xp_logs | GBOS: Dog Eat Dog World (Reply)

Catseye and Nick make an unusual contribution by driving away the feral dog population from the camp.

Predictably, the outskirts of the camp were plagued with packs of wild dogs. One of the aide workers had stopped as she'd seen Sharon's uniform and purple hair, and tried to explain the situation. "It's the earthquake. A lot of those dogs are farm or guard dogs which the earthquake sent roaming free. After a couple of weeks of little food, they're scavengers now. Individually, they aren't that dangerous, but in a pack or attacking our people trying to keep the waste far from the camp, they are a problem." She said, obviously mistaking her outfit for a military uniform of some type.

Not thinking anything was out of place in an aide worker mistaking her for an figure of authority and telling her about feral dogs, Catseye nodded reassuringly at the woman. "Okay thank you for telling me I will go scare the dogs away and make sure they do not come into the camp or hurt anyone who goes to take the waste away I promise yesyesyes!" She bounded off to find Nick. "Nicknicknick! Can you come hunting with me? Feral dogs are hurting people but I think a wolf and a cougar can scare them away!"

Nicholas Gleason was still in a state of shock to be on any kind of an assignment. It was still hard for him to believe everything that went on at the school, and most days of the week he pushed that to the back of his mind. But when it was forced on him like it was now, his mind was forced to confront it all at once. With that going on in his head, even the familiar sight of the purple haired-girl bounding towards him was enough to send him clutching his chest. "Cats! Who in the what?" The boy had to blink several times to return to reality. "What's up now?"

"Feral dogs," she repeated patiently, though she was vibrating with excitement to get out to the perimeter of the camp and help the people in it by chasing the bad dogs away. "Feral dogs are waiting around the camp when people go to put waste away from the camp and if the dogs become a pack they might hurt people so we need to chase them away and make sure they know this is our camp!"

Nick was already in wolf-form at the end of the girl's explanation. It felt weird to be in his hulking state suddenly, this was the first time he'd transformed since his incident with The Purifiers. He wasn't going to take any chances around other people. But as soon as his muzzle finished forming, he locked eyes onto Catseye, knowing that she was always the one that had kept him calm in these states. The boy wriggled his clawed toes around for several seconds to make sure he had full control before falling onto all fours. "Let's go!" came out in a growl. Although still not completely confident in his abilities he knew he had Catseye. And it was his duty to help these people the best he could.

Catseye patted the wolf's head affectionately, taking one of his ears gently between fingers and thumb so she could lead him through the camp and people would know he was her wolf, not a dangerous one. She supposed she could have just shifted to BigCat and romped through the camp with him to get to the outskirts fast, but Catseye had been to help people in disaster situations before (though nothing on this scale) and she knew the importance of keeping people as calm as possible. A werewolf and a purple cougar running through the camp would probably not help keep people calm. She didn't want to do anything to add to the already high tensions she could sense in the area.

As she led Nick through the camp, Catseye struggled not to keep making faces at the smells and sights. Her enhanced senses were not much of a blessing in a refugee camp, where displaced people, dirty from their journeys and the rudimentary sanitary conditions in the camp, some of whom sported cuts and other minor injuries from the earthquake and its aftermath, some of those cuts infecting under the heat and lack of proper medical attention were everywhere, and they carried their smells like thick clothing to the catgirl. People wandered aimlessly, looking confused, lost, dejected. Catseye and Nick passed food and water stations where people waited in lines for hours to get something to sustain them for another day. As she passed alongside the line, the smells of filth and gore made her head swim, but the scents of fear and of hostility that permeated weakly through the stronger odours were just as disturbing to Catseye. Those were the smells she found most worrying.

Nick slowed his pace as he passed by the people. With each passing sight, his heart dug down a little deeper. An extra twinge hit him every time he saw a child, instantly remembering how he felt the morning after his parent's accident. And these kids didn't have the luxuries of the mansion to help them through it. Their lives would be a struggle from this point forward most likely. He was happy he was in wolf form, knowing that the sad face of his human self wasn't what the people needed right now. They needed to see someone strong helping them. Even if that strong person look more like a monster from the movies. The smells and sights slowly turned from sources of sadness to ones of determination as he slowly switched into tracking mode, sniffing for any sign of the feral dogs. "Have to help..." was all he could get out above his focus on the task at hand.

Catseye skritched Nick's ears when she heard him speak. Now that they'd made it to the edge of the camp, she shifted into BigCat form, headbutting him in the shoulder affectionately before trotting off with him to start tracking the feral dogs. She caught the scent easily and turned her trot into a run, heading in the direction of an earthquake-affected trail that had been blocked off by a veritable mountain of rubble and disrupted earth where she guessed the dogs were sheltering.
The wolf instantly fell in line behind her. While the instincts of the beast wanted to rush ahead, catching the scent of the dogs as well, Nick was able to reign him in and follow behind the cat. She had much more experience than he did in these type of matters, and that was enough for him to keep his instincts in check. But the boy still let the feral thoughts run through his head. He knew that even the wolf could never attack Catseye, and he had a feeling that he would need them in the upcoming attack.

Catseye stopped about thirty feet downwind of the rubble. The scent was strong and she evaluated there were about six of the feral beasts nearby. She went into a slow, stalking crouch to move forward. The hunt was on. Though she hadn't made any motion to Nick, Catseye knew he would be moving around into a flanking position. They were a pack, as unconventional as it was, and had hunted as a pack before, and their animal instincts understood the logistics of packhunting without needing to be told how to do it.
Nick kept a few steps back from the purple cat. The lumbering form of the werewolf was a bit harder to keep silent than his companion's, and therefore he had to work extra hard to keep the noise level down along with the cushion between them. But as he spotted the animals for himself a growl ripped through his body. The instincts were to lurch forward, and Nick was having a lot of difficulty keeping the wolf reigned in as he eagerly awaited a signal from Catseye.

