Chapter 1
Chapter 3
“Well, aren’t you a sight of sore eyes,” the big, blonde hair woman with a southern draw calls out as Dylan exits the vehicle, “It’s been a while since you came out ta see me, ain’t it? And you brought Stryker! Come give you’re Auntie Heather a big hug!”
“Auntie Heather,” Stryker exclaims as he leaps up into Heather’s open arms and is wrapped up and twirled around like a doll, “I missed you so much!”
“I missed you too, sweetie, now run along and say ‘hi’ to your Uncle Roy.” Heather sets Stryker down, who promptly does as he is told and runs straight to the farmhouse. Heather turns to Dylan with a cheery smile. “And what is the occasions to come see your big sister without calling first?”
Dylan shifts his eyes back to the truck, “Got a present for you and Stryker hasn’t stopped asking to come see you for the past few weeks. I know you said to keep my eye’s out for a pink fluffy, so I brought you one that kind of fell in my lap. It begged me for a home, and I recalled you wanted a pink one, so I took it home to give to you,” Dylan and Heather both moved towards the truck so she could look over her new breeder, “We did kind of go crazy last night too with a waffle night, so it may be a little traumatized by that and the impromptu bath this morning.”
Dylan opened the door and pulled the neon pink mare out and presented it to Heather like a child would show their parents a doll. Heather gently took it from Dylan and inspected it for any cuts, bruises, damage, or signs of infections. The mare remains auspiciously quiet during the inspection and after being deposited back into her cage. Heather pulled out her phone and search for a picture of what her client was requesting. Double tapping the photo so it would fill out the edges of the screen in a better, clearer picture, she turns it so Dylan can see what she was looking at.
“This is what the client is looking for, a genuine Pinkyfluff to round out their collection. I’m not sure if that is the right kind of pink I’m looking for, hun, but I can definitely try and breed it to see if we can get the right outcome,” Heather sounding a bit annoyed at the prospects of going through so many foals to get the client’s particular request.
“I remember when we just sold regular fluffies at a decent price to loving owners, now that they can easily pick one up off the street, all we get now are very picky collectors, or trying to buy our show fluffs to do who knows what to them,” Heather lets out a heavy sigh, “Well, I’ll definitely take her. How much did you want for her?”
Dylan shook his head, “Come on, sis. You know I’m not going to charge you. Like you said, I can pick up any I see off the street. This cost me nothing to get, so it won’t cost you a cent either.”
Heather wraps Dylan in a hug. Her knowing her little brother cares enough to help her out even know he doesn’t agree with it fills her with joy. “You’re the best baby brother, you know that?”
“Yeah, sis. You aren’t so bad yourself.” They both chuckle.
“So, what something to eat? Roy just made some porkchops. You and Stryker are more than welcome to have some,” Heather offered whipping a tear way from her blue eyes.
“Sure. I’m sure Stryker is hungry. I hadn’t feed him yet since we had to….,” Dylan trailed off as he see Stryker running across the driveway towards them, mouth full of porkchops.
“Huckle Oy maae horhops,” Stryker trying to speak while trying not to drop his bounty.
“Whoow there, sweetie. Let me help you so you don’t choke,” Heather clears his mouth of the four porkchops he was trying to deliver to them both.
“Uncle Roy made porkchops,” Stryker yelled with excitement, no longer obstructed with the large portions of meat in his mouth, “Can we stay for dinner?! Please?!”
“Of course. It’s been a while since I had porkchops, myself. Be sure to thank Uncle Roy and Aunt Heather for dinner and don’t run with things in your mouth please. I don’t want you to choke to death.” Stryker’s smile grew wide at the divine bounty of succulent pork as a meal. Stryker thanked Heather before taking his payload and happily trotted back to the house.
“Let me put this one up in the barn, that way she isn’t sitting in a box while we eat. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes,” Heather shooed Dylan towards the house, “And you little one, how would you like to have some babies?”
“Babbehs,” the near catatonic mare finally spoke, “Wuv babbehs! Wan babbehs! Wuv nu mammah!”
“Well, aren’t you sweet. Let’s go get you acquainted with your new home,” Heather left with the fluffy in tow while Dylan headed to the old farmhouse, his childhood home.
The old farmhouse looked just like Dylan left it in his youth. The old pictures of family long pasted, memories of his childhood with his sister, mother, and father together making it by in life with not many luxuries, but the familial love that no amount of money could buy. The plaster walls cracked with signs of aging, the support beam that would be slapped every time they would enter the dining room for dinner, and the shaky fan that threatened to fall of whoever dared sit under it. The flood of memories of the early days of his youth hit him like a train. Dylan even recalled the night the siblings had made a pack, many, many years ago, to always have each other’s back; through thick and thin. That pack still holding strong today like the delivery of a much-needed mare with a particular color, so Heather could keep the roof over her and her husband’s head, and for Dylan, to keep the memory of those countless nights, wishing on stars for his family to always be happy. Knowing that Heather and Roy both had thing covered here, let Dylan sleep easier at night.
Upon entering the dining room, Dylan hugged the plump man that was his brother-in-law, “Thank you so much for having us for dinner. I know it was sudden,” Dylan couldn’t help but notice Stryker tearing into the pork like a dog with a bone.
