FSE

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“Give it up, Randall,” Morrison called out from the window as he ‘pursued’ the fugitive, Randall. Randall was desperately trying to run away on a bicycle as Morrison slowly followed behind in the SUV.

David watched Randall, trying to bike away as fast as he could, from the window. He drummed his fingers impatiently against the armrest of the door. They had been slowly following the fleeing Randall for almost fifteen minutes at that point. Randall was minding his own business, biking up Main Street, when Morrison honked at him to give him a friendly wave just to have him start biking away in a panic. Morrison, suspicious, followed him in pursuit.

“Randall, we can do this all day,” Morrison called out. He was enjoying the chase.

David wasn’t.

“Fuck this,” said David. He rolled down the window, unholstered his taser, and leaned out the window. “Deploying taser.”

David fired the taser with a loud cracking pop. Two barbed darts fired into Randall’s side and delivered fifty thousand volts straight into the man.

Randall’s muscles all over his body contracted and launched off of the bicycle. Stiff as a board, he sailed over the handlebars and landed face first onto the road.

Morrison stopped the SUV and both he and David got out.

“Detain and search him,” ordered Morrison.

David pinned Randall on the ground and started patting him down.

“Hey! HEY!” yelled Randall as David reached into the front of the man’s pants after he felt a large bulge. “You may swing that way but I don’t!”

David pulled out an old and beaten up 1911 from where it was hidden in Randall’s pants.

Morrison groaned, “God damn it, Randall. You know you’re not meant to have guns.”

David cuffed Randall, pulled him up from the ground and started dragging him to the back of the SUV. As he was being dragged, Randall snapped, “This is America, I have a right to bear-”

“Not when it’s part of your bail conditions, retard,” said David before throwing Randall into the SUV and slammed the door closed in the man’s face.

“The sheriff’s gonna have your head for tasing him,” said Morrison as the pair got back into the SUV and started driving towards the detention centre.

“No, he won’t,” said David.

“He’s right,” said Randall to Morrison. “I was running away. He’s allowed to use force like that to stop me.”

“Shut up,” snapped Morrison.

“You okay, Ben?” asked Randall. “You’ve been harder than usual on David lately. Is it because he, his brothers and sister lied about Colin?”

“You get a psychology degree last time you were in prison? Shut the fuck up,” snapped Morrison.

Randall threw up his cuffed arms, “I’m just saying. If you were more accepting then they probably wouldn’t have felt the need to lie about Colin being one of your grandsons.”

Morrison tapped the brakes, making Randall slam into the seat in front of him. The idea of such a well known figure in the community not supporting his gay grandson was a total scandal for the small town. All Colin had to do was off-handedly imply it to Blondie while he was on shift, just within ear shot of a drunk patron, for the rumour to spread through Pioche like wildfire. The Old Man wasn’t happy with the wolf-blood spreading that rumour. Especially in such an underhanded way.

David wasn’t happy about it either, but for a different reason. He didn’t like all the sudden attention from community members coming up to him expressing their sympathies over how his “grandfather” was treating his and Colin's relationship coming to light.

Morrison tapped the brakes all the way to the detention centre, making Randall slam into the seat in front of him each time he tried to bring up David and Colin. He was largely quiet with David the rest of the day, even during dinner. Usually David would be fine with that, but he could tell there was a seething anger and disappointment under the Old Man’s surface that felt as if the slightest wrong word would send him flying off the handle.

He and Colin sat together eating their dinner. Everyone was quiet, no one wanting to set off the seething elder werewolf. No one spoke about their day. No one cracked any jokes. The only sound was the sound of cutlery and eating. Eventually the sound of rain joined in.

The rain got louder, drowning out the sound of eating and cutlery. It increased into a heavy downpour that sounded oddly solid.

“Is that hail?” asked Colin, speaking up to be heard over the ruckus..

“Can’t be. It’s the middle of Spring,” said Lucas.

He got up and checked outside through the back sliding door.. The glass of the door and of the windows had started vibrating from whatever was pelting the Den. But there was nothing outside. No water streaming down the glass. No ice littering the ground outside. The evening was completely clear.

“Something’s in the Twilight,” Lucas said with grave concern before darting outside.

