CoR Klaxon

Jas

Jas

Exceptionally Common
Location
Aimeé's Apartment, Luksonios
In the weeks that Xandre had been checking on Aimee, she'd normally returned from work around now and was deep into cups. So when the familiar window he spied on from across the street was unlit when he pulled up, a bad feeling washed over him.

He knew she'd been out in the wilds with Baron for a day, so it was possible he talked some sense into her with the drinking shit. It was possible she was worn out and sleeping it off. It was possible for any number of things to be true.

But the dwarf trusted his instincts, and something felt off. Instead of parking down the road and heading for his favorite perch to watch from, he parked across the street, where he had that first night over a month ago. He pulled two customized P90 submachine guns from his saddlebags and unfolded the stocks, attached the slings, and slung them across his shoulders in a cross, then pulled the duster he wore to hide when he wanted to conceal something like that over the top of all of it, including his cut.

There was no activity in the apartment, but he couldn't shake that feeling of wrongness. He wasn't gonna walk into this lacking.

This early in the morning, there was no traffic on this road, so the dwarf booked it across the street, then in through the main door of the apartment building. Up the familiar flight of stairs, to Aimee's door. As he approached it, he reached in under his duster and took hold of the grips of each firearm, pulling them out from beneath the coat, and took a breath.

Breach. Clear. Gotta move quickly. If there's anyone in there, they prolly know I'm here already, just gotta do something unexpected.

He hadn't really let loose since Ragenard's revenge against Rowan, and he was excited. He lifted a booted foot and rammed it into the door, hard. The jamb inside the door gave way as the door's latch and bolt both tore through. There was enough force on it that two of the three hinges on the other side of the door also yielded. As he did so, he barreled into the room, holding one gun up to each side and looking for anything hostile to shoot.

"Disappointin'," he muttered, realizing that this area was empty. The pungent stench of blood filled his nostrils, though, adding certainty to premonition. He proceeded toward the hallway leading to the sleeping areas of the home, both barrels focused in front of him now that he was sure the area behind him was clear. The metallic sanguine scent waxed as he neared Aimee's room. The door was open.

As he peered in, he noticed her bed was undressed, and the room positively reeked of her blood, and sweat, and... salt? Tears?

"What the fuck happened in here? PUP!?" he called, hoping for a response but expecting none. He dropped both guns, the belts across his shoulders bearing their weight, and then he reached into the inside pocket of his coat. He unlocked his Enforcer phone, loaded the EncrypText app, and sent a message to Ragenard, making sure to mark it as urgent.

[To: BOSS][! URGENT !] Trouble at pup's place. She's gone, reeks of blood. Wolfing out, will track. Will inform when I know more.


The dwarf stripped down in seconds, placing all of his personal effects into his duster, which he tied into a bundle. He went into the main room with more space and began transforming, muscle and sinew rearranging, augmenting, growing. It took several minutes, but at the end of it, where the dwarf once stood, a wolf the size of a draft horse stood, howling.

He grabbed the makeshift pack in his mouth and broke for the door, but it was too broad to clear the doorframe. With a charge he muscled through, destroying the jamb entirely, the final hinge finally giving up its grasp on the door as it went flying. He burst through the building door in a similar manner, finding himself back on the street. He sampled the air. The trail was cold, but followable.

The enormous wolf broke into a full run, chasing the trail.[/B]
 
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Ragenard and Julienne rode side-by-side down the industrial blight surrounded old county roads that connected Lupaix to the Phantom Quarter, itself handily abutting the side of Luskonios closest to Aimeé’s neighborhood. Ragenard rode with a cold sneer frozen upon his gaze that cleared the few slow stragglers out of their way as well as his open brandishing of his modified grip short-barrel semi-automatic shotgun asking for the right of way. He wore his baldric visibly over his cut and plain muscle shirt, with the conflicting emotion inducing sword bestowed upon him strapped upon his back. For once, Ragenard had been able to don it with his mind firmly on the havoc he would wreak with it and not a single thought to its problematic history.

Unfortunately for Ragenard however, said history could now 'talk' at him.

'Have you noticed that you're just like, awful with women?' "Manny" asked him. That was Ragenard's small impotent barb in attack back at Manannán's greatness, Manny tried to assure him through their connection. Fuck you, Manny. I can manage them better than you, you're dead, Ragenard thought in response.

'I mean, wifes, sisters, daughters, just about any of 'em. You're always losing them one way or another when you have 'em—'

[Priority Group Chat Message] Jesse: :emoji_thumbsup: Prepping the Infirmary.


[Priority Group Chat Message] Ziessel:At the infirmary with Jesse


[Priority Group Chat Message] Rhetta: Understood.


[Priority Group Chat Message] Baron: The Prospects are at the Railyard.


The text messages began to arrive, temporarily jolting Ragenard's attention and dragging Manny away with the notification chirps momentarily. Without any decrease in speed, Ragenard adroitly replaced his shotgun back in it's riding hostler fashioned to hang right from beneath the right right side of Ragenard's ape hanger style handlebars. His phone he kept in a magnetized phone case at his belt with a quick release that Ragenard both knew was cool as fuck, and that the pups thought was very "Dad" behind his back.

It made it a cinch to pull his phone to read the incoming messages—'When you don't have them, you can't find them'—even as the adrenaline spike from the notifications began to fade, inviting the phantom back to resume undetterred.

[From: Baron] Chloe will keep him safe until I get there

[Priority Group Chat Message] Snow: At the Railyard. I'll arm up and watch the gate.


[Priority Group Chat Message] Lark: fuck. omw to railyard eta 20


'Then when they seek you out, you're too stupid to understand they want to be found. Seriously lad, let me drive,' Manny thought at Ragenard, suddenly full of disdain at his surprise 'suggestion' not only failing to implant...but being accompanied by a handsomer, healthier, and aliver person's sense of mirth because this connection goes both ways, asshole, Ragenard thought inwardly with a widening of his sneer as he put his phone back in its case.

"I won't say nice try, my ear itching uncontrollably for half an hour while you tried whatever while I was trying to sleep had more effect," Ragenard whispered under his breath, his words shattered amidst the rumble of twin motorcycle engines and scatted to the billowing wind. The phantom assured him he'd be back with full intention in its pun but blessedly said no more. Ragenard's thoughts returned to the pack as they neared the turn into Luskonios. He didn't waste any of them in realizing he'd missed the ride through the PQ section entirely.

