a story based in the korps universe that is nowhere near canon i'm sure i just needed to write this as a conversation with myself! more parts forthcoming.
part 1 (here) | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 (forthcoming)
Isaac wasn’t giddy, like they thought they’d be. Quitting their job after a long overnight shift felt good in the moment, but now, walking out to their car, the thought about what they’d do tomorrow crept into their mind.
Isaac walked out to their car, cheap plastic bag of belongings threatening to tear open right there on the pavement. The sky was just starting to shift from deep midnight blue to the cold grayness of summer morning, and the birds were starting to wake up, their chilly bird calls adding to the morning humidity.
Corn towered either side of the county road home, lopsided headlights poorly illuminated the potholes in the road. The morning news program was talking about the election in sixteen months, muffled by open windows and the combined sounds of engine and wind.
Fifteen minutes later, Isaac arrived home, and setting the weakening bag down on the porch to find their keys in the pale morning light, heard a noise.
Probably one of the neighbors, they concluded. Isaac’s neighbors were special cases, every one of them. Running a quasi-illegal auto-shop wasn’t really a problem, it was their drunken yelling, power tools grinding away at one in the morning, and patent refusal to just be neighborly that got to them.
Fiddling with the key in the door, Isaac heard the noise again. Closer.
“Uh…” Isaac hazarded, sweeping their front yard looking for anything or anyone. It didn’t help that Isaac was afraid of the dark, even though the sky was lightening further and the sodium street lamp on the corner did its best to push back the darkness, the shadows still dominated. “Hello?” they mumbled, barely under their breath.
The morning air was silent, Isaac’s heart wasn’t. Pounding in their ears was the illogical fear of being followed home by someone looking for an easy mark. Isaac didn’t remember being followed home, there were no headlights in their rear view mirror.
Isaac glimpsed a shadow. There was a shape, peering around the corner of the house. They could see a flash of pink as the shadow retreated from view. Fumbling with the doorknob and jamming the key into the deadbolt, Isaac rushed and opened the door, slamming it shut behind them, clicking both locks back into place. What the fuck?
Then there was a moment of clarity: All my shit’s still out there.
Isaac hunched their shoulders, which reawakened the pain in their shoulders from that terrible fucking bed in work release, and leaned over the window sill next to the door. They couldn’t see any movement in the direction of the stranger. Still, though, they decided not to retrieve the bag until the sun was fully up.
Coffee gurgling into the pot, Isaac was pacing back and forth in front of the window, looking at their phone.
I’m glad you’re ok axyl but… why not call the cops? Their friend said.
bc fuck the cops, first of all. they haven’t hurt me or stolen my stuff yet, i’m not calling the cops. Isaac typed back.
Their phone buzzed with a couple more replies, Isaac ignored them, spying something stranger.
Do tigers live in colorado? They asked.
no, lol. are you on drugs? Someone replied.
No, seriously, Isaac quickly switched to the camera app, and zoomed in on the unmistakable striped tail poking out from around the corner of the building, waving gently, fur sleek and shiny, only disturbed by the breeze.
woah holy shit
Yeah i’m calling animal control.
A voice behind them chuckled. “No you’re not.”
Spinning around quickly, Isaac reflexively chucked their phone at the intruder out of pure, distilled panic.
“Why’d you do that?” the lean figure asked, the shape of her smile leaking into her words, phone clutched in a hand… a furred hand.
Stunned stupid by their decision to throw away their only means of communication, Isaac was further stunned more stupid by, irrefutably, what looked like their fursona, clad in black and purple athletic wear, strong midriff resting on long legs trained, no doubt, to jump as if spring-loaded. She reached up and pulled a strand of purple hair away from her eyes, sharp claws striking a sense of danger into the human.
“Hey, A, I think you broke her,” another voice joked, this one lower in pitch and less feminine, but Isaac couldn’t physically tell the one carefully putting away a lockpicking set into its case from the one smiling at the contents of their phone. The only difference was their outfits.
“X, you need to learn to hide better,” the one scrolling through the phone said.
“Still getting used to this thing,” she said, pulling her tail to the front. “What are you looking for in her phone anyway?”
There it was again… her. Isaac felt a little jump in their chest the first time but was more focused on the second of the two intruders at the time to pay it any mind.
The first one smiled, flashing a fang, “Ah, here we are!” She turned the phone around, “The artist got my good side in this universe!” Her smile turned smug.
“It’s always nice to be seen, isn’t that right, Axyl?”
Isaac fainted.
The smell of coffee came next. The morning news was on, Isaac heard something about the police. “Ugh,” they groaned, more out of annoyance at the news than anything to do with their loss of consciousness.
“It speaks!” the low, husky voice cheered.
Isaac sat up stone-straight. That wasn’t a dream…
“Quiet! Let her wake up,” another voice cooed.
Sitting cross legged in the armchair in the living room was the tiger: Isaac’s fursona. Zero doubt remained. She moved a mug, steaming with coffee, towards the stunned human. Another tiger, picture-perfect the exact copy of the first tiger, munched happily on a bowl of cereal.
“I hope you don’t mind. Given the circumstances, we thought it’d be okay to help ourselves,” the first one said calmly and kindly. “I understand what you’re going through right now, but we don’t have a lot of time. Your roommate comes back from work soon, right?”
Isaac nodded. Looking up and down the two tigers, Isaac noticed the first one was dressed economically. The simple sports bra and short shorts revealed a lot of skin–well, fur. She looked down on the human with several more inches to spare through pink square-frame glasses.
The second one wore round frames with the same pink-purple lenses, but was dressed more to impress: ripped jean shorts, black tank top with a stylized DNA double-helix, and a spiked choker. What could only be described as a utility belt wrapped around her hips, laden with useful, compact tools.
Isaac turned quickly to the cup of coffee, mostly out of shame, to not be seen eyeing up the two women… the two well-dressed, fit, attractive, tiger women which looked exactly like the way they presented themself online.
Could still be a dream, they thought.
“Unlikely,” the deep-voiced one chuckled.
“Easy,” the cross legged one said pointedly. “Bottom line up front: we’re you.”
“We’re who you want to be!” the other one added, boastfully.
“If you want to think of it that way, yeah.” The tiger drank from her mug. “From two other universes, obviously.”
“Obviously?” Isaac equivocated. “That’s not… that’s not even the beginning of the questions I have.”
“I can imagine,” the athletic one said. “I’m A.”
“I’m X.”
“And with any hope you’ll be Y, but only if you decide to be,” A said.
X looked up into the air, at a blank spot on the ceiling, as if thinking of something to say, and looked back down at A. “Ah, roommate’s on her way in. Let’s bounce, girl.”
“Eat something before she leaves tonight so we can talk with you instead of waiting for you to wake up,” A said. “Here, take this in the meantime.” It was a little silver disk, polished to a mirror finish, engraved with the winged double-helix figure they both wore on different spots on their uniform.
“Keep it secret,” X warned seriously.
“Lie about a tiger escaping from the zoo to your friends, if you want, there’ll be a story planted by tomorrow morning. If you tell the truth you won’t see us again,” A said with finality.
And just as quick as Isaac could blink, they were gone. The sound of jingling keys through the door was all they could hear. The only remnants of the visit were the half-eaten bowl of cereal and empty coffee mug.