The inmates are running the asylum

[Shimizu Susumu]

"All right," he said softly. Alva was quite the spitfire. It was easy to mistake him as a weakling and an easy target because of that innocent face and the fact that he was stuck in a wheelchair. But Susumu was quickly learning that he was anything but an easy target. Not that Susumu had ever intended to target him in any way. He was still genuinely sorry about the curse. If only they'd met in better circumstances. After a moment, Susumu reached out and gently ran his hand over Alva's arm.

"Let me."

The forest wasn't an easy place to traverse on feet, let alone on wheels. Somewhere in the mist-laden forest, he heard it--the keening of a wolf. It wasn't the white one, because he was currently high-tailing it after the slinky fox, who had run off, close to the ground in that way foxes did. The wolf probably had his hands--paws?--full with that one. Just the same could be said for Susumu and his fox, too. Alva might not be in fox form, but he still behaved just like one.

Susumu pushed the chair over fallen leaves, the wheels crushing them and leaving behind an earthy scent. The hair acted as a radar and Susumu followed its heat. There were areas where people had obviously been camping and left in a rush. Susumu's lip curled.

"Hunters," he sneered. But they were gone. There were signs of them left behind but they'd hastily left the area. He could guess why--when their enemies decided to kill one another, they would just stand back and let it happen and come back to see what became of any survivors.

As they kept going, he saw the blood first.

The fox, who had managed to escape the wolf and was walking somewhat alongside them (several yards away but in the same direction), stopped in its tracks, ears flattening against its skull. Susumu's gaze followed the fox's and he saw the first victim.

It was a young child. A shifter, by the looks of it because it was in a hideous half-shifted form, part rabbit and part child. Its throat was torn out, obviously by an animal and not a hunter.

[Alva Ren]

"Thank you." Briefly, Alva laid a hand over the back of Susumu's hand, smiling up at him. Susumu didn't have to offer, and Alva didn't need help, but it would have been rude to refuse, when Susumu obviously meant well. Alva could take care of himself, but sometimes it was nice to have someone lend a helping hand.

Not that Rae never tried to help... If anything, he was always quite eager to prove how useful he was. The problem was in the delivery. Susumu had the gentle touch down to an artform; he didn't make Alva feel like his aid was mandatory and necessary. Rae, on the other hand, was blunt to a fault. It wasn't his fault, exactly, but Alva was stubborn in his own way and they didn't always see eye-to-eye on when Alva needed Rae's intervention, and when he could take care of things on his own. Hence, the rocky end to their relationship.

The deeper they got into the woods, the stronger the smell grew. Not the hunters—though they reeked, too. It was wolf. The scent of wolf, of familiarity. Alva noted the scattered campsite and while he didn't sneer, his gaze was full of scorn, too. Clearly, the hunters had scattered; their scent was fainter, their trail cold. But the smell of wolf persisted, growing stronger, alongside the scent of blood and death in the air. Alva felt a little sick even before they approached the site where the attack happened.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw, though.

"Oh!" His hands flew to his mouth, eyes wide with horror. It was a child. A small boy, with his body flung across the ground in a grotesque attitude of death. Alva let out a cry of shock, of pain. He broke away from Susumu and wheeled himself forward, taking in what lay beyond the bushes. More bodies. Two adults, their torsos torn open. Eaten. More children. A baby. A campsite that looked like it was newly erected, as though the shifter family had just begun to settle into their surroundings.

"Oh no... no, no, no..." Alva wanted to stop looking but everywhere he turned, there was carnage and death. And the smell of wolf.

The scent of Rae, and of Josh.

[Reagan Ryang]

Rage. Death.

Death was everywhere. Rae saw only red. Fully feral, there were no thoughts concerning morality. No. Everything that stood in his way was subject to death. Amidst the innocents that were mowed down, a larger, more aggressive coyote made himself known. Snapping jaws and a bloody fight later and Rae had nearly torn that coyote apart, too. He was viciously proud of himself, letting out a howl of triumph as he sniffed out where Josh had gone.