The pack was responding, and preparing themselves. They would be fine together, he just had to focus on finding their lost one back. They're together and expecting something. I have to trust they can handle the rest, Ragenard thought as he slowed down fractionally in order to gesture at Julienne before turning off the county road and onto the street that held the townhouse apartments where Aimeé lived.

Ragenard led them to where Xandre's bike was still parked across from the pup's apartment and parked alongside. "I'll go first, in case a cleaning crew has moved in," Ragenard barked without preamble as he hopped off his motorcycle and pulled the shotgun out in one motion. He ducked his tall frame as both his feet met the ground and moved in a fast moving crouch reducing his silhuotte as he crossed the street, clearing a way for Julienne to follow up into the apartment's door.
 
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Julienne withdrew a more modest side-arm that she held in a practiced grip. She nodded in response and followed at his back on swift but silent footsteps. Of the two of them, Ragenard was the more able to take a bullet to the chest unscathed. It was a practical call, and she didn't question it.

As they reached the entrance to the apartment, they found the door as Xandre had left it. Julienne fell into place next to the wall and nodded to him that she was ready. He would want to be the first one through the door, and his massive physique would easily form a protective shield for her to move in behind him if necessary to reposition in the event of a shootout.

She didn't hear anyone inside, but despite her temper she hadn't survived alongside the more powerful pack members without a healthy sense of calculated caution. She knew her vulnerabilities, and she knew her strengths.
 
What the fuck... Xandre's wolf- brain tried to process. It was just here and then... Gasoline exhaust? Shit, of course they loaded her into a car.

Xandre followed that scent for a bit until it kind of blended into the general smog that settled over the city, and he could go no further. He sat on his haunches, small bundle of cloths still clutched in his mouth. People were starting to get up for the day and some screamed at the sight of him; this wasn't exactly Lupaix, after all, and even there it was uncommon to see a shifted wolf in broad daylight. Others seemed unimpressed or nonplussed, but all gave him a wide berth.

The wolf was weighing options when he heard a couple of choppers riding in, from the direction of the Phantom Quarter. Perhaps the cavalry had arrived. If he listened closely he could swear he heard the beat of Ragenard's engine, though the other he didn't recognize. Either Snow for muscle or Julienne to cover for his poor tracking skills, he reckoned. Probably the latter.

Regardless, the enormous wolf got to his feet and bolted through the streets, tracking those engines. He was amazed how far he'd gotten from the apartment while trying to track, and by the time he got there, they'd parked near his bike and were already inside.

It was hard enough getting out of there and didn't really go back in, so he placed his pack down on Ragenard's saddle and gave a short howling yip, of the sort they'd used for signals in the past. "I'm here when you get done in there.
 
Ragenard made it through the remains of the door without further ado upon receiving Julienne's readiness signal. He led them from room to room swiftly bolting into each one with a quick dash and roll before covering the corners in a manner that would have been reckless were it not for the fact that it was Ragenard doing it.

'You know,' Manny piped up in his mind as he cleared the last room, Aimeé's. 'I was wondering what would happen if you die. I can't, y'know? I mean, I didn't expect this when we cast that spell that long ago, but yeah, it's clearly holding...so...'

Ragenard did not deign to reply back. He understood the creature's musing and implication clearly but he didn't want to give it more solidity than it already had. He was coming to understand some of the Morrigan's cryptic warnings now; she'd been trying to check if Manny was awake and causing him grief yet without alerting the phantom fuck. That was both a good thing and utterly terrifying because it implied that there was something the Morrigan could probably do to help him, but it also implied Manny had the ability to cock that up, and Ragenard had no real way to predict what her concerns around his passenger may be. He couldn't afford to play tug-of-war right now.

'I can feel you worried about something even when you wall me off from the details." It whispered with that insufferable feeling and sound of distant laughter that still crept in when Ragenard wasn't steeling against it.

"All clear," Ragenard called out to Julienne, ignoring his inner world once more as he took in the room. As much as he could, that was. He could smell the sourness of sweat, the tang of blood, and the stink of drugs and alcohol in the room. He could smell the fear. Ragenard turned his gaze to Julienne, his eyes pulsing amber with his heartbeat as he held his shift at bay, barely.

Xandre's check-in yip brought him from the precipice, and Ragenard managed a slightly tighter rein upon himself. He put two fingers to his lips and let out a short and fast shrill whistle to communicate his response, heedless and uncaring of the hour. It was the simplest response whistle they had: 'Acknowledged'.

"Xandre's back, sounds healthy and is waiting for us," he voiced unnecessarily. "Must have lost the trail in the smog and perfume of the city. You're up, wondernose," Ragenard barked, his temper evidently short to the straining point, though that didn't feature in the name.

Julienne's old nickname hadn't stuck around past her prospect-hood days (she'd made sure of that), but it was apt. A blend of ability, morphology, and intuition, Julienne's tracking put the rest of the pack to shame in ways that bloodhounds would get jealous of. Her ability to track a scent thorough the city, cross-reference it with other scents, follow a cross-reference to where the original scent reappeared, or any other number of things that she'd tried to explain to Ragenard that feature in how she was so successful at city tracking in not so many words simply boggled his mind.

He hoped she wouldn't notice his rising volatility, but it wouldn't take a genius, let alone someone who knew him as well as Julienne did to notice he was struggling to contain himself being in the room where if they let their imagination wonder, their senses would fill in the past picture. "I'll carry your shit, and Xandre will cover you in case you have to go where two legs can't. I reckon we got a couple of hours before the LPD bigwigs wake up and order some idiots to hassle us, the cut comes in handy. Long as I don't shift, they won't call the army on our asses." Ragenard's tone was as strained as his joke, but he got his phone out and used it like a talisman to ground himself whilst Julienne did what she needed to.

He had a whole pack to concern himself and worry for, he had to keep himself in balance.

