Agency's Echo (For Ty Vulpine)

[Snow]

# 1. #

Ty tried not to whimper as he stomped on the mansion. He kept telling himself that tearing old buildings down was a part of the construction process, but it was a shame to see this one go since it was still in good shape. Some baseball star here in Florida had bought three beachfront lots so that he could build one super-mega-mansion. So, the guy had done the logical thing: call in a fifty-foot-tall foxtaur to crush the existing houses, and let a filmmaker pay him to record it.

"More shouting!" said the man by the camera. So Ty gave his best Godzilla roar and punched his way through a bedroom. He was going to enjoy helping to build the replacement house more than this, and didn't really want the monster reputation, but Emily had insisted they needed the extra cash. Ty rampaged his way slowly through the mansion, took a break, then started in on the other one while actors shot at him with prop guns.

Ty winced, hurting his fist on a gratuitous brick chimney. He'd only been free for a few months and still wasn't used to having a real job, let alone such a strange one. He concentrated and tried to shrink a few feet so that he could get in there and pull out some pipes better. Almost there...

Something in the mansion snapped loose. At the same moment the actors outside shouted something. The distraction broke his concentration and he found himself shrinking too much, from fifty feet high to forty, twenty. He stumbled forward and the chimney came down on him, exactly like a ton of bricks. The edges thudded against his long back and made him yelp in pain. Too many came down on his head, too. He was flat on his face inside the half-broken building just as the rest of it crashed inward onto him. It was suddenly dark.

# 2. #

Ty groaned. The light made his head throb. He heard someone distantly saying, "Mister Vulpine? Glad to see you're awake."

He was in a hospital with buzzing bulbs overhead. "What happened?"

The doctor frowned at him over a clipboard. "The house always wins. You're lucky to have that extra durability in your bones. Meant to be bulletproof as well as able to handle you stomping around while fifty feet tall, right?"

Ty nodded, which just made the headache worse. "Is everyone else okay?"

The doctor pointed to a vase of flowers and a card signed by his co-workers. Ty grinned. Emily had kept even her signature hidden in a corner, by the construction crew's and the architect's. "We should have you out of here within a few days." A cough. "I'll have the nurses bring you the insurance form."

Ty groaned. Ever since he and Emily had escaped from the Agency that had raised them -- after it made them orphans! -- the two of them had suddenly had to deal with real-world stuff. It turned out that being trained as some kind of super-soldiers didn't automatically mean good pay as a civilian. Not in the Free States, anyway. They'd fled south from the US proper to the part that had recently broken away, and gotten asylum. But neither of them had been eager to fight "terrorists" after all, they'd decided, which meant no government jobs.

"I'll deal with it later," Ty said, and slept.

Days later, he was troubled. He still hadn't had more visitors. He called up Emily but got no answer, twice. The construction crew didn't know where she'd gone either. What really got Ty's fur on end (and nearly made him lose control and grow too big for the hospital bed) was the report that his bill had just been paid without explanation.

The nice thing about his past was that he knew Tren. Ty called up the "dragon" -- really a lizard who'd gotten wings as part of the same kind of experiments that made Ty a taur -- through a couple of layers of security.

"Your sister's missing?" said Tren. He cursed. "And you've heard nothing from her, encrypted or otherwise? Well, she didn't take me up on my offer." Tren had been lying low in Occupied Mexico and trying not to get any Hellfire missiles delivered to his door. He'd suggested that Emily spend some time doing "odd jobs" with him. Ty suspected he liked her.

"Then what do I do? It's not like her to be this sneaky. And somebody just paid my hospital bill."

"Sounds like your sister got another job. Now, who'd want to pay some minor celebrity a lot of money up front on short notice, in a way that'd make her vanish without talking to you first, when she'd normally at least leave a note?"

Ty thought about it, and didn't like the idea he was getting. He found himself arguing against it. "You don't seriously think she's in trouble, do you? We're done with the Agency and all that. We reached an understanding."

"Might not be them, necessarily. There's some neat technology in the three of us. Worth studying."

"Then who?"

