Drops of rain spattered against the tractor’s bright green paint, throwing smaller droplets into Bo’s face as he worked.   Annoying as it was, he would never complain about rain. Long summers working on his grandparents’ farm as a youngster had taught him never to curse the precious commodity.  He’d seen too many small family farms go out of business because of fickle Mother Nature to ever wish it would go away. Nonetheless, he did wish it would go away today.

Wiping his eyes clear for what seemed like the thousandth time, the hulking varius turned back to the task at hand.  His family’s farm had a tractor of its own; a huge but simple monster that chugged down the crop rows with boring predictability.  When he was thirteen he’d wished their tractor had air conditioning, GPS, or even a radio to keep him company while he worked the day away.  The machine he worked on today had all that, and more. A marvel of modern engineering, the machine he was working on could plow as many acres in a day as he used to do in four.

If it worked.  Which it didn’t. Because it had gizmos, it also had to have plenty of sensors to keep the gizmos working.  Bo suspected that it was one of those sensors that was triggering a fault in the steering system, which in turn kept the massive machine from even turning on.  All of the sensors tested good, so he re-installed them and hoped that maybe it had been a loose connection.

Climbing into the cab, he turned the key, programmed the intent, then pushed the start button.  Lights blinked optimistically, beepers beeped with cheerful abandon, the steering rack moved to the left and the right...and then it died.  Again.

He sighed and blasphemed the engineers that had made such a complicated machine.  Then he cursed the civic planners who hadn’t sent a simpler tractor for their colony.  “The first thing I’m going to do when I get this fucker running again is to rip out every gods-be-damned integrated circuit!” he muttered to himself.

A few minutes later, his ire mostly spent, he climbed out of the cabin and turned his attention back to the tractor’s steering rack.  He pulled a pair of locking pliers out of his toolkit and clamped them around the steering shaft, wincing as the pliers’ serrated jaws cut through the brand new paint.  It was a shame to mar such a pretty finish, but It couldn’t be helped. Expensive as it was, the tractor was just another tool, and tools didn’t need to be pretty to do their jobs. He gave the steering shaft a good wiggle and noticed that motion did not reach the wheels.

Great, he thought, we’re narrowing it down.  His eyes followed the shaft’s path through a universal joint (which was wiggling) to an intermediate shaft (which was also wiggling) into the steering rack and out to adjustable arms on either side (which, again, were wiggling).  The wheels, which were the only components left in the mechanical chain, were not wiggling, so the problem had to be…“There you are, you little bastards!” Bo exclaimed, when he noticed the slop at the end of the ball joints.  “Gotcha!” Satisfied as he was to have found the problem, he was puzzled that a brand new part could have worn out so quickly.

He felt Dan approaching from behind him, and a smile warmed his face.  Fingers scritched behind his neck and down between his shoulder blades to that spot that he could never reach by himself.  Bo writhed in pleasure, seriously considering throwing Dan down and taking him where they stood. But no, fun as that might be, the middle of a muddy field next to a broken down tractor wasn't the place for that.

"You making any progress?" Dan asked, peering into the tractor’s guts. He’d never worked on one before but it looked pretty simple.

"Some," Bo said, putting his paws on the small of his back and stretching backwards. "Something out here doesn't agree with the steering system. Or maybe the guy who designed this thing had his head up his ass."

Dan chuckled and leaned into guts of the tractor.  After a moment’s examination he reached in and shook the handle of the wrench. "Ball joints?"

"Right.  Back home, there'd be no problem.  Take off the arms, bang out the old joints and press in new ones.  It's simple if you have a field press. But guess what was in shuttle eleven?”

“The field press?” Dan guessed.

“Right. Now I've gotta take the whole assembly in to the machine shop and see what the boys can do with it."  Bo reached up and scratched at a tickle on his neck, just at the spot where Dan had done the same a few moments earlier.

Dan helped Bo remove the stubborn pieces, then tossed them into the back of the truck while Bo cleaned the grease off his handpaws. They all had to share between a few boxes of gloves that weren’t really designed to be re-used, and none of the available sizes had any hope of fitting Bo’s handpaws. His jet-black fur hid almost any stain, but still he washed as diligently as he could to avoid spreading the grime to everything he touched.

The ride to the machine shop was short, but not so short that it didn’t trigger Bo’s competitive nature.  As soon as he heard Dan’s safety belt click into place Bo’s feet jammed to the floor, one bracing himself against the seat, the other ruthlessly mashing the accelerator pedal.  The little utility vehicle wasn’t fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but Bo piloted it with no less enthusiasm than had it been a full fledged rally car. “B-b-b-bo!” Dan stuttered out, as they bounced down a hill at an entirely inappropriate speed, “s-s-slow down b-b-before I l-l-lose a filling!”

All Dan could see of his partner was a big, black and brown blur as his eyes rattled around in their sockets.  From time to time he also caught a white gleam as Bo’s teeth showed from behind a maniacal smile. “I think we caught air on that last one!” Bo laughed, as they sailed down a hill far more steep than Dan would have attempted even in the lowest gear.

The world looks awfully different to him because he’s all but invulnerable, Dan thought to himself. Unfortunately, I’m not!  He braced his feet, grabbed onto the strategically placed handles and lifted his butt out of the seat.  On the positive side, this stopped his neck from noodling around like a bobble-head doll. On the negative side he could now see how steep their descent really was.  “Holy shiiiiiiit!” his voice echoed through the canyon.

“Now you’re getting into the spirit!” Bo yelled, happily.  “Watch this!”

***

“I can fix the truck!” Bo protested, politely holding the machine shop’s door open for Dan.  “The frame isn’t even broken all the way through!”

“It wouldn’t have cracked if you weren’t driving like a bat out of hell,” Dan answered, his tone ending the discussion.   He hoisted the pair of wrecked control arms onto the bench and waited patiently, pointedly ignoring his partner.

