Katja:

Bracing my feet against the small window frame in front of me, I enjoyed the small comfort that the wall offered my bruised and battered shoulders from the kickback of the M14 rifle. Already the air was putrid and harsh with the sulfurous smell of expended gun powder. In the distance I could hear a few automatic weapons pop like popcorn in a heated kettle. There was a loud roar and the rifle nearly jumped out of my hands as I squeezed off one shot and another. The old man in the uniform, perhaps a couple hundred feet away dodged wildly amongst the debris. There was a final deafening roar as my third shot sheared away the running man's jaw.

He fell to the ground with a gaping mouth that was obviously unnatural due to the sheer amounts of blood coursing down his faded gray uniform, the insignia of the Republic stitched to his shoulder. Under normal circumstances I would have given him another round for mercy, but due to the unusually strong winds and my limited ammo, such kindness could not be spared. After-all, I didn't ask for this fight, did I? I shouldered the rifle, it's strap further chaffing the sores on my shoulders and sides; I still wasn't used to the weight of it. My uncle's words echoed hollowly in my memory. Two days ago I had come into Kaelon city to visit my Uncle Rishmann. I was always delighted to leave the slow pace of the country and be a part of the city for a bit, but this time it had been different.

My uncle's welcoming smiles had been thin, and the summer heat was bearing much more harshly upon the city than any previous year. The evening of my arrival, as my uncle and I walked to the grocer to pick up what herbs we needed for our "famous" cooked salmon there was a blood-curdling shout from the alley-way we were just passing. My uncle's face as he saw the insignia stitched on the attacker's shoulder will always haunt me. He seemed sunken, and after a moment of him appearing not to see the brutality occurring to the homeless creature in front of us, he hurried me along. "Go! There's nothing we can do." he had hissed.

That night at dinner, we ate in silence. My uncle attempted to make light chatter, with questions such as "How's School?" or "How is everyone?" before I finally snapped: "What the hell is going on?" I said it a little louder than intended "There's something wrong Riss" (My mispronunciation of his name as a child had stuck as a nickname.) "You're scared... everyone's scared... Hell, I'm scared and I haven't been here a day!" Riss excused himself from the table, instantly tightening my stomach into a small lead ball. Our dinners sat out all-night, barely touched.

The sun had set late that night, setting the sky aflame with brilliant hues of purple, orange, and a fiery red. Pollution had been an increasing problem over the past decade or so, and every sunset seemed as if it might be Kaelon's last. In the dying sunlight, Riss seemed even more sunken and tired than ever. Why didn't I recognize it right away? His dull gray fur seemed to absorb the color around him and his ears had been continually slanted back a bit. His amber eyes seemed ashen and faded, like a shirt run though the washing machine a few times too many.

I remained on his Victorian style, wrap-around porch long after he had gone inside to escape the swarms of night insects. The dark green trim vanished quickly into the consuming dark as the sun said it's final goodbyes before dropping regretfully over the horizon.

Swatting at a few pesky mosquitoes, I repositioned the rifle in my lap, sparing myself a glance at my forearms. The white and orange fur was horrendously caked with mud, with every small movement, I could feel the pressure of the dirt tugging at my hairs. There is no way that I'm licking that off. I sighed bitterly before turning my attention away from my severely deteriorated hygiene and back to the heavy weapon in my lap. I had come in from the porch to find my uncle cleaning the damn thing.

"You have a rifle?" I had asked him, stunned by the presence of such a malicious object in my uncle's peaceful home. The rays from the kerosene lantern had played eerily across his face, (There had been many brown outs in the city, and rather than placing their faith on the electric lights, many citizens had turned to more conventional methods.) as he calmly told me that he hadn't ever considered the rifle until recent months. The M14 had actually been found in the house when he had bought it from a man about to go under from drug problems.

My father, having always had an interest in guns, took it and fixed it up for my uncle. He replaced the rotten stock with a new, light ash one. All the parts needed oiling and cleaning, but by the time my father was finished with it, it was in good working condition. Sometimes having a parent with gun-care as a hobby was cool, but other times it scared me.

"You told us that you sold it years ago," I insisted, "to a pawn shop." He shook his head.

"Do you believe everything that you're told Nima?" He used my childhood nickname with almost an unsavory air. "I've held onto it over the years for reasons I couldn't even begin to think of, but now I am glad that I kept it." He sighed, and I took the opportunity to jump on the opening he left.

"But why?" I inquired, "I need you to tell me what's going on, there's something wrong with Kaelon, there's something wrong with you." I breathed in quickly. "Please, just tell me why!" He sighed heavily before giving in.

