Raiyev - Parts 20-24

Part 20



Raiyev was nonplussed. His lab partner, one of his closest friends, was standing right outside his cell door—but not as Dr. Frost had stood, no. She was on Raiyev’s side, whereas Thomas stood a traitor. So many mixed emotions were going on inside the giant raccoon that, mixed with the stomach full of city he had somehow been coerced into ruining, he thought he was going to be sick.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Thomas began.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!!” Raiyev roared, heaving himself against the unyielding glass door. “I should rip off your beak and break your wings! You traitorous prick!”

Thomas bowed his head, shutting his eyes and sighing deeply. “I know,” he said weakly. “I don’t blame you for being upset at me.”

“Let me out of here! Let me out now, so I can throttle you, you demented fuck!” Raiyev kept on raving, his eyes red from so many tears and his heavy fists throbbing from pounding them on the door, trying in vain to break out.

“Would you please calm down?” Thomas asked a bit firmly. “I WILL let you out, but you have to keep quiet or else we’ll all be caught! They’ll kill us if they catch us!”

Raiyev panted heavily, still fuming, and started to weep again, his ears folded back. “But why, Thomas?” he queried in a much softer voice. “You’re supposed to be my…friend…”

“I know,” the bird sighed. “I never wanted you to get hurt, but I didn’t have much choice.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Dr. Frost asked, stepping into the conversation.

“Look, it’s like this,” Thomas began. “The humans, if you haven’t figured out by now, are extremely powerful and far advanced in science than we are. They have technologies we couldn’t even begin to dream of. But that doesn’t stop them from still being a violent race. They threatened me, just as I’m sure they’ve threatened others, to comply.”

“Comply with what?” the two prisoners asked in unison.

“It’s a war,” Thomas explained. “They’re at war with some other planet, far from here. And they chose you, Raiyev, to be used as a weapon. I don’t know why,” he added, seeing and knowing the question Raiyev was about to ask. “I DO know, however, that Dr. Paxton had plenty of dealings with the humans for many years now. She’s a secret agent for some government agency that deals directly with humans. She and others in the agency traded information for bits and pieces of the humans’ advanced technology.”

“What sort of information?” Frost asked.

“A lot of basic information about our planet, the creatures living here…but then a lot of specific information including employee profiles, psych evaluations, that sort of thing.”

“How do you know all of this?” Raiyev asked.

“I had my part to play,” Thomas said, looking at the floor again in shame.

“And you just went along with them,” Raiyev spat in disgust.

“I told you,” Thomas said defensively, “They’re too powerful to deny. They threatened me. And they lied to me.”

“I’m sure they did,” the raccoon responded, a bit sarcastically.

“They did! I swear it! They said they’d only use you once…and then you’d be free to go. Geez, Raiyev, I had no idea it was going to go on like this. That’s why I have to get you two out of here now. No more time for questions. We have to get the hell out of this god-forsaken place.”

“Now you’re starting to talk a little bit of sense,” Frost said. “Well, what are you just standing around for? Let us out!”

Thomas nodded and revealed the same glass plate controller that Frost had used to free Raiyev once before. Pointing it at the glass doors, he pressed on the plate, and Frost and Raiyev found themselves free. However, unlike last time, it wasn’t a silent escape: all of the sudden, a loud alarm began going off. Great, Raiyev thought as he slipped into the corridor, they rigged it this time.

“C’mon!” Raiyev yelled and started to run in the direction he remembered going the first time, heading for the exit, before stopping to realize that Frost and Thomas couldn’t go nearly as fast as he could. He doubled back, running towards Frost and Thomas—and a few humans running after them. One of them had a gun that Raiyev recognized from his last escape, and just as he was snatching up Frost, he heard and saw the loud red blast hit Thomas, the bird being sent several feet before stopping, laying on his back and—Raiyev gulped—very dead.

