An Uneasy Alliance (boyxboy, PAFP)

Muse A is a young superhero at the top of his game, protecting Radical City from anything and everything that would threaten her and her citizens. He has defeated every one of his enemies, even his arch-nemesis, the Hellhound (my character), and the city has been enjoying a period of peace and prosperity it never could have imagined before Muse A started protecting it... But, unfortunately, all good things come to an end. When a bomb is detonated at the very center of the city one day without warning, destroying City Hall and killing hundreds, a message is broadcast all over Radical, announcing the rise of the Church of Ashes, some kind of new terrorist organization with many super-powered members. Muse A quickly finds himself besieged in a way he hasn’t been since he first started out on his career. As powerful as he is, he finds himself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, organization, and resources of this new group of villains. And then the situation goes from bad to worse; The Church stages a mass-breakout from Radical City’s prison, freeing, among others, the Hellhound (Muse B), nullifying years of Muse A’s hard work in cleaning up the city.

Just when the situation seems most desperate, however, Hellhound waltzes into Muse A’s headquarters, gives himself up, and offers to help stop the Church. And he knows who they are and what they want, to boot. Suspicious of his motivations, but desperate enough to accept his help, Muse A is forced to work with his formerly greatest enemy, though not without keeping an eye on him at all times.

With a violent terrorist organization on one side, and a cocky, flirtatious ex-nemesis on the other, Muse A will soon find that no peace lasts for long in a world of superpowers.

I'd call this a semi-advanced to advanced thread, so I'd like two paragraphs minimum. Or if you'd like to write me a novel with each post, I'm cool with that too! ^.^ Do note that I’ll often write more than I probably need to, because I’m wordy and I like to write. xD So be prepared for that.

As for character design, all I really ask is that your character be minimum nineteen, maximum twenty-four or twenty-five. My personal preference is no goth/emo/hugely alternative face claims, but beyond that I'm good with whatever you want to go with. A super simple little form (if you can even call it that) like I did for Wolfie is just fine! Just be sure to list your basic power-set. You don’t have to go into massive detail, it can be fleshed out in the RP.

Also to note; Both Wolfie and Muse A know each other’s real identities, having discovered them during their long rivalry before Muse A finally captured the Hellhound. Why exactly Wolf never used Muse A’s real identity against him is not clear. Though their relationship is initially tense and antagonistic, they establish a rapport over time that eventually leads, to both of their total surprise, to something more.

Accepted! I love the idea of a dual-natured superhero whose powers change depending on the time of day. I used a similar idea for a fantasy roleplay awhile back, where my character was connected to nature and changed with the seasons. I’ll get started on the first post!

For the last month or so, it had been quite unwise to be out and about in Radical City after sundown. Streets that had once been safe under the watch of Onyx Sun and other, lesser-known superheroes were now once again rife with crime and corruption, the recent mass breakout from the rather ludicrously named Sweetwater Correctional Facility, having released thousands of criminals back into the city. Years of work, undone in a fortnight. Wolfie almost felt bad for Onyx Sun.

Almost.

As one of the people who had escaped in said breakout from said prison, the blonde couldn’t really find it in himself to be too sorry. And, yet, as much as he appreciated the assist from this new group, the so-called “Church of Ashes”, Wolfie found himself in the odd position of being at odds with his own rescuers. The Church was violent beyond the pale; Blowing up City Hall, and killing hundreds of civilians in the process? That was bad villainy, no matter how you looked at it. Mass murder benefited no one, and drew far too much attention to boot. Plus, he knew a little something about this group and their goal; And it had to be stopped. But Wolf couldn’t do it alone, as formidable as he was. He needed help, and he’d never been one for group play during his time before being imprisoned. He had few friends in the criminal underworld. He only had one real option.

With that in mind, Wolfie allowed himself a grin, and walked forward, toward the door he’d been idly observing for the last few minutes. On the outside, it was an ordinary door leading to an ordinary apartment building, but he knew better. It was, in truth, the pedestrian entrance to one of the best secured locations in Radical City; the headquarters of Onyx Sun, good old Dylan, himself. The poor guy must have been tearing his hair out over this mess he suddenly found himself swamped with. Wolfie was going to be nice to him and make one of his problems go away; Namely, finding the Hellhound and bringing him to justice. Again.

Stopping in front of the door, Wolfie craned his neck up to look up, grinning into what he knew was ah hidden camera. The alarm had probably already started inside; The computer was likely set up to go haywire if he ever showed up here. Well, now was that time.