“Nasty.”  The scraggly machinist examined the parts over the tops of bottle-thick glasses, then shook his head.  "Without a press, I’m going to have to knock out the joints with a big hammer. The good news is, after they’re out I can machine the arms so you won’t need a press to remove the joints next time, but that might take a day or two."

"It's going to fail again sooner or later, so take the extra time to do it right," Bo said. "We can't keep cobbling shit together."

The machinist looked closely at the failed part, then looked up at Bo.  "There’s quite a bit of wear on these. You said the machine it came off is brand new? Not a rebuild?"  

“Yeah.”

"You didn’t clean these out?  

“Nope.  That’s how they were when I pulled them off.”

Jerry harrumphed and pulled a magnifying lens over his regular glasses.  He bent closer and probed the bad joints with a stainless steel pick. “I don't see any old grease in here.  Bring me the replacements, will ya?" Dan jogged out to the car and pulled the spare parts out of the truck's bed.  Coming back inside he handed them to the machinist, who examined them under his desk lamp. "Yep, that's what I thought.  Bone dry. Whoever put that thing together at the factory never shot any grease in there. You're lucky they lasted as long as it did."

Bo grumbled to Dan as they walked back out into the bright sunshine of their new world. "I don't feel all that lucky.  That one set of joints represents a third of our replacements. One third down, and we're only a month in.

"Don't get discouraged, Boo!” Dan encouraged. “Look at how much progress we’ve made."

As if taking him literally, Bo lifted his head and shielded his eyes with his hand.  Dan was right, of course. They had already made significant progress in taming their new world without destroying what made it special.  They lived in relative comfort, and everyone who wanted a job was employed. Sure, there were a dozen ways things could be better, but there were also a thousand ways it could have been worse.

***

Bo steeled himself, trying his damnedest not to scratch at the rash which had appeared on the back of his neck.  The itch was now ferocious, but he would not allow himself to be so weak as to give in to the impulse to scratch it raw like he wanted desperately to do.  "It's not that bad."

Dan glared at him.  "Yes, it is that bad!  It keeps leaking through the link and it's driving me nuts.” He didn’t want Bo anywhere near that damned vulture of a nurse, but if he was feeling it this bad, he could only imagine how bad it was for his partner. “Get Maria to look at it," he ordered, irritably.

"She's gonna stare at my butt!" Bo protested, reaching a hand up distractedly to pat the itchy patch in a vain attempt to ease the itch without breaking the skin.

"She can stare at your butt all she wants to," Dan said, "She can even take it for a ride around the block if she can get rid of this damned itch."

Bo looked aghast before realizing that Dan was kidding. "I'll tell her you said that."  He started out the door to the hut the colony used as their medical building, and was surprised when Dan followed him out.  "I thought you said you were busy."

"My schedule just cleared up," Dan said, pushing Bo's hand away from his neck, where the varius had gone from patting to scratching.

The brilliant smile that burst across Maria’s face upon seeing Bo walk through her doors dulled substantially when Dan Blocker followed him in.   She knew the two were mated, but something like that shouldn't stop a strong, potent varius like Bo from fulfilling his biological duty and inseminating her.  Repeatedly. Sure, he wasn’t much to look at, but she liked ‘em rough around the edges.

"Hello, Mister Taylor," she asked, coyly. "What can I do for you today?" Slowly, she extended one leg, hoping her shapely thigh might catch his eye. No matter what he was getting from that sapiens guy, she could give better.

Bo was brief. "I've got a rash," he said, trying his best to not let his gaze wander below the woman's neckline.

"I see," she said, allowing her eyes to crawl across his body. "Take off your clothes and let's have a look."

"It's on my neck!" he almost yelped.

She felt a smirk crawling across her short muzzle at his reaction.  She'd seen it before in a dozen other men - Bo was interested, she could tell.

Dan's voice startled both of them. "No," he said, commandingly. "No, he's not!  Diagnose his rash and give us something for it!" Bo looked surprised, but said nothing.

Embarrassed, she whirled and pulled a medalyzer out of the emergency kit.  Wordlessly, she strapped it to his forearm and pushed the "go" button. She couldn't believe she'd been stupid enough to say that out loud, especially in front of his mate.

A few seconds later the machine beeped and she read the codes that appeared on the display.   Frowning, she pushed the button and looked closely at the display, then pulled Bo’s lower lip out and read the code tattooed there.

"What is it?"  Dan asked, concerned.  "What did he get into?"

"It's not what he's got," she said, pulling a thick book out of the desk drawer, "it's what he doesn't"  Intrigued, she flipped rapidly through the pages.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dan asked, sounding every bit as annoyed as he felt.

She ignored him as she paged through the manual.  After a few moments she found the section she was looking for and read carefully. "The rash is nothing," her tone was reproving. "It's a heat rash on top of a sunburn, and he’s not washing his neck well enough." But the analyzer picked up a serious nutritional deficiency that hasn't expressed itself yet."  She shook her head sadly and spoke to Bo, leaving Dan feeling ignored. "We're going to have a bunch of this before too long. “We’re all running out of our supplements.”

"What am I missing?" Bo asked, stonily.

"It's not so bad in your case," she said, "You're a B2."  She gave him a hopeful smile. “I’m a B2.” Dan’s impatient cough made her roll her eyes, but still she stopped flirting. “Your hair might start falling out and you could lose visual acuity.  I had a guy in here yesterday who's looking at complete renal failure in a few months."

"Is the nutritionist aware of this?" Dan asked, annoyed that this was the first he'd heard about this issue.  

Her tone became arch, as if she were talking to a slow-witted child. "It’s not like they can do anything. If we don't have the supplements, we don't have the supplements.  They can't make them out of thin air."

"No," Dan said, "but they can take preventative measures and recognize what's happening when it finally does start to express itself.  What about that huge case of vitamins I found in the shuttle?” he asked, matching her petulant tone with ease. “What happened to those?”

“Oh, please,” she droned.  “Those are vitamins for octogenarian pinkies who don’t really need them anyway.  Varius supplements are specifically formulated to address each of our needs, and without them things go south real quick.”

