CoR In For a Penny, In For a Pound

Jas

Jas

Exceptionally Common
Location
Rail Station Compound, The Pound
An abandoned rail station straddled the border of Lupaix and the Phantom Quarter. The rusty tracks peeked out from under thick foliage, like the decaying bones of the hub this used to be. The only signs of life were occasional patrols, each with a cut saying "Bloodstones MC" on them, as they walked the campus.

On one end was the corpse of the rail station itself, the last vestiges of its frame jutting above the unkempt underbrush. On the other, a large, unassuming warehouse. Various buildings scattered the grounds between, the original purposes of most of them having vanished from recent memory. A dilapidated road traveled down the center, entering near the warehouse and terminating at the station.

In the past few weeks, many of these buildings had found new life in the hands of their newest owner: Ragenard Guiscard.

Xandre approached the complex, the limp, partially shifted (and slowly unshifting) body of Pissy McBeanBrains on the back of his bike. As he approached, a figure stepped toward the road, not wearing a cut like the standard patrol. Xandre slowed to a stop.

"Oh, fuck's sake... Liam, who put yeh on duty again!?"

"Oh, Alexandre--no, Xandre!" The prospect's fearful face elicited a minor chuckle from the enforcer. "Er, Julienne said she needed me to watch the road for a bit."

"Well get on with it!" the dwarf snapped back at him. He revved his bike and made his way to a building near the warehouse that served as headquarters. As he drove, he muttered, "Needs must, I guess. That kid needs a spine, though. I'll need to make sure 'e gets some extra attention."

He killed his bike and hopped off, shouldering the limp form easily, and then entered the building. Inside, the vestiges of its former life took form as an array of destroyed boxes and empty crates. It was unclear what was stored here, but it was clear it used to be a storage room. Now, though, it was The Pound.

The back wall had been cleared of all the junk that littered the rest of the building, and three large, empty cages were placed along the wall. The dwarf carried the would-be robber to one of the cages, tossed him in unceremoniously, and shut the door. He produced a key ring from inside his coat and selected a key from it, and locked the door.

Looking at the seemingly lifeless body inside, he cautioned. "I'm gonna get someone here to figure out what to do with yeh." He pulled out his phone and then stopped. He put it back and reached into the same pocket he got the keys from, producing the phone Ragenard had given him days earlier. He unlocked it and took a snapshot of the kid in the cell, then opened up an app called EncrypText and sent the picture along with, "Picked up a stray; wanna meet me at the pound?"

(Context: Late-day Robbery)
 
Last edited:
BOSS: Looks like a dipshit, but keep him anyways. Just finished a thing, I'll be there in 45 minutes. Feel free to soften up (but mind again, he looks like a dipshit and y'know how soft they are), I want to know who the fuck is weaponizing these morons.
 
It was about thirty minutes into Xandre's wait that the sound of an arriving bike interrupted the silence that had otherwise only been broken by the steady breathing of the unconscious teen he was watching over. The pitch of the engine was enough to inform him that it wasn't Ragenard arriving unexpectedly early, and a few moments later that was confirmed by the familiar sound of Lark's voice exchanging a few friendly words with Liam outside.

After another minute, the younger wolf poked his head through the door, smiling as his eyes settled on where Xandre was waiting atop one of the old crates and raising his hand in a wave. "Managed not to miss the party, I see," he remarked with a nod towards where Jimmy was slumped in the cage. "Jeez, kid's either catching up on some much-needed z's, or I beaned him harder than I meant to."
 
Xandre turned his head as Lark entered. "Hey, bud. Yeah, I reckon 'e might be comin' down offa whatever he was high on."

He stood up and crossed to the cage, looking down at the kid. "Boss should be another 15 minutes or so, but 'e said we could 'soften 'im up', to use 'is words." He started rifling through his pockets for the keys to the cage. "Looks like 'is shift has finally reverted, lasted a bit longer than I 'spected. But maybe we should wake 'im up before Rage gets here. Yeh wanna do the honors?"

