There was a classroom. Magarce couldn’t quite believe there was a classroom. She’d been told that Ungovernment was a secret anarchist place in the mountains outside Verss, and when the word ‘anarchist’ was explained to her, she thought things were going well for her for a change. But then there was the classroom, and the boring lecture, and Magarce played with the dress Faisand had given her. It was a present to make up for not having the gun. It was a lousy weapon, though Faisand had suggested that it allowed for other kinds of weapons, and she would know. She sat, half-listening to the old wolf giving his lecture.

He paced back and forth at the head of the class, and though students had desks to write on, he didn’t have any sort of desk or podium. There was one chair pointing back at the others, which he wasn’t sitting on. For some reason, it was a tiny chair, as if for a child, and perhaps this was why he wasn’t using it.

“The purpose is to develop your consciousness- or, rather, to help you develop your own consciousness, willingly- toward what we might call mutuality: assuming we want to maximize liberty and minimize authority, the trick is that we must always take the opposite principle into account. This is not obvious- it seems as though the obvious thing to do would be to maximize liberty at all costs, but we’re looking for something sustainable. Just as we recognize limits to authority, we must also recognize at least some limits to liberty, because our path to a sustainable society is through reform rather than idealistic revolution…”

Magarce tuned out. She thought one of the other students, sitting up front, might be peeking back at her. He was a fine specimen of Runge-wolf and she liked the idea of him peeking at her. She played with her dress some more, hiking it up, to see if his attention could be drawn.

“It’s important to emphasise that we should not turn to revolution, because that’s by definition recourse to force, the arbitrary imposition of our views onto our environment, and obviously a contradiction on the face of it. It’s essentially a moral transformation we seek, requiring the highest ethics from those who seek permanent and lasting change, achieved through tireless reform and persuasion. And if we must take refuge in an enclave against the overwhelming force of our neighboring society, so be it, let us reform what we can and go on reforming unceasingly. And yet… do we transform ourselves into the reflection of that which we resist?”

Magarce slipped a paw under her dress. The other student was definitely peeking at her, and it was distinctly exciting. Her paw caressed the soft fur of her crotch- and tickled the hidden pinkness that stirred and pouted beneath the dress. She shifted her weight a little in the chair, and saw the guy’s ears perk, as if he’d detected a waft of some scent that interested him.

“Take for instance our people who aren’t above enjoying the toys of the society we reject. We admire the moral strength of the person who’s willing to live equally, mutually, with his fellows, but what do we practically do with the person whose willingness is a pose? Who talks of complete liberty, so long as his car is better than that of his neighbor’s, so long as his room is bigger? How many of you can honestly say that you truly desire total equality? You desire freedom from the repression of society’s forces, but can you extend this into mutuality, or is it freedom for me and not for thee you’re after? When the pie is in your hands, how quickly do you reach out to your brother to share it, or do you resist?”

The guy ahead of her was having real trouble paying attention. He was peeking back like mad, and Magarce stared levelly at him while her paw delicately encircled her vagina, parted her trim folds, stroked the quivering pink flesh within. Her tail flicked about excitedly, and other students were beginning to glance in her direction as well.

“And what of natural imbalances? Do we oppress and suppress those among us who excel, in order to guarantee the equality of all? Surely not- and yet, given total liberty, we’ll have some who naturally rise to gain greater power over others, perhaps power to rival anything our society has inflicted. Total authority is an abomination, yet total liberty breeds the same abominations. I say again, mutuality, mutuality, mutuality: the moral force of willingly trying to strike an ever imperfect balance with…”

Magarce’s legs were well parted by now, and her elegant dress rode around her waist, allowing the student in front of her a clear view of her eagerly pouting pussy, and every one of the students had the scent now, and showed reactions from amusement to distress to anger.

“Miss? I’d like to think my lecture was important- in fact I’m sure it is- but do you have pressing matters that need attention, also?”

Magarce glanced, startled, at the lecturer. He didn’t sound angry, but his ears were quirked to the side in an expression she recognized as suppressed annoyance. She seized the moment.

“Yeah! I want that one, there,” pointed Magarce, “to come and fuck me. Cause I’m really bored!”

“Propaganda of the deed!” chuckled the lecturer.

“Does that mean come and fuck me right now?”

“Perhaps a little!” said the lecturer. “Let’s run with that for a moment…”

“Yay!” said Magarce, beckoning to the student she’d been seducing, but the guy wasn’t finished.

“You, there!” he said, picking out the wolf who looked most upset and angry. “Mutuality. If we’re here for you, what do you need right now?”

It was a female Runge, rather scrawny and ungainly, and she stammered for a moment and then spoke out with force. “I need her to not be doing that!”

“Why?”

“I… ahhh…” said the Runge girl, unable to continue, but the lecturer wouldn’t let up. “Please. Don’t hold out on us. It looks like you’re upset…”

“Damn right I’m upset! I want to hear your lecture, I mean it’s really good and it’s really important and this is a big distraction and, and, and…” She broke off again, bristling terribly.

“And,” said the lecturer, “she’s picked the most attractive guy in the room, hasn’t she?”

The wolf girl didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to- her bristling and her tucked tail and flattened ears told plainly that it was true. Even her scent hinted, to the other Runge, that she’d been harboring a passion for the handsome student.

“You! Lucky man!” said the lecturer. “Looks like you’ve got some power, haven’t you?”

“He won’t need that much, I’m pretty wet,” offered Magarce. “It’s not as hard as you’d think to fit in there.”

“That’s nice,” said the lecturer, “but I’m talking to our lucky man. What would you like to happen right now?”

The guy was bristling as well. He hadn’t asked for this public shaming. He mumbled, in a deliciously deep voice that Magarce hadn’t heard before, “Uh… I’m sorry about the distraction… I, uh, want some different things… um… What does everybody else want me to do?”

At this, the lecturer clapped his hands sharply, making everyone jump, and his eyes were bright. “Mutuality! Thank you for the wonderful demonstration of how difficult this all is in practice! He wants several things, she over there clearly wants one very badly, she wants her to not have that thing- or at least not in class! There is no one right answer! Mutuality is the means by which we imperfectly navigate an imperfect world, and it’s a continuing moral struggle that we take on out of love for each other…”

“Can he come over and fuck me now?” said Magarce.

“Ah, the voice of liberty. Remember that voice! We’ve got to honor it- in a way all our efforts are to give every one of us a chance at living that voice, in harmony with each other. But we cannot trust that voice to be our final answer, any more than we can trust authority to rule us. We’ll go as far in the direction of liberty that we can, but remember that both authority and liberty can tread on your tail…”

Magarce pouted. The cute wolf student wasn’t even looking at her now. He was sitting very straight, and his ears kept trying to twist toward her and getting wrested back to perk towards the lecturer. Clearly his idea of fun wasn’t to screw her in class, and it wasn’t just her pussy that was pouting. She toyed with the idea of masturbating to orgasm to teach them all a lesson, and then decided she wanted dick and would have to wait for it, because she just wasn’t big enough to drag the guy off against his will.

