It's pretty peaceful here in the IUPC place, but that's what I wanted after the nonsense of fighting... just about everyone. In the first few weeks, I had some nightmares, occasionally about the Bleak, but more often just about the loss of my home. I've lost two homes now, but thankfully, these nightmares were only about the whole world of Godcraft getting destroyed. I haven't had one of my original nightmares, ones about that terror spider, for quite a while. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll tell you later. Although, it will probably be quite a while before we get there. I'll start my documentation from the very beginning. It gives me something to do until Talist decides he wants me back in the plot, which will happen eventually. I am somewhat of a crowd favorite, except I'm not a below average 4/4 for 4. Heh... references. Anyway, I'll start my story. Here we go.

My earliest memory is of me hiding in some bushes. I was only around two or three months old. I don't know exactly why I was in the bushes because obviously I didn't remember anything before that. But I could make a guess based on my memories after that. Oh, and before we go any farther, if you have no idea who I am and are questioning why a three month old child would be left in some bushes, you should know that I'm not human. I'm a fox. Specifically, the kind people call fennecs. The small kind that tend to have big, heat dispersing ears. So three months old isn't as young as it would be normally. Anyway, I get sidetracked a lot. So, I was in a bush, but not for long. I had already explored the extent of my world. I didn't know at the time, but it was all fake. I was essentially in a large zoo, with transplanted grass, trees and sand. The walls and ceiling were painted to look like sky. Not like it mattered to the young me. I had never seen real sky, so I wouldn't have known the difference between real sky and the fake substitute. The lights were hooked up to very slowly cycle between on and off, simulating the day and night cycle. Again, the people who ran the place could have convinced me the day was 20 seconds long if they wanted to. Having nothing to compare things to is the ultimate form of naivety. Speaking of whoever ran the place, I think that was why I was in the bush. I spent several days watching them enter and leave through a hidden door in one of the walls until I felt ready to make my move.

I had lived in this little world all my short life, and now I felt like there was a chance to see a little more. I had a spirit for adventure back then. Not as much now though. In my few days of watching, I had taken note of a few things, like the outer extent of where the door swung to. They also would never open the door when there was another fox there. I wasn't the only fox in this zoo place-thing. The most cunning plan my three month old self could think up of was digging a little trench by the door and make it just deep enough for me to hide in completely. I thought it was genius, so I starting digging into the sand, making my little foxhole, both figuratively and literally. I had no way to measure time accurately and predict when they'd come, so I spent several hours hiding in the sand, waiting. Eventually, they did. The door swung straight over me and I popped up and just ran through, not knowing what I'd find or even if I'd want to find the whatever it was. What I did find though, was a wall. I'll leave you on that to continue this later. Probably anyway.

Reader, as you read this story or any other story for that matter, please take note of who the narrator is and what their relation to the story's events is. Depending on the answer you come up with, consider whether the narrator is a reliable source of information. I lived through these events, so I am going to be biased, even if I don't realize it. I'll try to be objective, but with some of my own opinions to make this more interesting. Now, where was I?

Oh yes, I was in front of a wall. There was nothing particularly special about the stone brick wall, per-say. But to young me, it was incredible for two reasons. One, I had never seen a material as simple as stone before. The closest thing to it was the plastic of the colossal fake tree stump. Second, I hadn't seen many regular patterns like the bricks of the wall. Its evenness and regularity astounded young me. As much as I wanted to stay there for a few minutes and examine the wall to its fullest extent, I had other things to worry about, like how my flawless plan wasn't all that flawless. I could hear the door starting to swing shut behind me and based on the startled cries, I had been noticed. I changed direction, my little claws scrabbling against the equally incredible stone brick floor and I started running to the right. Now, some of you may remember the vague format of the building from my dreams, but that wasn't really how it was set up. I keep running to the right until I made it through a wooden door that was thankfully left open. That door was supposed to contain any creatures who, like myself, tried making a run for it. The people in charge had been strictly told to always close that door behind them, and every day, they did, except today. And today just happened to be the day I decided to make my move. Back then, I attributed it to luck. But now, looking back at it, I feel that slightly too many things like this had gone slightly too well for me. I now suspect it was a little bit of... divine intervention. Although, whether the divine in question had or even still has my best interests at heart is yet to be seen.

Anyway, I scrambled through this open door and continued along the corridor until I reached the main commons, which had some bustling activity of hooded figures too tall for me to make out. I don't think anybody, myself included, can understand the sheer thrill of discovery I had palpitating through my veins. With every step I took, my world was redefined. My world used to have such a small cast, but now I was meeting new actors through their startled glances. Taking but a few moments to glance around, I picked a leftward path and dashed behind some decorative suits of armor. There were already people pursuing me and I only had a brief headstart. I ran forward, past a open corridor on my left and kept running until I reached the second corridor, but I didn't go through that either. Instead, I yelped as loudly as I could and banged on the nearest suit of armor, as though I ran into it by mistake. It was all to attract attention though. I doubled back and ran through the first corridor I had seen and kept running, ignoring all other doors until I collapsed on the floor, panting heavily. I lay there for a few minutes. It seemed that by either luck or the aforementioned divine that I had evaded capture, and now the winding corridors and hallways were mine to explore. Well, they were until I got caught again.