“Thanks for the lesson,” Dan snapped. “I think I already knew that.”

Maria leaned back and rested a paw on her hip. “Then maybe you can tell me why the government, which is still ninety-nine percent sapiens, by the way, will only give us a thirty-day supply?  Maybe, so we can’t protest unfair treatment or they’ll turn off our medication supply?”

Dan bit back the hot retort that sprang to his lips, took a breath, and tried again. “I married a varius.  I’m on your side.”

She rolled her eyes contemptuously. “So you poach a viable male out of our breeding pool and think it gives you some kind of social credit?”  She dipped her head emphatically. “Really?”

Stunned, Dan could think of nothing to say.  He held up his hands in surrender, knowing that nothing he said would be right, anyway.

Discomfort

Bo’s exasperated sigh broke the awkward silence. “Can I please have that analgesic cream, at least?”

***

A kilometer away, Clay brought the magnifying glass up to his eye and examined the small, communal insects that skittered around his feet like the little black picnic ants he’d investigated back home. His mother had bought him a special book on ants that had guided his explorations and provided worksheets upon which he documented his discoveries.  So far he’d made notes on several different species, identified queens, drones and workers, and had observed scout ants laying down scent trails that others would follow through the yellow-and-black, plastic magnifying glass that came with the book.

His view today wasn’t as clear as he got through that professionally made magnifying glass, but it was almost as good.  He’d made this one out of a broken pair of eyeglasses that someone had thrown in the refuse box, and he felt very responsible for having recycled them into something useful.

“Scurry around, little citizens,” he murmured, as he watched the tiny little insects. “Hurry, scurry…”  He was hunkered down as low as he could go without letting his butt actually touch the dirt. Clay was very careful not to let any part of his body touch the ground. Dirt was gritty and harsh, and he wasn’t fond of it. He singled out one of the larger insects and, using a twig, he carefully carved a path in the sand directly in its path.  

The insect seemed happy to follow the new path until it got too elaborate, and then it ignored the channel and made a beeline for the hole in the soil where it lived along with a million of its fellows.  Maybe that’s why ants are so interesting, he thought.  A million of them can live together in a tiny little space and still get along with each other.   He wished he had a stylus and some paper to make a note of that observation.

He stayed there, patiently watching, until the high-pitched voices of the other children and their self-appointed schoolmarm (he called her that because teachers were special, privileged creatures, and the woman who led the other children was bossy and self-important, and seemed no more intelligent than Clay himself) approached from the other side of the hill.  With a reluctant sigh, Clay levered himself up and prepared to relocate.

At least, that had been the plan.  Crouching down in the sand for who knows how long had made his muscles stiff, and getting up that quickly made his blood pressure drop.  With a small grunt, Clay toppled over with all the grace of a felled ox. Most distressing, he landed on top of his improvised magnifying glass, breaking it even worse than it had been to start.

“What are you doing down there, young man?” the bossy schoolmarm demanded, upon seeing him lying in the dirt.  “Do you fancy yourself a modern day Tom Sawyer? What say you?” Her accent identified her instantly as one of the puritanical colonists.

Clay kept his groan inside, where it could not hurt him.  He knew it was right to respect adults, but this woman made it so difficult!  He didn’t want to be anywhere near the other children in any case, but especially if they had to remain in the company of this tiresome woman.  Regardless of his personal feelings, he knew he had to answer her. “I do not fancy myself a modern day Tom Sawyer,” he replied, quietly. “Although I might accept Jane Goodall or Temple Grandin.”

“Who is he?” the woman demanded.  

“It’s not a ‘he’,” Clay explained.

“A woman?” she sounded shocked.  “You want to be a woman?”

Clay closed his eyes and folded in on himself in the futile hope that if this horrible woman refused to vaporize, then at least she might just walk away.  The children around her, forced by their parents to join this parody of school more to keep them out of the way than in the hopes of learning anything, had not seemed to pick up on anything yet, but Clay knew that it would only be a few more repetitions before at least one of them would catch on to what she was saying and begin to repeat it to the group.  And from there it would grow into teasing, then inevitably degenerate into hateful taunts.

Unaware of the seeds she sowed, she asked again, and more loudly this time. “Why would you like to be a woman when you’re a little boy?”

Desperate to turn her attention elsewhere, Clay did the only thing that sprang to mind.  He grabbed the nearest rock and threw it at her. “Go away!” At this close range he could hardly have missed, but his poor aim ensured that his fist-sized projectile touched only the hem of her skirt.

She shrieked as if he’d thrown a live viper into her hair, and that got the attention of the class more than anything she’d tried to teach them all day.  “You weird, wicked little boy!” she wailed. “We should have left you up there!” She snatched up the hem of her long skirt and, looking like a hen gathering her chicks, herded her group of suddenly attentive children away from the dangerous, rock-throwing golem.

“You will be punished!” she shrieked, once she felt she was safely out of range. “You cannot throw rocks and not be punished!”

Clay felt a pang of worry when she said that, but it did not last long. He was alone now.  Who could she possibly tell?

He thought about fixing his magnifying glass and returning to his observations, but the activity had lost its appeal.  He carefully wrapped the parts in a piece of paper and stashed them among the gnarled roots of a nearby tree, then wandered wherever the group of children was not.

After moving twice more to avoid them, Clay gave up.  He went to the dining hall, had his weight recorded and picked up his ration bar.  It seemed a little larger today, so he must have been losing weight. Had he eaten breakfast that morning?  He tried, but could not remember.

He took a community book and a plastic canteen which he filled with water from the new well, then headed into the hills.  He’d already made a number of excursions and was in no danger of getting lost. The sun was almost at its zenith, and he decided that his destination would be a small meadow he’d discovered only a few kilometers away.  There was a broad, flat rock at the edge of a clearing filled with low grass and flowers where he could sit in peace and quiet and read his book. Although he hadn’t yet seen what was eating the grass to keep it trimmed, he was hoping that it might appear if he could just stay still and quiet enough.

