Werewolves - for worthallthis

[ofmarble]

This is not the first time Natasha Romanoff has played bait, nor even the first time she's allowed herself to be captured in order to allow an enemy to bring her into a place that would have been difficult to infiltrate in a more conventional manner. That this time the difficulty is a result of the location being hidden rather than merely a matter of security is academic. Still, as she wakes with her head throbbing and her muscles burning in a manner that tells her in no uncertain terms that the cocktail of drugs she'd been injected with in order to render her unconscious long enough to transport was definitely laced with silver, she allows herself a moment to curse the fucking plan.

She cracks her eyes open just enough to peer through the lashes, noting her own cage and the others beyond, stretching in a double row in what resembles nothing so much as a maximum security dog kennel. A shockingly optimistic kennel - she counts thirty such cages, including her own, and only a half dozen others are occupied. Some of the captives are in skin, and others, like her, are in fur, most just beginning to stir groggily, to taste the chemical-stale air and stain it with an acrid spike of panic.

Overhead, an intercom crackles. The droning voice is carefully modulated, native accent suppressed so that even should something go wrong and one of their captives escape, they won't be able to give much information. She catches a hint of Scotland on the vowels, which only confirms existing intel - international, mercenaries. A private concern, both more and less dangerous than something more structured, more organized.

The list of instructions is both brief and an utter lie. There will be no large sum of money for any of them who survives three nights - even acting through technology, safely anonymized, it would be far too great a risk to let any of them live. But it gives her a timeframe. Three days, and then they'll lure in any remaining victims, and trade the monsters paying to hunt supernatural creatures for soldiers trained and paid to hunt the same.

A harsh buzzing sound signals the opening of an airlock leading out of the kennel-prison, and the cell doors open with a dull metallic thump. Most of the captives make an immediate and instinctive break for the thin promise of freedom, and the warning that the cells will be electrified in one minute is enough to drive the rest into the airlock in a milling, fear-scented knot of skin and clothing and fur. The airlock door shuts behind them, and for a long moment they're trapped in the cramped, too small space, unable to advance, unable to retreat. Then the door before them hisses and begins to grind slowly open, letting in viciously cold air and the weak light of a sun halfway through its descent to the horizon. Illuminated by the dying sun is the burnt-out corpse of a town, the nearest buildings slumping in decay. The shadows of a forest lie beyond, but it's a long run to the treeline, and that's doubtless exactly where the hunters are expecting most of them to head.

15 minutes, the voice on the intercom had promised them. Not long enough to make it to the forest, even if they don't, as she suspects they will, cut the time in half.

15 minutes, and the hunt begins.

Comments

[worthallthis]

The Asset is not in a cage. The Asset is waiting out in the woods to start culling the weak ones, once the signal is given, because those are its orders. It paces through the dark of the trees, watching the shapeshifters-- two human, three wolf, and one panther, that's a smell the Asset hasn't smelled in a long time-- spill out onto the lawn. The prosthetic limb doesn't touch the ground, held close to the Asset's chest, so it makes no betraying noise, and it just hobbles surprisingly smoothly on three legs.

One scent is familiar. One of those wolves-- the Asset knows that smell. Its nose twitches, its tongue falls out, panting to try and swallow the scent whole. Trying to tickle its brain, find where that scent came from, why it is familiar. The handlers can't watch it here, and it can wait, take the time it needs to watch and smell and thinking.

It has three days to kill as many as he can. There are only seven. The panther will be the trickiest. And... maybe that one that it remembers.

The panther-shifter, crowded close to one of the wolves as they surge out, swats and hisses, like an actual housecat writ large. One of the humans says, "Hey, stop. We're more likely to get out of this is we work together."

Pitiful, stupid human-shifter. No one is getting out of this. Even if they survive.

[ofmarble]

Natasha lifts her muzzle to sniff the air, catching the scent of gun oil and old blood and too many shifters. Most of the hunters at least have the with to stay downwind - most, but not all, and she marks the ones who don't. They'll make more mistakes, and once they're down, she can take their weapons for herself. Werewolves shun human tools - that's one of the the favourite assumptions, as though they're born wild, never live as humans, never have jobs or hobbies. They won't be expecting her to shoot back at them, and that will keep her alive a little longer.

She flicks one ear in the direction of the humaniform speaker, an older woman, dark hair beginning to grey, an ugly, knotted scar along her cheek suggesting either an injury taken before her first change, or a bad brush with silver after. She's not wrong, exactly. She's not exactly right, either.

