Yin's Identity Crisis
By Hikaru Katayamma
& John 'The Gneech' Robey

Chapter 3
Round and round we go...

“Oh, my god!” Yin said quietly as she got a good look at the weapon the badger was pointing at her. “Please, don’t kill me!” She quickly raised her hands in surrender.

The badger shook his head. “We have no intention of harming you, Miss. Now if you would just turn around and get into the car,” he instructed, waving towards the black sedan, “I think we can avoid any unpleasantries.”

Yin turned around and began to walk slowly towards the car. “Look, I don’t know who you guys are, but I have friends. I’ll be missed. You can’t just snatch me off the street without anyone knowing.” She paused as she reached the car. Not getting a response from either assailant, she turned to make a startled discovery. Both of them were missing.

“You can put your hands down now, Yin,” a tall, white rabbit said. He was enormous. Not counting his ears, he had to easily be six feet tall with one lop ear and a chin that looked like it was chiseled in stone.

Yin slowly lowered her hands as he walked over to the vehicle. “Oh wow,” Yin mumbled. “That has to be the second biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen!”

He placed his hand on the car and a second later it vanished from sight.

Yin shook her head at what she saw. This was just too incredible. What had happened to the badger and the wolf? And how did he make the car disappear? For that matter, just who was he? He looked kind of familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she saw him before. “How did you do that?” she asksd in a hushed voice.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is always indistinguishable from magic,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Go home, Yin. Go home and pretend none of this ever happened.” With a wink, he vanished before her eyes.

“Oh man,” Yin muttered to herself as she stared at where the huge rabbit had just stood. A second later she looked around before stamping her foot. Nobody was in sight. It was too early for the kind of crowd that The Watering Hole normally attracted. “Damn it!” she exclaimed to herself more than anyone else. “That must have been him!”
Angry and frustrated at herself for letting an opportunity slip by, Yin turned and stomped her way home.

Arden strode into his office and sat down in the large, leather bound chair. His current form, that of a lop-eared white hare, was quite comfortable in the chair. “Mychelle, please set up a level three containment area by the far wall.”
There was a brief shimmer in the air before the voice replied, “Containment field activated.”

“Thank you. Now access my BDA. You’ll find two bioforms stored in there. Extract them to the containment area, please.” As he spoke, he crossed his left leg over his right and began to idly scratch the bottom of his foot with his hand.
Within the invisible field, the forms of a badger and a wolf appeared. Startled at their sudden change of venue, they looked around in a panic. The badger, gun in hand, spotted Arden and pointed it in his direction. “What’s going on here,” he demanded. His partner, spotting the lapin, immediately drew a quite different looking weapon and aimed it at their apparent captor.

“My name is Arden, and you are currently being detained as part of an investigation into the transport and sale of illegal technologies to your dimension,” the rabbit stated in a businesslike tone.

“Arden, eh?” the badger mumbled. “So you would be the one that’s been contaminating the local known as Yin.”
Arden nodded. He got a far away look in his eyes for a second before his shape flickered and changed. Sitting in the chair was no longer a lapin, but a polar bear. “I believe this is the form that you were looking for?”

“Wow, Neat trick,” the wolf commented.

“Cute,” the badger grumbled. “You can change your shape. That still doesn’t give you the right to come in and snatch our people for whatever obscene experiments you may have planned.”

Arden shook his head. “You misunderstand. I didn’t snatch Yin. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, I dropped the unit that controls my bioadaptation process when I jump from dimension to dimension. Yin found it and activated the homing function. It was entirely unintentional.”

“So what were you doing outside The Watering Hole last night?” the Badger confidently challenged. Let’s see him worm his way out of this one.

The bear laughed. “Simple. I was meeting Yin for a date. She’s an interesting sentient.”

“Yah, she may be cute,” the wolf chipped in. “But what makes you think you can just come in and interfere with the locals. She was telling all her friends about you. Do you have any idea how much trouble that could have caused for us?”
Arden smiled and shook his head. “Right. And who’s going to believe her? Just the other folks who are already convinced that there’s a conspiracy, and I don’t think they’re a major worry for you.”

“It’s not your place to decide,” the badger stated angrily. “You have no right to come into our world and start mucking about.”

“On the contrary,” Arden said as he stood. “I’m an unlimited class scout. I’m charged with visiting worlds such as yours, evaluating them and determining if they are ready for contact.” He paused for a second as he took a couple of steps towards the force field. “Or advanced technologies, for that matter.”

