Alan had gotten his army to march along the eastern road, saying that it was also true that most of the army took off during the night and he had been informed by one of the generals... just before the man left... that no, he couldn’t label the men as deserters and that yes, they actually have every right to go see their families for a single night.

Sooooo only about 5% of the total army was actually there, the rest were scheduled to show up sometime near the evening.

“How far from the border are we Chris?” Alan asks Chris who is walking along beside him.

“Ummm, I’m pretty sure I don’t know...” he replies to his question. “Just calm down Alan, We’ll get there soon enough.”

“I don’t need to calm down... those soldiers just need to learn to act like professionals.” Alan says “This speed is costing me too much time, Chris go make everyone move faster.”

“Ok sir.” Chris says and salutes him “I’ll go do that personally...”

Chris walks away and doesn’t look back Alan had been like this since he met him, a little bit of a perfectionist much like Nebel and also a doer also like Nebel. But there the similarities pretty much ended, Nebel is calm, laidback and patient where Alan is serious, a workaholic and stressed by every set back.

“Maybe I should have attached myself onto Synthia...” Chris thinks to himself, into his mind floats a scene of Chris holding a tray of condoms one of which Synthia grabs as she walks into a tent with a soldier... “Ummm.... maybe that would be a bad idea too...”

“Bo...” an image of Chris carrying her around on his shoulders, with both of their weapons and luggage strapped to his back.

“Maximus... ” the thought of being thrown out windows, into shark infested waters drenched in cow’s blood with a steak in his hands pops up...

“I seriously need to head back to Nebel...” Chris thinks to himself after a few minutes of imagining his fate under a few more people. “He’s the only real boss for me.”

“Ok guys the commander commands us all to move faster.” Chris tells a group of officers when he reaches where they were talking as they strolled along.

After saying his bit Chris makes to continue his walk but is stopped by the group of officers “Hold on a moment Alien.” One of the officers says, a captain by his markings “Go tell our fake commander, that the rules state we have to march at half speed for a day to let the rest of the men catch up.”

Chris sighs “Let me find one of his men... I’ll send him the message...” after which he smiles wryly

The officers smile at this and let him leave to inform his boss... which he wouldn’t do in person of course!

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Having been running across the plains for a while Lucca starts to see rat men wandering around and is forced to slow her pace, moving from hill to hill she makes certain to keep them up wind from them just in case.

As she moves closer to the city, the rat men density slowly increases, she could see them moving around in both more and larger groups. Remembering a few details about rats Lucca comes up with a plan and swiftly executes it, moving up behind one of the smaller groups just in case something goes wrong, she slows her breathing and softens the tread of her steps.

Breathing only through her mouth Lucca steps up behind the rear most rat man and cleanly slices its throat before it even knows what is happening, dragging it away from the rest of the group before they could notice what had occurred, Lucca cleans off her knife before replacing it in its sheath and taking out a set of skinning knives.

Carefully cutting through the skin along the back of the corpse, Lucca slowly peels off its skin in one big piece and lays it on the ground.

Instead of carving around or under its nose, genitalia, tail and ears she includes them all in the skin and after cleaning off those knives and stowing them away she takes out a few rat man skins she had collected earlier in a not so clean method as this time and a sewing case too.

Using a measuring tape to check its size compared to her own she was relieved to see that the “mask”... its face... would only need a few adjustments, unlike the arms, legs and hands. Adding strips to the legs and arms she swiftly resizes them to fit her like a glove.

And speaking of gloves she adds a cross shaped piece of skin to both sides of the rat man’s hands along with strips to the fingers to get them to the right size. Over her shoes she lays the top part of the rat man’s feet and finishes it all off by placing the last of the skins along the back of the body and head to give it more room.

After putting away her tools and admiring her handy work, Lucca strips down to her underwear and shimmies into her new rat man costume. Pulling up the zipper she had stitched in along the back, putting on the claw gloves and placing the full head mask onto her head she was ready to go.

Luckily some of the rats actually used backpacks so she didn’t have to ditch her stuff and could instead place her clothes inside it to.

This whole plan was a bit of a gamble in reality, while the costume was amazingly well done, it wasn’t perfect but Lucca had heard that Rats have bad eye sight and see in black and white.

“The only problem is... how much is a rat man’s eye sight like a rats...” Lucca mutters as she heads towards the city the suburbs of which were only a few kilometres farther to the north.

Making sure to keep her distance, Lucca skirts the many rat man groups along her path... just to be safe. Unlike before they mostly ignore her, so her plan seemed to be working, at least enough to get around.