After the lecture was over, Magarce sat warily in her seat, for she hadn’t enjoyed the looks she was getting from some students. The unlucky wolf girl refused to look at her at all, and rushed off awkwardly as soon as people got up to leave. Even worse, the sexy wolf she’d teased did the same thing- he wouldn’t even look at her, and to top it off he went after the wolf girl, apparently trying to get out apologies while she hastened her exit, her tail severely tucked in embarrassment. She was left alone in the classroom with the teacher, who stood there at the head of the class, looking very amused.

“What just happened?” said Magarce.

“Mutuality.” said the lecturer, and his eyes twinkled. “I’m Brin, by the way. I’m guessing you’re even more new here than the rest of them?”

“No, I mean, why wouldn’t he come and fuck me? I wanted him to. I thought I had him!”

“He had many different wants.” said Brin. “I’m sure you counted as one of them. Gabby there counted as one last week, and she was a bit hurt, and it’s not unreasonable that he had second thoughts.”

Magarce quirked her ears. “Yes it is. I’m trained by Faisand, for fuck’s sake, it’s totally unreasonable. I’m way better.”

“Really?” chuckled Brin. “Seems he didn’t agree. Maybe we need to talk a little about mutuality, before you go.”

Magarce purred. “Okay! C’mere!” She began tickling herself again, but the Runge lecturer held up a paw.

“Nope. That’s not what I mean. And you stay where you are, okay? Don’t make things too hard for me. I’d really like to talk to you.”

Magarce heaved a big sigh. “Okay- you’re the boss! What’s up?”

That put the guy’s ears back. Rather than answer, he turned and sat down in the little chair. Ridiculously seated, he said, “Do I look like a boss now?”

“You look like an idiot. What’s with the silly chair?”

“Counterweighting. I have to be in one place to talk, so we do this so I can remind the students I’m not above them, I’m just communicating with them all at once. Got that?”

“Nope.” said Magarce. “Hey, you could probably lick me while I was standing up, if you’re sitting in that!”

Brin was momentarily speechless, but his ears spoke of dismay eloquently. Then he said, “Do I need to stand up again, or will you listen?”

“I’m listening. So what’s going on? And why can’t I get you interested? It’s pissing me off.”

“Two reasons.” said Brin. “One, I think I’d better try to get you socialized in this place or it’ll be bad for everybody. Two- you haven’t got a dick, and maybe it’d be simpler to just mention that fact rather than get into complicated, ambiguous explanations?”

“Oh!” said Magarce. “Okay, okay. That explains it. But you don’t think I can go after the cute guy? I don’t know how far he got.”

“Good. Let’s go on from there, shall we? I can explain why you shouldn’t try to do that right now, and you’ll have a better chance of going after him in future- but you’ve got to listen. It seems like I know how this place works a lot better than you do. Okay?”

Magarce sat more demurely, though almost anything would’ve been an improvement. “Okay. Shoot!”

The guy sighed. “Where do I even start? It just seems like your attitude is… coercive. If it stays like that, you’re going to have an awfully hard time getting anything you want here. Example. If you want a thing, and someone else is able to provide that thing, can you tell me how you’d describe your role? What do you do, how do you see yourself in that situation?”

Magarce’s ears flattened a bit as she tried to work out what the right answer was. It was frustrating that this old wolf was gay: her best weapons weren’t going to work, and it seemed like she had virtually no way to make him like her or approve of her, and it seemed like that would be important, because he was the boss- or some weird variation on that, which still included him being a boss but didn’t include making any sense.

“I… make… no, take that back, how about… I get him to give me the thing? I do whatever I gotta do, to get the thing.”

“How do you know?” said the old wolf, rapidly.

“What?”

“How do you know what to do?”

“I don’t.” admitted Magarce. “If it’s fucking, sticking my ass up in the air seems to work, because the thing I want is dick. Is that okay? You should understand that, you want dick too! How complicated can it be?”

Brin was shaking his head. “Even getting fucked as an act of coercion… amazing… though to be fair, I’ve seen female Nerre at it before, and you guys really seem to specialize in being demanding. Listen, I’ll cut right to the answer, okay? The way you see your role is, looking for what the guy wants. You already know what you want. Mutuality means you take a minute to try to understand who he is, where he’s coming from. You hope he’s also trying to understand what you want…”

“I can get that across.” snickered Magarce.

“What about when it’s not sex? What about other wants?”

Magarce fell silent. The one thing she wanted most of all was a gun, and Faisand and Demarle had taken that from her. It was Faisand’s, true, but it still upset her that she hadn’t been able to keep that gun, and she felt profoundly unsafe without it. She did have other wants, desperate ones, and she wasn’t doing great at getting them met.

Brin observed her reaction, satisfied. “You see? You need mutuality. I can see right away, there’s other things you want, and you didn’t get them, did you? Coercion will sabotage you, even out there in the outside world, but here you’re dead if you try it.”

“What?”

He spotted the note of panic, and added, “Probably not literally. It depends what you’re demanding. We’re pretty good here- we have to be, and we have to care. I’m just saying, you need to also care. You didn’t think for one second of the other students, or that girl, when you were trying to pick up our pretty boy in class, and you struck out completely. Wake up. You hear me? Wake up.”

“I am awake!” protested Magarce. She felt herself tearing up, and went with it- anything to get this guy off her back. Or off her case, since he apparently wouldn’t want to be on her back anyhow. Unless he’d be into kitty anal? No- she thought she sensed a certain repugnance and could tell she couldn’t get to him that way. It would be crying and the innocent act, then.

“So what are you going to do more of, from now on?”

“Uh… be good?” sniffled Magarce.

“Define good!” snapped Brin.

Magarce winced- this guy was too tough! She racked her brain for what he’d said, though everything tended to slip away and be forgotten, just more stuff into the memory hole. “To be.. um, to… To wake up and, um, listen to what other people say?”

“Look for what they want.”

Magarce nodded. “Do what they want. And then I can get what I want.”

Brin winced, covering his eyes, the expression on his muzzle strained and frowning. “Something like that… while also not anything like that… Oh, just go on, will you? Be careful with our people. I don’t think you understand us very well. We’ll try to take care of you. Okay? I don’t know where you’re from, but you’re going to need us to take care of you while you wake up. We’ll do our best to meet your needs, okay? I’ll talk with some people and warn… uh, tip them off about you.”

Magarce just stared at him, perplexed.

“And… I’ll ask around. I can’t help you, but maybe you’ll feel better if you get fucked? You smell like you need it.”

Magarce nodded, brightening. “You can say that again!”

“Well then- come with me. I’ll call in a favor. Actually, I can think of a couple guys where I’m doing them a favor. Preferences, requirements, not-to-exceed sizes?”

Magarce’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding. I get to pick ‘em out, just like that?”

