Fox(girl)ificated 2 - Ch.5 - Dreams (Lies) & Hope (Patreon)

** content warning: instances of transmisia & misogyny **

There was a reassuring hum as the high-voltage breaker was energized, but that only lasted a half second. Then all I could see was a brilliant blue six-inch arc as the connection failed. Finally the whole thing exploded with a shower of sparks and a loud bang that almost knocked me out of the lift basket.

My ears were ringing and my heart racing as I blinked a few times to try and get the spots out of my eyes. The electricity couldn't hurt me so it didn't scare me, but electrical arcs were a very different story. There's a reason arc-welding was a thing, and I wasn't flame-proof. Burns like that were no joke, even if you've got D-rank metahuman healing.

As the ringing faded from my ears I heard my coworker yelling into his radio, "Cut it! Cut the power!"

Fortunately the arc didn't get me, but the breaker was completely screwed. The contacts were melted to slag along with part of the mechanism, and as soon as my vision returned I knew I had at least another half hour of work ahead of me to replace the entire assembly. And that was assuming we had the correct parts in the truck.

"God damn it Sparky!" Clayton shouted at me from down at street level. "Quit daydreaming and pay attention up there! You space out one more time and I'm gonna start calling you Space Cadet!"

He continued griping as he headed for the back of the van, "I like overtime as much as the next guy, but it's been a long night and I'm ready for a break, you know? Now we gotta replace the damn breaker on top of everything else!"

I sighed and rubbed my forehead then muttered under my breath, "I'm fine Clay, thank you for asking."

"Sorry man, my bad," I added at normal volume. "The breaker must have been damaged, I don't know how I missed it."

My coworker grumbled some more about my daydreaming from inside the van as he rounded up all the parts we'd need to do the replacement. Meanwhile I operated the lift controls to bring me back down to ground level. The thing that bugged me most was knowing Clayton was right. Almost three days had passed since I ran into Luna on Wednesday, but I just couldn't stop thinking about the gorgeous catgirl.

I really should have asked for her number or contact info when I had the chance. After everything she did for me though, I couldn't bring myself to impose on her for anything else. Instead I just quietly hoped she'd ask or offer, but she didn't. After lunch that day she headed off work while I walked home, then I spent the rest of the day quietly moping in my one-bedroom basement apartment.

To be fair Luna wasn't the only attractive young woman on my mind. I was also thinking a lot about Doctor Fawkes, and the raid on her clinic. I hadn't seen anything on the news about the small foxgirl or her GAMA ray though. Her website was still active, so was her social media. Except she hadn't made any posts since then. Which made sense if she was stuck in a jail cell somewhere, while MaR-AID took their time tearing apart everything she'd built.

I briefly considered calling or emailing the clinic on Thursday, to see if they were still open. Then maybe I could try and reschedule my consultation. I quickly shelved the idea though. If MaR-AID seized everything then even if it wasn't a trap before it was almost certainly one now. Despite Luna's assurances I just couldn't imagine those assholes letting Doctor Fawkes go.

So yeah, I had a lot on my mind lately. And if I was a little unfocused this morning I felt like I had a good excuse. Not that it would have mattered if it led to someone getting hurt.

Apart from a two-hour break around dinner time last night, both Clayton and I had been working almost non-stop for the last nineteen hours or so. It wasn't just us either, almost every field tech Metropolitan Light & Power had was called in yesterday evening. Same for the water company's crews, and the guys who worked for the gas company. We'd all been pulling double or triple shifts, working through the night to get the city's utilities back online as quickly and safely as possible.

It didn't happen often, but yesterday afternoon a supervillain popped off downtown. I didn't even know all the details yet, but as usual my coworker was ontop of the gossip and unsubstantiated rumours. Allegedly it was an A-rank villain called Destroyer. According to Clay, a few of Destroyer's flunkies busted him out of his maximum security jail cell yesterday. That was just in time for him to rampage through the city's financial core at five PM on a Friday afternoon.

All I knew for sure was two hours after our shift ended Clayton and I and everybody else were all called back into work so we could help put the city back together again. The local capes had already neutralized the threat, MaR-AID and the regular cops secured the area, then fire and ambulance workers took care of any injured civilians. Now it was up to regular folks like us to pick up the pieces and repair the damage.

Speaking of repairs, it was another thirty-five minutes or so later when I finally finished replacing the high-voltage breaker. Clayton called dispatch, and at long last substation seven powered up without any more faults, flaws, or minor explosions. We wrapped things up then the two of us climbed into the van and got moving again.

"This is truck one-eighty-two," my coworker said on the radio as we pulled onto the street, "We're taking our break now."

Ray, our dispatcher responded, "You and Sparky can come back in and clock out if you want? Looks like we're just about done for the night."

Clayton glanced at me then smiled as he thumbed the mic again, "Nah, we'll take our union mandated break first. We'll clock out after we're done."

"Understood. Take it easy boys," Ray replied with a laugh.

Meanwhile my coworker grinned, "Like I said, I like my overtime as much as the next guy. Right Sparky? If we're gonna take a lunch break we may as well get paid for it."

"Right," I mumbled.

It was almost half past four Saturday morning, and considering I started work at nine Friday morning I was more interested in getting some sleep than picking up an extra hour's wages.

I didn't bother asking where we were going, but there weren't a lot of options at that time of day. Especially considering a chunk of downtown was in desperate need of repairs. So we spent the first ten minutes of our break driving to a not-damaged part of town, where we ended up in the twenty-four hour drive-thru of a place with the uninspiring name, "Bob's Burritos."

"You know the worst thing about getting called in again last night?" Clay asked after we got our food from the window. He pulled us ahead and into a parking spot, then shut off the van and pulled out his new phone. "There was a special CCC live stream, and I missed it. Luckily Seth posted the recording after it was over."