“Hello again, old friend! I heard you were looking for me. We should probably talk, Johnson. Would you rather do it out here, are you going to invite me in like the gentleman we both know you are?” Wolfie asked with a smirk.

This might actually end up being a lot of fun.

The Hellhound grinned at Dylan as the man came outside to meet him, noting the handcuffs and, with absolutely no resistance whatsoever, putting his hands together in front of him so Dylan could cuff him. Both he and Onyx Sun knew, of course, that no pair of handcuffs could hold him with any degree of reliability; You needed a full-on power nullification field generator for that. But even allowing himself to be cuffed at all was a sign of good faith, as far as Wolfie was concerned. He’d never once let it happen so easily before.

“Oh, you know why, Dylan. I missed you! You never once came to visit me, all that time I was in Sweetwater. I expected some conjugal visits at least, but you didn’t even come just to talk! It’s enough to make a guy feel unwanted, you know? And after all that time we spent together, all those times you tried to handcuffed me to things. No worries, though, I was always into it. I like a guy who can take charge,” he said with a amused smirk, cocking his head slightly a moment later as the sound of sirens once again filtered through to them from somewhere far away. That sound was near-constant these days. Emergency services were overwhelmed, and it was beginning to show; Police, fire, and medical response times had nearly tripled in the last month. And it was likely to get worse.

“You’re in deep shit, Dyl. I know, the city knows, the Church knows. And let me tell you; You ain't’ seen nothin’ yet. The Church tried to recruit me, after they broke me out. Can you believe that? Everyone knows I work alone! But apparently they didn’t get the memo, because they wanted me onboard and ready to serve. I spit in their ugly faces, obviously, but they did tell me what they wanted from me before I did,” Wolfie told his rival, rolling his shoulders and looking just as relaxed as he had when he first walked up to Dylan’s door. “They wanted me to hit the Elliot-Markland Facility. More specifically, they wanted the blueprints for the Evolutionary Engine. I think you know what that means, old buddy old pal,” Wolfie revealed, knowing that would grab Dylan’s attention.

The Evolutionary Engine was a machine designed almost twenty years before by a brilliant pair of scientists, Joseph Elliot and Dianna Markland. The Engine was the cause and primary source of most superpowers in the modern day; It had originally been intended for advanced and extremely precise genetic engineering and gene therapy, but the design had been flawed in a way no one had predicted. The explosion caused by its first true stress test had scattered altered genetic material over hundreds of miles, causing rapid mutation in about point five percent of people within that radius. Dylan and Wolfie, only toddlers then, had been among those affected. The Evolutionary Engine had been dismantled almost immediately after the accident, but, if a group like the Church of Ashes got its hands on the blueprints, they could theoretically rebuild the Engine, or another version of it, and create superpowered individuals on purpose. It would even be possible for them to be able to grant specific powers to specific individuals, doing away with the randomness of the first Engine. The potential applications were... Well, terrifying.

“No one wants a bunch of new supers running around and screwing with all of us old hands. So I’m proposing a temporary detente; We become our own personal buddy movie, and stop the bad guys, the ones that aren’t me, you know. We kick some ass, take some names, hook up a few times, if I’m very lucky, because I’ve been having daydreams about you since we were both teenagers. And then, after it’s all said and done, we go our separate ways as friends, with a new and deeper understanding and respect for each other. What do you say, Dylan? Ready to bury the hatchet yet?” the Hellhound suggested, his blue eyes dancing, the man just dripping confidence.

He knew Dylan would say yes. Even if he said no at first, he would eventually have no choice. He was outnumbered and outmaneuvered, with more villains on the streets than he could shake a stick at. The hero would be used to Wolf’s grand-standing, as well as the flirting, which he’d been doing even before they knew each other’s real identities and had only ever seen each other wearing masks, or in different forms, in Wolf’s case. It had only gotten worse once Wolfie had learned who Dylan really was, and had seen him without his mask. Working together with Dylan for once would be... Interesting, to say the least.

Whatever else happened, Wolfie knew this to be true; This was going to be a hell of a ride.

Good. While he’d been prepared for Dylan to refuse him, at least at first, Wolfie had hoped that he would see sense right off the bat. Radical City didn’t have a lot of time, and if he’d been forced to make the hard sell, it would have taken up some of whatever the city had left.

