Irma rolled over the side of the bed, onto her feet and took a fighting stance.
"Very good, agent Smith. Sharp as ever.", came Captain Ross' voice from the other side of her bed. Irma had taken to occasionally sleeping in the base, and had nearly been subjected to a rude awakening by a bucket full of ice water.
If she knew it had been him up to his usual tricks again, she would've opted to punch him in the nuts instead. While the excuse was that it was part of the training, Irma would've much preferred that her bedroom wasn't intruded like that by anyone.
She still hadn't figured out how Captain Ross managed to get past her bedcurtains without seemingly even moving them or without making any noise while sneaking up to her. These days, it wasn't just cold water, Irma had seen some of the Werewolves that were slow on the uptake cleaning actual ice cubes out of their bedding.
"Alright everyone, twenty laps as warmup. The slowest does double of everything for the rest of the day!"
Suddenly, everyone was scrambling into their training clothes. Irma had found the sight of half-naked men rushing about disturbing, but now there wasn't an ounce of excess fat on them, she had gotten used to the sight.
They didn't dare to even glance towards her, not after she had beaten proper manners through their thick skulls with her fists and feet.
###
Gaude, after sneaking away and removing the magic suppressing bracelets and having Laly cast the illusion of Charles on him, pulled Carter to the side when he was about to join the rest of the trainees for the run.
"I've got a few things to discuss with you.", he said.
"As you know, Irma and her unit are a bit different than the rest of them."
"No kidding, I've seen how they train. Everything Irma says is law to them, no matter how difficult. They're growing like bamboo after a good rain thanks to that, too.", he agreed.
Gaude continued: "The reason for that is a disease they've been infected with. It makes many changes to those that are infected, but it can all be summed up as one thing – they act like wolves, and Irma is their alpha."
Carter seemed puzzled by that for a while, before he seemed to figure something out. "There's no fucking way in seven hells.", he finally said. "And here I was thinking you were just doing some weird human- animal hybridization experiments, trying to create a chimaera or something."
"I assure you, there is a way. They're all carrying the disease known as Lycanthrophy. They're all Werewolves.", Gaude confirmed his suspicions.
"What the actual fuck! You're given me monsters to train!", he exclaimed, once the weight of the situation hit him.
"Not monsters, people with special talents that can be transmitted. Trained right, they will become a powerful force in full control of their faculties even in the transformed state.", Gaude explained.
"Why are you telling me this now?", Carter became suspicious.
"From today onwards, you'll be training Irma in the use of weapons that emulate her transformed state to a certain extent, a set of claws. I suggest you get a lot of practice in with her, since I'll be having her test her fighting abilities against you on ninth of July, in her regular and transformed state, both with and without a blindfold."
###
At first, Irma hadn't been comfortable at all using the claws. It took her two days of practice to even start using them in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile, Captain Ross had picked up a baton from somewhere and was using that against her.
The claws felt more like a hindrance than a useful tool – they constantly got stuck and helped Captain Ross redirect her punches.
Finally, he seemed to have enough of her fumbling around with them, so he growled out what was on his mind: "They're claws, so use them like goddamn claws! You practically have three knives attached to each of your hands, Goddamnit! I could shred you seven ways to Sunday with those!"
She decided that instead of trying to punch all the time, she would try to slash too. She even tried to change the tension in her wrist mid-strike and when the strike landed.
That seemed to help a little – now she could at least block the incoming strikes.
From the corner of her eye, Irma occasionally glanced at the 'pure human' and part-Dragon trainees slowly getting the hang of swinging their chosen weapons. She definitely didn't want to spar with one of the battleaxe-wielding part-Dragons, just seeing how their opponents were sent flying with screams indicative of multiple broken bones was enough to convince her.
Seeing them wield weapons that could deal massive damage even made her want to switch her own weapons, but she was willing to give it a go for the month and see how it turned out. If she would still struggle with those claws after that, she'd just pick one of those two-handed swords. Those looked just right for her transformed physique.
###
Gaude didn't spend all his time in his private military academy. He still had his studies of magic to take care of. To Gaude's chagrin, Amanda had decided to start studying magic as well, claiming that it was too boring to always read on her free time. Now, she was drawing rune clusters and pestering Gaude to check them for mistakes, then carve them.
