Nicknames for our Fred Friends.

"Well," Duke Dredrick D'Honaire says after the manbear Synizn raises a cloak of magical silence. "Is this really necessary? That mage put up so many wards and magical diversions around us the magic makes my teeth itch!"

"Oh, it's necessary alright," chuckles the manfox as his tail idlely swishes from side to side. "It has to do with our friend the Golem. Probe seems to be honorable enough, but......."

"He's a golem," shrugs one Fred.....the one who had come to this world as a human. "You should never trust one, or you'll be dead! What I want to know is why YOU trust him."

"From his past actions, I see a man that is honorable enough," smiles the manfox. "And something else that I've come to....sense about him. Let's just say I can smell it....." The manfox's black, moist nose twitches for emphasis.

"It's that supernatural nature of your, isn't it?" one of the former demi-fox Freds asks. "It's telling you something is trustable about that thing?"

"That 'thing's' name is Probe," admonishes the manfox. "And yes, my....supernatural nature tells me he's trustable....to a point."

"Must be nice," the other former demi-fox Fred mutters. "But why......why keep this form when you can just ask those dragon friends of yours to.....change you back to the form the gods gave you at birth?"

The manfox's tail stops for a second, and then he shakes his head sadly.

"This decision of remaining a manimal was not an easy one for me to reach, gentlemen," Fred the manfox states quietly. "I take it that in your Allaria's there aren't many nonhumans, correct? Well, there weren't many in mine, and that kind of limited my experiences with them. I always felt that somehow, human beings were always on top because we deserved to be there....we had a moral right to be on top. When I started to sprout this red coat and tail, it scared the bejezus out of me. I saw my future as that of an outcast, and it frightened me. I saw myself as turning into something less than a person.

"The shifting into a man sized fox, animal through and throuigh didn't help matters, either. But when I met Alicia.....I know bless the day I met that vixen! She's.....my better half. She helped me get over the rough parts of my transistion. My cousin Willian, his wife Astra, and the rest of the Pack.....helped me to finally see that though all humans are people.....not all people are humans."

"We know this," chides the Fred who came to this world as a human. "But......"

"I'm getting to that part, Fred," smiles the manfox. "Now, a human mind put into a new races body....not a body twisted into a new shape by lycnathropy.....basically a man with the curse of a beast trying to get out and all that.....will do one of two things. Either he begins to adopt the views of his new race.....or he goes insane. The mind....or soul experiences and is shaped by what input it receives. With a new body....a new race of being......I had to change. Else I'd be running through the hills, mad as one of those were-jackal back in Ethiopia near the lands of glass."

"You....had no choice?" Duke Dredrick whispers, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The others also feel a cold shiver run down their spines. Having a curse force its behavior onto you was one thing. This....was something else.

"Now I didn't say that," tisks the manfox, a grin on his fox face and a twinkle in his eyes. "In fact, up until the end, I still wanted to be human.....but I finally realized something that finally changed my mind. I wanted to be human so I could again take up the banner of protector of Allaria....or what I had thought was left of it. You folk still have an Allaria out there, I don't. The Lizards blew it off of the map. I DID have the Pack who still wanted and needed me to be their Pack Leader.....and that job called for Fred the Manimal, not Fred the Man. And my wife was so loving and loyal while I was being an ass and hurting her feelings: going on and on how 'monsterous' after that damn city of Gilgil (re: 1820).....because of the anxieties of seeing those monsters who we have Minestus to blame for....."

The manfox pauses and smiles a sad smile at the memory before continuing.

"Minestus made the manimals....so in my mind I saw the monsters....saw me....and I saw myself as a monster. But I was so wrong. The manimals are people, and not monsters. I've come to see that dragons might not be human, but they are not all monsters....at least not like Minestus the worldkiller was and the Lizards....who still are monsters. I am a person.....not an animal....not a monster. I'm no longer human, and don't wish to be one any more. Plus, there IS the added bonus of a sense of family in the Pack. Plus the super healing, super reflexes, heightened senses. A feeling of love deeper than I've ever felt with anyone or anything with Alicia (not possible in anything other than a manimal....I'm afraid folks). Period. I can't explain it any clearer, folks, so......" The manfox shrugs.

The others keep their silence. They may not totally agree with this Fred's decision, nor wish to join his Pack, but they understand a bit more now.

"Let's....get back to names," the manfox smiles after a bit. "Now, though I was born Frederigo D'Honaire, and WILL NOT change it to something else, officially, I think I can live with a nickname."

After a pause, the manimal Fred smiles a foxy grin, tail twitching.

"I seem to like the nickname 'Manfox,'" manfox Fred begins. The others make faces and object heavily. This causes the manfox to raise his ears in surprise. He even gets more surprised at what the others say.