Everyone else, bar Colin, ran outside with Lucas. Something in the Twilight meant only one thing; a spirit had crossed the Gauntlet into the Mundane. Such an occurrence was of grave concern and a serious crime for a spirit to commit. And for a spirit to come to a werewolf’s den right afterwards meant it was either desperate or ballsy. Either option meant that the spirit was extremely dangerous.

They all gathered outside and shifted their eyes to peer into the Twilight ready to fight whatever was sieging their Den. David and Lucas, as Ithaeur, could do it as second nature. Everyone else had to consume Essence to do it. What they saw was a downpour of small, flaming meteorites pelting the Den. All of them coming from a large one that was hovering over the house, stuck in a snapshot of looking like it was hurtling straight into the house.

Fireball.

“Obviously he’s ready to talk,” said Morrison, relaxing as he saw the spirit.

“About time,” said Lucas. “I was wondering when he’d show up. He said he’d be a few days, not weeks.”

“He’s old, remember,” said Morrison. “Very old. Probably was a few days for them.”

He set off back to the house and said, “Let’s get him inside so he stops pelting the house and before the noise attracts any undue attention.”

“How’s he gonna fit in?” asked David, following the elder inside. “Blast through the damn wall?”

“You can phase through walls while in the Twilight,” said Morrison. “It’s how ghosts can walk through walls.”

“How come the little meteorites were hitting the hose then?” asked Jesse.

Lucas shrugged, “Maybe that’s Fireball’s idea of knocking.”

When they got back into the is when Fireball finally descended to Earth. It zipped along the ground like a bullet. It sailed straight through the wall with no damage and stopped right in the middle of the living room.

David looked at Colin, who was back to eating his dinner, and pointed towards the large flaming meteor in the middle of the living room, “This is Fireball.”

“I can’t see into the Twilight or Hisil, David. I don’t have that Tell,” said Colin after he swallowed what he was eating. He leant over to look around David and added, “Though I think I can kinda see where he is though from the effect he has being here on the Mundane side of the Gauntlet.”

David turned back towards Fireball and briefly shifted his eyes back to normal and noticed a faint haze in the air in the area of the living room where Fireball was situated. Like the shimmer above a fire. He shifted his eyes again to see into the Twilight.

Fireball turned in place to face Morrison and said in the First Tongue in its voice like grinding rock and squealing glass, “Old one, I have come to uphold my end of agreement to become totem to your pack and serve Mother Luna alongside you.”

It turned to the others “Young ones, I have spoken to my fellow elemental spirits and found more to the stories you recounted to me. When you told me that the human monkeys reached into space, I could scarcely believe it. One of the spirits, a crater spirit, recounted to me its memory of these human-monkey things from a tribe called Nasa dressed in bizarre clunky armor using it as some sort of ritual attunement focus to allow them to travel to the surface of Silver Lady herself!”

Kaiden spoke up, “Uh, you mean the Apollo Program?”

“First Tongue, Kaiden. Most spirits can’t understand English.” said Colin from the table. “Especially ones that have been asleep for most of human history.”

Kaiden repeated himself in the First Tongue and Fireball shifted its entire rocky body in a nod. It said, “Yes, this Nasa tribe dedicated these rituals to my Lady’s brother, Apollo. The crater spirit was a volcanic one, so it wasn’t concerned about the affront to my Lady. It just found the entire thing amusing.”

Jesse spoke up with a shake of his head, “Those weren’t rituals. It was science. They weren’t dedicated to Apollo either. The program was only named that in inspiration of Apollo, not worship.”

“Actually,” said David, “Due to how spirits and the Spirit World works, that probably actually would have been dedicated to Apollo and functioned as worshipping him.”

Jesse shrugged, “Alright then.”

Fireball continued, “Things have moved so much faster this millenia. You told me that the human monkeys have had a massive impact on the Hisil but I never would have guessed to this degree. Such strange spirits have come into being. Spirits of metal, fire, and speed.”

The description of the apparent spirits’ nature caught David’s and Lucas’ attention. David asked, “Did you happen to meet one of these spirits on a long, wide stretch of tar and asphalt painted with white and yellow lines?”