Gaude, meanwhile, was studying the one artefact from Boring and Burkes that he knew to be relatively harmless – the Vanishing Cabinet. He had cast a revealing charm onto the thing. It seemed that the various enchantments had melded together, into a medium-sized array consisting of around eight individual rune clusters. It was either that or it was a single complicated enchantment.
Gaude transcribed the array onto a piece of parchment after a few casts of the revealing charm – it tended to fade out with time.
Next, he started calculating the flow of magic, starting with the magic gathering cluster and the limiting cluster, going downstream and attempting to figure out if it could logically connect two distinct and distant spaces to each other or if there was a portion of it missing.
Unfortunately for Gaude, the formulae needed quickly surpassed his scope of knowledge and thus he decided to leave it for another time, when he was more educated in Arithmancy, algebra and magic theory. It never crossed his mind to go to his magic library and see if there was anything about vanishing cabinets in there.
It was going to be another full moon. Gaude went to check up on the progress of Irma's training. He had Laly take him to the front door of the building. He took up a position behind a one-way mirror that gave him a full view of the training hall. The few hundred men were sparring with each other and Irma was using the dull metal claws to fight against the instructor who used a baton.
Gaude shouted: "Alright, Alpha team, go upstairs for R&R. Omega team, observe."
Naturally, the Alpha team was the team of Muggle ex-criminals without a drop of beast blood in them. Omega team was the opposite, part-Dragons and Werewolves.
The Alpha team stored their practice weapons onto weapons racks and left the training area. The part-creatures made their way to the edge of the training grounds.
Irma was wearing a blindfold. Gaude could've sworn her ears were pointier than usual. She kept dodging, blocking and counterattacking, sometimes barely avoiding getting hit, sometimes getting struck on her arms, shoulders, hips or thighs. She didn't even flinch. Those strikes would definitely leave a big bruise.
An hour later, she was tired out and the moon was rising. The instructor sent the rest of the men to rest. Irma removed the clawed gauntlets from her wrists. She took various recovery potions to prepare for another go, and so did Carter.
Carter already knew what would come next, Gaude had finally given him the Werewolf talk.
Then the change started. She fell to her palms, her joints dislocated and realigned themselves. Fur burst out of her skin. Her stretchy were still clinging to her body just as tightly as they did in her human form.
"Are you in control?" the instructor asked.
The wolf simply nodded.
"Good. Let's get started with round two."
He placed a blindfold on her once again. This one tailored for wolf physiology. They started the fight again. At first, she took more hits than she managed to block or evade, but ten minutes later, she seemed to have gotten used to her bigger body and longer reach.
Slowly but surely, she started evading more and more hits, using her claws to block and at times even tear at the fabric of the protective gear the instructor was wearing.
Gaude used an intercom and spoke: "Good job, agent Smith. Now go again with your eyes open."
She removed the blindfold and took a low stance, with one arm in front of her, ready to block and the other near her hip, ready to do an upward strike.
The instructor started with a fast jab at her throat. She moved to block, but the baton changed direction just enough to strike her solar plexus instead.
"Did you take your ears off with your blindfold? You have to use all your senses if you want to win."
She growled as a response. Then she went on the offensive. She made sweeping strikes at him, trying to overpower his baton. However, each time her strikes got close to him, he evaded them with ease.
"Do your fighting skills come as a set with your gauntlets?"
She growled even louder, and her strikes became shorter. She even started trying to do an occasional thrust with her claws.
Her movements kept accelerating until suddenly she managed to somehow disarm Ross. She took a wide swing at his throat, her claws extended. For a moment there, Gaude thought he saw her snout forming into a cruel smile.
Suddenly, she yelped. Her long claws clattered on the floor. Ross was holding his combat knife in front of his neck.
She used her other paw to thrust at his knife-wielding hand's elbow. Her claws found purchase and punctured through his Kevlar reinforced clothes and flesh. She yanked her arm to the side, tearing large holes into the instructor's bicep.
Gaude saw the feral impression on Irma's face and decided to end it. He spoke into the intercom: "That's enough. Agent Smith, stand down."
The wolf wasn't satisfied and with a growl, she opened her jaws wide, rushing towards her tormentor, ready to bite.
Gaude used the intercom once again: "Ross. Take her down. She's going wild."