He ran, cupping Dr. Frost in his paws like a protective shell, darting through the corridors (now smaller than he remembered them from last time). For whatever reason, no more gun blasts came his way. Perhaps they don’t want to kill their weapon, Raiyev thought in disgust. He could sense Frost’s fear as she huddled in his paw, and he held her as tightly as he dared, fearful of inadvertently hurting her, but even more fearful of the humans getting to her.

In his panic, Raiyev trying to remember the way out, made some wrong turns and, reaching what he thought were the doors to the exit, he barreled into a room that he had only seen from one other perspective. In the middle of the room lay a huge metal table with wrist and ankle restraints. Above it, a large bright white lamp. Raiyev recognized it immediately—it was the room of his nightmares, the room where he was taken right before he became a monster for a short amount of time. Not just a monster, he realized, a weapon. I am a weapon.

He stood stunned for a moment, taking in everything he could see in the room. Right behind the head of the table was a large ring made up of electronics and stone. It looked rather crude, but Raiyev could only guess that it was how they transported him to the other planet. That poor planet, he thought, and all those innocent people. And these humans have the gall to drag me into their affairs, their war. Why me? Well, I refuse. I won’t fight for them anymore.

Raiyev was resolute in not wanting to have any more part of this horrible war, but deep down he wondered how well he could withstand whatever influence the humans used to control him in the past. The sound of approaching voices jarred him from his thoughts, and he ran back out, twisting back around corridors, passing humans along the way.

He had to jump and dodge a lot of attacks, his paws still cupped around Frost, and nearly fell more than once. All he could think about was escaping—he didn’t care how many humans were after him or how powerful they were. He just needed that exit. Turning down a vaguely familiar corridor—it could have been from anywhere—he saw the blessed daylight just ahead, peering in from windows on the double doors to his freedom. With a final mad dash, blindsiding a couple more humans, he was safely outside. He kept running for many more minutes until he thought he was well hidden in the forest. Finally, he opened his paws to peer down at Frost, hoping she was all right. She was very shaken, like Harper had been when he kidnapped her from the prison, but she seemed unharmed physically. Thank goodness, Raiyev thought.

“Are we out?” Frost asked, looking up. “Are we safe?”

“For now,” Raiyev replied.



Part 21



Raiyev plopped himself down on the ground, his large frame making a loud THUD as it hit the soft grass, and he began to weep gently, small streams of tears rolling cautiously down his fuzzy masked face. Dr. Frost, still in Raiyev’s paws, looked up in earnest at her large colleague—her friend, her savior from that wretched prison.

Well, Thomas did his part, too, Frost thought to herself. Oh, Thomas! Damn you, you fool! She started weeping as well, her tears a silent elegy for their fallen coworker. Raiyev felt it, too: Even though Thomas had betrayed them and helped get them into this predicament, he at least tried to make amends at the end. He at least freed them. And all this mess…this war the humans were waging with that other planet…and he was their weapon. How many other “weapons” of this sort did they have? It was all too much, and the giant raccoon couldn’t help but feel as if he wanted simply to stay here, in this forest, for the rest of his days.

After a few minutes of sitting and weeping in silence, the bowed head of Raiyev suddenly jerked up, as if remembering something suddenly. “They’re going to be coming after us!” he hissed down at the hybrid in his paws. “We need to split up. We need to just…go our separate ways. At least if they catch one of us, there’s still hope for the other one.”

“Please, no!” Frost pleaded. “You’re so big now—you can make good time running away. Take me with you. Keep me safe, please!” Frost looked almost terrified at the thought of being abandoned here in this forest.

“I can’t,” Raiyev replied. “They’re after me primarily,” he explained. “You’re not nearly as important to them…they won’t search you out if they find me.” He got up and started in the direction of the dirt road where Brad had brought him. Brad… Raiyev thought sadly. It felt like an eternity since Raiyev had seen him. He wished so much that he could just go back to being in his fiancée’s arms. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

Time seemed to disappear from Raiyev’s mind as he continued to think about Brad, wondering what had ever become of him. Before he knew it, he had already carried Frost to the dirt road. He set her down carefully and pointed down the road with a huge digit. “The main road is just down that way,” he explained. “Please go…take care of yourself. Get away from all this. I’m sure we’ll figure out something in the end, and I’ll be okay. Just you wait and see.” He tried to sound as convincing as he could, even though his heart told him otherwise.

