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It was as if I had gone from laying on a cold, concrete floor to somewhere warm and comfortable. I felt relaxed and at peace with everything. Was I dead? No...he had the chance to kill me...so I had to be alive. But then, he looked like he had belonged to the same people who had come here to kill us. So, why hadn't he finished us off? We were definitely being taken away, that much I knew. The smells of the basement were no longer fresh in my nose, and I had forgotten what fresh air felt like as it passed down into my lungs. I felt cleaner and more safe. Where...where was I?

I opened my eyes slightly, as the sun was blaring in my face and warming my fur. It felt good; feeling the sun again after so long. I was laying in a bed covered in white sheets in brown painted room. There was no terrible smells or evil feeling of the place and for once in a very long time, I could relax. But then, my mind went back to the strange person that had knocked me out in the first place. I looked around. The room was small; Quiet, and small. The only things in it were the bed, a small table next to the bed that contained a lamp, and a dresser placed next to a large window. The window was facing me, and as I stared outside of it, I felt confused. This place we were at was not our home, but nor did it seem anywhere that was too dangerous. I got out of bed and walked towards the window, hoping that a closer look would reveal something about where we were. As I stared downward at the street, hoping to see something that would key me in to where I was, I heard a knock on the door. "It's Ryudo." said a very familiar voice. He opened the door and walked in, looking much better since last I saw him. "You've been out two whole days." He said. He had a serious look about him that was completely different from the normal Ryudo. He seemed as if he was angry, or didn't want to be here. "You look bad, Lokai." I felt my head, where I had received the hit from the end of the weapon and noticed that there were bandaged wrapped around it.

"Ryudo...what happened? Where's that fox...?" "Lokai, I know as much as you do. No one's been here since I woke up. It's only the four of us here." I wondered where the fox had went off to. Was this a holding center for us? Were we supposed to wait here for something? "It's weird, Lokai..." Ryudo told me, looking out the window, "You know, you're here in this bed...and Kolt, Illia and I have been sleeping on the couches and the floor in this room here." He led me into the room he had spoke of and I was taken aback. There were two couches surrounding a table and in the background, I distinctly saw what appeared to be bread, fruit, and a fridge. Ryudo, probably noticing my stare looked at me with a faint smile. "It's packed with every kind of food you could imagine." He said to me. At that moment, my stomach growled loudly, as if it were telling me to see if Ryudo spoke the truth or not. I walked over to the kitchen, but stopped abruptly, noticing that Ryudo was staring out of another large window in the room he had been sleeping in. "It's weird, Lokai." He said, not facing me. "Our city...our homes...everything we've held on to...Everything is gone now." He was remembering everything that he held dear in our old home. Everyone knew each other, everything was perfect. Now, all that we know and treasure is gone.

"Ryudo...do you know where we are?" I asked him, my mouth full of beef from the fridge. "No, I've never seen this place before. All these scents are fresh to me." He must have felt terrible because he sat on the couch and stared at the floor. He was homesick and lonely. Ryudo had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. I put what was left back in the fridge and walked over to sit by his side. "Hey..." I said to him in a caring way. I saw tears leak off the tip of his nose to the floor. "C'mon, Ryudo. We're alive, right? That's all the matter-" I stopped. Looking around, I could not find any trace of Kolt or Illia. "Ryudo, where's Kolt? Or Illia?" At that moment, the door that appeared to be the entrance to the apartment swung open, The tall fox escorting Kolt and Illia inside.

"How many times do I have to tell you brats, stay in the apartment!" He said, pulling on both of their ears as he pushed them inside. He looked from them, to Ryudo, to me, now standing with the hair raised down my spine. I had many questions that I wanted to fire at this fox, but they were subdued by anger. I felt a growl rise out of my throat. He only looked at me and laughed. "What? You want to kill me? In your condition? Come now, pup. You've no power against me." He walked over to me again slowly, but this time I had been prepared. I jumped forward, attempting to seize his throat in my jaws. However, he side-stepped me as I crashed against the wall behind him. I stood up again and prepared for another strike, but he had already stepped forward and grabbed my muzzle yet again in his paw. This time, however, he began lifting me by it so that my whole body was being lifted by my nose. "A brave one, aren't you?" he said softly as he released me from his grip and I fell to the floor. His foot, pressed up against my chest as I lay helplessly against the floor, I was completely helpless and humiliated. "Hey." he said, putting more and more weight on me, "If I wanted you dead, I could have killed you in your sleep. Does the fact that your alive mean nothing to you?" He removed his foot and grabbed a chair from the table near the two couches. Sitting in front of the couches, he motioned his paw in my direction. "Come. Sit. I have much to discuss with all of you."

I was broken again, my body feeling as if all the bruises that had only just healed once again flushed the damaged parts of my body with a swelling pain. My muzzle felt painful from having my entire weight put on my nose. I wanted to go back to sleep and just wake up from this nightmare, but I knew that all of this would not simply go away. Struggling to my feet, aided by Ryudo, I made my way towards the couch and sat, ryudo and me in one couch, Kolt and Illia in the other. "Now, as you all know by now, this is not your little village on the edge of the world. In fact, this place has been completely abandoned for many years." He said, staring mostly at me.

In my bruised state, I wondered how he came upon this town if it was abandoned for so many years. "I've kept a spare apartment here, for any hideaway I need to use." He turned towards the window. "This place...is my sanctuary away from the cruel world." He stared outside. Clouds had began to gather in the sky; their dark shadows spread across the buildings and homes. I, too, stared out at the quickly darkening sky. It became very quiet. The fox had stopped talking, and now just sat there, completely transfixed on whatever past event rushed through his head.

