<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>

Artwork by  a-kitsune!

---

Bryce's early days at Burrow Prime were spent undergoing a lot of testing. Blood tests, DNA tests (Mr. Underwood said his entire genome would have to be sequenced), vision, endurance... he found himself running on treadmills and getting vaccinations for diseases he'd never heard of. The wombat also quizzed him on his general knowledge of medieval European history which was... odd.

I'm dealing with a crazy person, Bryce thought. But he's a crazy person with money, and that's what matters..

Speaking of, the only way Bryce was going to put up with this was if he got paid part of his stipend early, ahead of the promised trip. Mr. Underwood didn't seem to relish that request, but he also seemed strangely eager to keep the caribou on his payroll, so he ultimately acquiesced.

Meanwhile Mr. Underwood's assistant, a chipper ferret named Sully, was also strangely eager to have the "new recruit" around.

The ferret was a keen outdoorsman by his own account. Or maybe he just noticed how often his new "coworker" headed off into the woods in between test sessions and decided to break the ice that way. There was a lot of downtime to fill, and Bryce often took advantage of it to get some birding in. Sully however found birdwatching boring. His favorite activity was fishing, and he asked whether Bryce had ever been.

The answer was yes, technically. Bryce hadn't really been on a fishing trip since he was a kid and he didn't care for being on a boat very much.

The ferret's eyes lit up. "That's the perfect excuse to go fly fishing!"

Bryce didn't know why he even agreed to it. He did get the sense that Sully didn't have many friends outside of his, um, work. Surely it wouldn't do him any harm to give it a try. If it turned out not to be his cup of tea, he'd just go off on a hike instead.

What Sully hadn't told him was that his wombat boss wasn't very careful about keeping waste chemicals from his lab from seeping out into the waterways around his burrow, and that said chemicals were known to have unpredictable effects on wildlife.

The day was getting late. Bryce was getting eaten alive by mosquitos... but then he detected the bite. The caribou was actually excited when he saw the shadow in the water and felt the tug on his line. Sully, however, seemed to be having second thoughts about landing this particular lunker...