CHPT 466: Unmasked and Into the Night.

"Oh my GREATNESS!! If this bed was a beautiful dark skinned woman I'd marry it!" Warren cooed as he rushed into Isaac's room and jumped into his bed.

He wrestled with the sheets as if they were thousands of snakes trying to constrict him in a Tangent before ultimately settling in with a sigh.

"My bed hasn't been my bed in…..well a long time. Crazy." Isaac commented as he entered the room with Ursula. Their collective width caused them to bump shoulders and almost get stuck.

"Damn girl… you really have gotten larger.." Isaac added as they separated inside in his room with a chuckle.

"Doesn't it make you want to leave the school and head into the forest to train for months on end?" Maris asked as she approached Isaac's desk covered in drawings.

"I don't know. Ursula and Claude did something very few people can. They were lucky to run into those….."

"Druids." Ursula finished, "Glorified gardeners that can pack a punch." She added.

"Did you bring any back? The Professors at the University are spread too thin. I need a dedicated whetstone all to myself to sharpen my skill….my blade? Metaphors make my forehead itch." Maris replied.

Ursula raised her eyebrows at Maris' backside, "That was still impressive. You reading these days?"

"Conroy's pompous intelligence spreads like a virus." Maris coughed.

Ursula headed over to Maris, placing a hand on her back as she flipped through Isaac's drawings. "Do you need water?"

"No. I have access to all the water I desire…..thank you though." Maris said, forcing out the thank you.

Ursula didn't hear it though. Every bit of sound had faded from her ears after she laid eyes on Isaac's artwork.

Her blood didn't run cold usually— cold stopped affecting her after she spent her first week in her fathers meat freezer to get away from the heat. Shock usually hit her in different ways.

Sweat. Heavy thudding pulse. The urge to break something.

Her eyes glowed faintly as she studied them. She didn't have Claude's sometimes otherworldly levels of control. She needed to lean on his power to bolster her own. But he was quite a ways away. His physical presence was just as important as the magical.

"Calm….down." His voice entered her mind in echoes as if the pack link was literally stretched for miles and the words ran its length like Squirrels on branches.

"Yea… yea I would be calm if I wasn't looking directly at a fucking Lupine." Ursula thought as icy winds exited her mouth.

Maris' hands did nothing to hide the image. The beast was massive, scaled to the trees surrounding it. It had to be eight feet tall. It stood like something stuck between man and wolf. It's legs had that half bent risen heel look that communicated the anatomical possibility of quadrupedal and bipedal travel. Heavy on the quadrupedal look though. It's hands were less human, one even lacked an opposable thumb. The ears were undeniably canine. So much so that on all fours it would probably look like a giant gaunt wolf.

But it's eyes.

Maybe it was Isaac's drawing skill. Maybe it was because she knew.

They were human. Like looking at a man in a mask. You couldn't hide the human…..

Bats flew above like migrating birds. Something was off about them too.

"—sula!"

Ursula spun around only to find Isaac and Warren leaned away from her with their hands raised. She swallowed down her tension as best she could and grabbed the paper.

"…..What's this?"

"Honestly. I should tell his mom cause this twisted artist angle is not going to work. Maris already freaks me out." Warren explained.

Maris threw a dried out paint brush at his…..well you know where.

Isaac looked beyond the question. He looked past the paper—metaphorically, and into Ursula.

She could feel his question being formed in his face.

"Out of all the papers on that desk, why are you fixated on that one?"

"Ronin showed me a picture of WereWolves in a third year Monster Anatomy Book during my…. Interrogation a few months back. They kind of looked like this." Ursula explained.

"Oh yea." Maris stood up from the desk and walked over to Isaac's bed, pulling a bag out from under it.

Ursula smelled Claude's scent. Old. But she knew that pure forestry, pine, fur and wolf urine scent from anywhere. It was an acquired taste like the rest of him. But she liked it, nonetheless.

As for everyone else's scent when she pulled the bag out.

Fear.

