Episode 13: Nick the Stampede (Patreon)

Another Feb Commission complete! One to go and two days to do it!

This one is a Trigun crossover piece in Sunderance art style. Maybe a little heavy on the Trigun? Hope you like it!

Enjoy! Story follows. Warning, very mild sexual suggestiveness and nudity:

 

In a world where gunplay is a way of life and the helpless are always subjected to the will of the strong, mammals would tell stories of heroes that wander the land. These heroes fight for the weak, defend those who cannot defend themselves, and defeat evil at every turn. On a world where the sun could kill the unprepared as easily as a bullet, these lone figures often failed to appear when the people cried out for a savior. When violent gangs, greedy opportunists, and the lawless wealthy spread over the land unchecked, hope started to fade that there would ever be such a hero again.

He arrived out of nowhere. A long figure walking the deserts on nothing more than his two paws. Indestructible, never failing to appear when the people needed them the most. Destruction was often left in his wake, destruction brought by the downfall of those who abused their strength. And then after flashing a charming smile, giving a cheerful wave, and with no desire for reward or request for thanks, he would vanish into the deserts again. Hope had returned, though none knew where he came from or where he went when he left.

One bunny, Judy Hopps, determined to know more about him, searched far and wide for this lonely fox. The monumental task, one that seemed impossible to many at first, led her to meet a strange fox. At first, she dismissed him. He was silly. He was a smart ass. Charming as he could be, he also sometimes seemed a coward who shrunk away from fights when taunted and pushed by lowlifes. He escaped dangerous situations with what she considered pure luck and random chance.

Until the day the mammals of one small town cried out for a savior. Madmammals came with the heated wind, threatened the town and all in it if “Nick the Wilde” wasn’t turned over to them. And to her shock, to her horror, the strange fox stepped forward to meet them. Suddenly fearful and expecting the death of this strange fox she had come to see as a friend, she watched in awe with the rest of the town when he moved like lightening. His feet carried him faster than she had ever seen a mammal move before; his gun roared and spit fire, and his eyes took on a determined calm that almost frightened her. He won the day with seeming ease, sparing the lives of those who had tried to take his. She knew then that she had found him, as strange as he seemed. And while he was not the perfect, flawless hero that the stories told, to the bunny that followed him to learn more…

He seemed invincible.

What sounded like a stampede in the adjacent room brought the bunny’s mind out of her work so suddenly that the pen in her paw went flying across the room as she tried, and failed, to stop herself from falling out of her chair. Luckily, the fall was painless enough to permit her to roll onto her feet only a second after impact, allowing her to turn her gaze to the paper-thin wall where the sounds of cursing and growling filtered through. Fear spiked as she pushed herself to her feet and sprinted for the door, grabbing the belt with her six-shooter as she went.

“Nick! Nick, I’m coming!”

In the weeks they had traveled the dark and barrel waste together, not once had she heard him curse like he was now. The sounds were pained and caused a spurt of panic as she rushed towards his door, her paw tightening on the wooden grip as she gripped the door knob and swung it inward. “Nick, are you alrig….”

Her words died in her throat and the gun sagged to her side as she took in the sight of the room. Nothing was wrong that she could see, aside from the fact that his back was turned to her and he was muttering to himself while running a towel over his damp ears absently. Surprised at first when she realized that he wasn’t in any apparent danger, she allowed her raised gun to sag to her side when it registered that she was staring at his bare back. Long and leanly muscled, as she had expected, it wasn’t the naked state of the male that she noticed at first. It was the wasteland of scars that greeted her gaze. The variety and freshly regrown skin over some furless patches told her that not all of them were old. Some of them were relatively new, a few months into healing at the most, and she found her eyes drifting lower as she examined the long gash that ran the length of his spine. The scars stopped short of his tail, which interested her.

That was when her skin started to burn under her fur when she realized that she was looking at the very bare ass that the tail was attached too.

“I’m fine,” he said loudly, still sounding annoyed as he started to move around the room again with a slight limp. Clearly, he had missed her entry into his room. Where her eyes had been on what she had decided was a very nice fox butt, her eyes were now filled with the cream-colored fur of his sheath and the full sac below when he turned without looking to the door. “I just stubbed my…”

When his voice died, her eyes rose. Not entirely sure why she wasn’t running out of the room, because the part of her that was mortified was demanding that she do just that, she stayed where she was as her gaze traveled the length of his torso. Just like his back, there were scars. In many cases, they were gruesome. One even had a metal grating over his ribs in what she assumed had been a surgical attempt to keep his internal organs or bones in place, a wound that she couldn’t imagine how he had survived at all. There were burns, bullet wounds, and what looks like a poorly healed bite from a large predator on his ribs. The embarrassed desire to flee from the very naked male was overcome by the sorrow that clawed at her heart, and she found herself stepping further into the room.

