[NaNoWriMo] Past Tense

[Amraphenson]

Chapter 1:
----
"So how much of this are you hiding from me?"

"If you're asking that question, not nearly enough." I can't even piece the words together properly. I'm suddering, trembling with my back against the door, using my sheer mass to barricade it. That's not hard, at least.

I can't face her like this. Not now, not...this wasn't supposed to happen! I was supposed to stay in my house like every other night, away from all human contact! No one would get hurt, no one would find out, just like usual. She...she wasn't suppoed to just randomly drop in like this, unannounced and with the key we hid under the welcome mat. Why did we even still keep that there anyway?! Something like this was bound to happen, someone was going to look eventually, and now it's happened! Except instead of stealing all our stuff, they're going to see something they really don't want to see.

She starts talking again before my mental train can derail any further. "You know, your big mystery is already...well...out of the bag. Might as well let me get a clear look at you," she calls from behind the door. A pause. "...I'm starting to get really worried."

I wish I could cry. I really did. "Just...just go...just leave me alone. I...really...just leave, Cassie. Just forget you ever came over," I respond.

"You know that's never happening, Spencer. I'd never leave you alone, especially not now."

To be honest, I'm a little astounded. She was always the joking type, so this was the most serious I had ever heard her. There wasn't a lick of fear, or hesitance, or any other emotion I was expecting. It's Cassie being dead serious, with a happy tinge to her voice that makes me stutter a bit. How was she not afraid after seeing what I did in my panic to get upstairs? It's absurd, and illogical, but then again both of those were always words I used to describe her.

That thought makes me laugh, though that laugh is choked with the occasional sob. "Alright, alright," I say. "Just...just don't make any stupid comments, alright?" I manage.

"I'll try," she responds quietly, making me laugh a bit more, and somehow I manage to move myself away from the door.

She swings it open and gives me a good, long look. I was curious how she felt, worried, and I wondered what it was like for her to see her best friend turn from an skinny, awkwardly tall human into...whatever I counted as now.

"...Huh," she started, finally speaking up. "You're not as ugly as I thought you looked like," comes the zinger, complete with the straightest face I've ever seen on her.

"Wait, that's all you have to-" I start to retort, but she somehow closes the distance between us, grabs my head, and tilts it up before I can finish. I'm looking into her eyes now. Even with me sitting, she's barely any taller than me. An inch, maybe two.

Cassie finds it somewhere in herself to smile. "This explains everything, you know? You'd always disappear around the same times. You'd never eat dinner with us no matter who was at who's house, you'd lock yourself in a room...Spencer, you can only go on for so long like that before someone gets suspicious," she explains, her voice barely a whisper as her fingers dance over my altered face before clenching into a fist and halfheartedly punching my shoulder. "Asshole, why didn't you...I mean, I could have...," she sighs, looking for the right quesiton. "...How long ago did this happen?" she settles on that one.

"...three years," I say finally.

"Before school started?" she asks. I just nod, and feel ashamed when I see her eyes begin to water. "Oh Spence...how? Where?"

I try to smile, but it's a little difficult. "Would you laugh if I said I didn't listen to all the advice involving strangers and vans?"

We both crack up at that. She somehow manages to hit me again; no mean feat considering she's holding her sides from how hard she's laughing.

"That's the Spence I know. Cheer up!" Her smile is as glowing as always. "You actually look pretty cool."

"Really?" I ask skeptically. I'd raise an eyebrow, but again, difficult.

"Well," she starts. "If by cool, you mean a cross between a Lovecraft reject and a leprous werewolf, then sure." Again with the straight face, throwing me into another fit of laughter that drags her down right with me in seconds.

It's a few minutes before we gather our wits about us. Too many emotions bottled up on my part, too much relief on her's, I guess. She takes a seat beside me and continues examining my body, nothing more. I fidget a little, wanting to say something, still uncomfortable with having someone so close, so still.

More silence. More inaction. But it's not...bad, per say. It's...sorta normal, actually. She'd come over, I'd still be doing my thing, and she'd just hang around. Like old times, before I changed, before I...distanced myself.