The cat snarls, tail lashing, but it's one of the other wolves who breaks first - a large, grey-furred monster of a thing - and bolts straight for the centre of town. The smallest wolf - dark-furred and too leggy, a juvenile, probably all of fourteen or fifteen in human form - tenses to bolt after him, and Natasha whips around snake-quick to nip at her shoulder with a warning growl. Run without a plan and you won't last the hour.

[worthallthis]

That. That one. The one who stopped the young one. (The gray one will be an easy kill, but the Asset will wait. The signal has not sounded. There is still time.) That one. The Asset knows that smell.

How does the Asset know that smell.

The panther stays, reluctantly; the young one stays, whimpering; the human shaped ones stay. For now, they stay. "Come on, we'll go together," the woman says. "We can't be out in the open when the shooting starts. The woods is smarter than the town, we'll be sitting ducks in an actual building."

She walks, brisk but still walks, and says, "I'm Anna. You don't have to tell me your names, even if you can."

[ofmarble]

"Simon," the other humaniform shifter says, and wraps his arms around himself to keep from shivering against the bitter wind. He's clothed for autumn in more southerly climes, jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. "They're not - I mean, they gotta know we'll head for the woods. They're gonna expect it."

Natasha chuffs her agreement - Pack tactics. They want to herd us. - and picks up her pace, heading into the shadows of the town. That's the one nod to fairness the hunters have made - there is no perfect vantage point that can see the entire playing field from. There will be surveillance, but they clearly want something of a challenge in their game, at least at the start. They can get some cover, and plan to gain an advantage. She doesn't have any illusion that they'll all survive the next three days - or even that they'll all survive the night - but if they keep from running straight down the throat of the beast, one or two of them might survive.

[worthallthis]

"Best of a bunch of bad options is still best," Anna says. The Asset turns in its pacing, listening, memorizing their scents. Even from the treeline, it can hear them. "Until we get the lay of things, we'll have to play their game. But every game's got rules."

The rules are die, poor human shifter.

"When we get to the trees, Simon, you should shift. You'll be faster and safer in fur," Anna continues. True, but not by much, and she says nothing about shifting forms herself.

That files itself away in the Asset's brain, but most of its thoughts are chewing on the younger, ruddy-eared she-wolf. How does the Asset know her? How is it that, that scent makes it want to whine and snap and maybe lick those ears instead of biting them. It turns again in its three-legged pacing, lip curling, distracted but still silent.

[ofmarble]

It's not a discussion made for fur and the limits of lupine communication. Even so, it's only with some reluctance that Natasha shifts, tensing immediately against the deeper bite of the cold as soon as she loses the shield of fur. Changing forms only dulls her senses a little, but the loss of even that slight edge stings.

"If we make straight for the woods, they'll gun us down before we're halfway there," she says, voice pitched low, tone carefully reasonable. "We need to thin the numbers first, get some of their weapons, a radio if they have them. Once we have a better idea of how many of them there are and where they are, we might stand a chance of getting to the treeline."

[worthallthis]

Anna doesn't comment on the shifting, or even pause in her brisk walk. "Unless they go back on their word, there's fifteen minutes-- ten left, now-- which should give us time to reach it." She looks Natasha over up and down, critically, and apparently sees something there that lets her say, "Unless you have a better plan for actually getting those weapons, child. I'm just an old hunter, I haven't played these kinds of games in decades."

The Asset should be listening. The Asset is not listening. It isn't even moving, now, it's staring at that flutter of red hair in the breeze, the sound of that voice, too low to make out the words, but the sound of it-- the Asset knows that, too. It whines, very soft, confused.

[ofmarble]

The word of men and women who hunt other thinking creatures for sport is worth less than ashes; they'll renege on any agreement made the moment it ceases to be useful to them. Natasha knows this in her bones, but doesn't voice it. Not now, not when they have precious little time to spend in argument over how to treat the monsters hunting them.

Instead, she tips her head minutely towards the east, and a small hillock of snow in the shadow of what must once have been a church. "There," she says quietly. "They're inexperienced - they wouldn't be there if they weren't. I can get into their blind spot, circle around, and take them from behind. I'll break off at that house, there." Another minute gesture, this time towards a half-fallen house with only a splotch of green paint showing where the long-ago fire had burned most of it away. "Stay in their view for two minutes once you pass it. That'll give me enough time to get into position."

[worthallthis]

Anna considers this only for a beat, then allows, "You know what you're doing, I'll give you that. And once you're in position, what then? Do we circle back around and join you, or wait for you to find us again?"

The Asset is still frozen, unable to make out what either of them are saying now. It should be listening, inching closer, finding a breeze to carry their words, but all it can think is, How do I know her.

[ofmarble]

Natasha considers the restless cat, the nervy juvenile, and young man and aging juvenile before she says, "Watch for my signal, then circle around to meet up with me. Stay low, stay quiet."