"Alright." He breathed, I had to scoot my chair across the hardwood floor to a position right beside him to hear what he was saying. "There's been some major problems in the city, mainly with segregation. The Dolneen" (Humans) "have been rallying together under the Republic, and slowly turning all the Andarr" (Anthropomorphic creatures.) "out of our governmental positions." I gasped.

"That's crazy! Don't we out-number the humans here, in Kaelon, by like... three to one?" It was purely absurd, the thought of such segregation occurring after these many years of peace and equality. As my tail smacked rather painfully against a nearby file cabinet, I realized how agitated I was. I had been practically ready to jump out of my seat. Calm down, it's not his fault. I reprimanded myself before muttering a "Sorry, go on." and forcing my back to rest against the wooden chair. The blood-curdling scream we heard by that alleyway earlier came to mind, silencing my anger with sudden chills.

I stood up and stretched rather painfully. Having been lost in thought, I forgot to rearrange myself into a less cramped position. What little muscle I did have ached horrendously from the abuse and strain I had put on them over the past day. The small attic I had been camped out in for the past twenty minutes or so was rather dusty, and since my fur was already damp and rank with sweat, mud, and lord knows what else. It clung onto me like a magnet, reducing my already light colored fur to a weak shade of gray.

The dark rafters of the roof protruded like the backbone of some giant whale, I felt almost as if I had been swallowed by some giant beast. It took me a full second for that comparison to truly hit, I had been taken in by a giant, and the brute's name was "War." Outside the sun had begun another fiery descent, however smoke was already beginning to choke the horizon. My first day in the belly of the beast was about to end. Having paced away from the window, the retorts of gun-fire seemed much more distant now, like I was beginning to wake up from some wretched nightmare.

A floor board groaned beneath me and my breath caught in my throat.... silence... the realization that it had been me slammed down like a brick wall and I fell dumbly onto my ass, my tail barely flicking out of the way in time. "Fuck... this is really getting to me." and I suddenly felt like crying. Not just for the old man I just shot, nor for the young man I stabbed earlier with his own bayonet, (He happened upon me and caught me by surprise, but having the agility and flexibility of my feline race, I was able to stick him before he got me.) but I wanted to cry for myself. Here I was, Katja Leona Nimms, caught in the middle of a rebellion I wanted no part of.

After a few moments, I was able rise to my hands and feet, and then just my feet. Of course, having managed the chore of standing up, I had to squat again to pick up that damned rifle. I had absently slid it from my shoulder onto the ground when I had gotten too busy pitying myself to take care of myself. A subtle hunger began to gnaw at my stomach, and soon that pain would be much worse. It took a while for my body to recognize it's hunger and lack of nutrition, but when it did, I was to be in a world of hurt.

Anxious, I glanced out the small window again, tracking the progress of the sun. My goal was to travel at night. Since I had better night vision than humans, I figured my best bet for finding my uncle and getting us both out of town would to be hiding out during the day and traveling in the dark of night.

"Some extreme humanists have rooted themselves in the republic and have been starting propaganda campaigns and instigating senseless violence against our kind."

The night was not coming quick enough, if I ever hoped to be able to find my uncle alive, time was of the essence. Having been in the same room for so long, I began to feel a bit claustrophobic, and worries bore down on me like a set of lead laced robes.

Riss had gone into town early that morning, having told me that he needed to run a few errands. It had been late morning when the sirens first went off. I instantly thought "Weird." considering that when I glanced out the window there wasn't a single storm cloud in sight. In fact, it had been a very sunny day today, with a cool breeze to knock down the temperature, so it was quite comfortable out. Setting aside the notebook I was trying to write a poem in, I rose from the wicker chair I had been lounging in. Stepping out onto my uncle's front porch everything seemed normal, except for the number of other people who had stepped out of their homes to see what was going on, just like I was.

I just began to work my way around the wrap-around porch when a loud click and a dying hum caused me to freeze. I rushed back into the house to find it eerily silent. The click had been the circuits as the power went out. "Something's up." the ominous thought could not be shaken no matter how much I physically rattled my head on my shoulders. I was already half-way to the hearth where the rifle hung, a menace in the seemingly peaceful afternoon sunlight. I kept wanting to believe and even told myself aloud: "They're just testing the equipment, there can't be any other explanation for it."

If I had known the true horrors in store for us, I would have already been running.

Again I felt tearfully shaky as I slid down the pitted plaster wall. All those poor creatures... I had been lucky. Let's hope that luck can hold. The steady roar of a machine gun firing somewhere on the block caused me to flinch and then curl further up against the wall. Not much longer... Not much longer until what? Until you have to go outside again.