Frost hesitated, then after a long, heartfelt hug around his leg, leaving some of her tears in his soft fur, she turned and started off down the road. To stay safe, Raiyev ducked behind a line of trees and watched her until he couldn’t see her anymore.

He breathed a deep sigh and started off deeper into the forest once again, not really sure where he could go this time. Thomas was dead. Harper had gone to find out what she could…Harper! He suddenly remembered his agreement to meet her where she left him. He wasn’t too far, and he started jogging towards their parting place hopefully. Maybe he could meet her there. Maybe she would be there already.

Raiyev came to the place where he had sent her off towards the facility, but he didn’t see any signs of Harper or anyone else. The only tracks around were at least a day old—most likely from their previous visit to that spot. Raiyev sighed again and sat down, sniffing a bit at the air, hoping to catch some sign somewhere. It was useless, though, as all he was able to smell was the forest itself.

It’s not too bad here, Raiyev thought. Maybe I should just stay here, in this forest. No, that would be still far too close…but maybe I can find someplace natural like this far away. Someplace where they would never find me. And then I could just relax there…with nature… He found himself digging his paws a bit into the soft earth, almost curious at the feel and texture of it against his bare paws. That feeling he had been harboring for so long began welling up inside again—the feeling of being at ease in nature, away from the science he had long held dear. He almost felt like some otherworldly force was drawing him to that sense of natural living.

After a while of just sitting and thinking, relaxing under the cool shade of the forest trees, Raiyev finally got up, stooping so as not to reveal himself above the tops of shorter trees (being a good 40 feet tall or so now), and started making his way as far away from the facility as possible. He didn’t get far, however, when he heard the rustling of footsteps not too far away behind him. His hopes were up again that it might be Harper at last, but he suddenly cautioned himself that it might be another detestable human out to capture him again.

He turned around suddenly, and gasped as he saw the image of Brad standing there, looking very disheveled, grimacing up at Raiyev, almost as if he didn’t recognize him.

“B-Brad?” Raiyev asked, tears starting to well up in his eyes at the mere sight of his lover. “Is that really you? Oh, my god, what happened to you? What did they do to you?” He started to approach the much smaller raccoon when Brad suddenly pulled out a pistol and aimed it squarely at Raiyev’s face, making Raiyev stop in his tracks.

“You hurt me,” Brad managed to squeak out in a dry, raspy voice. He was shaking, the gun wobbling in his grip.

“What?” Raiyev asked, totally perplexed. “What are you talking about? What did I do, hon?” But Brad just turned around and ran away back towards the clearing. Raiyev stood for only a second, still confused, and then starting chasing after his mate. “Please, Brad!” he cried out, louder than perhaps he should have. “Please stop! Wait! Talk to me!”

In no time, the two raccoons were standing back in that clearing where they had made love, a time that felt so distant to Raiyev now. Brad turned back around and pointed the gun at Raiyev once more.

“You hurt me!” Brad repeated, yelling it out this time, crying in his rage. “All of this! It’s all your fault!”

“Brad, please!” Raiyev struggled, trying to find the right words. “Please, listen to yourself! This isn’t you! This isn’t right! You don’t—“ Raiyev stopped, thinking a moment. And he realized: If the humans could make him terrorize an entire city, they could easily take over the thoughts of his mate. “Brad, you have to listen to me! Listen! They’re controlling your thoughts! They’ve brainwashed you! You have to fight it, please!”

Just then, an entire squad of humans dashed out into the clearing, surrounding them quickly, their own guns trained on both Brad and Raiyev. “Lower your weapon!” Raiyev heard one of them call, and saw it was a human pointing a gun at Brad. It was the first time he had ever heard any of them speak in their own language, and it sounded odd—the voice sounded far too unnatural.