"That, I don't know. Let me do some digging. Try not to worry yourself too much. Your sister can take care of herself."

Ty wished he were sure of that.

# 3. #

Ty and Emily lived in a cheap apartment not just out of poverty, but for exactly the reason that Ty met KC. The construction company had gotten a weird call to come out someplace on short notice to do a "damage assessment", not normally in their line of work. Seemed urgent though, and Ty's boss said the customer had insisted on hiring him specifically.

It became pretty obvious why, right away. Police had cordoned off the neighborhood. Ty saw a giant blue foot sticking out of a collapsed house down the street. Ty got out of the truck, showed an officer his ID, and grew a few inches taller by way of explanation. "I have some experience in this kind of thing." The cop blinked a couple of times and let the crew through.

The foot belonged to a giant with blue dreadlocks... no, spines. "Ooh, an echidna!" said one of the younger guys on the truck. Ty and the others looked at him strangely. "What?"

Ty approached. "Ty Vulpine here! What the heck happened to you?" He could see the giant laying in the rubble of half of the house, afraid to move without bringing the rest of it down on him. His arm was stuck through a second-floor bathroom wall. A shower was raining on his shoulder, and threatening to fall from the pipes that held it up. Considering the bits of shredded clothing on him, Ty added, "I'm guessing you weren't planning to redecorate like this. How'd this happen?"

"Just get me out of here! I don't want to lose the bedroom, man." An expensive four-poster bed up on the third floor dangled over the man's head. A seagull perched on it, looking dubious. "Don't want to do more damage than I already did."

Ty conferred with his co-workers. "Sorry, but that place is pretty much totaled. You kicked out half the structural support and the attic is mainly held up by your spine. Why do you even have an attic in this climate?" The customer glared at him. "Okay, never mind. But your house is already split, so you're not going to escape if you're afraid of the rest coming down."

The giant echidna swore. "Can you at least get the bed and the stereo?"

Ty nodded, stepped away from everyone, and unbuttoned his already tight shirt. He'd more or less given up on pants since becoming a taur, and few people complained. He kicked off two pairs of sneakers (one custom-made for his more digitigrade hindlegs) and willed himself to grow. It was a power he'd never fully learned to control, hence his own cheap taste in housing and furniture. He could sympathize with the blue guy. He gradually felt massive and powerful, seeing the world from the height of the roofs around him.

Ty now had hands big enough to grab the entire bed that perched on the broken upper floor, then the fancy stereo system, and set them down by the truck. He had to snap some wires off the stereo, but those should be fixable, he figured. "Okay. So, let me just hold up this bit of the ceiling so it doesn't bean you, and --"

The echidna lunged up from the rubble. "You jerk! I'm out half a million dollars!" He came up swinging a fist that must've weighed as much as a refrigerator. It caught Ty in the side of his lower torso and made him stagger. Ow, those knuckles! The building crumbled around him and crashed in a pile of dust and jagged lumber.

Ty raised his arms in defense. "What are you talking about?"

The blue giant grabbed some cinder blocks and chucked them at Ty, saying, "This is all your fault!"

Ty's fur bristled. Years of combat training kicked in. He swatted aside the blocks, yanked the echidna's arm, and swung him around to slam him face-first into his own broken house. His former boss would've approved; no extra property damage. "No." Ty put a heavy forefoot down on his back and said, "Whatever crazy ideas you've got about me, take our your frustration someplace where we won't kill anybody! Are you done for now?"

"I give! I give." Ty stepped off of him and let him awkwardly turn around. He clutched at some nasty cuts on his muzzle. "Not in the face, man! So did you not ask Alyssa to send me some kind of crazy turn-you-huge potion? You broke my house!"

"I did not," said Ty. "And who's Alyssa?"

The man sighed and sat up, making broken planks and a chair slide off of him. "Name's KC. AM 970 WFLA, voice of the Rays?" Ty blinked, not recognizing the face, but maybe the voice from local radio. KC said, "Whatever. Look, I got this weird package in the mail today with a note from a friend. Let me grab it from my desk." He glanced back over his shoulder.

