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Isan Dawn - Chapter Three

2011-03-02T23:55:00Z

Oberon: Created page with 'Category:Story Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Three}} Category:Oberon {{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}} By: Oberon We paus…'

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Three}}
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

We paused in front of the door for a moment and the doctor opened the door and I looked into the room, to be precise at the bed where my lovely mate was still sleeping, a single IV feeding her as her chest rose and fell with each breath.

"Helen…" I softly said before walking up to her bedside and looking at her new face. Her muzzle was similar to mine in that it shared equal parts male and female traits, other than that her fur colouration was quite different than my own. I was blessed with the colouration of a white tiger, while her pelt featured the colouration and markings of a snow leopard. I purred softly as I gazed at her form and spared a moment to look over at the doctor but he simply nodded and smiled softly.

"This isn't about sex is it Mr. Von Ryan?"

I shook my head softly. "I don't think its ever just been about sex. Our parents weren't there for most of our early lives and we had to make do with a whole series of caretakers that also educated us as well. Our shared experiences, as well as our natural bond as twins... well it led to this. Before you chastise us for not trying I should inform you that both of us tried our hardest during our mid to late teen years to find someone who would be both mentally and physically compatible with our needs, wants, and desires."

"I take it neither of you had all that much luck?" He surmised quietly.

Nodding I placed a hand on my sister's shoulder with a smile of my own. "It's hard for anyone to live up to what Helen and I share. It's absolute, we share everything together, our joy and sorrows."

"Even a couple that's been married for a long time would be hard pressed to attain what you two have."

After a moment I stepped away from her and gestured him forwards. "I think she's waking up, and it might be easier on her if she sees a human first. I don't want to scare her out of her skull before she understands what has happened..."

"Good idea."

"In the meantime can you tell me where the washroom are?"

"Yes... there's one between this room and your room. Oh and one more thing, your urinary tract isn't connected to your penis any more so you'll have to sit down in order to relieve your bladder."

I stopped at the door and turned slightly. "Thanks for the heads-up doc." I said before heading out to the bathroom. What he didn't know was that roughly ninety percent of the time I sat down anyways. It wasn't for a lack of male pride or anything so shallow as that, instead it was simple practicality. Even though standing up had its benefits it also had its drawbacks, in my case that was more so because, quite frankly my aim was pathetic so I mostly only stood up in the outdoors or at a urinal.
When I was finished my business paused to look at myself in the mirror and I had to admit to myself that I was a rather striking looking individual. My facial markings were a series of black on white stripes with a rather unique clawed pattern above each of my pale ice-blue eyes. My forehead was high and domed, much more so than on any natural-born feline, probably to carry the larger brain required for a creature with sapient intellect. Sweeping back from my high forehead and back was a shoulder-length shock of soft, silky white... head-fur. I was hesitant to call it hair since it was much too fine to qualify as such.

After spending a good five minutes regarding myself I left the mirror, washed my hands, which now possessed a set of one inch long curved retractile claws in each finger, and left the washroom to return to my sister's room.

Her head swiveled so that her gaze met mine, cool grey eyes meeting my blue ones before she softly asked, "Mark is that you?"
I nodded softly and walked over to her bed taking her hand in mine, though as I thought about it I realised that referring to her, and by extension myself, as male and female really didn't apply any longer. "Yes Helen I'm here now."

"What the heck happened to us?"

Chuckling softly I replied, "Your guess is as good as mine love, but that last cold was a real doozy."

"You could say that again." I replied with a soft chuckle scratching one of my ears gently.

She chuckled as well, hir laugh warm and musical to my ears before she grabbed my arm and yanked me down so that I was face to face with her before she turned her head and opened her mouth. "Shut up you fool and give me a kiss."

This was awkward since the doctor was watching us but after a moment I shrugged my shoulders and tried to figure out how to give her the kiss that she deserved. After a few moments of trial, and error we figured out that we could softly kiss each other's lips for a polite one or two our muzzles in opposite directions for a full on French Kiss.

After our experiments with kissing the doctor cleared his throat softly and we parted slightly. "As far as I can tell both of you are doing quite well now, and there's no real reason for us to be keeping you here is there?"

Helen and I looked at each other before we shook our heads in unison, something we'd been teased about in the past, before, again in perfect unison, we replied. "I don't think there is unless you need us here."

He chuckled softly shaking his head. "Not really, though Ms. Von Ryan you should find your feet before we get the discharge papers taken care of."

She nodded softly in understanding before quickly proceeding to flip the hospital blanket aside.
For Helen gaining her feet was almost the same as it had been for me, minus the bigoted statements of a narrow minded orderly.

What need of an orderly did we have when I was here for her to help her find her feet?

Within fifteen minutes we were each handed a clipboard, with discharge papers, our personal effects, my Desire S was flat dead, and our clothes, which would never fit anyways.

"Mark how about you stay here while I go get the car, then we can go get some clothes that will have a chance of fitting our new bodies."

"What exactly am I supposed to do while I wait?" I asked her softly in response.

"I don't know... you'll figure something out." Was her answer as she tied her robe tighter around her waist. "I have a feeling that you still have something to do here brother."

"What do you mean love?" I asked her, my tone sounding a bit puzzled.

"I don't know hon, but I just have a feeling that you have something else here that needs your attention."

"Okay..."

"Trust your feelings Mark and it should be cleared up shortly."

"I sure hope so, I've never been all that fond of hospitals."

"I know that Mark." She tossed over her shoulder as she headed out the door to the cab, which I assumed she's called a few minutes ago.

"Mr. Von Ryan..." The doctor, who'd stuck with us called out to me.

"You can call me Mark if to want."

"He shook his head before carrying on, I think I know what your sister was referring too."

I felt my ears perk forwards in interest. "As long as the problem isn't medical I think I can deal with it."
He shook his head, "I don't need you for medical reasons, but because of what you've become."

"What are you talking about?"

"To put it bluntly we have an orphan in one of our rooms who's stuck here because he has no other place to go. His family all died from this damned plague and he's changed species into... whatever it is you've become."

"What is it you want me to do"?

"Well... talk to him, try and get him to respond without being afraid. You see he's withdrawn into himself, and he reacts like he's half the age he really is."

I nodded softly. "Go on."

He took my hand guiding me to the elevator. "Aiden Cooper just turned ten, in fact his birthday was during his transition."

"So he's reacting like a five-year old?"

"Not in all things... in fact some of his reactions seem to be a bit younger while other reactions are older. You really need to see him to understand."

"Okay I'll reserve judgement till I actually see him." I said evenly as the elevator care to a halt and we stepped off of it.

{{series bar
|previous=[[Isan Dawn - Chapter Two]]
}}

User:Oberon

2011-03-02T23:49:50Z

Oberon:

*[[Raptor’s Hunt]]
*[[Enter the Tiger]]
*[[Claws of the Tiger]]
*[[Hot Under the Collar]]
*[[Castle Fever Cat]]
*[[The Pointless Patrol]]
*[[A Good Time, A Bad Time]]
*[[The Bandit King]]
*[[Conversations]]
*[[Visitors in the Night]]
*[[The Joy of the Hunt]]
*[[The Trial]]
*[[The Raid]]
*[[A Swing at the Mule]]
*[[The Bottom of the Barrel]]
*[[The Ambush]]
*[[The Rise of the Black Tiger]]
*[[A Friend in Need]]
*[[The Mandalorian]]
*[[Back to Xanadu]]
*[[Enter a Wolf]]
*[[The Lost One]]
*[[Isan Dawn - Chapter One]]
*[[Isan Dawn - Chapter Two]]
*[[Isan Dawn - Chapter Three]]

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Oberon}}

Isan Dawn - Chapter One

2011-03-02T23:48:15Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}}
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

Prologue

In the early part of the 21st century a radical realignment of the world population took place. The cause for this change was a geneticist who created a pair of viruses that he believed would spawn a new species on earth.

The species in question was Isan species. They were feline species and they carried most of the most highly evolved features of their less developed cousins.

The second virus that caused the appearance of the Isans was, and is still considered one of the most devastating plagues in the history of the world. By the time virus had finished its initial sweep through the world's population roughly half had died.

However, there are some who say that Chimera, the second virus's name, was a blessing in disguise. They say this because by the year 2012 the world's population had ballooned to over 7 billion and the supply of finite resources was being steadily depleted. After Chimera though things changed substantially, and the Isans played a big role in those changes.

'A new Dawn,' Jarome Lang, Royal Ottawa City Press, 474 N.E.Y

Chapter I

I slowly opened my eyes looking around my current apartment, I had this place as temporary home for the summer while I worked here to make a little money for the the coming year at school, as well as other family concerns in Calgary.

