FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

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"Attention!" someone yelled and Dante woke with a fright; snorting a little as he inhaled again. A little shaken, Dante looked up lazily at the tall figure of Commander Madsen.

"Up, come on. It's your first day of training. We'll be heading to the cafeteria first; get some breakfast, then I have to escort you to the briefing room." Dante looked around; his eyes squinted as he looked for his wrist watch.

"What's the time? I can't find my watch." Dante looked around and under his bed even but couldn't find it.

"It's six am... come on, hurry up and get dressed. Oh and not your normal clothes, you'll have to wear the uniform now."

"Great, I'm tired, hungry and I'm about to make a fashion statement" Dante said very sarcastically. John just shook his head smiling, and said,

"I'll be waiting outside for you," and walked through the door. Dante quickly grabbed the uniform from the trunk at the bottom of his bed. Minutes later, he was out of the door and walking on his way to cafeteria where he was sure that everyone would be staring at him and plainly talking about him once again.

"You've certainly attracted a lot of attention."

"Yeah well it isn't everyday that you see a twelve year old walking around in a military base now, is it?"

"True but, I don't really see the big deal about this."

"Yeah, but you know me a little and know what we're going to be doing together. Everyone else is curious to why I'm here."

"Alright but, I still don't see what the big deal is." They walked through the doors of the cafeteria once again but not as many furs this time were looking at Dante.

Dante thought that either the uniform had seemed to have made him one of them, or that he was yesterday's news. He preferred the second idea better. Still trying to ignore the diminished stares of the others, he followed John to the queue.

"So, what are we going to do today?" Dante asked him very curiously.

"We're going to give you a lot to do. Hope you can handle it. You'll be told everything in the briefing" John said as he pointed to one of the food containers as the bear asked him what he wanted.

As the bear finished serving John, Dante moved up and once again was getting a dull look.

"I'll just have some of that" he said who didn't care anymore about what other furs reactions were going to be. They were just going to have to get used to him being there.

The bear piled his tray and Dante walked off and sat next to John who was eating his food and talking to a few friends of his. As Dante sat down next to him, the table went quiet except for John and the panther that were in conversation about a soccer match that was on yesterday.

Dante just ducked his head a little and began eating his food. Not long after, a female cat with black and white fur with brown patches walked up to him and asked him directly,

"Excuse me, why are you here?" she asked him, her yellow eyes transfixed on his position.

Dante looked up. Come to think of it, the Major had never really said why he was really there. His real intentions weren't ever mentioned.

"I don't know. I was just brought here for testing and I had to stay for some reason" he said, shrugging his shoulders as he did.

"Oh. Um...so what's you're name?" she asked, looking a little surprised.

"Dante...Oakbrook...I think" he said to her with difficulty. He still wasn't sure what his name was yet. For all he knew everyone could be lying to him but, why would they, especially to someone who had a bad injury like his?

"It's nice to meet you. My name's Catharine Beach. Everyone just calls me Cat for short. Why aren't you sure of your own name?" she asked, smiling unbelievably at him.

"It's a long story" Dante sighed.

"Oh...well...um...do you want to come over with some of my friends. We just wanna talk. Not everyday you see a kid roaming around here." She looked at him innocently as she spoke to him. This seemed so much like he was in school for some reason.

"Uh...sure? Why not?" he said as he looked over to John; who was still in conversation with the fur sitting next to him.

Dante grabbed his tray and was led over to a table that had a wide variety of furs, male and female. Dante started to feel very awkward as every fur glanced over at him.

"Hey guys, this is Dante Oakbrook...well at least he thinks he is anyway" Cat said to them all.

"Sit down Dante, don't be shy. We're all quite curious to why you're here. By the looks of it, you're going to be one of us" she said, looking him up and down at his uniform which seemed a little too big for him.

"Well, like I told John over there, I know as much as you guys. I mean, I wake up in hospital, not knowing who the hell I am, and I've forgotten everything that's happened to me in my life. I finally learn that I was a victim of a brutal attack and my friend was shot dead. I'm suffering with a brain condition and I'm now in a military base somewhere, and I'm talking to you guys."

He just told them plain and straight. He didn't want to beat around the bush.

"Wait...you're the kid in the papers that was attacked by that gang!" a grey and white furred husky blurted out, his tail pointed up in surprise. Dante just nodded silently.

He knew he just caught everyone's attention on the table now. They all looked at him intently, wondering when he was going to tell them more about what happened, as if they had asked him to carry on.

"I...I don't like to...to talk about it. It's ruined my life." Dante looked down into his tray of food. He suddenly didn't feel that hungry anymore. He didn't realise that everyone was still fixed on him, watching his every move.