“To the extent that I can guess it, sure. It seems like it’s hard to make you care. Let’s show you what it’s like to be cared for, and maybe it’ll make better sense. Come along, ah…?”

“Magarce!” she said, and scampered along in his wake, beginning to be enchanted with her new world.

Outside the classroom, a group of Runge were talking, among them the guy she’d been after and the girl who’d been so offended. Seeing her approach, they smiled, but more with amusement and side comments than with friendship, and the cute guy promptly sidled off making some excuse- followed by the girl, whose tail was held a lot higher than it had been earlier.

Magarce regarded this with feline irritation, but followed Brin over to the group anyhow. The watching eyes didn’t look away- interested but guarded, males and females alike, as if Magarce was worth lively conversation, but not actual respect.

“How you guys doin’?” said Brin, with great casualness. Nobody answered for a moment, and then a white-furred wolf replied, “We might ask the same thing of you. Are things okay? Do you need help with anything?”

“Well, yes- and funny you should ask, Jens.”

The white Runge seemed to draw back a little, and his ears showed wariness. “Help for… you, then?”

“Remember a couple weeks ago, do you?” said Brin. “That’s what I’m thinking of.”

Jens stayed very polite. “Yes, I’m thinking of that too, and I don’t have another answer to give you… I’m sorry, and I’m still grateful you were so cool about it…”

“No, don’t worry about that.” said Brin. Magarce watched from behind him, because she was having trouble working out the tone- marching up and demanding stuff was natural to her, but it seemed strangely unpopular here. He continued, “If I remember right, there was something you weren’t seeing much of- you were complaining about it, and I couldn’t help you?”

Jens glanced past him. “Don’t tell me…”

“I’m not telling you a thing.” said Brin, sharply. “If you like, I’m trying to find the best compromise for the most people, all right? Meet, what’s-her-name… our voice of liberty, that you guys might have been talking about.”

Jens’ expression was complicated, with elements both of desire and disapproval. Magarce stepped out from behind Brin, and Jens’ expression intensified, with ears quirked to the side and laid back slightly. She tried to latch onto the way these new people were talking. “I’m Magarce. Can… you help me?”

“Depends what you mean!” said Jens. “While I appreciate how well Brin remembers the details of what I told him…”

Magarce lost patience, all at once. She stamped a paw, and lashed her tail, which came off as more cute than intimidating due to her tiny size, and she declared, “Fine. Fuck me, dammit! I’m really frustrated. I tried so hard to get that guy, and off he goes, and won’t even look at me! Can you believe that?”

Jens backed off, imperceptibly. He stared at Brin. “Holy crap. You expect me to defuse this?”

Brin shrugged. “Maybe she’ll settle down if she gets what she wants. Can’t fault her for wanting it. Still feeling left out? This might be your lucky day.”

Jens regarded Magarce. “You… do look nice. Brin knows that I like your kind… what if I said, yes?”

“Yay!” cried Magarce, and, remembering Faisand’s tricks, she cast the dress over her shoulders and down in a graceful twirl, that she promptly screwed up, stumbling over the hem of the silky fabric. Rather than stepping gracefully nude out of a puddle of spilled fabric, she ended up wriggling out of a tangle of dress that bunched up around her waist, her perky little breasts jouncing tautly as she shoved at the binding fabric.

“Whoa!” said Jens.

“Meet our voice of liberty,” said Brin, “and if you’ll excuse me…” at which point he made a hasty exit.

Jens’ friends were laughing. “We’ll be moving along too…” said one.

“No!” protested Jens. “Hang on… c’mere, you…” he said, and scooped Magarce up bodily, which caused her to snuggle against him and purr, entranced by the pirate-like boldness. The sudden contact also caused her libido to kick into high gear again, and within the tangle of dress fabric, her pussy jolted into ‘damn the torpedoes’ mode. He gazed down at her, and she looked up at him as if he was going to bring her all the presents in the world, and then stuff them up her until she couldn’t come any more.

“W… would you like to go visit a more out-of-the way hallway? It’s nice and p… private.”

“I can’t drag you toward it unless you put me down. And don’t put me down!” panted Magarce.

Jens didn’t hesitate, and to the accompaniment of polite, amused applause from his friends, he set off down the hall toward his goal.

The place looked like a wreck. There was no telling why Jens spent time hanging around such places, but perhaps he was the sort that wandered off by himself, to mope or explore. Part of the ceiling was falling in, and Magarce wriggled in his arms as he bent to avoid a sort of girder that had once held up the roof. Jens’ first reaction was to grasp her feline bottom tighter, but then he realized something was up.

“Um. Maybe you don’t… like… places like this?”

Magarce squirmed more, and got a paw on the ground, supporting herself. She stared down the decaying hallway, appraisingly. “Is it gonna fall over?”

“No! Well… Almost certainly no.”

“What’s that mean? What’s ‘almost’ certainly?”

“There’s a place I, I, I…”

Magarce studied him. Jens was pitifully ill at ease. “A place that you knocked over?”

“No no… the opposite…” He was bristling dreadfully.

“A place you built up? Or propped up, or something? Talk to me, you’re worrying me. What the hell is the matter?” chirped Magarce in her little cat voice.

Jens waved helplessly. “You’d better come see…” and headed further in, with Magarce carefully pursuing him, her excitement damped down by the weirdness and awkwardness.

It was indeed a place he built up, and propped up. An arch of girders held a curtain, behind which lay Jens’ would-be love-nest. A sort of bed was made out of old boxes, with an old mattress covering them. The mattress wore a sensuous crimson bedspread, though you could see through a rip in it that the mattress was worn and frayed to near extinction. Magarce got the sense that nobody had joined him here- until now.

“It’s f.. ff.. firm.” said Jens, and waggled his eyebrows in some kind of imitation of a bold, suggestive Runge lover-boy.

She stood for a moment, while his tail drooped further and further and began to tuck between his legs, but before he could make some excuse and leave, Magarce took a dainty step toward him, and Jens froze, eyes riveted on her petite form. She took another step, and some echo of Faisand breezed through the elegant, tangled dress, and this time Magarce handled it just right- the silky fabric billowed to the ground, nearly catching on her tail but spared that as Magarce slung her tail low for just long enough to clear the settling silk, and Magarce took another dainty step out of the puddle of cloth, utterly nude.

Jens couldn’t even breathe, and his eyes were wild. They scanned between her perky breasts, sheathed in soft ivory fur, took in the cool grey of her points on feet and hands and tail, bugged out as they locked into frantic study of her neatly sculpted hipbones and the cozy arch of her mons, beneath it the glimpse of pouting feline vulva framed in the gap between her slim thighs- and then his eyes jumped up in alarm to her face, as if he’d been caught at something, and took in her pert grey muzzle and perked ears, and finally her sky-blue eyes- and then, the glimpse of cute little feline teeth and little pink scrap of tongue as Magarce licked her lips, enjoying his response.