Fireball rocked its body in a nod and both Ithaeur gave a long ‘ahhh’ of realisation. David said, “Yeah, that would’ve been a car spirit you encountered. One of humanity’s many inventions created during the millennia you’ve been asleep.”

Lucas added, “Entire spiritual ecosystems have been created surrounding humanity’s technology. There are spirits of information that travel the ocean floor along large fiber optic cables that connect the continents in a massive web that envelopes the entire world. Spirits of industry and commerce that travel the surface of the ocean and land, and even under the land, in a similar web to the information one. Even being intertwined with it.”

Jesse threw up his arms and said, “Praise the Omnissiah!”

Kaiden slapped Jesse up the back of the head and said, “Don’t bring Warhammer into the Spirit World. It’s messed up enough as is.”

“No, actually,” said Colin. “Daemons from Warhammer function surprisingly similar to spirits. Though with a lot more overt malice. Same goes for the Warp being similar to the Hisil. What with it being influenced by mortals’ thoughts and emotions. As far as I know, Games Workshop only has humans who don’t know about how the world really works, so the fact they got so close to how the world actually is is rather impressive. As close as clueless humans can get anyways.”

Not understanding a single thing the young ones were talking about, Fireball turned back to Morrison and asked, “Is your pack ready for the bonding rite to seal the connection as totem and pack?”

“Well shit,” Morrison said sarcastically, looking at his wrist as if there was a watch there, “I don’t think we have anything planned for tonight. So why not?”

Not understanding the concept of sarcasm, Fireball said, “Good. We need somewhere to burn a large fire and a lot of salt water. Though there isn’t an ocean near here anymore.”

“Can we just dump a bunch of salt in regular water?” asked David.

“Yeah, that should be enough,” answered Lucas.

“Define enough,” said Jesse.

Lucas made a so-so gesture and said, “Ehhh, I’d say around a bathtub. Enough to extinguish a bonfire.”

“I have some road salt in the garage,” said Morrison before leaving to presumably grab some.

“How we gonna move it though?” asked David. “The bathtubs are connected to the floor.”

“We can just use a couple barrels,” said Lucas with a shrug. “Plenty out in the desert”

“Those are rusty and full of holes,” said David. “It’d be like using a strainer.”

“You could always go to the Sheriff’s Department to grab some,” pointed out Kaiden.

“Just use the garbage cans,” said Jesse, annoyed. “They need to be cleaned anyway. They’re starting to reek.”

“Oh yeah,” said David, Kaiden, and Lucas in unison.

They grabbed the garbage cans and started filling them with water and road salt. They struggled to get the full cans into the back of the truck. Not even Tsu’mara was able to lift the full cans.

Jesse watched the others struggle to get them in the back, and only after they got them in said, “You should’ve just filled them in the back of the truck.”

“Why didn’t you say that before!” snapped Tsu’mara.

Jesse shrugged, “Cause it was funny seeing you guys struggle to do it the hard way.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” said David and went to leap from the back of the truck but was pulled back by Lucas.

“Would’ve been easier if you had the Heart of Water Shadow Gift,” said Lucas. “You should’ve gotten that from the tortoise spirit instead of Eyes of the Dead.”

“Why would I have gotten that gift?” snapped David, not happy with his packmate saying he chose wrong.

“There's wisdom in water,” said Lucas. “So you, as an Ithaeur, would be pretty skilled with it unlike with fire.”

David growled. He burnt an entire asylum down to keep the Herd from knowing.

Seeing David getting angered by him, Lucas put up his hands and said, “I’m just saying that it’s easier for us Ithaeur to get better with Wisdom based Shadow Gifts than Purity. Purity is more suited to Rahu.”

“Stop bickering and let’s get out of here,” said Morrison. “I want to find a place well before Mother Luna’s meridian.”

But Colin stayed in the house.

“Colin!” called out David. “Come on.”

Colin came out of the house and up to the side of the truck. He said, “This part of the bonding rite is for Uratha. My part as a Wolf-Blood comes later.”

He asked Lucas, “You think you could conduct that part of it?”

Lucas nodded, “Yeah, I have an idea on how to go about doing it.”

“Why does he-?” snapped David but was cut off by Colin.

“Don’t start,” he said. “You two just started getting along.”

***

It was nightfall by the time Morrison found a place in the desert reasonably clear of brush. What brush there was was cleared and added to the bonfire they built.