I rolled my eyes, "Yeah Clayton. That was the worst thing about an A-rank villain attacking the city during Friday's rush hour."

My coworker didn't notice the sarcasm in my voice, or maybe he wasn't even listening. Instead he propped his phone up on the dashboard, while I unwrapped my breakfast burrito and took a bite.

"Hey folks," the annoying host's voice spoke up as the video began, "Welcome back to a special live-stream of Capes Crooks and Creeps, where we bring you all the meta news that mainstream media's too cowardly to talk about."

He was streaming from what I assumed to be his basement studio again, sitting behind his cheap desk with the chalkboard behind him. And he immediately launched into a rant, "So you folks all know why the stream was delayed by a half hour tonight. We had an A-rank crook attack the city this evening, and it took almost an hour for the capes to bring him down."

"I know my viewers are smart people, so you're probably asking yourselves some very important questions," the host said. Then he started overacting, with the fake outrage and fake concern, "How could this happen? Why did it take our so-called heroes so long to stop this baddie? Why isn't our city better protected?"

He paused for breath then announced, "Well folks, I've got your answers right here. See, this is what I've been talking about all along! Someone's been nerfing our best capes, and tonight's the first example of where this is headed!"

"Oh for fuck's sake," I grumbled. "Not this crap again."

"Dude shut up, I'm watching this!" Clayton glared at me. Then he took another big bite of his burrito as he turned his attention back to his phone screen.

Meanwhile the annoying host was already talking again, "It's been ten years since the Destroyer last attacked our city. When he was here a decade ago he was stopped cold in under twenty minutes. How? By our one and only Masked Man of course! Old Maskie was an S-rank hero, best of the best. So what happened, why didn't he help us out tonight?"

The video cut to a blurry photo of the part-ferret hero Noodlecat-Boi, while the voice-over continued his stupid rant. "The Masked Man allegedly retired, and this is what we got in his place!"

I bit back another comment. I knew NCB had nothing to do with the Masked Man, I already told Clay about that before. The idiot streamer had to know it too, but the guy kept spreading his lies.

"Ok so what about the Flaming Fist, or Platinum Pugilist?" the guy asked, deadnaming the two capes as the image changed. A long-lens photo of Fiery Femme Fatale and Platinum Blondie together appeared on the screen. The heroines were laughing like they'd been photographed right after someone told a joke or something. Meanwhile Seth stated sarcastically, "Oh look, there they are! Our best A-rank heroes, prancing around in skirts!"

The video cut back to the host's face again as he scowled, "I'm not going to waste any screen-time on ugly D-rank losers like Aella. Instead let's move on to the most important question of all. Who's behind this? Who's doing this to our city's protectors? And what can we do to stop them?"

"Well folks," he continued after a 'dramatic pause', "We've got a new supervillain in town, and I'm not talking about a guy with muscles or laser eyes or sonic boom fists. No, this time I'm talking about the worst kind of creep you can get. Our new villain is what we in the business refer to as a mastermind."

Seth paused there to let that sink in, before he started talking again.

"Now because of 'legal' and 'liability' reasons I'm not allowed to share this creep's name or picture," he said, and he even did the air-quotes. "But I can tell you our new supervillain is a chick. And she's no dog like Aella. In fact you could even say this new crook is actually a bit of a fox. Right down to the animal ears and the tail between her legs."

As soon as I heard that my gut lurched. He had to be talking about Rachel Fawkes, and I was almost afraid to hear whatever lies he'd cooked up about her.

Meanwhile he continued, "Appearance aside, this creep is dangerous. We all got a taste of her end-game tonight folks. I'm not saying she specifically coordinated things with Destroyer, but I'm not not saying that either. It seems like a pretty big coincidence though, that Destroyer waited to break out of prison until -after- Flaming Fist and Platinum Pugilist were emasculated and the Masked Man was 'retired'."

I literally had to bite my tongue at that point, or I'd have blurted out a few things that would have earned me no end of bullshit from Clayton. It was painful though, and annoying as hell. Then it got worse.

"As bad as this sounds folks, I promise you it's even worse than you think," the host announced. He looked like he was gloating at the next part, "This is it folks, here's the big scoop nobody else has. This comes to us straight from my secret source, a front-line investigator with MaR-AID."

"It turns out our new villain hasn't just been letting our capes go after she nerfed them. Like I've been saying all along, she's got her claws in them. Not just the capes either. She's started pulling strings further up the line. How do I know this? I know because MaR-AID actually raided this creep's lair earlier this week! But instead of tossing her furry ass in jail you know what they did?"

There was another 'dramatic' pause before he half-shouted, "They let her go! They let this bitch walk! Why? Apparently a couple of our A-rank capes stood up for her! Testified in her defence! Turned against MaR-AID, our city, and we the people, to defend this dangerous creep!"

"Now I'm not going to name names," Seth added as he calmed down. Just then the picture of Fiery Femme Fatale and Platinum Blondie flashed up on the screen again for a second or two. Then the host continued, "But I can't help thinking about coincidences, you know? A couple A-list capes rushed to help a brand-new criminal mastermind on Wednesday, now here it is Friday night. And didn't it seem like they were dragging their feet and taking their time while Destroyer was, well, destroying part of our fair city? Now I don't know about you, but -"

Clayton paused the video at that point and started talking about his own bullshit theories, but I wasn't listening. I'd tuned both him and the video out completely, because there was something way more important on my mind.

If they let Doctor Fawkes go then maybe she could still help me after all! Maybe there was still a chance for me, a glimmer of hope. I just had to get in touch with the doctor, and get back into her clinic, before MaR-AID or anyone else tried to shut her down again.

** This chapter is brought to you courtesy of Lucy, who commissioned it! **