She shifts again, forcing past the cramping of her poison-stung muscles to keep her gait steady as she transitions from human back to wolf in anticipation of the split.

[worthallthis]

The older woman nods, and chivvies Simon, the wolf, and the panther along gently ahead of her to give Natasha room to peel off when she's ready, picking up the pace like they're worried. (They are worried. They should be worried.)

They pass the old church, and then suddenly the red-eared she-wolf is gone, she's not in the knot of them, and the Asset... does not panic. It does not. It is a tactical asset and a killing machine, it does not panic. But it does whine again, heart thudding, and tears out of the trees, keeping low to the ground, using all four legs now. The group passing the church does maybe panic a little, but the Asset ignores them, diving instead into the knot of hunters that the Asset is supposed to be supporting. That is supposed to be supporting the Asset.

Natasha will be able to join in, if she's quick. Otherwise, there's just a bunch of bleeding bodies, and a huge silver wolf bristling in the middle of them, one leg bright steel and glinting in the starlight.

The Asset does not attack her.

[ofmarble]

Natasha has never been a brute-force fighter in either form. What she is, however, is quick, and quiet, and willing to take any advantage offered on the field. And so she's quick to join the fray, darting in to lay open a femoral artery here, savage a hunter trying to draw a bead on the other wolf there, all while the bigger threat holds their attention.

It's only when the humans have all fallen that she has a moment to really look at the massive silver wolf, and recognize what the stench of blood and viscera had obscured. She stiffens, ears flattening against her skull and tail tucking between her legs, every muscle in her body coiled to flee if he makes an aggressive move, her mind already charting a rough path away from the other shifters. She doubts she could win a fight against him; she knows they couldn't survive one.

[worthallthis]

Normally, that's the point. It's here to take them down. Normally.

This isn't normal. The Asset huffs, snorts, shakes its heavy mane, but doesn't approach any closer. It stamps in place, wanting to move, but unable to make itself-- unable to attack, though its blood is up, and its mission is clear. It knows her. It knows her.

The Asset whines, then turns and bolts for the trees, to where it knows the nearest batch of human hunters waits. In for a dime, in for a dollar: it's killed one set, and the red-eared wolf won't be safe until it's taken out the rest. Natasha can follow, or she can see to her little pack. It will circle around to find her later, if the latter.

[ofmarble]

For a few seconds, she remains frozen, weighing her options. Just what he's doing here, she can't fathom - she can't imagine the monsters who controlled him and had created her objecting to what's going on here enough to send their prize weapon to end it unless the fools responsible for this had mis-stepped badly enough to tread on exactly the wrong paw - but she doubts it bodes at all well for the civilians.

It's that, in the end, that decides her. She knows full well that he's forgotten more about running down prey than she's ever had a chance to learn; if she returns to the others and tries to lead them away, if he is here for them as well as the hunters, it will only be a matter of time until he finds them, and she holds no illusions about it being at a time or on ground of her choosing. If she stays close, perhaps she can discern his purpose, and distract him long enough to give the others a chance.

She lopes after him, silent as a shadow as she slips between the trees.

[worthallthis]

It registers her following, sidles to one side so it can keep her in the corner of its eye, but can't stop on its... new mission. Is that what this is? Mission reset, targets reassigned? The code for changing a mission has never been a scent before.

But with that new framework in mind, it can fly through the trees and leap directly onto the poor, unsuspecting humans' little brush-covered tent. The Asset knows how many are in there, how many weapons they have, and when they were expecting to have to defend themselves, and from what angle.

Defending themselves from their own attack dog landing on top of them was not in their plan, today. While they scream and trash and try to get a shot off at their own ceiling, Natasha will have plenty of time to dart in and bite some arteries open.

[ofmarble]

With their attention consumed by the threat from above, two of the hunters are down - legs laid open to shred tendon and blood vessels, throats reduced to raw, gurgling meat - before they realize there's another wolf inside the shelter with them. Even then, they're hampered by the close quarters, and on the fact that focusing on either the threat above or the one below will leave them vulnerable to the other.

Between the two of them, it's almost pitiful how fast this group of hunters drops, though in the wet, red aftermath, the comm system the hunters have been using to keep in touch squawks concern - the sound of gunshots carries well in the icy twilight.

[worthallthis]

The noise is annoying. It's easy enough to stop, though: the Asset roots out the source of it, the multiple sources of it, and bites each communicator in half until all that's left is the sound of two wolves breathing.

It won't be hard for the rest of the teams to figure out what happened. They might not, however, know that the source of the problem is the Asset. They might still have the advantage. Time to keep moving, before they do figure it out. There are two more teams to take out, and then--

--and then--

--then it doesn't know. The handlers aren't here. Will it have to take them out somehow, too?