"Is this why?" she asks, thoughts apparently synchornizing with mine. I just not again. "You could've told me," she mutters, but her heart really isn't in it. She understands just as well as I do that, really, that wasn't something I was going to do. Secret keeping is one of my fortes, after all.

Without any signal, she just gets up. She moves to the door, opens it, and lingers there for a moment. "I'll head home then. But we have a lot more to talk about, okay?" she says gently, smiling, small tears in her eyes. I just...nod dumbly, like the idiot I am. Her smile widens, and she leaves.

I can hear every step she takes down the stairs, every tremor through the house. She's really leaving, but she's not running. Not from me. She's not...she's not afraid, like I was so sure she would be.

I lean back and let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding in, the suspense dying with it. All my fears, or at least the most prominent up until that point, were gone. Cassie wasn't afraid of me. The one person I cared about more than anything else didn't shun me like I thought she would. I bark out a laugh and close my eyes. What a night.

Maybe things would work out after all.

And then I hear a scream and the sounds of violence. In my shock, another few seconds pass and the stench of fear seeps in through the walls. Her fear, like knives through my senses. My eyes shoot open and I stumble out of my room, unbelieving, scared out of my mind. I nearly fall down the stairs, and I barely open the door.

Just in time to see a monster, just like me, sneer at me. There are others too, also like me. They have her. They sneer at me too, claws flashing and fangs white in the moonlight.

I want to run. I want to just escape, like the last time, and forget they existed...

But then I saw blood. On the floor. Her blood. Her body, unconscious and wounded.

I see red. I roar, lunge forward, rage boiling into a violent twister. Maw open, claws flashing. I'm not thinking, not doing anything but acting.

'Give her back.' A voice echoes in my head while I tear into a throat, spraying warm blood across the porch and yard.

'Give her back,' it rattles again, consuming all other thoughts as my claws blur away, ripping flesh and bone and viscera and bone to nothing but tattered ribbons.

'Give her back,' Again, again, and again. Over and over, ringing endlessly in my mind. I don't see, I don't smell, I don't hear. Everything has been consumed by that voice, and all I can do is keep going until it stops, until it's sated, until I accomplish whatever it keeps telling me to do...

And then it's over. The voice is gone. It's quiet, and cold out, and yet warm in places.

I drag my eyes to the ground to find nothing but piles of torn flesh and scraps of bone. Not a single living being left. My throat would have been parched, but...well...the blood on my teeth and on my tongue is proof enough of what I've done, and how I've done it.

"Spencer...," I hear someone whisper behind me, almost a whisper. I was never so scared to turn my head before, to do anything before, but somehow I do.

She's shaking, wracked with emotion. Tears in her eyes, an ugly gash across her face that's sure to leave a scar. She must have woken up in the middle. She's afraid. Deathly afraid. Cassie, my neighbour and best friend since before I could even remember, the girl who always stood up for me and always stood up against bullies for me, the girl who was always by my side, the girl who had accepted what I was not even ten minutes ago, the girl I had fallen in love with god knows how long ago...

She was afraid of me.

So I ran.

[Amraphenson]

Chapter 2
----
All I did afterwards was travel, endlessly and without distraction. My goal was simple: I wanted to put as much distance between me and her as possible, no matter what the method. I tore across the countryside like a being possessed. I hitched rides over highways and stowed away into river boats. I ran by day and hunted in the night. Feeding myself was trivial. Sleep was ultimately unnecessary.

I don't remember how long I ran for. I remember it being easy, and that it was in a way liberating. To be free and without worry, to just run away from everything I had ever been afraid of. Who cared if some passerby caught a glimpse of me? Would anyone believe them? Would they even believe themselves? Those questions made me bark out a laugh. It was so simple, so exhilirating. I was more free than I had ever been in my entire life.

Sometimes I would stumble across small pockets of life hidden away from the rest of civilization; tiny hamlets that thrived in seclusion, a man who lived alone in a converted missile silo, a married couple who had run away to the mountain caves, and all sorts of others who had run away or never been part of the greater world. And without exception they always had a place for me to sleep, a fire or a heater to warm my feet, and a story or two to tell.

