UnderWorld

"Mr. E Detective Agency--" I was cut off, rather rudely, by a woman's frantic voice.

"Oh thank God! My daughter is gone! The police won't do anything, and--I--you... please help me!"

"Woah! Calm down miss... Tell me, where did you last see your daughter?"

A small pause, then the woman continued in a much calmer tone. "Yesterday, when she left for school. She left at 6:30 for school, same as everyday, and she never came home. Her school gets out at 3:15, she usually gets home around 3:25 after she walks from school." The woman paused for a moment before continuing. "Yesterday she said she was going to go to a friend's house after school and be home in time for dinner, 6 o'clock. She wasn't home for dinner and when I called her friend's they said she hadn't ever arrived there."

I looked at the clock, it read 6:02, "So, she's been missing for 24 hours? Why won't the police do anything?"

She began to sound slightly frantic once more, "They say there are too many runaways for them to actively hunt for every single one! So, they won't do anything. My baby didn't runaway!" She started sobbing.

I sighed, I hated kidnappings. I hated runaways more. What was often the case with these things was that, for a kidnapping, the child has already been killed and dumped somewhere. And for a runaway it was almost worse, the child simply refused to go home. Or disappeared forever. Most private investigators had a strict "No Kidnappings" policy. I was about to explain this to the woman, when she spoke again. "Two million dollars."

"Pardon me?" I thought she was talking to someone else.

"I will pay you two million dollars, in cash, up front. Another $2 million when you bring my baby home."

Now, a "No Kidnapping" policy is one thing, refusing a four million dollar payment is insane. Even if I never found the poor woman's missing child, I would have $2 million to upgrade my equipment, pay bills and debts... my thoughts ran in circles until she spoke again.

"Hello? Are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm still here... Um, I have to ask, why are you calling me? There are better detectives out there. I'm the bottom of the barrel. I barley get by from one rent payment to the next."

"You were recommend by a good friend of mine, she said you put your heart into it. While most of the other detectives look for something, you search for someone."

She had me, there was no way I could walk away from this now. She had found the right buttons to push. I agreed to the job and got directions to her house.

I took one last look at my dingy little office in a mostly abandoned building as I stepped out the door. The door's "click" as it shut was oddly final.

A rash of kidnappings had started lately, that was why the police were refusing to get involved. In a city of 3.5 million souls, the police force would be spread so thin that they would be unable to do anything else.

So the burden falls on us.

I didn't know much about the kidnappings, other than what I had heard and read in the papers. All the officials would say was that they had no suspects and were still looking. I had noticed a pattern, though, all the kidnappings were like my current case. The child went off to school, saying that they were going to a friend's house afterward. And somewhere between school and the friend's house, they simply vanished.

There were no other similarities. The friend was different, always a long time, close friend of the victim. They were happing all over the city, to kids that walked, rode the bus, or caught a ride. The youngest was in fourth grade and the oldest was a collage sophomore.

I sighed and tried to think of something less depressing.

The house was just as she'd described it over the phone. The gate was open and the path clear to the door. As I drew closer, I saw a figure dart inside the door, a moment later a middle-aged woman emerged and rushed toward me. This was obviously the mother, she looked as if she had been crying the whole 24 hours her daughter had been missing. She made an attempt to compose her self before she got to me.

She reached out to shake my hand, "I'm sorry, I never gave you my name. Deloris Fontaine, call me Deloris." She made a little curtsy as I took her hand.

"Alex Enigma, call me Al."

She stood and looked at me, "That's your real name?"

I sighed, having been subjected to this most of my life. "Yea, my granddad did it. He started the 'Mr. E Detective Agency' and thought it would be funny if his last name was 'Enigma,' enigma means puzzle or mystery and 'Mr. E' sounds like mystery."

She smiled, "Thats kinda neat. Um, is there anything I can do to help? We should probably go inside, it's going to get dark soon. We can talk in the den." She lead me inside to a room that had to have cost at least two million to decorate alone. I was trying to suppress my urge to gawk when she chuckled.

"Another grandparent legacy. My grandfather got out of the stock market just before the crash and managed to make a ton of money afterward. We've been living on that ever since."

"Wow." Was all I could manage. What a lucky woman, and not bad looking either, no! Can't be thinking that! Got to find her daughter first, then. Only then.