He selected the right key off the ring and held it out to Lark, offering for him to take it. "I know yeh're not normally the combat sort, but maybe you got some personal investment. But if yeh'd rather, I'm pretty sure I could handle 'im whether 'e decides to wolf out or not. Yer call."
 
Last edited:
"Soften him up, huh?" Lark huffed a laugh. "Course he did. Can't say I'm much for kicking kids in cages myself, though. I prefer to catch my flies with honey. How 'bout I give my way a try, and if he flips out we can revisit the kicking idea?" He took the offered key and turned to regard the sleeping boy with a sigh. "Hope for his sake he has a better head on him when he's not so high he's violating airspace laws."

The cell door opened with the protest of old hinges, rattling in its frame, and Lark stepped inside to nudge the kid a couple of times with his foot. "Hey, beanhead. You gonna wake up, or do I gotta get a bucket of water?"
 
Groaning at the nudge, Jimmy felt like his head had been rammed into a wall multiple times, which was plausible since he had absolutely no recollection of the last few hours or however long it had been. Pressing his fingers into the metal beneath him, he snapped his golden eyes open and realized that he had no idea where he was at. Panic surged through him and he was incredibly paranoid that his uncle and aunt had finally hired someone to end him. They had threatened multiple times, but he didn’t think they’d actually do it.

“Nnng…” He felt worse than anything he had felt before, but it wasn’t pain he was feeling. The back of his head was nothing more than a dull ache. What he was feeling was sideffects of the unknown drugs his friends had obtained from a new source. He hadn’t planned on taking them, especially after the dumbasses had been forced into treatment, but the seller promised that he would have the best night of his life and he wanted that. Wanted at least one good day before returning to his relatives.

Wait! Were they going to put him in treatment too or worse, jail? Was this jail? He didn’t like that idea and clenched his fingers into tight fights. He wasn’t going to jail! While he didn’t remember what he did, surely it wasn’t jail worthy, right?! Right. Where was his shirt anyway? He snapped his head toward the two strangers and without warning a medium-sized fluffy ebony quadrapedal wolf was standing in the cage. The actual shifting time was faster than what should have been possible, his long canines dripping with saliva. Howling, he snarled and dug his claws into the floor of the cage before barking fire while the heat from his saliva sizzled on the metal.

That’s new!

Having not processed the door to the cage was open, he started to ram himself against the bars in desperation to get free. Jimmy barked more fire toward the two strangers as his movements grew faster and more erratic. It wasn’t long before he was moving much faster than what was possible. He slammed harder and faster, body becoming nothing more than a blur. Thanks to his ability to take a great deal of damage before pain would register, he was like an out of control locomotive, practically bouncing off all sides of the cage. Finally realizing the door was open, he lunged towards it, lost in the throes of the side-effects.
 
"... The fuck?"

Xandre witnessed this inexplicable ferocity and began to act. Lark was not in the right physical state for this (and the enforcer wasn't really certain that he had the right state for this). The enforcer was stronger than most wolves, even in his unshifted state, so he figured he'd be the more equipped to deal with whatever this thing was, which--sorry, kid--didn't see interested in talking at the moment.

So he dove in as soon as he saw that first gout of fire and extricated the Road King by his belt, and quickly tossed him unceremoniously a few yards away with a backhand. "Sorry Lark!" he called out over his shoulder as the cranked-out pyro-wolf turned around, apparently having realized the door was open.

As beanhead broke to escape, Xandre stood in the door of the cage and prepared to intercept the hellhound? Wolf? It was hard to tell. Regardless, the dwarf probably had twice the mass of the other (and the height advantage, which was an unfamiliar situation for him), but the wolf was clearly faster, so he decided that he'd try to get his arms around its neck as it tried to get past, and then use his considerable strength to wrestle the beast to the ground.
 
Last edited:
"What the..." Lark had quickly backstepped away from the kid when he immediately shifted, ready to defend himself if needed, but primed to try and talk him down. That was, at least, before he started spitting fire. That particular surprise left him speechless, and a half-second later, he was being tossed backwards by his belt -- making an indignant noise as he flew. Thankfully it wasn't the first time he'd been thrown in a brawl (albeit that it was a first for this particular method), and he had the wherewithal to land in a roll and use the momentum to spring back to his feet.