The kindness of these people startled me, mostly because I met half of them by accident while I was transformed. There was that momentary fear, yes, but then they'd reach out because of some absurd coincidence. A kid would reach out and call me 'fluffy!' or a bird would land on my shoulder, and then the entire monster image I had simply dispelled, especially once I reverted to my normal body.

To find people out there that weren't afraid of me was astonishing. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that everyone would be scared witless...

...ah.

It had been a year. Maybe two, tops? She'd be in school still. I'd...I'd have a lot to explain. The mess in the yard, the damage in the house. Did she give me away? I wouldn't have been surprised. After all I did to her, she would have had every right to say everything.

"And what exactly did you do to her?" said a voice, one I was intimately familiar with. I froze in place.

Surrounding me was the sky, the clouds, snow, and rock. I was alone. These were the Rocky Mountains, far up where no one had any right to be.

Especially not someone with my voice.

I turned to face it and found myself. Everything was identical, save for the sneer of contempt that lit up his face. "Answer the question," he spits out, but before I can even answer I'm on the floor, my jaw on fire. Then he pulls me up by the collar of my shirt, slams a knee into my gut, and smashes his forehead into mine so many times I'm seeing spots. "Come on!" he shouted before another headbutt. "Answer me! Fight back!" Each sentence was punctuated with another act of violence. His elbow, his foot, his knee, his fist. My face, my shin, my gut, my kidney. The snow below me was slowly dyed red. "Or are you going to run away again?!"

Something snapped. My body somehow found the time to react, sending my own fist past his and into his face just as his smashed into mine. Both of us were sent reeling backwards and I was allowed to breath again.

"What are you talking about?" I manage between gasps. He smiles after spitting out a glob of blood, adding to the morbid scarlet mural between us.

"Don't you remember? You ran away with your tail between your legs. Away from the first and only person to have ever accepted us," he stated with one arm spread out wide as if to gesture to the entire world.

After a moment's pause, I simply repeated myself. "What are you talking about? There are plenty of people that have accepted us in the past year." For some reason, I couldn't speak smoothly. Was it the injuries? The cold? Something made my voice shake.

"Past year? People? Take a good look around you Spencer. Take a real good look. And tell me what you see."

There was something in his words that made me shake. At the time, I had no clue, not even a small hint. There was no reason for me to be afraid of his instructions, but I was. Something inside me didn't want to look out. But I did.

The forests spread out before me took my breath away. Not a green or autumn shade to be seen. Purples. Blues. Whites. Colors that trees had no right to be. The sky was a bright yellow, then a bloody red, then turqoise; it changed without rhyme or reason. What was hanging in the sky was not just a sun, but a sun and three moons, all at once. And the mountains I stood on weren't the Rocky Mountains; no, the Rocky's were certainly not soft and fleshy.

And just when I thought I had managed to wrap my head around this alien place, my head surged in pain as memories rearranged themselves. Actually, in retrospect, it was more like they were fixing themselves. All the people I had met after I ran away weren't human at all. They were beings like myself and in some cases they were even stranger. That was why I was never run off or shunned away from shelter. To them, I was nothing unusual.

It floored me. All of the revelations I had in that moment, spurred on by a doppelganger, were simply too much. I shook, I trembled. I cried and shouted, wondering why I had never noticed, angry at myself for being so easily deceived. I had so many questions to ask, so many frustrations.

I felt someone lower to their knees beside me. I felt arms wrap around me, holding me close, and with no other venue I started crying.

"I finally got through to you," said the doppelganger, relief flooding his voice. "Years and years of you, of us, lost in this place, away from home. Pretending like it didn't matter, denying what was so plainly in front of us. She was never scared of us. We were just ashamed of what we had become and made an excuse, like we always do. And now we'll never see her again."

The words were just more blows against me. "What...what do you mean?" I whimpered. My copy held me at arm's length and smiled sadly as he faded away.

"Welcome to the Fay Realms, Spencer. You've been here for almost two hundred years now."

