Rood Awakening

Woken from cryosleep, a cat must escape a post-apocalyptic training facility designed to turn him into a kangaroo supersoldier. Explicit.

In 2036, war began. Destructive, planet-wide, all-out war. Civilians, fleeing the encroaching devastation, sought out cryogenic stasis en masse. Governments pooled their resources with private companies in order to preserve their citizens, with the promise that, in five or ten years, they would be brought out of stasis and would return to the post-war world.

Sixty years later, war has changed. Gene-spliced soldiers fight a constant battle of attrition on the war-torn wastes. To fuel the never-ending conflict, warlords and military dictators search for stasis pods to replenish their bleeding ranks. With fresh pre-war blood, and genes ready for splicing, the civilians in the pods are the newest recruits in the endless war.

WARNING: HOMEOSTASIS BREACH. POD UNLOCK BEGIN.

He tumbled limp onto the floor. His lungs seared with chemicals as he coughed for breath. A computerized voice, back inside the pod, was saying something to him.

"You may be experiencing mild memory loss. This is normal. Please wait for a care counselor to come retrieve you."

No. This wasn't normal. His lungs were dying. His memories were a haze of feelings; anxiety, fear, wanting to curl up until the war went away. But who was he? It was a big blank in his mind. Brown fur, short claws, whiskers: cat, male, young. He spun the plastic tag around his wrist and read the name on it. 'Circutron.' Was that a name? Didn't sound like one, but it was all he had. 'Circ' was good enough.

He grimaced and clutched his chest. The sting in his lungs seeped into his veins. It spread into his body, some foreign thing that shouldn't be there.

The floor was littered with dust and flecks of concrete fallen from the ceiling. He leaned against the wall, cushioned by the tubes and hoses running between the pods. One hose had been ripped from the wall and connected to a rusted red canister with strips of duct tape. In yellow spray paint, the words 'RooD Jooz' ran down the middle of the tank. He coughed. Was that what he'd breathed in?

Trade-Off

A nerdy tigress invents a device to steal her boyfriend's muscular build. Explicit.

The last time Sam had tried to spice up things in bed, she'd nearly given her boyfriend an electric shock.

She was a tinkerer by nature. She was never happy when something just worked. She had to know how it worked, why it worked, if it could do its job faster, and how many volts she could run through it before it started smoking. The inner workings of a device spoke more to her than most people did. She didn't get out a whole lot.

Somehow she'd found a boyfriend in Ivan. Actually, she knew exactly how: physics tutoring. Ivan needed it for his distribution requirements, and she wanted a chance to sit and stare at the cute hockey player while he tried to stomp his way around unit conversions.

They couldn't have looked more different. Maybe that was why Sam wanted to make it up to him by coming up with new ways to have sex: because she didn't feel like she was enough for him on her own. She was five foot four at her best, a tigress with stripes that almost looked like glasses and a soft midsection that spilled out a bit if she wore anything too close-fitting. Ivan was six foot five, broad chest, with the sort of shaggy handsomeness that arctic wolves were ideal for. She spent her time in her workroom messing around with disassembled microwaves and scrapped lab equipment, while he was out at the gym, keeping himself in shape.

The Curse Deepens

Captured by the Lion Clan, a cursed adventurer struggles to keep his independence. Mature.

The misty forest hung heavy on Circ's whiskers. The droplets of dew weighed each whisker down. The weight of the drops became an unseen hand pushing his head down, telling him to stop, to turn back, or at the very least, to rest. If Circ knew anything about this land, that feeling meant this was the worst possible place to rest.

The young cat pushed on through the mist, clinging to his spear like it would draw him through the woods. His armor creaked softly as he moved, stretching around his slim form. Armor was little help if he was ambushed, though, and he was so slight that only light leather could give him enough mobility to defend himself. His best defense was the small shield buckled to his forearm, followed by the tip of his spear. If anything came at him, the best he could do was put it down quickly before it could get its claws into him.

Minutes crept by and trees emerged from and disappeared into the haze. He had no idea where he was going, but at the very least, he couldn't see any tracks ahead of him, so he wasn't circling around. Every sound of shifting leaves made him turn and squint into the mist. He was almost sure he saw a figure moving or a bit of fleeting motion behind a tree. When he looked again, there was nothing, just the mist playing with his eyes.

Heart's Desire [Illustrated]

Three friends play a fortune-telling game to grant their hearts' desire, but is it really giving them what they want? Explicit.

Cole stood beside the cabinet, like he was presenting it to them. "It's like a fortune telling game, but it's got special rules to it. You play it with a bunch of people, you get one fortune per day, and the first person to get to five 'blessings' wins."

"Wins what?" Tricia asked.

Cole pointed to one of the rules. "Your heart's desire."

Alex made a soft snort. Cole grinned. Tricia was starting to smile too. It was a cheesy old game.

"So, want to give it a shot?" Cole asked.

"That's what we're here for," Alex said. Even if it was silly, it was something they could all play together.

Alex stood up, fished one of the tokens out of the open coin return, and dropped it into the slot. A tinny recording of a sitar played as the cards on display in the booth swirled around and the lights on the outside flashed on and off in a spinning pattern.

A slot in the front spat out a yellowed card. Alex picked it up, then moved to the side. Tricia stood by her after getting her own fortune, and once Cole got his too, they all turned to face each other.

The Snowy Gnoll [Illustrated]

Each time a gnoll comes back to Riska's shop, she's been more and more changed by her adventures. Mature.

Riska stood high on her stool, looking over the small pile of treasure dumped onto her counter.

"And none of this is stolen?" she asked. The gnoll girl across the counter from Riska folded her arms across her chest. Riska felt it was a perfectly valid question to ask. When a gnoll in dark leather with more knives than she's got hands to hold them in walks into your pawn shop, you start thinking that maybe this girl is a bandit. It didn't help that she was skinnier than most gnolls, with a wiry frame that her tight armor accentuated.

"No, it's not," the gnoll said. There was a little huff in her voice. She was probably used to being accused of thievery. People didn't have high opinions of gnolls to begin with. Still, Riska thought, she did look like a thief.

Growing Confidence

A nerdy wolf girl starts getting bigger and stronger, and not even her boyfriend can stop her. Explicit.

Stephanie tilted the envelope toward her hand and shook the silver pendant onto her palm.

“Oh, wow," she said. “You didn't have to do this. Dinner was enough."

Her boyfriend, the tiger across the table from her, shrugged. “I thought you could wear it to Pathfinder." Though he was trying to play it casual, he watched Stephanie's reaction, hoping she'd like it.

“Yeah," the white wolf girl said, paying more attention to her present. The pendant itself was about an inch and a half in diameter and made of silver. It was shaped like a disk, with the image of a snarling wolf carved into it, its eyes looking forward and its mane making up the outer part of the disk. Its small steel necklace chain had pooled in her palm underneath.