"Come on get your sorry tail out of bed." I told myself as I sat up and looked at my alarm clock, a Sony Dash, and tapped the icon to get the device to quit its infernal racket.

Damn I feel like I been hit by a bus, but I needed to get my ask to work, tuition, internet, cellular, rent, and car payments didn't make themselves out of thin air, though rent, tuition, and car payments where made from a trust fund that my parents had established for me when they were alive.

They had been killed during a diplomatic incident five years ago when I'd just turned sixteen by some people who'd wanted to rattle our country's cage a bit and prove their machismo.

Ever since then my twin sister and I had survived decently together with occasional visits from our aunt, my father's older sister. That was when she'd decided to be responsible and sober for the day. Most of the time she would leave us to our own devices and spend her time requesting some of the less than savory establishments in the lower east end of Calgary where she could drown herself in cheap rye.

As it was that was the way that Helen and I preferred things since our personal situation was... complicated to say the least. Neither of us had a real full-time boyfriend or girlfriend, indeed I had neither even though I was confirmed bi-sexual who enjoyed both males and females equally.

In my last year in high-school some of the school's most homophobic bullies had tried to take me on, but like bullies everywhere they'd not really thought about their target, and I'd managed to take care of them in rather quick order.

After fifteen minutes I was ingesting, coffee, cold medicine, and cereal in equal measures when my phone rang in its belt case.

"Hi Helen how are you this morning?" I answered with a slight smile.

"I could be doing better love. I've got a cold to beat all colds dragging me down."

"Sorry to hear that sis, but you aren't alone. I feel pretty much the same way."

"Well you don't have morning sickness on top of a cold Mark."

"Is it my fault that you stopped using birth control last month?"

"Love it was time, we've been doing it for for nine years, and I felt that we're ready for it now."

"Helen how are we going to explain who the father is?"

"I have a few ideas Mark, it shouldn't be too much of an issue."

I chuckled recalling our last weekend together. Like every other time since we were twelve it had been a mixture of tenderness and passion.

The night we discovered physical pleasure came after a particularly bad day at a summer camp where we'd been teased about how close we we were to each other as well as split up and forced to do 'gender appropriate' activities apart. To further compound things there'd been a thunderstorm that night and when we were twelve Helen was still deathly afraid of thunder.

I don't know what the councillors had been thinking but they'd allowed us to improve our personal bond with each other to the point where we'd been able to survive our parents untimely demise without breaking down. In a way, I am sad to say, the death of our parents almost came as a relief because it reduced the stress that Helen and I were under. We no longer were faced with the constant threat that the depth of our special relationship would be discovered.

"Mark, view this wonderful thing as our ultimate gift that our love has allowed to happen."

"Helen I have never viewed it as anything else. Our baby will have the most loving parents in the world."

"Now get going slowcoach or you're going to be late for your job."

"Yes hon, I better get going, or Don's gonna wonder where his best rider and guide is.Ok" I replied with a chuckle, which turned into a hacking cough.

"Mark get something for that cough please... it really sounds nasty."

"Yes hon, I'll take care of it before work, I have some Fisherman's Friends that I can take till then." I said while I popped on of the strong lozanges into my mouth.

"Okay, love you Mark, looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday." There was a soft kissing sound from her end before she ended the call and I tidied up the table before heading outside to my car.

Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the tourist ranch in Banff where I worked for the summer. "Hi John where's Thunderstar?"

The other man looked at me and chuckled, "Mark I don't know how you can ride that stallion, he's half wild."

"He's also the smartest trail horse here, as well as the largest." I replied with a knowing smile as I grabbed my riding gloves and hat from the passenger's seat of my 2012 Subaru Impreza WRX STi Sedan.

"You say you're a techno-geek and yet you've got a great eye for a good horse."

"Can't a person be both John?" I answered him with a question.

He shook his head with a wry smile and nodded as I walked around him, dodging a semi-fresh pile of dung on the ground. "You do seem to have a good understanding of both, hell we're gonna lose a darned fine guide when you go back to uni in the fall."

I nodded as I locked my car and headed to the stables where some of the guides kept their personal mounts recalling a conversation with my boss the week before concerning Thunderstar and his future here. The problem was that Thunder, a three-year old mixed breed stallion, refused to let anyone but me handle him. We'd ended up agreeing that at the end of the summer I'd take ownership of Thunder, at a reduced price, and take him to the stable that my sister and I jointly owned in Cochrane, just outside of Calgary.

I stepped up to the door to the stall and a soft black nose poked over the barrier as the large black horse nickered at me.

"Hi boy." I responded stepping into the stall to hug his finely arched neck. He smelled of fresh hay, and clean healthy horse.

I spent the next fifteen minutes getting him ready for the day by getting his tack on and checking his hooves for health before mounting his back and walking him out of the stable. Usually by the end of this morning ritual I felt good about my day, and myself, but this time if anything I was feeling worse than before with a skull-splitting headache and profoundly clogged sinuses.

"Mark you look like death warmed over." I heard John's voice say to me from a distance that seemed like a thousand yards before I felt myself falling forwards in the saddle against Thunder's warm neck, embracing the painless darkness of sweet unconsciousness as I felt myself supported by the strong neck of my faithfully steed.

{{series bar
|next=[[Isan Dawn - Chapter Two]]
}}

Isan Dawn - Chapter One

2011-03-02T23:46:49Z

Oberon: Created page with 'Category:Story Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}} Category:Oberon {{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}} By: Oberon I…'

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}}
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I slowly felt myself beginning to wake up as I pulled myself out of the sweet embrace of sleep my eyelids grinding at my eyes like sandpaper. After a few moments of blinking my eyes to clear the feeling of wallpaper I began to really comprehend things, both the sound, smell, and sight of my surroundings. The very first thing I noticed is that I felt, strong... healthy, completely well. The second thing I noticed was the additions to my body. The most glaring was the white and black tiger striped fur that covered my body from head to tail. Tail?! I had an honest to goodness tail sticking from my furry bottom and as I gently rubbed the tip of the strange new appendage I felt my fingers creasing the fur and a soft rumble built in my chest.

I was purring, actually purring as I inspected my body in more detail. I also had some slight inflation in my chest as I softly rubbed what I took a moment to concede where breasts. The weren't big breasts by any stretch of the imagination, but they wheren't just over-developed pecs since they were in the area of a B-cup in size. Feeling slightly frightened I checked my lower extrematies and sighed with reliefe when I found that my penis was still there. it was contained within a furry sheath, but it was, none the less present and accounted for. Howerver, below my newly sheathed cock was somthing new, instead of my familiar male testicles there was a region of short soft fur that led to... oh man that felt amazing... I gently touched the warm furless slit and gasped as the incredible sensations before I forced myself to stop before I got too carried away. I knew exactly what this body part was, I'd spent enough time fooling with my twin sister to know what a vagina was. The real puzzle was what a pair of tits and a pussy were doing on my body while I still appeared to possess a male penis.

My internal ruminations were brought to a swift halt as a, rather harried, looking man in a white doctor's coat came into my room and looked at me from the door. "Awake I see. Do you know who you are"?

I nodded softly. "A'm Mark Von Ryan." I managed, realizing then and there that I would need some time to get used to speaking with my new mouth and dental structure without biting my tongue off with my Sharp new teeth.

"Well that's a relief. You're the first of your kind to wake up here."

"Um can you tell me where here is?" I queried softly after a few moments of thought.

"Yes I can, you're in the Advanced Treatment and Research Ward at Calgary University Hospital."

"What am I doing here" I asked him in a puzzled tone of voice.

"Well you've seen what your body looks like right"?

I nodded slowly conceding the point. "What can you tell my about this new body of mine"?

"Well... there's a lot to tell. In the past three and a half weeks your body has undergone radical, and most of my co-workers concede, permanent changes. These changes have not only been at the physical, but also the genetic level in every cell in your body. While it appears that you've retained your memories, and personality everything else about you has changed including your species, gender, and diet." He paused checking his tablet, he was carrying a Blackberry tablet instead of the traditional clipboard, before he carried on.

"Your species, it appears, shares most of its internal and external traits with members of the Felid Family with some notable differences in locomotion, visual accuity, and vocal abilities. Your gender appears is even more unusual, in that we've never seen it in any animal other than some invertabrate worms.

As near as we can tell you're a completely functional hermaphrodite with internal testes, as well as a womb, ovaries, and a vagina. Furthermore those breasts on your from are much more self-supporting than a normal human's would be, though I still would suggest that you make a point to purchase a bra with some support in order to make things easier on you.