The first thing I did in my new quest was look around at all the doors. Most of them were closed, so I went to the one that was open a small bit. Plus, I could smell something nice from inside. Gingerly, I tried to squeeze through the tiny opening, not realizing that the door would swing open if I applied any pressure to it, so I was pretty startled when it did. Hey, I had never seen something as simple as a proper door before, so cut me a break. Inside this door was the storage room, and to me, it felt like heaven had just shown me its bounty. The most important thing at the time was the smell of fish. That was pretty interesting.

I singled out the box that had the smell coming from it, but it was closed. Most of the boxes were. However, a few were propped open in one way or another. I noticed that at the point where the lid and base of the chest connected, there were bits of metal. You know, hinges. I had seen similar pieces of metal in the door that led in here. And thinking back, I remembered them marking the place where that first door was, the one that led into the fake plains. So, in my mind, the idea of objects having these metal cylinders was linked to the idea of objects rotating when pressure was applied. To test my new theory, I went up to the fish smelling chest and pushed on the side of it. Of course, that wasn't how chests worked.

So, somewhat disappointed, I spent some time examining how the hinges worked on the open chests and came to a new conclusion, which was how chests actually worked. I reached up on my hind legs to open the chest that smelled like fish and was labeled fish to find... fish. Don't worry, it's okay if you need to take a breather to handle from that shock. I haven't fully recovered from it myself. Excitement clouded my young judgement and I leaped up into the chest. The problem with this was obviously that I got myself trapped in the chest. That was the first time I felt genuine fear, fear that I would never get out of the chest and starve to death, even with all the free fish. I wish that my definition of mortal peril was still getting stuck in a box. However, I tried to keep calm (in big, friendly gold lettering) and thought about how I could get out here. I started throwing all my little weight against the side of the chest I entered from and managed to tilt the chest onto its side and I tumbled out in a small avalanche of fish. Feeling pretty clever about thinking my way out of "mortal peril", I rewarded myself with one of the fish.

I must have had a really short attention span when I was so young because as soon as I had finished my delicious fish, I was distracted by something I noticed out of the corner of my eye. It was something that would forever change my life. Poking out of a nearby chest was a soft blue potion. How awfully convenient it would be placed there, in just the right point to sculpt my passions to the will of someone else and make me spend countless hours downstairs in my basement lab. Maybe in some way I wanted to replicate this lab I was born in. Not like I regretted picking up alchemy.

Anyway, the blue of the potion caught my attention. I bit around the bottle's neck and drew it out slowly. For a brief moment, I was captivated by the swirling colors that formed when I tilted it this way and that. It took me a while to figure out how corks worked and I chewed at it before yanking it out. The potion wasn't a carbonated drink or anything, but I still managed to drench myself as most of it flew everywhere from me pulling too hard. Now, there was only a small bit of the liquid left. I was feeling pretty thirsty, and because sanitation wasn't my utmost concern at this point, I started lapping up the potion of speed I had spilled on the floor. That was when I discovered that potions are awesome.

Now, maybe you could say that... I... uh... sorta... got addicted or drunk or whatever you want to call it. Maybe I'm still addicted now. I don't really go out of my way to drink any random potion, although most are fun to drink. But I do enjoy the smell quite a lot, so maybe I'll start having withdrawal symptoms. That will be fun. Anyway, for now, I engorged my new addition, lapping up as much of the speed potion as I could. In total, I only drank about half the bottle, but for my small metabolism, it was enough. Plus, it was a potion of speed II. I could feel my heart starting to gallop, adrenaline inject itself into my blood, and new reserves of energy I didn't know I had surging through me like thunder bolt. My world had sped up, and I sped up with it. I had never felt anything like it before. And it felt... incredible, like I could run faster than anyone had ever dreamed, rather than just 40% faster.

My brief... drug trip was interrupted when I heard footsteps coming down the hall. Somebody was coming, and I knew getting caught would be a bad thing. I ran right next to the door, on the opposite side to where it would swing through. I waited there with the potion bottle's neck in my mouth, shaking from the energy rampaging through my veins. The door opened and someone walked in, probably muttering something like "what the...", but I didn't particularly care. I sneaked past him and flat out sprinted down, back to the main commons. The commons had cleared out more, but there were still some people around, so I hid behind one of their many decorative armor stands, panting heavily. The speed potion was starting to wear off, so I could feel my wonderful power fading away. I'm not sure how long I stayed behind that armor stand, but eventually, one of the people looking for the escaped fox found me and started yelling at each other to coordinate and trap me. Biting around the bottle's mouth, I threw my head back and drank what was left of the potion before throwing the empty glass bottle to roll and clatter along the floor. Then, I sprinted down across the room, outrunning my pursuers and entering a new room.

Just as the storage room shaped my future passions, this new room shaped my future knowledge. And no, it wasn't the library. I didn't know how to read yet, so that would be useless, but I'd get to that later. Instead, I entered the maintenance room. And there, I discovered that this building had a system of vents and redstone wires running through the walls, but they were covered by grates held on by two screws at the bottom and a hinge at the top. One of the screws was loose, so I bit on it and pulled it out, watching how it spun. In addition, I found what I called a vent key at the time, but it was really a screwdriver, a device to turn screws. And screws, when turned, would either loosen or tighten. I put the two together and, after two tries of going the wrong way and thirty minutes, managed to open it. I didn't want anybody to know I had entered, but I couldn't reseal it behind me. It swung on the hinge at the top, so maybe they wouldn't notice the screws being missing. I brought the loose screws and screwdriver with me into the vent and hid the screws.