He had no schedule to maintain and his walk was unhurried. Instead of letting his book read to him, he kept it in visual mode and read for himself.  His steps and many others had already begun to wear a path through the scrubby landscape and his journey was easy. When he got hungry he took a small bite from his ration bar, and when he was thirsty he took tiny sips from his canteen.

After almost an hour of leisurely walking and tramping through the woods, he was surprised to discover that his clearing didn’t belong only to him anymore.  He watched from behind a large tree until he identified the shape as the lupine varius, Lucas’ mate, standing on the very rock upon which Clay had intended to read his book.  Almost any other stupid adult found in his clearing would have incited Clay’s ire, but Victus had been so respectful to Clay that he was willing to share his special place with him.  

Something about the way the varius was standing was very odd.  He seemed formal, in a way Clay could not quite pin down. Then as Clay watched, the Kenzine lifted one foot up until it was straight out in front of him.  He held it there for a count of ten or eleven, then smoothly rotated his body at the waist until his torso was parallel to the ground, his leg remaining elevated to the side.  After another pause he raised the same leg above his head in the most improbable of high kicks.

Clay was mesmerized. He’d had no idea that a body could move that way without injuring itself, and watching Victus do it with such ease was revelatory.   Clay watched the lupine for almost ten minutes as he went through an entire routine of these moves. Then, as if in response to some unheard signal, he jumped off of Clay’s rock and loped through the thin forest, only the barest whisper of sound marking his passage.

Now alone, Clay took the Kenzine’s place atop the warm, smooth rock.  He lifted his own leg in an attempt to duplicate Victus’s first movement, but could only raise his shoe a few inches off the ground before his body failed him.  He tried the second position with even less success, and could not even imagine how one might go about attempting the third. Clearly, Victus must have practiced for a very long time to be any good at this.  Clay wondered how long it would take him to become a Kenzine? Victus had mentioned that his parents had died when he was young, so perhaps they took in orphans like him.

Clay settled himself on his rock, but it felt different now that someone else had been there.  He was not in favor of things in his life being different. Different was often hurtful. It was frightening and intimidating, and things were usually much easier to handle when they just stayed the same.  But something about this rock - his rock - their rock, felt more complete now that he shared it with Victus.

He prostrated himself against the warm stone and pulled up the book’s search window.  Carefully, one letter at a time (because he hated wasting time backing up and fixing mistakes) he keyed in, HOW TO BECOME A KENZINE.

***

As the sun dropped toward the mountain range to the colony’s east, magnificent reds and oranges ripped across the evening sky.  Dan took his mate's oversized paw in his hand, appreciating not only the impressive sunset but that they had both survived to see it.

Dan felt Bo's thick, furred fingers release his hand, and after the usual flash of disappointment that came whenever Dan broke contact with his mate, he felt that same hand ease its way across his back and onto his far shoulder, pulling him closer but also nearly pulling him off balance.  "You big ox," Dan groused, sounding annoyed but smiling as he said it. He reached his own arm around his partner's thick waist, hooking his thumb into a belt loop on Bo's shorts and relaxing comfortably into his side.

They were fortunate to have landed in such a favorable location.  The survey crew may have been wrong about a great number of things, but they'd managed to hit this one on the head.  Nestled at the foot of a modest mountain range, the meadow where they’d located the colony had a pleasant stream running to one side, with deep banks which strongly suggested that the river flooded rarely.  

Where they were standing, less than five hundred meters from the outermost ship, began a gentle slope ending in a huge, thinly wooded plain a hundred meters down.   Far off in the distance and currently blanketed under a thin veil of fog, they could barely see the ocean. Dan had never been to the Union's Pacific Coast, but Bo had, and through him Dan felt the similarity to the land they now occupied.

A gentle squeeze on his shoulder brought Dan back to the moment. "You usually find a way to get your way don't you?" Bo rumbled, massaging Dan's shoulder with his thumb, "you were wanting a quiet vacation."  He chuckled. "Looks like you got it."

"Getting here was a little frantic," Dan observed, pressing the side of his head into Bo's warm shoulder,

*contentment*

"but now that we're here, it's just about perfect." He breathed in the smells around him. Even through his stunted sapiens senses his nose picked up the loamy smell of freshly plowed earth, a whiff of brine from the nearby ocean, and the almost omnipresent foundation smell of his husband. Varius seemed to think that Bo smelled peculiar and other sapiens considered his natural odor to be odd, but Dan could not have disagreed more.  Dan was fully aware that his emotions were being manipulated by Bo’s pheromones and he could not have cared less.  It was masculine and earthy, organic and rich. He fed the effect back into their link and felt Bo rumble contentedly.

A quiet voice from behind the two let Victus’ presence be known without breaking their mood.  "Am I intruding?"

"No," Dan said, instinctively reaching out to the lupine varius.  The man had lost so much that Dan's heart went out to him.  "Pull up a rock."

Victus sat next to Dan, as close as he would have to another varius.  They were largely social creatures, and it had taken Dan a while to get used to snuggling up next to complete strangers.  Once the Kenzine had settled, Dan demonstrated his acceptance by putting an arm around as much of his shoulders as he could reach.

Victus was touched by their compassion, but after a few moments sitting still he became restless. Seeing to the needs of the other passengers over the past few days had left him feeling drained and weary, yet he was thankful for the work.  If he stayed busy, if he kept up the frantic pace, he might not think of... "Are you willing to let me try again?" Victus said, softly, refusing to allow himself the luxury of personal grief as long as others were in pain.

"Why not."  Dan was in a surprisingly good mood, considering that he'd been marooned on an undeveloped planet, years away from potential rescue.  Maybe he and Bo were feeding off each other, or perhaps he was just serving himself up a big bowl of denial instead of mourning the impersonal sacrifice of thousands of people to the hard vacuum of space.  Or maybe he just knew that Victus was in desperate need of something to do to keep his mind off his loss.

