Juno, the titular Protogen
My Furry Protogen is a Kinetic Novel by Dirty Fox Games, released as part of its My Furry novel series. The novel was released through Steam on August 11, 2023. A sequel, simply titled My Furry Protogen 2, released on January 27, 2024. Both titles have official, but optional, patches to add adult-oriented content.Having run away from his village after refusing to accept his "fate", a male human encounters a furry alien, who is researching his planet for scientific purposes. Deciding to pass himself off as the local leader, he ends up bonding with the alien, and must inevitably decide whether to return to his old life or to join hers...that is, if he still has a life to return to once he learns what the alien is truly researching.
Tropes:
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: Juno apologises profusely upon realising the male protagonist's civilisation isn't even "Type I" in terms of evolution, stating that things should come naturally and mentioning that she had a friend that introduced modern technology to a culture that hadn't even discovered the wheel and caused chaos to break out.
- Benevolent A.I.: Juno's spaceship, Pixie, has its own artificial intelligence that she treats as a travelling companion while on her adventures.
- Bittersweet Ending: The novel ends with the male protagonist and Juno healthy and staying together, but at the cost of an entire planet succumbing to plague, and with the knowledge that some entity is intentionally killing the planets in his solar system for some unexplained reason.
- The Chosen One: The male protagonist was raised as though God had chosen him to save their village when he grew up, treated so specially that other people born on the same day as him have to celebrate their own birthdays the next day. The protagonist himself doesn't buy into the hype, mainly because he also wasn't permitted to leave the village, follow his own schedule, or otherwise endanger himself because the villagers didn't want him to die before the ambiguous, potentially nonexistent threat arrived.
- Cyborg: Juno's race, the Protogen, are anthropomorphic animals hybridised with nanites, allowing her to directly interface with technology.
- Fake Aristocrat: The main protagonist refused to become his village's chosen one due to feeling like he was just their property that would eventually be sacrificed to fulfill some prophecy, but lies to Juno that he's the leader of his tribe so he doesn't have to return and likely get killed for sacrilege (especially if he has a heretical metallic creature in tow).
- Find the Cure!: Following the Liar Revealed moment and ensuing apologies on both sides, the second half of the story focuses on the protagonist duo encountering The Plague and researching a potential cure for it, intermixed with realising their growing feelings for each other. Unfortunately, they fail to find a cure in time to save anyone other than the male protagonist.
- Gilded Cage: The male protagonist believes he was raised in one, given special treatment by his village but only because he'll be forced to fulfill the potentially deadly role of The Chosen One when he becomes of age, and unable to leave the village or make any meaningful interpersonal connections to the point that his only "friend" is his personal guard.
- Hazmat Suit: Once discovering The Plague, while Juno's equipment keeps her protected from infection, she insists that the male protagonist wears one of these whenever they have to gather or experiment on samples of it.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The male protagonist, whose viewpoint the story is told from, has no default name, and the player must type a name in at the story's beginning.
- Higher-Tech Species: The Protogen are an alien race to the protagonist, who comes from a tribal community with no knowledge of things like spaceships.
- It's All My Fault: When the male protagonist returns to his village after The Plague hits it and sees that nearly everyone's dead and his mother is struggling to stay alive, he immediately blames himself, since he had ignored a prophecy and tragedy had indeed struck in his absence. His mother, however, tells him that the villagers were the wrong ones, and she's glad he's able to live instead of dying pointlessly like the rest of them before passing away as well.
- Last of Their Kind: The male protagonist ends up not only being the sole survivor of their village after the plague reaches it, but the sole survivor of their planet.
- Liar Revealed: Though she starts having doubts early on, Juno figures out that the male protagonist is truly ignorant of the world outside of his village after they get attacked by a dangerous Sand Worm in what he had assumed was an empty desert, causing a rift between them.