The clicking sound of my claws on the plating was something strange and alien to me, but I kept going. Fennecs tend to have underground burrows, so the tight, winding tunnel like structure of the vents didn't scare me. In fact, it was comforting. Skipping past the boring few hours of me bumping into walls a lot, I came to another grate. This one opened straight into some fake leaves, so I realized it must connect to the fake plain I called home. A few of the grates could be unscrewed from the inside, but not this one. However, I could slide the screwdriver through the grate. I wouldn't have access to it for the rest of this little adventure, but if they caught me, they would probably put me back in the fake plain. So if I left it there, I could escape through this grate later. Deciding to invest in my future, I popped the screwdriver through and let it fall down onto the synthetic grass below. Well, it wasn't investing because that is an economics term for when businesses buy more capitol. Anyway, I was getting tired. The lights in the rest of the building weren't hooked up to cycle between day and night, so I was wondering what time it was. I wandered the vents for a few more hours, trying to find a better place to sleep. Failing to find anything, I collapsed on the hard, metal plating. In an effort to lure myself to sleep, I started counting rivets in the roof, but I ran out of ones I could see and had to turn over and count all the rivets in the floor and walls. I ran out of those too. So, without the incredible calming power of rivets, it took me a long time to go to sleep. ... Either that, or the fact I was trying to sleep on a hard, uncomfortable metal surface. Also, because it was, you know, a vent. It was pretty drafty.

I woke up possibly more tired than I had gone to sleep. I got up and stretched slowly and methodically. In order to continue my adventure, I'd have to find the maintenance room vent again. After either a few minutes or a few hours, I popped out back there. I brought the screws with me and fumbled to place them slightly back in the holes so it would look like they hadn't been moved. I left that room, unaware of how much knowledge that screwdriver would bring me, and started walking down the corridor again. After wandering around looking for interesting stuff, I found something. An important looking figure wearing blue robes with a purple trim opened an important looking door and went in, swinging the door halfway shut behind them. Yes, I use "them" for that. Come at me grammar Nazis with your quantity disagreement argument. Anyway, I followed the figure, sneaking into the room and hiding inside a bookcase. The room looked like an office with a desk primarily in the center and flanked by personal chests and bookcases. But peaking my interest was an object on the desk. It had three small platforms of cobblestone at the bottom and an orange pillar in the middle. Each of the stone platforms had bottles of plain water on them. Connecting the bottles to the main pillar were thin little pipes. Sounds familiar, right? It was a brewing stand. I wanted to run out and grab the potions, even though they were water bottles. But of course, I didn't.

The person, who I could now see was female, spent a few minutes rummaging around in a chest before drawing out a red, bulbous plant that I would later come to love, nether wart. She funneled the nether wart down into the top of the brewing stand, causing it to fizzle, pop, smoke, and transfix me. She turned her back from the brewing stand and went back to rummaging around in chests. Not finding whatever she wanted, she muttered something and left the office, probably headed for the storage room. If she didn't already know about the mess I left in there, she would now. I seized the chance and leaped up onto the desk. I needed to find something to put in the brewing stand and replicate what the other person did. From rummaging around in what was presumably her desk, I found the honeyed, and poisoned, lips of praise. That's something said by the one I like to call my Ancestor, Reynard. Anyway, I didn't literally find honey. I found a cookie, one made with wheat and cocoa beans. In my excitement, I grabbed it and shoved it directly down into the brewing stand, causing it to magically start humming and popping. Within thirty seconds, my potion was ready. What was also ready, was the woman in the purple robe. She had returned and was holding a ghast tear.

The other potion helped me before when I was caught, so these three potions of cookie should help me now. Flawless logic. I grabbed one of the potions from its stand, popped out the cork, spilling some, then happily chugged the whole thing. It tasted pretty nice and sweet and I could feel my heart rate start to increase, like this one just took longer to kick in. The woman had already closed the door, trapping me. I had to look for a different way out, so I leaped down from the desk and ran behind one of the bookcases by the walls, my heart racing. We started playing a game of cat and mouse with me running to find exits and her moving the bookcases to eliminate my cover. With every passing second, I felt like I was getting stronger. The energy I expected started coming to me in a landslide. I felt incredible, active and ready, like my reactions had just sped up ten fold. My heart palpitated furiously, coursing power through my blood. I felt more alive than I ever had before, but in reality, I was dying.

You see, chocolate and caffeine is technically toxic. Plants don't produce that stuff randomly. They produce it to ward off bugs. So in high concentrations or in a creature with a small metabolism, such as a fennec fox, it can cause dehydration, too high of a heart rate, and eventually, death. Plus, I believe I was born with an abnormally low resistance to this kind of thing. I was allergic to chocolate, if you will. So, my heart was beating too fast and I was quickly getting exhausted and I started slowing down and panting raggedly. That gave the woman chasing me the chase she needed and she grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and lifted me off the ground. That was the second time I feared death. I thought they would kill me for trying to escape. But they actually thought me escaping was an incredible feat, one that made me their best and brightest.

