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Ryan's first night of sleep had gone as bad as he had expected it. The bear's snores were so loud, that Ryan considered whether this was the trait that had earned the bear his nickname.

It was early on his next morning, when he was begrudged and his eyes were bagged, that he was asked to perform the first impossible task of many to come.

"Yo, wake up ye' bloody freeloader!" Sneered a voice with all the demand of a morning bugle.

Even Ryan in a sober state would've have pin able to pin that accent to Kyle. But Kyle was who it belonged to. And for whatever reason, the fox looked so angry is almost seemed personal.

"I'm not fuckin' tellin' ye again, mate." He snarled and flipped the poor coyote off of his mattress.

For once Ryan was thankful for the soft dirt floor on the tarp, otherwise he'd be starting this morning with a few bruises.

The fox left, and how he kept his fur its natural snowy white out in these conditions was a mystery. Ryan frowned, realising the bigger mystery to be why Kyle had been acting like such an asshole this past day. But before he was fully out the door, he stuck his head around, looked the coyote up and down, and spat on the floor. "And wear somethin' ye don't mind ruinin'. If yer smart, that is." He said, and left.

Even when Kyle's footsteps had faded well out of earshot, Ryan still lay on the ground, locked in thought. He cursed the fox under his breath, and he distinctively remembered how Kyle hadn't an ounce of that accent the first time he saw him in the basketball court. Almost a different fox, he remembered the hyena saying.

After a few grunts, and some flavored swearing about his new life, Ryan pushed himself off the ground and followed the fox's advice. Amazingly, as he slid on the more stretched of his two shirts, Mortar's snores still vibrated the tarp walls of the tent. The coyote smiled, thankful for that minute - brief as it were - where the thought of suffocating that bear hadn't been on his mind.

Benji was getting tired of Bandit's face. Especially that flat, almost concerned expression that had plastered to it.

"I want to have a chat with Whiteout," The cat asked, although in how commanding his voice was it was more of a statement.

The fox snarled, bearing its teeth before spitting on the ground again. "Fugoff, mate. Christ, how many times this las' week have ye asked me that?"

The cats eyes twitched and he stared dead-ahead. It occurred to Benji the only time Bandit actually talked to him - as opposed to Kyle - was when the rest of the gang couldn't possibly be listening. Bandit was also the only one who actually knew that he existed. Clever cat, Kyle's supposed 'leader' was.

Right now they were all enjoying breakfast. And enjoying was an understatement; Camp D had slipped them through some hash-browns in the last shipment.

Bandit rolled himself a cigarette, and he didn't seem very concerned that he was too young to smoke it. "I'm gonna let that one slide, Benji."

"Aw, why's that? Ye scared to punish me?" The fox cackled.

The cat hesitated, and his ears flicked back out of curiosity. "Tell me, Benji, does Kyle feel pain when you do?"

The fox held his tongue. Arrogant as he was, he knew better than to let the cat get him talking. Every word he'd say would be like handing Bandit pieces to the puzzle of how Kyle worked. Benji couldn't risk that. For him it was life or death.

Bandit smirked. "Didn't think so."

Ryan walked as far as the community tent before he was stopped my a cup of coffee. The paw holding it belonged to a very, very happy hyena. The hyena had a newspaper hat perched on his head, pushing down his ears, the same kind kids would make out of boredom in primary school.

"Hey there, mate."

Before Ryan could give his own greeting, Flack had given him something and it wasn't coffee - he looked down in his hands to find that they were both grasping the wooden length of a splintering shovel.

"Ever read 'Holes'?"

Ryan shook his head.

"Crazy book, 'bout all these boys that dug big holes every day. You'd love it."

Ryan peered down at his shovel and felt a sick feeling down in his stomach.

Flack punched his shoulder with a chuckle. "Don't you worry your pretty little face, mate. Only one hole for you. Ye' remember those big ones at the bag of camp?"

Ryan recalled peering down into them, having felt amazed by their sheer depth and circumference. It was that kinda hole that you could break an ankle falling into.

"Christ, Flack, you're not being serious... _are _you?"

The hyena squinted.

They walked to the back of the camp, where all the other boys were waiting with their breakfasts. It dawned on Ryan that he was going to have an audience while digging this whole. They hooted and hollered at their newest member as he walked out into the field, shovel clasped nervously in his paws.

"This spot, right here." The hyena tapped his foot at a very specific space of dirt, although to Ryan the spot seemed just as random as all of the other holes. "Don't stop until you've hit water." He said, then added, "seriously, don't stop. It's quite possibly the worst thing you could do for yourself." The hyena's eyes flicked over towards the other boys. Ryan understood what he meant.

He felt hopeful with the shovel in his hands, silently mouthing 'Okay, I can do this'... his first dig with the shovel bounced out from something hard on the ground. He'd barely made a crack in the soil.

Bandit's boys howled with laughter.

He got more luck on his next few strikes, as he was beginning to break through the sun-baked sun making up the grounds top-layer.