Knowing Nick would be waiting for her, Catseye snuck around to cut off a retreat from the feral dogs and sussed out the alpha. When she was sure Nick was in flanking position, she pounced the alpha dog, all teeth and claws and muscle. The pack leader was pinned underneath her weight, stunned, but only for a moment. He reached around to snap at her neck and she had to shift her weight to dodge his teeth, and as soon as the dog felt her balance alter he had wriggled out from under her on her weak side. Two other dogs had jumped her, their teeth grabbing and pulling at her flesh as they aimed for her neck and legs. But the cougar had claws the former domesticated dogs did not, and used them to her advantage when she'd spun and writhed to shake them off.

A part of her warned not to hurt the dogs, reminded her that they had once been loved by people and had given their affection and devotion to humans who would miss them if they were gone, but the animalistic part warred with her human side and pointed out that their humans were probably dead in the earthquake, or had abandoned them as feeding them would be too difficult. They had gone feral, they were a threat to humans now, to her humans, and killing them in a fight, animal to animal, would be more humane than letting them live to starve and scavenge and face their end from a human rifle.

So she quashed the impulse to show them any clemency, justifying that it would be more humane to kill them herself, as she slashed through the leg of one and the jugular of the second, severing arteries efficiently, turning her attention back to the alpha while Nick dealt with the other three dogs.
The wolf quickly rammed through the group of dogs, lowering his head he sent them flying like a bowling ball. As he quickly spun around, his teeth were bared. After seeing them jump on Catseye, both the wolf part of his brain and human side were actually working together. They had to protect the cougar at any cost. Before one of the dogs could even get up, Nick's claw hand picked him up and hurled him at a nearby rock. He didn't wait to hear the crunch of its spine breaking before turning his attention back towards the other two. He fell on his front paws again before circling, making sure his gigantic frame was between them and Catseye.

After several minutes of circling, growling, and snapping with the alpha while Nick kept the other dogs away from her, Catseye drove forward to attack. The alpha dodged and lunged towards her neck, but she leapt away in her own dodge and they began circling again. The cougar was biding her time to give Nick a chance to come at the alpha after he dispatched the other dogs, and it appeared as if the alpha was using the same tactic, waiting for his pack to take care of Nick so they could overwhelm the purple foe.

She closed in for an attack once again and again the alpha dodged, to the same side as he had the first time, which was something the catgirl had anticipated. This time she was ready with a feint and a lunge to his other side, the scent of his blood as she ripped claws through his shoulder invigorating her to press the attack further. Guessing the alpha dog would be confused, she used her prehensile tail to reach for one of his back legs as her mouth went for the other shoulder. When he turned his head to see what had grabbed his leg, she went for the throat, tearing at it with her teeth as she went for the jugular.

The sound of the fight behind him caused Nick to turn around. His human side still wanted to check to make sure Catseye was ok. But the brief hesitation was all that the feral dogs needed to begin to turn the tide against the wolf. One lunged forward and bit onto the back of his neck. Nick instantly rared back letting out a howl of pain. But as he fell back down to look at the other dog, the anger had tensed every muscle in his body.

Quickly Nick reached out and grabbed the other dog. With one thrust of his hand, the howl of pain from the dog was stifled as Nick snapped the dog's windpipe. Instantly he began grabbing at the back of his neck with his claws, still howling in pain and anger at not being able to reach the dog behind him.

Catseye flew at the dog on Nick's back now that she had killed the alpha, plowing into it claws first and knocking it off of Nick by sheer weight. She tore out its throat efficiently, then shifted back to girlform, staggering a little from the transformation. She was covered in blood, but a quick press of her hands over her limbs and torso and neck and head and back reassured her that none of it was hers. And now that she knew she was healthy, she knelt down over Nick and began to poke at him. "Are you hurt very badly?" she asked, concerned. The wounds on his neck seemed to be bleeding a lot.

As Nick shrank back down to his human form, the howl of the wolf quickly died down to a dull scream and grimace of a young boy. "Yeah, I'm doing just fine." To be honest, the back of his neck was throbbing, and if he wasn't clutching it tightly with his hand, the pressure would probably be losing more blood than the drippings that saturated his ripped shirt, but he didn't want to alarm Catseye, so he forced a small smile back at her. "I'll just have Dr. McCoy look it over when I get the chance. He just hoped that in the end the wound wouldn't require stitches. With his accident last summer, and his recent accident with the Purifiers, he had developed a bit of a "White Coat Phobia" around hospital settings.

Catseye ripped her shirt in a neat line around the midriff with a claw and then sliced through the strip she'd cut to make a bandage, then sliced it lengthwise to make two more narrow bandages. One she balled up and applied to Nick's neck, using the second to wrap around Nick's neck and hold the first in place. "We killed all the dogs." She looked around as if in disbelief. "We should walk around the whole camp to make sure we do not smell any more dogs I think before we go back though?"

Still squinting slightly at the twinge of pain in the back of his neck, Nick cast a smile at Catseye. "Sounds like a plan." A small knot still rested in his stomach after pulling off his first 'operation' since moving to the mansion. But he felt better after doing so with Catseye. He couldn't have asked to work with anyone better.