Her confidence in beating this dog without severely injuring or killing it, had very, very sharply declined the moment she laid eyes on it, after almost a fucking hour of sprinting around to try and find the damn thing without getting lost.

Not because it was particularly gigantic or intimidating, despite its strange form, but because it was eating something several times bigger than itself. Like, eight times fucking bigger. Without stopping at all, biting whole ass chunks out of it.

Without being disturbed by anything.

She didn’t for an instance think that this thing was what killed the… what looked like the mutilated remains of a spearhead shark. It was something that it probably just stumbled upon and decided to eat, because she couldn’t fathom how something that small could kill something that large. It just didn’t make sense.

She was still confident she could beat this thing into the fucking dirt before hog-tying it and slinging it over her back, whistling merrily all the while over her free trip back into the Beakers’ good graces. She just wasn’t sure she could do it while holding back. Accidentally killing this thing was a genuine concern. Baron whateverhisnamewas was very insistent about catching the thing alive.

It was just the attitude of everything around the thing that made her hair stand on end.

Whether it was the carnivorous vines around the canal that seemed to actively lean away from the massive, free meal right next to them, the acid flies that seemed only interested in melting the carcass’s tail, as far away from the dog as possible, or the sump frogs and acid slugs, everything that came close to the massive carcass to scavenge some easy pickings, they all very quickly turned around and left.

And she knew that nothing in nature, or as close to nature as one could get inside this shithole, would ever give up a mountain of free food without a valid reason and concern.

She idly noted the withered signs posted occasionally up and down the miles-long expanse that stretched to her right as she observed from a lightly vibrating venting pipe a few hundred feet above her catch, her left leg swinging as she hugged her right.

Something about this all felt off and she wasn’t sure what. Just to be safe, she mentally noted the canal number and sign, in case she’d need to call in assistance from the comms tablet.

After a brief moment of self-reflection, she sighed and rolled her eyes at her own attitude.

She was being such a fucking pussy about this.

It was just a fucking dog, and even if she couldn’t beat its ass with her bare hands, she had a thirty pound harpoon gun she’d been forced to lug around for two weeks. And a healing potion she could feed the thing once she’d sufficiently tied it up, to prevent it from bleeding out.

“Alright, come on, it’s showtime you jittery fucking bitch.” She murmured to herself, a familiar phrase she’d muttered to herself before every cage fight, and hopped off the pipe onto rusty metal with a worryingly loud bang. She stayed crouched for a moment, nailing her eyes on the dog’s form below.

Besides a twitch of its ear, no reaction. It just kept biting giant chunks out of the carcass.

Holy fuck, how much could this thing eat?

Beginning to unstrap all unnecessary weight, from the filter canisters to the backup respirator, she only kept a single flare, a healing potion, and the comms tablet on her belt.

Just as a precaution.

She picked up the harpoon gun, checked the crank and arrow, and began stalking closer with a deep, steadying breath, ducking beneath a crisscrossing box made of wires and squeezing through tight crevices for the best shot possible.

It turned its eyes to the tail currently getting melted by glowing flies, and after throwing its head back and swallowing a giant chunk of oddly-textured organ that almost got stuck in its throat, it clacked its teeth shut and began limping over to shoo them away.

It wasn’t very interested in chewing up the thing’s digestive tract.

It was very interested in how this thing got its tail to be such a devastating weapon.

Thankfully, its tail was about half as wide as its main body, nevermind its gigantic, arrow-shaped head, so it took little more than forty-something minutes to eat through it all, up to the base of the thing’s spine, which, oddly enough, had hip bones connected. Without any legs.

Weird. And redundant.

With only a vaguely cylindrical piece of meat left, around six feet long and half as tall, almost two hours after it began eating, it was quite honestly more than sated. Even [Devourer] seemed more than content enough. Its diminishing reserves had been restocked to more than it had before it went down into the enclosed spaces of the human nest, [Devourer] wasn’t hungry for once, and the wolf’s jaws were beginning to hurt from constantly biting and chewing and tearing out chunks.