Finally from a basic analysis of your digestive tract I would suggest that you try and limit your intake of vegetables and un-processed grain products. since it appears that you lack the ability to properly process large amounts of fibre in your diet."

After he finished his lecture to me I laid back for a moment to let the information sink in before I began asking him some questions. "Does this mean that if I was so inclined I could become... pregnant?"

"Yes as far as we've been able to ascertain you'll still be able to father children, but additionally you'll also be able to bear them as well."

"How long do I have to stay here?"

"Well as much as we'd love to study you... we need the bed space. We've got more cases of the Chimera Plague than we can shake a stick at."

I nodded softly and ran a hand through the hair on my head between the two pointed ears that I understood that I now possesed before I flung the thin hospital blanket aside and got a better look at myself. I was wearing one of those hopelessly flimsy hospital patient gowns that left very little to the imagination. After taking stock for a moment I swung my legs, which now ended in a pair of digitgrade foot-paws, down till the pads of my feet touched the cool linoleum floor.

"Perhaps I should grab an orderly to give you a hand at first since it make take you a few minutes to find your ballance. You're quite significantly larger than you were before. Last time we measured you, you were 198cms tall and weighed 116kgs."
I paused looking at him since that was well over six feet tall and over two hundred fifty pounds, I'd never been that large, ever. The biggest I'd ever been had been, had been five eight and one hundred, seventy-six pounds. After a moment I nodded slowly and sat on the bed while he went to fetch the orderly.

As I sat there I leaned slightly forward, unconsciously so that I didn't jam my tail-base in the mattress of the hospital bed and tightened the lone string on the gown that kept me from displaying my assets, both male and female, to the world.
Finally the doctor returned with a huge male orderly who looked even bigger than I was.

The orderly looked at me and then at the doctor, an appearance of revulsion on his face, and strangely enough also in his scent, as he said. "Doctor I know I'm here to follow your orders but I won't touch that dual-sexed monstrosity."

The doctor looked almost shocked, at the beef-cake's pronouncement until I started chuckling. "Matthews get out of here." He ordered before looking at me. "What's so god damned funny Mr. Von Ryan?"

"His attitude sir... Although I've changed his attitude reassured me that this was the same world that I'd grown up in."

"How can you say that? We try and foster..."

"Don't give me that horse-shit! Humans have as much right to be xenophobic, narrow-minded, self-centered bigots and anyone else. Indeed I expected it sooner or later."

He stood there with his mouth opening and closing for a second like a fish's before finally shaking his head softly. "Of all the patients I could have ended up with, I get a cynic."

I shook my head softly, "I don't consider myself as a cynic, but instead as a realist. You see sociology is my Minor while Computer Science is my Major, so I have made a point of understanding human nature."

"Oh." He managed to elucidate incoherently.

"You have to understand most of the time humans hate what they fear, and fear what they don't understand. I embody something of that lack of understanding. Furthermore my body is based off of that of some of the Earth's most dangerous predators and there is a instinctive response to distrust predators built into the human psyche."

"I guess you are right on that count. Should I get someone else to assist?"

I shook my head. "Why deal with the hassle when you could assist me yourself ? you aren't built like a twig so you should prove more than adequate for my needs."

"But..."

"Listen we can do this by the 'Book', which means we have to go through your staff of orderlies to find one who's willing to lend his or her shoulder for a few minutes while I find my feet, and my balance, or we can just screw the 'Book' and get it over and done with now."

After a moment he began chuckling before he finally said, "You, I like."

"Is it because I see the heart of the issue and try and find the easiest solution even if it doesn't always meet the rules?"

"Precisely! You don't seem like the kind of person who takes cap from anybody." He answered as he stepped up beside me and
took my hand before pulling on my arm.

I heaved myself into an upright stance with my feet spread wide while my tail, which I hadn't done much with yet lashed the air behind me. I tried to get it to calm down for a few moments before the doctor said something.

"Quit trying to fight it Mr. Von Ryan. Your new tail is there for a reason, its to help you balance so let it do its job and just relax."

I nodded closing my eyes and relaxing, letting my new sense of balance take over. A moment later my body, and my tail was quiet with only the tip of the somewhat flexible tail twitching. "Now for the next part... walking."

"Yes precisely. Walking might be a bit more difficult, but not my much."

"There's only one way to find out, by doing. As Yoda in Star Wars said, 'There is no try do or do not."

"That's the spirit Mr. Von Ryan." He encouraged as I lifted one of my feet to take a step.

The funny thing was that it seemed that once my natural sense of balance had returned it wasn't going to go away since I found my walking gait right away and let go of the doctor's shoulder. My gait, it appeared, was much smoother and more graceful than my old, masculine tromp. Indeed my hips moved more, probably because they were wider than they had been before, probably an adaptation for bearing children.

The doctor watched me with a soft smile as I growled the room, getting used to walking on my own two feet again till I stopped and smiled at him. Bad idea, he recoiled from my smile before I closed my grin. "Sorry about that, I forgot, with this new mouth comes some new teeth and you still have an instinctive response to a carnivore displaying too many teeth." He also apologized to me fore backing away as I told him that I'd actually been smiling because I'd found my feet so quickly.

"Well I'm glad you feel so good about yourself."

"Can you tell me if my sister's had to come in as well?" I asked remembering that she'd also been ill as well.

He nodded softly, "She's in the room right beside this one, and she should be ready to wake up any time now."

I nodded with the tip of my tail twitching happily and a relieved sigh. I couldn't bear the thought of being forced to live the rest of my life, however long that was, without her by my side.

The doctor closed with me then in the softest of whispers said, "Just try and keep your exact relationship to yourself."

"What do you mean?" I asked though I had some idea of what he was talking about.

"We ran genetic tests on her, her unborn fetus. Her genetic structure is remarkably similar to yours and your sister’s, but there aren’t any unusual genetic markers that are from anyone outside of your family.”

I lowered my head softly and nodded. “Can you please keep it private?”

“Yes I’ll do that… and one more thing… your daughter will be human… for some reason your sister’s body has protected her from the change imposed by the chimera virus.”

“You mean Helen and I are both…changed and our daughter isn’t?”

He nodded with a smile. “Does that suit you?”

“Yes… I think I can live with that.” I told him with a smile. “Can you show me to her?”

“Of course Mr. Von Ryan.” He replied heading for the door.

I followed him with a spring in my step, my heart beating like a trip hammer in my chest in anticipation. I hadn’t seen her since two weeks before I’d gotten sick and now I would see my dear sweet sister again… only like me she would be changed into something new

{{series bar
|previous=[[Claws of the Tiger]]
|next=[[Castle Fever Cat]]
}}

User:Oberon

2011-03-02T23:45:13Z

Oberon:

Isan Dawn - Chapter Two

2011-03-02T23:43:33Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}}
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I slowly felt myself beginning to wake up as I pulled myself out of the sweet embrace of sleep my eyelids grinding at my eyes like sandpaper. After a few moments of blinking my eyes to clear the feeling of wallpaper I began to really comprehend things, both the sound, smell, and sight of my surroundings. The very first thing I noticed is that I felt, strong... healthy, completely well. The second thing I noticed was the additions to my body. The most glaring was the white and black tiger striped fur that covered my body from head to tail. Tail?! I had an honest to goodness tail sticking from my furry bottom and as I gently rubbed the tip of the strange new appendage I felt my fingers creasing the fur and a soft rumble built in my chest.

I was purring, actually purring as I inspected my body in more detail. I also had some slight inflation in my chest as I softly rubbed what I took a moment to concede where breasts. The weren't big breasts by any stretch of the imagination, but they wheren't just over-developed pecs since they were in the area of a B-cup in size. Feeling slightly frightened I checked my lower extrematies and sighed with reliefe when I found that my penis was still there. it was contained within a furry sheath, but it was, none the less present and accounted for. Howerver, below my newly sheathed cock was somthing new, instead of my familiar male testicles there was a region of short soft fur that led to... oh man that felt amazing... I gently touched the warm furless slit and gasped as the incredible sensations before I forced myself to stop before I got too carried away. I knew exactly what this body part was, I'd spent enough time fooling with my twin sister to know what a vagina was. The real puzzle was what a pair of tits and a pussy were doing on my body while I still appeared to possess a male penis.

My internal ruminations were brought to a swift halt as a, rather harried, looking man in a white doctor's coat came into my room and looked at me from the door. "Awake I see. Do you know who you are"?

I nodded softly. "A'm Mark Von Ryan." I managed, realizing then and there that I would need some time to get used to speaking with my new mouth and dental structure without biting my tongue off with my Sharp new teeth.

"Well that's a relief. You're the first of your kind to wake up here."

