Enter the Hound: The Origin of Inu

Chapter 1: Golden Ticket

 

            Ashley Boyce walked into the Student Union, adjusting the ball cap on her head as she went and paying little attention to her environment.  It was Friday, and she wanted to get back to the dorm and unwind before going out that evening.  Her goal was to get lunch as quickly as possible without drawing attention to herself...

            “ASHLEY-CHAN!!!!”

...and she failed.

            Before she could do more than blink, Ashley was pounced upon by a pink and blue blur that could have easily been a rapid anime fangirl, but was merely Nadine Blackwell.  Withing seconds, Ashley’s hat was gone, and Nadine was playing with the pointed pair of dog ears atop Ashley’s head.  Ashley freaked.

            “Get-off-get-off-get-off-get-off -- GET OFF!” she screamed as she attempted to shake Nadine loose.

            “Oh, but Ashley-chan,” said Nadine, “I just looooove these ears!  They’re so cute and fuzzy!”

            “Nadine, I swear to God if you don’t get off my head, I will make you my personal chewtoy.”

            Nadine released Ashley ears and stepped back, her lower lip shoved out in a pout.  “Oh fine, be that way...baka inu...”

            “Tone-deaf diva.”

            There was no use in putting her hat back on; everyone in the Union had already seen her ears.  This wasn’t the first time Ashley’s ears had been exposed in public, but she had hoped to through the first week of classes without the new freshmen pointing and staring.

            Those ears...

            Those damned ears had been nothing but trouble since the moment they appeared.  Once, Ashley had been a normal person with normal ears.  Then as soon her fourteenth birthday rolled around, everything changed.  First, there were the headaches.  Then her ears began to hurt; it was like they were infected, for they burned and throbbed all the time.  Then came the sensitivity to noises.  Everything was always too loud.  Even her nose betrayed her, and smells became unbearable.  And just when she and her family thought it couldn’t get any worse, what should erupt from Ashley’s head?

            Dog ears.

            Furry, pointed dog ears.

            And what of her human ears?  Why, they just shriveled up and fell off, yes sir.

            It was horrible!  The other kids at school made her life miserable from that point forward.  If not for the few friends who stuck by her during those first years after the change, Ashley probably would have taken her own life.

            The ears weren’t the only things that appeared after Ashley turned fourteen.  The increased sensitivity to scents and sounds became more bearable, and she developed a talent for tracking and eavesdropping almost instantly.  She would experience strange sensations -- like her skin crawling or hair standing up on the back of her neck -- for no apparent reason, then hear on the news that an accident or some other such disaster had occurred within a mile of wherever she had been the sensation struck.

            And then there were the clones.  It took a lot of practice to get used to that little bonus.  She thought of the clones as her own portable pack of hounds, and she practiced summoning them whenever she could find time, space, and seclusion enough to do so.  Outside of her family, no one else knew about the clones, not even Nadine.

            “So where have you been hiding, anyway?” said Nadine, ignoring diva remark.  “I looked for you in Japanese on Wednesday and didn’t see you.”

            “Sumimasen,” Ashley replied, “but I’m taking the afternoon class this quarter.  I needed the morning slot for a literature class that I need to graduate.”

            “Oh, then I really won’t see you that much.  That’s not fair.”

            Ashley rolled her eyes.  “Oh please.  You still have Austin to keep you company.”

            Nadine shook her head.  “No, A-kun didn’t sign up for Japanese this quarter.  The kana fried his brain.  I am all alone!”

            “I’m sure you’ll get over it.  Join me for lunch?”

            The mere mention of food immediately brightened Nadine’s mood.  “Ooh!  Hey, you’re not going to eat here, are you?  ‘Cause I know this reeeeaaaally great sushi place....”

            Ashley sighed and hung her head.  So much for going back to the dorm.

 

*****************

 

            On the way to Ashley’s car, Nadine spotted Austin McDermot, a.k.a “A-kun,” and begged him to have lunch with them.  Austin was 6'4", and roughly 230 lbs of solid muscle.  In order for him to go, they would have had to take his truck.

            And they did.

            And now they were happily chatting away over sashimi and sushi as if they had all the time in the world.

            “Did you see the flyers they put up in the Union today?” Austin asked, dissolving a lump of wasabi paste in his soy sauce.  Ashley shook her head.

            “No,” she said.  “I only got about three feet through the doors when I was attacked.”

            Nadine ducked her head and muttered an apology.

            Setting his chopsticks down, Austin reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled, folded sheet of yellow paper.  “Here,” he said, handing it to Ashley.  “Got this one from Cori-O in the student activities office.  I asked him what it was, but he didn’t know.  Said he only gets paid to hang ‘em, not to read ‘em.”

            “Sounds like a smart-ass,” said Nadine.  “What’s it say?”

            The flyer was an advertisement for a research facility called Genome.  The facility was looking for volunteers to participate in testing a new drug.  The volunteers would be paid for their time, and all medical expenses would be covered should the participants experience side effects.

            “They’re offering $2,000 per participant, per day,” Ashley said.  Nadine almost choked on her kappa roll.

            “Two grand a day?!”  She ripped the flyer from Ashley’s hands, devouring it with her eyes.  She looked like she’d just found the last golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.  “No way....  I am sooooo in!  Where do I sign?”

            Austin frowned and dissolved another lump of wasabi in his soy sauce.  Ashley shook her head.  She could smell the wasabi in Austin’s soy sauce across the table and wondered just how much he could take before his sushi fled the table in terror.

            “I don’t know,” said Austin.  “That’s a little hard to swallow.”  He then dipped part of his tuna roll in the soy sauce and popped it in his mouth.  His eyes grew wide and watery, and he dove for his water glass.  It took every ounce of will power Ashley had to keep from laughing.

            Nadine was oblivious to the event.  She kept reading the flyer again and again, saying that this was a “golden opportunity” to make some much needed money for Christmas and spring break.  She would not be dissuaded from her decision, even though the initial screenings -- also paid -- weren’t until November.  Though Austin and Ashley remained skeptical, they couldn’t bring themselves to let Nadine go it alone.  They agreed to accompany Nadine to the facility for the initial screening, if only to be there for her when it turned out to be a scam.

            Secretly, though, Ashley was eager to go.  Genome was a genetic research facility, and she was a walking genetic mystery.  She hoped that someone -- anyone -- there could tell her the truth about her condition.  She wasn’t so naive as to hope for a cure, not after all the practice she put in with her clones; she simply had a need to know and to understand.