“Don’t hurt him!” Raiyev said braver than he should have. “Don’t you lay a finger on him, you bastards! You leave him alone!”

“Why did you let them do this?” Brad cried to Raiyev. “See what they’ve done to me? Can you see what you let them do?!”

“No, Brad!” Raiyev turned to his lover once again. “Please, stop this! Snap out of it! I know you can fight it, please, you just have to try!”

“Lower your weapon or else we’ll have to shoot!” the human said again.

“Why couldn’t you save me…” Brad cried, then turned the gun on himself, placing the barrel in his muzzle.

“No…” the giant raccoon strained, uttering only a whisper, but it was too late.

Raiyev would never forget how simply poetic it looked, Brad’s body arcing backwards after pulling the trigger. He seemed to fly gracefully through the air, suspended in time. The blood didn’t even register in Raiyev’s eyes—only the beautiful body of his fiancée, his mate, his lover. Laying sprawled on the ground, Raiyev tried to imagine that Brad was only sleeping, just like he saw so many mornings of waking up next to him in bed. But he was gone this time…gone for good.



Part 22



It wasn’t until the humans started making their move on the giant raccoon that Raiyev’s thoughts came back down to the severity of the situation. Brad was gone…gone! He was dead, and it was the fault of these damnable intruders into his life and his world.

Blinded by rage and tears, Raiyev starting attacking the humans, his much larger body fueling his strength as he knocked out one after another with fists as big as beach balls, the sheer strength of each pounding wallop sending each human flying several feet through the air before landing, unconscious, on the soft earth. There were inevitably too many humans surrounding him, though, and he felt that faintly familiar prick on his neck, and he fell into darkness.



When Raiyev awoke, he found himself strolling in some strange and foreign landscape. It seemed like a dry, barren desert, with hard and brittle earth that cracked beneath his feet. The sun was shining fiercely in his eyes as it was setting on the horizon, the golden-orange glow hurting his vision. He had no idea where he was headed, either—only that his feet seemed to be guiding him of their own accord. He tried to stop himself, but found it extremely difficult, as if he were in a dream, his body not wanting to respond to his will.

As he started to panic at the thought of his body being controlled like a marionette by some outside force, he cast his eyes around—the only part of his body that was fully under his own control. Then he saw it: glancing downward, there was an assortment of something that looked like tiny glittering pebbles or seeds cast all around the ground. There were faint patches of green as well, looking like tiny patches of moss.

It took a moment for Raiyev to register that these tiny pebbles were actually buildings, and those patches of moss were clusters of trees. It looked like a much bigger city this time, until some part of Raiyev was able to figure that it was really two sister cities overlapping each other’s borders. They had done it again—the humans were using him again as their war machine. But why could he sense it this time? Why was he so aware of it?

His panic rose as he watched in horror, his body lifting his tremendous leg, that titanic hindpaw hovering over some part of the nearest city’s edge, casting it in a deadly shadow before it came smashing back down with great force, the ground cracking as scores of buildings flattened instantly, snuffing out hundreds of these foreigner’s lives in the blink of an eye. The paw rested there a moment before his other hindpaw lifted and swung forward over another section of the suburbs.

No… Raiyev thought. Not this time. Please…not again… You won’t use me again! He struggled with all his might to overcome whatever force was controlling his bodily movements, strained to force his own will into dominance. He watched as his leg slowly started to pull back towards him, away from the cowering people beneath its shadow. Yes! he thought. Come on! No more destruction today…

But it was no good. Just as he started to regain control of his leg, it jerked forward again, much more powerfully and swiftly, and the struggle to win control caused Raiyev to topple over sideways, landing with a planet-shaking THUD that completely obliterated about a sixth of one of the cities. No! Raiyev tried to scream, only hearing his own thoughts instead. The twenty-mile-tall raccoon started to tear up as Raiyev felt beaten, feeling himself slip even further away from control over himself.