She had a half-smile on her face as I wrestled with my thoughts. "Well, what I need now is details, who her friends are, what classes she was taking, where she would hang out. That kind of stuff."

She handed me a small note book and a list of everything I could ever have wanted, names, places, she'd even written down times. "Here, I already wrote everything down. This is her journal, maybe it can help."

"Thanks, this may come in handy..."

I stayed for awhile, chatting with Deloris. She managed to convince me to stay for dinner, I left shortly afterward.

Once I made it home, I opened the journal back up and started reading at a random point:

They were at it again. Those bullies are picking on me still. I did what Mom's boyfriend told me to do, but they just laughed in my face. I don't know what I'm going to do...

I found the most amazing place! It's full of people like me! All my wishes are starting to come true! I'm going to go hang out with them now!

[scribbled quickly]
user name: littlefox
password: soalone45

All of a sudden, they had become very popular. As a matter of fact, it would have been the start of the Chinese New Year. Year of the Dragon, if I remembered correctly.

Furs had begun to appear all over the place, on billboards, in TV ads. The internet.

The computer finally connected, I did a web search for "furries."

672,015,382 pages found. Holy hell, this isn't going to be as easy as I thought. Let's try this then. I did another search for "furry RPG"

15 pages found. Nice, this shouldn't take long. I started to click through the sites, attempting to log in as "littlefox."

The first 14 pages came back with a "User Not Found" error, the last, a strange site filled with stories and images more than a true RPG, logged in with no trouble. I clicked over to the "Your Account" section and checked out the personal info.

She had left it blank except for her instant message address. I checked the name against the list her mother had given me. A match. I had found the site her journal was referring to.

Okay, now to see if I can find any clues. I started to check the site. It was a rather interesting site. I'd never really gotten into the whole furry thing, but I could see why it was so popular.

My biggest clue came from her private messages, one was dated two days ago and read:

littlefox, met me after you get out of school to talk about doing the TF. 3:20, backyard.

DL

I waved to them and continued down the street. As I was walking my hands began to change. They sprouted grayish fur, and small black nails replaced my human fingernails, becoming the forepaws of a canine but still retaining there human qualities. Oblivious, I continued walking.

The changes weren't limited to my hands, however. The fur continued to spread up my arms and down my body. My face pushed outward to form a canine muzzle. My vision blurred as my eyes repositioned themselves.

My hearing underwent a similar change as my ears moved to the top of my head and became long and pointed. My sense of smell became almost as good as my sight as my nose reformed.

There was a brief uncomfortable moment as my tail emerged and snaked it's way out. As it grew, it also became covered in the same grayish fur.

My task for the day was to find out where the "backyard" was. I had the school's address and set out to discover the location.

The school wasn't too far away. It was still a long walk and took me most of the morning to get there. My mid-morning, I had arrived.

The school was a older building that had been ignored once, but a new caretaker had breathed life into the old bricks. A new coat of paint covered the walls, and the grounds were well cared for.

Administration was easy to find, just inside the doors. Once inside, I found a woman who could easily have been a secretary when I was in school, she was that old.

"Hello sir, how may I help you?" She asked, already board with the day.

I flashed my badge and said, "I'm just doing a check of all the schools in the area, nothing to worry about."

At the sight of my badge she sat up and began to talk in a stream, "Oh! I'm sorry officer! We--I, had no idea you were coming out today, Is there anything that I--we can do to help?"

I appeared to think for a moment before replying, "Actually, there is. Do you know of a place the kids call the 'backyard?'"

She thought for a time, "I think you mean the back lot, beyond the play ground there is a stretch of land that is out of sight of the school, lots of kids go there to do things they shouldn't."

"This is behind the school?" She nodded. "Do you mind?"

"Oh, of corse not! Anything you need, just let me know!"

As I made my way through the school, something seemed odd to me. It took me awhile, but I finally figured it out. There were no student drawing on the walls. In most schools I had been in, the factually plastered the walls with artwork and projects done by the students. This school was eerily bare.

Sure there were "classic" prints on the walls, a Van-go here, an Okeaf there. But no student works.

A passing teacher provided the answer to that mystery. "Why are there no student pictures on the walls?"