After half an hour, he'd made a fairly good attempt of cracking through the hard stuff. The red clay descended into a muddy brown the deeper he went. Every now and then there'd be a rock that would send a jolt up Ryan's arm muscles, but that was nothing in comparison to the splinters.

After three hours, his paws felt as though they were wooden than the shovel was. Most of the splinters stuck out from his flesh like a new addition to his fur. He'd eventually decided to stop picking at them and just leave them in, as he knew that he'd be getting many more before this job was done and this impossible hole was dug.

The midday sun beat down on his neck, his mouth dry and his fur soaked with a fresh layer of sweat. All of bandit's boys had stopped watching him and were off doing more important looking activities. Only one of them stayed to watch, a tired-looking bird with dark feathers and dark eyes, who was too concerned with coughing and sneezing to really be doing anything productive.

Ryan had once waved out to him. Despite staring back at the Ryan, the bird hadn't waved back.

After four hours of pure digging, Ryan's motivation was hanging solely onto the hyena's advice on not to stop. It also became a looming frustration, that he had inflicted so much more work on himself than was actually necessary. Ryan had tried to dig the hole very deep whilst keeping it small to reduce the work for himself, but he hadn't planned on what he'd do what he was submerged in the hole. It was too tight to work efficiently, and he had to hoist himself out - thankful that he only had a small audience - and dig the hole thing to be wider. He felt as though he weren't making progress... and he swore to himself that as long as the bird was watching him, he'd keep slamming his shovel into that dirt.

The bird of course left five minute later. Probably to go treat the nasty cough he had.

Ryan's motivation was in tatters.

Around the five hour mark, just when Ryan had been considering throwing his shovel down and begging the boys for water, a fox peered down into the hole.

"Hey." Said Kyle, cocking his head.

Ryan kept digging as if he hadn't heard him. The fox had come before earlier and tried to land spit on top of the coyote's head, cackling evilly each time a wad of spit had slapped on top of Ryan's shoulders.

"I brought some water, figured you'd be thirsty."

The fox could have been satan himself and Ryan still would have accepted that water. He caught the water bottle and nearly sculled the whole thing before he had to gasp for air.

The fox dropped down next to him and sat against the soil wall. The soil got softer the deeper Ryan had dug, but that had also been matched with the challenge of trying to fling each load up and out of the hole.

"Wow, this is the best one I've ever seen!" Said the fox, sounding different. "Most holes are crooked or slanted as they go down, but this is pretty much perfect circle." He patted Ryan on the pack, whose expression couldn't be more confused. "Solid job, man. You should be proud."

Ryan opened his mouth, swallowed, changed his mind. "Kyle." He said.

The fox's ears pricked up alongside its smile.

"Are you okay?"

Kyle picked some dirt out of his fur before blowing a raspberry. "What kind of question is that, man. Course I'm okay. Todays been one of the coldest days we've had in ages, man." He looked up at the stars and sighed. "Nowhere as cold as how the arctic would be right now, but... you get what you get I guess."

"I don't give a shit about the arctic." Ryan said, very slowly. With hot and bothered he had been, he was surprised he hadn't punched _the fox. "I mean mentally. Are you _mentally okay?"

The fox hesitated. "Jeez, man. I hope so-"

It had been sudden. Ryan had grabbed the fox by his shoulders and was shaking him so hard that his head bashed the dirt wall behind him.

"KYLE CUT THE SHIT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

The fox was too shocked to speak.

"JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!"

"..."

"TELL ME!" Ryan howled.

The fox struggled against his muscles.

"Or I'll FUCKING EAT YOU!"

The fox was able to shove Ryan hard enough to slide out of his grip, and in the brief seconds where he was finally loose, he had already scampered up and out of the hole and was already gone.

Ryan was alone once again. And after his adrenalin had cooled down he began to quietly sob to himself. His his palms hard against the side of his head, filled with mental anguish, tears fulling into the dry ground under him.

But they splashed as there was a layer of water there...

And as soon as he had seen it, he was feeling this wet, tingly feeling as the right side of his pants got wetter. He head a dripping noise, and when he turned to face it he saw where the water was coming from: the dirt wall, through thing cracks. A leaking crater, where he'd put the fox's head into.

Tears filled his eyes once more, as he realised that he could finally stop. That he could finally put the shovel down, finally crawl back into his dirty bed and soak more sleep. He wouldn't even care about Mortar's snores. In fact, fuck it, he'd like to those snores right now.

He should be feeling satisfaction. The serotonin completing such an impossible task... in short he should be feeling better than he did now...

He lay his head into the muddy water, feeling it's cool slickness soak into his fur. It washed over the blisters on his paws. It soothed the splinters.

Holding his face down in the muddy water, he wondered if he should just keep it there. Whether he should just choke on it.

Unbeknownst to him, the red mud stained into the fur on his face as he held it there. A stain that shaped like a mask around his fur, playfully colouring his ears and muzzle at random.

When he finally turned himself over, sucking in breath, he had a stain quite similar to Bandit's. The difference being that Ryan's looked more brutal. More of blood.

More of bloodshed.