"Um can you tell me where here is?" I queried softly after a few moments of thought.

"Yes I can, you're in the Advanced Treatment and Research Ward at Calgary University Hospital."

"What am I doing here" I asked him in a puzzled tone of voice.

"Well you've seen what your body looks like right"?

I nodded slowly conceding the point. "What can you tell my about this new body of mine"?

"Well... there's a lot to tell. In the past three and a half weeks your body has undergone radical, and most of my co-workers concede, permanent changes. These changes have not only been at the physical, but also the genetic level in every cell in your body. While it appears that you've retained your memories, and personality everything else about you has changed including your species, gender, and diet." He paused checking his tablet, he was carrying a Blackberry tablet instead of the traditional clipboard, before he carried on.

"Your species, it appears, shares most of its internal and external traits with members of the Felid Family with some notable differences in locomotion, visual accuity, and vocal abilities. Your gender appears is even more unusual, in that we've never seen it in any animal other than some invertabrate worms.

As near as we can tell you're a completely functional hermaphrodite with internal testes, as well as a womb, ovaries, and a vagina. Furthermore those breasts on your from are much more self-supporting than a normal human's would be, though I still would suggest that you make a point to purchase a bra with some support in order to make things easier on you.

Finally from a basic analysis of your digestive tract I would suggest that you try and limit your intake of vegetables and un-processed grain products. since it appears that you lack the ability to properly process large amounts of fibre in your diet."

After he finished his lecture to me I laid back for a moment to let the information sink in before I began asking him some questions. "Does this mean that if I was so inclined I could become... pregnant?"

"Yes as far as we've been able to ascertain you'll still be able to father children, but additionally you'll also be able to bear them as well."

"How long do I have to stay here?"

"Well as much as we'd love to study you... we need the bed space. We've got more cases of the Chimera Plague than we can shake a stick at."

I nodded softly and ran a hand through the hair on my head between the two pointed ears that I understood that I now possesed before I flung the thin hospital blanket aside and got a better look at myself. I was wearing one of those hopelessly flimsy hospital patient gowns that left very little to the imagination. After taking stock for a moment I swung my legs, which now ended in a pair of digitgrade foot-paws, down till the pads of my feet touched the cool linoleum floor.

"Perhaps I should grab an orderly to give you a hand at first since it make take you a few minutes to find your ballance. You're quite significantly larger than you were before. Last time we measured you, you were 198cms tall and weighed 116kgs."
I paused looking at him since that was well over six feet tall and over two hundred fifty pounds, I'd never been that large, ever. The biggest I'd ever been had been, had been five eight and one hundred, seventy-six pounds. After a moment I nodded slowly and sat on the bed while he went to fetch the orderly.

As I sat there I leaned slightly forward, unconsciously so that I didn't jam my tail-base in the mattress of the hospital bed and tightened the lone string on the gown that kept me from displaying my assets, both male and female, to the world.
Finally the doctor returned with a huge male orderly who looked even bigger than I was.

The orderly looked at me and then at the doctor, an appearance of revulsion on his face, and strangely enough also in his scent, as he said. "Doctor I know I'm here to follow your orders but I won't touch that dual-sexed monstrosity."

The doctor looked almost shocked, at the beef-cake's pronouncement until I started chuckling. "Matthews get out of here." He ordered before looking at me. "What's so god damned funny Mr. Von Ryan?"

"His attitude sir... Although I've changed his attitude reassured me that this was the same world that I'd grown up in."

"How can you say that? We try and foster..."

"Don't give me that horse-shit! Humans have as much right to be xenophobic, narrow-minded, self-centered bigots and anyone else. Indeed I expected it sooner or later."

He stood there with his mouth opening and closing for a second like a fish's before finally shaking his head softly. "Of all the patients I could have ended up with, I get a cynic."

I shook my head softly, "I don't consider myself as a cynic, but instead as a realist. You see sociology is my Minor while Computer Science is my Major, so I have made a point of understanding human nature."

"Oh." He managed to elucidate incoherently.

"You have to understand most of the time humans hate what they fear, and fear what they don't understand. I embody something of that lack of understanding. Furthermore my body is based off of that of some of the Earth's most dangerous predators and there is a instinctive response to distrust predators built into the human psyche."

"I guess you are right on that count. Should I get someone else to assist?"

I shook my head. "Why deal with the hassle when you could assist me yourself ? you aren't built like a twig so you should prove more than adequate for my needs."

"But..."

"Listen we can do this by the 'Book', which means we have to go through your staff of orderlies to find one who's willing to lend his or her shoulder for a few minutes while I find my feet, and my balance, or we can just screw the 'Book' and get it over and done with now."

After a moment he began chuckling before he finally said, "You, I like."

"Is it because I see the heart of the issue and try and find the easiest solution even if it doesn't always meet the rules?"

"Precisely! You don't seem like the kind of person who takes cap from anybody." He answered as he stepped up beside me and
took my hand before pulling on my arm.

I heaved myself into an upright stance with my feet spread wide while my tail, which I hadn't done much with yet lashed the air behind me. I tried to get it to calm down for a few moments before the doctor said something.

"Quit trying to fight it Mr. Von Ryan. Your new tail is there for a reason, its to help you balance so let it do its job and just relax."

I nodded closing my eyes and relaxing, letting my new sense of balance take over. A moment later my body, and my tail was quiet with only the tip of the somewhat flexible tail twitching. "Now for the next part... walking."

"Yes precisely. Walking might be a bit more difficult, but not my much."

"There's only one way to find out, by doing. As Yoda in Star Wars said, 'There is no try do or do not."

"That's the spirit Mr. Von Ryan." He encouraged as I lifted one of my feet to take a step.

The funny thing was that it seemed that once my natural sense of balance had returned it wasn't going to go away since I found my walking gait right away and let go of the doctor's shoulder. My gait, it appeared, was much smoother and more graceful than my old, masculine tromp. Indeed my hips moved more, probably because they were wider than they had been before, probably an adaptation for bearing children.

The doctor watched me with a soft smile as I growled the room, getting used to walking on my own two feet again till I stopped and smiled at him. Bad idea, he recoiled from my smile before I closed my grin. "Sorry about that, I forgot, with this new mouth comes some new teeth and you still have an instinctive response to a carnivore displaying too many teeth." He also apologized to me fore backing away as I told him that I'd actually been smiling because I'd found my feet so quickly.

"Well I'm glad you feel so good about yourself."

"Can you tell me if my sister's had to come in as well?" I asked remembering that she'd also been ill as well.

He nodded softly, "She's in the room right beside this one, and she should be ready to wake up any time now."

I nodded with the tip of my tail twitching happily and a relieved sigh. I couldn't bear the thought of being forced to live the rest of my life, however long that was, without her by my side.

The doctor closed with me then in the softest of whispers said, "Just try and keep your exact relationship to yourself."

"What do you mean?" I asked though I had some idea of what he was talking about.

"We ran genetic tests on her, her unborn fetus. Her genetic structure is remarkably similar to yours and your sister’s, but there aren’t any unusual genetic markers that are from anyone outside of your family.”

I lowered my head softly and nodded. “Can you please keep it private?”

“Yes I’ll do that… and one more thing… your daughter will be human… for some reason your sister’s body has protected her from the change imposed by the chimera virus.”

“You mean Helen and I are both…changed and our daughter isn’t?”

He nodded with a smile. “Does that suit you?”

“Yes… I think I can live with that.” I told him with a smile. “Can you show me to her?”

“Of course Mr. Von Ryan.” He replied heading for the door.

I followed him with a spring in my step, my heart beating like a trip hammer in my chest in anticipation. I hadn’t seen her since two weeks before I’d gotten sick and now I would see my dear sweet sister again… only like me she would be changed into something new

{{series bar
|previous=[[Isan Dawn - Chapter One]]
|next=[[Isan Dawn - Chapter Three]]
}}

Hot Under the Collar

2011-03-02T23:43:26Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Hot Under the Collar}}
[[Category:Metamor Keep]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Metamor Keep}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

When I got back to the Keep with my escort, a ferret morph whose name was Finbar, the first thing that I did was head for the baths. There I could take care of the dirt that was still in my fur from when I coated myself to avoid detection while I infiltrated a lutin encampment a couple of nights previously. My clothing was also in need of cleaning since it was dirty, too - partly because of my dirt trick, and partly because of the time that I had spent on the trail. As soon as I lowered myself into the water it turned black as the loose dirt began to be wash out of my thick fur. I used my hands to softly massage the fur to try and get the rest of the dirt out. It was at that point that Drift, the white Samoyed morph who I had met on my first full day of being conscious came into the room and took off his clothes before he slipped into the water.