"Under your left elbow," said Ty.

KC rummaged and tried to grab a tiny slip of paper between his fingers, but just didn't have the coordination yet at this size. Ty caught it carefully and gave it to one of the construction guys to read. KC said, "She told me, 'Take care of this. It's a secret.' And to find you. I figured this was some stupid spy thing she'd gotten me mixed up in, and that you had put her up to it. And when the damn glass vial in the package leaked on me, I was all Alice In Wonderland with my house. I just put in five thousand bucks worth of hardwood!"

Ty's ears perked in surprise. "I think we need to have a talk. Can you, you know, shrink? It's a mental trick. You have to calm down enough for it."

"Easy for you to say," KC groused. But after a few minutes of Ty talking him through it, the echnidna relaxed enough that he was able to control his own size, and slowly reverted to about six feet tall. He stared at his hands, then farther down. "Oh, right. Think you can dig my dresser out from the rubble?"

# 4. #

"If you've got the same kind of 'matter storage field' as I do, then that friend of yours has access to the same kind of tech." Ty stuffed himself with chicken as they lounged in a hotel room. He'd heard the media rushing to the scene of KC's big problem, and figured that it'd be best not to head right home. Some reporter was probably already lurking there.

KC leaned back in a chair. "How are you eating that much?"

Ty grinned. "Taur body. Size shifting. You're lucky you didn't sprout extra legs."

"Whatever." The echidna picked at the chicken and rice. "Having this done to me feels like cheating. I earned these muscles." He showed off some biceps.

Nowadays, ever since Ty and Emily escaped from the Agency, you could buy ones just as good. The official word from the US government was that the Agency was a medical research lab, abused by a couple of rogue scientists. To make the story stick, they'd had to release some of their discoveries to the public. Super-steroids, basically, some nanotech-based medical stuff, and weirder things. So, Ty and Emily weren't the only taurs in the city, but they still certainly stood out. And the technique for doing the size thing was still classified, supposedly only usable on very specific genomes. That one seemed to bend physics enough that even Ty didn't blame the government for being wary about explaining it. It could probably be used for making matter/energy bombs or something.

Ty said, "Tell me about this friend of yours. She sent you a nanite vial?"

KC looked around suspiciously. "She was always traveling a lot. Wouldn't tell me what it was all about, but from some hints I gathered it was spy stuff, not just her 'business' across the border in the US and out in Asia. Anyway, yeah, out of the blue I got that package. She wouldn't have done anything like that unless it was urgent. What's it all mean?"

"Hmm... If she was trying to get you to contact me, and it was about the size-shifting tech, then... Agency stuff. Where was it sent from?"

The echidna had retrieved a scrap of paper with some nasty cologne on it. "China, but that doesn't really narrow it down."

"Why's it doused with that stuff?" Ty's nose wrinkled but he sniffed again. "Ugh."

His phone rang. Tren. "Ty? Bad news. No word from your sister at all, and there's some government chatter mentioning her. Can't read much of it though."

Ty threatened to crush the phone. "Any of it from China? And on a related note, have you got some kind of chemical sniffer?"

[Snow]

# 5. #

They had more of a clue than "China". It took most of his savings, but Ty got two plane tickets (both for himself) to head that way. KC had the third seat in their part of the row, trying not to lean on Ty. "So, what happens if this size stuff acts up on us in mid-flight?"

Ty started to speak, then scribbled a note to him instead. "Then the plane shatters. Try to keep calm."

Tren had met them in Seattle, with some scientific equipment and an alarming number of computers. Turned out that that nasty cologne came from a factory in the middle of nowhere, in western China. Worth checking out even though it meant an even longer trip. Would've been too much of a wild goose chase even for KC's heftier bank account, but for a bit more information Tren had been able to dig up.

He sat there now in the seat across the aisle, wearing a heavy trenchcoat to hide his wings. The airport security people had certainly noticed something odd about him, but took him for some rich eccentric who'd bought some of the Agency's released body-mod technology. He had a couple of his computers out and looked intent on something. "Hey, Ty? Did you look this city up before you left?"

