Sarah ‘Tomboy’ Nakano
Stonehaven, Bear Valley
2214 hours local


After Bird Dog’s call, I went to sleep thinking about what he had said. He was right: I wasn’t a monster, no matter how much I hated him, or myself. If he HAD been going through the same things as I was, then he knew best.

After having a few really weird dreams involving a gopher, a shoe and a chocolate bar, (don’t ask. I don’t even know.) I woke up to the smell of breakfast. I got myself presentable, one of the many things that was left over from the military, and went downstairs.

After I finished eating, I was wondering how I could possibly have put so much food into myself when Elena walked over. I looked up from what I was reading, and gave a ‘hmm?’

“Do you want to go on a Hunt with me, Sarah?”

“A hunt? You mean like going out and shooting a deer?”

She smiled. “Not exactly, but you got the right idea.”

I was genuinely confused. Partly as to what a hunt was, but mostly for Elena asking me if I wanted to go on one. I was the most junior of all the Pack werewolves, and she was one of the most senior. It would be like a General asking a Captain if they wanted to do something or not. That generally never happened; the Captain was usually told to do something, not asked.

I shrugged and said: “sure,” I was being polite and maybe this was some kind of test to see how well I responded to the Chain of Command. Yeah, I thought. This is a test. I can do this.

We went outside, but I was again confused at the choice of weapons. Or rather, complete lack thereof.

“Umm Elena,” I said, curiosity and confusion eating away at me. “I don’t see any rifles, what are we going to hunt with?”

“Oh, right, you don’t know much about our slang yet. Well, when we hunt, we Change and do it as wolves.”

“Oh…” I said, vaguely disturbed at the feeling that I was going to eat a deer… raw.

She seemed to sense my discomfort, and said: “don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. In fact, it’s actually kinda fun.”

We went into the forest, and we both went into separate clearings. I said nothing about it. I hadn’t got a good look at a Change yet, but if it looked as bad as it felt, I didn’t want anybody to see me like that. Either as a human, or a wolf, not somewhere in-between thank you very much.

I got undressed, and started to Change, but I fell face-first onto the ground when my feet turned into paws. I expected it to go fairly smoothly, like in the movies, and for it to be less painful the second time around. It wasn’t, and I did not Change smoothly. It hurt like nothing I’ve even felt before, so I screamed, and nearly blacked out.

When it was over, I got up, and tried to get used to the fact that I was now walking on all fours and that I’d be doing this at least once a week from now on until the day I died. I took a couple of steps and found it really hard to coordinate at first, but it got easier as I went.

Elena slid up behind me and exhaled. I yelped in surprise and I’m pretty sure I jumped into the air. She made the wolf equivalent of a laugh, gave a shake of her head, and then took off. I caught on to what that meant, a ‘follow me’ gesture. I tried to talk, but only a few growls and dog noises escaped my throat.

We scented a deer soon after I caught up with Elena. At that scent, my brain was flooded with the need to attack, kill, eat. I charged, going as fast as I could.

Suddenly, something slammed into me right side, and I crashed into a tree. I looked around to see what attacked me; brain still soaked in the wolf’s instincts, and growled. Elena gave me a ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ look and returned my growl.

I snapped out of it, and quickly backed down, cursing myself for that fuck-up. I was more careful this time. We snuck up on the deer, and eventually we where so close I thought it would be impossible for it to miss us.

Without any warning at all, Elena suddenly lunged at the deer, and it took off. Great! I thought. There goes lunch…I knew for a fact that deer were faster then wolves, and that in a contest of speed, a wolf would never be able to catch them. Trying to catch it now would be like an A-10 trying to catch up with an F-22A going full speed. It simply wouldn’t happen. I reluctantly followed Elena however. I didn’t want to be left on my own in a forest in an unfamiliar body.

Eventually, I heard the deer breathing heavily, and I could more or less see that it was slowing down. My vision was terrible. Another assumption I had shot to hell. I thought that the first Change would be the hardest one, and that my body would react to it as though I was a true wolf, but after that, I’d be fine, human vision, with an increased sense of smell and hearing. No luck there.

We started gaining on the fleeing deer, and I remembered another little tidbit from school: a deer puts all of its energy into the first few seconds of running, and thus it can’t run for very long. Wolves however are distance runners, they can go for an extremely long length of time, and simply wait for the deer to become exhausted.

I smiled to myself. Maybe Elena knew what she was doing after all. I stayed back and let Elena make the kill. I was still a little squeamish at eating a deer… raw, and making the kill myself? No thanks, at least, not yet. Plus, I didn’t know how dangerous it would be. One wrong move and I could end up dead.

So, Elena killed the deer, and I watched to see how she did it so when it came time for me to kill one, I’d know what to do. Once it was dead, Elena signalled me over, and we begun eating. You may find this a little weird, or disgusting, but despite being raw and extremely fresh, it tasted pretty good.

As I was eating, I was amazed that even though I had a massive breakfast, I could still fit a lot of deer meat in me. Although, I had to admit to myself that it was around lunchtime, but still…

When I was done, and we where walking back to where we had Changed, I started wondering how she and Clay made their relationship work. At times, I got the impression that they hated each other, or at least, Elena hating Clay, yet they seemed to get along. Or maybe it was because the day I came over, it happened to be one of their bad days.

When I Changed back, and got dressed, I asked Elena about it.