When the hero offered his hand, Wolf could have just shook it while still in handcuffs given that his hands were in front of him and not behind, but that was pointless. So the Hellhound concentrated for a moment, superheating the air around his wrists, the fire raging through him like it had since before he could remember. The metal of the handcuffs, as durable as it was, took only moments to melt down into slag and drip down onto the street, the molten metal hissing as it struck concrete. Then, after shaking his hands at the wrists a few times to get rid of the last clinging drops of metal, he let the air cool again. Only then did he reach out to shake Dylan’s hand, calmly and easily.

“Fine, fine. Professional it is. You heroes and your serious, dutiful attitudes. At least you always have that stick in your ass as a back-up weapon. That’s handy,” Wolf sighed, respecting Dylan’s personal space, for the moment, by not letting the handshake linger any longer than necessary for the absolute minimum of decorum.

Turning his upper body a bit to the right, Wolf waved a hand in the vague direction of west, toward the Elliot-Markland Facility. “From what I understood from the recruiter, they were planning on hitting the place sometime in the next week, though he didn’t know the exact time and date. The guy was a little reluctant to tell me anymore than that, but I... Ah, persuaded him, to let slip two things; The first is that they’ve got an inside man in Elliot-Markland Corporation, so we can’t rely on the Facility’s automated defense systems to be of any help. Second, and worse, is that I’m not the only escapee from Sweetwater whom they tried to recruit, and, unlike me, many of our old friends took the deal, including Warlord and Stormshadow. Look forward to seeing them in there,” Wolfie informed Dylan, a faint grimace appearing on his face. He hated getting wet, and Stormshadow was very good at getting people wet. Also electrocuting them. Ugh.

Warlord was your typical, run-of-the-mill brute force villain, with super-strength, super-endurance, and rapid healing. While far from subtle or strategically-minded, his sheer, destructive power was considerable when he got going, and he could be incredibly difficult to take down at the best of times. Stormshadow, on the other hand, was a thin wisp of a girl, five foot nothing and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, but she could control both the weather and sound; A devastating combination in her experienced hands. Both had clashed with Onyx Sun in the past, and both had caused a lot of damage in their days before being defeated and imprisoned.

“As for my freedom after the fact, who’s to say what the future holds? Hell, maybe I’ll be reformed by then. You can teach me all about truth, justice, and the American way!” the villain suggested with a bright smile, rolling his shoulders and glancing up at the seemingly innocent facade of the apartment building. “So, you gonna let me in to see the super-secret hideout? I always wanted to check out where the magic happens. Or is our collaboration going to of a strictly outdoors nature?” he asked next, giving Dylan a hopeful smile that was deceptive in its innocence. He’d always been very good at seeming both charming and harmless. It was part of what made him so dangerous.

The Hellhound listened to Dylan’s prediction that Wolf would never reform, and he couldn’t help but point something out, even if it made him the devil’s advocate. Or... Perhaps angel’s advocate, in this case. “All dogs used to be wolves, Dylan, or didn’t you know that? The game may end one day. But now isn’t the time for debates on my potential for reform, or lack thereof. For the moment, you don’t need a trained dog in this fight. You need a wolf,” he reasoned with a smirk.

Of course, he didn’t honestly believe that he would ever change into a better person, but he enjoyed the debate, and there was no downside to planting the idea in Dylan’s head. Either he dismissed it completely, in which case there was nothing lost, or he entertained it in some, small way, and perhaps that would lead, farther down the road, to Onyx Sun letting down his guard. Even just slightly. A guy could always hope.

Wolfie grinned at the other man when he suggested his home as a meeting place, however, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “Already willing to bring me home, Dylan? I didn’t think you were that kind of boy, shame on you. I most certainly am that kind of boy, however, so of course I accept. Lead the way,” he decided, not surprised by his erstwhile enemy’s willingness to let Wolf come to his actual home. They both knew that Wolf already knew the address, and had for over a year now. It hadn’t been hard to find once he knew Onyx Sun’s true identity.

But, whatever else the Hellhound was, he was also a rather old-fashioned supervillain. He believed in defeating his superhero enemies on the field, in outmaneuvering and outsmarting them during grand chases, battles, puzzles, and traps. Granted, he’d been bested in the end, but it had been a hell of a game up until then. Attacking his nemesis while he was at home living the normal half of his life? It just wasn’t done. He could have, he supposed, but what where was the fun in it? The Church of Ashes had no such compunctions, which was one of Wolfie’s problems with the new kids in town. Already they had struck at two superheroes while they were at home, believing themselves safe. One of them was dead, and the other had been badly injured, though he would recover. The Church didn’t play by the old rules, and that made them even more dangerous.