Dan shifted his weight, but Victus didn't move.  "Is it okay if we just stay where we are?" he asked, "I, uh..."  The weight of Dan's arm on his shoulder removed the need for the lupine to say anything else.  His human friend understood.

As before, the Kenzine experienced Dan's mind as a slow, gentle pull encouraging his approach with its cool, soothing calm. He had an idea that perhaps if he entered the problem of the nightmares sideways, he could disconnect Dan's susceptibility to them without touching his link to Bo.  Maybe instead of getting rid of the terrors, Victus could direct them to a part of Dan's mind that could store them the way it stored memories of an unpleasant event.

Although he had no visual or physical indications of such, the lupine felt he was descending, floating down through a misty cloud.   Within a few seconds a breeze began to blow the fog away, and Victus could see the Japanese house as it was when he'd last left it. If there was one thing Victus had learned in his previous encounters with Dan, it was that visualization was even more important with this man than with most.

Taking the rough, weathered handle of the front door in his handpaw, Victus slid it aside and stepped in, conscientiously removing his shoes and leaving them beside the door before stepping onto the bamboo floor.   Standing upright, he felt that something was different this time. Something felt odd. Several hallways with sliding doors on either side extended into the distance, all but the nearest swallowed by darkness. "Dan?"

One of the many wood and paper doors slid aside and Dan's head peeked out. "There you are!" He climbed out and slid the door back in place. "I've been looking for you."

"Where are we?" Victus looked around them.  "Did you redecorate?"

"Heck no!" Dan looked surprised.  "You did it. You're in Bo's mind."  He looked embarrassed. "Sorry, but I thought you were trying to get inside my head.  I guess it's not all about me, right?"

"Actually, I was trying to get into your mind," Victus admitted.  "Are you sure we're in Bo's mind?" He looked around them. "It looks a lot like yours."

"Oh no, we're definitely in Bo's," Dan said, with certainty.  "There's a huge pile of greasy speeder parts in that room I just came out of."

"This isn't possible," Victus said, sounding somewhat uncertain. "You can't be in here.  I can't be in here." He sent a portion of his consciousness back inside his physical body for a moment. "I'm not touching Bo, and that has to happen for a link to form."

"Oh," Dan said, looking nonplussed. "Will it hurt anything if you're here?"

"I can't say.  This is new territory.  For me, at least," he amended.

They looked at each other for a heartbeat, before Dan asked the question Victus was wondering.  "So where's Bo?"

The Kenzine shrugged and motioned to the scene around them.  "Usually when I'm in someone else's mind, this is close to what I see." He hesitated for a moment before reaching out and touching the oiled wood, wondering if doing so might bring the pain of sudden rejection he'd experienced with every other attempt to be in Bo Taylor's mind.  Nothing happened, so he rubbed it with a gentle touch. "It looks like the wood in my visualization but it's smoother in yours.

"To answer your question, I'm guessing that this is a cooperative effort.  The only reason I can be here is because you're making it possible. If you want Bo to be here..." he looked at Dan, wonderingly, "make it possible."

"Dude!" Bo's voice came through loud and clear, a half second before the man himself came barreling out of the darkness.  He was dressed, Victus noted with amusement, in sandals, loose shorts and an unbuttoned tropical print shirt. The excitement on his face was infectious, like a child who'd just been set free on DisneyMoon.

"There's shit in here I'd forgotten all about!"  He reached a hand out to the door nearest to him and slid it open, smiling when he saw what was inside. "There's my old bedroom!"  

Leaving it open, he turned in the narrow hallway and had another paper screen halfway open before quickly shutting it again and pulling his hand away. "Oh, shit.  Didn't need to see that again." Dan had no idea what he'd seen, but whatever was in there was bad enough to convince him to stop opening doors.

Victus walked closer to Bo and quietly closed the door that the larger varius had left open. "Usually it's best to approach one's memory with a degree of caution," he advised.  "Not everything in here will be pleasant."

"No shit," Bo said, looking worriedly at the closed door.  He took a good look around them, storing away everything he saw in his.  "So this is what's going on inside my noggin', huh?"

"Sort of," Victus allowed. "This is a little different than what I usually see.  I think Dan's acting as a conduit between us."

Bo nodded and regained his air of almost military purpose.  As he sobered, Victus noticed the vibrant colors of his shirt mute accordingly "Can you do it now?"

"I hope so," Victus said, looking around them carefully to see what might have changed now that Bo was with them.   Although he had never done anything quite like this before, he was beginning to catch on to what might be required. Since all three of them were quite impossibly sharing the same space, he might as well enlist their help. "Can you lead me to your subconscious?"

"I'm new here, chief," Bo said, but he was willing to help. "What does it look like?"

"It's a little different for everybody," Vic explained, looking around them for a likely portal. "In my space, I visualize it as an attic door built into the ceiling."

Bo looked at him derisively. "Ceiling attics weren't a feature of classical Japanese architecture."

"Did I say it had to be logical?" Victus smiled at him patiently.

Dan broke in.  "Yours looks like this."  He pointed at the wall, and the same doorway Bo had seen in his and Dan's world appeared, wavering at first, but quickly solidifying into reality.  As before, it looked solidly constructed, with multiple locks but no handle.

All three men looked at it in surprise.  "That's way too simple," Victus mumbled. "How the hell are you doing any of this?"

Dan shrugged.  "Nobody’s ever told me I can’t." Victus merely stared at him for a moment before letting the issue go.  It didn't really matter right now.

Bo examined the door closely. "I guess I should have expected that a person's subconscious wouldn't have a handle on it. That would just be too easy."  He peered at the keyhole, wondering if he might be able to see through to the other side. "How do we get in?"

"That's where I come in," Victus said, with some assurance. "This is what I'm good at."   He stared at the door for a few seconds, imprinting upon it the 'rightness' of having a handle on it.  The more he believed that a handle belonged on the door the stronger the visualization became, until reality matched what he'd pictured in his mind.