"Fucking hell-- get back Xan, I've got the door!" He barked, lunging forwards to grab the cell door in preparation to slam it shut the moment Xandre was able to untangle himself from the burning wolf and get clear.
 
Last edited:
Roaring when his prize was stolen from him and another stood in the way of freedom, Jimmy expelled another flame towards the dwarf. The wolf refused to be caged any longer and with the magic 'roids or whatever it had been that he took, he danced just inches from the grasping arms to keep from being grabbed. Growling in warning, he spotted the exit door across the room.

Out. He wanted out.

Wanted to kill those that hurt him. Glowing golden eyes flickered to the other potential meal and he snapped his teeth at him. The male was too far away though. Damn it. Jimmy snarled and with the added speed, took off out of the cage, heading for the exit door. He had somehow manged to avoid the dwarf and with hope, he would get freedom.
 
What the shit!?

Somehow the little fucker got past Xandre using his flame breath as a smokescreen. As he felt the wolf's fur slip past him, he had no choice. Xandre reached into his jacket, into his shoulder holster, and pulled his giant revolver out again, the second time the kid had made him draw.

The boss ain't gonna like that I called 'im down to interrogate a greasy spot, Xandre fretted. But there ain't no way I'm lettin' this... whatever the fuck it is... out into the compound.

He targeted center mass, aiming for the heart. 15 feet. Inside, no windage. Fire. The dwarf squeezed the trigger. He wasn't even sure he would survive if he was shot like that, and Xandre was a beefy boy.
 
Last edited:
Claws dug into the ground as Jimmy surged full-steam ahead. He had no plans on slowing down and howled loudly before more flames shot out his mouth. The human mind had been overpowered by the wacked-out wolf and it wasn't letting anything get in its way. Hearing movement behind him, the beast snarled at the gun and as it was fired, shimmied off to the left of it. He wasn't able to get completely out of the way unfortunately and though it nailed his left flank, he didn't slow at all.

Baring his sharp teeth at the two behind him in warning not to do that again, he continued to sprint for the door. Slamming full-speed into it, he busted felt it give seconds before it was no longer standing. Kicking what was left of the door out of the way, he moved to step outside. Next was to take out the threat no matter what.
 
Last edited:
Ragenard had already been approaching the entrance to the pound with a speedy but concerted care since the moment he'd crossed the outer threshold of the warehouse and heard the clanking of the struggle with the inner cell door. Lark's shout had propelled him into a preternaturally fast clip, and Ragenard flowed like water over the obstacles in his way as he crossed the warehouse in record time.

Then suddenly, the world lurched into slow motion, nearly causing him to trip. Ragenard blinked his eyes furiously, trying to make sense of the way he could see the sound of the blood rushing through—too much stimuli, too fast. He couldn't consciously parse it, but his body didn't need to. The trouble then was handling the bizarre sensation: Ragenard's body reacted faster than he could think, demanding repositioning, but at the same time, the "instant" for his body was stretched alongside everything else.

Ragenard might have been able to better explain his surreal lived experience if he hadn't dropped out of school (and perhaps taken some creative writing as an elective track), but that didn't bother him. The fact that he had to be careful with what he decided his body should feel or do and that even instincts would play him by as he puppeteered himself did.

Either way, Ragenard found himself flying through the air with both feet aimed to crush some point in space two whole thoughts before enough of Jimmy's snout became visible through the cloud of splinters made as the panicked punk forced his way out of the Pound and into the warehouse interior.

Sucks that I can't scratch the itch in my nose, Ragenard thought as he pondered and confirmed that with his current trajectory he would be right on the mark. There had to be a way to better sync the motions with the thoughts, he felt. It wasn't useful to be locked into a kick when he could have scratched his nose before the—

The world lurched back into its normal, visceral, and messy pace as Ragenard's feet connected solidly with Jimmy's jaw. The momentum of Ragenard's tremendously sudden plunging of his four hundred pounds through the soles of his feet didn't necessarily generate more force in a given square inch than the explosion of primer behind the slug within Xandre's shot, but it absolutely placed an appreciable percentage over a larger surface area, namely, Jimmy's face.