[Amraphenson]

--Interlude 1--
That had obviously never been my intention. I didn't want to get away from the entire world, let alone end up in a distorted flow of time; I just wanted to distance myself from Cassie so that she wouldn't be targeted. So she wouldn't have to live with the very monstrosity that had terrified her.

But no, looking back, that wasn't why I ran. I didn't run for some altruistic reason like 'for her sake' or 'because she was afraid'. I ran because I was afraid, and not for anything else. Like a little kid who didn't want to bring home a detention slip home to be signed, I ran. She had never been afraid of me, specifically, she was just afraid of what I could do. Who wouldn't be? I had atomized half a dozen other werewolves with just my bare hands. But hindsight's 20/20, and I was so insecure and unstable at the time that I couldn't even see past my own tail between my legs.

So I ran again. I tried tracing my steps back. I ran across the now-alien paths of that realm, trying to go back to the world I had left behind. The other me had called it the 'Fae Realms', and if that phrase evokes an image of a fantasy world full of faeries and rainbows then you're halfway there. The other half was paved with death traps and brambles, goblins and child-eating monstrosities. That place was just not right, in any sense of the word. Sometimes gravity would reverse mid-stride, the orientation of the world would alter, or solids would become liquids and vice versa.

To think I never noticed these abnormalities before getting beat up by myself. But hey, we're all embarassed about our younger selves to an extent. Even I'm no exception.

Long story short, it took me a while. Every little conclave and group of 'people' that I had met on the way through, I met again on the way back. Some were friendly, in a 'stay with us forever and never leave' sort of way. Others weren't, in the 'let's make bread out of your bones' way. Fun times. Great way to reinforce my already shoddy mental fortitude, but I'm here in front of you right now so it ended okay. Mostly.

Getting into the Fae Realms was a lot easier than getting out, I soon learned. There isn't any magical door or airport or waypoint or anything. You just end up there. People filter in all the time when they want to get away from reality, and most never want to go back.

By the way Peter Pan is an asshole. And his pixie dust is a hoax.

So how did I get out, you ask? Well, to be honest, the same way I got in. I ran away. Eventually I just lost all rhyme and reason to my backtracking, chose a direction, and ran. I was so frustrated, so confused, so alone and desperate that I just followed my instincts and ran.

Did you know that if you ran fast enough, you'd be able to run over water? And, keeping that in mind, if you ran in a straight line for long enough, you'd end up exactly where you were? Same concept, except applied to interdimensional travel.

I felt myself crossing the border. I felt the compulsions and glamours of the Fae Realm fading, losing grip on me. I felt lighter than ever, stronger. Energetic.

And that's when I learned the other, main reason no one leaves the Fae Realms.

--Chapter 3--
A sudden flash of movement and my left leg is gone, pulverized past the knee. Another shatters my right shoulder, yet another bisects the same arm lengthwise. Those are the ones I notice; there are too many to count, so I just run. Even as the pain threatens to consume everything, I run.

I won't die from this, my regeneration will make sure of that. But it seems to know that, it seems to know I won't die, and in fact seems to relish it.

Everytime I escape by the skin of my teeth, it doesn't feel like it's because of my own speed or reflexes or strength. It was always because I was being played with, like a mouse under a cat.

I can't describe it. Some sort of beast. Vaguely humanoid? I can't tell. Every second wasted trying to see it is time wasted not surviving. Even as I think this three holes burst through my chest.

It hurts. All the wounds, regenerated or not, hurt like hell. But I don't have time to wince or scream. I need to run. I need to get away. I need to go back to my world, my home, because I need to apologize. I can't run away anymore. I can't afford to be afraid anymore. She deserves so much more than that, and she deserves so much more than what I've given her.

Forward. I have to keep going forward. Through this dark tunnel, through this endless darkness, this limitless madness. Even when it lops off both arms, even when my neck splits open like an overripe watermelon, even when it lances me straight through the heart...

I have to go back to her. No matter what.

I have to fix what I broke.