For… probably the second time in its life, it considered actually leaving free food behind. It didn’t want to waste another hour with this, it had to get going and find some crevice to sneak into-

A distant click and a faint whistling sound made its ears shoot up, and it detached from its prey, planning to crane its head around to investigate the odd sound, one that didn’t quite fit with the normal ambiance of the canal’s surroundings.

The ghostly prickle of a needle at the side of its mind from [Danger Sense] made its head snap to the left before it could do so, just quick enough to see an arching blur fly out of the foggy reaches of the walkways above, just a dozen inches past its head.

It slammed straight through its left hind leg, the skin and muscles not enough to stop the projectile without its fur to assist, the impact jerking its hips to the side from the force. It yowled in pain and surprise, forcing its protesting body to jerk back and turn away from its assailant.

It didn’t need four limbs to run, despite its awkward half-changed paws.

Right as its claws dug through the stone to propel it forward, with its left leg curled up to its stomach, the metal pulled, three jagged points digging into the inside of its thigh and using its own flesh to pull it back.

Its chest and jaw slammed into the stone as [Bloodrush] activated and it began getting dragged back with unreasonable speed. Any attempt to resist the pull only shredded its flesh further, so it didn’t hook its claws into the stone at all, instead squeezing as much adrenaline out of its sac as it dared to, throwing its left paw back to hook into the stone next to its hip.

It twisted its waist with as much force as it could muster as it pulled with its paw, launching its body backwards, granting it some relief from the pain. Its left eye saw the tense steel cable that led to the metal in its leg, and without hesitation, it backhanded its claws through it, sending it reeling back to whoever held it.

Its antennae, the few that had regenerated, writhed against the floor, feeling the vague vibrations of someone or something dropping from one pipe to the next.

Its eye focused on the piece of metal, and in the few seconds of respite it had gained, it pressed its palm on the blunt back of the arrow-shaped thing, forcing the metal through its flesh with a pained whine-snarl.

Then it moved its left hand under its abdomen between its legs, and with a flick of its finger, cut off the sharp, spiky bits that had been hooked into its flesh, then moved to the outside of its thigh to yank it out.

Then it realized that it would only bleed even more should it do that, and instead cut off most of the metal with a flick of its finger to make it less awkward to run, and quickly turned around once more, sending one last glance to the human that had attacked it for no reason before it began running.

As its assailant sprinted out of the fog, however, it paused, its lips curling into a sneer, its eye narrowing.

Its body was still wrecked. How long could it run for before it would have to activate [Maddened Frenzy] and get itself even more injured than before? Five minutes? Ten? It was fast, normally, but could it run with two hands instead of paws, heavily injured, and without using one of its legs? While bleeding the entire time?

Realistically, it couldn’t run away.

But as it used its single functioning hind leg to hop its bottom half around, turning to face the human, it came to a simple conclusion, one that might be borne of overconfidence for all it knew, but felt right.

Why should it run away?

It was so tired of running.

And this was just one human.

As hundreds of feet rapidly turned to dozens, the human slowed down, its knees bent and its fists held loosely in front of its body, slowly closing in.

In the dim light, it couldn’t see any sort of weapon on the human, at least none that it could recognize as such, so it idly wondered if he was holding onto some other hidden trick like whatever he had used to shoot it.

Because there was just… no way he was actually planning to fight the wolf with his fists.

This wouldn’t even be an actual fight if he tried that.

Yet, even as the distance closed, and the wolf silently glared at the human, it took nothing out to wield.

Maybe its wishes for an easy fight were less unrealistic than it had thought.

In fact… it could probably kill him without even fighting.

It just had to crack the mask.

And then it could just let it die without interfering, before inevitably biting its head off.

Despite its desire to coil its tail for a strike, it allowed its appendage to wag a little, restricting the snarl in its chest into a low rumble.

