“You know she’s going to hate us for giving away all those coins for some rockets, right, bro?” Rao asks Fenrir.

“It’ll be worth it. I hope,” Fenrir answers as they both carry a couple of wooden crates in their arms.

“What are we going to do about drinks?”

“There’re some places here that sell alcohol, so we can pick up the drinks there.”

“Yeah, but how are we going to afford them? We don’t have anything to trade now.”

Fenrir takes Rod off of his side and extends him into his full-sized form. “By fishing. They said we can trade fish for goods, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

“Oh. Is that why you put one of the rods in the wagon?”

“Exactly. We’ll drop these crates off at the wagon, check to see how much fish we’d have to catch for some bottles of the good stuff, and then we’ll fish and hopefully catch enough to trade.”

“Damn, this place is pretty nice now that I think about it. If you don’t have enough money, all you have to do is go fish for a couple of hours.”

“I know! Isn’t it great?” Fenrir asks, his tail wagging behind him as his ears twitch.

“Hey, bro, I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“You.”

“Oh. Well… what about me?”

“Are you like… one of those furri—”

“No,” Fenrir is quick to say, his voice stern as his tail and ears both fall still.

“But you’ve got ears and a tail. Doesn’t that make you a—”

“No.”

“How?”

“Rao,” Fenrir says, putting the crates down to grab Rao by his shoulders and to look him in his eyes, “there is much I have to teach you.”

“I’m not sure I want to be taught about furrie—”

“Shhh, shhh,” Fenrir says, putting one of his fingers over Rao’s lips which gets a very confused and concerned reaction from Rao. “It’s alright. I’ll teach you.”

After taking the crates back to the wagons and checking on the first liquor shop that they could find that would accept fresh fish as payment, Fenrir and Rao are outside of the town’s walls with fishing rods in hand and standing on the beach.

“Why don’t we just fish from the docks in the town?” Rao asks.

“Because. The water there is surrounded by walls and it’s busy there. How many fish do you think are actually going to be in there?” Fenrir asks. “More importantly, we need to teach you about trash.”

“About… trash?”

“Yes. I am trash and I know it, and now I am going to teach you about trash. First,” Fenrir pauses to cast his line, “there is a difference between trash and degenerates. I am trash. Furries are degenerates.”

“Sounds the same to me, bro,” Rao says before casting his own line out.

“Alright. First off, when it comes to furries, there is a scale going from one to five. One is where I’m at. I have animal ears and a tail, but that’s it.”

“Yeah, but you get furry arms and legs whenever you’re fighting, don’t you?”

“That only puts me at like a one-point-five. Anyways, what I am is a kemonomimi. You like, like in anime. Catgirls and all that.”

“Aren’t catgirls basically just furries for people who deny being furries?”

Fenrir’s grasp on Rod tightens as his eyebrow twitches. “No. Kemonomimis are for people who like humans, but also like the animal ears and tails because they find them cute or exotic. Or, because the girls will also display some characteristics from their related animal. Like… a catgirl might be kind of tsundere-ish, or a dog girl—the best kind of girl—might be super loyal and loving and playful.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Next on the scale are the semi-furries coming in at two out of five.”

“Okay… what’s the difference between you and a semi-furry?”

“Semi-furries might have their skin colored to be more like fur, or their faces, hands, and feet might start taking on the shape of animals. Sometimes, they might even have very short fur covering them in some spots. If I’m only ten percent animal, then semi-furries are forty to fifty percent animal.”

“Sure, bro.”

“Now, when you get to three out of five, you reach the real furries. These are the ones where they basically look like bipedal animals with human traits. They might be completely covered in fur, so they don’t even wear clothes at this point sometimes. Furries are fifty to seventy percent animals.”

“Then what if you’re an even higher percent animal?”

“That’s when you get to the fourth stage. These are basically the super furries. Their bodies start to look more animal than human when it comes to size and shape, they’re covered in fur or scales or whatever is associated with their animal, they probably don’t wear any human clothes, and are basically just walking animals.”

“Then what’s the fifth stage?”

“That’s basically just being an animal that can talk and have human emotions.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re a stage one furry?”

“Not a furry. A kemonomimi.”

“Kemomomeemee?”

“Ke-mon-o-mim-i.”

“Whatever you say, bro.”

Fenrir sighs and turns his attention to Rod.

He has no idea how long he’s had a fish on the line, but he feels his line getting tugged which means it’s time to reel in.

“You get way too invested in things like this, onii-wan,” Saya thinks to him.

“I mean, it’s not like I have anything against furries. They’re no worse than some of the stuff I’m into. But… I’m not a furry, and I definitely don’t look like one,” Fenrir thinks back to her as the striped fish he’s reeling in jumps out of the water.

After a short battle reeling the fish in, Fenrir gives the line a final tug that pulls the fish out of the water!

“Got you!” Fenrir shouts, grabbing the fish mid-air and… immediately dropping it because he cut himself on its spine.

“You just looked so lame, bro,” Rao says.

“Sh-shut up.”

Rao is the next one to reel in a fish, and his fish ends up being even larger than Fenrir’s going by what they can see whenever it comes close to the surface.

“That’s a nice one. Come on, Rao, you’ve got this,” Fenrir says, standing next to him and watching.

“This fish doesn’t have anything on me. No way I’d ever lose to a fish,” Rao says as he confidently reels it in.

Rao reels the fish in, yanks it out of the water, and goes to grab it!

Then he, too, drops it as soon as the spines on its backs cut his hands and the side of his wrist.

Fortunately, neither of the fish manage to escape after being dropped.

“You just looked so lame, bro,” Fenrir says.

“Yeah, I did. Shit,” Rao says. “Dang fish. Making me look bad in front of my bro.”

Fenrir smiles from how oddly endearing that just was before securing both fish on a line and putting them back in the water.