"A bit. Sounded like a ghost town besides a chemical plant and the perfume place."

"Worse." Tren handed Ty a tablet showing empty streets, empty buildings. "Practically nobody lives there but a few Party members, some Muslims the Chinese are trying to wipe out, and some factory workers. The thing is, the chem plant isn't really interesting. I'd rather go shopping."

Tren wouldn't explain, but grinned wider as he continued whatever searching and analysis he had going through his satellite link. Ty felt outclassed on the computer front; he'd learned about the Agency's crimes basically because somebody there used bad database security. By the time they'd all slept and landed, Tren was ready to lay out more of a plan.

# 6. #

There was a model of it just outside the airport restaurant. "Shenyu Glory Mall?" said Ty, eyeing the dollhouse-sized building complex.

Tren said, "Biggest mall in the world. Occupancy hit two percent in its heyday. And that was before the Crash. So, basically a giant shell that's slowly falling apart."

KC was peering through the window at it. "Is that a rollercoaster?"

Ty was still skeptical. "Cool, but what proof have we got about Emily? Or this Alyssa lady?"

"Because," said Tren with a look of triumph, "whoever's there didn't do much to hide the fact that they were getting shipments of something from the factory despite having no reason for it. Something that Alyssa wanted to lead you to."

Despite trying to dress like businessmen, the three of them stood out when they left the airport. Not a lot of people in town at all, and exactly one taur. Ty stared at highways with hardly a car on them, apartment buildings with barely a sign of life. The air shimmered with hazy heat.

In the distance, Ty could see glass towers similar to the model. "Well, let's check it out."

Tren was still busy thumbing through info on a phone, so he didn't see Ty removing his shirt. "I'll get us a taxi or -- wha!"

Ty was already fifteen feet tall when he grabbed the dragon, grinning. He felt Tren getting lighter and lighter in his one-handed grip. As usual, the ground seemed to fall away, frightening him for a moment as though he'd been launched into the air. The changing perspective started to feel more familiar. Ty said, "Want a ride, KC, or will you go 'kaiju' too?"

The echidna looked down at himself. "Haven't really practiced. I'll ride." Ty grabbed him and ran off.

The mega-mall looked like a city unto itself. Except for the emptiness! Ty jogged along a vacant highway and some wind-blown sandlots until he reached an empty parking lot for thousands of cars, with a train terminal. Heat rippled up from the pavement and made him pant just to see it.

He felt his fur bristle. There, unlit, was a neon sign showing that "Hello Foxie" cartoon character. Ill-maintained as it was, it seemed to have broken teeth. "I feel welcomed."

"Not going to crash on in, are you?" said KC.

"Probably a bad idea." Ty set the others down and began shrinking again. The doors weren't locked. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any other shopping mall, but with cheerful music playing to no one. The halls were plenty big for Ty at any size. "What exactly are we looking for, if this is someplace Alyssa thought was worth investigating?"

Tren walked. "You know how China's pollution laws make the Free States look strict? Turns out that the whole country's been willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of things so long as the right Party members get bribed or show 'growth' for the areas they control. I think what with someone offering your sister a job, and --"

Gunfire split the air. Ty made himself a big target, quickly doubling in size to pounce KC and get him away. They rolled to one side of the hall, hearing echoes of more shots. Tren leaped into the air. His coat fell away and his leathery wings unfurled. Ty tried to shelter KC while the dragon-man sighted an automated turret perched in an "under construction" display overhead. He smashed the thing with one clawed hand, then landed, much bigger than he'd been.

Ty shouted, "Any more?" He was starting to feel the sting of several shots that'd thudded into his tough hide.

"That's all I see," said Tren. He crouched on all fours, the size of a truck. His wings barely brushed against the empty storefronts to either side. It was suddenly quiet again.

KC stepped away from Ty and stared at the turret wreckage. "What the hell? Is someone trying to kill us specifically, or just anyone who walks in the door?"