He trotted across the bodies that were scattered around the forest, finding Josh with a warm body. The red was dying down now that he'd satisfied his bloodlust. He'd tasted and eaten several bodies by then and he felt full, fat, and satiated. Generally, that meant nap time so he nuzzled against Josh's side and let out a half growl. Then he smelled something new in the wind. Turning his head away, he raised his nose to the wind.

Something smaller than him with a long bushy tail and a curious stance--it was close by but it had frozen in place, like prey. Rae lowered his head and raised his hackles, letting out little more than a warning growl before he pounced on the fox. Or that was what he was going to do but... he couldn't. Instead, he flopped down to the ground and couldn't move. It was as if a switch had gone off inside of him the moment hunt mode tried to turn on. He lay on his side, panting and letting out a long howl, irritated and a little afraid. Why couldn't he move? He couldn't move anything--not his legs, not his head, not anything.

[Aldon Huang]

Stupid slippery sly fox! Aldon was an agile wolf, but he couldn't keep up with Ryland and soon lost him. It wasn't hard to find him again, though—he followed the scent to where the small party was headed. Once he sighted Ryland, he pounced with a victorious bark that died in his throat. As he landed on Ryland, he saw the bodies. He'd already smelled blood in the air but he thought it was hunters.

Not...

Babies. Kids.

Slowly, Aldon rolled off of Ryland. His dark eyes flicked over the scene and the feral blood in him rose, but he fought hard to repress the urge to finish off the carcasses. Aldon wasn't as far gone as his two friends and even so, he had to take a few steps back to get himself further away from the temptation of freshly killed bodies. Rabbits, it looked like. Shifters—not hunters.

"Where is he?" Alva's voice rang out through the small campsite, shaking with emotion, angrier than Aldon had ever heard him. Alva wasn't easy to piss off but by the look on his face, he was out for blood. When he turned to look at Susumu, Aldon saw the raw fury etched into every line of his face. His eyes were shining—those were angry tears, if Aldon had ever seen them. "Where's Rae?!"

Without a sound, Aldon loped off, disappearing rapidly into the forest. He had to get to Rae before Alva did. Hell, not even the witch could do anything worse than what Alva was going to do! He sniffed the air hard. Rae's scent was faint, not easy to follow. Josh's too, was indistinct but it was still in the air. Aldon ran fast, following his nose and then the sound of the howl, until he burst through some bushes and saw Josh nosing at Rae, who was laying prone on the ground. Nearby, two coyote corpses laid, their stomachs torn and throats ripped out.

Aldon shifted out of his wolf form quickly and stumbled onto his knees beside Rae. "Alva!" He gasped, checking Rae over in confusion. He thought Rae was hurt, but there wasn't a mark on him. "Alva's here with the witch! You guys. You... you didn't get hunters, it was rabbits. Alva's gonna KILL YOU! You guys have to go before he gets here!"

That look on Alva's face earlier?

That was a look of pure murder.

[Reagan Ryang]

Nothing like this had ever happened to Rae in his entire life. Nothing. NOTHING. He knew things sucked for Alva, not being able to move his legs but this was beyond even that--Rae couldn't move anything. He couldn't even move his eyes as he laid there, prone on the ground. What he felt like was very much like prey. The wolf mind didn't comprehend what was happening--it willed itself to stand and nothing happened. The human mind, increasingly moving to the forefront now that the ferocity had moved away due to fear, panicked.

Finally, he let out a sound and it embarrassed him. It was the kind of short little whimper a pitiful whelp might let out if it lost its mother or its pack mates. After a moment, the locked up feeling gave way to shivering. It was like the strain of his muscles trying to move could only manifest themselves in the shivers. Which, honestly, made Rae feel all the more pathetic.