- The Lost Lenore: When the protagonist comes clean about his Chosen One status and why he lied to Juno, Juno also admits that she lied about only travelling with people that could benefit her research. She once had a travelling companion named Toshi, who ended up caught in a trap and dying during their interplanetary adventures together, so she decided to Never Be Hurt Again by keeping future partnerships strictly job-oriented.
- Minimalist Cast: Juno is the only character with a Character Portrait, and the only others with speaking roles are the male protagonist, a couple of minor characters from his village, and the faceless artificial intelligence Pixie.
- The Plague: Juno and the male protagonist's adventures on the latter's planet leads to them finding diseased plants and animals, with Juno admitting that she did not come to the planet by chance, and she's actually been tracking the interstellar path of a deadly, rapidly-spreading, bioengineered virus that might not be curable. Juno briefly tries to convince the male protagonist to return home and be with his loved ones before they die, but since he doesn't have any attachment to his village, he's able to convince her they should stay together and that he'd be safer on her ship in orbit than on the planet where he could get infected. Months later, when it seems like they're about to run out of time on finding a cure, he does have second thoughts and visits his village one last time regardless of how they'd treat him in case he'd never get another chance to see them. However, by then, many of the villagers have already perished, with his own father having already died and his mother struggling to stay alive, with her final words being to apologise for how the village treated her son and how glad she is that he was able to escape in time and stay healthy; realising all he's just lost, it breaks him emotionally.
- Plot Allergy: The protagonist's lies to Juno start to unravel when he has an allergic reaction to a berry he ate in the forest, developing a rash and fever until he vomits the berry in her ship, causing her to ask if he's really as knowledgeable about local flora and fauna as his position would require.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The male protagonist is ready to go on one after the bioengineered plague kills everything and everyone from his home planet, directed at the anomaly that brought it to his planet. Juno tries to talk him out of it, not wanting him to die in the process and lose another loved one herself, but relents when he insists. He then fails immediately, getting trampled and left for dead by infected animals just outside of the cave where it was hiding, but Juno manages to recover his body and synthesise a cure for him in time.
- The Runaway: The main protagonist was raised as The Chosen One, but grew sick of how he was being treated. The story starts with him coming of age, angering the entire village by complaining about his Gilded Cage and questioning if their God's even real, and then running away before he has to face the repercussions. Having never dealt with physical hardship before, he nearly dies in a forest before encountering Juno.
- Sequel Hook: The novel ends with the two main characters watching the male protagonist's planet blow up due to the plague ending all life on it, and them promising to work together to find and stop whatever force is responsible for the anomaly that caused it.
- Servant Race: When asked if she's a researcher out of personal desire or if it was a role she was forced into, Juno explains that her species was originally created as genetically-engineered slaves to replace soldiers in war, but fought for and earned their freedom and free will. She's always had an interest in studying biology, and while she can't tell whether it's a desire that was imprinted into her genes or a natural one, she's happy to do it and glad to have the option to stop if she ever grows tired of it.
- Take Me to Your Leader: Juno makes this request to the protagonist upon meeting, who then pretends that he is the local leader to avoid returning to the village that's irate at him.
- Translator Microbes: The first time Juno tries communicating with the protagonist, she speaks in different unintelligible tones before adjusting her helmet, activating its translation function and allowing her to talk perfectly in the protagonist's language.
- Wingding Eyes: Juno's facemask displays a digital version of her face, allowing her to add a teardrop under her eye when she's sad or completely change her eye into a question mark when she's confused.
- You Are Number 6: The love interest's actual name/serial number is NV-0903, but she goes with "Juno" when she realises it's easier for the native protagonist to pronounce.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Conversation about this come up a few times, such as the protagonist fleeing from his village instead of taking up the role of The Chosen One due to the unwilling confinement involved with the position only to end up in a dangerous situation that affects his entire planet, and him asking Juno about if she was "fated" to be a biologist due to her genetic code despite her species' history of overcoming their former status as a Servant Race.