I'm bleeding so much. My eyes are blurry. I'm so tired, but I can't give up. There's a light far away, seemingly miles away, but that's close enough. I can reach it if I only try. If I don't give up. If I just keep going forward.

It's in my way now, so I can see it. Not clearly, though, because something distorts my vision. My own mind, attempting to save me from the horrors of contemplating this abomination's true form? It's own powers, making it impossible to perceive its attacks before its too late?

There's no where to run now. It's directly in the way. I can't escape it now. My mind locks up with fear for a split second, and in that split second every single one of my limbs is pierced three times over. Then two through the torso, four through the chest cavity, one through the neck. I'm lanced to the floor, my blood splattered to the point I look like a butterfly speared to a display. I choke, and a torrent of blood escapes my throat.

I can't see. My body can't keep up with the wounds, let alone my desperate pleas for it to move. It's over now, isn't it?

At least I can see what's going to kill me. They look like tentacles. One last one hovers in front of my face.

I'll never see Cassie again. Or my parents, my family, my teachers, or any of the few friends I ever had.

If this one pierces my brain, even I'll die. It knows that, surely, else it wouldn't be bringing it closer and closer to my face as if to savor what little fear I could muster.

...no. I feel it again. That same rage from however many years ago bubbles up inside me, rises to a boil. I'm so close I can almost see her again. Obsession, or infatuation, or dependance, feel free to call it whatever you want, but that thought drives me forward.

I take a step, even though I'm still impaled. Another. The pain is excruciating, the effort impossible. I shouldn't even have the leverage to move like this.

Anger. Burning, erupting anger. Compared to the growing anger inside me, the pain is absolutely nothing. No more running. No more being a little kid being bullied, no more hiding behind my best friend because I was too much of a wimp to stand up for myself. For the first time in my life, I want something for me. Not for anyone else. Me.

I gurgle out past the blood in my mouth, and these are the first words I've spoken since that fateful meeting with my doppelganger, but despite that they're clear and shake with my every emotion . "If you think you can stop me, if you think you can stand in my way, if you think you can keep me from her...THEN THINK AGAIN."

I see red yet again, in the exact same way I did back then, but this time I welcome it with open arms and a grin, claws and fangs included.

My blood. Its blood. There's enough blood by the end of it to drown in. But the one standing at the end is me and nothing else.

Its a familiar sight. Nothing left but scraps of meat and bone and me, dyed scarlet. I'm exhausted, I'm hungry, I'm in so much agony but hell if that matters. I'm going home.

So I take a look over my shoulder as fur turns back to skin, and flash the Fae Realms behind me my best grin. "Later assholes."

And the light at the end of the tunnel consumes me without further ado.

-----

He smiles and takes another sip of his soda, eyes cloudy with unformed tears and nostalgia. The rain pours on but he doesn't seem to mind; every now and then a car would fly over and block it for him anyway. The sleek metal of the city and the glowing lights of the future bath him in a strange glow as he turns and flashes you a smirk. "And thats how I ended up here, four hundred years later. Helluva story, huh?" With another swig, he finishes his drink and throws it deftly into a nearby bin. Spencer pulls the hood over his head and gestures for you to follow. "Anyways, let's head out. We got an uprising to help out."

The symphony of gunfire and weaponry is the only answer he gets as you fall into line behind him.

-----
We all have a story. We're all a little different, a little unique, and we all have our problems. Some have better stories, some are more different, some are more unique, and some people have bigger problems. Some of them, like me, aren't even human. But four hundred years into the future, long after everyone ever knew has died, there's a war being fought because of this. Because the supernatural has finally reared its head, and there are more than a few humans who want them to disappear.

I don't have anything left. That's the way a lot of us on this side of the war are. But that's exactly why I fight. Cassie would have wanted to see humans and non-humans living together, in peace. I'll never stop looking for a way to go back, to fix all the mistakes I made because this entire mess in the future happened because I left that huge pile of blood back home, but until then I'll do everything in my power to help these people out.

My name is Spencer Dawson. And this, up til now, has been my story.

Of course, some stories never end. Let's move on, shall we?