Ty looked around for more danger and saw none. He examined the scrap metal and the wooden housing that'd hidden it. "I see a camera in there. Someone probably knows we're here even if they didn't hear that, and they'd kept the gun disguised in that box. So... yeah, probably us specifically." He glanced over to KC. "Tren and I are more bulletproof than you. Experimental military dermal armor. It might be a good idea for you to wait outside."

KC scowled. "I came this far with you. Besides, there's probably someone waiting to pick me off outside if I leave you. How about if I'm bigger?"

"It'd mean any hits would knock relatively small holes in you, but still..."

KC seemed not to care. He beat his chest and grew, giving a King Kong roar. He grabbed a tattered red banner and wound it around his waist. "Come on, then!"

The three of them marched through the deserted mall: KC as a spiky giant, Ty padding along on four feet, and Tren stalking along on all fours as a dragon.

Cheerful Chinese music boomed from the mall's long-silent PA system. Ty's ears perked and he looked around, finding only a dark store full of mannequins in creepy poses. Then came the voice. "Good work, Agent."

The three of them froze. Ty recognized it in three words, and answered through gritted teeth: "Colonel Salt. How nice to hear from you again." His tail bristled.

"And thanks for dropping in. Sorry for the rude greeting; just wanted to see if you were on your toes. I assume you're here about your sister?"

"What have you done with her?"

"Use your imagination, boy! I can collect all sorts of interesting data on you while you romp around. The echidna is a nice bonus. How would you like to volunteer for closer study, sir? I can make it worth your while."

Ty grabbed a bench in one hand, raising a dust cloud. "Show yourself."

"Where's the fun in that? Relax; we practically have the whole place to ourselves. How have you been, out in the cold, cruel world? It's been tough for me ever since you ruined my research and threw away your new family."

Tren put a wing over Ty's lower back to stop him from pointlessly charging at the nearest speaker. Ty fumed but said nothing to the voice -- to his former boss. To the man responsible for making him an orphan. He looked to the dragon and said, "Help me find him."

Tren nodded. "Can't use most of my gear at this size," he said. "Keep an eye out for recent construction of any kind. Move!" He dashed ahead, and Ty and KC hurried after him.

Signs advertising store brands flashed by. Ty recognized some, and had to duck under a fast-food logo, but a lot of it was Chinese stuff he'd never seen before, and that customers apparently never saw either. His feet kicked up dust all the way down the huge storefront-lined hall. What a huge waste of resources this place was! He stared at the rollercoaster in the distance.

Tren ran into the trap first. Potted fake plants hid the black boxes of machinery on either side.

Tren tripped and crashed forward, impressive for a quadruped. Ty skidded and only knocked him farther into the sudden crackle of energy between the hidden gadgets. The blast's edge caught him too, leaving him dizzy and lying on a patch of carpet. Everything looked bigger... Ty cursed and got up, finding he'd lost a few feet of height. He tried to get back to his full, giant size, and felt as though something were squeezing him back down instead.

Tren hissed. "KC, stop!" But the echidna had already leaped over whatever it was that hit them, and was pointing at the ceiling. Tren said, "Yes, I know; something's blocking my size shift." He was obviously smaller now, though still on all fours and accidentally whapping Ty with a wing as he recovered his balance.

KC yanked at one of Ty's forepaws. "Move, quick!" Ty's ears rang and he could hardly hear. But there was a sound like something breaking...

Ty glanced up and went wide-eyed. The whole section of ceiling overhead was falling in, with the contents of a car dealership on top of it. He shoved KC along with him in a rolling dive to the left. Tons of metal crashed from at least five stories up. Fine -- there was a little room to spare -- but Tren was about to win a brand new car to the face! Ty came up and swatted the thing with both hands on its way down. Trucks and cars rained down and crashed onto linoleum and carpet, making a horrible metal-rending shriek. When it was over, Ty found he'd been gashed along one side by a fender, Tren had a broken wing, and KC somehow hadn't even mussed his spiky hair. Tren glared at him.

"Who is this guy?" said KC. He stared at the expensive pile of scrap metal.