Josh didn't seem to have any clue what was going on but at the very least, he hadn't left Rae on his own. Maybe he heard it, too--the others in the forest. Rae let out another sound and it sounded like the whine of an injured dog. Not much better. He snorted in frustration; some smaller muscles seemed to be able to move now. His eyes could move again. They strained upward to see what was coming toward them. Aldon. Aldon? How the fuck...?

He couldn't shift back. Was he stuck this way now? He understood the magnitude of Aldon's words but he could hardly react to them. Somewhere farther in the forest, he heard Aldon's ex-boyfriend calling for him. What, was everybody here to see... to see...

He could smell blood everywhere now that the red had faded from his vision. Shifter blood. Fuck.

[Aldon Huang]

Too... late...

Aldon heard Ryland's voice calling to them, and he knew that the foxes' keen sense of smell would lead them to him. And Rae. And Josh, who sat defiantly close to Rae as he stared into the darkness in the direction from which the voices came. Inside, Aldon died a little. He had to warn Rae, because Rae was one of his best friends, but he didn't want to be branded a traitor.

Anybody who knew anything about Alva knew that he had a soft spot for the defenseless--for the shifters and the supernaturals that couldn't stand up for themselves. Alva worked hard to make sure that shifters like those rabbits were safe. That was how he found and rescued Rae, too, after Rae was hurt by hunters all those years ago.

He was out there protecting others, trying to make sure that nobody else ended up like him. Aldon knew that Alva was no more than a kid himself when he was shot, and seeing those babies torn apart must've torn him apart on the inside.

That was why he had that look on his face, why there was so much unrestrained anger and hurt. And Aldon sorta betrayed him to come here, trying to warn Rae, except Rae looked totally helpless and was making frightening noises--vulnerable noises. Aldon half leapt to his feet, wildly grabbing one of Rae's hind legs like he would drag him off to safety. But then Alva was already breaking through the trees, his dark eyes like lasers cutting through the grim dimness. And there was Aldon, in the act of dragging his paralyzed best friend, with another one looking scornfully at the approaching group.

"Murderer!" The word shot out like a bullet, so hard that it made even Aldon flinch. Guiltily he dropped Rae's leg and stood by awkwardly as Alva drew closer, looking like the harbinger of doom. "Susu, set him free."

Aldon shuffled off to the side, trying to hide behind a tree. He avoided everyone's gazes--particularly Ryland's--but when he side-eyed Josh, he was still just sitting there, staring, clearly unapologetic.

[Shimizu Susumu]

Susumu stepped calmly through the trees, although inside, he was anything but. Death was something he looked in the eye on a fairly regular basis. He tortured and killed hunters for this exact sort of act. Personally, he wanted to do more than curse Rae with paralysis. He wanted to do more to him. He had the hair, though. And now that they were in close proximity, he could gather more than that from him. Susumu's smile was small as he regarded Rae with stone cold eyes. He hadn't paralyzed the other one because he didn't have what he needed to do it. But he had other spells for him if he tried to interfere.

If he was fast enough. He knew feral wolves were nothing to mess with. Typically, he wouldn't have but this time, they had gone too far. Children. Infants. Innocents. The smile--all traces of it--were gone now as he stared Rae in the eyes. Such a pathetic creature. He yanked the spell back but with more force than was needed. Rae let out a pained rasp of a growl and then he was shaking out his head and shifting. A wolf couldn't talk. A wolf couldn't fight back--but nothing this filth said would make up for what he'd done.

"No!" Rae denied vehemently. "I'm not a murderer!"

[Alva Ren]

"They were children! And babies!" Alva didn't care if his voice echoed, or if he was half-screaming at Rae in his anger. Rae denying it only made it worse, because Alva knew that he could smell it. They all could. The blood that tainted the air wasn't human blood, it was clearly shifter. It was supernatural. Even those two poor coyotes laying close by, who had done nothing but cross Rae's path, made Rae's denial completely ineffective.

"You killed them! You and Josh! That family did nothing to you and you-- You have your head stuck so far up your ass that you can't even listen to reason anymore!"