Wolf followed Dylan to his car, and, once they had both gotten in, he turned his head to inspect his old nemesis in profile, stretching out luxuriously in the passengers seat. This was already proving to be a novelty, riding in Dylan’s actual car in a semi-civilized manner. As little as three or four months ago he would have laughed in the face of anyone who told him he would having a normal, non-violent conversation with Onyx Sun as a free man. And, yet, here he was, doing just that. Funny how the world worked, wasn’t it?

“You know, I was just thinking; I almost feel sorry for you, Dyl. All your hard work flushed down the toilet. All of your old enemies are free, and even the ordinary, run-of-the-mill thugs are back on the streets. Reminds me of Sisyphus, that old Greek guy who was cursed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity, only for it to slip from his grasp and roll back down just before he reached the top. How do you feel about starting all over again, old friend? Still feel like you’re up to the challenge?” Wolfie asked as they got underway, a half-smile appearing on his face.

The roads were unusually empty for Radical City, but that was to be expected, given the miasma of fear that had gripped the populace. Thousands of residents had up and left when Sweetwater Correctional had been breached, and, while that was only a small portion of the city’s population, the remaining people were largely staying at home, on the advice of the police, the interim Mayor’s office (the elected Mayor having been blown to kingdom come at the start of all of this, of course), and the city’s beleaguered superheroes. When they had to go out, generally for to go the markets for food, the citizens stayed in small groups and didn’t stick around in any one place to witness the next attack, wherever it was going to happen.

Radical City’s name had come from its origins; That of a haven for scientists, doctors, and engineers working on the cutting edge of their fields. It was a badge of honor, in that the name Radical had ceased to mean something bad here, and instead stood for progress, innovation, and advancement. But all of that was changing; The narrative was shifting, and the Church of Ashes was to blame. Wolfie had never seen the city quite so cowed as it was now, and that included during the height of his own career, when he and other supervillains had been running all over the city. The old game of masked vigilantes, cackling villains, and the triumph of justice? It seemed very far in the past, now. And the stakes were higher than ever.

OOC: No worries!

The angrier and more irritated that Dylan got, the more serene and satisfied Wolfie seemed to get. So, it might have been true that he was still a little annoyed at having been forced to spend seven months in prison, and he was enjoying riling up the hero. They’d so rarely had a chance to talk before, their conversations mostly being constrained to pre-or-post-battle banter. The poor guy was clearly working with less patience now than he usually would have. And, yet, as much as Wolf would have loved to just needle Dylan to the point of eruption, they actually had to find a way to work together; And that definitely included the blonde giving his old enemy something of a break.

Once they reached his house, Wolfie glanced out the window at it, a disbelieving smile spreading across his face. “How suburban of you, Dyl, I’m impressed!” he exclaimed, climbing out of the car and shutting the door behind him as Dylan walked up to the front door.

“I can’t even remember the last time I stepped foot into an actual house like this. Maybe back when I was eight, at Lucy Graham’s birthday party. I think I set her cake on fire. Accidentally, mind you, my powers were manifesting by then,” Wolf reminisced as Dylan let them in. He made no complaint about the shoes, pulling off his rather mundane tennis shoes and setting them to the side. Eight was young to start manifesting powers, most of those affected by the Evolutionary Engine had started showing signs of mutations around twelve or thirteen. Not that Wolf would have spent much time in houses even if he hadn’t had powers, given his mother.

Perhaps continuing to act like he and Dylan actually were old friends wasn’t the best way of giving him a break, but Wolfie couldn’t resist. Supervillains tended to bond more with the heroes who hunted them than the heroes did the villains, and Hellhound was no exception. For a very long time, Dylan had been the most important person in the criminal’s life. To this day, that was true. There was a connection there, a connection that most supervillains didn’t get anywhere else. There were reasons why they tended to fixate on one particular superhero, after all.

“So this is where the almighty Onyx Sun lives when he’s not being heroic, or alternatively tending bar as a cover. There’d better be pictures of you as a little kid, that would make my day,” Wolfie said, looking around with unveiled interest at the small house. There was no way he was wasting this opportunity; The ordinary half of Dylan’s life was tied up here, and that wast he half that Wolfie had little experience with. And evert minute he spent here, he would be learning more about his former nemesis, whilst the opposite was not true. Wolfie had no home to show Dylan, and never had.