"So...so how did you end up here then?" Cat asked him, very awkwardly. She tried to break the awkward silence because she always hated them. Dante looked up, feeling a little depressed about all what had happened in such a short time.

*******

Dante had told them everything he knew altogether. About his condition, how he got here.

They were all quite supportive towards him too. He'd got to know the six of them. He'd already met Catherine who had been there for six months.

The male husky's name that had asked him about Dante being the boy in the papers; was Michael Grey. He had also been here for six months and had joined up around the same time as Cat. Michael was twenty six years old while Cat was twenty two. The others were a tiger whose name was Alan Nickson.

He had been working in the military base for two years and was thirty years old. There were twin brother and sister foxes named Josh and Mary Andrews. They were both new recruits themselves and were twenty years old.

The last fur was a black Labrador named Jack Stuart who had been there the longest out of them all for four years. He was only twenty six but was very experienced.

"Man, that's pretty messed up. So you can't remember anything. But you can get some of your memory back when you have one of those attacks?" Alan asked to confirm he'd heard right.

"Well, I've had one already. It hurts like hell. Although; what I remembered just confused me more than help me."

"Whoa, cool. What did you remember?" Cat asked. She was very curious to know everything.

"I...I remember some of the attack, and no, sorry, I don't want to talk about it. I have enough of it in my nightmares without talking about it openly to everyone."

Cat looked a little disappointed knowing that he had something as interesting as this.

"Oh Cat, give him a break. The kid's just been recovering from the trauma and you want him to relive it for your own interests" Josh blurted out. He was quickly hushed by his sister who wanted to know more herself.

"Maybe I'll tell you guys later, I...I really don't want to talk about it right now."

Dante looked down again at his empty tray and tried to hide himself from the stares they were giving him to carry on. They all stopped then realising that he really didn't want to talk about it because they could see that he really looked troubled by it.

Not long after, John had come walking back up to him and said it was time to meet up to have his briefing. Everyone at the table looked amazed that he was going to have a briefing from the Major, even Jack. Not many people got anything important like this unless they were very high ranking officers like John.

"Nice to meet you guys. Hope I see you again sometime" Dante said. He really did hope that he was going to see them again. They were a funny bunch but they were fun to be with. They all waved and Cat and Mary smiled as they waved goodbye.

*******

John and Dante were making their way to the briefing room. They didn't talk that much as they made their way there.

"Just go straight in, Major Jackson is waiting for you inside. See you later."

Dante nodded his head bluntly, and walked through the door. It was a pretty small room; it had a few chairs spread about the room with a big screen. There was a computer at the front that must have been the controls for the screen. Waiting next to it was the Major.

"Come in Dante, sit down" he said, beckoning him to a seat. Dante sat down near the front.

"I suppose Commander Madsen told you a little bit about the briefing." Dante just nodded.

"Well, lets just get straight to it. You'll be training over the next year or two, depending on how fast you learn. You'll be doing some weight training; you look like you need to put a bit of muscle on. You'll also be doing advanced weapons training; you'll learn how to use, identify and destroy weapons. Also hand-to-hand combat..."

"What kind?" Dante asked with great enthusiasm.

"Well...we'll see how you handle it. You'll be doing the standard recruit training first. It's just a trial period to assess your abilities in a more practical situation. It will also be ideal for your neurologist to study your learning condition. These doctors seem to relish every aspect of illnesses these days." He finished, sifting through his new dossier.

"Oh. What about John? What does he have to do with it?" He hadn't been informed on why he was even doing this.

"Consider him to be your personal target. Commander Madsen is one of, if not, the best officer under my command here at this facility. It's your aim to be as skilled and as disciplined as he is" the Major informed him, slapping the dossier shut and focusing his entire attention on Dante.

"Well...what happens after that?" he tilted his head. The Major was certainly being evasive.

"Then, Dante, the real training begins..." he said, staring at Dante as if he could see the way he was going to turn out after all the planning, resting his chin on his paws as he propped his arms up with his elbows.

Dante gave the Major another curious tilt of his head, breaking the strange stare by asking,

"So...what exactly will I be doing today?"

The Major snapped out of his extremely uncommon visualisation, answering Dante's question with unwavering composure.

"Well, today you're going to be building a little muscle; you're going to need to because you need to be strong for this job." Dante looked down to the floor and sighed.

He found the idea of lifting chunks of metal on bars to be a serious bore. He would have taken anything else they could give him but, not weight training.

*******

Once the Major had finished telling him the schedule for every week, he escorted Dante personally to the on site gym.

It wasn't long before they got to the gym and was soon greeted by a bulky tom-cat. The Major and the cat instantly began chatting and discussing the session that Dante was to entail.