"H-hey, Alva..." Aldon stepped forward, holding out his hands before him placatingly. "Maybe it was just a--"

"Shut up!" Alva saw Aldon flinch, back down. He turned his fury back onto Rae, wheeling himself right up to him. Dried leaves and twigs crackled underneath the wheels of his chair as he advanced. Josh rose and growled, choosing to remain in his well-protected wolf form--like a coward--but Alva ignored him. Nothing that Josh could do to him would remove the images from his mind. Children. Babies. Innocent rabbit shifters who were trying to escape persecution from hunters, only to meet a cruel fate at the hands of an--

"Idiot! You're a complete idiot, Reagan! You're not a hero! You're a murderer!"

[Reagan Ryang]

His nostrils flared and he took in a breath but there were no words. Why had he bothered shifting? To argue? He shut his mouth and set his jaw. Somewhere behind him, he was aware of Aldon's stupid boyfriend or ex or whatever the fuck he was moving closer to Aldon. He was pretty sure he shifted back into a fox--which made Rae twitch slightly--but his burning gaze was on Alva. Alva, who was shouting at him with more fury than Rae had ever seen. Despite knowing he was in the wrong and that what happened was horrifying and unintentional, Rae couldn't help it; he had to defend himself.

"Fuck you. You don't get to pass judgment on me. You and that guy."

Yeah, he saw that asshole witch with his head tilted slightly upward and that smug ass look in his eyes. What an asshole. Oh, but wasn't he so perfect? A goddamned hero somehow, for killing hunters. When that fucker accidentally cursed Alva, he was still a hero. When Rae made a horrendous mistake, he was a fucking... murderer!

Sickness roiled unpleasantly in his gut. He hadn't yet come to terms with the murderer thing. He couldn't even look at the surrounding massacre because what was happening in his stomach was too precariously close to spilling out. He started toward Alva.

"What are you going to do about it? I'm just as bad as any hunter now. Are you going to kill me?"

He was a few steps from Alva when he felt it--that awful paralyzing feeling. It stopped him in his tracks and he couldn't move a fucking muscle again. He glared at the witch.

"Stay away from him," the witch said.

"Fuck you!" Rae snarled through his set jaw. If he could move, he would fucking kill that bastard for starting all of this.

[Alva Ren]

All Rae had to do was apologize.

All he had to do was admit to his wrongs and show a little remorse for the slaughter of the rabbit family--of the children and the babies. Maybe he wasn't in control of himself when he killed them--Alva knew how difficult it was to be a feral--but the fact of the matter was that Rae still did the deed. It wasn't hunters that he massacred. It was an innocent family.

It was so simple, and yet, Rae never could fess up to his mistakes. He always had to be right, and it didn't matter how many people he hurt. He had to be alpha.

Alva's anger was mingled with deep disappointment. "I'm not the one who came here with the man I cheated with!" How did Rae think that was going to look, him cavorting around these woods with Josh? Alva was so furious that he almost did it--almost reached up to slap Rae in the face. Because that was what Rae was doing to him, right that minute--slapping him in the face with his own concern. To think, Alva had been worried. Worried that Rae would run into trouble! That hunters would kill him!

He stood his ground as Rae advanced, though, never one to back down at the height of anger. They were alike in that way, he and Rae--never back down. Only Alva's stubbornness was still tempered with a little common sense. Before Rae got to him, however, he suddenly froze and Alva looked over his shoulder at Susumu. Alva knew that Rae wouldn't hurt him, though. Not physically. He hurt Alva with words, with his callous attitude, with his refusal to simply admit to being careless and wrong, but he wouldn't raise a hand against Alva. Too bad Alva already felt like he took a pummeling that night.

"You are not the man I thought you were, Reagan Ryang." Alva tried to stop his voice from shaking--with anger, with disappointment, with the disillusionment that hit him like a punch in the gut. "I thought--I thought you were better than this. But you're not." Rae showed that clearly tonight. Alva turned away, wheeling his chair back. "I'm going home."