---Past Tense---
--End Prologue--

[Amraphenson]

"So how's everything going so far?" I ask out of habit. Cars cross ahead and above us as we wait for the traffic light. Rain had begun to trickle downwards, but my hood had been up for a while now.

My walking partner swiped a finger through the holographic display he held. "Uh...well, so far most of our safehouses have been doing pretty well," he starts, eyes shifting rapidly. "Safehouse four could use more supplies though..."

"Most?" I interrupt, gesturing for him to follow after the traffic light shifts. Best to be specific in these cases.

He corrects himself quickly, almost fearfully. Not a surprise. He wasn't the first to fear me, and rightfully so. "All. The supportists are going to organize an evacuation of safehouse three and six to the secure zone...and that's it for news."

"The situation with the embassy is still the same?" comes the usual followup. He simply nods, which makes me grimace.

This had been going on for decades before I arrived, gasping and reeling from my tenure in the Fae Realms. It had started when I left, which was exactly three hundred and forty years ago, and I had only been here for the last one. Trying to integrate externals with humans was tough. As tough as the segregation of Blacks in the United States of America, the Latinos in the same country, and maybe tougher. Probably tougher, considering the 'genetically different' angle actually applied in this case. They certainly weren't human.

Orcs. Goblins. Elves. Dwarphs (Because spelling it with a vee offended the medically small). Outcast Fae and all sorts of other beings, no less of an intelligent being than any other human but still not human.

Hate crimes. Out right violence. Discrimination, segregation. All sorts of words I was familiar with but applied in vastly different ways; you had people saying the laws didn't even apply to the externals because they weren't human, which was bull. You had people saying that they were just as human as anyone else, but that viewpoint was flawed too. And you definitely had those who just took the law into their own hands, and I don't have anything to say about that.

I sigh. "So all that's left is today's agenda, right?"

He nods again in that secretarial way. Holo-tech, as they called it, needed registration to a government network to use, and it was crippling to be in this time's society without it. Considering that network had census records from farther back than computers even existed, it was for the best I didn't have access. They'd ask questions about a four hundred year old user, to say nothing of what species he'd register as. "That's all that's left, Mr. Dawson," he parrots.

Another sigh flows out, but I try to give him a smile anyways. "I told you to call me Spencer already...um...what was it?" I whisper, one hand knocking on the door we came up to. "Oi, we're here," I say louder.

"Xue Yi. Like 'schway eee'. Just call me Shawn," he says in a practiced, almost apologetic manner. I flash a grin, knowing the feeling of downsizing just to make something understandable all too well myself.

"Alright then. Let's get this over with." The door slides clicks open and we slip in.

We arrive in a low lit, old-style pub. I occasionally wondered what they would think about what I considered old, but that thought wasn't around today. All business now.

A few hands raise in greeting. Some shuffle away discreetely when I pass, others extend hands and fists for quick and or awkward shakes and bumps. Even amongst the 'supportists', as we called ourselves, some weren't entirely comfortable with my presence. Again, no blame. "It's been a while Dawson," a voice calls from the center of the pub. I smirk momentarily before settling into a seat.

"Gang's all here, I guess?" Murmurs of agreement and acknowledgement arise. "Right then. Let's figure out what happened to safehouse one."

Our biggest refugee for the externals, the most secure, the most well protected, the strongest bastion of everything the supportists stood for and everything the purists, the other side of this racial civil war, hated.

And, as of now, our emptiest and bloodiest.

It happened a month ago. It took that long to gather all the supportist leaders in one place to even discuss, but investigations had already been underway ever since we found out.

And we still didn't know a damn thing. It was a locked room genocide and we didn't have a single clue.

We talk for a while. We throw out ideas; remote drones, murder suicide, food tampering, small bombs, all sorts of silly ideas we never would have considered otherwise. But we're desperate. We argue, we yell, we drink. In the end nothing happens because the entire massacre was, really, impossible. There was nothing that could have ever done that. Not without leaving a trace.

So the conference ends. We all agree to stick around the city for a while after just to make sure this doesn't happen again, but the tension is there. Unspoken accusations of incompetante, blame, fear. We're all on edge.

