Chapter 2
The fresh water mists of the lake were cool on the spring air as Rooky and Reever silently approached the chain-link fence that surrounded the Sunrise Docking corporation vehicular storage dept 109, a soul destroying gray, concrete and rusted steel platform sticking out onto reclaimed land with the lake lapping at it from two directions. The actual dock was on the east side, and the west had a large parking lot with corroded shipping containers blocking several warehouses and a parking lot for, exactly as Reever had said, three dozen chrome, plateless mini-vans and SUVs, all of them brand new and with air-fresheners still dangling from the rear view. The guard made his rounds a bit more quickly than Rooky had been told, but, after observing two rounds, averaging 49 minutes each, they decided to make a go for it anyway. If they took longer than 30, something irreparable had gone wrong already and they’d have to ditch. 
Rooky had worn a functional black leather jacket, his typical lifting clothes, and each had their backpack of equipment. Reever went out in front of the tanuki as they approached the chained up gate, some five minutes after the guard passed by on foot. He had the bolt cutters, and together they levered them onto the industrial lock, and, with a few heaves of effort, broke it with a loud snap. Both waited a minute for signs of the guard returning, then opened the gate and weaved between the closely packed steel containers towards the lot, and an early spring snowfall started to drizzle down onto their heads. Now that brought Rooky back… He stopped in mid sneak for a few moments, looking up at the pitch black and cloud filled sky, watching snowflakes flutter down towards his nose like had during his years seeking shelter in back alleys and culverts, anywhere he could keep the wind out.
“Yo, what’s the hold up?” Reever said, snapping Rooky out of his flashback, and he shook himself free of it and continued on, the drill in his pack weighing heavily.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” Rooky said sarcastically, and flew a knowing eye over the cars in the lot. All new, all the same color, all the same few, redundent models. He picked the most valuable of them and nodded to Reever, “That one,” he said, pointing to a large, family sized mini-van that lacked a license plate. That would be a problem if they got pulled over, but it was ironically only a few streets over that the car would be chopped to bits and shipped across the country to be resold as individual parts, so Rooky didn’t worry about it. 
The tanuki set up between two of the vehicles, slinging off his drill set and making sure he had room to wield it properly with so little room. He did, set it down on the bag to keep it out of the snow, then stood up cautiously and kept guard while the mouse did his thing. It was getting misty, even in the glow of the overhead crime lights along the edges of the compound, for all the good they did them, and visibility was considerably reduced. Rooky didn’t like it, he didn’t blend in well in the fog, especially against chrome. He was a smooth operator, and didn’t show any anxiety he might have felt, but, regardless, it was there. The minutes ticked by after Reever disappeared under the car without so much as a word, and he could hear the clanking and jostling of shadow mechanic work going on beneath. 
Ten minutes passed and nothing happened, so Rooky settled in a crouch between two cars, watching where the guard would approach from, and looking back from time to time to make sure his six was clear. Usually the paranoia that came with a few shots of coke was annoying, but a main reason Rooky kept the habit was the material advantage it gave him during his work, keeping all his senses at a diamond edge, totally aware of his surroundings, or so he thought. Rooky heard the mouse move out behind the back of the car and didn’t pay him any mind. Time conscious, he picked up his drill, ready to run if the alarm hadn’t been properly dismantled, sighed, and was about to go to work when the mouse jabbed him in his upper arm with one of those modern, plungerless syringes.   
“Hey, what the fuck?!” Rooky said, backing up a step and looking at where the needle had pierced his fur and skin, and the normal falling sensation of having been shot full of something. Reever said nothing, only stowing the syringe and looking at him with a raised eyebrow, like he shouldn’t still have been standing long enough to talk. Sure enough, a textbook wave of exhaustion fell over Rooky’s limbs as he started to run, like he was held down by lead weights, and, stumbling, he fell face-first into the hood of one of the silver SUVs. “The fuck was that?! Horse tranq?” Rooky screamed, stealth forgotten and anger flushing in his face as he realized the mouse had tried to knock him out. The car’s impact alarm started to flare, alerting anyone in the area that they were there, and hopefully they’d preoccupy themselves with Reever and not him. He grabbed with half-limp hands for his coke shooter, clumsily raised it to his nose and took a long hit, gasping as his eyes widened, lighting up the area well enough for him to see several approaching figures in the mist, like specters to Rooky’s twice hammered eyes. 
As soon as the burst of energy from the powder hit him, Rooky pile drove right into one of the guard-men’s chest, winding him, and, heedless of his own pain, threw the man, who was somewhat bigger than him but not hyped on tranquilizer, cocaine and adrenaline at the same time, muzzle first into the nearest car, and scrambled over the hood of the car as he sprinted towards the gate, wanting nothing more to do with whatever the hell had just happened. 