“Nick,” she whispered, not sure what she was supposed to say or even what she wanted to say. She placed her gun on the side-table near the door, her gaze lifting to his. If he had been surprised by her entry or embarrassed himself at his state of undress, he didn’t show it. Emerald green eyes rested on hers with what she could only describe as calm understanding.

“I know,” he murmured, letting both arms drop from the towel as he held her eyes. One arm that was cybernetic. She had assumed it was an augmentation, to improve his combat skills. But now she could see the scars running away from it. Her stomach knotted as pity tried to fill her. “It’s okay if you’re disgusted.”

“What?” she whispered, her voice almost nonexistent. She couldn’t even comprehend what he had said, and shook her head quickly. They were both surprised when she rushed across the room and placed her paws on his scarred chest as she looked up at him with wet eyes. “No. No! That’s not it at all. I just… I didn’t expect this. What happened? How did this even happen to you?”

“The price of being a good guy?” he said, his muzzle curving into one of his charming smiles. How easily he did it was questionable. She could see the sadness in green eyes as she held them, until the smile slowly faded and his eyes lowered to the paws on his chest. It may have been her imagination, or the realization that her own was beating quickly in her chest, but she could have sworn that his heart sped up as he stared down at them for a long moment before he continued. “We all know that this isn’t a kind world, Judy. This is the price of trying to be what everyone else is not.”

“There are good mammals out there,” she said, her muzzle turning into a frown when he reached up to gently remove her paws from his chest. She took a step to follow him when he moved towards the bed. “There are! I know you’ve seen it. You have to see it!”

“Of course, there are good mammals,” he said, tossing the towel onto the floor before reaching forward to pick up his pants. He stopped when she jumped onto the bed and stepped on said pants facing him with a determined expression fixed on her muzzle. “Are you going to let me get dressed?”

“No,” she said, going so far as to kick one foot back to send the pants flying off the bed behind her. The action caused him to raise one brow and straighten up, his tail swaying behind his still very nude form. “Is this the price of not killing? I haven’t mentioned it before. I thought maybe you were sparing them to spare me, to protect me somehow. But that’s not it, is it?”

“No,” he admitted after a moment of silence, during which she watched him fold his arms over his chest and stand hips shot. Playful eyes watching her as he made no attempt to hide himself from her. “You do know that standing in a room with a naked male sends that male a pretty clear signal. Even if he is disfigured.”

She considered him for a moment in silence, resisting the desire to chew on the inside of her lip as she held his gaze. He was trying to distract her by drawing her attention to his nudity. Nudity that he, from his own words, thought she would find disgusting. She steeled herself, drawing a deep breath before she called his bluff. Green eyes widened when she stepped closer to the edge of the bed and before he could take a step back, she gripped his shoulders with her paws to draw him closer to her. She saw the hesitation, but also the interest and hope in that gaze when he glanced down at her lips for a brief moment before he opened his muzzle to speak. And she struck, just as his lips parted.

Standing on her foot pads to elevate herself, she tipped her head to the side and pressed her mouth to his in a clumsy kiss that had her long front teeth smashing into his lip hard enough to make him yelp. Pulling back, skin burning with embarrassment, ready to apologize while cursing herself for messing up what could have been a great moment, she stopped when those lips curved upward. Trembling a bit, nose twitching furiously when his flesh and blood paw came up to cup the back of her head, she found herself pulled in for another try. Her eyes fluttered closed when the much softer, much more patient kiss showed her how their mouths could fit together. The scent of him filled her every breath, the twitch of her nose slowing as she sucked in deeper breaths of clean male fox. She didn’t know what to expect, even as anticipation caused her stomach to tighten and her thighs to squirm when he tucked his mouth against hers and parted his lips again. The slick dance of a lick teased lightly over her lips, filling her senses with the taste of him when she parted them to allow him to explore her mouth as her tongue curiously rolled over his. An exploration that soon had their arms wrapped around each other, holding tightly as she felt her world tilt and swim. A sensation that she realized was largely because they were now lying side by side in the bed, once she was able to think clearly.

Eyes as wide as they were soft, she raised them to him as a warmth spread through her. A warmth that she knew would build into heat if she stayed where she was for much longer. He smelled so good, his paws, even the mechanical one, were very gentle on her as he unhurriedly stroked her back through her shirt. His tongue licked over his mouth slowly, his body adjusted slightly, and she was drastically more aware of how nude he was when she felt the brush of his sheath against the inside of her thigh. Not that she blamed him for it. She was the one who had draped her leg over his hip to draw him closer, after all.