She’d be able to get this one to do anything she wanted.

“Do you have guns?”

“Uh…” said Jens, flustered. “Is… is that a comeon?”

Magarce’s ear flicked in vexation. First things first. “No. This is!”

With that, Magarce went to him, rubbing her nude body against him, purring, and undoing his pants. He didn’t even try to help, and he was trembling slightly, his legs shaking as she lowered the pants to the ground, with a pause as she undid the tail-loop a bit late. She ran a paw down the inside of his thigh reflectively, and then extended a claw and teasingly ran it back up again, retracting it when she got to his crotch so she could fondle his heavy testicles, and then exploring above to feel the swelling of his cock within its pristine white-furred sheath.

Magarce felt briefly annoyed that this Runge’s fur was a prettier white than hers- but it was coarser, anyway, and her attention was quickly distracted by the emergence of Jens’ wolfhood, glistening already with precome and a scarlet to shame the crimson of the bedspread. Everything about this guy was pretty, and she wondered how on earth he’d ended up this desperate- but the question answered itself, for Jens was bristling like mad and seemed afraid to even move, other than the steady emergence of his cock. His hand reached, trembling, out as if trying to touch her breast and not daring to do it, and Magarce’s ear flicked again, for his terror was infectuous and almost stole her own confidence.

Almost.

She sprang onto his bed, landing on all four paws and posing very nicely considering that the mattress was only a pretend mattress, a thing of lumps and gaps that her foot went into. A quick skip of the paw fixed that, and Magarce nuzzled the bedspread, ignoring the fact that it smelled of stale wolfcome, and thrust her pert tail in the air, wriggling. Jens didn’t move.

“Come here. Come heeeere… come HERE.”

Just when she was about to start yelling at him in earnest, the white-furred vision of wolfyness took a step toward her- and another- and loomed over her expectant body, his tail tucked between his legs but his erection standing out rigidly. He crouched a bit, then stood staring, then dropped to his knees with his paws out behind him only to find that Magarce was presenting so eagerly as to leave her crotch too high for him to reach in that position.

“Where do I put my feet?” whimpered Jens, his erection beginning to droop as he ran directly into the problem of his own inexperience. Hearing him, Magarce opened her eyes and looked behind her, displeased with what she saw.

“Stop that! Stop whining and fuck me! How difficult can it be?”

“Well I, I, I…”

Magarce snarled in frustration, and resettled her paws in a wider stance. She lashed her tail, held her butt at what she saw was a suitable elevation, and shot a hand back between her legs, finger-pads not seeking entry but to spread and display herself for him. It occurred to her as she was doing this that it was a smart play- this idiot might go up her ass, and she wanted it the traditional way after all her frustrations.

“Fuck that! Right now!”

Jens licked his lips, his ears back and his eyes terrified.

“Do you not want to? Are you like that other guy, the one that…”

“No, no!”

“Then what?” demanded Magarce, getting more and more cross.

“I just… what part do you… where does it, uh, go, and…”

“Push.” suggested Magarce. “Shove! You’ll fucking figure it out!”

The next thing she felt was Runge cock butting against the outer regions of her pussy, not farther up where her entrance peeked through into feline depths toward a womb that wouldn’t answer to Runge seed, but down lower, where she was slickened but no opening presented itself. He’d picked the wrong area, not knowing better. Magarce grabbed onto the crappy bed with all four paws, and instinctively jutted her pert bottom into the air again, which only raised her out of his reach.

She fought her instinct, and lowered her rump again. “Oh- so sorry- come on!” There wasn’t a trace of actual sorry in her remark.

Jens bit his lip, and tried again, his dick going floppy from his failures and worries, and he gripped it in his hand and tried to push it against her waiting vagina. For a moment, it was no use- Magarce felt a sort of vague pressure and that was it. She let out a shriek of frustration that rang down the corridor, and fought back the urge to whirl and claw at this fool- and then, as he tensed his body and tried to push his hips forward, the demanding feline felt a squeezing and shifting, and Jens, squeezing at his dick and trying to direct it, managed to wedge the front part of it into her.

Magarce froze, staring at nothing, and Jens could feel her freeze, and in that moment he pulled his hand away and shifted forward, his cock slurping into her in a jelly-like way, squeezed at her entrance and staying in her mostly because his crotch was pressed against hers as if to prevent his penis from squirting out between them. He held that pose while Magarce panted, and his eyes were wide and wondrous, because he felt himself growing more erect inside her, felt the slippery fevered inside of her vagina against him, and he knew that he’d found the real thing. He was balls-deep (if squishy) inside a Nerre girl, and it wasn’t a fantasy.

It especially wasn’t a fantasy when she started berating him. “Uhhh! Don’t just fucking stand there, move! Nnnhhh!”

Jens wasn’t sure he could pull back much without squishing out of her, though he felt the pulse of his erection stiffening and knew it wouldn’t be a problem for long. “How do you, um…”

Magarce let out another shriek, her ears flat in annoyance, and Jens decided it wasn’t safe to ask that.

He began with a hesitant little motion, barely allowing any gap to show between them, and felt the unfamiliar angle of his cock wedged into Nerre pussy, how she held and gripped him, and it emboldened him to tug a little farther. He looked down and saw he’d got stiff enough to not squirt out, and nudged forward until their bodies joined again. He pulled out more and looked again, and it was definitely his cock, except the end of it was wedged into the pussy of a gray-tailed feline who was squirming and moaning in pleasure, and suddenly he had all the stiffness he could have asked for and slid forward again, joyously, rewarded by a lewd yowl, and tugged back one more time but his body said quick, forward, in, right now, and he shoved it to the hilt and jerked in the spasm of a sudden, half-prepared, strangely weak and hesitant… orgasm.

It had taken him seventeen seconds, from when he first squished his cock into her.

“hhhh… what?” moaned Magarce, nuzzling the bedspread.

Jens panted, feeling his body unload in a weirdly noncommital way, feeling his knot swell up inside her, and didn’t withdraw, for fear he’d do her injury- or worse, get stuck outside her and be done for the day.

“What, what?” pleaded Magarce. “Move! Come on!”

Jens wriggled his hips a little against her. “Uhhhh… don’t want to hurt you…”

“What? With that? That’s it, that’s a knot? That’s it?”

Jens, stricken, didn’t reply for a moment. Then… “I thought… that Nerre were…”

Magarce heaved an exasperated sigh. “Fine! Keep it there. Keep hard! At least you can do that…” and her hand slipped back between her legs again, and he could feel that feline paw twiddling and rubbing around where he impaled her. “Push, dammit!”

He did. He could feel himself starting to cry, he could feel his erection flagging, but he tensed every muscle in his body and hung on while the tiny cat, the unexplainably insulting tiny cat who couldn’t possibly find him inadequate and yet did, fondled her pussy and writhed and panted and finally let out the sweetest little cry he’d ever heard… and melted against the bed… and turned her head to fix him with a very cranky stare.