When it was 'right,’ he stopped concentrating and examined his handiwork.  "It's a fine handle," he allowed, "but now we need keys."

"No problem," Dan said, as if Victus had asked him to snap his fingers or dance a little jig.

Reaching into Bo's pants pocket, he pulled out a large ring with a few antique keys dangling from it and handed it to the Kenzine, who took it with nothing short of awe.  

Telling this man that what he did was impossible was beginning to sound repetitive so he didn't bother, but he did impart a warning.  "Thanks, but you need to understand how dangerous it is, to do what you just did." He held the keys out, expressively. "Giving someone, even someone you trust, access to another person's subconscious is unthinkably dangerous.  Please," he begged, "don't do it again."

Dan could feel Vic's discomfort, and sheepishly nodded his head. "Okay.  I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Victus said, "just...yeah." He looked at the ring with a sense of foreboding, then inserted the first key into the first lock.  He didn't have to fumble to find the key, because this was the way it was supposed to work.  Some of the locks were well-lubricated and snicked open, others creaked in protest as if for years they'd been shot through with salt water, but all of them opened.

With one last look at his companions, Victus opened the door and peered inside.

"What do you see?" Dan asked, after a moment.

Bo’s voice followed shortly after. "Is anything in there?"

Victus paused.  "I see lots of...dark."

"Smart ass." Dan chided, good naturedly.  "There's a switch to your left."

Victus didn't bother asking how Dan knew that.  Reaching in, he flicked the old-style mechanical switch, which was disconcertingly like the ancient ones that were still in use back at the abbey, and was rewarded with a light that flickered at first, but quickly settled into a cold, even glow.

"Should we follow you?" Bo asked, wondering what he'd see inside his own hidden recesses.

"I don't see why not," Victus replied, after thinking about it for a moment.  "This is your mind. At worst, you might see something that gives you some introspection on your personality."  But something inside him wavered, and he put a hand on Bo's chest before he could clear the doorway, effectively blocking Dan.  "Are you certain you want Dan to see what's in here?"

Bo paused.  Dan already had access to the full contents of his conscious mind whenever he wished.  How much worse could he possibly see? Not to mention the fact that he was already seeing the worst elements of Bo's inner workings with the nightmares he was eavesdropping on.  After careful consideration, he returned to his initial impulse. "Yes."

Victus nodded once, then turned and continued down the wooden steps leading into a shallow basement.  The space had been converted into a workshop, filled with half-repaired bikes, small motors, and piles of interesting-looking, unidentified mechanical bits.  Behind him, Dan nodded his head. "Yup. This is Bo's brain, all right."

Bo looked around him, feeling rather inadequate in his role as a tour guide.  "Shouldn't I recognize all this shit?"

"No," Victus said, distractedly.  "If you knew all the stuff that was hidden away in here you wouldn't have any issues left.  Or," he mused, "it would drive you completely off the deep end."

The three spread out in the cluttered room, easing their way through narrow passages in the dusty junk.  Dan accidentally brushed against a workbench, knocking an empty metal can to the floor as he passed.

Bo looked up in surprise and blinked.  “Oh, my gods!” he exclaimed, “I can’t remember my comm code anymore!”

Dan blanched in horror at what he’d done, and was about to grovel for forgiveness when he noticed the playful twinkle in Bo’s eyes.

“Pay attention to what you’re doing, boys,” Victus admonished, gently.  “There’s plenty of time for that later.”

"What are we looking for?" Dan asked, picking more carefully through the hundreds of uncompleted tasks that littered the huge workbench.  He had absolutely no idea what any of them were. "What does a nightmare look like?"

"I think you may know when you see it," the Kenzine said.  "Your being here might complicate things a bit." He turned in Dan's direction, but continued to look for the obvious as he spoke. "You're very good at imposing your mental will on the situation," he pointed out. "Please, do try not to manufacture a nightmare for us to find."

Dan hadn't considered this, but he immediately knew that Victus was right.   Something in the back of the room caught his eye. "Vic." He pointed to a tool cabinet almost lost in shadow.  "What about that?"

Victus looked up, and if Dan was pointing to what he thought Dan was pointing at, it was an excellent candidate, indeed.  He stood and stepped carefully over the piles of machinery, moving more closely to the black metal cabinet. It appeared to be no more than four or five steps away, but it took Victus a good ten steps to reach it.  

That was both a good sign and bad one, and Victus might have retained some doubt about the nature of what lie within, except for the fact that Bo was still not close to it after taking at least two dozen steps.  No way could Dan have anticipated that, and Victus was convinced that what they were looking at contained something that, to Bo Taylor, was evil.

"We should talk about this," Victus said, cautiously.

"We've been talking this entire time," Bo complained.  "Nuke the fucker and let's get the hell out of here." He shivered perceptibly, rubbing his arms to restore warmth. "This place gives me the creeps."

"You can't just obliterate it," Dan said, evenly.  "Nothing in life is that easy."

"And that's what we need to talk about," Victus said, pulling up one of the wooden work stools and sitting on it.  He rubbed his face, wearily. He wanted nothing more than to help Bo and Dan, but this was really taking it out of him.  Still, there was no rushing this. They had to know what they were doing, or all of this effort, all this pain would be for nothing.  "There's something in there that you need to handle. You'll already know what it is by the time you open the door, and after you see what's in there, you'll already know what to do."

Bo approached the tool locker as if expecting the boogey man to jump out at him.  The cabinet did not shiver and jump menacingly, it didn't begin steaming with hidden inner fire or make noises like the undead were clawing to escape.  It simply sat there, held shut by a thick silver chain and a padlock. He sounded normal, but Dan could tell that this was freaking the tar out of his husband.

"How do you open it?" Bo asked.  "There's no handle." He looked at Victus expectantly, thinking that if the Kenzine could put a handle on the door to his subconscious, he should be able to put a handle on this door as well.