"Looking back...," He said suddenly, drawing our attention away from the window and towards him ", I knew the experiment would fail." he said coldly. He voice echoed with pain and sorrow. I wanted to ask what had happened, but my mind had suppressed the though to disturb him any further. I still felt bruised and beaten. However, my thoughts must have transferred to Kolt, who was now looking down at the floor. "What experiment?" He said, he voice no louder than barely a murmur. The fox turned and stared at him, his eyes changing from angry to slightly curious.

"And why do you want to know, little one?" He said, a smile cracking across his face. "Aha, the curiosity of youth. Well, little one, in the past...only a few years ago, the human government demanded too much from their outstanding army." He said, focusing again on the whole of us. "Human's don’t have the senses we do, you know. They are oblivious to sounds and feelings. They grow weary from exhaustion far faster than we do. Now, When I was a pup like the rest of you, I had no family. The parents I remember were human, and could never feel the things I felt during those many years. However, after returning home one day from a travel through the woods that had been near that house, I found both of my parents dead. A general of the human army had captured me and taken me back into the deepest part of their land. For years and years, I was tortured, beaten, and hurt in order for me to become a killing machine for them. They thought that they could change my loyalty towards my fellow creatures...and for awhile, so did I..." he broke off again, looking at all of us individually.

"Eventually, " he continued, "they had brought more of our fellow's into captivity and made them suffer the same treatment I did. So many of us...so many small children couldn’t keep up with the pain...There were mass graves dug for those poor kids..." He said sadly. "Out of the 400 test subjects...only 7 survived. I was one of them." He said, staring now at me. "But we didn't die from the beatings...oh no, it was the experiments." He said angrily. He stood up and moved towards the window, his eyes back to angry. "They wanted to play God. They wanted to create the most powerful, loyal and yet still instinctive soldiers imaginable. They wanted to tamper with our DNA..." He grimaced at the window. "All 400 of us. All of us, waiting in our little cells...waiting for the day they would take us away...No one ever came back...But...I managed to survive. How...and why, I'll never know. Why me...out of everyone else...why was I destined to survive? But, alas..." He said, turning away and facing in the direction away from us; His tail flicked back and fourth. "Alas, I was chosen to live. And this town...this town was our test." He said. His tail stopped moving completely and he became like a statue; motionless and stiff. "All seven of us were sent out here to find a group of radicals that had been trying to smuggle explosive ammunition into their country. Seven of us went in. Seven of us walked out. No one that was in this town..."

He moved his head to look at the floor. "We killed them. All of them. Every innocent person in this town. I remember seeing it so vividly. My team-mates...they had lost all sense in them...blood and gore splattering their fur and everything around them. Even the small children...even the children..." He turned back to us. "I was the sole person among us to maintain his sanity. I, alone, managed to preserve the part of me that had once been kind and compassionate. But...my senses will never return to normal. As of this day, I hear things that go on so much further away than I should. I can smell things from far greater distances. Sight, sound, touch...every single sense inside my body has been multiplied to the greatest of heights. And...no amount of surgery will change me back. Even my blood..." he said. He walked over towards the kitchen area and grabbed a knife out of the block. Slowly, he cut the very tip of his paw, allowing just a small bit of blood to spill. "Even my blood..." He removed a matchbox from another drawer and lit a match, holding it towards his blood. "They even changed my blood." The blood caught fire and burned with a bright red flame against the black marble of the counter top.

"You see..." he said in a dark tone, his muzzle facing towards the ground, "I'll never...I'll never be the same ever again." He looked back up at us. I, myself, had been taken aback. For him to have been changed so dramatically...for his own blood to suffer such a transmutation...I thought about his pain, his hardships, and his suffrage. I thought about how he had endured such a large change and not died. "But, you, little pups..." He said, walking back over and taking his seat again. "You are special. You managed to maintain yourselves in the face of danger, which, by your age, is quite the feat." He had been staring in my direction the entire time, leading me to believe he had been impressed with the defensive position I had taken at the bottom of the stairs. "However, a few of you lack the potential to make any expert motions against your enemies. Your not tactical; Though that cannot be expected from pups such as yourselves. So I've made my decision." He said, now standing from his chair and exerting a force over us as if we had just been selected to fight off an army alone. His eyes grew pale and cold, like that of a dead man's. "I've decided to train you all as my new co-op team."

"Really? No way!!" I said, now excited and happy. I had wanted to learn combat training ever since this whole situation had began. Excited to get started, I stood up. However, my chest had suddenly been attacked again, forcing me back into the couch. It was the foxes's foot what had brought me down. "First rule of MY combat training," he said coldly. "You don't speak unless your told to. Got it?" My chest now pounding from the pain of the bruises and the recent kick, I could barely move my body off the couch at all. I had a sudden urge to sleep, and for a moment, I thought I was going to; Only to have my aspirations met with another kick to my face. "I said, do you have it? Tell me you have the rule hewn into your mind by now, insolent pup." I had fallen behind the couch completely and landed on my belly, now facing him as he stood angrily above me. Painfully, I coughed out a response, "Yes..." Again, his foot had met my face, pressing my muzzle hard into the rug. "Yes, what?" he had asked. "Yes..." I replied weakly. I had not known what to say. To call him a 'sir' would be an insult to your people. I hesitated, and for a moment though I was to black out again, but then received another sharp blow to the head. "And I forgot..." he said, kneeling and whispering into my ear, "The name...is Klyde."