Tossing a glance over his shoulder, the tanuki saw that there was in fact a closing ring of people chasing after him, and, had his tolerance to the drugs in the syringe not been so high, he probably would have bitten the pavement and been dragged off. That goat fucking son of a bitch, Rooky said, growling as he reached the fence, and, not seeing a few of the people chasing him swerve to cut off that road, started vaulting his way up it with all the speed and agility a life of crime afforded someone. Tweaked as he was, Rooky didn’t even notice the barbs on the wire as they cut through his dark, greasy fur and into his flesh. It hurt, but it was dull and muted, distant, not important. He leapt from the top of the fence, which was intended to keep people from breaking in, not out, but, in his haste to get away, failed to notice a pot hole in the road below and heard a loud snap as his ankle rolled sixty degrees to one side and pain shot up his leg.
“Aahhhh!” Rooky screached in pain, stumbling to his knees for a few seconds before the pain died down, helped along oddly enough by the painkillers he’d been shot full of a few moments later, and, despite the agony, he continued to run in an awkward, limping gait, not wanting to put too much weight on the ankle lest it be injured further and leave him immobilized. His trick had bought him some time through confusion, though. Dismayed shouts from behind the fence told him that they didn’t know he’d gotten over, yet, but that wouldn’t last. He had to run and hide, and luckily he wasn’t going to tire any time soon with the amount of narcotic he’d taken into his body.
The tanuki had parked his car some ways away, knowing these parts of town were iffy, and not wanting to see himself get robbed while trying to steal from someone else. Rooky’s truck was built to look unattractive, an older blue model with rusted over paint and no back seat. It wasn’t a compensator from the outside, and, like the rest of his appearance, it was intended to show one thing, and be another. Under the hood, Rooky had personally installed a range of top-of-the-line parts, and he put them to rigorous use in close escapes like this. 
Jumping into the front seat and hearing voices close on his tail, Rooky fumbled, growling for his keys, and plugged them into the ignition just as the first of the pursuit, two burly looking wolves in security dress, came around the corner and pointed at his car, some fifty yards away.
“Suck it, bitches!” Rooky shouted through the open window as he backed out of the alley, waving both middle fingers at them as he nicked the wall and got out into the street, not caring what scrapes or bumps the body took at this point, then put it into gear and burned rubber down the residential street doing the speed limit threefold and with no qualms that he’d be getting tickets for running red lights later on that month. Or at least he would have, if he hadn’t wrapped his license plates in board tape, so all the cameras could see was a bright, white blur with no distinguishable letters or numbers on it. 
At those speeds, and giving no apparent fucks about the rules of the road at three thirty in the morning, it didn’t take the tanuki more than fifteen minutes to get home, where it normally would have taken twice that, and, by the time he stumbled through his door, truck parked across three spaces in the lot across from his building, the tranquilizer came back with avengance, and, no thought for his own comfort, collapsed into a corner and shivered, curling up into a ball as all of his tensed muscles relaxed and went still, the hefty dose of some knockout drug finally winning out over the other things in his system and causing his much abused brain to shut off for some much needed rest.

***

A very loud, very rude knocking woke the stiff necked and headachey tanuki the next morning, who, in trying to scramble up and stand, knocked his head on the solid wooden end table next to his black leather couch, and, cursing, sent the modern metal lamp on top of it, along with various other small items, clattering to the ground around him.
“Mother fucker,” he cursed, standing up, still dressed in his raid clothes from the previous night since he’d never had time to undress, then, ready to punch whoever it was at the door as he came down from two different drugs at the same time, he walked over and opened the door. “What is it?!” He barked at the grease covered jackal standing in his hallway, and he unclenched his fist, knowing he’d probably loose the fight if he started one, along with an excellent chop-shop contract.
“Where were you last night?” The jackal said, letting himself in and shutting the door before glaring right at Rooky with a very pissed off expression, “I had to keep my guys paid and on staff all goddamn night, and where the hell were you? You said there’d be a car by four, so where the fuck were you?” 
“It went to shit,” Rooky said, letting his tone do half of the explaining for him as he turned his back, not caring about manners at this point, then collapsed onto his couch and put his feet up on the steel and glass coffee table, several half snorted lines scattering as he did. The shop’s owner stayed standing, but didn’t take his eyes off him, clearly expecting more information. Rooky took his sweet time replying, and watched the jackal’s face go redder by the minute, “Fuck, let me come down here alright? That shit for brains mouse kid I was working with turned on me.”
“Was he a cop?” Eric, the jackal, said, eying him warily.
“Ever heard of a cop shooting you full of horse tranq?” Rooky said, rubbing his forehead, “he was working with a bunch of grunts, lured me in then jabbed a needle in my arm. I ran like my tail was on fire, got away, then crashed out here. They weren’t cops, they were something else.”