[Priority Group Chat Message] Ragenard: We're at the pup's house. I...can confirm violence happened here to the pup. Not lethal, but she was moved. Xandre is outside. Juls is gonna nose from here, we're legging it. This stinks. Stay alert and stay tuned, but I see those stepping up. Take care of each other.


[To Baron:] Alright. I know you want to stay and make sure they're all okay. I did too, but it can't be neither of us right now. You know that. I hate it more than you and baby them more, you know it. But I really do want you to make sure my second isn't splatted. Like I said, this stinks but I don't know who is doing the set up or why. It smells like her fucking rommates did it, there's no fresh stranger scents in here than our own.


[To Baron:] Oh, and don't be where Rhetta can see you too much. Throws her the fuck off and I want her sharp 🙅‍♂️.
 
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With the apartment clear of any obvious threats, Julienne allowed the poised tension in her body to relax. She returned her side-arm to its holster to free up her hands.

"I swear if that name makes the rounds again..." she said with a roll of her eyes.

Light bantering was par for the course between them, but it felt too strained and practiced. The unease and tension of the situation overshadowed any genuine irritation for the time being.

"Sure, give me a moment though," she added as she crouched down to examine the floor.

It was difficult to discern much within the apartment itself, on account of Aimee living here. Everything smelled of her, and her roommates. At least she assumed it was her roommates. They weren't trace smells. Like Aimee, the whole place smelled of the pair. They where definitely living here.

"This doesn't seem right," Julienne said. "The only scents are the people who live here. But that would mean..."

She let the thought trail off. Even Aimee should have been able to deal with a pair of humans. Though had they been human? She couldn't remember for certainty. The smell of Aimee's blood had her riled and there was genuine anger in her eyes as she stood back up.

"She had better be alive," she growled.

She was alive when she was taken from the apartment, but there was no telling what transpired after that. There was no point in wasting more time and she removed her gun holster and set it on a nearby table before shedding her clothes. Her skin seemed to ripple and bulge as she doubled over, and a few minutes later a lean wolf with chestnut fur was shaking itself off.

She scented the air, and the floor one more time, but picked up nothing new. As she led the way back out of the building she couldn't help but feel that something wasn't right though. The trouble with processing the intricacies of scent trails almost subconsciously is that she was having a hard time placing why things felt... off. It would have to wait though. For now they needed to find Aimee.
 
Ragenard quietly bent down to retrieve Julienne's clothes and gun holster from the low table, and stood there with the bundles as he beheld the room. He spotted a familiar looking bundle then, and collected Xandre's gear.

He could hear the faint humming of morning TV's in the apartment nearby. Smell the mildew awakening as showers kicked off to life. Motes of dust danced in the alighting morning sunlight while he watched Julienne sniff around. He resisted the urge to try to taste the air like a snake, and was momentarily thrown off by the fact that it was his concern.

No comment for once? Ragenard thought to himself. He shrugged his shoulders in mild subconscious discomfort at the sudden feeling of lack when a response did not materialize, but otherwise put the thought aside as Ragenard picked up on Julienne's body language that she was ready.

"Alright," he said clearly, unconcerned about the optics of a gigantic man talking to what might be mistaken as a dog by comparison. "Let's go update Xandre." Ragenard led them out of Aimeé's apartment, pausing at the threshold for a moment to take another look within. There was no way he could arrive at why, but the itch at his cognition wouldn't stop. How did two humans overpower a werewolf? Ragenard knew the pup and her propensity for self-doubt but adrenaline alone should have had her bending them like twigs. She was dosed, Ragenard realized the obvious suddenly. The burst of anger at all the possibilities surrounding everything from why and how a couple of human dipshits had access to lycan-pharm, to why they were shacking with Aimeé to begin with, and beyond became a torrent then however, and he quickly got moving again.

He wasn't a fucking detective, and would settle for scouring the answers out of the flesh of whoever was at the end of the trail.

A door opened as they were leaving, but the occupants quickly beat a hasty retreat at Ragenard's armed urging if not at the sight of what to them was unmistakably a large shifted-werewolf suddenly intruding in their vaunted and beloved illusion of suburbia, as if his kind didn't all struggle to survive in the scraps of their society a few scant miles away. Ragenard resisted the urge to bark at them or to call out to Xandre so they could really shit their pants at the reminder that "big doggies" walked amongst them.

They made it back to where their motorcycles were parked, and the comical sight of a giant wolf sitting on it's haunches towering over them. Now that the sun was up, their intrusion upon polite society would be impossible to hide. While this brought Ragenard a measure of amusement—he actually looked forward to meeting whatever LPD near-pensioner/rookie combo they sent to hassle him about his morning whereabouts later—it also carried with it a tactical consideration: Whoever was behind this would find it easy to get word about their being on the move. They would have all the opportunity in the world to time their very fucking obvious trap.

They'll be fine, you left them together and alert. Just another set of punks about to find out...Ragenard thought with an accompanying deep breath.

'They!? You left over a dozen good fighters behind, moron. Are we safe? You're not together or alert,' Manny piped in mockery from the corners of Ragenard's mind. The rippling was mentally similar to the physical sensation of Ragenard's lips shaking in a rage-tic, exposing his canines, which was also occurring.

Maybe if you would shut up while I am thinking or better yet, explain the fuc—Ragenard's frustration was immediately matched, creating an emotional tug-of-war within him that brought with it the now-explained sense of vertigo that these clashes tended to bring.

'Lad, I didn't fucking ask for this either, but no, go fuck yourself. It was your job to make sure I was dead when you wanted me dead. No fucking way am I teaching, mentoring, helping, powering, conjoining, or otherwise making your existence anything but misery and/or drudgery,' Manannán groused at Ragenard. It was fucking surreal to feel indignation within you that you didn't conjure but also could feel targeted at yourself.

Don't get your ghost panties in a bunch, I'll figure it out eventually, aren't I absorbing you? Ragenard thought as he reached his bike, setting down Julienne's stuff on the seat of his bike momentarily. "Thanks for the quick heads up and for trying to find her brother," Ragenard said to Xandre as he reached up to roughly yet affectionately shake the wolf's shoulder. "We'll let Juls work her magic. I'll carry both your clothes and bring your twin babies." Ragenard reached into one of the saddle bags of his bike, and pulled out a simple but sturdy mesh bag in which he bundled in Julienne's clothes.