He looked over at me and then his ears went back before he said, "You know Oberon you are crazy. To go offending Misha like you just did is probably one of the stupidest things that you could've done on only your second day here."

"I think that I understand that now and I will have to do something to to assuage his temper."

"My first piece of advice to you is not to go out there and do something foolish again. That's something that is bound to get Misha's tail in a knot, but, what you can do is to simply respect the rules around here and operate to the best of your abilities."

I nodded somewhat distractedly as I tried to get some of the dirt out of the fur on my neck ruff. He noticed the dirt and then asked me "Why is your fur so dirty?"

I grinned at him, confident that he knew what I meant in the gesture before I replied. "While I was out there I had to infiltrate a lutin encampment and I needed some way to avoid detection. In the winter that wouldn't be a problem but since it's spring and the all of the snow is already melted I kind of stand out in the bush."

Drift nodded in apparent understanding while I struggled to get the dirt out of my thick fur. When I was human I had used this trick many times to conceal myself, but now it seemed it was something that I should only do under the most dire of circumstances since it was such a pain in the tail to remove the dirt when the time came. Drift looked at me as I struggled with the dirt before he asked me if I had any brushes and the sort for grooming my fur.

"No, I have yet to get any of them - but I can assure you that now I will make a point of it."

"Well, there are some brushes here at the bath that you can use for the time being, but I would advise you to get your own as soon as you can."

“Thank you for the information,” I told him, before he left and I continued to clean out my fur. It took me another hour and a half to get all of the dirt out of my fur and restore it to its pristine black and white striped appearance. Once I was satisfied with my appearance I made my way back to my apartment to get dressed. I also spent some time exploring beyond a door that I hadn't seen the the first time that I was there, though I may have just missed it. Behind the door was a fully equipped forge with all of the implements that I would need to make any kind of weapon that I could imagine. In one corner there was the fire box itself with the bellows and the flue leading up and out of the room. In the middle of the room were two troughs, one contained water and the other contained oil, they were both used for tempering swords and other bladed weapons. There was also a box of clay in the corner and all of the various tools that I would need to do the job correctly. In a bin beside the fire-box was an assortment of ten iron rods that I would use to make anything that I wanted to. As a Blademaster of the Gold I was highly skilled in the creation of Kelmar weapons. Being both a Blademaster of the Gold and a Swordmaster of the Black I was, in fact considered a Bladelord of the Bronze. Bladelords were the rarest type of Kelmar Warrior with their numbers naturally limited to less than one hundred per generation. Most Kelmar Warriors excelled in only one discipline, either the creation of Kelmar weapons or the use of them; however bladelords were skilled in both the creation and utilization of weapons.

It had been roughly thirty years since I had had any chance to practice my skills as a Blademaster of the Gold. I would take this opportunity while it was here. However, right now I had something else to do, I needed to get some food, and I needed to purchase a grooming kit so that I could keep myself looking presentable. I put on a lighter belt that I had been storing for a long time and attached my single-handed sword, short-sword, and heavy dagger to it before I grabbed my favorite black cloak and headed out to take care of my errands.

I actually had to go into the town of Euper to find a kit that would fit my needs and it cost me a fairly large amount of money, considering that it was just a collection of brushes. The total that the merchant forced me to pay was a moon and five crescents. His reason was because the set was particularly complete and he complained about my coins because they were from the Midlands and not the same weight or purity as the coins that were from the Keep itself. I grumbled about the charge all the way back to my room, but as soon as I began using my own tools I appreciated the cost, even though it had been high. Once I was completed a proper grooming of my fur I went down to my usual mess facility for lunch before I went back to my room.

Now that I had eaten I was ready to begin work in the forge. I took one of the bars of iron and placed it on the anvil and began to beat on it with on of the larger hammers that was available. The first step in making a Kelmar Sword was to cold fold the metal one time before even starting to use heat to fold it a further nine times. The folding increased the blade's strength though it did have a tendency to make the metal more brittle. However that problem would also be solved by giving the weapon a core that was made out of more flexible steel that had only been folded the first time without heat. The final, and key step, in forging a Kelmar sword was the tempering process which utilized metal straps, clay, water, and oil to make the edge as hard as possible. I was starting from scratch and so had a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks.

*

As Misha reached the Keep he thought about the mission against the lutin raiders that he had just led. It had gone well and the two remaining forces had been exterminated, though it had taken them nearly a week and a half to bring the last of the lutin parties to bay and destroy it. Though he didn't like to have to chase the lutins around the Giantdowns north of Glen Avery, he didn't like the idea that there were some lutin raiders still around ready to try and attack the town though it was well guarded, especially considering the fact that Misha's friend Charles Matthias was living there at the current time. The rat was probably one of Misha's greatest friends and one of the most fearsome fighters in the Long Scouts. He currently lived in Glen Avery after being sent there in the wake of the Yule Assault that had happened in December during the yuletide. Now, though, Misha was glad to be back at the Keep where Caroline and Madog and his other friends lived. Here he didn't have to worry about lutins coming out to ambush him in the halls. However his peace of mind was soon disturbed again when he asked about the crazy Kelmar Warrior that had caused all of the fuss in the first place. Just about no one had seen him since he had gotten back. That was just what he needed now, more trouble with that blasted warrior cat, this guy was turning into a major pain in the tail. Misha scoured the place from the baths to the bar before he finally got a hint from on of the other people in the keep. The man was an older guard that had worked in the keep almost all of his life.

"Well Misha sir, I've seen this guy you bin a lookin' fer off in da baths ever day but that not all, he also come by da main mess to eat his grub but he stay all by himself not talkin' to nobody."

"Thank you, old timer, I much appreciate the information." Misha was understating the facts quite a bit, he really wasn't in the mood to chase down that blasted cat in the Giantdowns north of the Keep. The fact that Oberon was still in the Keep was pleasing but there was still one thing that bothered Misha, and that was where Oberon spent his time if he wasn't down in the practice fields sparring with other soldiers. In the end he simply thought about where Oberon was and let Kyia carry him to where the Kelmar Warrior was currently spending his time. After a few minutes he stepped around the corner in the hall and found himself standing in front of a door that was marked with oddly shaped runes that he had never seen the like of before. He slowly raised a hand-paw and knocked on the worn-looking oak door.

*

I had just finished polishing and sharpening the last of my recently completed set of new weapons, which included a new hand-and-a-half long-sword, a short sword, and a new dagger. They were all marked with Kelmar God Runes that helped make them a little better than normal swords made of steel. These blades when properly forged wouldn't rust, dull, or chip making them almost incalculably valuable. I had also created a new sword belt to carry this set of weapons. As I ran the soft cloth over the gleaming metal of the blade and marveling at the Hatkarat Watermark on both edges of the blade a loud knocking sounded from the other room. I quickly stood up and placed the new sword in its scabbard and then took it in my left hand as I went to the door. When I opened it I was surprised to see Misha Brightleaf, the fox scout, standing in my doorway with an axe in his right hand. I bowed my head and then said something which I had been planning to say ever since I had gotten back to the Keep.

"Misha, I apologize for my actions up in the Giantdowns, and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive a foolish old warrior's harebrained escapade."

The fox looked surprised before I turned to where I had placed my newly crafted set of weapons and picked them up. I held the three weapons out to him. I had designed these weapons for his use and his use and his use alone. Though I hadn’t managed to get precise measurments I had still managed to get the dimensions correct.

As I held out the three weapons out to him I said, "Sir, I have been in the service of many different people and organizations over the past thirty years, and I have almost forgotten some of the lessons that I was taught by my teachers in my homeland, all those long years ago. As a token of my respect and as a form of apology I would like to give these weapons to you. They are blessed by my gods never to lose their edge or luster so they will always serve you well in battle. You are probably the first non-Kelmar ever to receive weapons like these and so please carry them with the dignity and respect that they deserve."

He looked stunned for a moment, I could've hit him with one of the two remaining iron bars in my forge an not gotten a more stunned expression out of him then I was getting now. Finally he managed to put enough of his head back together to respond, although his response was still a little wooden. He took the weapons from my hands and then pulled the sword out of its scabbard to expose the runes and the hatkarat to the light of the sun that was streaming in through on of the windows in my apartment. After a few more minutes of regarding the weapon and gathering his thoughts together he finally managed to speak.

"I am a little surprised that you've decided to give this to me, considering what I said out there in the Giantdowns."

"No, even though I am shamed by what you said, all of those things were true. I didn't know the terrain, I didn't know my enemies, and I didn't know the risks. In truth if I was still under the command of a Kelmar Warlord I would've been in all likelihood been ordered to go remove myself from his sight, permanently."