The instructor, who had been holding his injured arm, dove down, grabbed his baton and did a sweeping strike at the knee of her support leg. With a loud yelp she crashed hard on the floor and slid a few feet before coming to a stop, even before Gaude had finished speaking.
The moment she did, Ross was already finishing a strike at the back of her head. She was out like a light that got hit by a shotgun.
Gaude rounded a few corners and made his way into the training hall.
"Alright. What the hell was that at the end?", he asked.
Carter replied with a wry smile: "I got careless. She's smarter than I thought, she was downplaying her own skill."
He handed Carter the paste that was already prepared for that exact occasion.
Gaude said: "It's a good thing she didn't bite you, otherwise I'd have another Werewolf on my payroll. Either that or an open position for a combat instructor."
Carter gave a wry smile at that. "In three more months, I'll definitely end up as her chew toy. Who the hell are you up against that you thought teaching a monster how to fight was a good idea?"
Gaude replied: "Another wolf. Bigger. Stronger. Most likely faster. He's called Fenrir Greyback. He's been hunting all over the country, takes kids and turns them. Makes them his pack. Trying too hard to play an alpha."
"If you want me to keep training her and live to tell the tale, you better have her turn me too. I don't think I'll do much good without a head."
Gaude had been thinking how to bring that up himself. It turned out that no convoluted schemes were necessary.
He said with a smirk: "I thought you'd never ask. Just remember, you might be weakened for a few days after you turn, and it comes with a ten-year contract. You break it and you end up dead."
Carter seemed to think it over for a while, then replied: "You drive a hard bargain, but I'll take it."
Gaude instructed: "Try to connect with your wolf on the fourth day. That's when it should be fully manifested. It's much easier that way. Irma will guide you through the process."
He presented Carter with a contract that he signed without even reading it. The signature disappeared.
He looked at the place his signature was supposed to be. "Boss, are you pulling a fast one on me with this ink?"
Gaude explained: "You have to read the terms and conditions before you can sign it."
He took a while before he signed again. This time, the signature took hold.
The contract split into two copies. Then Gaude handed him a syringe. He extracted some saliva from the still 'sleeping' she-wolf.
He plunged the needle into his arm and pressed down.
"Bloody hell it burns!", he pressed through gritted teeth.
His veins turned black, then with a few pulses they returned to normal. Gaude hadn't noticed any of that happening with Irma.
"What did you expect? A nice cooling sensation that leaves you minty fresh after? Just make sure to stay indoors for the next three days. In the first phase of it, sunlight is a bitch on the eyes."
Carter stared at Gaude with narrowed eyes and asked: "Are you speaking from experience?"
"Not my own. However, many cases have been documented. Alright, would you give us some privacy now?"
Ross looked at Gaude strangely, as if suspecting he wanted to do something uncouth with the wolf. Gaude rolled his eyes with incredulity.
Irma finally got up, still drowsy, still a wolf. She started growling at Gaude.
He spoke in a calming voice: "Irma. It's okay. It's all over. You can rest now. How about I take care of your hurt paw?" He took out a bottle of essence of Dittany. She held out her injured paw, the one that had all of its claws cut off. He dripped a few drops onto the raw flesh.
With a small strand of greenish smoke, fresh skin stretched over the wounds and short claws grew out.
"There we go, all better. Try to be more careful next time. You never know what tricks your enemy can pull out. You have to be vigilant even when you think you've won. Especially then."
The wolf lowered itself onto all fours and lowered its head. Gaude rubbed her head gently, giving an occasional scratch near her ears. Soon, she was lying down on the grass.
The rest of the Werewolves were looking from the side, the females seemed to have a hint of envy in their gaze.
---
On the next day, Gaude added a new type of training to the Academy: fighting against Wizardkind. Since there were multiple Wizardkind among the Werewolves Irma had 'rescued', they ended up being the ones in charge of casting weak jinxes at the rest, making them go through the same hell that Gaude had, so very long ago.
As Gaude had expected, there wasn't much progress at first, but with a few tips from him here and there, as his experience of the learning process was still fresh in his head, they started advancing at a monstrous rate – their reflexes and awareness had already been sharpened through countless practice fights, often against multiple opponents.
Now, they started against a single opponent with a single pointy stick. Most seemed to pick up where that stick was aiming rather quickly, being able to dodge at least half the spells by the end of the day.