These stupid people! he thought as he started to rise again. It’s all their fault! Why did they have to war with these humans? Why couldn’t they just give in? He barely noticed that he started stomping the city in earnest now as he ranted inside his own head, causing unfathomable panic and bedlam to unleash down below in the city. If they just gave in, I wouldn’t have to be here! I wouldn’t have to do this, and I’d still have Brad! Massive tears, each big enough to fill fifteen swimming pools, streaked down Raiyev’s cheek as he relented, giving himself up to the forces controlling his body.

He watched as his body easily smashed through the first city, only vaguely aware of it all. He barely registered how the houses felt like grains of sand to him, the larger buildings like small pebbles that flattened so easily beneath his incalculable weight. The people themselves were so insignificantly tiny that he couldn’t even feel them had he been in total control of his body.

Far below, the people were doing there best to escape, though many resigning to their inevitable fate, accepting the fact that there would be no possible escape for them. The military had gathered, still trying in vain to battle the towering titan, whose body soared up past the clouds. Their guns might as well have been loaded with pudding for all the good they were accomplishing. The larger artillery only registered as a faint tickle for the giant, not reaching up farther than his ankles. The military only stopped fighting when they were helplessly crushed under another mighty stomp of the raccoon giant’s hindpaw, compacting them and everything else in a three-mile radius deep into the earth, leaving a crater hundreds of feet deep.

As Raiyev moved on to the second city (already in an uproar of panic), that familiar twitching from his sheath grew until he was sporting the biggest raging hard-on the planet had ever seen (or likely would ever see again). The two-and-a-half-mile-long cock began oozing with huge dollops of precum that rained down over the city, crashing heavily directly into the downtown area, causing buildings to crumble, the rubble soaking in his thick, warm, sticky jism. Anyone who wasn’t crushed to death from the impact of the fluid drowned almost instantly thereafter.

But before Raiyev could fully play, he had to take care of business. Swishing his enormous tail violently, he wiped out humongous chunks of the city almost instantly, murring and churring in delight at how easily he could crush this puny city simply with his thick, soft tail. The part of Raiyev that had been trying so desperately to stave this off just a few minutes ago was now so subdued that an overwhelming sense of erotic satisfaction came from destroying these cities. Every house crushed, every person stomped and broken, left Raiyev feeling better and better, his massive member throbbing almost painfully in need.

The remains of the city died quickly under Raiyev’s incomprehensibly brutal attack. It was just all too easy for the looming giant to snuff out in seconds what took these people decades to build. When all was said and done, the great ruins of the twin cities—one of the planet’s most prized localities—lay like a vast, barren gravesite, small fires still burning here and there. And Raiyev finally turned his attention to his aching cock.

Lowering himself cautiously to the ground, he rubbed his long member atop the ruins of one of the cities’ downtown area, ploughing through it like a greatly oversized battering ram. But this wasn’t enough for the giant, so pulling his dick up again, he pointed it directly down at the ground and lowered himself with a moan, murring in delight as the planet’s crust shattered and gave way for his unstoppable monster cock. Pile-driving his rod into the planet, Raiyev groaned in lust as he hilted in the ground, then, paws spread out as if trying to hug the entire planet, he started humping the earth.

It was an amazing sensation, the jagged crust around his cock a delightful sensation, and he simply kept humping harder and faster, lowering his muzzle to a part of the ruined cities to lap up some of the rubble, enjoying the taste of adding insult to injury for these tiny people and their proud cities. His great tail swishing above him like a victory flag, Raiyev continued to hump and pound the planet with his rod, the ground shaking with each powerful thrust of his hips, countless gallons of precum leaking into his self-made dildo.

The giant raccoon felt his climax building, and just as he felt himself ready to explode, he pulled back out of the deep hole he made and pointed his cock at the cities themselves, roaring in delight as his organ exploded, shooting wave after wave of his thick cum over the cities, drowning what was left of them in a lake of his messy seed.

His orgasm lasted several long, glorious minutes, and he simply stayed there, his back arced, supporting his torso’s weight with a single massive paw on the ground. After his cock finally shrank back into his massive, protective pouch, he rose again to his feet and strolled away, his mission complete.