Victus shook his head. "I should be able to do that, right?" He sighed in regret, "I can't.  This is something you locked away a long time ago, and even if I could put a handle on it for you to grab, you'd still need to undo the lock yourself."

Bo stared at the Kenzine, biting back his irrational first impulse that Victus wasn't doing his job.  Bo wanted to deny that this was his problem. He wanted to yell and shout and stomp around the room and find something to be angry with.  He wanted to hit and punch and break things, to argue and fight, to make Dan mad and to make furious love to him all at the same time. Anything.  Anything to keep from facing the fact that this was his problem.

Sighing in resignation, he admitted to himself that Victus was right.  When he looked back at the door, he was surprised to see that it now had a handle, where previously there had been none. "Gods damn it," he muttered to himself, ears flattening in annoyance.  He wasn't getting out of this. This cabinet contained something so hot, so toxic that when he had first tried to face it, it damaged him so severely that he'd had to lock it away. And Victus was also right about something else - he already knew what had to be inside there, and it was ugly.

But, he realized, although he did have to face this himself, this time he might not have to face it alone.  Frozen in place, with a voice that felt childishly small, he asked Victus, "Can Dan help me?"

"If it's both your wish to do so, I think it would be okay.  In fact," he said, after a bit of thought, "if he will allow it, I think it's probably a good idea."

As had always been the case with any of his struggles since they’d shared that first roast beef sandwich outside Magnum Metals, Dan was there by his side, ready to help in any way he could without even considering what it might cost him. "I'm ready when you are, Boo," Dan said, and hearing those words, Bo knew his 'weaker' sapiens mate carried within him the heart of a lion.

Bo was momentarily stymied - his pants pockets contained no key, and Victus had as much as told Dan that he wasn't to manufacture anything in this environment. The key had to be somewhere close by.  Bo bent down and rooted through some of the piles on the floor without finding it, then moved to the nearby table with a similar lack of success.

"Hey, babe?" Dan said, carefully balancing the tact that would keep Bo calm against the assertiveness that he would respect.  "What's the scariest thing in this room right now?"

"That damned cabinet," Bo said, opening and closing drawers on the workbench.  They contained styluses, old glue bottles, small tools, and everything in the world except for the one thing he was actually looking for.

Dan stood silently, his arms folded across his chest.  A moment later Victus moved to join him, and adopted the same position.  Bo pretended not to notice them staring at him, but eventually he could stand it no longer.  Slamming the drawer he was looking in so hard that it bounced halfway back open, he turned to them and shouted, "What?"  His face showed an almost blind panic, his eyes sick with fear and regret.

"Can I hold you?" Dan asked, quietly.  Receiving no answer from his mate, he moved closer and wrapped his arms around the varius.

The instant they touched, something broke inside Bo.  Wrapping his arms around the man he loved so much, Bo Taylor, battle varius, bouncer, machine worker, war-weary soldier and leader of men, began to shake.  What he was going to have to do scared the ever-loving shit out of him, but it was for Dan's well being, so he knew he must.

His loss of control did not last long.  He'd spent over a decade avoiding this issue, burying it, repressing it, and doing his best to pretend that the problem didn't exist, but now that the time had arrived to rid himself of the contents of that damned cabinet was here, he wasn't going to face it curled up in a little ball.  

Huffing in deep breaths like he was inflating his courage, he stood and threw his shoulders back.  The shrinks had done their best to help, but in the end, Bo had to be the one to solve this problem.  To be plagued by his past was something Bo had come to accept, but now that his psyche was attacking his Dan, it had to stop.  It has to stop, he repeated to himself.  It has to stop!

*!Protect!*

Now that the issue had been put into proper perspective, Bo staggered towards the cabinet, his fear not suppressed, but converted into a rage that he knew far better how to handle.   This thing was going to attack his Dan?  Oh, hell no! He knew where the damned key to the cabinet was.  He'd known it the whole time, he'd just been too fucking afraid to admit it.  This close to the louvers stamped into the thin sheet steel he could pick up the scent of the contents.   They smelled of blood and pus and rocket fuel, of rot and decay, moist earth, gun oil and black shoe polish.

Reaching around to the back, he shoved his hand behind the tool locker and pulled out an antique, black plastic key box that had a magnetic stripe running down one side. "Right where I could reach it, Dan," he muttered, as he fumbled to open the box.  "It was right where I could reach it the whole fucking time."

Once the key had dropped into his palm he tossed the box aside without a second thought, turning his attention to the lock holding the chains in place.  Now that it was in his hand the lock thrummed with an angry energy. It felt warmer than the rest of the room by a few degrees, as if it held a life of its own.  

Something about the thought repulsed Bo, but instead of letting it go in revulsion he turned the lock to expose it's keyhole. Almost viciously, he stabbed it with the key.  A twist, a click, a quick rotation of the wrist, and the chains swung free. Without looking at it again, Bo tossed the lock into a corner behind a pile of old electronic equipment.

The chain snaked out from between the aluminum handles, each link pausing before clunking through, then pulling its neighbor behind it until the doors were loose.  "Babe?" Bo called out. "I might need your help, here." He wasn't sure exactly what he'd find when the doors were opened, but whatever it was would be manageable as long as Dan was by his side.

The smell was stronger now, and when Bo looked down at him, Dan was obviously trying to not gag on the stench.  But no matter how noxious the smell might be, it could never drive Dan from his side. Satisfied that all was in place, Bo grabbed one handle in each of his hands and pulled open the flimsy metal doors that kept the contents of the cabinet hidden from view.

At first they could see nothing through the dense fog that boiled out and puddled around their feet, but after a few seconds, motion could be seen through the mist.  With a grace that made blue whales gliding through the ocean look clumsy, hissing mummies floated towards them.