As he turned his back, he heard a sudden scuffle behind him and before he knew it, a large wolf was streaking past him, headed directly for Susumu. "Josh no!" Aldon shouted, then-- "Alva! No!"

Alva did the first thing that came to mind. He grabbed onto the wolf's tail as it passed him, grabbed it hard and held on even as Josh turned on him with a vicious snarl, bowling him over and out of his chair, teeth inches from his throat.

[Shimizu Susumu]

Susumu's opinion of this Rae was lower than it had ever been for anybody. That included the moments when he swore he hated Liam more than any other person in the world for hurting him. This was different. Liam was just a junkie and a cheat. He had never killed an innocent person. Hunters only. They swore it when they partnered up and beyond accidentally cursing poor Alva, neither of them had hurt a hair on another person. Except one another.

The kind of pain this man was inflicting on Alva, however? Not only was he a disgusting waste of space for killing children and showing little--actually no remorse for it--he was also talking to Alva like he was worthless. The tone of his voice pissed Susumu off--he was more than happy to curse the bastard and he had more than paralysis up his sleeve.

Before he could say anything else, however, the wolf accompanying the lying, cheating bastard came at him. He was a huge wolf, too, and he was diving straight for Susumu with what looked like murderous intent in his eyes. After what the pair of wolves had done to a helpless group of rabbits and coyotes, Susumu had no doubt that the wolf coming at him fully intended to kill him.

Alva stepped in.

Not literally, of course, but he tried to stop the wolf.

For a few breathless seconds, Susumu's head spun with that knowledge. Alva had just thrown himself into the fray to save him. He wasn't just stubborn. He spoke so highly of Susumu but really, Susumu couldn't remember the last time he'd met somebody so selfless and heroic. Rae could only stand helpless in the face of the attack and the fox rushed forward to help with a loud sound Susumu could safely say he'd never heard come from a fox before. But it was Susumu that acted. From his pocket, he grabbed one of the vials he'd brought with him for protection.

"Alva!" The cap came off the vial and then Susumu was dousing the wolf with it, the spell on his lips. Unfortunately, it was the fox that took the brunt of the spell because he'd leapt onto the wolf and sank his teeth into one of the wolf's ears. His body effectively blocked most of the wolf from the spell's ingredients. It knocked him out almost immediately. Another sleep potion. Shit! "Alva!"

[Alva Ren]

"No! Stop!" Alva cried out but not to Josh. He saw Ryland leaping forward, then slumping down after Susumu accidentally threw something onto him, and he tried to shield Ryland with his own body, curling up around him the best that he could. Josh was still on him, stepping on him, teeth snapping around him as he first tried to get rid of Ryland, and then when he fought against the white wolf that leapt onto the pile.

Finally, Aldon dragged Josh off of them. He had Josh by the scruff of the neck and he was pulling Josh away, growling in warning. Aldon was the only one who could deal with another feral.

"Ry? Ry!" Alva cradled Ryland closer to his body, in case Josh broke free. He couldn't move or even crawl anywhere, so he used his free arm to drag himself out of the way. Close by, he heard Aldon's growls, and the scuffling sounds of two wolves fighting it out.

"Susu! Get me back in the chair! We have to get out of here!"

[Shimizu Susumu]

Everything had descended into pure chaos. Susumu was reaching for another vial but even as he did, there was another wolf, this one snow white and it was attacking Rae's friend. Wasting no time, Susumu dove over to pull Alva away from the snarling mess. He held him safely against his chest, heart ramming hard against his ribcage. For a moment, he checked Alva over, running a hand over his face. For the most part, he seemed unharmed. Heeding Alva's words, he grabbed the wheelchair and pulled it away from the fight.

Frightening growls and snarls filled the air as he righted the chair and settled Alva into it. Normally, werewolves didn't intimidate Susumu but at the moment, with Alva to protect, he felt distinctly vulnerable. He cast barely a glance at Rae--didn't care what happened to him. But he did look over at the sleeping fox. Alva must think the white wolf would win the fight if he hadn't mentioned him.