"That is a little harsh isn't it?"

"Harsh but necessary, otherwise you would have Warriors who aren't trained as scouts running around in the deep woods trying to find the enemy with no concept for the common good of the Clan Army."

"Are you a trained scout?"

"Not really. I was trained as a Kaharatak, a Heavy Combat Specialist, though since I left my homeland roughly thirty years ago I have served as just about everything from a scout and assassin to a flag level officer in an army."

"If you aren't a trained scout, then why did you go out there without anyone else knowing about it?"

"I went out there for reasons that I've already explained. I don't take to well to not having a purpose in any place. Most of the time when I left someone's service I would do so because I perceived that they no longer really had a need for my services and that they were keeping me around simply because they enjoyed having a man of my skills around in case they needed me. Now here I am in a place that I can never really leave because of how I look and they view me in the same way as they did in some of my other assignments."

"Oberon, we don't view you that way, it's just that you have to follow the rules here. You need to prove your skills, your loyalty, and your ability to obey orders before I can even think of sending you out there. Even then it will not be my decision as to where you go, it will be up to Patrol Master George to decide."

"Haven't I already proven my abilities?"

"Yes, you have proven your abilities to me, but I am not the one that you need to be concerned about. The person that you need to impress is George." I nodded slowly before I asked him how I should go about doing that.

"Well for one you can follow all of the rules of the Keep. Though with your experience I believe that there are many jobs that would suit you. For instance if you could teach others how to make swords like this one you could probably be the most sought after smith in the Midlands."

e field when I was five and a fully fledged warrior by the time I was sixteen."

"That sounds like you didn't have much of a childhood."

"I enjoyed what I had and I made the most of it."

Misha looked at me for a second and then shook his head before he commented. "That still isn't much of a childhood."

I didn't say anything more. I just nodded my head and thought back to all of those hard years while I was growing up, learning from the masters of their crafts. The hundreds of hours learning discipline and swordsmanship, the times that I would spend outside in the grip of the cold north wind meditating on the meaning of the life of a warrior of the clan.

"Oberon, are you okay?" Misha's voice brought me out of my memories and back to the present.

"Yes I was just going over some of my memories. Trust me when I tell you that I have a lot of memories."

He looked into my eyes before he nodded and turned away. "If you don't mind we could go spar again for a while. It would help take your mind off of the past."

I nodded and told him that I would be a while. I had to put on my full body armour, though the leg pieces, and helmet didn't really fit anymore. Once that was done I grabbed one of my belts with a broad dagger and looped it around my waist and attached my normal hand-and-a-half long-sword to the loop on the my left hand side before I reached into the chest at the foot of the bed and grabbed one of my Gatraibvan practice swords and headed out the door towards the inner ward where there was some room for sparring. In the middle of the practice field there was a large group of young keepers swinging at targets. On the edge of the field watching the youngsters was a grizzled old jackal morph who looked like he had seen a lot of action in his career. Misha stepped out of the other door and then asked George if he wanted to spar with me. The old jackal looked over at me, where I was slowly taking practice swings with my weapon, and then nodded before he went off to put some armour on. I wouldn't usually have worn full armour but under the circumstances I had decided that it might be a good idea.

"Oberon, why don't you have a helmet?" Misha asked me.

"I don't have one, because my old one no longer fits and neither do my greaves."

"Well the Arsenal Tower has something that will fit you."

"How can you be sure about that?"

"The tower is part of Metamor Keep and hence is provided with any kind of weapon or armour that you could imagine. Though it doesn't do all that well when it comes to weapons like your swords since they are enchanted to some extent."

I nodded before Misha shouted to one of the young keepers to go get an assortment of helmets and greaves to fit me. Five minutes later George and then the young soldier came out of the tower, George wearing a brigantine with a shield on his left arm and a training broadsword. I looked over the assortment of helmets and greaves that the young Pine Marten held in his arms and selected a helmet and a pair of greaves that fitted me perfectly. The nice thing about these new pieces of my armour was that they matched perfectly the style of my existing equipment. Once I was comfortable I picked up my training sword and held it over my head in the style that was known as Btrena-Kel-Yukate. Kelmar training swords were actually heavier then combat swords so that if a warrior got used to his training sword then he would find the real thing to be easier to use than the training sword.

George made the first move, a sudden lunge at my exposed midsection but I brought down my own weapon and parried the blow before counter-attacking with a blow of my own to his left side. George's moves showed both an immense amount of experience and his growing age so I took it easy on him. I didn't go too easy, though, because I still had to prove to the old warrior that I was at least reasonably competent with my weapon. However, what I wasn't expecting was the deviousness of his maneuvers. He seemed to know any number of moves that were underhanded and just plain nasty. After only ten minutes I was panting and feeling hot. Blasted fur! It wasn't really meant for constant heavy activity in the latter end of spring.

When I lowered my weapon in a silent request for a break the jackal lowered his weapon before asking me, in a gruff tone of voice, "Are you all right?"

I waved him off before I replied. "It's okay, I'm just a little warm right now." I went over to where a jug of water sat on a cobblestone and took a heavy drink lapping at the cold watter with a will. The cold water felt so good that I was surprised when I noticed that the jug was empty. I looked around for another jug of water and I found one nearby and began to drink that as well.

"Oberon, are you sure that you're okay?" I heard Misha ask me. I raised my head from my drink and looked at him before I replied.

"It's nothing, I'm just a little hot that's all."

"Get out of that armour now."

"No, I'll be fine, just give me a moment."

"Get out of that damn armour, you furry fool, and into some cool water before you get heatstroke!" I put the Gatraibvan on the ground and then reached up to undo the clasps on my cloak but my vision was starting to swim. I looked over at the fox and the jackal only to see more than one of them.

"Wwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhooooooooooo arrrrrreeee yyyyyyyyyoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuu," I slurred before I hit the ground with my hands. My vision was now seriously degrading as I tasted the warm stones of the practice grounds. In the distance I heard a voice shouting.

"Get that armour off of him and get us some water, he's going into heat shock." At some point someone rolled me onto my back and undid the clasps to my armour and my cloak. An instant later I was hit by a deluge of pure bliss as someone dumped a bucket of cold water on me. After that everything black as I passed out.

I don't know how long it was but when I awoke I was looking up at a very familiar ceiling. I was in the infirmary again though I couldn't remember why I was here this time. Maybe I got hit on the head because my head was pounding like a Hjaktan War Drum.

"You're covered in fur now Oberon. You need to always worry about the heat. You might want to consider clipping off all that thick winter fur in the summer," I heard a voice say, and I managed to look over and see Misha standing there looking down at me with an expression that I can only describe as a sort of frustrated concern. For some reason this fox always seemed to be saving my hide. Finally I mustered a response.

"Are you out of your mind? I do have my dignity - what's left of it at least - and I will not go around naked."

Misha laughed before he replied. "It's either your dignity or heat prostration. You '''have''' to deal with the heat one way or another."

"Is there any way that I can maintain my dignity without burning up?"

"Perhaps, but it will mean some magic. I made a magic a ring for Drift to protect him from the heat of his tinsmithy. I could do the same for you."

"What would I owe you for that, sir?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred suns, perhaps, for the metals I'll need. The spell is simple enough."

"That sounds good. I can give you the money as soon as I get out of this infirmary."

"Good! What do you want? A ring? I'm not a jeweler so it won't look fancy but it will work!"

"Okay but I think that a collar would probably suit me a little better, I could lose a ring in the middle of a battle and then where would I be?"

"All right. It'll be a big collar to fit that fat neck of yours. I should have the collar roughed out in a day or two."

"I'll take it easy for now until I get it because I don't want to go through this again."

"You have to think furry now my friend. And remember that long tail of yours. The first time you get it caught in a door you WILL feel it."

"I've been very careful about it and I've managed to keep it out of the way most of the time. I think that my experiences with my Soul Guide have helped me adjust to it, though I have put it in my own door once and I can tell you that I won't ever forget that feeling, no matter how long I live."

He laughed before shaking his head, probably at a memory, before he told me that I should try and be more careful for the next little while, at least until I got my collar from him. Shortly after that he left me in the room to my own thoughts. Well not precisely alone, because shortly afterwards Brian came up to me.

"Do you know how hard I had to work to save your life, Adòn Naharél?" he asked me.

I shook my head carefully to ensure that I didn't get a headache before I replied. "Not really, sir, but I will try and make sure that it doesn't happen again."

"You had better, because I'm starting to get tired of seeing your tail in here every day."

"You think I like always being here, Brian? I have a life to lead and I would rather I didn't spend too much time in the infirmary. Although my profession does dictate that I will be here from time to time, to get patched up."