Bo moved to step away, but the familiar hand of his mate was on his arm, restraining his crushing strength with a loving touch.  He looked down at Dan with urgency in his eyes. He tried to back away one more time, but Dan was fixed in place as if his feet had grown deep roots. Bo was so desperate to save him that he would have picked him up bodily and run, but the look in Dan’s eyes stopped him.  It was not terror, but conviction.

Rather than the fear Bo had expected, Dan looked unendingly sad. “These are still your friends, baby.  You can’t run from them, even if they’re scary now.” A tear emerged at the corner of his eye, and Dan did what Bo had never been able to bring himself to do.  He cried. Not out of guilt or shame, or in humiliation at Bo’s inability to save his comrades, but at the loss of friendship and love. “Come on.”

Bo knew what Dan was encouraging him to do, and even though it scared the hell out of him, he opened his mind fully to his mate.  Dan’s innocent love flowed into him, a catalyst which turned Bo’s explosive grief into something manageable. Together they shared the pain of loss, and Bo felt the gaping wounds that had slashed at his soul finally begin to close.

The first of the bodies were almost touching them now.  Turning to face the cabinet, Bo reached out and first touched the linen-wrapped figure, then grasped it more firmly.  It weighed less than he expected, and it was easy to turn it over and hand it to Dan. “Put it... put her... over there,” he indicated a space that had cleared itself on the floor.  Dan nodded and moved the body away.

One by one, they took the bodies away from the cabinet and lined them up in respectful rows.  They did not crowd out of the cabinet like they did in the nightmares, but floated out slowly at a pace matched to the rate they were removed. Dan thought that they seemed to be cooperating with their efforts, as if ready and willing to be put to rest.

At last, the cabinet was empty.  “What do we do now?” Dan asked.

“Get a pair of shovels.”

Dan looked around him, and instead of lighting on digging implements his eyes lit on Victus. “Wait,” he said, and moved toward his friend.  The wolf looked utterly wretched. Dan was so used to seeing the Kenzine approach things like this with such aplomb that it was easy to forget how much work it was for a third party to maintain a bond. He looked exhausted from the effort it took to keep their unique link alive.  

Moving to where the lupine was standing, Dan wrapped his arms around him and pushed warmth and comfort into his aching body.   He’d done this sort of energy transfer before with Bo and he knew that this would cost him dearly, but there was no option. Victus had given them so much of himself over the past few days that to not return at least a portion of it would have been unthinkable.

The Kenzine began to pull back, objecting to the inrush of power - it was the Kenzine role to give, not to take. He opened his mouth to protest but was stopped by a large, black-furred hand on his muzzle.  “Hush. Let someone take care of you, for a change.” Once he quieted, Bo wrapped his huge arms around the two men and, with a soft sigh, donated his own energies to the transfer.

The graves were dug quickly.  The earth here was soft and loamy, and every stroke of Bo’s oversized varius shovel removed far more soil than it would have in the real world.  Dan wanted to help, but there had only been one shovel and it was too heavy for him to lift.  All of them took this as a sign that digging the graves of his friends was to be Bo’s task, and Bo’s alone.  

By the time he was finished his face dripped with both sweat and tears.  So much pain, so much wasted time, so much misery. Each bucket-sized shovel full of dirt excised a tiny portion of the toxin that had been poisoning him for years, until by the time he was finished digging the eleventh grave, Bo finally felt free of the monsters that had been living inside him.

While his mate dug, Dan had retrieved the bodies, moving them outside and setting them at the foot of each grave so that Bo could see them as he toiled.  Now that he was finished, he took a few moments to gather himself and wipe his face with a cloth that Dan had provided.

Moving to the first of the bodies with legs shaky from exertion and emotion, Bo looked down at the first swaddled bundle and saw that it had an old-fashioned union-jack attached to it above where the chest should be.  He smiled. “This is Roddy. It took us a long time to get to know each other, but I’m glad we finally did.” He nodded his head, not even trying to keep the tears at bay. “Yeah, I’m really glad we did.” He carefully picked up the body of his friend and lovingly set it into the grave. “I miss you, Roddy.”

Standing in the grave, Bo gently spread the loose soil over his buddy, bucket by bucket, until the body was fully covered.  Climbing out, he repeated the ceremony with the next one. This one had a stuffed toy varius sitting on it, an orange-and-black-striped doll in the shape of a tiger. The small, quiet whimper of pain the sight brought from his mate sent Dan to Bo’s side, holding him until the wave of sorrow had passed.  When he had recovered, Dan moved back to Victus, letting Bo continue at his own pace.

“This is...” Bo gasped and squinted his eyes shut for a moment. “This is Jody,” he almost shouted, trying to get past the lump in his throat. “None of us really understood him, but if there was ever a scared kid around, they went running straight to him.  He carried that stupid doll with him everywhere he went, just in case he needed to make someone feel better. This...” He gathered himself until his voice could once again be strong. “This is Jody,” he repeated, laying the body to rest, “and I miss him.”

Down the line they went, Dan and Victus participating as witnesses at the graves of eleven good people they’d never met, but both now mourned.  One by one, Bo placed bodies into graves and covered them lovingly with the warm soil that was to be their eternal beds. One by one, he poured out his love and his magnificent pain.  One by one, he laid his friends to rest.

When he reached the last empty grave, the wrapped body, a bit smaller than the rest, had  laying on its chest a single white rose. Bo’s voice was tender. He’d stopped sobbing, but tears still ran down his cheeks and his voice was soft. “This is Mindy. She was our captain.  She was good, she was fair, and she always listened to us. She left behind a husband named Clancy, who none of us ever thought was good enough for her, and a daughter who changed our minds about him.  He loved her so much that he never got remarried after she died, and I would do anything... “ He looked at Dan, and decided that there were some things he would never give up, even for Mindy. “Well, almost anything, to have her back.”

Hoisting the body in his arms, he turned and placed her into the Earth.  “Dan? Victus?” He said, engaging them fully, “Her name is Mindy, and I really wish you could have known her.” Looking down one last time at the last of the buddies he’d served with, Bo Taylor said, “I miss you, Mindy.”