Regardless, I started doing everything in my feeble little power to escape the cold grasp of death. I kicked and clawed, I tried to bite or scratch her, and I yelped my little head off. I landed one or two scratches on her, but didn't even draw blood. I just tore up her robes a little. She carried me over near a shelf and snatched something from it. Then I yelped again as something sharp jabbed me in the neck. For a brief moment, it stung like a bee sting. But then an enchanting calm came over me. I fought against it as long as I could, but I was already exhausted from running. My entire body felt heavier than lead, especially my eye lids. It was as though the sky was crushing down my world into blackness against my will. The woman held me at arm's length, struggling and kicking desperately until I succumbed to the soft embrace and stayed limp in her hand.

When I woke up, I discovered I had gained a new piece of jewelry. There was a metal ring with a small broadcasting module wrapped tightly around my front left leg. How unfair. I didn't get to lick the bride or even say "I do".

Could have had a cloudless rain.

I had pulled myself back from unconsciousness and my head was tilted to look directly at my new ring. I could barely feel anything, like my body was coated in thick wool. My head was swimming, my vision was blurry, my throat was parched, my stomach was turning, I had a burning sensation in my mouth, so in short, I felt pretty terrible. Not to mention my nose was dry. I tried to raise the paw with the new ring on it. ... No, tried isn't the right word. That implies I had some vague chance of control over any of my body. It was more like I had to write a formal letter of request to my leg kindly asking it to move up, post it, wait several days for air mail, have it delivered and then instantly crumpled up and ignored.

My body wasn't under my control any more. Every part of myself seemed foreign and alien, like it was actively trying to stop my progress. I never realized how comforting it was to know that my body was mine until it wasn't. It was so comforting that now without it, I was mortified by the simple fact I couldn't flick my tail. I had no control, no say, no power, no choice. Time was going to keep up its unstoppable march forward and pull me with it. But without being in control of myself, I couldn't get my feet under me and run along side it. All I could do was lay limp and lifeless as time dragged me through the mud. So, thanks to this little experience, I'm now terrified of the idea of my body or mind not being my own. So... yeah. Don't you dare try to force that Trickster stuff on me. The only trickster I am is as a Yako.

Regardless of all this, there was something else that bound me in my invisible tomb. In addition to my new ring, there were metal straps binding me to the floor. Now, that is never a very good sentence to say, but vaguely luckily for me, I wasn't in an erotic torture movie. Although, according to the CAH DTG pack, at least one person has imagined me in a similar situation, which is... creepy. I barely passed health class with Golden Freddy. Enough talking about what wasn't happening. I was bound to a hard plastic surface.

Because my eyes were the only non mutinous part of my body as far as I could tell, I wildly looked around the room, my eyes wide with fear. Everything seemed hazy and unreal, but I was in some kind of a bletch white medical room with cabinets of intimidating and pointy implements lining the top row. One of these pointy implements, a syringe, was lying next to me, filled partly with my own blood. The sight of blood always made me uneasy. Past the syringe of my own DNA, there were two people in more practical veterinarian's outfits arguing about something. I couldn't really hear them, but I did make out one word being said a lot. You might be able to guess what that word was. It was Wilson. All the researchers at this lab would call me Wilson.

Before that, I had called myself Laiko, and I still would use that name until I left here. I didn't know why my name was Laiko, so that of course means it was probably an act of that divine, Inari. She actually molded me into her perfect little child. She had made sure to steer my passions and personality towards what she wanted them to be. But this name, Wilson, came not from her, but from chance. ... If my future knowledge serves me right, Wilson came up as a name idea for me because it was a variation of the name Wilhelm. Or more specifically, Wilhelm Whudt, father of psychology... or something. I kinda like the name Wilhelm, but Wilson is good too. Random side note, Wilhelm is a German name, where W's are pronounced more like V's. So technically speaking, my name should be pronounced Vilson, but everyone, including me, probably uses the "wa" sound, and I like that better.

Regardless, they mentioned the name Wilson a lot, eventually seeming to agree on it. One of them typed something, probably Wilson, into a computer terminal and then pulled a tiny little rectangle out of it and held it with tweezers. It was like what many might know as a micro USB, you know, the kind that goes into cameras. The person turned towards me and, even though I tried to close my eyes fast enough, still saw that I was awake. The two spoke some more to each other and one of them moved towards the table I was on, reached under it and pulled out some kind of clear mask just large enough to cover my face. I tried to resist by turning away, but my neck didn't have a post box to receive my letter. The veterinarian put the mask over my mouth and a whirring sound started up and it pumped a humid gas at my face. As soon as I took my second breath of that gas, my fragile grip on consciousness was obliterated and I slipped back into the endless black void.

It was a long time before I woke up again.

There you go. Have six paragraphs to describe five minutes of action.

For at least a day or two, my mind was a blur of strange, horrible and ineffable colors exploding and folding over each other in impossible ways. I wandered around the chromatic tunnels of my dreams for most of it. I don't really remember what I dreamed about. Maybe I will one day, but I don't think it was particularly important either way. Probably just some weird symbolism for something or another.