Ty winced at the cut. It wasn't deep, anyway. "He's probably listening. Keep your voice down. Sounds like he got kicked out of the US so they could claim he was acting on his own -- and now he's either playing mad scientist by himself, or the Chinese have him." Like an old German rocket scientist or "doctor" working for the US, actually.

The echidna stared right back at Tren. "The guy said 'Well done, Agent.' Like someone had led us here."

Tren hissed. "If you're accusing me of anything, feel free to walk away!"

"Quit it," said Ty, getting between them. "The Agency liked to mess with people's heads, and Salt was behind it all. Besides, Tren was the one who helped me get away in the first place. Tren, how hurt are you?"

"Can't glide with my wing like this. And I can't seem to get back to full size; can you?" Ty tried it and shook his head; he was stuck a bit shorter than his usual maximum. Tren said, "The Colonel's got some kind of draining tech, then. Let's have a look at those black boxes -- after we find him." There wasn't much of the trap left to see, anyway, after several tons of automotive damage. The dragon shrank back to human-size and went to work with a computer tablet.

Ty explored farther ahead, more careful this time. Tren tapped his tail and pointed to another turret, this one larger, mounted on an upper walkway. Then, KC spotted a less obvious second one behind a dark glass storefront. Ty scowled. The hidden one would be the more dangerous, given how this trip was going. Ty gave a mighty hindleg kick through a metal chain door, and then Tren hopped in to sneak up behind the turret and help himself to the gun it held. Tren came back checking the ammo. "Nasty; he put armor-piercing rounds in this one just for our hides. Figure he's done playing."

Ty looked up at the more obvious turret. "Yeah. Now this one..."

He gave a giant foxy pounce that tore a chunk out of the upper walkway and yanked the trap down with him. A few shots went off and shattered a window somewhere. Ty saw the motors twitching and sparking, so he stepped on the thing and snapped it. "Want the gun, KC? Might have to shrink to use it as more than a toothpick."

"Nah. I'd rather have the size advantage."

They came to one of the mall's great plazas. It towered fifteen levels high with empty walls of windows where a hotel should have been, and a miniature theme park. Cheerful, actually, with the skylight ceilings. Ty stomped warily past the rollercoaster. His foot stomped a sign showing a cheerful panda and the words, "You Must Be At Least This Tall To Ride".

"That's far enough!" said an amplified voice. Salt again.

# 7. #

"Watch out! He can --" A woman tried to make herself heard over the speaker, but there was a sound of a scuffle and she went quiet.

KC started forward. "Alyssa?"

Ty held him back. "Now what?"

"That's her! Where are they?"

Ty looked around for more threats. The closest thing to an open store here was the anchor-store slot. It had no sign, no open windows, but the barbed wire and sandbags made it pretty obvious it wasn't just a men's clothing store opening next month. A couple of terrified-looking men in lab coats crouched behind riot shields, holding rifles. He shouted, "You guys down there! You don't look like soldiers. I figure your boss has told you he's got secret weapons for beating me, but I've got friends along and I've gotten this far. I just want --"

Shots rang out and gunfire stabbed along his long body from a third-floor railing. He winced. That one hurt! He tried not to show it. "Tren, go!" Ty ducked behind the rollercoaster while KC took cover and Tren got into a duel with the man overhead. One of the little fort's scientist-guards took potshots at Ty, but not with enough aim or firepower to make it count.

Ty pulled the rollercoaster's cars off of their track and held them up. He pointed behind himself with the other hand. "You can't win." He got interrupted by the man on the upper balcony falling off of it with a scream, into a swimming pool. "See? Get out of here while you can!" He gave his best angry yip/growl/roar. (No one had even come up with a good way to transcribe what it sounded like. It was a fox thing.)

The scientists fled their barricade, shouting in English and Chinese. Ty grinned and waved to them as they ran the other way past him down one of the mall's other huge halls. Then he called out, "There go your friends, Colonel! How about you, now? KC here is looking for Alyssa, and I know you've got Emily in there. You can walk away from this too."