“And what business is it of yours what technologies we have?” the badger challenged.

“Simple. You’re using class 7 neuralizers. Those are not designed for use on your type of species. Usage of the devices can cause permanent neurological damage or even possibly death,” Arden stated in a terse, angry voice. “And if that doesn’t give me a right to stick my nose into your business, then that’s too damn bad because you don’t have any choice in the matter.”

“Acceptable risk.” The badger adjusted his weapon, cranking up the power. “Now send us back before I do something we’ll both regret.”

The bear chuckled. “Go ahead and take your best shot.”

Not expecting that reaction, the badger gave the bear a surprised look for a second before his expression hardened. The force field flared as a bolt of energy leapt from the weapon and spent its energy trying to penetrate the invisible barrier.
“Just a hint for you,” Arden said, stepping up to the edge of the barrier. “You don’t have a single weapon in your arsenal that could penetrate that field to harm me.” The badger growled as he holstered his weapon, his companion following suit. The bear turned and strolled casually back to his chair and sat down. “Now. I want you to tell me how you obtained the technology, when you first got it, who is providing it and when and where you’re expecting the next shipment.”
“We’re not telling you anything,” the badger grumbled angrily as he shot a harsh look to his associate to insure there was no dissention.

“Now, now. There’s no reason to be that way, “ Arden said as he propped his feet up on the desk. “Believe me, I have the technology to pluck the information from your brain. Though it would take much longer than if you just cooperated, I will get the information either way.”

“You’re bluffing,” the badger said not quite as assured as he was before. Some of his bravado had worn off.

“What if he isn’t,” the wolf asked nervously in a low voice. “This guy isn’t playing around, Jay. Do you really want him mucking around in your head?”

Jay turned on the wolf. “I’m not going to betray the FiB and neither are you. Do you understand me?”

“Sure,” the wolf said, taken back at the badger’s attitude.

“That’s too bad,” Arden said with a sigh. “Mychelle. Access the bioforms in containment and digitize the badger please.” Before the badger could react, he flickered and vanished.

“Bioform digitized and stored,” the computer dutifully reported.

“Thank you, Mychelle. Please begin synaptic mapping of the subject for memory extraction,” the bear reluctantly directed.

“What did you just do?” the wolf asked with a wide-eyed look of shock.

Arden dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward onto the desk. “I digitized your friend and put him into biostorage. My computer is now mapping the neurons in his brain so that we can download his memories.” He paused for a second and stood again. “I really didn’t want to have to do it this way,” the bear said, walking slowly towards the wolf. “I would much rather have just had you answer the questions rather than subjecting him to this.”
The wolf nodded slowly. “Is he dead?”

The question surprised Arden for a second. “No. Not in the least. I’m not in the habit of killing sentient beings if it can be avoided.”

“Will there be any side effects?”

Arden frowned and nodded. “Yes. The longer the process takes, the more severe the effects. Fortunately they aren’t permanent, though they can be quite painful.”

The two men faced each other for a minute before the wolf spoke again. “All right then. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Arden smiled as he ordered the force field to be dropped. “Come with me,” Arden said, waving a hand towards the door. “These things are better handled in a less formal setting.”

The large warthog sat at the end of the long meeting table. As with every other person in the room, he wore a sharply tailored black suit. “Damn it, what do you mean they just disappeared. That’s impossible. Something must have happened to them.”

The reporting jackal coughed nervously. “Agreed, however we have no solid evidence. The only lead we have is the fact that we registered a quantum dimensional shift at approximately the same time, though we weren’t able to track it.”
“What project were they working on?” he gruffly demanded.

“The Yin Panda case,” the jackal replied, opening a folder. “Apparently she was involved in an interdimensional incident and her memory was wiped yesterday. They were on surveillance to ensure that there was no further contamination.”

“Damn it, man,” the warthog shouted, slamming his hand into the table and causing everyone to jump. “Do I have to hold everyone’s hand? Obviously whoever was responsible for the dimensional breach she was involved in probably returned. I want her grabbed now and sent to special holding for debriefing.”

“Special Holding?” the jackal said in a squeaky voice. “Yes sir,” he continued having regained control over his faculties. “I’ll get a team on it right away.”

The warthog nodded. “Good. And place our forces on orange alert. I want that section of town covered with agents who are set up for acquisition and containment of whoever this intruder is.” He paused and let out a low rumbling snarl. “Nobody toys with the FiB and gets away with it.”