Eventually, very slowly, the chemicals circling around in my blood started to ease on their enchantment that held me down. I had only opened my eyes a tiny fraction, but the light was already blinding, so I shut them again and whined. I shuffled around a little in my sleep and discovered that I was on so much painkiller that I couldn't feel anything. It was like I was suspended by strings in a black void. At least I could actually move now, but my muscles were impaired, jittery and delayed. I rolled over and could barely tell that I fell from one cushioned surface to another. I was probably on the stone floor now, but to me, it felt cushioned. Eventually, light returned to my world. It took several minutes for me to fully open my eyes and look around. Turning my neck took considerable effort and time, like I was controlling it via an RC remote over on the moon. Taking way too much effort than I should have, I looked around.

I was in some kind of plain, square room. The walls were a color of blue specifically chosen to be calming. As I suspected, I had rolled off a cushion placed in the corner of the room and was now lying on the floor. Up in the top corner of the room was a camera set up to slowly pan through the room. On some of the walls, I could see lighter spots that indicated other pieces of furniture had been there recently, but were removed so that I wouldn't hurt myself with a bookshelf or something, which was a real possibility. This room had been re-purposed in the last few days specifically for me because I was in no state to be around other people or in the normal subject area. I was way too high on ether and every other sedative they gave me to make anything resembling a logical decision. Although, if I hadn't been tranquilized, I suspect my heart would have beat faster and faster until it broke itself. I kept on thinking I saw a blur of movement in the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look, there was nothing.

Let's play a little game. See if you can tell the exact moment I started to lose my mind. I did have at least three or four judgement impairing substances cycling around my body after all.

My vision was slowly twirling and blurring, like the world was made of cake batter, except more sickening. Everything was eerily quiet, either because I had gone deaf or there was nothing to hear. I was very, very afraid. In fact, I had been feeling constantly terrified since that woman grabbed me, and that was starting to take a toll on my mind. The edges of objects were blurred and I couldn't quite tell where or what things were very well. I climbed to my stilts of legs and stood wobbling. I looked around some more at the furniture specially picked out for me. On seeing a bowl of clean looking water, I realized how thirsty and hungry I was. So, I tried to make my way over there. It was just across the room, but it took me considerable effort. The world was like a seesaw, slowly tilting back and forth. I leaned against the direction of the tilt to keep my balance. However, I must have leaned too far because I fell over and tumbled up the floor, defying my sense of gravity. I quickly scrambled to my feet and tried to stand up perpendicular to the floor, but fell over again against the wall. I felt the wall bend inwards against my weight, which made me think I was in a padded cell.

I had been led astray from my goal of reaching the water bowl and was now standing in front of a shallow bowl of fruit. And of note, the bowl had some strawberries in it. I was supposed to eat all these fruit because they had a good amount of juice in them and staying hydrated was important for cases of chocolate poisoning. So, I took out the fruit one by one and ate them pretty messily, the juice looking disturbingly like blood. And of course, I thought the strawberries were pretty great. I was startled to hear a slight whooshing sound behind me, so I whirled around to see what it was, but ended up tripped over my own feet and lying face down on the floor. After taking a while to figure out what happened, I got back to my feet and stumbled over to the water bowl. I hope you're not too bored by my long, extravagant descriptions of my terrible motor skills. It gets more interesting pretty soon, I promise.

I tipped my head down towards the water, but the entire world started tilting up towards the water as well, causing me to loose my balance and fall over into the water. After accidentally inhaling some water, I thrashed around and pulled my head back out and yelped. When I looked down, a crimson, blood red tint was spreading slowly through the water. Startled, I ran backwards as fast as I could, spluttering from the water in my lungs. Due to my incredibly poor vision, I ran straight into the opposite wall and had what little air I had left in me knocked out. I must have been putting on an incredible show for the people watching through that camera. They must be laughing their heads off.

After having regained a slight sense of rationality, I patted my face several times, checking my paw each time for blood. I must have been bleeding somewhere, right? But where ever I checked, I found that my veins were intact. However, I did notice that I had a small cut across my belly, So the next question I asked myself was, if that wasn't my blood in the water, who's blood was it? Or was the water always bloody? I was sure it looked pure and clean before I fell in it, so it must have been my blood. And therefor, I must be bleeding somewhere. And if I was bleeding, I was in danger. So it was perfectly clear to me that I had to escape this frightful place. I started running around the room, panicking despite all the blue on the walls.

The only door I could see was securely locked, so I looked for vents. There was one vent, but it was in the roof. I couldn't reach it at all. I scratched against the wall and whined loudly, taking care to avoid that blood tainted water. It must have been becoming night time because all the lights were dimming. In the new darkness, I started to notice certain... things. There were strange, tick like shadows slowly closing in on me. They were massive though, taking up about a fifth of the room. I was quickly losing maneuvering space to these evil creatures. Convinced I was in mortal peril once again, I ran to the center of the room to make my final stand there against the shadows. Desperately, I kicked, scratched and bit at the darkness, which seemed to hold them off. But I swear, these things were fighting back against me. Sometimes, they would counter my claw swings by stabbing my side with needles of pain, which drove me to fight harder and faster and so gave them more chances to counter attack. By now, I was sure I was actually bleeding. After a few minutes of me fighting off these shadows, I noticed there was an open passageway leading out that I hadn't noticed before. But once I started running towards it, it sealed itself shut and another passage opened on another wall. I ran to that only to have the same thing happen. After a few tries at this demented game of Simon Says, I heard a whirring sound coming from above and looked to discover to my horror that the vent I thought would be my salvation had started spitting that same gas that had been used on me before. I looked around for anything to cover me from the slowly descending ceiling of oblivion. I didn't want to get knocked out again, but the only cover I could see was the cushion I had slept on. I fought through the shadows and their constant stabs of pain to hide under the cushion. All I could hope for was that the gas would knock out the parasitic and large beaked shadows rather than me.