“Another gang?” the visitor suggested, going into Rooky’s messy, unkempt kitchen and helping himself to a cup of coffee via one of those expensive one cup at a time machines. The tanuki paid it no mind, waving a hand dismissively at the idea.
“The fuck would a street gang want with me? I steal from college kids and douchey soccer moms. And if they wanted me dead, that would have been a glock, not a tranq needle.” Rooky trailed off, feeling dizzy, and rested his head on the leather armrest, staring blankly at the news on his new TV.
“I don’t know,” Eric said, walking over and dropping a second cup of coffee in front of Rooky, black columbian, “but I’m taking my guys’ wages for the night out of your next cheque, and you might want to seriously consider skipping town for a month.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Rooky grumbled, not really giving a damn about money at this point, he had plenty of that as it was, then picked up the coffee mug and drank. He could lounge around in a bed once he was at an anonymous hotel somewhere far to the north of the city. 
The jackal stood and went to leave, leaving the half finished coffee on the counter with two dozen others, then looked back at the badly hung over tanuki and nodded, “You might also want to clean this place up, and get yourself some new pants.” And, without another word, he was gone. Rooky’s door shut, leaving him alone in his apartment and wondering what the fuck Eric had meant by that last part.
“Some new…?” Rooky said to himself, as though saying it aloud would break open the words and explain their mysteries to him, then, quite belatedly, he realized how cold and clammy his crotch felt, his black jeans smelling of urine and clinging to his fur, soaked. “Jesus titty fucking christ!” Rooky set loose a torrent of curses as he realized what had happened. It wasn’t all that uncommon with muscle relaxants, which was one of the reasons Rooky stayed away from them, and he hissed involuntarily past it all, stripping them off without another word and throwing them into the trash.
With that sobering experience under his belt, Rooky took a record breaking shower, thoroughly scrubbing the smell of ammonia from his fur but doing as little as he could to get the grease and oil stains out, which he wore as a badge of pride, inside of a grand total of five minutes. Rooky kept his place of residence a secret from most people, paid his rent (and everything else) in cash, and had given a fake address on his car insurance application. As such, he wasn’t too worried about whoever it was who had jumped him the previous night coming to his door, since even if they found his car it was anybody’s guess which of the lower middle class apartment complexes in the area he lived in, and, further, which of the apartments. Rooky liked being hard to track down, it meant almost all encounters had to be on his terms, and that gave him an edge.
Still, Rooky didn’t know what he was up against, and skipping town sounded like a good idea, so he threw his on-hand cash into a backpack, along with a change of clothes, and any easily carried off valuables. With little ceremony he slung the pack over his shoulders, locked up his door as well as he could to keep any sneaky bastards from breaking in while he was gone, then parkoured his way down the fire escape, knowing full well he could climb his way back up when he got back even if the ladder was up, but doubting any cop or would-be kidnapper would be that dedicated. His ankle slowed him down a fair deal, though, and the tanuki, still in a lot of pain from his bad landing the previous day, had to take the steps a lot slower than he would have liked.
Reaching his truck, which was parked in a long abandoned lot a half block away, Rooky got inside with little ceremony and tossed the bag on the passenger seat before flipping off the epic city skyline, which he could see from his neigborhood, and driving due west along the lake front, intending to turn far to the north from there and find a small town bed and breakfast to stay at for a week or two. The scene changed quickly, and anyone who was out of the spotlight for more than a few days often found themselves overshadowed by the next idiot that got on someone’s bad side, and totally forgotten. Rooky was counting on it. 
The capital was by no means a small city, and, even with the evening traffic dying out, it took Rooky a good two hours to reach the outskirts, urban landscape on either side of the highway turning to rural townships, woodland, farms, and pristine wilderness. Rooky very suddenly cursed in every language he knew, and, while he didn’t know more than just the one language well, he did know how to make old grannies faint in about fifteen different countries. Luckily the man behind the windshield of the white car with flashing lights and a siren couldn’t hear what the tanuki had just said about his mother, otherwise Rooky might well have found himself kneecapped and kicked a few times, but that didn’t change the reality of things. A cop was trying to pull Rooky over, and Rooky very much didn’t want to be pulled over. Not with a bag of cash, drugs, and pawn shop jewelry that had probably once been stolen on his passenger side seat. 
Running was out of the question, though. Rooky could probably out-drive the cruiser, and his truck was probably faster, but that didn’t take into account that they’d track him down eventually, since he’d obviously written down Rooky’s plate number by now, and the gauss tape trick didn’t work against people’s eyes. “Cocksucker,” the tanuki growled, pulling over to the side of the road and pulling to a stop as the officer stopped behind him and got out. Rooky quickly stowed the bag of money and drugs behind his seat, and sprayed a powerful bottled air freshener with the hopes that the cop wouldn’t notice the smell of weed and arrest him on charges of possession, or some other such bullshit.