Once it was fully burning, Fireball took position above the pyre and instructed, “Take each other's hands and dance around the fire.”

Jesse, in between Morrison and Kaiden, asked, “And what? Sing ‘Ring Around the Rosie’?”

Both Kaiden and Morrison smacked Jesse up the back of the head.

Together, they all danced around the fire. For hours they danced, with the pyre pulsing like a heart all the while with each rotation of the pack around it.

It was exhausting dancing non-stop for hours on end, most of all for Kaiden and Lucas. The two lacked the physical fitness of the others. Like Tsu’mara’s fitness from military training, and David’s from survival. Kaiden and Lucas, completely exhausted from the constant dancing, started to stumble as the full moon above reached its zenith.

A beam of silver light speared down from the moon and struck Fireball. The silver moonlight refracted out in a cone onto the pack. They stopped their dancing as it did. The light of the moon in the phase of their respective auspices always felt right and good, but the light coming from the moon now felt euphoric, almost addicting.

The spear of light from the moon lasted for several minutes and the pack stood in awe as they took in the raw, unfiltered glow of Mother Luna.

Eventually the full moon passed from its apex and the beam of light disappeared. Morrison collapsed to the ground, exhausted.

Fireball descended next to Morrison from on top of the bonfire and said to him, “The ritual is complete.”

Morrison waved at the others to extinguish the fire. Lucas and Kaiden picked themselves from where they too collapsed in exhaustion to help the others back the truck right up to the fire and tip the trashcans of saltwater onto the flames.

It was hard for them to tip the trashcans of water onto the fire, due to being exhausted from exerting themselves for hours. Lucas and Kaiden were barely able to help, being the most exhausted out of the pack.

David panted as he and the others finally managed to get the bonfire extinguished, Lucas didn’t let him use his Tongue of Fire Shadow Gift to help extinguish the bonfire. The other Ithaeur was worried doing so would interfere with the rite.

They all sat in the back of the truck as they rested. Lucas had nodded off and Kaiden looked to be well on his way as well.

David watched Morrison who sat by himself by the remains of the fire looking up to the moon. The Old Man had the faintest of smiles on his lips, but a look in his eyes betrayed a sense of profound sorrow.

David said to the others, “The Old Man always claims to not be a part of the pack. But he called us his pack when we first met Fireball and he bonded to Fireball along with us.”

Kaiden answered tiredly, “I guess the Old Man finally came to realise he’s stuck with us.”

***

Later on in the week on the weekend Lucas conducted the non-uratha’s side of the rite at his mother’s house under the guise of a late housewarming barbecue. Lucas stoked the fire of a charcoal grill which would suffice for the rite to bond the non-Uratha members of the pack. Non-Uratha members like Lucas’s mother, Catherine Tomas-Vovk, and his sister, Sarah Vovk.

Sarah sat at a folding picnic table with Colin where they were catching up eating a slice of cake that was in the middle of the table. She had long wavy dark brown hair that was always kept tied up. She was dressed like a female Indiana Jones with the hat and jacket. Though minus the whip. Unlike Catherine, her and Lucas’ mother, Sarah was in the dark about the world and her nature as a Wolf-Blood. As far as she knew, she just had a rare allergy to silver. Completely unaware that her ‘allergy’ to silver actually gave her the same regenerative abilities as Uratha. Her cluelessness, alongside her more low risk lifestyle as a geology student at UNLV, actually helped suppress her healing abilities. So she only healed weirdly fast compared to humans instead of rapidly like Lucas and the other Uratha in the pack.

Catherine, an older middle aged woman with deep crows feet from a seemingly permanent smile and the same dark wavy hair as her daughter, walked up to Lucas as he grilled some patties and sausages. She asked him, “Where’s your new packmate?”

“Kaiden left to settle the issues he caused at the university,” answered Lucas.

“I thought that was settled by the Protectorate,” said Catherine.

Lucas nodded, “On paper, yeah. But he had friends and people he knew that, as far as they knew, thought he went insane and was committed, then there was an incident and mass breakout at the clinic he was committed to, just for him to return a couple days after that like nothing happened with a full ride scholarship from the group of people you’re not supposed to ask questions about.”