Part 23



Raiyev awoke with a start, back in that cell that had now become all too familiar for him. He remembered more clearly this time what he had done to those poor cities. Their defense was practically non-existent against him, the raccoon recalled. He got up from the stone bed on which he was laying and, with a heavy sigh, leaned against the cool clear wall facing the corridor.

He had been there tool too many times now. Well, really, once was too many, Raiyev told himself. His attitude towards it all now was beyond distress. He didn’t feel like crying or yelling at anyone. All he could feel now was a resolve to escape by any means necessary. He placed his paws on the hard, clear wall, feeling it, trying to understand a way he could escape from it. He ran his fingers all along the edges, trying to find some sort of groove, but it melded seamlessly into the adjacent walls.

Pounding on it before didn’t help, but maybe he could break through it somehow now. Raiyev noticed, looking around, that the cell looked considerably smaller than last time he was in it. He reckoned he must have been a little over fifty feet tall now. Pressing himself up against the concrete wall opposite the clear wall from which he had exited twice before, he prepared himself for his new drastic plan.

Raiyev breathed deep a few times, his eyes closed as he gathered his strength. Snapping his eyes open, he stared menacingly at the clear wall for a split second before he broke into a dash across the small cell, slamming his entire body into the wall. He bounced back hard and to the side, ramming backwards into the concrete wall along which the stone bed rested.

He shook his head, his body throbbing in pain all over, bruises forming quickly beneath his ruffled fur. Moaning, he looked up at the wall against which he had just slammed with all his might. Nothing. Not even a scratch or dent of any sign. Raiyev moaned harder, bringing a paw up to massage his forehead.

He sneezed as a sudden amount of dust fell in front of his face, and he looked curiously at the paw he had just raised. It was covered in dust, and looking behind him, Raiyev saw the source: the concrete wall behind him had a few large dents in it, as if someone had taken a few good swings of the sledgehammer to the wall.

The bounce back, Raiyev realized, caused the concrete wall to get damaged. Well, if that’s the case, Raiyev thought, then… He got up, surveying now the concrete wall as he had done the clear wall next to it. It wouldn’t do good to go ramming through there, he realized, as the stone bed was blocking the way. However, the other concrete wall at the back of the cell had a clear path to it.

Raiyev rested a minute, his body still aching all over, before he got up in preparation to repeat his tactic to the concrete wall. Backing himself up against the clear exit wall, Raiyev once again summoned every ounce of strength in his massive body, and took a full charge at the concrete wall in front of him. In a shower of dust and rocky debris, Raiyev successfully broke through to the other side.

Just as he was dusting himself off and looking around at the new corridor he had broken into, a loud, raucous alarm sounded. Knowing that sound could only be bad, Raiyev ran off to his left, trying desperately to find a way similar to the path he had found to escape before. The corridor didn’t lead where he thought it might have, though, and Raiyev spent many panicky minutes darting around corners and down long hallways, his back stooped most of the time to avoid hitting the ceiling.

Left, right, right, left, straight, right, straight, left… The entire place felt like a maze, and as the second ticked by, he grew more and more anxious as to when he would run into more of those nasty humans. No one seemed to turn up, however, and he blessed his luck for a while until he figured ten minutes had passed (though it felt like hours), and he was still trapped in the maze of whatever place this was. He paused a moment at another intersection, to catch his breath, the alarm ringing in his ears, and he glanced around quickly.

Still, no one pursued him. He felt odd—more odd and out of place than he had before, as if they were just letting him go and not pursuing him on purpose. He couldn’t explain it to himself, he couldn’t figure why they’d risk losing their precious weapon now, but he didn’t want to risk sticking around to find out.

At long last, he found a hallway that looked familiar enough to him that he dashed around the place almost on instinct. Before he even was aware of it, he had burst through the doors to the outside, the sun still shining brightly. The beautiful clearing and forest beyond still looked out of place directly outside the facility from which he had escaped, as if its natural beauty under the warm sun was mocking the tribulations he had just been through.