The younger's wolf head would practically bend back over itself before dragging the rest of the wolf to a stop that would bounce off the Ragenard missile to clatter onto the ground himself.
 
The fire-breathing wolf had almost moved faster than Lark could track. Jimmy blurred past him at breakneck speeds, and by the time he'd spun around to follow him, he was already halfway to the door. Xandre's gunshot came just a second after Lark had started running, but it barely even slowed the kid down.

What the fuck is he? And why didn't we see any of that shit at the store?

Then, suddenly, their would-be fugitive met a resistance far tougher than the warehouse door he'd shredded in the space of a blink. Lark skidded to a stop as Jimmy was thrown back inside by the impact, taking a couple of steps back. Ragenard being here meant that, until proven otherwise, he was probably best off doing the one useful thing that people in his weight class could do in situations like this...

... staying the fuck out of Ragenard's way.
 
Oh good. Rage was here. Xandre was close to him in raw brawn, but Ragenard had something the dwarf didn't. Speed. Agility.

Wait, what the fuck is up with his eyes?

Regardless, he didn't have time to think about that. Even as he noticed, he was already moving, hoping to capitalize on the surprise drop-kick to close the gap to Jimmy and grapple him. He dropped his hand cannon on the way, since he didn't have time to put it away properly and he'd need both hands for this.

Xandre tackled the beast on the floor like a defensive lineman, trying to get both arms around anything he could. There were so many teeth and razor-like claws, spouting flames and lava-hot spittle. He didn't have time to determine what he landed on, but he wanted to help Rage out. It was his job to.
 
Freedom!

At one moment the wolf was about to surge beyond the room he felt trapped in and then the next his head was snapping back from, was that a boot? Where did the boot come from? As he was sent backward, Jimmy managed to focus on the body that was connected to the foot and growled. It was the oddest sensation, being suddenly thrown off course with a kick to the jaw despite his previously forceful forward movement.

It was amazing his neck hadn’t been snapped with how hard he was kicked, though he did feel blood seeping from his snout or maw. Something was definitely bleeding. Instead, his body hit the ground after going ass over head. Quickly righting himself, the beast howled and howled fire at Ragenard as he dug his claws into the ground. That fucker was going to pay for that! Rushing at the newcomer, Jimmy knew he had to beat him to get free and exact his revenge, as long as the other two didn’t catch up to him! He looked back at the other large bastard and snarled in agitation at the sight of being ran at. At least he gun had been dropped.

Pushing himself off the ground to launch at the large beast of a man while the dwarf attempted to tackle him. He felt arms once again try and grab him and slid out of them like butter. The wolf thought about just leaping over the kicker and fleeing but instead zig-zagged off to the side to hopefully throw them both off. Rushing in, much faster than what should’ve been possible, he felt his entire body vibrating as he hopefully was able to sink his claws and teeth into some part of the fucker that had kicked him.
 
It feeds on your rage, but it feasts on your love. The Morrigan’s words—cryptically delivered to him via dream before the casino attack with the failed expectation that he recognize them in time—were finally starting to make a semblance of sense to Ragenard. Well, that wasn’t true, precisely, but Ragenard was starting to gleam what practicalities were hinted at that he could understand in a message that hadn’t ever been intended for him in the first place. Ragenard wasn’t sure why, but he felt like laughing all of a sudden.

No.

The word rang in the chambers of his mind until it echoed.

The singular thought was delivered with the unquestionably firm basis of any mountain and it killed the feelings of laughter dead. It didn’t feel like his thought, and Ragenard no longer wanted to be involved with this situation. He saw Jimmy’s sudden burst of speed threaten to escape past his perceptual capacity to keep track and shifted his mind to account for the increasing danger this placed his packmates in. That was the secret he thought, reframing the situation in a familiar way.