The speakers behind the sandbags boomed. "I'm a reasonable man, kid. I'll return my guests, once I'm done with them. Or you can come on in after me, but you'll have to shrink unless you're looking to bring down the building on poor, non-bulletproof Alyssa. I don't think even Emily can withstand having the place fall on her, in her condition."

Tren hissed in surprise as he picked through the abandoned fort in front of the department store. "Ty, this isn't just Chinese stuff he's outfitted with. I see US military markings on some of this gear."

KC came back into view. "What's that mean? He's still working for the Agency?"

"Some version of it, apparently, even though the official one's gone white-hat." Louder, Tren said, "I bet the local authorities would like to know what you're doing here."

The Colonel scoffed. "Please. They helped fund this place. The chemical plant next door, remember? It's a joint research project. Hang around long enough and you'll get to meet them. Careful; they might mistake you for terrorists, smashing up their mall and everything."

Ty and Tren exchanged a look. Salt was right that they'd probably already attracted some bad attention. But that just meant it was time to settle the matter, before any reinforcements came. Ty pointed to Tren's bags and whispered, "Record everything."

"Already doing it," said Tren. Ty tilted his head, then recalled that the dragon had some minor cyber-ware in with his other upgrades. "What now?"

"We go in." Ty shrank, down to nearly normal size. "KC, you're in back." He took a moment to whisper a bit more to the others.

The department store slot wasn't empty inside, after all. Behind the barricade and the locked doors (one good dragon punch did those in), Ty found a dingy concrete lab three stories high. Lots of card tables with computers, lots of electrical cables snaking across the floor, and at the far end of what was meant to be the shoe department, an armed Colonel Salt with two prisoners strapped to examining tables.

"That's close enough," Salt said.

"A hostage situation?" said Tren. "If you thought that'd actually work, you'd be heading for the door with one of them right now. We might even let you get away with it, right Ty?" He got an uncertain nod from the foxtaur.

KC said, "Alyssa! I came all the way here to visit! You have terrible taste in perfume." The woman was a kangaroo, bound and gagged and glaring daggers at Salt.

The Colonel gestured to another pair of the devices that'd zapped Tren and Ty earlier. "Did you know that back then, we tried to give your sister the same matter-storage field as you, but it just didn't take? I never did figure out the whole technique, even from doing a little testing on her. Some of my own researchers kept things from me. Luckily, I've had an ally bring me a better test subject. Tren, how about if --"

"Yeah, we're not buying that one," said Ty. And he pounced. Salt naturally swung his gun up to go after Ty, but that left him not paying attention to his hostages, or to Tren's own weapon.

The move was perfect. Ty used his own unusual body weight to flip around and change direction in mid-leap, dodging Salt's shots. He landed, grabbed the man's leg, and kept his head down while Tren took a single careful shot. Ty felt his former boss shudder from a hit to the chest. Ty said, "I've been practicing those fighting moves your guys taught me once!"

Salt's hands dug into Ty's fur like vices. Ty found himself tumbling through the air into an escalator, with a crash. "As I was saying," said the mad scientist, suddenly ten feet tall and growing, "My research didn't pay off completely, but it had some benefits!"

KC, Tren and Ty stared up at him. "There's more room in here than you let on," said Ty. He scrambled to his feet. He'd just pull the same trick...

"No," said Salt, moving to stomp him before Ty could match his size. Too late, though! Ty grabbed his foot and slammed him over his backs, face-first into the concrete. Both of them were growing, now, and a second later Salt was up again despite his gunshot and plowing into Ty with wild fists.

"I've got this!" said Ty. "Help Emily and Alyssa!"

Ty didn't have it. Salt was just frenzied at first, but at twenty feet tall he still had plenty of strength, and was going for a wrestling hold he couldn't quite get, yet. Ty couldn't beat him through sheer size in here with the lower ceiling. He got knocked into a support column, winced, then decided to take this outside. He hurled a couple of computers at Salt's face, then body-slammed the man out through the front entrance, onto the barbed wire. Salt snagged it around Ty's forelegs, making both of them stagger together into the rollercoaster. Ty yelped and tried to grow more, to get big enough that the falling beams wouldn't hurt him or small enough to wriggle out of the way, but it was all coming down on him too hard! He tried to at least cover his head and neck...