The Asset doesn't communicate the way most wolves do, or even most werewolves. Its body language and scent signals are completely fucked, unless it's trying very hard, and it isn't capable of that kind of focus right now. But there should be communication. Its-- pack? pack-- needs to know the situation. There's enough time for that.

Standing there on top of a torn hunting tent full of dead men, it changes back to a man in complete silence, except for the metal leg reconfiguring noisily and painfully into a metal arm. The whole process of changing forms hurts, after all the experiments and tweaks made to it, but he knows how to not make any noise to betray it.

[ofmarble]

The sound of the limb reconfiguring is harsh enough that Natasha's ears pin back; she can't imagine how unpleasant it must be to feel the reverberations through sinew and bone. She has no doubt that it's painful - lupine and human anatomy are hardly a perfect match, and she very much doubts any effort was made to mitigate that.

She swallows her lingering wariness, and shifts back in a shiver of grey and russet fur, reverting to the shape of a young woman just outside the tent's entrance, remaining crouched low to limit visibility - there's no trace of anyone close enough to see, but discarding caution would be sheer folly.

"How many more are we looking at?" she asks, voice pitched low and as gentle as she can make it with the adrenaline of the hunt still singing in her veins.

[worthallthis]

"Two teams. Four each."

His voice is rough, clearly unused for a long time. He can't actually remember the last time he was a man. In this shape, he can kind of think of himself as a "he", though he's still as much of a weapon as ever.

He doesn't watch her. He doesn't watch her, his eyes roving everywhere else, looking for sources of threat.

"But handlers aren't here. They can send more. Once they know it's me killing them." A pause. Then the slow correction: "Us."

[ofmarble]

Her own watchfulness isn't quite so obvious - but then, she was trained for a very different purpose. There's little use for a spy who's overtly wary, who lets on that she knows she's in enemy territory while the game's still running. She seems calmer, but she's still listening for telltale signs, voices or footfalls or engines, still scenting the air for anything besides the two of them and the dead would-be murderers in the tent.

"How far to the nearest outpost?" she asks. Eventually, his handlers will realize that something's gone horribly wrong, even if ego and complacency obscure exactly what that 'something' is. But a response will take time. They have that much going for them.

[worthallthis]

"Nearest handler is back at base. One hundred eight-six miles from this complex. Field command is in the security office in the building you were released from." Field command is the one with connection to the handlers, who can call in backup.

He frowns. "Prioritize taking out field command to slow response time, or prioritize taking out field teams to protect the shifters." There are pros and cons of each, but if the red-eared wolf wants to go one way or the other, he can work with it.

[ofmarble]

The line of her mouth thins slightly as she runs the math in her head, weighing lives risked now against lives saved overall. Either way, there will be more marks in her book, but the bill on one side will be substantially longer.

"Field command," she says. "Protecting the shifters won't mean much if they have a chance to call in a strike team."

[worthallthis]

His lip curls-- not at her, or the plan-- but at the field command. At the idea of tearing their throats out. It's a wolfish expression on a human face. He doesn't always remember who they are, but he knows the smells this time, and there's a fierce pleasure at the idea of tearing the bearers of those scents apart.

No time to sit and imagine. The longer it takes them to plan, the longer field command has to figure out what happened. He turns back towards the building the red-eared wolf came from. "I have the codes to get into the building. Come."

And he shifts back to wolf, landing in a lope the instant the metal leg is back into wolf configuration.

[ofmarble]

Her own transformation is a little slower, the last of the poisoned sedatives still lingering in her system suppressing the lightning-fast shift she should be capable of. She shakes it off faster this time, and breaks into a steady lope beside him, risking bunting his flesh-and-bone shoulder with her own in what she hopes is a recognizable gesture from days long past - I have your back - before falling into a familiar two-person hunting formation.

[worthallthis]

It shies, baring teeth at her a moment without losing a stride forward, only to belatedly remember the wolfish meaning of the signal. Watched other wolves do it. Watch men do it. It hasn't been applied to itself in so long.

Teeth go back behind lips and it watches her sidelong, one ear cocked. Then its tail gives a half-hearted wave, and all focus goes to the mission.

They're ghosts sidling up to the building the shifters had all been released from, no one expects their prey to come around the back of the building, where what used to be the tack room for the configured barn has been turned into a fortified elevator leading below to the sheltered bunker. The Asset changes back into a man again to punch in the code that opens the doors. Then they can go in and... wait for the elevator to descend.

Not great for their element of surprise, but with luck Field Command below will think it's the missing team making a strategic retreat.