“I’m not disgusted,” she whispered softly, her paws sliding up the back of his neck slowly. There she found another scar, one that she explored curiously for a moment before allowing her to touch to rest at the base of his ears. Lips curved softly in a smile when he tilted his head into the light scratch of her short claws at their base, a little rumble leaving him after his eyes dropped closed. “But why? You’re, for lack of a better word, amazing. I know you could beat any of them without much effort if you weren’t so determined to save everyone. They would kill you without a second thought, wouldn’t they?”

“I try to think that they wouldn’t sometimes,” he muttered, the low hum of his voice so close to her causing her fur to stand on end in a most pleasant way. “But of course, more often than I would like I am reminded of how unrealistic that is.”

Her gaze dropped to the patched mass of metal that covered the scars on the left side of his chest. A wound that she couldn’t even imagine a normal mammal surviving, much less being able to continue to fight and protect life. Even when some of those lives might not have been worth saving.

“Like I said, this planet isn’t a place overflowing with kindness,” he continued, opening his eyes just a fraction to look at her. She felt the slow caress of his flesh and fur paw slide up her back, the sort of slow and curious touch that told her he was wondering how far he could go and how intimate he could be. “The ones who run things, walking over normal mammals in the process, don’t care who they hurt. Some of those who wander from town to town killing for sport might have been good, once upon a time. People are only as a good as this world allows them to be.”

“But what about you?” she asked again, leaning in to press her forehead against the center of his chest. Curling in closer to him, she closed her own eyes as she listened to the steady beat of his heart. It soothed her and amazed her. Just the fact that it still beat given what he must have been through. “The world has tried to change you, hasn’t it?”

“And you,” he commented, and she could instantly tell by his softly playful tone that he was trying to change the subject. “You’ve remained a good mammal.”

“Nick,” she sighed, taking another moment to root her nose through his fur softly before she raised her head to look up at him. “We’re talking about those like you. The ones who can make a difference. Who can stand up and survive…” She waved one paw down at the ruin of his torso once before she continued. “…this without becoming bitter and hateful.”

“Who says I’m not bitter?” he murmured, resting his muzzle between her ears, preventing her from lifting her gaze to see if he was serious. “Besides, if I didn’t do it, who would?”

“Dumb fox,” she whispered, struggling to keep the tears at bay as she wrapped her arms around him again and squeezed him close.

Lying together in the in the silent room as minutes ticked by, she felt no real desire to move. Even when she was again reminded of how naked he was when she felt a twitch in his sheath, she didn’t move away. He on the other hand suddenly seemed to realize that she might have felt the slight yet obvious motion, and the reason for it as his paws had wandered down awfully close to her butt.

“You should go back to your room,” he said at length, even if the word spurred neither of them to make it happen. In fact, she wiggled against him just a little. Or more precisely, her hips wiggled in his paws as she looked up at him with sparkling eyes when he seemed to take the hint. The grip of large paws on her rear, both real and mechanical, caused her a shiver a little as she stuck her tongue out at him. “I mean, if you want to.”

“I’m thinking about it,” she teased, finding it oddly easy to relax this close to him. Relax and quietly want as one of his paws started a slowly repetitive caress over her back, starting between her shoulder blades and stopping at the base of her tail. A tail that twitched when she narrowed her eyes on him. “You were cursing and yelling when I came in here.”

“Yes, I was,” he responded, one brow quirking in response to the oddly timed question.

“You stubbed your toe.”

“I did.” The brow remained quirked when his paw gently gripped her tail, causing her to shiver as he allowed the fur to slide through his fingers before he started the process over again.

“You survived all of this, and you were crying like a kit because you stubbed your toe?”

“Stubbing your toe hurts!” he said in response to her playful grin, causing her to muffle a laugh in his chest. “It might be the second worst pain in the world. And I wasn’t crying. I was cursing. Very Toddish, strong cursing.”

“Big strong fox can’t take a little stubbed toe,” she giggled, sliding her arms around his neck as he tried his best to look offended. The smile creeping up the corners of his muzzle diminished it, only to have it vanished when she pressed her lips to his again in a short but welcome kiss. She enjoyed it for a few seconds before she asked in a breathy voice, “Which piece of furniture injured your poor toes, anyway?”

“The bed,” he muttered lightly, his muzzle tilting back as she trailed kissed along the underside of his muzzle slowly. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” she replied, smiling to herself at feeling that twitch against her thigh again when her paws ran along the back of his neck lightly. “Just wanted to know which one to thank for it in the morning.”