Wild Coyote sat next to a door while squeezing a coyote plush. A folder stuffed with several paper he typed and printed yesterday lay on a chair next to him. He tried to focus on it, imagine how Silver Vixen would think once she read through it, but his mind always returned to the room behind him. He sucked his lips and reached into his white lab coat, pulling out an E-cigarette. It inched closer to his lips before he shook his head and placed it back in.

“No need for that. Besides, it can’t be that bad, right?” Coyote asked himself. His tone held a heavy amount of doubt. “He must be acting, right?”

The doubt remained, hovering above him like a cloud. He pulled out his smartphone, woke it up, and tapped in the password. He opened the messaging app and scrolled over to Jack, his nickname for Thunder Jackal. He winced, remembering the last time he called Thunder Jackal that nickname. He rubbed his throat, which burned for a couple of seconds. Once the pain passed, he checked the chat with him and sighed. Jackal read the last several messages he sent but returned no reply.

“He must be freaking out,” Coyote said. The door beside him slid open, and Silver Vixen slipped out. He got up, but one look at her despaired face, from the red at the edges of her eyes to her unruffled hair, told him everything. “So, it actually got worse, right?”

“Yeah.” Vixen pressed her forehead against the wall. “He explained what happened and, oh, it’s all my fault.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.” Coyote reached over to her shoulders and rubbed them.

“It is. Don’t try to downplay my guilt in this.” Vixen lay there, unmoving. “I convinced him to bring June along, despite knowing his issues with wolves, even a half-wolf like her. I directed him to a specific universe for his medical leave. I thought that they would help him overcome his issues, but the opposite happened.”

“To be fair, it was decent logic from what little we know.” Coyote’s voice remained firm though it lost its tone. “About his bandaged arm and how they refused to tell us everything. Plus, from what Star Fox told us, it was sheer, poor chance that he encountered a werewolf in a magicless, modern-day world. And as long as he has that kunai clinging to him like a super powerful magnet, he will always be at a center point of a crisis.”

“Honestly, I hope to defy that accursed kunai somehow.” Vixen turned to face him. She struggled not to cry. “Perhaps it would go for a more downplay adventure he found himself in. Instead, he is always in the middle of some evil plan.”

“Well, look at the bright side,” Coyote said. Vixen raised an eyebrow at him. “Not about his bandaged arm, I mean. He is always in the right place to disrupt those plans. That’s what I meant.”

“Maybe. Maybe.” Vixen sniffed. “Perhaps I should cheat next time. Like planting him in a universe where death is cheap.”

“Like a cartoon universe?” Coyote asked. He waited until she nodded. “I think that blasted curse will still happen, but we’ll see.” He hesitated momentarily before rushing to the chair for his folder. “I have something that can take your mind off of this.”

Vixen tilted her head, curious. Coyote handed her the folder labeled ‘Project B. B.’ She flipped it open and, reading through the text, intrigued replaced her heartbroken expression. Each page held diagrams of a vague anthro-shape figure and an intense technical description. She closed the folder and turned to him.

“Your new personal project?” Vixen asked. Coyote nodded. “You’re asking for a lot. It’s one thing to fuse technology with biology, but this?” She wiggled the folder before him. “I’m not sure if we can do this.”

“I have faith. And besides, we have seen impossible stuff happen. Why not this?”

Vixen hummed for several seconds. “You know, with some adjustments and a new nanomachine type, it might.” She rubbed her chin. “Did you plan this out because of her? Or maybe, for Blondie’s sake? And why the name?”

“I admit that I thought of her when the idea came to me.” Coyote rubbed the back of his head. “But she’s not the true source of this idea.” He blushed as bright as his hair. “It and the name came from a certain inspiration I’ve been following as of late.”

Vixen sighed and lowered her eyelids halfway. “You were thinking of that game, weren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged,” Coyote said. He turned to the door again, and his joy died. “How long will he be in there?”

Vixen sighed. Her earlier despair returned in full force. “He’s asleep, so it’ll be a few hours. At least you weren’t there when Jackal talked to him.” The hair on Vixen’s hands stood up straight. “I was outside the room, you see, and while their voices were muffled, it’s clear to me that they screamed at each other for half an hour.”

“Jeez. Now I know the world’s ending.” Coyote shook his head. Vixen handed him the folder back, and he tucked it under his arm. “Now, let’s go straight to the commander and ask permission to greenlight this project.”

Vixen nodded. The two walked down the hallway, with the walls beside him painted off-white and with bright lights shining above. “Do you think he’ll accept?”

“Personally?” Coyote’s and Vixen’s footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. The floor beneath him was polished enough that their ghostly reflection showed on the white surface. “He’ll accept it as long as it remains FOXWOOD’s secret. Already, I can hear him saying how it could grant immortality and how it can go horribly wrong.”

An anthro black fox stood in front of a machine. Its large glass tube, enough to fit a grown man within, finished filling with golden protoplasmic fluids. Beside the tube lay keyboards and pipes leading inside. Memories of the last few months building this machine remained fuzzy in his mind, but he knew one last thing. It needed two DNA samples to start this machine.

He reached into his blue button-up shirt, with black zigzagging patterns on it and hanging open over an orange shirt, for the sample. He pulled out a vial filled with blood. It held the label ‘WRITER’ on it, the key to his plan for resurrection. He paused, struggling between two sides of himself before he surrendered and inserted the vial into the machine.

Already, the blood danced within the golden fluids. He rubbed his hand-paw against his purple jeans. He stared at the dancing blood for what felt like years, though it only took a minute. His tail, black and ending with a dark red tip, twitched behind him. He grunted and, reaching to his belt with a tarnished golden A buckle on it, unsheathed a knife. He pressed the tip against his left forearm before he stopped himself.

His hand-paw, dark red up to the elbow, clenched tighter against the knife. He gritted his teeth, his will for freedom against this alien desire winning. Inch by inch, he pulled the knife away from his arm. His left eye glowed an unnatural orange, and he froze in place. Without any room for fighting, he stabbed the blade in without flinching.

He released the knife, with it still in his arm, and he reached into his pocket. He pulled a vial and uncorked it before laying it underneath his bleeding arm. The blood dripped into the vial, filling it up with blood. Once full, he inserted the vial into the machine.

His blood joined with the other blood, and the two danced around each other in a spiral. He pressed a few buttons and pulled a switch, causing the machine to hum. Once done, he yanked the knife from his arm and dropped it on the floor. It clattered, with blood splattering on the floor. More of his blood joined the flooring.

“You think you can still defy me, even at this stage?” He asked. His voice held a strange echo. “No. You are mistaken. It is your fate to serve me.”

At that point, his left eye stopped glowing orange. He blinked before he flinched, with the pain flooding his head. The attempt to defy him failed again, leaving him with a bloody arm as a result. He got up and rushed to the side, where sterile towels prepared for the occasion lay. He grabbed one and tightly wrapped it around his left forearm, squeezing it.

“You fool,” he said to himself. “You know he’s too powerful for you. But, I need to escape, but how?”

He swallowed as he turned to the machine, with steel covers unfolding over the large tube. The floor beneath his dark red feet-paws froze, with ice covering between his toes. He licked his lips and narrowed his sea blue eyes at the machine.