Tangentially, I felt a little out of place. These were people with years if not generations of involvement in the supportist versus purist situation, while I was just a random werewolf that had popped in from the Fae Realms. I suppose me managing to save one of their most important members out of complete fluke was a reason. That, and the experience with the Fae Realms.

...wait. The Fae Realm. I had slipped out of this world and into the other without issue, without trace. There was the distinct possibility someone else had managed to escape.

Even with the abnormality of the new races, the future hadn't figured out if magic really existed. The odd abilities of each race could and are attributed to scientific processes; the orcs, for example, had specific, very large hormonal glands they could trigger to fly into a state of super-strength and painlessness. Only I had any clue about magic, and even I wasn't sure.

But there was the possibility. Part of me dismissed it as impossible, improbable, but hey. If a wimp like me had managed to come back, what's saying a bigger badass couldn't have?

We start exitting the bar. A part of me can't help but think it's a little weird that all the people lobbying for the rights of externals were humans, but it wasn't safe for externals to even show their faces. They, legally, didn't have rights or any sort of protection. Still didn't even after all this long. The entire world had yet to agree to anything, which honestly made me a little queasy. You think after nearly five centuries of first world countries, the place could agree on integrating new species into society.

And as I think about the irony and other things of this world of the future, the sounds of police sirens fill the air.

Well. That's one way to sober up.

The police sirens were a hoax, they always were. They were just so that the normal person didn't involve themselves, to fake authority so no one would question it when a bunch of supportists were brought in for unjustifiable imprisonment. It was one of their many tricks, but we had our own.

Back doors, trap doors, secret passages. Everyone's gone in seconds in response, like mice in a closet when you turn on the lights. But I stay around.

I grin.

I change.

Skin to fur, fur to scale, scale to chitin, chitin to...something else. My clothes stretch to fit my now-familiar, even comfortable other form. The wonders of future polymers.

Now, you might be asking, what the hell? Is he going to kill them all? Wouldn't that make things harder for the supportists? Well, yes. It would. Which is why I'm not going to kill them, I'm going to scare the living hell out of them. I'm not going to at any point make it look like I'm a supportist or even affiliated with them. I'm going to be the random monster they found at a reported supportist meeting yet again because their information is shoddy; they can't even pinpoint supportist meet ups, all they can find is a very, very angry werewolf.

It's what I've been doing since I joined up. It's what I like doing. And it's sure as hell something I'm good at.

The rage is there. It always is. It's part and parcel with the werewolf shtick. But I've spent every moment of my time controlling it, refining it. It's not that I'm not angry anymore, no that would be a lie. I'm still angry. At myself, at my situation, at my stupidity and the world I live in now. But letting myself be consumed by that just means pointless deaths and more people left behind. Never again.

The door frame explodes outwards. I'm already in motion, a blur too fast to be seen. Some of the 'police cars' had grounded themselves, so I took the liberty of flipping them over first. A fire hydrant serves as an excellent projectile to send another vehicle careening into its neighbours, and I make a point of howling in the face of a very terrified man.

I raged when I was a kid, back in my town. I angsted. I sapped myself of what should've been some of the funnest years in my life. It's only now that I realise that, hey, being a werewolf is actually really cool. The super strength, the super speed, the regeneration, the shape shifting, it's all great.

So maybe I should be a bit more serious, but so long as I was dealing with discriminatory bigots who couldn't tell that the externals were people just as much as they were, whatever. Maybe I should be more cautious, but I've regenerated from being impaled in twenty different spots simultaneously, so there isn't a lot for me to be afraid of. Maybe I should get to the point and start investigating my Fae Realm hunch, but I really needed to pound the point into these guys.

And, in the end, when I'm howling to the raining sky atop a pile of cars, with unconscious and moaning jerks surrounding me, I don't really care.

It was a pretty awesome day for me

Too bad that was pretty much as awesome as it got.

[Amraphenson]

--Interlude 2--
"Yeah...alright, I'll hang low for a while, as usual. Later."