The fuck are you going to stop him with, good intentions? He—Ragenard wondered as the shift-itch exploded at the base of his left shoulder in time with Jimmy’s apparent shift in velocity. Xandre and Lark appeared as motionless statues before Ragenard’s gaze, but Jimmy was moseying along at a brisk walking pace. Ragenard thought back to Rowan’s final evening when he first felt that newfound itch that wasn’t an itch. His memories were still shaky of what happened after, but he could just about see the leathery black skin beneath the uncharacteristically lusterless gray fur stained red and pink amidst the rhythmic thumps putting a period to that sentence.

It was nearly enough to get him to turn away, but an alien feeling of disgust threatened to overcome him, and that pissed him off. He thought instead of Skye, and the confusing evening of a few weeks ago. How he hadn’t crushed her to a bloody pulp with a monstrous limb.

It is never the monster we fear, but its intentions, Ragenard thought suddenly, and felt a small measure of peace at the statement.

The short sleeve tightly wrapped around his bicep by the exercise shirt exploded into ribbons as Ragenard’s left arm—and only his left arm—shifted into something else. The limb wasn’t as large as his full wolf’s transformation, but it was still oddly out of place as it was a size too large for even Ragenard’s impressively robust frame. It was an effect not unlike that of a child parading around in their father’s boots.

Jimmy still appeared to be casually walking in a zig-zagging direction away from Ragenard, who had just realized he could move himself. The sensation of the bones in his normal limbs compressing as if under tremendous pressure as he assessed them was the only physical sign he really had as to what was happening. They were under tremendous pressure, because he was moving the same way they moved, but he hadn’t expected the serenity of thought. No mental friction to battle, he supposed.

Rather than pause to finish putting two and two together, Ragenard decided to run up to Jimmy instead. His legs nearly broke as he tried to burst into his maximum speed, and he realized the meaning of that had changed. So, he power-walked through the molasses, faster than Jimmy was walking, and paused to consider the conundrum—problem—they were all facing this evening.

He tensed his freakishly monstrous limb and found it more readily accepting of the strain than his other arm. Thus, he used that one to simply lift Jimmy by the scruff of the neck like a bad kitten, and for lack of an idea of how to turn off whatever the hell Jimmy was on—here Ragenard took a second to recognize that yes, he had seen the fucker breathe fire—decided the classics were best.

Time lurched back to normal for Ragenard as he stood holding a frenzied Jimmy by the scruff of the neck in the air with a monstrous left arm and proceeded to assault the werewolf rapidly and violently upon his exposed belly with repeated strikes from his human right arm. He kept the quick strikes up until he started to feel the younger man’s form start to soften in his grip.

Ragenard then unceremoniously tossed Jimmy several feet through the air, through the pound cage’s open door, to clatter down against the back wall.

“Lock that up will ya,” Ragenard calmly asked of Lark.

He flexed and massaged his wrongly shifted left arm, working to figure out what part of him he needed to relax in order to make it go away. He avoided Xandre’s gaze; he himself had set the example of the enforcers and the SAA being bold enough to question their First in private (a failure of Matthis that Baron and he had readily learned to do the exact opposite of, like so many of the man’s lessons) when he was SAA, and he did not expect the dwarf to let the practice go just because Ragenard was now the object of stubbornness to be deferred.

But Lark was here, so he would be saved from the more pointed questions, even if not from the expected ‘what the fucks’. To be fair, Ragenard was still muttering just that in his mind as he tried to get the limb back to human himself.
 
"What the..." Lark hadn't even finished his expletive before it was over. Between fire-breathing wolves that could move faster than he could think, and Ragenard pulling out yet another ace from his bag of tricks that Lark hadn't seen or heard of before, he suddenly had a lot of questions he wasn't sure he would like the answer to.

Questions could wait, though, until after the problem was confirmed to be handled. He snapped out of his stunned stupor after just a bare second of staring, quickly stepping back to the cage door and slamming it closed, followed shortly by sliding all the deadbolts and locks back into place.

Only then did he allow himself to turn back around to face Ragenard and finish his thought, almost exactly as Ragenard had predicted.