“Not at all. I made a little too much anyway. Ol’ Hildy was just a bit bigger than I anticipated,” Roy said as he finished off the last of his meal, “But she will definitely keep us fed for a while.”
“You still having him use great grandma’s old recipe,” Dylan asked Heather who had returned from the barn letting her new breeder get used to her new living arrangements.
“You know it. Ain’t nothing better than old, homestyle cooking,” Heather beaming with pride as she handed Dylan his plate. Dylan cut the pork and savored the flavor of the long-lost taste of the homestyle his mother used to make all the time. His sister really did train that man well. Dylan not hesitating anymore dug in to finish the rest of his meal.
After a satisfying meal, Dylan stayed a while longer to chat with his sister and brother-in-law and enjoying some after diner tea while Stryker slept off the food coma from the past day.
“So, Dylan, I never got what you do at your job, and what is Stryker exactly? Is he a fluffy, or some genetic experiment,” Roy’s questions granted him a disgruntled look from Heather.
“Kind of. Let me start at the beginning, I work for a division that handles the extremely dangerous and aggressive mutations of fluffies, cannibals and hunters mainly. I also go out to collect specimens that are diseased or dispatched by our other members and divisions, and I assist law enforcement on cracking down and stopping illegal mutation farms that will breed to produce more volatile mutations,” Dylan took a sip of tea before continuing, “We have a partner policy in place which partners you up with a stalker or a griffin to assist us on our search and destroy calls which is a large majority of IRATE’s calls, and as for Stryker, he is a hybrid of fluffy, canine, and human DNA. The fluffy side you can see,” Dylan looks over at Stryker and notices that he was listening in after talking about him,” makes up his appearance, kind of. I guess his equine genes are more prevalent than the standard fluffy.”
Heather and Roy both taken aback look at each other. Heather asked the first note worthy question, “Did you say he had human DNA? Isn’t that a bit… unethical?” Heather looking at her cooling tea as she swirls it in her mug.
“If it were taken from someone that didn’t know, or didn’t want to, yes. It would be, but the DNA that makes up a stalker is usually shared by the stalker’s handler,” Dylan let that sink in a bit by pouring more tea into his mug.
“So, what you are saying is, Stryker has YOUR genetics that make him up? So, you and Stryker are,” Roy couldn’t think of any word to explain the explosion of information that was told to him so casually, as if it were a normal occurrence, but to Dylan, it was all too common.
“We call it bonded, but yes. Stryker is, as crazy as it sounds, an extension of myself; my son.” The conversation was ground to a halt as both Heather and Roy look over at the now awoken Stryker. His head hung low as to expect them to reject him like most did when given this knowledge.
Heather and Roy looked at each other for a few minutes almost telepathically communicating to one another. The silence was only broken by the natural sounds of the outdoor night life. The two turned to Dylan now ready to continue after finally processing that bomb.
“You know. I think he look more like me than you, Dylan,” Heather winked at Stryker, who was now at the edge of tears for not being rejected for the first time after revealing an industry secret, “Yeah, Dylan is much too ugly to have someone as adorable as you.” Stryker, now in tears, runs over the Heather for a big hug while everyone laughs at the heartwarming events that brought them here. “I knew you were kin from the day we met.”
After the emotion had calmed back to a normal mood with Stryker on Heather lap while she stroked his mane, the question, that were still burning the back of both Roy and Heather’s head, reemerged from more information regarding the work that was ultimately necessary for the safety of the city.
“You did say stalkers were one of the partner’s you could get, but what was the other one, again? Oh, right, griffins,” Heather recalled.
“Yes, but the griffins are remarkably similar to the legends, themselves. They are, in my opinion, an inferior partner compared to the stalkers. They can’t talk, extremely self-centered, and very independent, making them hard to train and even harder to control when giving commands,” Dylan took a sip of tea, “There was a reason why the Chimera project, the one that produced griffins, was shut down. Griffins will attacked anyone and everyone that give it the opportunity. They are an aggressive creature that can and would turn on you at any second they got.”
“Wait, I thought you said you hunted and killed aggressive mutations of fluffies. Does that extend to stalkers and griffins too,” Roy’s question stunned Heather and Stryker as it never crossed their minds, but for Dylan, it was a situation that he was well aware of and had mentally prepared for since his early days with Stryker.
“Yes. If stalkers or griffins get loose and started to harm people, we would have to stop them at any cost,” Dylan’s words were cold much like his tea had gotten, “I’ve had to kill a good share of griffins before, but I have yet to have to hunt down a stalker.”
“So, we’d would have to kill stalkers if they were hurting people,” Stryker’s question threw Dylan off guard as he had assumed that he already knew.
“No, not you. It would be too dangerous for you to hunt your own kind,” Dylan had to be very precise in what to say as to not give away the true reason why they couldn’t hunt one another.
“You would have to go alone? I’d think that would be more dangerous, wouldn’t it,” Heather had a point. It would be a very deadly cat and mouse game.
“Not necessarily. We would have other agents participating in the hunt as well. It wouldn’t be a one-man operation,” Dylan explained taking great care not to give away that he was hiding crucial information on the reasons why.
Thankfully, Dylan’s phone started to go off, interrupting the conversation. It was the lab contacting him to tell him that the results were back from the hunter he brought in, and what they found was not good.
Chapter 5