The Lupine in her loved it. Too much.

"AYE MARIS!?!" Warren panicked immediately but was barely given anymore time for much else as she dug into the backpack and pulled out a leather journal.

"Isaac's been drawing WereWolves ever since he found this in Claudes backpack. It belonged to a WereWolf." Maris said it as if she were recounting the weather.

Isaac sighed and shook his head.

"Friends do not lie to each-other. That's…. Goofy as hell, as all of you would say." Maris said in another shocking show of social and emotional expression.

Ursula had to choose her next words so wisely they probably wouldn't even be hers.

"Really?"

Maris nodded, "He's scared…. He's scared that Claude truly is the Wolfman that wants to kill every student inside The University."

Isaac turned to Ursula, "I had my suspicions…. Fuck it, I still do. You have to understand that I have a reason though…."

Ursula nodded and flipped through the first few pages, "….and you had a reason not to tell me... because I just spent over two months in the wilderness with him."

Isaac ran a hand over his face, "I don't think you're a WereWolf…..I didn't—"

"But I changed." Ursula finished. It was all there for him to surmise. No wonder he couldn't smile at Claude. He thought he changed her into a WereWolf. He wasn't entirely off.

"But…. You can still function as a human." Isaac added. "You're not a WereWolf. I just…. I don't know."

There was a long silence until Ursula found Warren staring as he held one of Isaac's sheets around himself like a cloak.

"Now you…" She pointed the journal at him.

"No please….. I'm sorry, Urs." Warren cringed.

"Don't give me an endearing nickname right now, you cinnamon stick." Ursula started jokingly, "You couldn't have slid me some of this info beforehand so I could talk to Isaac about me and Claude?"

Warren whispered an apology.

"I did that for you and Claude when you had no teammates. Remember that."

"That's fair…. My bad."

"Don't sweat it. This is all very…. Serious. But I think things will be…. better— different, when he gets here." Ursula explained.

"Maybe." Isaac mumbled below human ears.

Before she could press him about it somebody began tapping the window placed above Isaac's desk.

Ursula turned to find a pair of eyes reflected the light inside the room like cat eyes.

"Fuck—" she panicked and approached the window so they wouldn't see. Opening it to let Claude crawl inside.

He was soundless, not even rupturing a single paper on the desk as he stepped over it like he wasn't over two hundred pounds.

After a few seconds of silence, he rolled his shoulders and said something none of them were expecting.

"I need to use your bathroom, Isaac."

***

Minutes passed and they all sat in Isaac's room in anxious silence waiting for Claude to return.

Little did they know it was for reasons unrelated to him being a shapeshifting monster.

"How's Cassidy?" Ursula asked through their Pack Link.

Frosty whined in her mind. Not a sad sound. She could feel his tail wag as if it were stapled to her back. He was anxious.

"He's fine." Claude replied.

"But you did it…. Right?"

"I did….."

Ursula sighed and shut her eyes, only to find her darkness replaced by Claude's vision. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror taking off his black t-shirt. His wild long black hair fell in an appealing mess. Curls and straight waving rivulets of shadow that matched the tattooing on his arm.

The muscles in his forearms and biceps flexed like snapped cables as he reached up to tie up his hair. It was a nice look on him even with his punctured ear.

Suddenly she realized he was just standing.

"So can I take off my pants in peace or are you going to keep staring? This feels like bathing at the river all over again."

"Oh— sorry." Ursula opened her eyes and put her iced fingers to her reddened cheeks.

"S-so…. You did it. You bit him and he's fine. But you're nervous. Primarily nervous as if you're directly waiting for something….? Am I getting that right? How is that possible?"

"The Pack Link connects the mind. Minds are more detailed than just words. You can sense more than I can ever tell you….. which is creepy as hell. But is also why we can synchronize in combat so well."

"So I'm right?" Ursula confirmed.