“Good evening officer! I do believe I was in my lane and obeying the speed limit,” Rooky said in his best sarcastic voice as a large, adult male tiger in the distinctive uniform of the city police walked over and looked agressively at Rooky through his open car window.
“Out of the car, now,” the officer said with the sort of GET ON YOUR KNEES tone of command that the police often used to coerce everyday normal people to obey them, even if they weren’t doing anything wrong.
“You need to tell me what I’m being pulled over for, buddy,” Rooky said with perfect indifference, leaning out of his car window and trying to look like as much of a douche as possible, casually examining his claws for dirt, but never bothering to clean them out. “H-hey! What the fuck! Oww!” The tanuki yelped and kicked violently in the cab of his truck as the burly feline reached into the cab, grabbed Rooky by the nape of the neck, and, showing arms that clearly took years to build, dragged him out through the window with zero shits given. That was six kinds of illegal, and Rooky actually grinned as he fell face-first from his truck and onto the pavement, hurting his nose somewhat. Even if they tried to press charges for the illegal stuff in his truck now, he had a literal get-out-of-jail-free card, but the cop didn’t seem to get the memo. 
Rooky, stunned and on the ground, took a none-too gentle kick in the ribs from the tiger, rolling him over onto his belly, and promptly felt a booted paw on his back, pinning him mercilessly as he tried to rise, but each of his arms in turn were pulled behind his back and cuffed with those newfangled plastic things that looked more like zip-ties than normal, steel cuffs, and couldn’t be picked as easily.
“You piece of shit, I’m going to have your ass for brutality when we get to the station!” Rooky hissed as the cop grabbed him by the nape of the neck and, showing his much superior size and strength again, dragged the tanuki quite painfully to his feet by it. By now he was pissed, and showing it by thrashing back and forth, hissing and growling like a wild animal, and snapping at the cop. Much further and he’d have literally been trying to sink his teeth into the tiger, but no sooner had Rooky gotten to the cruiser, and been punted into the back with the same booted foot as earlier, than his weird-shit-o-meter went from 0.9, that being douchebag cop who beat up suspects for kicks, to 9.3, that being I picked a fight with something seriously shadowy and much more well connected than I was.
“Who said I’m taking you to the station,” he said, grinning sadistically at the squirming, kicking tanuki in the back seat, then took out a gun - not a firearm, but something that almost looked like a paint-ball pistol - and shot Rooky with it, leaving a dart the size of a toothpick sticking out of his upper right arm. “You should have just passed out last night like you were supposed to, jackass, instead of breaking someone’s sternum and running like a bitch.” 
And that was when Rooky’s weird-shit-o-meter hit the roof and left a neat, dick-shaped hole in the ceiling. Whoever these people with the silver minivans and track suits were, they had agents inside of the police. A wave of weakness not unlike that he’d felt the previous night washed over Rooky, and, with no coke to speed him up again, his struggled shortly stopped for the most part, and he unwillingly calmed down as the drug in the dart relaxed his muscles against his will, but did nothing to stem the tide of insults coming out of the tanuki’s muzzle but make him slur a little. 
Rooky calmed down a bit as the cop cruiser did an illegal U-turn and started heading back towards the city, and, at first, he thought they were just going to leave his truck on the side of the freeway, but then noticed a conspicuous white van with tinted windows driving towards them, and the officer slowed to nod through the window at whoever it was behind them. Too pissed for any number of words to show, but not willing to let the clearly corrupt officer get the best of him, Rooky squirmed and curled into a ball, and, quite uncomfortably, pulled the cuffs up behind him so that he could have his hands in his lap. He’d done the maneuver with steel cuffs before, but never these plastic things. It was much harder, but he could do it. Rooky had all the time in the world to pick the dart out of his chest, which was surprisingly hard given the tranquilizer that was coursing through his veins, but he eventually did it, and, inexplicably, not five minutes later the big tiger in the front seat sniffed, and turned around to see an unbound Rooky, lounging casually in the back and smoking a blunt shamelessly, with no explanation given.
“Sup, chief!” Rooky said, grinning and nodding his rolled narcotic cigarette sarcastically, just to show off that it was probably best to search the person you’re kindapping, though he couldn’t properly enjoy it without something to snack on. With an air of mingled confusion and amazement, the tiger stopped the car, grabbed his dart gun, and casually shot Rooky two more times before the power of the drug finally overtaxed his immunity, and, smiling with satisfaction that he’d gotten the better of his kidnapper, if even just breifly, the tanuki dropped his joint and fell slowly unconscious, but he fought the sleepiness to the bitter end.