Ignoring any objection Dylan might have, the blonde found the kitchen very quickly, though he didn’t go for the fridge or anything so presumptuous as that, instead fishing out a small, black cylinder from his jacket pocket and placing it on kitchen table (or counter, if there was no table).

“I did my homework before approaching you; These are holographic blueprints for the Elliot-Markland Facility. Some of the scientists who work there frequent this bar up north a bit, and this one young scientist proved very amenable, he provided everything I asked for, and all it took was my cell number. Some people are so desperate, I swear, give anything to a pretty face. If the Church is going to hit the place, they’ll go in via the storage warehouses on the south side. Easy access, and most of the security is automated, very few flesh-and-blood guards. Not that guards will be able to stop Warlord and Stormshadow, but still. It’s where I would hit, if I was on the other side of this. From the warehouses, the computer core is only a few corridors away. Once they’re in there, they can download the blueprints for the Engine with no trouble at all, given the inside man. They’ll have the access codes,” he explained, tapping the top of the cylinder. A moment later, a 3D image of the facility flickered into view, the blueprint rotating slowly in the air.

Inbetween the front door and the kitchen, Wolf crouched down a bit to pet the cat, Pepper, allowing a small smirk when the feline made no move to run or avoid his touch, allowing the stranger to pet him with that imperious condescension that only cats could really pull off. His shapeshifting abilities weren’t just about transforming his physical form; On some level, every animal Wolfie had ever encountered had sensed, somehow, that he was one of them, in a way. It was an affinity that had served him well, both during his career and what passed as his ordinary life, when he wasn’t on a crime spree through the city. Animals often made better company than humans, he found.

“Actually, what I said was that it would be sometime in the next week. It’s Thursday today, in case you’ve been too busy to keep track, bud. We might have a week plus change, or we could have less. It’s difficult to say without more reliable information,” Wolfie corrected the other man, his blue eyes tracing the holographic blueprint for what felt like the thousandth time, even though he’d only acquired this device two days ago.

“Unfortunately, between seven months spent in prison, the Church shaking everything up, and you and your bloody heroics, most of my old contacts are long gone. If you hadn’t arrested the Silent Seer, for example, then it would be child’s play to get what we need. But of course you just had to object to her little side gig in the illegal information trading business, didn’t you? You’re too damned efficient for your own good,” Wolfie grumbled, his confidence giving way for a moment to a grudging sort of acknowledgement. Respect would be too strong a word for it, but Wolf’s feelings about Dylan weren’t all antagonistic. Better to say that he had learned long ago not to underestimate Onyx Sun, and leave it at that.

“Figuring out who flipped on Elliot-Markland won’t be easy. You know how ruthless those eggheads can get when it comes to their secrets being stolen, the inside man, or woman, I guess (equal opportunity criminal here), will know that. Besides, there’s a much easier way of getting what we want, Dylan; We breach the Facility ourselves, knock the living daylights out any guards who get in our way, and pull the blueprints before the Church can even get there. Quick, easy, and no one has to die. Sure, it’s breaking a few laws, but the alternative is a bunch of boring busy-work, investigating, finding clues, probably an interrogation, maybe a mysteriously dead hooker or two, and finally, if we’re lucky, a climactic battle with the bad guys that ends up wrecking half of the Facility anyway. Isn’t just stealing the blueprints ourselves much more palatable?” Wolfie suggested an alternate plan, suspecting that the goody two-shoes wouldn’t go for it, but hoping that he would be wrong for once. Hero types rarely understood the basic fact that sometimes, you had to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. This was one of those times.

Though he heaved a disappointed sigh and a shook his head despairingly over Dylan’s annoyingly unshakeable moral compass, Wolfie chose not to press his suggestion, at least for the moment. The hero wasn’t yet desperate enough to start sacrificing his dedication to justice. If there would come a point where he was that desperate, and there was no guarantee that there would, then it would certainly be a ways into the future. Pushing him on it now would be pointless.