"Yea. I'm nervous. We need Cassidy up and running soon. He needs training and we need another pack member. It's possible….. that Alpha Lupines can speed up one's change into a Lupine by increasing the potency of Wild Magic in the air…"

"Mhm…" Ursula stopped herself from nodding.

"I can't control Wild Magic like an Element… yet… if that's possible. So I used Commanders Howl to draw more Wild Magic to him. I'm just worried because it was loud and Cassidy…"

"Said there's Detectives patrolling the streets." Ursula finished.

"Yea."

"Well I'm sure Rollan's a good liar." Ursula provided.

"Rollan is a half elf Druid living in a giant forest house built around the cabin of….. my father…. Which is guarded by two Satyrs learning human norms and a Banshee that wishes to be a singer." Claude provided.

"So were fucked?"

"Im just thinking we could be." Claude said nervously into her mind before abruptly fixing himself. He did that often.

"But you don't need to worry about that. I'm coming in." He added.

Ursula shut her eyes only to see him fading from the mirror.

She saw the faintest glint of armor.

***

Shuck!

Claude opened the door and stepped inside.

But, it would've made more sense to say AllBlack entered the room.

Warren who was closest to the door sat up from Isaac's bed.

"You went shopping?"

"No I got this…. Out of a Tangent."

"When?!"

"Months ago." Claude replied, now everyone watched.

Nobody was speaking. Claude had never laid out a big secret without biting someone or going insane. Apologies will always go to Ursula.

He didn't know what to do, so he took a blood crusted page out of Maris' book.

"I've been posing as a Night Runner since the middle of last year."

Somehow it got quieter.

Claude looked around the room at them.

Maris nodded in support with Ursula.

Warren looked on the verge of melting. Isaac kept his head down.

He found Ursula holding Aeron's Journal and it took every fiber of his being to remain calm. He could work that into his angle. More partial truth to give them a full truth.

"I started because of the twins. Samuel and Tai. After the Tangent they were different. They weren't just cliche bullies trying to kick my ass because I wouldn't roll over. They wanted to kill me. They tried to kill me the night I woke up in the infirmary….but I was different."

Isaac stammered soundlessly if that was possible as he sat beside his bed.

"Prof. Alvis has theories for it…. I'm too tired to repeat them. All I know is death changes people…. getting close to it yourself does something else. It did something else to me. I had new reminders of my mortality as if the planet isn't crawling with musty ass monsters. I needed more than a Tangent every Friday."

"Yes." Maris agreed with his final statement.

"So I snuck out on weekends. I don't look sixteen anyway. It was a rough decision and I almost died a dozen times, but I got stronger. I was able to keep the twins… and the Detectives from killing me. But in the process I saw good people die…." Claude clutched the Hero Tags in his hand harder.

"I killed bad people too."

Warren looked over at him.

"I don't— I didn't, think Heroes killed humans. It fucked with me for a long time. But I kept going. I stopped being so embarrassingly naive after a while. I got stronger. I stomped out some HellBred in the process….I fought off a Village ruined by Goblins with a girl that likes swords and blood a little too much…."

Isaac and Warren looked from Claude to Maris.

"Goblins….. right." Warren whispered.

"And I ran into a psychotic Tangent Biologist turned WereWolf. He held a batch of Raiders hostage that I was tracking." Claude pointed to the journal Ursula was holding.

She smiled faintly and held it up once.

Warren sighed and put prayer hands to his face as he looked up at the ceiling.

"Maris….. all of you actually, I'm sorry I lied. And I'm sorry to say I'd do it again. I'm still learning and figuring shit out. And speaking of learning, we're behind."

"Wait— what? Can we get like three minutes to process what you just dumped on us?" Warren asked.

Claude shook his head, "Nah man. We're behind as it is. I've told you what I can about me, and with that I think we also have an opportunity to grow. I got you guys into this tournament mess, so at least let me give you a fairer shot."

"What are you saying?" Isaac asked.

The silence was cut by Maris sheathing her sword and shrugging on her battle gear. She knew what she wanted as always.

"Night Run with me."