“Get better, okay?”

“I’m sorry!” sobbed Jens, his cock still in her only because he didn’t want to pull it out. Even his knot had gone down- or at least softened enough that it would be far too easy to withdraw.

“Yeah well sorry doesn’t ram thick Runge cock up me, okay? Get better. What the heck was the matter?”

“I’m so sorry… I… well you could tell, I just don’t know how to… do it…”

“Well, figure it out! It coulda been awesome except for being, you know, terrible.”

Jens’ ears perked a little in spite of all the abuse. “It.. could? a?” Between them, his cock slithered out of her as she shifted and lay on her side, stretching languidly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. You know I bet you could do a thing that Dau… that somebody I knew used to like. Your knot sucks but that’s exactly why I bet you could pop it.”

“What?” said Jens.

“Work it in and out. You know! I think you guys consider that, doing it wrong, but with one as small as yours…”

“Uh… yeah… you mean, you can do that? Um, have it done to you?”

Magarce purred, unexpectedly, as if a happy thought had occurred to her, and she looked up at him with a wicked glint in her eye. She stretched again, kicking a leg up and revealing her half-sated catpussy before his hungry stare. “I bet I can find somebody to do that to me. Don’t you think?”

Jens’ ears showed extreme agitation as he considered this, and finally he could find nothing to say that was any better than, “Can I do that to you?”

“Why you?” purred Magarce, her eyes slits, her muzzle a grey smirk against the ivory of her facefur.

“Please! I’ll do… anything!”

Magarce rose on her elbows, flowed forward against him as if she was a miniature Faisand, nuzzled up under his chin, and purred dreamily but clearly.

“Get me a gun.”

The next day, Magarce stayed in Jens’ love-nest. She’d gone out to look for food, on the sensible assumption that these people surely provided it in some form, but she didn’t get far- a small group of Runge had been talking, and one pointed at her. Magarce, reminded of the price on her head, skulked off out of sight and then ran back to Jens’ hovel and tried to hide under the bed, but there was no ‘under the bed’, it was nothing but a pile of boxes. She hid behind it until Jens returned, and thought about things.

Jens agreed with the small group of Runge, as he’d joined the conversation a moment later, never noticing the fleeing Magarce. He thought it was quite true that her lust-scent was strange but penetrating. He’d even mentioned that he liked it, and that he thought he’d keep it, which got him a little guffawing and backslapping. It felt good to be treated as an equal, no longer regarded with exasperated sympathy for his endless tales of rejection woe. It also frightened him, for he knew he had to keep Magarce happy to maintain that status. He wasn’t a virgin any more, but he was adrift in totally strange territory, and he had no map- just orders.

And he didn’t have a gun- yet- and wasn’t sure how he was going to explain that.

Jens peered into what was once his most private hide-out, nervous that he didn’t see Magarce, and frightened to see her now that he was away from his bravado. He could smell her, both the scent of their tryst and more recent suggestions of her body’s presence- if she were right up against him, he could get a sense of her mood. He wanted to know that very badly, for she was quite bullying enough when just demanding things of him- he figured that having to admit failure would be much worse. And yet, her scent reached down and grabbed him by the balls, leaving him wobbly with the urgent need to take her again, do it better, but above all, do it again. At all costs, he had to placate her, or perhaps she would go play with another guy- one who had guns.

He thought he saw a motion behind the bed- well, boxes in the shape of a bed- like a tail-tip, flicked out of sight.

Well, time to put a brave face on it, perhaps act bold and claim the gun was on the way, being delivered. That was a laugh. “To: pile of decrepit boxes, imperfectly disguised by a threadbare coverlet. Under the fallen timbers, six inches to the left of the Nerre in heat.”

Cheered by the thought, Jens took two steps and jumped upon the bed, landing on all fours with a bark of “Hi!” to announce his return- and got an earsplitting scream. Magarce sprang up from behind the bed, bristling all over, and cowered against the wall, her body shaking. He could see her tail foofing out spasmodically, and her ears were laid flat against her head. He’d fucked up again.

“Uh. Um…”

Magarce drew a shuddering breath, and said “Quick- are you a rich guy? Say you’re a rich guy already.”

“What?” said Jens. “Do I look rich?”

“Ahaha! hhh! okayokay… so… Are you rich enough? Just say that!”

“What’s the matter?” yelped Jens. He was near enough for a scent now. His bullying kitten was terrified, afraid beyond anything he’d ever smelled, though her species made even that exotic and strange. She couldn’t look away from his eyes, and her hands worked in a peculiar way, not unlike the squeezing of imaginary triggers, though to Jens it was meaningless agitation.

“Say you’re rich! S…say you’re rich please please just say it…”

Jens’ heart went out. His ears perked in full attention, and his tail wagged in anguished sympathy for his new lover’s distress, and he did the best he could. “I am rich. I’m rich because I have you. You are wonderful.”

Magarce shook harder for a moment- and the next moment, she was clasped in his arms, shaking and sobbing, and he was stroking her body with firm paws and murmuring, “It’s okay… it’s okay…”

Eventually, she quieted, and then she looked up at him, eyes wide and blue as the sky. “You’re not. You’re not really rich.”

“I told you…”

“No, it’s okay. I believe you…” she said, nestling her head under his chin, but he wasn’t going to leave it at that. A finger under her chin lifted her gaze, and he asked, solemnly, “What happened?”

“Oh, I can’t…”

“Yes you can. What happened?” said Jens. “Tell me what I can do.” As soon as he said it, he wanted to bite his tongue.

Magarce looked at him. “You don’t have the gun. I don’t see a gun…”

“Ah. Yeah. About that…”

“No, don’t say that, say ‘I stole one, here it is!’. Can’t you do that? I’ll steal one if you tell me where they are…”

“Wait, what? What do you mean steal? That’s not how it works here- that’s kind of, you know, coercive!”

“Well, how does it work here?” said Magarce.

“It’s like you asking if I’m rich. Nobody’s rich here! Rich means sitting on more than you could ever use. Or taking rents- something like that. We don’t like that stuff. Nobody here even wants to be rich, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We’re sharing. And we’re growing, and getting our needs met. We’re a community. Maybe all of us together count as rich, because we can use that for anybody who really needs it…”

“Use what?” said Magarce.

“You know,” said Jens, waving his hands vaguely. “Resources. Stuff.”

“Guns?”

Jens didn’t answer.

Magarce sighed, and nestled against him again. “I really need a gun. There’s people who want to kill me. So they can be rich. It could be anybody. It could even have been you. I have to be more careful how I act, I could’ve had you wanting to turn me in… I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Turn you in? The cops want you?”

“Please don’t talk about it!” begged Magarce, trembling again, and Jens dropped the subject.

After a minute of silent Nerre-holding and neck-scruff-petting, he said, “I guess I understand why you feel that way. But you should understand more about this place. You shouldn’t want a gun. We’ll take care of you. We’ve got people who are specialists- they’re the ones who should have the guns. It’s for the people who can make best use of them.”