'I don't fucking know what you're doing, but I repeat that I am not giving up power willingly. Fry yourself at your own peril, dog,' replied Manny to their inner conversation. His disdain was amusing to Ragenard, not the least because he could tell that despite it all, Manny was interested.

That should have given him pause, but it didn't. Ragenard simply wasn't the kind of person to measure or consider odds when the equation required that he stand alone to one side of the equals symbol; So what if he was posessed by a ghost vampire with thousands of years of general life experience? Manny didn't know shit about being not just a werewolf, but being the creature that Ragenard was.

'Yes, yes,' Manny groaned audibly within Ragenard's cognition, before taking a mocking intonation that Ragenard perceived as an attempt to use his own voice against him: 'Hyuck Hyuck, I'm an aberrant freak and proud of it UGh why didn't I have the fortune to end up within someone more dignified and capable of—'

Ragenard added a mental 'Pop' to go with the idea of the slowly drifting bubble that was Manny popping at the end of its imaginary journey, and silence returned once more within his mind. It probably wouldn't last, but at least Manny didn't seem to track time as quickly as Ragenard did. It may be hours before he realized and returned bitching.

"We're legging it, I don't give a fuck who watches," he explained to Xandre. His mood re-ignited almost immediately. The therapeutic visualization technique that cleared him of Manny didn't cut it at the calming down bit anymore, that's why he used it. "I've all but gone about screaming 'Hi, I'm R. Guiscard!' this morning, so it'll be hours before anyone with balls in LPD command is awake enough to order the chickenshit file to come find me to hassle," he added in explanation before moving to Xandre's bike.

He separated Xandre's clothes from the bundle with the Duster and transferred them to the bag he was using to carry Julienne's clothes in, before tying it and attaching it to the back of his baldric. Julienne's holster he quickly tied to his belt, while the P90s went collapsed and attached to the spare clips on his baldric, with one sub-machine gun hanging in front of his left shoulder and the other by his right hip. His own shotgun went into a holster on his left thigh, leaving him capable to draw any of the guns upon his body at a whim.

"Alright kids, let's go find our girl and hurt some fuckheads".
 
Xandre watched Julienne and Ragenard exit the building, Julienne in her (rather elegant, in Wolf-Xandre's opinion) wolf form. The larger man seemed a little off this morning. Stress, maybe? Xandre wasn't sure; he knew the boss was fond of Aimee but this seemed like something else. Or something more, in any case. Or maybe the dwarf had spent too much time as a human to fully interpret his wolf's intuition. It was hard to say.

When Ragenard patted his shoulder, he allowed a little bark of affection before getting off his haunches; he was big, and a certain speed came with that sort of legspan. But for as big as he was, he was quite slow, and he'd worked with Julienne before. She was an expert tracker, and he fully expected her to move quickly, and he'd need to be prepared to keep up. He gave his coat a shake, stretched himself out, and positioned himself right around her 5 o'clock. She'd lead the way, but he was prepared to take on any threats that they may come across.

His failed tracking attempt behind him, he retuned his senses at his surroundings, patrolling for dangers, focusing on his ears instead of his snout. As Ragenard offered his final pep talk, a low growl escaped his lupine throat, through bared teeth, as though to say, "I'm ready."
 
Julienne was as quick on her feet - or paws in this case - as Xandre remembered. What she lacked for in size, she made up for in agility. Something was off today though. At times she hesitated, or even circled back. At other times she remained in one place just taking in the scents around her. There was a reason for her reputation. A bloodhound had an uncanny way of isolating a single scent into a trackable image. They couldn't rationalize or reason though. It was purely chemical reactions, and they focused on a single scene at the exclusion of all others.

Julienne could piece together multiple scents to form overlapping imagery that was almost as keen as her eyesight. It was a different sort of sight though, and one that was difficult for someone to imagine that had not experienced such a thing. It was perhaps for this reason that she continued to pick up on the sense of 'wrongness'.

The scent trails she was following should have painted a complete picture as she went. Each individual smell entwining with the others and creating a cocktail of smells that increased and faded in predictable increments. This wasn't the case though. The smell she was picking up on didn't seem to be part of the 'picture'. It was separate from it, both failing to influence the rest of the imagery, and failing to be influenced by it.

This may have contributed to Xandre's difficulty in following the trail. The scents of the city could be overwhelming and make it hard to pick out a single distinct scent from the rest. For Julienne though, it was a detectable arrow that cut through the rest. And it didn't make sense. She kept back tracking and searching for what she may have missed. The more she followed the scent trail, the more her instincts where telling her that something wasn't right. She broke off from it several times, searching nearby areas for signs of any deviations from it. But she always made her way back to it.

It was slowly leading them away from Lupaix, and into Iron Jackal territory. Her hackles where raised as she scented the air. She didn't like this at all. They had been searching for Aimee for several hours, and everything pointed in this direction, but it shouldn't be. It should have faded and mingled into the other smells of the city by now. Question was, if it was a trap, did it matter? As long as Aimee was there? With both Ragenard and Xandre at hand, there wasn't much they couldn't handle.

She slowed though and began the process of shifting back. Her fur receded rapidly to be replaced by smooth skin, and it wasn't long before she was standing next to Ragenard and Xandre on two legs.

"I don't like this," she said. "There's something wrong. It's hard to explain..." she looked irritated. It was always hard to articulate just what she saw when shifted. "Fuck it. It's just wrong."
 
The various guns dangling from his person rattled and jostled against Ragenard’s chest as he kept up the constant sprint required for his human formed legs to keep in roughly between the pace of Julienne’s energetic but relaxed trot and Xandre’s gracefully long but strained lope. For every six of Julienne’s steps and Xandre’s two, he pumped out four.

It was an easy pace for Ragenard, and being amidst his pack whilst moving towards a purpose together with them instilled an easy cadence and rhythm in him. It was something he wasn’t used to yet, that he had only begun to feel since the night after officially defeating Desmond the previous month. Ragenard hadn’t decided yet if the feeling was all in his head or if something else was at play. He supposed he could have asked Baron but he couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t sound fucking stupid.