Wolfie shook his head again, however, at Dylan’s idea that he infiltrate the Church. ”It’s a good idea on its head, but unfortunately in this case that’s a non-starter as well. I may have gone a little postal on the recruiter, you know, had to let off some steam after seven months in the can. Besides; There’s an initiation ceremony, from what the guy told me before I beat his face in. All those random murders you’ve been seeing lately? That’s their loyalty test, to make sure their recruits are willing to do anything for the Church. So, unless your personality has radically shifted in the last thirty seconds and you’re suddenly willing to let me shred some poor schmuck for the sake of the mission, we’ll need another plan,” he said, leaning back against Dylan’s fridge for a moment and closing his eyes to help him think.

A moment later, however, they flew open again as he remembered something. “Hang on a second; Wasn’t Elliot-Markland hooked up to the Archangel Network back in the day? Even shut down, the Network should still be logging what each employee over there has for breakfast and how many times they have to shit per day, let alone the important things. If we can access the system, we could ask it to search for any suspicious activity among the staff. It would find the traitor for us in no time,” Wolfie suggested, even the prospect of interacting with the Archangel Network again bringing a smile to his face.

The most ambitious surveillance, counterespionage, and anti-terror system ever built, the Archangel Network had been conceived and designed by a world before superheroes, a world gripped by the fear of when and where the next major terrorist attack might hit. The Network had run for decades in total secrecy, with most of the world totally unaware that what little was left of their privacy had long ago been stripped away. It was only after the rise of the supers that the Archangel Network’s existence was finally revealed, and, eventually, the government was forced to shut it down, or face massive backlash from its citizens. Besides, it wasn’t really needed anymore; The superheroes did the same job, only without the massive moral quandaries and dangers of a super intelligent computer calling the shots. The machine’s memory core had been wiped clean, but the information and surveillance infrastructure that supported it had never been dismantled. The computer, gutted of its reasoning capabilities, had been quietly gathering data ever since, data that was likely to never be used again. Until now, perhaps.

While the morality of using the defunct surveillance computer was murky gray at best, there was no law forbidding it, and it did provide a safe and easy way to identify the mole in Elliot-Markland’s ranks, with no risk of injury or loss of life to any innocents.

“And, hey, if you’re one of those people who gets squeamish about privacy or whatever, I can always just do it myself and then come back with the information. You know, if you’re not feeling up to it,” Wolf added with deceptive concern, his often-present smile returning in full force.

Today seemed to be a day for disappointed sighs, as Wolfie’s smile vanished and he let out another one as Dylan cottoned on to his innocent little attempt. Full and unfettered access to the Archangel Network’s databanks was the wet dream of most supervillains the world over, because as any good criminal knew, information was power, and the Network was the holy grail of information storage. Any superhero’s real identity, the codes to bank vaults and offshore accounts, secret research plans, government secrets, more scandals than you could shake a stick at. A supervillain with the Archangel Network at his fingertips could bring the entire planet to its knees.

“I take back what I said earlier; I don’t almost feel sorry for you, I do feel sorry for you. Being you must be so fucking dull. I mean, I swear, are you a human being, or Liberty Prime from Fallout? At least the villains know how to enjoy themselves,” he complained, throwing his hands up dramatically, as if in total despair of Dylan ever learning what the word “fun” meant.

When the two ferrets came scurrying into the kitchen to inspect the newcomer, Wolfie crouched down, a much more genuine smile spreading across his face. “Although, I do have to admit, you have good taste in pets, at least. These two are adorable,” he conceded, lowering himself fully to the floor and crossing his legs, letting the ferrets inspect him more thoroughly. They wouldn’t bite him, any more than any animal would ever attack the Hellhound. He was one of them, in their eyes. Always had been. If it had just been Wolfie there, he might even have shifted down into a ferret, just to enjoy their antics on a more even footing. But he wasn’t about to do something quite that childish in front of Dylan. It would probably be more difficult to take Wolfie seriously as a ferret than it was when he was an eight-foot tall wolf-man with flaming claws and red-hot fangs. Just a hunch.

“So how do you want to do this, boy scout?” Wolf asked a few moments later, absently playing with the ferrets with both of his hands, letting the little animals climb onto and tumble around his hands and arms. “We could head out as soon as possible for the old Network access station over in the south side, which is sadly squarely inside Church territory, or we can wait a day or two and prepare. I for one am all for the no-holds-barred frontal assault, but if you want to be all subtle and shit, I can live with that too,” he said with a shrug, really not caring too much about which course of action Dylan chose. The Hellhound had plenty of experience with sneaking around in the shadows, even if he usually preferred the hands-on approach.