Magarce’s ears perked straight up. “What did you say?”

Two minutes later, Magarce was in Faisand’s dress again, on Jens’ arm and being presented to a Runge who looked both tough and weary, a combination that could also be seen as skeptical- for good reason. Magarce’s eyes were wide and covetuous- she’d begun by announcing that she could outshoot anybody in the place, but was immediately distracted when she spotted the guy’s weapon- not, in this case, a reference to his cock, but an even worse distraction in the form of a gleaming long-barreled pistol, clearly expensive, clearly dedicated to competitive target shooting. Magarce had never laid her paws on a tool of such refinement. Jens was already picking up the scent of her erotic excitement as she checked the thing out.

The owner- if such a concept applied here- was picking it up as well, and his skepticism increased by the second.

“You need to understand,” he said, “you’re very nice and all, but we do feel that things should go to those who can use them…”

“But I can, I told you!” protested Magarce. “Really!” Her paws twitched with the desire to take the gun away.

The guy rolled his eyes. “Well… I’ve got a backup, and that’s somewhat wasteful. You’re serious? You want to take on the responsibility?”

“Yes!” lied Magarce immediately.

The guy looked down the corridor, and Magarce followed suit. He’d stuck a target down there, off in the distance, and there was a light, perhaps to help see the target. He nonchalantly flipped a switch, and it became clear that the purpose wasn’t illumination- the light was red, and flashed, and an unseen voice barked, “Whoa! Gimme a second, gimme a second…” and became hurrying feet, heading away.

The guy called, “You good?” and got no response. He shrugged, listened hard for another moment, and then turned to Magarce.

“Okay, do this.” he said, aimed, and fired down the corridor. The target twitched, with a neat hole half an inch from the dead center. He peered at it, squinting to see the distant result, nodding as he worked out that it had to be somewhere at the center because it was lost in the black spot, not visible against the white circles surrounding it. And he, with some ceremony, handed the target pistol to Magarce.

“You know how to hold it?” he said, and his ears showed some agitation. Magarce did hold the weapon correctly, but her eyes gleamed. She nuzzled the barrel, feeling its slight warmth against her feline face, and she licked it delicately, her tail twitching in an ecstacy of misdirected carnal eagerness, and she panted.

“Um… I know it’s pretty,” he said, “but if you get all distracted, it’ll ruin your aim. Just saying. Don’t you think you need to take this more seriously?”

Magarce looked up at him.

“No.”

Four shots rang out, absurdly quick. It seemed like she hadn’t even glanced at the target. The sharpshooter wolf’s ears went back, and he barked, “Whoa!” and grabbed the gun back, and began to yell. “You don’t seem to understand that…”

“Look!” chirped Magarce, her eyes glowing with pleasure and satisfaction.

“…that just because we seem like we don’t have any rules, it doesn’t mean…”

“Look, look!”

“…that… what the hell are you so happy about?”

“Look!” cried Magarce. “Let’s all go look!”

Glowering, the guy fell silent. He glanced at the target. He squinted, seeing nothing outside that black center spot, not seeing any wild misses, not seeing anything much at all, and following Magarce as she nearly skipped down the corridor, he went to look- and his glower broke up and was replaced by a combination of horror and awe.

His bullet hole was now the center of a letter- an X. It was very, very neat, and was clearly a letter rather than a shape, because the spaces at top and bottom were narrower, causing the X to be taller than it was wide. It stood very straight.

“I marked the spot!” said Magarce, and laughed and laughed and laughed until Jens had to hold her to try and settle her down.

When she stopped laughing, the sharpshooter wolf, looking very worried but resolute, said, “I’m Ganstig- and I hate to say it but I think you deserve this better than I do.” and handed her the target pistol. “I’ll get another… but, wow.”

Magarce stepped away from Jens and stood there, legs visibly trembling, and she took a couple deep breaths, and then began a series of actions that set both Jens’ and Ganstig’s ears into ‘holy crap!’ positions and caused Ganstig to step back a pace. Magarce’s eyes remained locked on the gun, and they saw her pet the barrel lovingly, and her nipples showed through the silky grey fabric of the dress. She flicked the safety on with automatic deftness, something Ganstig had apparently forgotten in his alarm- and then they saw her lick her lips, her ears flattening slightly, and with deliberation she switched the safety back off again. Jens made nothing of this, but Ganstig’s tail began to curl between his legs, and he glanced at the target as if wondering what she could want with it at this close range.

Magarce proceeded to caress under her chin and down her neck with the gun barrel, her tail quivering and swishing to the side as she felt its warmth- and then, slowly and carefully, she slipped the gun down the front of her dress, nestling it between her small breasts, and she hugged it to her, eyes shining and not focussed on anything- and the two anarchist wolves both watched, their darting, nervous gazes picking up the bristling of her tail, the way her paws tried to grab onto the floor, hearing little gasps and a suppressed mew, their lupine noses picking up the unmistakable scent. The little Nerre had come, for a few seconds, standing right in front of them, just from pressing the warm body of the beautiful gun to her heart. Her eyes went half-lidded, and she crooned and purred.

Jens and Ganstig looked at each other, and Ganstig said carefully, “I wonder if we ought to wait and think about this…”

They froze as Magarce’s eyes flew open, but her only motion was to clutch the gun closer, protectively.

“No! No thinking!”

“Right!” said Ganstig. “No thinking! Don’t know what I was, ah, thinking.” He laughed awkwardly, casting around for a soothing remark. “I’ve never seen shooting like that! No wonder you’re, uh, fond of my honey there. Your honey, I guess, now… I’m good with my backup piece…”

Jens pitched in. “It really is amazing. Where did you learn to shoot like that? It made a perfect X!”

Magarce stared at him with wide, unguarded, post-coital eyes. “I thought it was Angs but when she killed him, I mean she had to but that’s when I found out it was Benz all the time.”

They stared at her, and after a moment Jens said, “A guy named Benz taught you to do that?”

“I didn’t kill him!” blurted Magarce. “Because I didn’t mean to. And don’t ever say that.”

This time they didn’t even have a reply, but Magarce wasn’t quite finished.

“…and he’s with me. He would like this. I can feel him with me now.”

Her eyes closed again, trustingly, as she savored the warmth of the amazing gun between her little breasts.

Jens glanced at Ganstig, but Ganstig would no longer meet anyone’s gaze, his tail tucked between his legs, so Jens gathered his courage and spoke.

“Um… I know I didn’t get it for you, you kind of got that for yourself, but… and maybe you’re tired out now, but…”

“Oh!” said Magarce. “You want to go fuck!”

Jens lowered his eyes. “Wouldn’t say no…” and then oofed, for Magarce had embraced him affectionately. He felt the gun, now in her firm grip, against his back. He heard a click, and Ganstig saw the cause as she flicked the safety back on with automatic expertise.