Nevertheless, he dashed through the clearing, not entirely sure where to head, until he spotted a figure running out from the line of trees at the other end. He froze a moment, afraid it would be another human, but saw to his great relief that it was Dr. Harper. She ran up to him, calling out to him as he just stood there in the middle of the clearing.

“Harper!” Raiyev cried back to the small rabbit, starting to run towards her. “Come on, we should get out of here, quick!”

“Raiyev, wait!” she said as they got so close to each other that they risked running into one another. “Wait! I don’t think you have to run this time!”

“Wha…what?” Raiyev panted, holding a stitch in his side as he sat down in the tall heather, his massive body still looming over the diminutive rabbit. “What do you mean?”

Harper opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment, Raiyev cried out loudly in pain, his head pounding suddenly, and he leaned forward, his head in his heavy paws, rocking back and forth a bit. In a few seconds, something tiny had drilled itself out of the middle of Raiyev’s forehead and dropped into the grass between his legs.

Rubbing his forehead and wiping away a small trickle of blood, the big raccoon picked up the tiny black and red object that had just exited his skull. Wiping it clean a bit on his leg, he held it up close to his large eyes, examining it carefully.

“Is this…?” he said slowly, almost more to himself than to Harper. “Is this a camera?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” Harper sighed heavily. “That’s part of what I have to tell you,” she said as Raiyev looked at her. She was about to start again when there was a loud rumbling noise and the earth started shaking beneath them. Raiyev looked around, panicked, and suddenly saw the mountainside from which he had exited a moment ago start to rip itself from the earth.

Something very large started rising from the mountainside, and Raiyev looked in slack-jawed awe as a deep, steely-blue metal surface exposed itself from beneath the mountainside, rock and grass still covering that part of it that was concealed by the face of the mountain. Higher and higher rose the facility in which Raiyev had been imprisoned, propelled upward by some unseen force. As it rose, Raiyev was able to take in just how massive the place really was, and saw for himself why the humans needed an entire mountain to conceal them.

It rose a few hundred feet into the air, hovering over them before it disappeared in a flash, leaving the sky empty save for a few high-floating clouds. The mountain now looked more like the remains of a volcano whose side had crumbled during a particularly violent blast, and Raiyev simply stared at it for a few minutes before Harper’s voice drew his attention back to her.

“They’ve finally gone,” she said. “And now I can tell you what this was really all about.”



Part 24



“Tell me what this is about?” Raiyev asked incredulously. “What, you mean you knew all this time?” he asked firmly.

“No, no, no!” Harper said quickly. “I was able to find out what the humans were doing here, like you had sent me to do, remember?”

“Oh,” Raiyev said, remembering his last meeting with Harper. “Yeah…I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” Harper said consolingly. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot. More than anyone should be put through, honestly.”

“You’re telling me,” Raiyev huffed. “Anyways…I feel bad about sending you in. Thomas told me after I saw you last that it was about some political war with another planet, and that I was their weapon.”

“Yes, Thomas would say that. That’s what he had come to understand, at least. I was able to find some sort of archives—their technology is way ahead of ours, of course, so the way they store data is really different. Anyways, from what I could see, they were using you as a war machine…which is very sick and twisted and wrong…” she added in an undertone. “But while the war was real, it was only part of the equation. Almost like a red herring, but it did have its own innate purposes.”

“What do you mean?” Raiyev asked.

“Well, that camera you’re holding in your paw…it’s…it…oh, Raiyev! It’s for a television show!”

Raiyev sat, staring at Harper in total disbelief. “You’re joking,” he said accusingly.

“I wish I was,” she pleaded. “You know how we have reality shows here, right?”

Raiyev nodded, frowning at Harper.

“Well, the humans do, too, only for them, it’s gotten so bad in their society that they turn the news and politics into sick entertainment. They use reality shows to choose presidents and CEOs and other leaders. War to them is just like some fictional movie, even if they’re the ones waging it! And your life as you’ve been seeing it since this whole mess began has been documented and aired as pure entertainment for the humans back on their home planet.”