Blessedly, his banishing of Manny seemed to hold yet, and he was spared the distraction he was sure the sentiment would have brought. Which left him free to try to follow along with Julienne’s tracking.

He was humbled all over again, his enhanced human form senses immediately assaulted into near blindness by the overpowering scent of the city. To him, trying to parse the cityscape as a whole through scent was like trying to drink an ocean wave with a straw; his mind was simply buffeted senselessly away.

No, he couldn’t simply grab a hold of a tapestry like Julienne could. He was as limited to a single scent over long distances as a dog might have, and the act of multitasking was if not beyond his physiology, then somewhere beyond his current understanding.

Which is why Ragenard found it pretty fucking weird that every so often as Julienne led them along and the wind changed, that the scent of the city seemed to drop off and be replaced by…

A sense of vertigo came upon him faintly, as if his stomach was feeling off but it was telling him so by calling out from another room in the house. Whatever it was he thought he smelled was suddenly gone again, and the city stench suffused all. This repeated itself every so often throughout their run, and always unerringly in the path Julienne was leading them to.

He recognized the change in neighborhoods, as they neared to within a mile or two of where the pack’s various observations over the previous week into their hi-jinks had pinned as the likely part of town where the IJ’s hung their hats in their little clubhouse nowadays.

Julienne stopped them abruptly and began to shift back. Ragenard waited her out and hooked a thumb towards the bag at his back with a questioning raised eyebrow at Julienne—non-verbally offering her clothes back if she thought she had it from here on two legs—before responding to her outburst.

“I caught some whiffs of wrong that came and went but always seemed the same, I think I get what you mean. Gotta be magic, maybe a fucked-up taunt,” Ragenard said with a shrug.

“Irrelevant at this point, those fuckers have to know something at the least. Find us where they’re holed up but with a subtle approach, so we can try to get a look-see first,” he requested further as he looked around.

They stood smack dab in the middle of an empty street, having gone from Lupaix’s old rail industry district and into Via Laguna’s old riverside docks industry district. The slightly chemically tangy musk of the river dominated this portion of the city’s bouquet, and they were within visual sight of where the riverside warehouses and small factories suddenly took over this portion of the cityscape.

Ragenard pointed his thumb towards the bag again and included Xandre in the gesture this time. “What about you Xan? I want something left to question so I won’t shift unless we confirm these aren’t babyshit soft humans, but we could use you in either form,” Ragenard asked of the giant timber wolf.
 
Xandre listened carefully to the conversation, and when that... wrongness was mentioned, he took a couple of big sniffs from the air, letting the scent settle out on his olfactory organs. He realized he'd been smelling it the whole time, and it was confusing, but he hadn't been able to identify it as anything in particular.

Now that it was pointed out, though... he couldn't un-smell it. It was almost nauseating.

"...What about you Xan?" Just like that, he was snapped back into the conversation. Now that he was dragged out of his head, he realized he was growling low in the back of his throat.

This was probably a trap. He wasn't the tracker that Julienne was, and he wasn't the leader that Ragenard was, but he had his own degree of intuition and danger sense, especially while shifted, and it was going haywire.

He whined a bit and lifted a paw, tapping it with his snout. "No time." He was confident Rage would understand; they'd worked together long enough. It took Xandre almost a full 15 minutes to wolf out. Changing back was quicker; He usually was able to return to his dwarven stature within about 10, but the only real change to his efficacy between the forms was range and being up-close and personal felt right at this moment.

It'd been hours, and though Aimee certainly wasn't his friend, he felt ownership to some degree. Suspect? charge? ward? The lines had long since blurred together, and if there was a chance Aimee was at the end of this path, he was eager to just get to the end of it.

He let out a surprisingly small bark--you'd probably categorize it as a yip if not for its baritone tenor--as though to say, "Let's go!"
 
With Julienne’s expert tracking, the trio ventured deeper into the VL quarter. The trail often led them along a circuitous and winding path, making their final destination seem elusive. It became increasingly obvious to Ragenard that they were being corralled, a suspicion that solidified into certainty.

“We’re definitely being led,” he remarked eventually, casually jerking his chin skyward.

They had followed the trail to a bend in a hilly road, overlooking the river and the old J.J. Peugeot snacks cannery below, with a roughly 12-meter drop separating them. Just as they rounded the corner, a fortuitous combination of luck and what Ragenard could only assume was amateur hour gave him the confirmation he needed: he spotted the drone that had been observing them.

He had only caught the barest glint off its body as the operator realized the mistake in their altitude, given the way the ground was elevated on this approach. The drone began a steep and straight ascent, but it was too late—Ragenard had seen it.

Now that his eyes were locked on it, a slight itch in his ears signaled the rising volume of the world around him. His “stoppers”—the casual name he gave to the wonders that ILV had reconstructed his inner ears into being—opened with a faint pop, leaving behind a sensation of lightness.

Auricular muscles, no longer vestigial, which could have made a pinniped feel at home in water, sprang into action in response to his subconscious desire to hear the drone. Membrane-like flaps detached from midway through his ear canal, bending themselves around his cochlea deep within. As they manipulated and angled his cochlea in response to the visual stimuli, they brought hair-like filaments of varying thickness and density to bear on Ragenard’s auditory perception, dynamically modulating the range of frequencies he could discern.

As the final adjustment clicked into place—his auricular muscles aligning his cochlea and locking it in through the shifting of his middle ear bones—the sounds of vehicles, his packmates’ hearts, and the scant breeze of what promised to be a windless morning simply faded. These sounds were physically attenuated to a degree that rendered them beyond his awareness, allowing him to focus solely on the drone overhead.

Its electronic squeal and the soft whir of its struggling rotors became unmistakable to Ragenard, and he had to shake his head to willfully ignore it—here Manny would have marveled mockingly at the dog’s casual dismissal of such biological wonders if he hadn’t been so rudely compartmentalized—so he could focus on addressing Julienne and Xandre.

“There’s a drone watching us. I only just now noticed it unfortunately, but I bet it’s the assholes below,” he said, gesturing past the roadside barriers toward the cannery below. “That’s their home turf, no doubt. Has to be. I couldn’t purchase it when I wanted to and had to settle for the fucking railyard,” Ragenard added, spitting his displeasure in their direction before moving to lean against the barrier.