I later learned that I was freaking out and going delusional over strawberry juice. Yes, if I had just tried the water, I would have loved it because it had turned quite sweet. And those tick like shadows that I thought were stabbing me? That was me hurting myself. Anyway, I hid under my makeshift bed for quite a while until I fell asleep. I didn't fall asleep from the nonexistent knock out gas because that was just me being paranoid about the ventilation system starting up. I seemed to have a habit of waking up with new articles of clothing, and this time was no different. The people watching had seen me flailing around at nothing and hurting myself with my own scratches and bites, so they decided to do something about it. I woke up on the cushion, but my head was tilted upwards at an awkward angle and I couldn't put it flat. There was nothing but white in the sides of my vision. Maybe you've seen those white cones that are sometimes put on dogs or cats to prevent them from licking themselves. It's also known as the Cone of Shame. Yeah, I had one of those on, and I imagine I looked unbelievably stupid. It was difficult for me to see my own paws, but when I managed it, I found that I had gained gloves, or rather, some very professional looking socks that were bound to my legs in order to cover my claws. I was now a fox in some soxs, or however the rhyme goes.

After some more sleep and time, I wasn't quite as insane as I was before. I promise. I had put on a lovely show for my audience, which lead to them doubting my intelligence. I swear I'm smart, despite what all my flailing and running into walls would suggest. There were several reasons given by the researchers to explain my behavior, including that they had managed to breed in the gene for masochism. But regardless of their reason, their opinion of me had decreased dramatically. How did I know this? We'll get to that later.

I now looked around the room some more, dark fanciful images of blood and shadows dancing in my mind. At least now they were confined to my mind and hadn't invaded my senses. I wasn't bleeding any more, which meant that I had to wear the Cone of Shame because I wasn't trusted to not lick the antibiotics off and get myself sick. Now that I had all the fun insanity out of the way, everything else I could do seemed dull. I couldn't fight nightmares any more, but I could see that there was a brewing stand set up in the corner opposite my bed. It had a small rack of various simple brewing supplies, like nether wart, glistening melons, golden carrots, sugar, and plastic bottles. There was nothing I could potentially eat and kill myself with.

As I now had slightly better motor skills, I walked over to the brewing stand and tried to replicate what I had briefly seen over in that woman's office. But that was much harder than it sounded given how I couldn't see what I was doing most of the time and my paws were covered in socks. I couldn't even hold a bottle in my mouth. I must have spent at least an hour trying to fill up a bottle with water and place it in the brewing stand. Getting the cork off was a nightmare. But at least it wasn't the kind of nightmare that attacked me. After that, I needed to decide what ingredient to use. At the time, I didn't know that nether wart made awkward potions, which then made almost every other kind of potion. So, I tried adding a golden carrot directly to the plain water, and I was of course, disappointed. But that didn't stop me from trying various other ingredients. And that's how I spent rehab time, in an endless loop of fumbling with a new bottle for a long time, fumbling with an ingredient for a long time, and then being disappointed. That continued until I tried nether wart as my first ingredient. Then I was just confused rather than disappointed.

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again while still expecting different results, then I know I wasn't mad. I had been doing the same thing for several hours now, and expected the disappointment of a thick or mundane potion each time. But when I tried nether wart, it finally gave me something different. I remembered back to how that woman had added nether wart, then I added something different and it gave a cool potion. So, I tried a different ingredient, a strawberry, and that gave me something. It didn't have any particularly magical effects, but I still loved it. It was almost impossible to actually drink it though because I had the Cone of Shame on. Eventually, I figured out that I could open the potion's top, set it down, then tilt my head downwards and essentially do a handstand over the potion, except have the cone supporting my weight rather than my paws. That got my head close enough so I could grab it then fall back down. I quenched my thirst sipping on the sweet, sugary drink. Eventually though, the door opened.

In the brief moment when the door was open, I could see a solidly locked door behind it. They weren't taking any chances now it seemed. A man in a green, red trimmed cloak entered and seemed to be judging the small pile of discarded thick and mundane potions. Sniffing the air, I could tell he had some kind of fish with him, probably to bribe me with. I had learned to distrust humans, so I backed away from him. We spent about five minutes trying to passively ignore each other, yet still make sure the other didn't try anything. After that, he made the first move. He sat down, looked not quite at me, and smiled so that I could just see his teeth. It was meant to make me feel safe and trusting, but it didn't. Back then, I was less human than I am now. Today, if I'm happy, I'll smile. If I'm sad, I'll frown. Both are very human expressions I learned through observation. I saw that smiles were linked to happiness, so I associated the two in my mind. Those habits I learned make me more expressive, human, and relateable. But back then, I only had my instincts to work off of. And those told me that when something shows you its teeth, it's either going to eat you or try to prevent you from eating it. Either way, teeth were a threat. Even today, I rarely smile to show my teeth, so maybe that's why. Now, this wasn't literally the logic I consciously followed. I didn't think he was going to try to kill me because if he wanted that, he had plenty of chances, but I was still skittish and distrusting.