"Certainly hope not."

"Same here, I would rather not have to spend any time here, but it seems that I have still to adjust to this body." Every person in the Keep had had to adjust to whatever the curse did to them, but all the same none of them had come in here so quickly after.

I nodded at the raccoon before I let my head fall back to the pillow to get some more sleep. I knew that when I awoke again I would end up going back to my apartment, without the headache, hopefully the three runes on my back and my inherent Kelmar ability to heal could take care of any issues that arose from my abuse of my body today. However, I was going to have to be more careful about what I did in the near future.

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Isan Dawn - Chapter Two

2011-03-02T23:42:34Z

Oberon: Created page with 'Category:Story Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}} Category:Oberon {{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}} By: Oberon I…'

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Isan Dawn - Chapter One}}
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}{{universe|Isan Rising}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I slowly felt myself beginning to wake up as I pulled myself out of the sweet embrace of sleep my eyelids grinding at my eyes like sandpaper. After a few moments of blinking my eyes to clear the feeling of wallpaper I began to really comprehend things, both the sound, smell, and sight of my surroundings. The very first thing I noticed is that I felt, strong... healthy, completely well. The second thing I noticed was the additions to my body. The most glaring was the white and black tiger striped fur that covered my body from head to tail. Tail?! I had an honest to goodness tail sticking from my furry bottom and as I gently rubbed the tip of the strange new appendage I felt my fingers creasing the fur and a soft rumble built in my chest.

I was purring, actually purring as I inspected my body in more detail. I also had some slight inflation in my chest as I softly rubbed what I took a moment to concede where breasts. The weren't big breasts by any stretch of the imagination, but they wheren't just over-developed pecs since they were in the area of a B-cup in size. Feeling slightly frightened I checked my lower extrematies and sighed with reliefe when I found that my penis was still there. it was contained within a furry sheath, but it was, none the less present and accounted for. Howerver, below my newly sheathed cock was somthing new, instead of my familiar male testicles there was a region of short soft fur that led to... oh man that felt amazing... I gently touched the warm furless slit and gasped as the incredible sensations before I forced myself to stop before I got too carried away. I knew exactly what this body part was, I'd spent enough time fooling with my twin sister to know what a vagina was. The real puzzle was what a pair of tits and a pussy were doing on my body while I still appeared to possess a male penis.

My internal ruminations were brought to a swift halt as a, rather harried, looking man in a white doctor's coat came into my room and looked at me from the door. "Awake I see. Do you know who you are"?

I nodded softly. "A'm Mark Von Ryan." I managed, realizing then and there that I would need some time to get used to speaking with my new mouth and dental structure without biting my tongue off with my Sharp new teeth.

"Well that's a relief. You're the first of your kind to wake up here."

"Um can you tell me where here is?" I queried softly after a few moments of thought.

"Yes I can, you're in the Advanced Treatment and Research Ward at Calgary University Hospital."

"What am I doing here" I asked him in a puzzled tone of voice.

"Well you've seen what your body looks like right"?

I nodded slowly conceding the point. "What can you tell my about this new body of mine"?

"Well... there's a lot to tell. In the past three and a half weeks your body has undergone radical, and most of my co-workers concede, permanent changes. These changes have not only been at the physical, but also the genetic level in every cell in your body. While it appears that you've retained your memories, and personality everything else about you has changed including your species, gender, and diet." He paused checking his tablet, he was carrying a Blackberry tablet instead of the traditional clipboard, before he carried on.

"Your species, it appears, shares most of its internal and external traits with members of the Felid Family with some notable differences in locomotion, visual accuity, and vocal abilities. Your gender appears is even more unusual, in that we've never seen it in any animal other than some invertabrate worms.

As near as we can tell you're a completely functional hermaphrodite with internal testes, as well as a womb, ovaries, and a vagina. Furthermore those breasts on your from are much more self-supporting than a normal human's would be, though I still would suggest that you make a point to purchase a bra with some support in order to make things easier on you.

Finally from a basic analysis of your digestive tract I would suggest that you try and limit your intake of vegetables and un-processed grain products. since it appears that you lack the ability to properly process large amounts of fibre in your diet."

After he finished his lecture to me I laid back for a moment to let the information sink in before I began asking him some questions. "Does this mean that if I was so inclined I could become... pregnant?"

"Yes as far as we've been able to ascertain you'll still be able to father children, but additionally you'll also be able to bear them as well."

"How long do I have to stay here?"

"Well as much as we'd love to study you... we need the bed space. We've got more cases of the Chimera Plague than we can shake a stick at."

I nodded softly and ran a hand through the hair on my head between the two pointed ears that I understood that I now possesed before I flung the thin hospital blanket aside and got a better look at myself. I was wearing one of those hopelessly flimsy hospital patient gowns that left very little to the imagination. After taking stock for a moment I swung my legs, which now ended in a pair of digitgrade foot-paws, down till the pads of my feet touched the cool linoleum floor.

"Perhaps I should grab an orderly to give you a hand at first since it make take you a few minutes to find your ballance. You're quite significantly larger than you were before. Last time we measured you, you were 198cms tall and weighed 116kgs."
I paused looking at him since that was well over six feet tall and over two hundred fifty pounds, I'd never been that large, ever. The biggest I'd ever been had been, had been five eight and one hundred, seventy-six pounds. After a moment I nodded slowly and sat on the bed while he went to fetch the orderly.

As I sat there I leaned slightly forward, unconsciously so that I didn't jam my tail-base in the mattress of the hospital bed and tightened the lone string on the gown that kept me from displaying my assets, both male and female, to the world.
Finally the doctor returned with a huge male orderly who looked even bigger than I was.

The orderly looked at me and then at the doctor, an appearance of revulsion on his face, and strangely enough also in his scent, as he said. "Doctor I know I'm here to follow your orders but I won't touch that dual-sexed monstrosity."

The doctor looked almost shocked, at the beef-cake's pronouncement until I started chuckling. "Matthews get out of here." He ordered before looking at me. "What's so god damned funny Mr. Von Ryan?"

"His attitude sir... Although I've changed his attitude reassured me that this was the same world that I'd grown up in."

"How can you say that? We try and foster..."

"Don't give me that horse-shit! Humans have as much right to be xenophobic, narrow-minded, self-centered bigots and anyone else. Indeed I expected it sooner or later."

He stood there with his mouth opening and closing for a second like a fish's before finally shaking his head softly. "Of all the patients I could have ended up with, I get a cynic."

I shook my head softly, "I don't consider myself as a cynic, but instead as a realist. You see sociology is my Minor while Computer Science is my Major, so I have made a point of understanding human nature."

"Oh." He managed to elucidate incoherently.

"You have to understand most of the time humans hate what they fear, and fear what they don't understand. I embody something of that lack of understanding. Furthermore my body is based off of that of some of the Earth's most dangerous predators and there is a instinctive response to distrust predators built into the human psyche."

"I guess you are right on that count. Should I get someone else to assist?"

I shook my head. "Why deal with the hassle when you could assist me yourself ? you aren't built like a twig so you should prove more than adequate for my needs."

"But..."

"Listen we can do this by the 'Book', which means we have to go through your staff of orderlies to find one who's willing to lend his or her shoulder for a few minutes while I find my feet, and my balance, or we can just screw the 'Book' and get it over and done with now."

After a moment he began chuckling before he finally said, "You, I like."

"Is it because I see the heart of the issue and try and find the easiest solution even if it doesn't always meet the rules?"

"Precisely! You don't seem like the kind of person who takes cap from anybody." He answered as he stepped up beside me and
took my hand before pulling on my arm.

I heaved myself into an upright stance with my feet spread wide while my tail, which I hadn't done much with yet lashed the air behind me. I tried to get it to calm down for a few moments before the doctor said something.

"Quit trying to fight it Mr. Von Ryan. Your new tail is there for a reason, its to help you balance so let it do its job and just relax."

I nodded closing my eyes and relaxing, letting my new sense of balance take over. A moment later my body, and my tail was quiet with only the tip of the somewhat flexible tail twitching. "Now for the next part... walking."

"Yes precisely. Walking might be a bit more difficult, but not my much."

"There's only one way to find out, by doing. As Yoda in Star Wars said, 'There is no try do or do not."

"That's the spirit Mr. Von Ryan." He encouraged as I lifted one of my feet to take a step.

The funny thing was that it seemed that once my natural sense of balance had returned it wasn't going to go away since I found my walking gait right away and let go of the doctor's shoulder. My gait, it appeared, was much smoother and more graceful than my old, masculine tromp. Indeed my hips moved more, probably because they were wider than they had been before, probably an adaptation for bearing children.