"What the fuck was all of that?"
 
Xandre stood, dumbfounded. He was slow on his feet but he was quick to react. It was one of the things that made him so goddamned good with a gun. But this wolf had so easily evaded his reactions, something that Ragenard--or at leas tthe Ragenard he'd trained with, not whatever the fuck this thing was--was typically incapable of.

The First's pointed avoidance told him all he needed to know; he didn't know much more than Xandre himself. He'd seen something like this before, in the battle against Rowan, but even so, this was different.

Xandre added on to Lark's questions. "I got roughly a shit-ton of questions m'self. What th' fuck was this kid? What th' fuck was that?"

The dwarf didn't know if Lark was in on the Pangolin shit, so he simply left it at that. The final question remained unspoken. Even as Rage refused to look at him, Xandre pulled out the enforcer phone and sent another message.

Pangolin shit?


The buzz he heard from the direction of the boss told Xandre his message had been received. Who knows if he'd answer.

The bottom line on Xandre's mind: if this was what was coming, how the hell would he be able to stop it? "I need a bigger fuckin' gun," he said aloud, but more to himself than anyone, as he recovered his pistol.
 
Last edited:
The wolf made an odd sound when he was suddenly hefted off his feet. He frantically looked around and found himself being held by the big guy. The fucker he had seconds ago been lunging at. How did he get behind him? What the hell kind of limb was holding onto him?! It made no sense and just as he was building up more fire to spew at Mr. Odd Arm, multiple wierd things happened at the same time.

Not now!

The vibrating grew worse before it just shut off all of a sudden, leaving his mind in a state of confusion. As he was dealing with that, his stomach became a battering dummy and he felt all of his air rushing out of his body. Coughing and gasping as he punching continued, Jimmy felt like he had been in a huge brawl. By the time he was thrown back into the cage, he was starting to revert back to his human form. Struggling to his feet, he shouted out in anger as he tried to get his body to function properly. He took two steps before collapsing back onto the ground, the locking sound echoing in his ears.

"In this fucking cage again..." Grunting as he finally became all human, Jimmy flicked his hair out of his eyes and glowered at the three men. It took him a few minutes to realize just how much damage he had done to himself by slamming against the cage, though it was minimal compared to what had happened to his stomach. Wasn't there a bullet shot at him too? Bits and pieces floated in and out of his mind. Then, it was like his current situation finally dawned on him and he froze in absolute terror. He was completely nude.

"Nn...! Why am I just in here nude?! Get me a blanket at least!" Shoving himself into a corner, Jimmy did his best to curl up and hide himself. Not just his junk, but his entire body. He was trying his hardest to shrink into a ball so that the obvious scars and bruises were not visible despite his body being littered with them.

"Fucking ... rrr..!"
 
Last edited:
Ragenard glanced at Jimmy's pitiful form like he'd stare at an overturned beetle in his path: with a sort of alien apathy and fascination conmingled into inaction. "Don't worry about me," Ragenard said with a wide smile as he turned towards Lark. The familiar lycanthropic pre-shift ripple waxed over Ragenard's arm visibly, causing the strange limb to shrivel and disappear swiftly in a bizarre display akin to a demented fishing line being spooled back. He waved the now human limb in emphasis.

"Just been a lil' wolf sick lately," he added cheerfully. He was referring to a typical lycanthropic malady that could sometimes affect some werewolves, not dissimilar to allergies. That the typical symptoms were more likely to be patches of unwanted hair whilst in human form, or inopportune canines biting the tongue instead of...whatever Ragenard had displayed, was not something he addressed, pointedly.

He felt his phone buzz in time with Jimmy's lamentations, and unlocked it to read with a furrowed brow and reply:

Pangolin shit?

Worried so. Not many other heavies I kno of could. I mean c'mon, this some bio-magic shit. Gotta speak to Cathal, this is his side of the streets.


"Yeah. You want one RPG or two? Side of semtex?" he asked Xandre with a smile. It was time to put in a new order with Cathal. Personally.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top