This fucking thing was making her skin crawl.

Not only was it almost completely hairless, giving her a very good understanding of just how fucking muscular the damn thing was the closer she got, the way it had dealt with the harpoon made no fucking sense.

She’d fucking blinked and the steel cable had detached from the harpoon somehow.

The more attention she paid as she slowly circled the dog, the more hesitant she became about fighting this thing.

The harpoon that should be in its leg was nothing but a thin hollow pipe now, without the head nor the tail attached, two clean cuts. The canine’s body was covered in cuts and deep, jagged wounds all across its back and shoulders, which were disturbingly humanoid, and the way its single glowing eye followed her with an intelligent, laser-steady focus, made her hair stand on end.

Twenty feet of distance slowly turned to seven. One lunge from either of them would start a fight.

But neither of them moved, even as her eyes followed the steady stream of blood that dripped onto the stone from its injured leg.

Then its tail began to wag and its lips began to curl into a snarl, a low rumble building in the air, and the feeling of something not adding up only increased.

She felt like she was in the cage again, having to fight some blood-crazed psycho with a giant grin on their face at the prospect of beating someone up. Those were the fights one wanted to avoid.

Its body language, from the low stance and the reluctance to move, screamed defensive, while the way its almost humanoid hands gripped onto the stone below, the low, rumbling growl that sounded more like an engine’s purr, and the wagging tail, they all screamed ‘I want to fight’.

It was so contradictory she couldn’t tell what this thing was going to do.

Despite her wounded pride, her instincts and the bizarre way this thing looked and acted sealed the deal.

Her left hand went for the comms tablet, and the dog’s- no, the beast’s eye, followed the movement, hopping once to realign its bottom half with her, still crouched, but significantly more tense all of a sudden, its tail curling strangely.

So the mutt understood the concept of ‘weapons’ and the danger they posed. It had to have been around humans for a while-

In an instant, it blurred forward and to the side, whipping its lower body towards her by using both of its legs to kick the stone as it used its hands to stabilize its upper body in place, adding to its momentum and torque, its back facing her as its thick, muscled tail blurred straight towards her face.

She jerked back, a practiced movement.

Not quite far enough. She hadn’t realized how goddamn long its tail was.

She activated [Challenger’s Focus] just in time to watch in near slow motion as the strange black thing at the tip of the beast’s tail slammed through the glass of her gas mask.

Boxers learned how to not close their eyes when facing an incoming hit, as it would only hinder them in a close fight.

And that was the thing that doomed her, as in that moment of panic, her natural reflex to close her eyes simply did not occur, beaten out of her from repeated bouts in the ring.

Shards of glass, big and small, slammed into her open eyes, and she let out a cry of surprise and anguish as she backpedaled in panic, almost tripping over herself and spinning in confusion. Her legs buckled and she almost careened forward before managing to catch the ground with her fist and spin, pushing off and away from where she thought the beast was.

Where she thought, because no matter how hard she tried to focus and stop herself from blinking, her vision was nothing but a blurry sea of grimy green and gray and red, with a single undulating dot of gold glaring at her through the muck.

“F-fuck! FUCK!” She snarled, backpedaling further while keeping some unstable form of a stance as her left hand fumbled with the comms tablet, struggling to remember where each button was. She slowed just a bit and straightened, despite the panic clawing at her heart, in the hope the damned dog would keep away long enough for her to call reinforcements if she just pretended to have her shit together.

That blurry, golden dot disappeared, and something slammed into her ankle as she took a step back, just hard enough for her lead boots to scrape at the floor and make her lose her balance. In the middle of falling onto her back, she curled her left leg in and stomped where its tail was, all her points in Speed allowing her to do before it pulled back.

She was rewarded by a slight yelp before her hips and back rolled onto the floor, and she carried the momentum by curling her legs and rolling back, ass over head, and staggering upright, unbalanced, feeling fear and agony claw at her mind and body.