He eyed the drop as he thought back to that night in the casino a few—Ragenard realized he wasn’t sure if it had been one or two months since his abrupt crashing of Baron’s party with Rowan. A lot had gone on since then. Was going on, he reflected as he snapped back to reality.

“These assholes think we’re going to walk right into their trap,” Ragenard muttered with a perverse smile. The drop was trivial compared to his rooftop leaping, but he wasn’t alone this time. He regarded Xandre, considering what he knew of the large wolf.

The fall wouldn’t be painless, but Xandre was more than just a scaled-up wolf—he was as enhanced as any of them, and in many ways more than most. The makeup of his bones, the location of his muscles, the density and mucosity of his tissues—all the things Ragenard pretended he couldn’t consider, and which Manny wasn’t around to jeer at him for knowing—were present within all of them to some degree or another.

The feats they could or couldn’t perform were never straightforward.

Especially given that these monsters could reason, and hate. Hate enough to reason that a bit of pain, which would soon heal, might be worth it to utterly destroy those who thought they could harm one of theirs with impunity.

Ragenard pointed past the barriers and downward by jerking his thumb over his shoulder with one arm, while beckoning Julienne to come closer. He knew she wouldn’t be able to take such a fall onto solid ground and remain agile without needing time to heal. But she’d be safe enough in his arms as he took most of the impact, and it wasn’t even among the top ten craziest things they’d physically done together.

“I say we drop in on the party with some aplomb. If that Jimmy kid was any indication, they don’t know how to tell who reacts best to Magicle-Gro—that’s what we used to call those little state secret pills back in the War—and if we’re lucky, they’ll be taking it en masse like fucking morons, and we can mop up as half of them vomit their guts out,” he suggested, looking to his companions to gauge their thoughts on the plan.

That was the difference between people like Rowan or Regis and Ragenard: he would ask his kin if they would follow him into the fray, but he wouldn’t order them to. And he would readily find another approach for them while he himself took the path of greater danger, if need be.
 
"So let me get this straight. It's a trap, and you want to drop in anyways?" Julienne inquired with a quirk of a grin.

There was no hesitation in her, but if she was going over that drop she was doing it her way. She quickly checked that her weapons where secure in their holsters and sheaths before jumping up for Ragenard to catch her. She hooked her legs around his waist and held on tight with her arms. There was a fire in her eyes as she braced herself for the impact.

Julienne's trust in Ragenard's abilities was unwavering. It had been she who had called Ragenard to tip him off about Baron's move against the casino, which had enabled him to turn the tides with his arrival. He could dominate a battle field, and walk away from things that no one else could have survived.

Julienne for all her spitfire personality was quite young. She hadn't the decades of bloodshed to harden her against the losses they had endured recently. Ragenard was the one certainty Julienne had faith in. No matter what, he would walk out alive. Perhaps it was why she was apt to gravitating towards him more often than others.

Whatever her reasoning, she was prepared to follow him into the thick of the hornets nest below without an inkling of fear.
 
The large black wolf stood at the edge of the drop, and grinned in both equal parts anticipation and menace. Ragenard would know that look, even after all these years. The drop would hurt like a bitch, but he’d heal up quick enough to be into the fray and ripping into whatever came their way.

His only regret was that he’d not be able to shift and join in as a man. Even on the best of days, shifting back would take too long. It always took too long, a luxury they didn’t have tonight. The bastards were already aware they were here. Hell, they were lured here right? The thought had made the fur raise on his hackles.

He looked up at Ragenard, a growl that mimicked a huffed laugh. The thrill of the hunt burned in him, and he was ready. No matter what, Leo would follow Ragenard into battle. And he’d do his damnedest to make sure all of them walked back out again.

Lets go.
 
The Bloodstone pack leader took in a deep breath of air. It was the last one he expected to take while under a measure—small and strained as it was—of peace this morning. With his age had come a measure of wisdom he had to intentionally prepare to take down in order to do what must be done.

He looked down upon the cannery, and idly ruminated upon what the differences were between his kin and them below. Ragenard had asked his questions of his charges whilst being entirely certain of the responses he was going to receive. He had many faults—hell, the entire pack had many faults from a variety of different avenues both personal and as a group—but knowing he had the trust of his people was not one of those faults.

Ragenard was certain Regis below couldn’t say the same thing: There was no shortage of angry youth in Lutetia; indeed, they came from all of Issunar in search of the fabled boons of modernity offered by the city and rapidly developing country. The Iron Jackals ruled by fear almost exclusively, based on Ragenard’s estimation over the years. It wasn’t a necessarily a dig against them; that was how most human gangs that didn’t have a strong claim to the territory they held operated, usually.

Fear of poverty. Fear of privation. Fear of being taken advantage of. The fear of not having a place to belong in society. At its deep—and easily corruptible core—people joined gangs for a sense of belonging and to avoid the sting of being the “other” alone.

Things changed of course, once “the gang of like-minded” becomes “the Gang”.

The extra dose of disdain heaped upon werewolves tended to make werewolf gangs turn closer knit and isolationist, often ameliorating the next stage in the transformative process, except in cases where it didn’t, and you ended up with groups like the Scions.

Because once you had your group set to fight against the world, there was always the next set of nestled choices: What can all of those idle hands do to get what they deserve, what was it that they deserved…and who was fair game to stop from preventing what was deserved from being acquired.

Contrary to popular belief, the Bloodstone pack didn’t mark the entire world as the opponent they were fighting. In many ways, the chip on all their shoulders was simply too big to entertain such silly notions. They’d spent decades after their formation quietly working to make Lupaix their home first, before worrying how to extract a living second.

From small scale confidence schemes and petty thefts to their rise as instrumental parts of the international grey and black arms markets; the pack handled them the same way. You built a home and connections to that home not because it made it easier to earn, but because it was what they deserved. A home first, and business prospects later.

After that, it was a simple extension to focus on those niches that didn’t tend to make the place you called home a shithole. Sure, guns and arms weren’t harmless community aid, but that was why they focused both on their movement through Lutetia, as well as always stood themselves as the protectors of the lands they staked claim to.

