along, as I always have.”

Rhidi was quiet for a moment, slowly finishing her beer, then set the empty bottle on the table before turning to her father. “Dad, what did you mean when you said I was in a perilous position? Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty pissed you didn’t tell me my entire family had been attacked, and I get it, but what are you talking about?”

“We are at war, Rhidi.” Kohan said softly, smiling at his daughter. “A war you started.”

Rhidi spluttered. “W-W-What?! I didn’t start a war!”

“You started the war the moment you crawled out of that training area, darling.” Kohan said as he came down to a knee in front of Rhidi, placing his hands on her cheeks again. “I spoke to your instructors, and they told me what you did. You started the war the moment you stood and took the grenadier’s green. When you declared you were Human, and Kafya no more. When you began to lead.”

Rhidi glanced at her mother, who, for the first time, was smiling at her with pride.

“The finest Human I’ve ever seen.” Icirit said through her grin. “A Human made of Anili Kandi.”

“Did dad drill all the angry out of you or something?” Rhidi asked in shock, and both of her parents laughed.

Kohan ran his thumbs along the cheeks of his eldest daughter, smiling at her as tears of pride tickled at his eyes. “You are what the Elder Councils have always feared, a Kafya who is brave. When Drill Sergeant McPhiston told me about how proud you made him, about all that you had done, about all who are inspired by you… I had never felt more honored that I had the privilege of calling you my daughter.”

“Dad…” Rhidi murmured with a sniff, the whole day being a rather hard rollercoaster ride of emotions. “You’re going to make me cry again, you jerk.”

Kohan laughed and touched his nose to Rhidi’s, rubbing his thumbs along the fur of her cheeks as they both let tears fall past their eyes.

“You are so brave, Rhidi.” Kohan said quietly. “I cannot imagine how hard the things you have done must have been… but there is still more to do, things I cannot ask you to do.”

Icirit walked over to stand beside her husband, and reached forward, resting her hand on Rhidi’s head. “My little muddy toed girl, always causing trouble.”

Rhidi laughed wetly, then sniffed as she pulled her mother down into a hug. “Oh, shut up, mom.”

Rhidi, Kohan, and Icirit knelt there on the pristine tile of the kitchen for a while, hugging each other in silence.

It was Icirit that broke the silence, kissing Rhidi on the cheek before sighing. “I wish Tyllia was here for this. It’s been so long since we’ve all been in the same place together, at the same time.”

“I’m sorry for… throwing you into the mud, mom.” Rhidi said, sniffing again and wiping at her eyes. “You just… piss me off.”

Icirit snorted into a chortle, which caused Rhidi to laugh in return as Kohan smiled between them, though his face turned serious as they calmed from their humors.

“Rhidi… I’ve been talking to people since you’ve been gone.” Kohan said, steadying himself against Rhidi as he forced her back into her chair. “Powerful people. Once you got the ball rolling, it has been impossible to stop. You have people looking out for you, working around you, working for you, legions of single entities playing out this grand game you were the first to make a move in… but there are some things that only you can do.”

Rhidi sniffed again, then breathed in deep and set her shoulders. “What are you talking about, dad?”

“There is another.” Kohan said seriously, tapping her between her clavicals. “Another Anili that was planted here on Earth by the Elder Councils.”

Rhidi blinked her eyes for a moment, then narrowed them. “Second lieutenant Tamryn.”

Kohan nodded darkly. “She has challenged you, my love. And she means to kill you in order to take the Kafya back under Elder Council control. She is an assassin, a skilled one, and her only mission was to make sure that the Kafya always came back home.”

“It is dangerous, Rhidi.” Icirit said, her face now lined with worry. “This woman… your father told me about her, and it is likely that she will come for us if she is able to beat you. She will declare Qin Ro against you as soon as… whatever it is starts.”

Rhidi hadn’t heard that phrase in a long time, and looked to her father. “Honor ashes? She’ll fight me to the death?”

“She has declared herself Kholihl of all Kafya on Earth.” Kohan said with a rueful rumble to his voice. “Absolutely absurd, but she is doing it to draw you out. The weaker Kafya are already flocking to her and ignoring commands of the EUC military, while Kafya in the UUA see her as an interloper.”

Kohan ran his hands down Rhidi’s shoulders as if she was the most precious thing in the world, his eyes flicking back and forth as he took in her face. “The UAA… they want you to fight her, and kill her, Rhidi. Fight her, kill her, and then give her body to Lirya as a statement. The Humans are going to use you, and her, as a statement that the war has been acknowledged."

Rhidi’s blood ran cold, then bubbled forth with raw adrenaline as something took hold of her, drawing out of her a pulse of bloodlust that she had never felt before. It wasn’t like the battle fever she felt during combat… it felt… personal, and she felt hot with rage.

“She called me out?” Rhidi asked hotly, looking up at her mother and then her father. “Openly?”

Icirit nodded. “Blasted it across every communication platform she could get her hands on, then called you a coward when you didn’t answer back. Honestly, she’s not even from a top Anili bloodline, they had to buy their way in…”

“You were in space, obviously.” Kohan added with a shrug of the shoulders as Icirit scoffed.

This other yellow furred Kafya had the audacity to call her out, name herself Kholihl of all the Kafya on Earth, then named her a coward because she didn’t reply while on deployment?

The rage glowed white hot in her veins, and Rhidi brought her eyebrows together as she stood, bringing her father with her.

Rhidi looked to her mother, her father, then breathed in deep with a swell of her chest as her ears folded forward. “Where am I to kill her, then?”