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “And you may not understand, being a new wolf and all.”

“Try me,” I said, wanting to know if I was stuck with Bird Dog forever.

“He was the one that bit me, so yeah; there is a lot of tension and conflict between us. He made my life hell and I returned the favour ten times over.”

“How come you don’t get another lover?”

She laughed slightly. “I already tried that. It didn’t work out.”

“Clay killed him? I can see that.”

“No, no, no, nothing like that. Philip, -that’s his name- saw my Change one time, and we broke it off. With Clay and me… I can’t describe it, and probably one of the big reasons I haven’t looked for anyone else is because my wolf side is rubbing off on me.”

“You mean you’re monogamous?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Damn,” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Now I’m stuck with Bird Dog. Permanently. That’s just great…”

When we got back inside, I asked Elena for a bit more detail on her life. I wanted to get to know her. Us being the only female werewolves on the planet, it made sense that we should stick together.

She didn’t say anything about her childhood. Nothing at all, in fact, she started right around the time she met Clay. She told me how they met; fell in love, and ultimately how she became a werewolf. She then told me about a Mutt Rebellion the Pack had a few years ago, and how two Pack members got killed. Then there was a plot by a computer geek (kind of like Bill Gates) that nearly blew the supernatural community wide-open.

When she asked me for my life’s story, I told her it. It’s actually kind of boring and normal in a few places. It’s only when I went to War College that interesting things started happening to me. That’s where I learned to fly, met Bird Dog (a Junior Officer then), and where I had joined the Erusian Elite Yellow Squadron. After that, my life started to get interesting, their was the fall of the ULYSSES_1994XF04 Asteroids, the construction of the ‘Stonehenge’ Anti-Aircraft Artillery cannons, the Usean Continental War, and the Erusian defeat.

Once my life’s story was out of the way, I decided to start training with Elena. I was comfortable with her, and as such, we could easily work together. And again, again there was that whole female werewolf thing.

I went upstairs to my room and debated whether or not to call Bird Dog about this. I loved him, yet another part of me wanted to kill him in the worst way I could imagine. For now, I decided against it, and instead put all of my brainpower on how to tell my family about this little ‘development’. I knew that I had to, but I couldn’t think of how. ‘I’ve been a werewolf for the past few days, and it was my boyfriend that turned me into one?’ Yeah, like that’d work.

I knew that I had the opportunity to tell them in a few days from now, as I was going on leave after a nine-month tour of duty. My longest deployment yet. I knew they expected me back too, because they knew my schedule for when I was coming home, assuming I was still alive.

I couldn’t think of anything, so I tried to picture what Bird Dog had said to his parents, then remembered that he didn’t need to. They where dead and had been since 1994. The ULYSSES asteroids had killed a lot of people, Bird Dog’s family included.



Captain ‘Bird Dog’ Roy
Moscow, Russia
1300 hours local


If you’re a werewolf reading this, let me pass on a word of advice: don’t try to drown out your sorrows or whatever in booze. It doesn’t help, trust me.

High metabolism is good for a lot of things, but damn it! I wanted to, if even temporarily; forget about what I had done to Sarah. I knew that I had to go through the Replacement Air Group (or RAG) training because I had been away for so long, but I didn’t feel up to it, so I found a bar in a bad part of Moscow, and tried to get drunk.

This was clear even after twelve shots of Tequila, so I decided to simply leave. I paid the barman, thanked him for the drinks, and left. Even through it was noon, the thick clouds overhead made it seem like dusk. If that wasn’t enough, it began to rain, hard.

I got in my car, not even feeling slightly drunk, and drove back to base. Once I was there, I went into my quarters, and found my service pistol. I held it, feeling the weight, and made sure it was loaded. I was going to kill myself.

The pain of what I was feeling was simply too great, and the fact that I couldn’t get drunk only added to that. I clicked off the safety, and held it to the side of my head. Then I decided to use a silencer to muffle the sound of the gunshot. I put it on, placed the elongated barrel against the side of my head…

And nothing happened. I couldn’t pull the trigger. Which is odd when you think about it, for a living, I took the lives of other pilots like myself almost daily, and yet, I couldn’t take my own.

I sighed, and put the gun away.

The phone on my desk started ringing. It was probably the Commander wanting to know what the hell I was doing, and why I wasn’t taking the RAG courses yet. I picked it up and said: “hello?”

“Umm, Bird Dog, it’s me, Sarah. Are you busy?” her voice sounded extremely awkward.

“Sarah? What-?”

“I just called to tell you that I’ve started my training, and I don’t blame you for biting me. I had my first hunt a few hours ago, and I now know how hard it is to control the wolf’s instincts. I know that the bite was a reflex action, and I just got… unlucky for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Elena also told me what happened with her and Clay, and well, at least you TOLD me about that before you bit me.”

It took almost everything I had not to break down right there. “So, when are you coming back to Moscow?”

“Who knows? I’m just starting my training, so it’ll be at least a few months. I’ll keep you updated,+ though.”

“Okay, Sarah. See you in a few months.”

“Bye,” she said, and hung up.

Just like that, I was back to my old self: collected, confident without being arrogant. It was like waking up for a dream. I went down to medical to ask for clearance to fly. My Shoulder still hurt like hell from when Sarah had damaged it, but that’s all it was: just sore. I needed medical clearance to go into the RAG.

Chapter Ten

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