Somebody leaped over him in a haze of rusty fur. Ty yipped as the heaviest of the girders and rails splashed to either side of him, blocked by... "Emily?!" She had her arms out, at least twenty feet long from claws to shoulder.

She grinned down at him. "Like he said, the research wasn't a total failure. The quick red foxtaur jumps over the lazy dog!"

Salt was under a pile of beams, hurt even worse then before. "Enough! I give up! I can't feel my tail..."

The drone of helicopters approaching overhead helped settle the matter, too.

# 8. #

In the end, cover stories helped just as much as they had before. So did transparency: Tren managed to get a satellite link and upload video of the fight to a "dead drop" server before the Chinese military could say hello. It turned out to be a good bargaining chip. After all, Colonel Salt had been just a rogue United States spy conducting illicit experiments in China, and definitely not someone the Chinese knew about and subsidized for their own purposes, right?

"They're probably still listening," said Tren. He leaned against a wall in the battered shopping mall plaza, where everything but a snowcone hut had been crushed. The soldiers had left everyone alone for now. Tren was the only one not busy fussing over someone: Ty with Emily, KC with Alyssa. "Watch what you say until we're out of here."

Ty broke out of a giant hug with Emily, relieved even so. He'd kept up his huge size the whole time they negotiated. "It's going to be fun showing you the macro life! You can do construction stuff with me. And KC, I guess, if he wants."

"No way," said KC. "No adventuring for me. I just want to go back to the way things were." He took the roo-lady's hand. "With maybe one change in my relationship status."

Alyssa smiled at him. "Sorry for putting you in harm's way. I guess it's too late to hide exactly what I do for a living, and the nice soldiers here know who I am now, so it's time to find a different job."

Ty shrank back down to a convenient travel size -- or tried to. He seemed to be stuck at nearly the size he'd been while fighting Salt, about thirty-five feet. "Um. I seem to be stuck." He stepped back and fiddled with his own shifting ability, hoping to max out again and then hope he could sort of reset himself. Back up to fifty feet, fifty-five, sixty... Wait, what?

Tren stared at him. "What in Katamari's name are you doing now, Ty?"

"I can't get down!"

"Too much white fur," said KC.

Alyssa peered way up at him. "Salt was doing all kinds of research with the follow-up to his work at the Agency. He had some kind of trap set up for you to sap your matter storage field."

Tren said, "We ran into it. Seemed to knock a few feet off my upper size limit. But it seems to have affected Ty differently. What's your upper limit, then?"

Ty experimented, stepping even farther back until he was perched on the rollercoaster rubble. He was level with the eighth floor, then felt his ears brushing against the glass skylights up above the twelfth. "How...?" He calmed himself down before he risked breaking through even that.

Emily grinned and poked him on the foreleg. "I guess you're still my big brother."

Ty worriedly braced himself against the mall's wall and slowly shrank back down as much as he could, finding he couldn't get much below thirty-five feet. "I can't fly like this! Or even take a train, maybe!"

Tren and KC looked at him. Tren said, "We need to get Alyssa and Emily back to the Free States before there's too much of a scandal here."

"And I've got a job to go back to, I hope..." The echidna seemed doubtful about that and his home insurance policy.

Ty gaped. "I have to hike across China to get home, now? And then get on a cargo ship!?"

"At least it'll be faster for you than most people," said Emily. "Once the reporting dies down in a week or so, I'll fly back to visit you if I can. And hey, maybe you can do some side jobs along the way!" She grinned up at him. "Also, you don't get to criticize me now for agreeing to go on a long foreign job."

Ty's ears drooped. Everybody was more or less safe now, but this was going to be a long hike.

[Virmir]

This one felt a bit rougher than the previous one and it didn't grab me as much, though I'm sure it was because of the requirements you were handed. Still a good bit of fun action and your usual witty humor made this an enjoyable read in a cheesy B-Movie sort of way.

[TyVulpine]

Yeah but at least part three is much better ;)