“Oh, let’s! This is the best day ever. Come and let’s do it now!”

“You… still want to? I smelled it, you came standing there. No offense!”

Magarce nuzzled, then licked, his shirt. “I feel slippery. I’d love to. Come and do me more.”

And with that, she led Jens off, gun waving like the baton of an orchestra conductor performing a flowery romantic bit, her tail held to the side and quivering with pleasure already. Jens followed with lust and trepidation, telling himself silently that life had to be good, for this mad kitten was now begging for sex from him, and hadn’t that been his deepest fantasy? Ganstig stayed behind, watching nervously, and then began to walk the other direction, looking over his shoulder. Before long, the sharpshooter wolf broke into the quietest, most inconspicuous run that he could- after Magarce was out of sight.

They hurried along, Magarce and Jens, hand in hand, the gun waving cheerfully from Magarce’s free hand- but, before they were halfway back to Jens’ hideout, impatience struck. Magarce spotted a side-tunnel, a store-room (perhaps reminding her of another store-room on a pirate spaceship, in another world), and began dragging Jens toward it.

“Hey!”

“In here!” giggled Magarce.

“But… Mags, there’s no door! This is one of our store-rooms! It doesn’t lock!”

“So?”

This stopped him. “Well… um…”

“I like it better this way.” purred Magarce, amusement and arousal in her eyes. “I’ll stand on a box and find something to grab.”

“You’ll what?”

“You’ll see!”

In the storeroom, there were indeed boxes, but Magarce romped over to some large sacks of grain in front of a shelving unit. “Perfect!” She hopped up onto a sack, flipped her dress up and bent forward to grab the shelf posts, presenting Jens with her pert furry rump and a side-swished tail. A rotation of her pelvis to follow her pose gave him a fine view of her feline vagina.

Jens gulped, and glanced out of the storeroom, to see nobody approaching. “So I should…”

“You getting hard? Should I do more?”

“Yes! I mean no! I mean… I better get busy. I want to go longer, for you…”

“You’re going to do this for me- I think you figured out the basic idea, well now you’re going to grab my hips. Hold on really firm,” said Magarce, “and knotpop me. Nice and slow. Until we’re done.” Her legs trembled- and she shifted her paws, placing them right next to each other, leaving less space between her legs. “There, that’ll make it worse…”

“I don’t want it to be worse! I want to be better!”

“Oh, shut up and please me, will you?” purred Magarce, the tip of her tail flicking about quizzically.

Jens set his jaw, determined to do exactly what she asked. He made no further remarks, just unfastened his pants and dropped them, allowing his hardening cock to emerge. With his pants around his paws, he made to move closer to the boldly presenting Magarce, and this caused a problem, for he couldn’t move his paws far apart with the pants there. Jens made as if to step out of one pant leg, then glanced with alarm at the entrance, and then shuffled closer, tentatively drawing the pants back up as if he wanted to be half-wearing them, then letting them drop once more as he got into position.

He couldn’t resist wagging, in spite of all his nervousness. Going over what she’d said, he made a little ‘erk!’ sound as he remembered a detail, and grasped Magarce’s feline ass with both hands. He was rewarded with a moan and a wriggle, and his erection sprang to attention, entranced by the firm little wriggling kitty-rump under his thumbs.

It was no trouble to enter her, though the position of her legs made her puss even more snug than before. Jens marveled at the sensations, and wondered how she compared to his own species. It seemed like a strange thing that she’d be so yielding- but part of it was her state of high excitement. Strange that he could pry her so wide with so little effort, but not strange at all that he could slide into her, because Magarce glistened and dripped a little from her own lubrication. Perhaps it was her previous orgasm- she’d said she felt slippery, and she wasn’t fooling about that.

She wasn’t abusing or bullying him, either. She was moaning and crooning, her rump squirming in a lewd, sensual writhing, tail held hard to the side, and Jens tried to remember the shape of every moment, forever. It was magic, and he’d come so quickly the first time. Realizing that, he bit his lip and tried to figure out how to not respond so eagerly, and without releasing his grip or changing his slow, steady thrusting, Jens stared at nothing and thought about boxes. Specifically, the type of boxes he’d built his love-nest out of, ammo boxes. How long would it take a demented Nerre, firing four shots in half a second, to empty a given box, assuming it was filled with bullets. How many did the boxes hold, anyhow?

Magarce reeled as she felt Jens’ knot swell. He was good and obedient- for whatever reason, he was doing exactly what she said. She felt his grip shift, so that rather than spreading her pert buttocks with his thumbs, he was grabbing her pelvis and hanging on very tightly, and he had to, because it took more and more force to thrust into and tug out of her. He was doing it- he was knotpopping, and for a moment, Magarce wondered if she’d been very stupid. Jens was harder than the first time, bigger than he had been, and his inadequate knot stood out rigidly from the shaft, enough to feel almost substantial the normal way, but this wasn’t the normal way at all. Magarce’s tail bristled as the withdrawals and penetrations took on a wrenching, harrowing quality, and still he obeyed her, now with what felt like his full lupine strength, slowly pulling until the knot was tugged out of her, then slowly shoving harder and harder until it popped in and the wolf cock thrust deeply, all at once.

He panted. He seemed to be counting. He didn’t stop.

Magarce began to howl, louder and louder, her body shaking, and then as a sound of distant footsteps was lost beneath her cries, the wild cat-howl turned to shrieks and spasms, and Jens seized the moment, tried to shove into her one last time, got stuck outside by a poorly timed pussy-clench, and redoubled his efforts, shoving Magarce bodily forward and plunging fully into her at last, rewarded by an ecstacy of clutches and writhings and hoarse screams of pleasure that rang from the walls.

Panting harder as he unloaded, Jens released Magarce’s hips, now locked to him the best his knot could manage, and wrapped his arms around her, embracing and lifting her. Though her back was to him, he wanted his arms around her petite body, and was able to lift her into this embrace for a few unforgettable seconds, the little cat clawing at the air and shuddering with orgasm that seemed to drum against his deeply sunk wolf-cock… at which point, the position betrayed him, the knot ceased to hold, and the new angle yanked his erection completely out of Magarce, who sagged against him to the sound of polite applause.

Jens glanced frantically over his shoulder, still clinging to the sated and half-comatose Magarce, to see- some of his friends, and Brin, the teacher, who stood in front and looked unusually attentive. He clapped, apparently delighted with the show, but his ears were fixed in a state of alertness Jens had never seen.

“Our voice of liberty!” called Brin.

Ganstig was with them, also clapping and looking distracted. He mumbled, “We need to talk.”

Magarce was purring, nestling against Jens, and he stammered to her, “Scuse me… got to pull up my pants…”

“Why?” she crooned.

“Please?”

“Oh, all right…” she purred, and sagged dreamily to sit on the grain sacks with a dainty squish. Brin, seeing this, winced and muttered, “no more bread, ever!” but then forced his expression back into a grin before she saw the lapse.