Trust was the foundation, and that was what the Iron Jackals didn’t comprehend, ruled by fear as they were. They had no qualms robbing mom and pop shops in Vargeras. No compunction in peddling dangerous additive containing hard drugs in the same community their children would go to school in.

To the Iron Jackals, Ragenard felt, there was no fear that wasn’t worth tapping into. The IJ’s had always known the pack’s line to skirt, and for their shame the pack had ever enjoyed having another group close at hand that did the brunt of the police presence drawing.

But even there, Regis could only get as far as he’d gotten thanks to the pack’s foundation of trust. It was what allowed pissants like the men he expected to find at the back of it all down there to rise at the periphery of the Bloodstone kingdom. They would use the fear of the pack’s retaliation to bolster their defenses today, because they trusted it would come.

Ragenard didn’t need to know what exactly had crept up Regis’ ass to make him feel emboldened enough to drive Ragenard to stand here on the precipice of bringing their demise at last. He knew it was something that Regis feared could be taken from him and thus the man had acted in a way he trusted would bring Ragenard personally here.

The Bloodstones were also feared, thanks to that foundation of trust. There was no home, no arms business, no pack without the simplest thing you could trust upon: You did not harm the pack without the expectation of extreme reprisal. Strike the least of them…

Ragenard let out a long exhale, feeling his mental floodgates unlock at last.

Fuck the Pangolins; whoever the fuck they were this wasn’t their turf and who the fuck picked the IJ’s as their backing horse?

Fuck their having access to Magicle-Gro; Ragenard had already been forced to lead groups of men and women through that and there was no way Regis would trust anyone under him to hold any power long enough to identify any true-to-spark Shit-Heads for the ‘Gro to produce a true enhanced human.

The Bloodstone leader underwent several physiological changes of which he was aware and familiar with—both intimately and the reason why he ever got his school equivalence certification—but strangely didn’t feel the need to ruminate upon them as they happened like he normally did. He was already too far gone to the hyper-hormonal cascade to conclude why this was accompanied by mental silence and couldn’t be unnerved.

His eyes were a brilliant and untainted amber, and while he hadn’t triggered a shift yet, the Bloodstone leader was no longer Ragenard Guiscard. A name belonged to a man and here, the beast had been awakened.



He didn’t need to stretch. He didn’t need to warm up. He didn’t need to prepare. He never did, not truly. Not once he’d let himself reach this state. Everything else he heaped upon his life was merely debris and detritus meant to keep him separated from this. He ceased to think of himself as a man and let itself think as it truly was.

The Beast had enough of being watched, so it sliced the drone in half.

There was no space between the thought and the action whatsoever—Ragenard simply and unerringly reached over his left shoulder with his right arm and launched his priceless sword over yonder through its target, leaving it to land somewhere within the cannery below.

No space for worry about losing the priceless artifact—itself one of the few non-family things that were strongly impressed upon the Beast—for the same reason there was no doubt about having the chance to find it later; The Beast didn’t know and couldn’t conceptualize defeat.

It had the only two scents that mattered right now nearby—one holding on for protection and another nearby—and it hoped to pick up a third below, no matter what got in its way. Without preamble, The Beast took a running start and leaped over the cliff-side street barrier.

As the air whistled by the scant seconds they had until impact, The Beast unfurled. A simple drop over the wall straight down would have been faster and slowed the Beast less, but it needed the extra momentum to maneuver Julienne safely.

The Beast kept its center of gravity tucked forward ahead of its knees as it fell, with legs tucked in beneath his forward hunching head which nestled against his neck and arms locked grasping his own forearms while Julienne held on nestled within the makeshift crash cage. It knew the pain was coming.

The Beast hated pain. It was the constant goader that kept it caged away. It didn’t fear pain, it couldn’t. It existed as the response to pain, and it incensed it beyond reason every time it was forced to deal with unignorable amounts of the same. The Beast understood nothing that pained it could actually harm it, and thus it was brought to fury anytime physical law tried to use pain as the marker for why it was being forced to slow down.

It landed upon legs which immediately shattered in a network of bone fractures that audibly assaulted the air with the staccato burst of pulverizing bone as The Beast’s considerable heft was tallied alongside the mass added by Julienne and an equal but opposite amount of force provided happily by the ever-bracing ground itself. This was as it had expected, and the Beast used the fact that its center of gravity was pulling it slightly forward to transition into a roll even as one of its hips was pulled out of the socket by the sudden shift in angular momentum. The conservation thereof, combined with the strength of his arm muscles ensured that his Julienne bundle had been as cushioned as his own body could make her up to this point, but it was time for the baby bird to fly.

The Beast completed a single revolution without crushing the packmate to death against itself, and with their force severely curtailed it was now safe to springboard launch Julienne onto catching her own footing with his right arm while he slapped out of the fall with his left.

“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, REGIS!”, the Beast roared as it rolled back forward over its legs. More pain as bone shards ground together before being pulled by their connective tissues back into place.

The bullets started pinging around the Beast almost at once, but most of them missed.

Somewhere very deep down, the Beast held the notions of trust and fear. Held the notion that they played a part here in some ironic fashion. But these were not concepts that mattered to it. What did was the fact that he’d smelled them approaching while he had been dealing with the pain.

This made him angrier, which meant shorter pain periods. They missed because the Beast had closed in the scant ten feet of distance to the most daring of the shooters who had stepped out from under the awning over the closest entrance to the cannery from where they stood. What they’d mistaken in their split-second assessment as Ragenard rolling around in pain with broken legs had been the Beast shifting its feet to be beneath its two intact hips so it could spring upright and right into action with its healed up legs.

The Beast understood that it had multiple bodies that all belonged to it. It made no distinction for which one “made it up” like the man-things did, but it understood they each had their uses. That said, some things simply were what they were, and the Beast couldn’t begin to comprehend why man-things quibbled. Teeth were teeth, whatever the form.

The two Iron Jackals beyond the one whose neck was missing a human bite hunk from its throat ran indoors into the murky darkness of the cannery as the Beast spat out the debris from its weapons, leaving their compatriot to slowly sputter in aghast confusion as the Iron Jackal’s gun clattered to the ground in favor of trying to staunch the fountain spluttering from where his artery used to be.