Every breath felt like a million fish hooks were being dragged through her nostrils and into her lungs, a deep-seated feeling of wrongness permeating her body.

The scrape of nails on stone sounded out from in front of her, and in a move both desperate and fearful, she jerked her upper body low, and threw out her fastest right hook.

Her fist moved through something solid as if it wasn’t even there, the flesh and bone splitting effortlessly, the tendons snapping, before her knuckles slammed into the top of wet, hot, rough flesh, a sandpaper tongue scraping at her pinkie.

A split second before the agony registered, innumerable sharp points clamped around her wrist, and with a twist, she felt the flesh, the bone, the tendons, everything, be sheared off, like paper meeting scissors.

An ear-grating, shrill scream left the human’s lips- a female, it noted from the scent, as her mutilated hand lay comfortably nestled into its jaws, covered by some kind of skin-fitting covering. It quickly spit it out, watching in concern as the human backpedaled, tumbling over her own legs, hyperventilating and clutching at the clean-cut stump on her right wrist, agonized, choking groans leaving her lips as blood dripped down her face from her punctured eyes.

She was being loud, and the wolf was fairly certain she was just going to attract more of her kin to it if she kept it up. It was concerned about having to fight more humans. Besides, it didn’t really hate humans, so despite wanting to fight and kill this female, it had no reason to draw it out or toy with her.

It had to kill her quickly and leave, leaving her corpse to be food for the various vermin of the canals. It was kind of a sad situation for the wolf to be in. All that meat, wasted.

Her free hand let go of the stump, fumbling for some kind of vial at her waist as the wolf patiently hopped and prowled around her. She downed it in what seemed like a single gulp, before tossing it with force towards the wolf, a couple feet off the mark.

It quickly wreathed its claws in darkness and stopped its instinctual growling to deny her its rough location, watching in both fascination and annoyance as skin quickly formed over the bleeding stump.

The human fumbled for the strange metal device as she backpedaled even further, posturing as if she was fine, despite the way her legs quivered and the way her fear was so thick in the air it could almost note its undertaste from beneath the acrid chemicals.

A series of strange beeps and clicks came out of the device as her fingers pressed as many buttons as they could reach, and it tilted its head, the device’s design reminding the wolf of those strange, grated boxes that would make a bunch of noise, whether it was some human speaking, or some cacophony of sound that humans seemed to enjoy listening to.

It paused, its eye widening as it realized what she was trying to do. As she opened her mouth, bringing the device to her mouth, the wolf put down its injured leg, and rushed forward.

“HELP! JACQUELINE HERE, I NEED HELP, CANAL EF TH-” The human was cut off with a wheeze as the wolf’s shoulder slammed into her midriff, its left hand curling down and behind her knee before raking through, severing the tendon in her legs without issue, as its right hooked into her lower back, the furthest it could reach, and sheared through her back, severing the end of her spine.

It knew all the weak points of a human. It knew how to disable her without effort, and so it did, its eye nailed to her elbow.

As her torso reeled back, her hand extended, and the wolf saw its opportunity, unwinding its neck and opening its jaws to clamp onto her elbow, its canines scraping against one another as its front teeth cut through her forearm.

A violent jerk and twist as they fell, and the device flew through the air above their heads along with the human’s arm.

Some buzzing voice responded through the device as it clattered to the floor, but the wolf didn’t care enough to listen to what the human on the other end was saying, focused on shutting up the human below it as fast as possible.

It knew what humans sounded like when they were calling for their kin.

A breathless cry of terror and pain left the human as she threw her arms above her head and neck, and the wolf, left without a choice, started clawing through, its jaws closing around the single forearm the human possessed as she jerked and writhed around, its claws hooking into her shoulder muscles and raking through, jerking its jaws back and to the side, a clumsy maneuver that didn’t manage to sever her defense, only partly cutting through her forearm due to her stump smacking into the side of its face from the motion and not allowing it to twist further.