“Cut it out, Brin, this is serious.” said Ganstig.

“Apologies.” said Brin. “Listen, we do need to talk. It’s about that gun.”

“It’s good!” said Magarce. “You can’t have it back! It’s like the best gun ever!” She didn’t aim it, but her paw tightened around it.

“Yeah, well, it’s about what it represents!” said Ganstig, keeping behind Brin. “I don’t…”

“Let me handle this love please? Okay?” said Brin. “Can you trust me on that?”

“Why are you guys acting like you want to take my gun away?” said Magarce, and some of the post-coital softness was gone from her voice. Her tailtip flicked, and her ears began to flatten. Jens glanced back and forth, trying to figure out whose side he’d be on if things got ugly, but Brin was already speaking, directly to Magarce, and passionately.

“Don’t say such things! We are insulted! We will not coerce you in any way, so don’t even grab that thing in anger. You can let it go for all the difference it would make. We’re not going to take it. Let it go, and we’ll talk.”

Magarce didn’t. “It’s a trick! This happened before. She fucked me, I mean Demarle did, and then my gun was gone. You’re not going to fool me with that one again!”

Brin’s look of disdain would’ve frozen a lake. “Coercive! I’ll ask you, then- was it us, that time? Doing that to you?”

“…No?”

“No, it was not!” continued Brin. “Because we don’t behave that way- and we need you to set aside coercion as well, right now, and talk to us. Using our weapons means something. Don’t you even want to hear about why we’ve got them?”

“Dad, she doesn’t.” piped the voice of a Runge child. He could be seen, also behind Brin, to the other side, and looking bolder than Ganstig.

“Yes she does, Hallem.” said Brin. “She does.”

Magarce wasn’t stupid- however loosely moored to reality she was, she had a keen ear for threats. “Somebody’s going to attack you, that’s why you need this gun back. Is that it?”

“Are you listening? Can you put the gun down- where you can still reach it, if you like- and we’ll talk?”

Magarce’s ears flattened, and she gave Brin a sulky look, while a drip of Jens’ come leaked out of her and soaked into the grain sack. After a moment, she did as he asked. “Fine. Now, who’s attacking you? I guarantee I can take them out for you, but you’re pissing me off.”

“This is an illegal settlement.” said Brin, and waited for a reaction. He got only a puzzled look.

“So it’s only cops?” said Magarce. “That’s all? You’re giving me shit because cops exist?”

“I wasn’t sure you knew. You seem… unconcerned?”

“Cops have rules.” said Magarce simply.

Brin smiled, at that. “You’re right. Well… somewhat right. I’m not sure you’re that familiar with this planet. You came from Verss- do you still believe cops have rules?”

“I wasn’t there for long. I didn’t see much of it.” said Magarce, and her ears flattened again, as she remembered being assaulted in the street. Technically, it had never happened- but she’d felt attacked, and the experience made more sense in that light, even though Demarle said they’d been safe. Magarce’s expression became more unhappy, reaching for that memory, feeling how the presence of Demarle was rapidly fading into that locked box of a past- a series of locked boxes, in a row, leaking blood.

“I see you have some idea of the seriousness of it.” said Brin. “I should mention, however, that they aren’t our only concern. We do have to do business, and there are those who’d prefer to do business with an illegal settlement. Those ones- usually- aren’t cops, but you’ve got to be just as much on watch about them. Do you want to know our rule of thumb there?”

“What’s that?”

“Outside authority doesn’t enter the compound.” said Brin. “Doesn’t matter what sort. Cops, obviously, but outside groups have to send a delegate or leave their leader behind. No outside authority, nothing with coercive power, enters the compound.”

Magarce considered this. “What if they do?”

“They don’t leave.”

Slowly, in the chilly silence, the tiny Nerre smiled. “I like you! That’s simple.”

“You might want to learn to convey that rule to others- depending on the situation, we give people a chance to dial it back. Some people have a hard time understanding. Oh, and sometimes we stand to gain a lot, and tolerate a bad situation if it’s temporary- we do the best we can, in an imperfect world. But you’ll be able to spot when things are really out of whack. Right?”

The remark meant nothing to Magarce. Her world had never stopped being out of whack. She nodded, because the tone of the remark seemed to say ‘you can keep the gun’, and she liked that.

“Are you satisfied, Ganstig?” said Brin, turning. “Will that hold you? In our imperfect world? I’m sure I’ll turn up another weapon that good. You know I gave you that one.”

“Yeah.” said Ganstig, with chastened, curled tail. “I know. If you were there… but yeah, we can’t form too many conclusions.”

“No, we can’t. You don’t know how things will unfold- and you described an incredible feat of training and self-discipline. Isn’t that true?”

Ganstig looked at Magarce, who stared back and kept her paw very near the gun. He said, “It is true, and I don’t understand it…”

“Then don’t. Don’t understand it. Accept not understanding it. To force things into your own frame of reference is tantamount to coercion- there will always be that ambiguity.”

Ganstig nodded, unconvinced, but his posture relaxed and his tail rose slightly. “I know, I know…”

“Are you done?” interrupted Magarce. “I was kinda busy.”

Brin glanced at her, and then laughed. “Yes you were! Our voice of liberty! We’ll give you some privacy- not that you’ve been exactly private, we could hear you all over the compound! Which is fine- if anyone’s needing to sleep, or anything, they can ask you for that consideration and you’ll work it out. Right?”

“Right!” said Magarce, brightly. They could ask all they wanted. She had the gun.

“Until we meet again, then…” said Brin, and he ushered everyone out. The teacher wolf was strangely authoritative for someone who refused to be a leader, and Magarce decided to ask Jens about this later. But for the time being, she had other ideas.

“Hey! Pick me up.”

Jens blinked at her. “I don’t think I can go again- not right away!”

“No, no! I want to sleep. Carry me back to your place, and cuddle with me.”

His ears pointed several disparate directions. “I, uh, it sounds good but I was going to..”

“No, you’re going to do this. Nothing could be better.” said Magarce. “Right?”

“…maybe.” said Jens, and picked up his petite lover without undue effort, and carried her down corridor after corridor to his ramshackle love-nest, cradling her like a baby while she purred and the arm with the gun curled lovingly around his neck.

They slept as well as they could. Jens held her and stared at the gun resting on the shabby blanket, so near her paw. Something told him that moving it would spell the end of his new sex life, and just when he thought he’d be able to rest, Magarce began squirming against him. He wondered if she was trying to excite him, but the motions didn’t seem to be directed that way- it was as if the little feline was sleepwalking, and then turning, and then her hands were working in some sort of motion, paw-fingers squeezing at something, relentlessly, and then more motions that didn’t make any sense. He held her to him, which made the kicking worse, and she stiffened, and then sagged.

Magarce didn’t wake. Jens eventually slept. Morning grudgingly arrived.