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Sorry for the wait! Don't feel obligated to meet the length, my posts usually run a little long.
Skoll hadn't been doing much since the pack meeting. He did his morning ritual, stretching and practicing his moves before enjoying a morning hunt with the bow which--despite his continued use--he still wasn't very good with. Even though the bow had allowed him to go all morning without shifting down onto four legs, he had still decided to thereafter, though he knew not why the desire had struck him. It was possible that a wolf just needed to be on four legs every once in a while, to feel the earth beneath their forelegs as well as their back ones.
Breathing deep of the air, he surveyed the territory in front of him. His vantage point hadn't changed in all the time he'd been here, but the hill served just as well today as it had in the years prior. It was nearby where the bodies of the nine he'd killed that night littered the ground, though he didn't know exactly where Gale had put them, he knew that he had done well to get them out of sight. Such a grisly image would have convinced passers-by that Storm was the same as Inferni, and none of them could have that. Those wolves were worse than any Infernian, though. What they had hoped to achieve had been despicable.
It had been some miracle of Fenrir that he had managed to fell so many, and a miracle also that he had been saved by Gale and Sarah before he could die of his wounds. It had been a terrible night, a night of valor, perhaps, but of great bloodshed and evil intent as well. The night had been on his side, letting him strike down three of the seven in the raiding party before they were aware of him; the cultists had split up as well, which permitted him to deal with the last two separately. Still, that brief bout with the four of them had taken him to his uttermost limits, and left him with two wounds that bothered him even now, a full year later. Luckily, the other half dozen or so had since healed completely.
Maybe that was why he wanted to be unshifted now, as the morning quickly gave way to the afternoon. His most terrible memories occurred on two legs, and though he'd experienced plenty of violence on four legs as well, traditional tooth and claw sat with him much better than memories of human steel and the deeds he'd seen and done that employed it. It was always better to fight with natural weapons whenever possible, in his view.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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Baby I've been here before
Here we go!
I know this room, I've walked this floor
The ebony wolfess was not one to cross boundaries lightly; she rarely moved from either her home territory or one of the mutual territories. But this morning had dawned on a Hanna that was angry for a myriad of reasons, the least of which was the sorry state of the packs upon her return. Wishing to relieve herself of some of her anger, the female had set out with little more than her knives at her waist, with merely a belt to hold them. She'd not even bothered to place clothes on her naked Optimus body, in case she needed to shift quickly. Mounting a rise, the female spotted another wolf atop another hill, and something within her snapped.
Removing the belt from her waist, Hanna shoved her six foot, three inch frame hastily into the smaller frame that relied on four legs to move, and bolted up the hill towards him. All the anger she possessed was forced into her attack, all the hurt and sadness she had, in an effort to relieve it once and for all. Had there been a prey animal nearby, she'd have gone for it, but as the wolf was the first thing she saw, it bore the brunt of her rage.
In hindsight, Hanna would wonder what on Luna's earth possessed her to go after such a one as Skoll. The male's face was a patchwork of fur and scars, and he was missing an ear. Furthermore, the male had scars rending the rest of his body from who-knew how many battles. And by Luna, he was HUGE! But the female bunched her muscles like coiled springs and flew at him, teeth ready for gnawing his other ear off and claws left maybe a little too long, a little too sharp. Her ebony body soared like a bird of prey and she aimed to hit his side, to make her mark.
Oh, how little she knew.
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Here we go indeed!
From his vantage point, Skoll saw the new wolf long before she came running his way, but once she did begin running, he knew that the time to act was upon him. She wasn't going to give him the trouble of interception, though, she was running right for him. This was puzzling, but his job was still the same. The bite marks on his belly still pained him when he stretched them too much, as with running, but he would just have to work through that for this, since he didn't really have time to shift, and it would have seemed strange to shift up to handle someone who was already smaller than him.