Raiyev sat still and silent, the shock of all this hitting him like a freight train. “I’m a fucking show…” he sighed after a moment.

“It’s horrible, I know…” Harper started, patting his arm.

“How?” he demanded, glowering at Harper, as if it was still somehow her fault.

“It’s a bit complicated,” she began, looking up at Raiyev with pleading eyes, but his stare penetrated her, and she continued, “but a lot of our people were involved. First there was Toni Hawthorne.”

“Toni?” Raiyev asked incredulously. “But she seemed so nice…but then…she did try to warn me of something…” It felt like ages ago that he had that brief and interrupted meeting with Toni after work.

“I know,” Harper said, “but the humans have plenty of ways to make people do what they want, as I’m sure you’ve learned by now. Remember bumping into her that day, making her papers fall?”

Raiyev strained a moment to recall fuzzy memories. “Yeah…” he said slowly. “Yeah, I think I do. I helped her pick them all up.”

“Exactly. Those papers were coated with a certain solution that worked its way into your body. When that solution was mixed with the Gigantism extract, it caused you to stay the same size as the rest of us and this planet shrunk. Bilicek, the security guard, was paid off well to simply radio to Toni when you had arrived to work that day, so Toni could make sure to run into you and spill the papers.

“Dr. Paxton was a key link between the humans and earth. She worked for—“

“For a secret government organization,” Raiyev interrupted. “Yeah, Thomas laid me privy to that one. She sold information to the humans for access to their technology. Christ, it’s a fucking conspiracy! And Thomas was in on it, too!”

“Yes, Thomas was supposed to make sure that our lab got the ball rolling with the Gigantism idea.”

“Lovely,” Raiyev spat sarcastically. “Anyone else?”

Harper cast a nervous look at the ground. “Well, they had to get that camera into your head that day the planet started to shrink…” she said, her voice trembling a bit. “But it’s not clear…it’s hard to say for sure, because so many of the rest of us were just pawns, Raiyev, pawns that fell right into place as our profiles showed the humans we would!”

“Who?” Raiyev demanded.

“I’m saying, it’s not clear—I could have misread—“

“Who?” Raiyev repeated louder, though he already could tell who.

“Please, Raiyev,” Harper said, looking up into his eyes with fear. “I can’t—“

“SAY THE NAME!” he roared, grabbing her, his fist encompassing her tiny body.

“BRAD!” she cried out, sobbing. “Brad might have…been…”

“No,” Raiyev muttered firmly, releasing his grip on her. “I won’t believe it. I refuse to. He wouldn’t. Not ever, you hear me? Not EVER!”

“Oh, Raiyev…I don’t want it to be true…I don’t want any of this to be true…and it’s hard to tell anymore what is and what isn’t…” Harper leaned over the raccoon’s large leg and cried. Raiyev, too, had tears carefully caressing his cheeks. He didn’t care what Harper ever said—he would never believe that Brad had betrayed him.

“Why me?” he croaked after a minute.

“It was nothing personal,” Harper explained. “They just went through our profiles, looking for the best candidate—the one who would do the best job as both their war machine and their drama queen for their show. But it’s over now, Raiyev, and they’ve gone.”

“It’s over?” he asked, not knowing whether or not he could believe it.

“They’ve left. The war is over. And you’re shrinking.”

“What?!” Raiyev said, looking suddenly at Harper with sharp eyes. But as he looked around, he could see everything getting slowly bigger around him.

“They’re done with us, Raiyev. They’re returning Earth back to its normal size. They only started shrinking it to serve as a warning to us not to mess with them, just as they were shrinking that other planet they made you attack.”

Raiyev looked down at the small camera still in his paw, surveying it as he took in everything that had just happened to him. He gave an odd sort of laugh; it almost felt forced, but not really. He felt broken and betrayed. But there was something more… He couldn’t exactly put his finger on it—it felt surreal, like something out of a dream, but at the same time it felt so real…so real… Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say that it was otherworldly.



-end-