Will:

I walked down the street, absently stepping over a dead, canine Andarr, mother, still holding her child. Their bodies had been torn by enough gunfire that it had taken me a moment to figure out what they were. I felt strangely detached. My eyes were taking in all the carnage around me, but I was finding myself unable to process it. A few feet away a feline Andarr lay half in and half out of the doorway to what I assumed to be his ground-floor apartment. All that was visible was a pair of blood-caked, furry feet, a tail, and a swarm of flies dancing over a seemingly impossible amount of blood.

Soon I reached the intersection of 15^th street and Bolivia Avenue, not sure where my feet were taking me, I casually walked along the yellow dotted lines. My feet made a right at the intersection and began to walk down Bolivia Avenue. A shimmering, orange sun, that seemed to fill the horizon behind me bore mercilessly into my backside. My thin, sweat-soaked under-shirt offered almost no protection in its near-translucent state. I had shrugged off the dark gray jacket a few blocks back. The insignia stitched onto the side burned into me worse than the sun was now. I had been there.... They told me that we were there to help! It was when the guns were handed out that Will had truly begun to be concerned.

Will had been posted at a barricade on Lydia Boulevard and Main Street, a road block that encompassed an entire intersection. The main road-way leading into the slums and ghettos where most of the Andarr had been forcibly migrated to.

I walked past an old, worn-down playground, and upon seeing a small fur-covered arm dangling lifelessly from the opening of the tube slide, I threw up. Once the violent spasms passed, and the contents of my stomach was on the grass, I looked down dully at grass that was too clean. With all this death, it should be red, blood red. I wiped my mouth and stood up, almost wishing I could walk and have my eyes closed at the same time.

I had been fine with holding my post. They told us that our orders were merely to keep everyone under control while the power outages were being fixed. The siren had been a rallying call. We were there to keep the peace because our officials feared that the Andarr might try to riot because of the outages. Despite the number of holes in those orders, We had all swallowed it willingly I concluded bitterly.

My nose tingled and I ran the back of my hand against it. When my hand drew back it then wore a crimson stripe. The tingling grew worse, as the blood began to run out of my nose. Somehow, I felt it was fitting that I let it bleed itself out. Then with a sudden, irrational thought, my eyes shot wide with horror. Maybe it's not my blood, maybe I breathed enough in for it to collect and run down my nostrils. I certainly have waded through more than my fair share of blood. Blood I had helped spill. Knowing that it was my own blood still didn't help shake the image of tiny droplets of the crimson fluid in the air, being sucked through my nostrils...

I coughed despite myself.

Although large crowds of the Andarr did gather at the barricades and road blocks, they weren't upset about the power outages, but more concerned about our presence. There were shouts of "Tell us what's going on! Tell us!" which were greeted by shouts of agreement from other by-standers.

Over the next fifteen minutes the crowd had grown, and so had the anxieties of it's members. It was then that... "No." I muttered aloud. "Shut up." I really didn't want to revisit the sights burned into my memory. As soon as the machine guns had opened fire, I had run. Yeah that's the story... that's EXACTLY what happened. The schizophrenic voice in my head oozed with sarcasm. "Shut up."

Crossing the street, the slapping of my boots on the asphalt changed to the softer thud and rattle of them colliding with concrete. It seemed the farther I traveled into the section we barricaded off not six hours ago, the number of corpses depleted. Maybe most of those killed had been at the barricades. There was more than several thousand Andarr who lived in this area alone, there couldn't have been more than a few hundred at the barricades when we had opened fire. Maybe there's a lot more survivors than I originally thought.

I shivered, but this time it was truly from the chill. Being so close to the desert lands meant Kaelon had hot days and cold nights. Time was steadily creeping it's way towards the twilight. Suddenly I thought of my abandoned jacket, and I knew that even if I could retrieve it, I would not be able to bring myself to wear it.

The sunburn on my back throbbed intensely and my teeth began to chatter. Apparently tonight wasn't going to be much better than today. The gun-fire had died down though, perhaps the morning would find peace in the city. There was only the occasional retort of gunfire in the distance, even more rare were the short bursts of automatic fire that had been steadily drilling their way into my head all day.

So my trek continued, I had already decided that I wouldn't stop to rest until there wasn't a single sign of destruction in my sight.

Katja:

There's a giant pool of some dark liquid and I stand at the edge of it. It seems to have cohesion, like water bubbling up over a full glass. It is menacing me, bubbling like tar. In the middle of it I can see my uncle and all my friends and family from back home. They scream and shout to me in terror, they want me to save them. "No!" I cry over and over again, I don't know how to save them, and I don't dare dive in with them. I'm rooted in place and I cannot save them. Slowly they sink under, so slowly, so that I can suffer with their pleas, helpless.