I had a choice here. I could either back down and shrink away, or I could stand up and try to be aggressive. I felt like I had been abused and thrown around, so I decided I would stand up. I would show them that I wouldn't be discarded and constantly knocked out. I decided I wouldn't be their perfect little sculpture to be molded into an alchemist's familiar. I rose myself up and got ready to snarl with all the defiance I had in my soul, but I couldn't. I turned around and ran to the very back of the room to cower there. And I had felt so confidant too... I couldn't stand up for myself, not like this anyway. The man didn't seem to react to my cowardice. Instead, after a while, he reached into a small leather bag and pulled out a cooked fish. They probably had judged that I liked fish based on my choice of which of those chests to break open back in the storage room. They weren't wrong, but they also weren't entirely correct. I didn't accept his little gift. In fact, I specifically tried to not react to it. After seeing my indifference, he put the fish away and got out something infinitely more interesting, a red colored potion of health. Then he set it down about a meter away from him.

Now that had me tempted. I felt like it was a trap, and in some ways, it was, but my curiosity was sparked. At that moment, more than anything in the world, I wanted to know what that potion would do. Plus, he had set it a fair distance away, so it couldn't be to lure me into anywhere, could it? Well, that was the logic I used as I approached the potion, even though this stupid cone on my head meant I wouldn't be able to grab it, but I hadn't thought that far in advance. Cautiously, I sniffed the potion and it smelled sweet and interesting. After briefly looking up at the man to make sure he hadn't moved, I jumped forwards and hooked my paws around the bottle to try and pull it back with me. But when I started backing up, a tugging on my neck told me I couldn't. Of course, the man had taken that chance to grab me, or rather, the cone around my neck. I started to struggle and thrash as the man fiddled with something on the back of my neck. When I finally broke free, the Cone of Shame didn't follow me back.

That wasn't my last interaction with that man, but it was my last interesting one. He gave me a few more bits of food and potions supplies in order to get me to trust him. I'd be lying if I said it didn't work. He was the first human I really trusted, so much so that I even held still long enough for him to take off the socks covering my paws. Eventually, I was released back into fake plain area. The first thing I did was check to see if my screwdriver was still there. Heh. I'm already calling it my screwdriver. I stole it fair and square. After spending a while checking the outskirts of the area for it, I found the screwdriver glinting in the fake sunlight under some leaves. It took me a while to find a spot on the tree that was close enough to the vent for me to unscrew it, but I eventually got there. Then, after several setbacks of me dropping the screwdriver, I managed to open up the vent. Now, I could climb through the passages in the walls and come out in the maintenance room. Then from there, any other vents I found would become new way points for me. It's like I already know I'm in a game. I considered going for another adventure right now, but decided against leaving so soon after my last escapade. Instead, I focused on other things that any angsty pre-teen would, like romance, hobbies, and education.

Well, when I say romance, I don't really mean that. I once looked at a girl for about... 10 seconds. I'm pretty sure I'm now an expert on everything romantic because it can all be extrapolated from that. So yes, I had a bit of a... crush on a girl. She looked so perfect standing there. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that, compared to me, everyone else was... uh... really stupid. The mere fact I don't know if she had a name pays tribute to that. It isn't anything against them, rather, it's something against me. When Inari gave me her blessing to give me the snarky intelligence you know and love today, I don't think personal relations between me and everyone else was her top priority. Or, any level of priority in fact.

Turns out I was quite lucky to have decided against going on another adventure. The ring I had around my leg was broadcasting my general location to some person sitting behind an array of monitors. Although, it probably wouldn't have mattered either way. Inari hadn't given me permission to fail. She probably would have saved me if I had left, but she prefered if I followed her little plan and practiced brewing more potions. The larger building I was in wasn't solely dedicated to their breeding project. It was an alchemy college of sorts. So, they had tons of spare brewing stands and supplies. One of those brewing stands ended up, along with some more basic supplies, being placed in a small cave for me to play around with. They didn't give me any gunpowder or sugar for... obvious reasons. In addition, they had placed a camera in the wall of the cave. It was probably because they wanted clips for their hot new fennec reality TV show. That would get all the views. Anyway, it was supposed to be a hidden camera, but because me had big smrt brian, I noticed it and promptly ignored it. I didn't know it was watching me work. I quickly learned that I could use just about anything for my potions, so I started scavenging around for anything and everything. After making potion after potion, I built up my little stockpile. However, they only gave me five plastic bottles and I didn't know how to combine potions or ingredients, so I was quite limited.

Once I ran out of available bottles, I had to drink my oldest potion. I must have gone through about ten potions, starting to learn to associate ingredients with effects, when everything I knew about alchemy was thrown for a loop. Brace yourselves, but I learned that... not all potions are good. As you can probably imagine, me spending ten minutes gagging and coughing up blood before getting briefly hospitalized again disillusioned me somewhat to the joys of alchemy. At the time, it seemed like a fine idea to make a potion out of some brambles I found. When I returned to the compound, there were a few kinds of plants missing, although I don't remember exactly what they were. It was like I was constantly trying to kill myself for the sake of science in one way or another, and Inari and the researchers had to do everything in their power to prevent that from happening.