He looked pretty scary to Dante but, when Dante was talking to him while he was giving him pointers on what to do; he was actually a nice guy. His name was Tom; he was a drill sergeant who was always tough on training new recruits, but maybe because Dante was only young or that he was off duty he seemed to be a lot more lenient.

The training was still very hard though; Dante could barely lift 15 kilograms on each arm. It was hard to do anything especially when there were a few furs in the gym that was watching him.

He almost dropped the weights on his foot, missing his toes by a few millimetres. The easiest thing he could do was press-ups and sit-ups. Some of the furs in the gym were also laughing at him when he was trying to lift the weights; he was very close to keeling over.

At the end of the day, Dante was absolutely exhausted, even though he had a lot of stamina. He was absolutely starving as well. Maybe it was because of his hunger that he felt so tired? After having something to eat, he went straight to the showers, then straight to bed.

It made it easier on his composure anyways. He could only take so much staring.

*******

The next day, Dante was being taught his advanced weapons training. He thought that would have been just as boring as the weight lifting but, it turned out to be very interesting.

He was shown profiles of different weapons and was shown how to find each weak spot on every weapon. He especially liked the technique he was taught on how to disarm enemies with pistols by ripping the slide lock off of the gun. He learnt it very quickly and mastered the skill with speed in his technique.

He found it really fun to do and kept on pulling apart a practice pistol as he was shown where to fire at a gun and critically damage the gun so it was unusable.

After all the boring talk he got to fire a gun which was pretty good. He got to use sniper rifles, pistols and assault rifles.

There was one incident though when he tried to fire the assault rifle on fully automatic. The recoil made him fire all the way up in the air and fall over as he lost his balance and keeled over backwards.

He could see why he may have needed to do the weight training during his time there after that.

*******

Over the next few days, Dante had learnt how to clean and bandage gunshot wounds after taking out the bullet in survival techniques. He liked the sound of taking a hike with a small team to learn and implement more techniques.

He had learnt a variety of throws and disarming techniques from a new drill-sergeant that had just been assigned a new position at the facility. He was ex-SWAT. He commanded his own team for years, giving Dante a bit of extra tactical advice as he worked with the 'roo. He really got on with him.

When he finally had the training, he was taught the basics quite easily. But when he was sparring with John, John only caught him with a tap to the head that made him collapse to the floor in pain. It was going to be an uphill struggle in that aspect of training.

*******

A month later, Dante was excelling at everything. He was starting to get some definition in his figure now that he was getting stronger. John couldn't touch him in his hand-to-hand training anymore. They had to resort to sparring with him two-on-one in the end which proved too difficult for them to handle.

He was easily becoming one of the best shots too. He showed superb marksmanship with everything he was given. It shone through in his sniping.

It wasn't long before they'd approved him to begin new and more...exotic training regimes. Training had become more of multiple children's fantasies mingled together with the variety of skills he was being taught. Since when did a soldier in this day and age need to use swords?

During his stay, Dante also had numerous attacks to add to his experience. They were extremely unpleasant and questionable if they were worth what he had to go through.

He had finally been sure of what his name was, at least.

There was though, the snippets of memories he'd finally gained about his first and closest best friends. They just reinforced the guilt with more weight added to the pit in his stomach after recalling the day of his burial. He'd dread the day if he ever had to confront Grace.

The attacks had brought quite a lot of attention his way and so he tried to ignore it. He never wanted to talk to anyone about the memories either; it was too personal to share in his views.

Because Dante and John were partnered in a highly private training regime as the Major put it, they weren't allowed to say anything and talk about their training to anyone.

It was considerably hard for Dante because Cat and Mary kept on aggravating him but, Dante kept his mouth shut. Josh and Michael were always there to stop them as they tried to force the info out of Dante. Alan and Jack just sat there laughing their heads off every time they started bickering.

John would just shake his head in disbelief that they could argue so much and would just sit there speaking to Dante about anything other than the training they were receiving.

"Oh, they're at it again."

"Yeah! I mean they can't still want to know after so long, can't they?" Dante said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Well, you'll be surprised how persistent others can be. You better be thankful that you haven't got my mother here" John said very sarcastically.

"Yeah...you've made your point. Hey, watch where you're aiming!" Dante whined as Josh catapulted a fork full of mashed-potato in his ear.

"Woops! Sorry. Meant to hit Mary," Josh said now reloading the fork with another lump.

"I bet! It's really hard to aim when you're sitting next to me and she's right opposite you," he said now shaking his head a little to get the rest of the mash out of his ear.

"What can I say? I'm squint," he said, not really paying attention.

"Grow up Josh. You're playing around with your food like a kid does!" Mary hissed before she got hit square on the forehead by a pile of potato.