Without her shoulder muscles to help her arms move though, and her legs completely paralyzed, it didn’t matter. Its right hand ‘fingers’ clamped around her elbow and pushed it up, away from her head without much effort, allowing the wolf’s teeth to cut through flesh and thick, threaded cloth.

Its tail felt along the human’s limp lower body, before jamming into her suit in vain, the fang not sharp nor strong enough to piece through the thick suit.

As the human’s upper body continued writhing, her chin tucking into her neck, it twisted, throwing her severed forearm to the side, and opening its jaws as wide as they would go.

Then it snapped forward.

Its canines cut through her eye sockets and cheekbones effortlessly, and without anything to block it but the human’s annoying screaming and bucking, it began trying to dig its fingers into her neck, trying to either cut through her spine or neck, to make her stop making noise already.

Its hind leg, the functional one, kicked its lower body up in the air, then kicked down at her stomach right as its weight came crashing down, the impact making her abdomen curl and her mouth open in a breathless wheezing cough.

It saw an opportunity, and immediately blunted its teeth, yanking her head up and sideways by pulling at her skull, the tips of its fangs scraping at the edges of her brain.

It lifted its right paw, phasing its claws through her open mouth, down her right cheek and jawbone, before turning and finally managing to cut into her throat, her gurgling screams as frustrating as they were worrying.

It snarled, a rising, sharp sound, and engaged its pained, torn muscles as much as it could, trying to force its fingers deeper into her neck, being blocked by her blood-soaked chin as she desperately tucked her shoulders up.

In frustration, it gave up and grabbed onto the detached jawbone it had cut through, then yanked back with all its strength, the guttural crack of snapping bone and tearing flesh predating the animalistic, gurgling screech of agony that the human let out as the wolf’s arm trembled with the effort of trying to tear her jaw off.

It just wanted to jam its claws into her spine and be done with this, but she would just not give up.

It flattened its ears to save its hearing from the sound, and with urgency and genuine anger, let go of her head by cutting through with its teeth and yanking back. It quickly grabbed onto her half-connected jaw with its left paw, its stubby half-transformed fingers barely getting a decent grip, then wrenched to the left, exposing her flopping tongue and neck.

It formed a rough fist with its right arm and punched the side of her head, just strong enough to expose her neck further, and it jammed its snout into the exposed flesh, opening its jaw progressively and allowing its teeth to cut through tendons, arteries and flesh.

Unfortunately, no amount of twisting would reach her spine, so it adjusted its grip, blunted its teeth, and yanked her half-limp, spasming body off the ground.

Its hands rose to the back of her neck, and with a forceful rake of its claws and a twist of its own trembling neck, the human died with a final jerk, her spine severed completely.

It adjusted its grip on her neck, then pushed down with its hands on her torso and pulled up with its back and neck. With a sound of wet, tearing paper and a spray of delicious blood, her head finally detached, making the wolf jerk back from the sudden lack of resistance, leaving it hanging from the left side of its jaws by a few scant ribbons of flesh.

It had really missed the taste of blood.

Even as [Bloodrush] faded, it didn’t feel particularly tired, its breaths only mildly heavier than normal as it breathed through its catch.

It was just injured and frustrated at its current circumstance. It wanted to relax for one day without something trying to kill it. It was almost tempted to crawl back into the tunnels for some peace and quiet.

At least it could take the only part of the human it cared about, her brain, and take it along as it ran away to eat it somewhere safe.

Because there was no way not a single human had heard her cries for help, especially judging from the urgent voices coming from the little metal box-thing she’d been holding onto.

As if the world sought to validate that exact thought, another prickle from [Danger Sense] made the wolf instinctively duck and throw itself to the side in an awkward hopping manner, dropping the human's head and letting it roll away as it turned its gaze skywards.

It snarled at the shady outlines of two humans crouched atop a precariously positioned walkway that connected two leaning towers of steel, more than a hundred feet up and away, but both clearly focusing on it.