After that disaster of science, I ran into another setback. I ran out of nether wart. They hadn't been expecting results like myself so soon, so they decided to throw a bunch of random brewing supplies at me in the hopes that it would keep me busy for a week while they set up some tests for me. However, they must have underestimated my attention span because they only gave me about 30... units of nether wart. I blew through all my supplies in a few days and had to wait. During that time, I started poking around at the ring around my leg. The universal key, IE, what was totally my screwdriver, could open the side of it. Inside, there was, unsurprisingly, a bunch of colorful wires and green circuit boards. I was about to jam my screwdriver into it and break all carefully made wires to pull them out and get a closer look, but something, or rather, somebody gave me a hint of doubt. So, I quietly obeyed and resealed the little imprisonment around my leg. If I had broken it, I'm pretty sure I would have gotten a visit and the jig would have been up. That screwdriver was my future.

Eventually, I did get a visit, but not to steal back my screwdriver. The researchers tracked me down and abducted me. As much as I wanted to bring some potions with me, they didn't let me. They took me to that room I originally woke up in after my life saving surgery. Inside there, I did... nothing. For several hours, in fact. They gave me water, but no food or brewing supplies. One afternoon of boredom and napping later, I was quite hungry. Starting to get a little concerned that I was going to be left here to starve, I started calling out, pacing around the outside, and clawing at the doorway. Nobody came. Loneliness started to set in. The only thing that broke the oppressive silence was the soft whirring sound of the camera near the roof. In an attempt to take my mind off the growing hunger, tyrannical quiet, and existential thoughts starting to form in my head, I set myself down and tried to go to sleep. Again.

It was a few more hours before anyone came. At that point, I was starting to get genuinely worried they had forgotten about me and were going to leave me to quietly die here. I never had felt that kind of hunger before and never had afterwards. I spent most of my life no paucity of food. Well, there's a first time for everything I suppose, including starvation. So, after half a day of waiting, that same green robed person came for me. As much as I wanted to struggle just for the sake of struggling and being defiant, I was too hungry to do anything other than let myself get grabbed by the scruff of the neck and taken to another room. they didn't even bother to sedate me. Although, if they had done that, I probably would have gotten sick due to having no food in me. He took me though several twisting corridors while buying several curious glances from other students and researchers as for why he was carrying a small, furry, depressed looking fox. Eventually, we made it to a new room and placed me in the middle of it before stealthily leaving. It was pretty similar to the last room I was in. IE: blank and empty for the most part. However, instead of a bowl of water, there were five brewing ingredients in an orderly line. After a few moments, I heard a voice behind me announce something and the ground lit up and showed a picture of nether wart, which was one of the five options of brewing ingredients. Deciding to ignore the command, I went to the ingredient I found the most interesting, the ghast tear. I tried to grab it, but the researchers didn't want that. I leap backwards when jolts of pain started to strike across my leg. Thinking that I accidentally stepped on shards of glass or something, I quickly became a dancer and bounced backwards, shaking my leg furiously. However, the pain clung to me and kept digging into my leg. Even when I was cowering in the corner as far away from the ghast tear as possible, it still felt like my leg was trapped in a bracelet of spinning thorns. Eventually, the pain died away as randomly as it had started. Tentatively, I crawled out from the corner and started to sniff at the closest other ingredient, the sugar, but immediately and uselessly ran away as the spiking pain started up again on the same leg. Looking down, I noticed that the pain seemed to be coming from the band around my leg. With trail and error, I eventually learned that the only ingredient I could go up to without pain was the nether wart. Then, they gave me some fish.

After I wolfed, or, foxed down the little bit of life they had thrown me, the same voice behind me announced something else and the image on the floor changed to that of sugar. Thinking that I was smrt, I went over to the nether wart again. Of course, more stabs of pain in my leg shattered my eager expectancy of more food. So, deciding that I was getting punished for no reason, I stopped playing their game and backed into the corner to wait. Once they realized I had no intention of moving, guess what happened? Yeah. More volts of pain. At this point, it felt like my leg had been cut off, and not just cut off as in it lost circulation. So through the pain, my vision started to blur with tears. I had no clue what they wanted. When I went to any of the ingredients, they punished me. When I stayed still, they punished me. None of it made any sense to me. The world was an inherently unjust and lawless place where pain and punishments could be thrown out with no order or reason. There was nothing to ensure balance and fairness. Chaos and evil would extinguish the frail light of hope and plunge the world into despair. Then I realized that they just wanted me to identify the ingredient that they were showing a picture of on the floor. In hind sight, I probably should have noticed that sooner. I blame the hunger and pain obstructing my judgement. Although, I was kind of right in my whole "The world is unjust" statement. But now I know that there is one thing that fights to ensure balance and fairness, those who stand up for it. We cannot rely on outside forces to enforce judgement.

My despair had an unintended side effect. The researchers learned more than they thought they would, like how I was totes adorbs. Well, I doubt that was what they wrote down in their log. They probably wrote down something along the lines of "shows signs of complex social behavior". Remember how I said I cried? Thinking about it logically, crying is a pretty useless waste of water, especially for a creature that is supposed to live in the desert like myself. Lots of creatures can cry in order to clean out their eyes, but only really smrt social creatures like humans do it to show their extreme distress or happiness to others. And now, due to breaking into tears at the pain, they started expecting more from me, and not just in terms of alchemy interest.