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Having entered the suburbs, Lucca looks around for the mini mall Maximus had told her was the start of the path to his “Stronghold”. Finding it a few “mega blocks” off to one side, Lucca breaks into one of the shops to check what’s inside.

Thanks to the shutters that could keep rat men outside but were no match for a girl with a few bits of metal, the inside of the shop was pretty much untouched. The mini market that she had broken into had its shelf stacked full of food, drinks, candy and the usual objects that could be found in any corner store.

Noticing that the fridges were somehow still functional, Lucca packs a few drink, a bag of chips and some cereal into her bag before picking up a brand new safety lock from a pile of the same and locks the shutters when she leaves.

Placing the key in her pocket, Lucca jumps up onto the roof and looks around for Maximus’ sign. After a minute of looking between the solar panels and air conditioning units, she finds a small arrow pointing farther into town and starts moving in its direction along the roof tops.

Unlike someone might imagine if they have ever been to most suburbs, this one was mostly made out of crescent and circle shaped roads between the main ones, which had much more rat man traffic then Maximus’ path. These made simple navigation a chore and finding a specific building an annoyance.

Heading mostly north but with frequent turns to go around rat infested areas, Lucca finally reaches the police station where Maximus says he’s staying and walks around it to find the door he had marked as the entrance.

Knocking on the door Lucca calls out “Yo, Maximus open up!” from inside the building she hears a bang followed by the sounds of someone walking and pulling back multiple deadbolts.

A blurry eyed Maximus opens the door and looks down at Lucca. “That’s weird I swear I could hear Lucca...” he says as he pulls his sword out of its sheath.

Lucca looks down at her rat man costume “Oh crap...!” Jumping backwards Lucca dodges his first slash that was coming for her from the side, putting a little bit of distance between them she pulls the quick release straps on her backpack and pulls her long sword off of her back.

Stepping forwards out of the police station, Maximus delivers blow after blow towards Lucca, who barely blocks a few of them while dodging the rest.

Vertical chop! She side steps to her left in an orbit around Maximus... Right sweep! She backs up... left sweep! She backs up again... stab! She barely manages to.... oh crap!

Having herded Lucca around in a circle, her left side, the side she tried dodging the stab in, was up against the wall of the police station, pushing her body against the wall Lucca just manages to prevent a direct hit but she hears a slicing noise and looks down expecting to see blood on the ground.

There isn’t any... after completing the stabbing motion Maximus had pulled back on his sword and wrenched the ragged tip which was caught on her rat man costume away...

Lucca looks back up and sees Maximus standing there staring at her, with an expression of embarrassment that was slowly getting worse plastered on his face. Looking back down at her body, Lucca sees a bundle of fur that she hadn’t notice fall... it was most of her costume...

Dropping her sword and grabbing the top of the ragged leftovers, Lucca pulls them back up with her left hand while pulling the rat mask off of her face with the right, revealing her red cheeks and her eyes that are looking as far away from Maximus as possible.

“So sorry!” Maximus says and spins on his heel “I thought you were one of them!”

Dropping the mask on the ground Lucca doesn’t answer him and instead walks over to her bag in silence to get some clothes...

After making sure no rat men are around... and Maximus is still looking in another direction, Lucca strips off the costume, drooping the legs section to the ground and unzipping the remnants of top part which was barely enough to cover her nipples. She pulls on the pair of pants she was wearing before and puts a t-shirt on as well...

“Ok... let’s go inside...” she says and without waiting for an answer marches through the still open doors and into the police station.

Dropping her bag beside one of the chairs in the “Living room”, formally the central office space, Lucca looks around the room at the serious lack of recourses. On a table to her right are three, two litter bottles of water and a few bags of c rations, on her left is another table with a single element cooking stove...

Hearing the door being locked behind her Lucca turns around and acts like the last scene never happened... “So what did you call me for?” she asks of Maximus when he finishes locking the door.

“I need help keeping the population of rat men down, you game?” he says obviously acting the same way. “Their population just keeps going up; it could get a little hairy for the border if this continues.”

“Yeah, ok just let me fix my disguise...” Lucca says looking into her bag at the remains of the rat man suit...

An awkward silence fills the room and Maximus looks away from her... after a moment he asks her a question you should ask a young woman “Umm, why were you wearing male underwear?”

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She didn't stop for clothes before leaving the city... lol

Hope you like it, my schedule has been ruined, now i have to get used to writing 2000 words in a row every night again

thanks to the thankers! hope everyone continues enjoying my writing!

Comment any ideas you might have i might include them!