I'd never been on the top of a skyscraper before this past year. It was still breathtaking, even with the number of times we'd done this; with the floating cars, glowing lights, and brilliant signs, the future was just ridiculously beautiful. It stretched on as far as the eye could see, a glimmering kaleidoscope of neon and holograms. Hiding up here after my stunt was an obvious, but somethings never changed; people still didn't look up. No one noticed a slight shadow dashing up the side of a building, or a skinny young adult just chilling over the edge, feet dangling and elbows resting on his knees.

I click the phone shut as the wind picks up, ruffling my hair. Actual police sirens rang out from below, making me smirk. They'd ask what the party crashers were doing, wouldn't find a single scrap of evidence, and come to all the wrong (or in our case right) conclusions. I really couldn't help but stifle a laugh; with each and every one of these, the purists looked sillier and sillier. And the world became more paranoid of the real monsters, not the vaguely different races that had only just popped out.

That thought brings me back down from my laughing fit. My time period was when they had begun investigations into the paranormal in earnest; the blood my yard was covered in was absolutely non-human, no matter what anyone said or tried to do. Religious people all over cried demons, scientists were baffled, neighbours who had seen shut the hell up. And Cassie? She...well...

No clue. I still didn't know. I refuse to find out. All I can do is pretend she had been happy. In that way, I'm glad it's too dangerous for me to use the more modern applications of the future; I would've been too tempted to check myself.

Not to mention that actual monsters, like werewolves and vampires, had yet to actually appear. Not as far as the rest of the world or I knew, which was pretty reliable considering that every inch of the Earth and quite a good chunk of the Moon and Mars had been finely combed for more supernaturals. No, it seemed like one thing led to another; the massacre at my house led to the discovery of something tangential, and even then only years and years afterwards.

It confuses me to this day, even though I only had at best one or two hours a day to investigate. Causing distractions, drawing attention away from supportist movements, disrupting purist action, just plain scaring the wits out of everyone in vicinity; I'd become the boogie man of this city. And...that's all I could do. Nothing actually intelligent like organize the safehouses or help out with the rallies, just muscle work suited to someone like me.

Fingers flex. Flesh shifts to fur, fur shifts to...yeah whatever. In two seconds my arm doesn't really resemble anything more than a three pronged torture device, like something Freddy Kreuger could only dream of. Two seconds afterwards and its a sleek, black spike. Another two brings it around to a mess of blade tipped tendrils, and so on and so forth until I almost forgot what the original looked like. I frown, lean back, and sigh.

Firstly, there were no records of anything more exotic than elves and the rest. Secondly, there were certainly no records of anything to my level; I'm not a 'werewolf' so much as I'm 'werewolf-like'. The werewolves I heard about in stories and such couldn't change from their human form to their monstrous one at will, let alone change their bodies in such a drastic manner. I'm more like some kind of shapeshifting weapon you'd find as the final boss to a video game or the last antagonist in a series of books.

I'm poking at the dark. No leads about things the rest of the world should be more worried about, and no leads for this baffling locked safehouse slaughter. There was no way for anything to hide like that for so long, to escape so easily without a single goddamn bit of evidence left.

The Fae Realm. It all lead back to the one place I ran away from. And if that was true, nothing was safe. Everyone on Earth would be too distracted to notice the real threat.

Bullets, blades, pellets, fire, acid. None of it hurt me in any meaningful way; I only managed to kill all those other werewolves back then by completely disentigrating them, and they looked like normal werewolves, not like me. If there were other beings out there that had even a fraction of the sort of resilience I did, and any sort of vendetta at all towards humans and externals like the safehouse massacre suggested, then...

The thought scares me. It truly and deeply scares me.

I press a few buttons and start a call. "Yeah...yeah, I'm going to need a bit. Something came up...yeah, I got a lead. Gonna follow up on it first."

A few minutes pass and I sigh again as the inevitable question comes up.

"We can handle things by ourselves for a while, Dawson, but where are you going?"

I smile bitterly and kick off, wind whipping into my face as I descend down to street level.

"I got somewhere to run to."