It had to run away, so it turned and…

Stumbled over its own feet, its shoulder and the side of its snout smacking into the small pool of blood cradling the human’s corpse. Confused and alarmed, it pushed off the ground, planning to resume its attempt to flee, and saw the world begin to rock side to side, as if the wolf was in a barrel floating down a stream.

Something tugged and prickled at its back, and it twisted, almost falling over, staring uncomprehendingly at the half dozen tiny metal spikes that dotted its backside, swaying and lightly bouncing with each movement.

It understood why it hadn’t felt them, considering how much pain it was still in, but when had those gotten there? Did the humans above throw the spikes down?

A word for them formed in its mind as its vision blurred and the world tilted, sending the wolf drunkenly stumbling onto its side, watching the glowing canal twist like a worm across its vision.

Needles.

A wide, heavy net covered the wolf as it squeezed its adrenaline sack dry, the conflicting chemicals in its bloodstream battling for dominance, and it snarled in effort as it ground its knuckles into the stone, getting up and taking six stumbling steps before the adrenaline was overpowered, its limbs and fingers getting tangled in the net.

It didn’t even have the energy to swipe its claws through it.

It fell unconscious, and immediately its mind flit away into [Devourer], frantically trying to disable and target the poison in its veins.

It wasn’t paralyzing poison, so the wolf didn’t have experience with how and what it was doing. It seemed to move through its bloodstream and into the brain, and then act like a hyper efficient version of melatonin, forcing its mind to rest.

By the time it forced its quickly flagging mind into properly programming its mana cells into attacking the poison however, its chemical bonds seemed to have altered and changed, and eventually, it couldn’t even understand what it was doing or looking at, its mind succumbing to a deep sleep.

“HELP! JACQUELINE HERE, I NEED HELP, CANAL F TH-” The voice cut off with a thud and a wheeze on the public channel, and across the fourth floor, gangsters, mercenaries, and hopeful nobodies alike all paused, some replying with requests for location and details.

But all heard the ensuing blood curdling screams, the gut-wrenching gurgles of agony, the spine-chilling snarls, the sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bones, distorted through the speakers, until all that remained was the low static of a damaged comms tablet.

And in a metal tower, nestled into the walls of the third floor, a pale, grayed face curled its lips into a sneer as it listened to the replay, an hour late.

Newly regrown limbs crushed the crutches they held in trembling fists, while steely eyes glared at a complex machine of mana crystals and countless buttons and wires sprawled across a dark, carpet-less room.

“I knew you were alive, you fucking mutt.” He snarled under his breath, and swept his glare off the hub machine, and onto Kolak, his brown eyes staring back at him, unflinchingly.

Good.

“Get Mason in here. And the comms crystal that’s labeled “Trackers”. Now.” He growled, and didn’t wait to see Kolak nod before he grabbed a hold of the box-like microphone, pushing the WLF-SCT button with enough force to hear something crack.

He brought the microphone to his mouth, and cleared his throat.

“To everyone currently assigned to the fourth floor on dog-catching duty, this is Baron Manos Ironheart. And I will make myself very, very clear.” He rumbled, planning on doing his best to make it as clear as possible how serious this was and how fucking furious he was.

But then he remembered that many of them were tracking groups, mercenaries, and people he had little hold over, as well as how he couldn’t make it obvious how important this was. Thus, he forced out a hissing breath between clenched teeth to calm himself down.

“If you do not catch that fucking dog soon, you will all either be out of a job, or a floating corpse in a gutter, depending on your incompetence and efforts. My patience has limits. So I’ll add further incentive. Whoever brings me that dog, alive, will be paid their weight in gold, and will have one favor granted by me, within reason. I hope I made myself clear. I’ll relay new instructions through your superiors.”

He was met with silence as he tossed the microphone aside, letting its curled cord swing it along the edge of the machine.

He was going to burn this fucking floor to the ground if he had to to find that wolf.

-

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