He turned the chair away from the fighting ball of fur and put as much distance as possible between them and the war going on behind them.

"I'm sorry," Susumu said several times. "It was just a sleep spell. It was supposed to stop that wolf." He shuddered to think what might have happened if he'd used one of the others he had prepared with him.

[Alva Ren]

"I'm okay. I'm okay Susu, we have to go now!" He knew that Susumu wanted to make sure he was all right—he wasn't—but this wasn't the time. Alva's right shoulder had been bitten, and he suffered several bruises and contusions from where Josh had stepped all over him. But those were minor injuries to what Josh was capable of inflicting. A fully feral werewolf in its prime was not something that they could take on by themselves.

After Susumu placed him back into his chair, Alva laid Ryland across his lap. He glanced around as they began to move away from the fight, desperately looking to see where Rae was. Was he all right? Did he get caught in the cross-fire? Alva only managed to catch a glimpse of him—still, it appeared, frozen in place—before the woods swallowed them up.

"It's fine. It's just a sleeping potion, right? Ry—he'll be okay." He was saying it to reassure himself, mostly. Susumu was a skilled witch, he knew, and if he could cure a death curse then... a sleeping potion surely was nothing to him. Alva still hugged Ryland close, protectively, murmuring his own apologies to his sleeping cousin. He hadn't meant for things to get so out of hand. He only wanted to stop Rae from getting hurt, to stop him from acting like a goddamn idiot.

"There's the car!" Alva almost cried with relief as they broke through the trees, and Susumu's car sat there, like a beacon of safety. They were almost at the car when a dark shape shot out of the woods and Alva almost threw a rock at it before he realized that it was Aldon.

"Go!" Aldon panted, as he shifted out of his wolf body. "Go! Josh is right behind me! I can keep him busy for a little while but you guys gotta get the fuck outta here!"

"Aldon... I'm so sorry!" Alva reached for the door handle. "Be careful!"

"Take care of Ry!" Then he was gone again, a white flash streaking through the woods with a long, low howl.

[Shimizu Susumu]

Oh, good. Susumu was secretly relieved to see that Alva was taking the fox along because... well, he had no idea how well a sleeping fox might fare if the white wolf lost his battle. So many what ifs. So many ways things could go wrong. A few had already gone sideways so far. Susumu looked down at the sleeping fox. He was so out of it that his entire body was limp and he looked dead. Susumu shivered at the thought. Killing hunters--he had a reason for that. To protect people like Alva and his cousin and the little rabbits and the coyotes. Tonight, he felt like a disgusting failure. And not only had he failed to protect the community he cared for... he'd also managed to make the situation worse.

Gods be damned. He should have slit that wolf's throat with the dagger in his boot. That would have been easier. Quicker. Nastier, though. He deserves it. It was hard to see those two wolves as anything other than monsters now that he'd witnessed the atrocities they committed. Once things calmed down, he vowed to come back and put their souls to rest. If not... they might became trapped eternally between planes in torment.

"Kuso!" Susumu swore in Japanese, he was so startled by the newcomer. This time he did reach for the dagger but stopped mid crouch when he realized that the wolf was just one of Alva's friends. The wolf that had been on their side, for lack of a better way to put it.

"Thank you," Susumu said, opening the door Alva had been reaching for so he could help him and the sleeping fox into the car as quickly as possible. The fox was still very limp when he moved him from Alva's lap to the car. Discreetly, Susumu checked his pulse. Still alive. Still breathing.

"I apologize," he said again, more softly as he helped Alva into the car. "He'll be okay, though. Usually, sleep potions last for a while, though. He won't be waking up for a day or two."

He checked to make sure that Josh wasn't after them. He was still fighting the white wolf but they were getting closer. Susumu quickly buckled Alva in and closed the door before swiftly leaping behind the steering wheel so they could get the hell out of there.