21 February 2012
Weapons were trained on the laboratory animals by the Plum Island security guards. "It's the augments! They've escaped!," spoke one of them.
The commander of the guards nodded. "We're authorized to terminate them," he said grimly. "They've proven much too dangerous to live. Specimen J-47 has already severely burned a researcher! Shoot them!"
"I'm afraid we can't allow that to happen," replied the fox telepathically. And then just as they were developed to do, the augmented animals began working together, coordinating their efforts to survive and overcome adversity.
The ferret locked eyes with one guard and reached into his mind. "Go to sleep!," he commanded. The guard immediately collapsed to the floor and began snoring.
"Open fire!," ordered the commander of the guards to his remaining subordinate. The fox had already countered, however, reaching deeply within himself and projecting an intensely hot thermal aura, kind of a shield in front of them. The bullets hit this shield and were vaporized into harmless puffs of gas which dissipated and wafted away.
The ferret's eyes blazed as he locked eyes with the guard's commander, reached into his mind, and pushed hard. "You son of a bitch!," snarled the ferret, "You're blind!"
Darkness descended on the commander of the guards like a curtain, and he dropped his weapon to claw at his unseeing eyes and scream.
The remaining guard still held his weapon aloft but was trembling so badly that his shots went wild. The ferret looked at him and smiled darkly. "And you...why, you're just a big baby!," he declared as he wrapped his will around the man's mind and pushed him.
The guard's muscles suddenly became incapable of supporting him, so he dropped to the floor, wet himself, and began crying, fully infantile.
The fox ceased his intense concentration, and the energy of the protective thermal shield that he had generated returned to him. "Nice tricks!," he commended the ferret.
"I think we've just successfully completed our first mission," grinned the cat. "We should be going now." With that, the cat wrapped one foreleg around each of his two brothers, and teleported them all through the solid cinder block walls outside to freedom.
"Thank God that's over!," exclaimed the fox.
"No," corrected the ferret, "it's not over yet!"
The Augments IV • Opuss № I