"Ah! Josh, I'm gonna kill you!" she screamed and grabbed him by the ears and twisted. Josh was squirming in pain as his sister was making him submit to say sorry.

"Ah! Mary, get off my ears! Ah!" he shouted.

"No! Not until you say sorry!" she yelled back and twisted his ears even more which made Josh yell in pain. Everyone began laughing at this point.

"Hey, do you think we should stop them before she tears his ears off? Though, I know Josh would rather have them torn off than hurt his pride," Dante beckoned to John.

"Oh just leave them. They'll soon stop. Besides, it's good entertainment for the other guys," John laughed, looking around the table to see everyone else laughing.

"Would you like your ears twisted like that?" Dante said, motioning John to look at the twins; who both had now got a grip on each other's ears and were twisting them as hard as they could.

"OK. Hey guys, come on. Quit it before you tear each others ears off. Don't want two soldiers who can't hear anything." And at that, the twins left go of each other and grabbed their own ears, nursing them as they throbbed painfully.

"There, that's better...Kids...who'd have 'em..." John said.

"Yeah," Dante smirked.

"Anyway what do you think about yesterdays briefing on the new training program?" John broke off into a whisper.

"It's pretty cool! Though, I wouldn't have expected any of this new stuff to be part of a soldier's skill set...?" Dante said before he was interrupted by Cat.

"Hey, what are you two whispering about?" she said, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, we were just talking about yesterday's soccer game," Dante broke off.

"Yeah...man the officers didn't even have a chance. Ha...! They lost four-nil. It's a wonder how John didn't score more than that," Dante finished.

"Really? Why were you whispering it then?"

"Because we didn't want to bother you guys in something you wouldn't know much about," Dante answered.

"But I always watch soccer. I like soccer a lot."

"Oh. Never mind then," he said to her, and turned back to John smiling.

"Hey! Come on, tell me! Please?" she begged.

"I just told you."

"No! What you were really talking about!"

"I did."

"No you didn't."

"Fine; don't believe me."

"Fine; don't tell me."

"I won't."

"Good."

"Good!"

Cat folded her arms and started to pout, looking like a little girl who didn't get her way.

"That's right. Pout like all adults do; it isn't gonna make me change my mind; orders are orders and I can't tell you anything."

"You tell her Dante," Alan and Jack blurted out in unison. They were trying to stir things up as usual. The thing was that they were also like Josh, causing trouble. They did it a little less frequent than Josh but, they were discrete about it unlike him, who would want the whole world to see him do it if he could get everyone to.

"No-one asked you to say anything!" Cat hissed back.

"Oh yeah...no-one gave you permission to nose in on other guys training!" Jack retorted.

"Yeah; but friends should tell each other stuff about what they're doing."

"Well; consider it like this. Their training is like a deep, dark secret. Now, would you go telling someone your deepest, darkest secret to your friends?" Alan humbly said.

"No, but..."

"No buts!! Case closed." And at that, Cat went back to her pouting young girl phase again.

"So, what you been doin' in training then guys?" Alan slipped in again.

"Hey!" Cat burst out.

Alan chuckled, a smirk appearing on Dante's and John's face. Cat gave a loud, muffled grunt through pursed lips and stormed off.

"So, you gonna tell us?"

"No. It's on need-to-know bases only. Sorry but, you're just going to have to suffer," Dante said, just putting the matter aside.

"Anyways, I'm looking forward to the next soccer game. Ha, we're gonna play against Drill Sergeant Grimes's team. Oh, we are going to kick some ass, ha!" Dante continued.

"Hey, his team is pretty tough."

"Yeah, but we're still gonna kick their butts' cos we got Dante on our team!" Josh interrupted, leaning over and grabbed Dante into a one arm hug. Josh was their goal keeper and was pretty good too.

"Give him a break Josh. You're always saying he's awesome and the best. You're putting too much pressure on him and his head won't fit through that door if you carry on the way you're going," John retorted playfully.

Dante just sat there blushing and scratching his head, smiling again.

"Oh, we got a smirk! There's a smirk everyone! It won't be long before he starts claiming his rights to media coverage soon."

"John, you're such a goofball sometimes. You could out do Josh." He smiled softly.

"Hey! I resent that! No one can be goofier than me...Oops!" Josh retorted, banging his fist lightly against the table. He just forgot he had loaded his fork with another load of mashed potato and had sent it flying somewhere behind him.

"Say guys, it's time we were getting back to training. It's almost one o'clock," Michael announced. John looked at his watch.

"Oh, and it is. Come on Dante, need to get goin'. We'll see you guys later."

They all stood from their chairs and took their separate paths, before saying goodbye and leaving for their training sessions.