I opened my eyes to pitch black and thought with horror that I was in the black pool with them, about to drown. Then my eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see the attic room around me in perfect clarity. After a moment, I realized what had awakened me. A loud roar ascended over everything, and after a few moments of fearful curiosity, a heart-pumping terror gripped me. Artillery. My claws dug into the hardwood floor as I leapt to my feet and started running, the rifle slammed into my back painfully. Not bothering to use the steps, I leaped down the stairwell, which, fortunate for me, had a high ceiling that I missed by inches. Now on the second floor, I ran across the room and swung open the trapdoor which led to the ground floor. Gripping either side of the stairwell, steep enough to feel like a ladder, I slid down on the side supports, not even touching the rungs/steps in between. I slammed to the ground and despite the carpet, fell over. My head swam in pain. Had I heard a crack? I gingerly felt and moved each of my ankles. No I hadn't broken them, but I thought my left one might be sprained. Smooth move.

Will:

When I heard the roar of shells falling from the sky, I had been walking in the dark for almost two hours. My legs were on the verge of cramping and I had no clue where I was. The scary thing about artillery is, you have no clue where it's going to land. My eyes danced fervently across the nearby buildings. There! Across the street. A door stood open. With a loud grunt of exertion I pumped my legs into a running pace and dove into the dark unknown beyond its threshold.

As I held my arms out in front of me for protection against whatever furniture or floor I was to collide with, I hit something that gave way before my momentum. I landed with a loud thud on top of something furry and significantly softer than the floor. I screamed and rolled away from the corpse with disgust. I had dove straight onto a dead Andarr, recently dead, judging by the warmth.

From my position just left of it on the floor, I looked back to the body, wide-eyed, trying to see if I had landed in some sort of unpleasant pool of blood or open wound. When to my surprise, the corpse groaned and moved. I lay too shocked and terrified to move.

My first reaction was to scream again but I held it in and after a moment of struggling with it, I was able to gain control of myself.

"Hello?" I asked, suddenly angered at how frail and shaky my own voice sounded.

"mrrnnnnnmmhhhofffmmaa" it moaned. I leaned closer to it and tried to roll it over with my right hand.

"What?" A clawed hand shot up, palm first, and connected dully with my chest. I tipped over from my squatting position and onto my backside with a dull thud.

"I said Get Off Me!" a heavily slurred voice, which overdrew it's 's' sounds, hissed. I rolled over and climbed to my feet, but when I turned around, I was greeted by a gun barrel to my face.

"Fuck." Suddenly the roaring stopped and the ground shook momentarily. As suddenly as it had come, the threat had passed, however, the young feline in front of me still had the rifle zeroed in on my face.

"I guess they missed, or we weren't the target." I was having trouble understanding her through the ringing of my ears, let alone trying to understand her thick feline accent. All the Andarr had difficulty speaking, because their mouths weren't shaped the same as ours. Each race had different troubles with different sounds. The feline species was infamous for their lisp of sorts. While the canine seemed to have trouble keeping their voices from going too guttural to be understood.

"I-" I began but she interrupted me by switching off the safety on the rifle. I swallowed pathetically.

"Who are you?" she demanded quietly and I sighed.

"Will Collins, you?" her finger eased off the trigger.

"Katja, are you a member of the Republic? Because I don't see an insignia on your clothes."

I hesitated for a moment before deciding it would best for me to happen to forget my several months service to those monsters.

"No, I'm not... I'm just trying to figure all this out... nothing seems to make sense anymore."

A weak grin, that looked more ferocious than comforting, once again due to the differences in anatomy, played across her features.

"You seem to have got something right." she flicked the safety back on, and shouldered the rifle. "It's nice to meet someone who I don't have to fight to the death with right after meeting them."

Not fearing for my life anymore, and comforted to find another survivor of the brutal undertakings of that day, it was then that I noticed the smell.

A combination of sweat, fear, body odor, and an earthy smell all intertwined into something strong enough to make me crinkle my nose. I almost immediately recognized her as being the source.

"Is something wrong?" her golden eyes refracted what little light there was in the dark room, glowing eerily. I opened my mouth to tell her, when I realized that I probably smelled no better to her after my day's escapade.

"No, just thinking." Her eyes stay trained on me, and for an instant I found myself looking into the hundreds of terrified faces when the machine guns had opened fire.

"About what?" she questioned. Her eyes still burned into me though I had long since looked away from her.