He seemed a bit startled at the question, "Oh, well... The students were getting to 'into' the 'furry' thing. So the principal banned all references and artwork. The students responded by only drawing and creating furry-related works. Sad really, there are some real talents here..." He walked away, shaking his head.

I emerged from the building and walked out towards the play grounds. Once I got there, I could see the "backyard." I could also see why the students would frequent it. An isolated space, out of view of the common students and staff. I walked down into it.

For the most part, the "backyard" was just a small clearing set into the woods the bordered the back of the school. I poked around for a little bit and had just found something interesting, when a voice interrupted me.

"Who are you?"

I spun around to find a teenage boy looking at me. I was to startled to go for my badge and only sputtered something unintelligible. He smiled and asked me a different question, "Do you yiff?"

I blinked, the question catching me completely off guard. "Yes, I do."

He didn't say anything, only handed me a small business card. The front said, "Furs only" and the back had an address.

I arrived with plenty of time to spare. The dilapidated warehouse that owned the address had no lights or power of any kind. I circled around a couple of times until I noticed a small mark on a stairway leading down. They looked to be claw marks, but were far to large to be made by anything natural. I descended the stairs.

They were short and led to a large, iron door. There was a small viewing window set in the door, just above eye level. Hesitantly, I knocked.

The window slid open and a voice said "You're late" from inside. The door swung open. I stepped inside and was plunged it to utter darkness. The voice spoke again, from behind me this time. "Just head forward, you're eyes will adjust after a few feet."

I started walking, slowly at first. I didn't want to walk into a wall or a door. After a short distance, just as the door man had said, my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I was able to see a soft light at the end. The light was filtering through a painted window in another door. I tried to get a look at what was beyond the door, but the paint inhibited my view.

I opened the door.

But what really caught my eye were the inhabitants of this underworld, they were furries. I saw wolves, tigers, foxes, bears... any animal you could think of was walking around here.

I stood in the doorway gaping at the strangeness of it all. When something equally strange began to happen to me. My hands started to itch, I rubbed at them absentmindedly and continued to look around in awe. I could see a group of, what looked like, little foxes running around a larger, female fox. A mother and her kits I guessed.

Meanwhile, the changes had started. My hands sprouted reddish fur that quickly spreads up my arms and down my chest. My fingernails reformed into the small black nails of a fox. My face began to push outward, forming the sharp, pointed vulpine snout.

It was about this time that a young fox girl came up to where I was standing. She seemed vaguely familiar, like I had seen her in a dream. She smiled at me and stood looking at me until I noticed her.

I startled at seeing her, "Oh! Hello there... um..."

Her grin grew even wider, "You must be the detective my mother sent after me. I take it this isn't how you expected to find me, is it?"

"No, I.. well, er..." I sputtered, noticing my altered face, "What happened to my face?!" I brought my hands up to my face, and saw how they had changed as well. "What's going on down here?! Why am I changing? What am I changing into!?"

Still smiling she said, "We're not really sure why, it seems that this area has an effect on people who are dissatisfied with their lives and are wishing for something else. Even at a subconscious level, as in your case. Oh, you might want to... never mind."

Her warning came to late as my tail burst through my pants, I guess it was a good thing I was wearing kakis and not jeans. I felt other changes occur in my pants that, thankfully, didn't burst a seam. My feet altered to resemble paws, but still allow me to walk upright.

My transformation was now complete, I was a furry. An anthro fox. On some level, I guess I had wished for something like this to happen. I had just never thought it was possible. Something she had said earlier clicked.

"You're Deloris's daughter? I have to get you home!"

She shook her head, "There's no way I can go home now. Not like this. The same as how you can't go home either. None of us can." She seemed slightly sad. "But DL has worked out a way for us to make phone calls, so I'm going to call Mom and let her know I'm alright. I'll make sure she knows you did you're part and get you the money she promised you. We can use that money to help the community."

I was still stunned, all of this, all at once, was a little much for someone like me to take in. But I guessed I would have to get used to it.

The money littlefox's mother wired me helped us get started. And next week our council is going to go topside, to make our presence known.

Gone are the days of humans.

Welcome to the Age of Furs.

Hope you liked! This continues the framework started by Origin of DragonLord, and yes, the "DL" that is referred to in this tale is the same one. I'll write the intervening time after a while. I just wanted to do this one first.

In any case, that's all she wrote! Good night folks!