Catherine’s lips pursed downwards and nodded, “Okay, yeah. So there’s still plenty of things that need to be settled.”

Lucas nodded in agreement.

“But that wasn’t who I meant,” said Catherine. “I meant the one that was having trouble settling in. The one you keep getting into fights with.”

“Oh, David,” said Lucas.

***

“An iced coffee for the rookie cause he’s weird and doesn’t like hot drinks,” said Sheriff Paxton

Eric Paxton offered the cold drink to David, who was face down on a desk in the Sheriff’s Department with piles of paper around him.

“Why are you getting me coffee?” asked David as he peeled his face off the desk. He looked at the cold beverage suspiciously and then to the Sheriff’s other arm, which was hiding something behind his back.

The Sheriff grimaced and revealed the thick stack of paper he was hiding behind his back. He said, “You filled out this set of paperwork wrong.”

“You’re gonna have to redo it all,” he said, placing the stack on the desk with the rest of the paperwork filling the desk.

David groaned and slammed his head back onto the desk. Tasing Randall the other day landed him and Morrison mountains of paperwork and the Old Man forced David to fill out his half of the paperwork alongside his own.

***

“He’s working,” answered Lucas.

“So what benefits do we get from being bonded with this Fireball?” asked Catherine. She looked at the barbecue in surprise when the fire flared up when she said the spirit’s name.

“As Fireball gets stronger, we’ll get more benefits,” explained Lucas. “But I noticed so far that we’ve gotten a bit faster and tougher. Like we can run and fight better.”

Catherine nodded. She looked at Sarah and Colin. She asked, “So this all of the non-werewolf pack members? Just us three?”

Lucas shook his head and pointed towards the street outside the front of the house, “No, Howlmore is somewhere nearby with Father Albert.”

“The priest?” asked Catherine, surprised. “He’s a Wolf-Blood too?”

Lucas shook his head again, “No, he’s human. But he knows about everything but the Protectorate’s fine with it because of the Seal of Confession.”

A knock at the front caught Lucas’ enhanced hearing’s attention. “Someone’s at the door.”

“I’ll get it,” said Catherine.

“No, I’ll get it,” said Lucas. “I just need someone to man the barbecue.”

Colin piped up, having come over from the table. “I’ll do it.”

Lucas changed his mind and said to his mother, “On second thought, you can get it.”

Colin stomped back to the table and pouted in his chair.

Catherine left and returned soon after with a familiar blonde face. The mage Alice.

She gave a nervous wave and said, “I was looking for you at the library and they said you had the day off and were here with your mom.”

Surprised and dumbfounded to see the mage, Lucas stammered, “Come in, come in. I just finished grilling the food.”

Catherine watched the exchange with a knowing wry smile. She looked over to Colin who mouthed to her “Told you.”

She joined him and Sarah at the table and Colin said to her, “And I thought David was clueless.”

The three chatted amongst themselves, watching Alice and Lucas blush as the two talked. They bet amongst themselves how long it’d take for the Mage and Werewolf, not that Sarah knew that part, to get together.

A crash of a door breaking caught their attention and saw Tsu’mara carrying a tray of beer in one arm and Jesse in the other walk out into the backyard from the house.

She said boisterously, “I heard that there was a party!”

“Do I have to be here?” asked Jesse as he hung from his packmate's arm.

“Yes,” answered Tsu’mara, dropping the effete man on the ground. “You’re gonna have fun and like it.”

She then said to Catherine, “Sorry about the door, Mrs Vovk. My hands were full. I’ll fix it.”

“You better,” said Catherine.

“You also need to finish fixing up the half finished cabin,” said Lucas as he started serving the food from the barbecue.

Tsu’mara set the tray of beer on the table and said, “Nah, I finished that today. Came straight from there to here.”

“You must be Tsu’mara,” said Sarah, offering her hand to Tsu’mara who shook it

“How’ve you been?” asked Sarah as Tsu’mara sat down at the table.

“Eh, could be better,” said Tsu’mara with a shrug. “Haven’t been sleeping well the past couple days.”

“What’s happening?” asked Sarah.

Tsu’mara shrugged again, “Bad dreams. But they’ll pass and I’ll get back to sleeping normally.”