"About things I've seen today and would rather not remember" I half-lied.

"Oh..." her demanding tone instantly vanished into that of painful understanding. We stood facing each other, eyes darting to everything but each other for a moment. Then our eyes met and I spoke:

"So... where do we go from here?" She shrugged.

"I had been hoping to look for my uncle and try to get out Kaelon tonight, but I accidentally fell asleep this evening and had a rather rude awakening. I don't think I'd make it very far tonight, and this district of the town doesn't seem to be having as much action as the areas west of here..." she breathed deeply. "But that's only going by where the most gunfire seems to be coming from. The wind could be carrying the sounds around." I had to nod in agreement with her logic.

"So, you think it would be best for us to hide out around here for another night, catching some rest and..." her stomach made some odd gurgling sounds, almost as if on cue. "something to eat?" I finished with a grin as she politely excused herself.

"That's okay, I'll take that as a yes." she looked a lot less feral when she wasn't scared out of her wits, and peering down the sight of a rifle, at me. To be honest, she reminded me of a pet cat I had once, back before the Andarr had started wandering into the city. The first ones had been weird, and when asked where they came from, all they could do is point out across the vast expanse of desert that separated us from the Eastern Lands. I hadn't been around for the first arrivals, but my grandpa had passed his story down to me before he had died from an infection. Since the great plagues there hadn't been much medical supplies, so even a small scratch could spell death for an unwary citizen.

Some people had even suspected the Andarr of being disease carriers, thus the hatred of their kind was born. People were always looking for a reason to hate those who were different. Turning to her, I raised an eyebrow.

"Ready to go?" she nodded.

"Sure." She went to take a step towards the open doorway, and visibly flinched, recoiling from the foot to which she had just shifted her weight. I put a steadying hand on her shoulder. I still couldn't get used to the fur.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just sprained my ankle when I jumped through the trapdoor over there." I wasn't glad to hear that, she would need to stay off that ankle for at least the rest of the night, and be careful on it the next day. It really was a shame that there wasn't some sort of supportive tennis shoe that would fit her feet. But no-one had been able to design a style that fit the Andarr, so they stuck to cloth wraps.

"You shouldn't walk on that." I commented.

"Well, what else am I to do?" she glared at me. Suddenly I had a solution, but I knew she wasn't going to like it. As if reading my thoughts she quickly responded.

"No." I batted an eyebrow. She shook her head, less than convinced. "No."

Katja:

Against my best wishes, I had only agreed to Will's idea under the conditions that it would only be for a short bit. A temporary solution, until we found a wheel-barrow, or wagon of sorts for him to haul me around. It was no matter, I felt incredibly awkward and useless as he carried me from the apartment I had spent the day hiding in, down the street, and to the small grocer my uncle and I had visited not a few days ago. I had argued with him that I wasn't someone's pet cat, to be carried around, and he told me of course not, but that there was more than dignity at stake. We had argued until he asked "Are you hungry or not?" that's when I resigned to his idea.

Though Will had to stop and put me down to rest a few times, under the shelter of a dark alleyway, or just inside an empty house, his strength surprised me. Although I was a good half foot shorter than him, my guess is he was about 6', and I probably weighed quite a bit less, he had picked me up, seemingly without effort.

When we had arrived at the small building, we found it, thankfully, empty of anyone, including corpses. Although, I couldn't help but wonder if that poor creature my uncle and I had seen was still laying stiff with rigor mortis in the alleyway, just outside. Will had insisted that I stay put on a small stool, that he seemed to magically produce from beneath one of the dull, vinyl counters. A few moments after his short red hair had disappeared around a corner, he came back with an armful of whatever food he had found that was still edible. Our stash amounted up to a few oranges, an apple or two and a few canned items, that I didn't think either of us had the courage to touch.

"Thanks." I commented before I began to skin one of the oranges with my claws. He watched me with a look of amusement, and when I had finished mine, handed me his asking:

"Think you could get mine started?" he held up his hands, showing that his nails had been severely chewed away in the stress of the past few days. I couldn't help but chuckle as I made a neat incision down the side of his orange and handed it back to him. The smell of fear and delirium which had permeated almost sickeningly from him earlier had reduced significantly. I was actually to the point where I only became conscious of his scent when I focused on picking it up.

He smiled and thanked me before biting down into the orange, a thin squirt of juice shot off into the darkness. There was a moment of silence before we both burst into small fits of laughter. It was only a matter of seconds before an explosion off in the distance silenced us both, it was a brutal reminder of our situation. We were survivors of a battle we had not asked to fight, and we were both to play the biggest role, the only role, in each other's survival.