"No!" Duke Dredrick says firmly. "That name is not for you. It's......it just wouldn't do for you, Frederigo. It would be....demeaning somehow."

"Besides," says the Fred who came in as human. "You were born on this world. You have given us food, shelter, and comfort. You should not have to make such a drastic change in names for us. You shouldn't have to change your name at all, even as a nickname.

"I can call myself....Fred 3 for lack of a better nickname." He finishes. "It's kind of stilted, but it's the only thing that I could think of right away. What do you think?"

"I think I could be Fred 2," one of the former demi-fox Freds say before the other could speak.

"Fred 1," says the other former demi-fox Fred, rolling it around as if to taste it. "Works for me. But I never would have thought that after being hijacked by that greedy laywer Rift....that I'd be doing something like this! I must have done something to attract Loki's attention, because when I tried to bribe him.......they jailed me and Astra.....my Astra that is."

"That probably would've worked in other shady places," Frederigo D'Honaire said with sympathy, tail twitching at the trails Fred 1 and his Astra must have gone through!

"You tried to bride him, eh?" Fred 2 symphized. "I did, but I lucked out, apparently! He just pocketed my bribe. At the time, it made me angry, but......sure beat the $##@ out of jail. And it turned out luck was on our side after all, when we found OUR Synixn......"

"Jailed for bribes, pocketed bribes," chuckles Dredrick ruefully. "Sound like a run of bad luck there, boys. So, Fred 3, how did you do? I remember you saying that you had similar trials as my sons did. How did Master Rift react to your bribe?"

"I couldn't tell you," smiles Fred 3. "I just answered his questions.....he eventually got tired enough and let us in. After a few days of waiting in one of our Synizn's old haunts, he showed up. He was really under the sway of his were-bear curse because he kept on giving me a runaround. The news of Malachi's death must have connected really hurt him enough to shock him into something like his old self....or at least get his interest enough so he fought his impulses." Fred 3 had felt like bitting the werebear up to that point because it had been so annoying to try to get a straight answer out of Synizn up until that point.

"You and your Synizn seem to be good friends now," observed Frederigo, remembering how the demi-fox Synizn and his human compatriots had been.

"I, my wife, and my children owe him so much for returning us to normal," Fred 3 sighs. "No offense Frederigo, but I have no desires for losing myself and my wife for month on end due to the sudden need to couple with a normal fox.....bleah!"

"Wha...?" Willian asks suddenly white. "I knew about how Astra ran the risk of losing herself to her fox nature if she.....had the wrong partner at the wrong time but......it was the same for males, also?"<p.

Nods from the other human Freds made Will grow even paler. A furry hand pats him on the back in sympathy.

"We at least got you walking again." Frederigo murmurs. Will nods at that, coming to the conclusion that risks aside....it was better than a month in bed....paralyzed....and waiting to die.

That finally decided, the conversation drifted towards lighter topics. Finally, one issue came up that nobody really wanted to discuss, but.......

"So," Will finally says. "My analogs of your worlds never fell for your Astra?"

"No....." Fred 3 coughs. "He.....married the first girl he thought he loved and had.....well..... The marriage is....was on the rocks when I left."

"Our Willian married and is still happy about it," Dredrick says, sorry to hear about kinfolk being in a bad way....even if that kinfolk was from another universe (Ye GODS!) "Why are you asking?" Dredrick really didn't want this subject, but now that it was here......

"Oh, it isn't like my Astra's been unfaithful or anything!" Will mutters, annoyed. "It's just that, her sisters are much like here in many ways that......"

"Will," Frederigo says in a low, steady voice. "Know this. Though they may look like our Astra....they are no more her than I am you or my brothers. They might be similar, but.....they aren't. Trust me, this is not a road we want to go down because it's stupid in the extreme to question why things worked out the way they did in another persons world. Understand?"

Will looks into the brown eyes of his cousin, and noticed how.....human they looked. Yes, this was his cousin, though he had chosen to stay an anthropomorphic whiskered red fox. Though he was no longer human.....he was still his cousin.

"I'll do my best," was all that Will could say. "Besides.....with the.....hard feelings that my Astra has about your father in law.....I and she will be back in Aqualaria while the others will be in Malbacton. Given enough time....." He shrugs.

"You two aren't having the same problems, are you?" the manfox asks Fred 1 through 3.

"We'll do our best," they say in harmony, and then look at each other oddly.

"That'll have to do," mutters Frederigo. His muzzle forms a sneer unconsciously, because there really wasn't more that could be done.

He didn't have a problem with his analogs falling in love with other Astras. He had Alicia, and his Alicia.....his Leaping Stream and she had him.....totally. Both knew the other's Truename, and were bound far deeper.....than humanly possible. That was enough.

1. "Actually," chuckles Drederick. "We probably need not worry about the woman having such a silly conversation. They seem bigger than that!"

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