It would only take another second for a scream of pain to emanate from another of the pair off in the gloom beyond the sight of Julienne and Leo, as the Beast chased them under the awning and into the cannery within, moving with the characteristic predatory poise they would understand meant it was clearing them a path. They would still want to watch their corners and angles as they entered the foyer of the cannery, but there was one good thing about a foundation of trust; They could trust that the Beast would give them an opening space to enter into cover.

Furthermore, they could trust they could always find the Beast within; the heady sensation of this form of the pack instinct that Ragenard exuded behind him would be like ant-trails on crack cocaine that they could blindly follow even with their eyes closed, knowing they had but to aim everywhere Ragenard hadn’t been to yet.

Their enemies needed something to fear, and you could always trust the Bloodstone pack would deliver.
 
For a moment the pair where in free-fall and a rush of adrenaline flooded Julienne. Her eyes where a swirl of amber as she braced for the impact. It came quickly, but she held on tight and kept her head tucked forward against him.

Timing and positioning was everything, and hers was spot on. As Ragenard released her, and her feet struck ground, she used her forward momentum to enter a roll of her own. She came to a stop on one knee, gun drawn and aimed.

She was fast, but Ragenard was faster. Already he was upon the Jackals. She came to her feet at a sprint, eyes trained for any movement from their sides. Ragenard was drawing the gunfire, and no one gave the scrap of a woman an ounce of concern in the wake of the beast in their midst.

It would prove a deadly mistake. She moved with practiced precision and was well experienced in tagging along with Ragenard to raise hell. Though one might argue that those who fell to her gun where the fortunate ones. Those caught in Ragenard's path would certainly agree.

Julienne was too young to remember the bloodiest of their years, but she had engaged in this deadly dance with Ragenard enough times to not even be disturbed at the brutality of it. His rage and her exhilaration flooded her senses and she scarcely spared a thought for it. Her movements where guided largely on instinct and intuition.
 
The black wolf was on Ragenard's heels, a dark shadow moving with relentless speed. He soared over the wall, his muscular form cutting through the air, and plunged headlong into the pit. In that moment, there was nothing but the chase, the thrill of the fall, and the raw hunger for what awaited below. His grin stretched wide and unsettling, like a twisted version of the Cheshire Cat’s, with his tongue hanging lazily out the side of his mouth, mocking gravity’s pull.

A fleeting thought crossed his mind—what would it be like to fly, to escape the ground entirely? But it vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by the bone-jarring impact of earth meeting flesh. The crack was sickening, but he only yelped once before that manic laughing growl of his spilled out. His eyes darted, searching for Julienne, his vision blurry with adrenaline but sharp with intent.

His front legs had taken the worst of the fall, pain screaming through his bones, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. With a determined scoot, he dragged himself forward, his back legs less damaged from the fall. Even in pain, his mind was on one thing: blood. He was going to rip out throats. He was going to tear through bone and sinew. The damage didn’t matter—his body would heal, maybe not as fast as Ragenard, but fast enough.

His limbs began to knit themselves together, the deep bruising fading, the broken bones shifting back into place.Just a moment more, and he’d be back on his feet. His companions were already ahead, and soon enough, he’d be bounding down the hallway, hot on their trail. He’d go for the throat of the first one he found.

The hunt had begun.
 
A sound that went 'A ring ding ding ding ring ding ding' as beatboxed by a particularly obnoxious frog rang out incongruously within the cavernous interior of the cannery's main processing floor. It wasn't so much the ringing of Ragenard's intentionally annoying ringtone in the decrepit building that led to the rising feelings of incongruity, however. The culprit behind those changing vibes was most likely the fact that the Beast was working its way through the chaff with alacrity, and the screams of the dead and dying behind it clashed fiercely with faux cartoon motor sounds.

The Beast didn’t pay either set of sounds any heed; the throes of death were well and proper, and the man-thing used to talk to other man-things was of no use to the Beast or its desire to punish every creature that currently stood within its path or crossed its purposes.

“They’re here! Of course they got in already, Serg! YES! Oh god he’s—," a man cried out frantically, before he turned his rifle upon the Beast.

The creature that sometimes called itself Ragenard Guiscard secretly disdained guns with a tremendous fervor, for all that its man-thing knew of and did with them. It wasn’t so much that the Beast detested the inherent unfairness they imposed—ambush tactics were perfectly okay with its temperament as it was demonstrating after all, and hypocrisy surrounding notions of fairness was too high brow a concept for the Beast—but that they fucking hurt.

As Ragenard’s human form was perforated dozens of times initially, he roared in rage. He’d gotten close to the man, instinctively drawn by his words. The Beast crouched, bearing the burning-cold barrage. A dozen stars of pain became hundreds as the hollows within the projectiles deformed and broke into myriads of fragments as the bullets clashed against its bones.

The pain was nigh unbearable, but the man had said something important, and puzzling over it was a good distraction from the sensation of cold-fire and the plinking of the bullet fragments leaving his rapidly regenerating body hitting the ground like someone pulled his lever and had it land on ‘jackpot’.

A name. It was a name. The Beast hated when it needed to prod the man-things, but it had no choice. It retreated within itself even as it lurched, causing Ragenard to nearly trip upon his own blood slick as he landed before the iron jackal soldier. An absentminded jab punctuated by a brutal pull left the man disarmed and nearly armless to boot, while a blood covered but no longer bleeding Ragenard lifted the man one armed by the neck.

“Sergei? Regis? WHERE?” he roared.

“They’re in one of back buildings deeper in, where they’re getting some sort of surprise ready, please they only told some of—,” the iron jackal begun breathlessly.

The man’s desperate plea went unfinished as Ragenard’s eyes glazed over, and a snapping sound nearly went inaudible in the carnage as their packmates brought up the rear. The Beast had heard enough. It dropped its burden thoughtlessly and howled keenly with a loudly piercing emanation right at the limits of its man-shape’s throat before resuming its stalking path deeper within. The sound of his howling would alert Julienne and Leo as to his location, and the nature of the sound itself further communicated to them via its urgency that their goal wasn’t here.

As usual, the Beast didn’t worry overmuch about the packmates abilities to follow its trail. They just had to follow the bodies and deal with the paralyzed remnants who didn’t dare give him chase.
 
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