Even as she quickly closed the gap between them, he couldn't help but appreciate the oddness of the situation. A small wolfess was sprinting his way with murder in her eyes, but her motivation was completely unapparent. He hadn't fought any one recently, unless she was friends with that Andre pup, but that seemed unlikely. So revenge was probably out. But if not revenge, just what was she coming after him for? Could she be rabid? That would be bad. A rabid wolf that was shifted wasn't that hard to deal with, since they only had two legs to propel their diseased bite toward the victim, but it was much more difficult to fight a four-legged opponent without getting bit than a two legged one. Still, as she grew closer, he couldn't detect any sign of disease in smell or appearance other than her overly hostile behavior.
As she came running up the hill, he felt the muscles in his legs bunch. She was willing to fight someone bigger and nastier-looking than she was uphill? Strange wolf. Brave, crazed, or just self-righteous and overconfident, he had no idea. Sometimes all three of those meshed and one couldn't tell them apart. Either way, as she scaled his hill, his legs exploded outward, his head slung low and jaws open wide with his fangs rushing through the air, his pounce aiming for her oncoming form. The hope was to take hold of her shoulder or neck and send the both of them tumbling a few meters down the hill. If his teeth successfully anchored themselves in her fur, he could use his weight to pin her to the ground and end this fight quickly.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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Baby I've been here before
Sorry if some of this seems gmodded. I can change it.
I know this room, I've walked this floor
Hanna should have known that she'd be spotted long before she reached even the foot of his hill, let alone the crest, but she charged onward all the same. He turned to her and launched his own counterattack, and as the two creatures came together, he won over, managing a hold on the side of her neck, just behind her ear in the tender flesh and slightly shorter fur. The shock of the pain and blood flow brought her around from her momentary insanity as the two of them tumbled downhill, the male's weight and bulk effectively halting and reversing her forward motion and bearing them down to the ground. The female's head struck a stone on the way down, and her vision faded.
When her sight cleared, several minutes later -- she could tell by the position of the sun that it hadn't been long -- she was beneath a tawny-furred wolf that was missing an ear and looked oddly like the one that had set her off. The portion of neck behind her right ear hurt, as did the base of her skull. With a shake of her head which sent the world reeling, Hanna realized what had happened, and, smacking her lips to produce saliva for her dried tongue, muttered, "I really need to work on my attack pattern." She knew he'd make her remunerate for this, but how was another matter.
Casting an uneasy glance around, Hanna noted two important facts, neither of which were helpful: One, their headlong tumble down the hill had landed her near her knives, which she couldn't use because she wasn't in her Optimus form, and Two, there was nobody else around and even if she yelled, he could silence her before anyone answered. A whimper escaped from her throat at the desperateness of the situation that she'd created.
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It's all good. All fights need some powerplay to be realistic. I don't mind.
His attack had achieved its desired effect, and the two of them had gone rolling down the hill with his teeth latched onto her neck. By the time they had reached the bottom, three bursts of pain had lanced through his body from his stomach as he had extended his legs at various points to control their descent. She had hit her head somewhere along the way, and seemed to have lost consciousness, allowing him to release his hold on her and take a few steps back to reassess the situation. He was fine, the pain having vanished almost as quickly as it had come, and the threat seemed to have been neutralized, at least temporarily. He could go ahead and shift now, if he wanted to, but he decided against it.
He was glad he had opted not to take further action, since she came around pretty quickly. If she had woken to him shifting, she might have panicked and run away immediately. As it was, he wanted not only an explanation, but also to figure out who exactly had come sprinting toward him, fangs at the ready and with blood on her mind. It had been a very strange situation, and while smaller wolves had come after him before--often in the heat of battle out of courage or to capitalize on a situation where he was at a disadvantage...his ear had been lost to a smaller canine--he had never been so directly targeted by someone so out-classed before, at least not out of the blue.
"Or you could just not rush headlong into a fight without thinking. That helps too." He scrutinized her with critical yellow eyes. "Just what were you trying to accomplish exactly? And why were you trying to accomplish it?" That was the key question here. Why? Why had she come to Storm? Why had she been looking for trouble? If she was looking for trouble, why--of all people--did she target the meanest looking bastard in Storm? None of it made any sense, especially from the perspective of a wolf who analyzed every combat-situation thoroughly.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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