The doctor watched me with a soft smile as I growled the room, getting used to walking on my own two feet again till I stopped and smiled at him. Bad idea, he recoiled from my smile before I closed my grin. "Sorry about that, I forgot, with this new mouth comes some new teeth and you still have an instinctive response to a carnivore displaying too many teeth." He also apologized to me fore backing away as I told him that I'd actually been smiling because I'd found my feet so quickly.

"Well I'm glad you feel so good about yourself."

"Can you tell me if my sister's had to come in as well?" I asked remembering that she'd also been ill as well.

He nodded softly, "She's in the room right beside this one, and she should be ready to wake up any time now."

I nodded with the tip of my tail twitching happily and a relieved sigh. I couldn't bear the thought of being forced to live the rest of my life, however long that was, without her by my side.

The doctor closed with me then in the softest of whispers said, "Just try and keep your exact relationship to yourself."

"What do you mean?" I asked though I had some idea of what he was talking about.

"We ran genetic tests on her, her unborn fetus. Her genetic structure is remarkably similar to yours and your sister’s, but there aren’t any unusual genetic markers that are from anyone outside of your family.”

I lowered my head softly and nodded. “Can you please keep it private?”

“Yes I’ll do that… and one more thing… your daughter will be human… for some reason your sister’s body has protected her from the change imposed by the chimera virus.”

“You mean Helen and I are both…changed and our daughter isn’t?”

He nodded with a smile. “Does that suit you?”

“Yes… I think I can live with that.” I told him with a smile. “Can you show me to her?”

“Of course Mr. Von Ryan.” He replied heading for the door.

I followed him with a spring in my step, my heart beating like a trip hammer in my chest in anticipation. I hadn’t seen her since two weeks before I’d gotten sick and now I would see my dear sweet sister again… only like me she would be changed into something new

{{series bar
|previous=[[Claws of the Tiger]]
|next=[[Castle Fever Cat]]
}}

Oberon:

The Rise of the Black Tiger

2008-05-02T15:39:09Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rise of the Black Tiger, The}}
[[Category:Metamor Keep]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

It was only four and half hours since I had gotten back to the Keep and I was already prepared to go out again. I had even managed to find a source of temporary black dye that I used to dye my fur jet black. My heavy long range patrol pack was fully loaded with twenty-five spare arrows, ten spare spear-darts for my atlatl, food for two weeks, and the other things that a long range scout needed for patrol operations for two weeks. I checked to make sure that all my weapons were secured to my belts before I closed my door and locked it. I made a point to tell the gate guard at the final gate to the Keep that I was leaving before I headed down the hill into Euper. I quickly made my way through town and headed south towards where my squad had been ambushed. This experience with me losing half of my patrol to a lutin ambush had only served to reinforce my convictions that making superfluous connections to people would only lead to pain and suffering.

The weather was miserable but that suited my mood to a T. Right now I just wanted to kill some lutins, but even at the height of my anger I remembered something that one of my old Swordmasters had told me back roughly forty years ago in my homeland. “A stupid warrior fights with his heart and his emotions, while a smart warrior fights with his mind and his emotions.” What he had meant by that was that any warrior could fight when he was angry, indeed anger could make one foolhardy, but you could use your anger to give focus to your mind, to clarify your purpose. I had taken those suggestions to heart when I was very young and I knew that it made me all that much more dangerous.

It was just before dusk when I found the mutilated bodies of Hernando, Joseph, and Henrietta lying on the ground where they had fallen. The sight of this only further fuelled my anger which had long since grown cold and almost passionless. This was the trick to maintaining a fighting edge with your emotions; you had to make your anger cold and almost analytical so that when the time came to fight you would fight with your mind instead of your heart. I pulled out my folding shovel and dug three rough graves for them before I put them in their crude graves and buried them so that the scavengers wouldn’t have their way with them. They had already suffered one indignity I didn’t want them to suffer another one; they had already suffered enough at my hands. Once that task was complete I took up the trail of the little monsters that had caused their deaths and began to track them using both my eyes and my nose to follow the trail.

After a while I stopped and found a large tree and climbed it before I cached my heavy pack in the tree, so that I wasn’t carrying the full weight around with me when I needed to move swiftly, before I continued to follow the trail. I was right to cache the pack because a short time later, just as full darkness descended I came upon the lutin encampment. Now was the time when my midnight black camouflage came into effect. I climbed into on of the trees that surrounded the camp and to get the lay of the land. This particular band of lutins had been somewhat sloppy in choosing their location for a camp. There was dense trees and forest on all sides. The only thing that it had going for it was the easy access to fresh water, in the form of a nearby stream. I carefully leaned out over the branch that I was standing on and looked down at the trail. As I was expecting the lutins had posted a sentry along the path that I had been following. I looked down at the lutin for a few more seconds before I quietly climbed down the tree and slid my left stiletto out of its sheathe and snuck up behind the lutin and then lunged forward with the knife in my right hand. I caught the monster with my knife at the base of the skull with a crunch of fracturing bone. The lutin sighed and then the full weight of the thing hit my wrist, not that it was a big deal for me. I wrenched the stiletto out of its skull and sheathed it before I pulled the body off of the trail and into the bushes. Just before I left the body I used my sword to remove the head and my dagger to remove the right thumb of the monster. I took the head and the thumb with me. I concealed the head in the branches of a tree and placed the thumb in an empty belt pouch that I was wearing at my side.

I spent a good deal of the next two hours quietly sneaking around the camp killing the sentries and concealing their bodies. I wanted these things to feel fear from the fact that their comrades where disappearing with no apparent cause. Only later would I start attacking them overtly, when they were completely terrified of the woods around the camp. With the ground work laid out I went back to the tree where I had concealed my pack and at a ration and sipped some water before I fell asleep with my feet on branch and my back to the trunk. It wasn’t the most comfortable position that I had ever slept in but neither was it the most uncomfortable. I had once slept in a trench that was half full of dirty, muddy water.

When I awoke in the morning the sun was just beginning to rise in the east. I yawned and stretched, as much as my
position high in a tree would allow before I ate another ration and took another sip of water. Once all of that was taken care of I made my way down the tree and headed back to where the lutin encampment was located. As soon as I got a good look at the camp I could tell that they were beginning to feel the effects of my first elements of my campaign of fear on them. They were milling around looking for their missing comrades. Shortly after I arrived two lutins came from a bush where I had concealed the body of one of the dead sentries with the body between them. The whole camp seemed to shudder before one of the monsters shouted

“There be a Long here.” Another monster shouted

“Why would be Longs here? We be well inside their range. All we run into out here is stupid patrols who don’t know muzzle from tail.”

“How you explain that then?” The first one asked pointing at the beheaded corpse of the dead sentry.

“I know not but that no Long, might be some crazy freak Keeper.”

“Can’t be ordinary Keeper, they louder than troll walking through woods.”

“How you known that?”

“They loud yesterday then they must be loud all times.”

“That not true, some of them very quiet, barely hear them until they come up on you.”

“How come they so loud yesterday then.”

“Bull man and human loud, the rest move quietly.”

“Scariest was white tiger man. He move like one who seen a lot war.” I had to muffle my own chuckles at that comment.

“Why didn’t die? I shot him in neck.”

“He wearing some collar on neck. You arrow hit collar not neck, he break arrow off and take charge.” I fingered my magical collar that Misha had sold to me and smiled slightly.

When a group of twenty lutins left the camp, leaving the other fifteen to twenty in camp to guard the camp I followed the patrollers. My plan was to take each one separately from behind with a spear dart or a thrown knife. It was now that I was glad that I had kept in practice with my knives with my almost nightly accuracy contests with Cope at the Deaf Mule. The first lutin that I killed as they patrolled was stupid one who decided to go off of the trail to relieve himself. I quickly relieved him of more than the strain on his bladder; I relieved him of the strain of living with a quick stiletto thrust to the back of the neck at the base of the skull. I even managed to collect his head and thumb before two of his comrades came looking for him. Of course by the time they reached the body I had disappeared into the surrounding trees. As the morning went on I picked off the stragglers until there were no stragglers and the patrol of lutins was traveling in a tight cluster of terrified green skinned monsters. If I had some comrades with my I would’ve gone if for the kill now with my weapons swinging, but since I was alone I didn’t want to risk making any noise. A full out attack now would throw out any chance of stealth so instead of pressing home my attacks I made my way back to my base tree and clambered up it for a snack and an afternoon nap. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not by nature arboreal, but under present circumstances I had found that it was a wise thing to do. Simply put most lutins don’t tend to look up for enemy threats, so this was one place that I could feel comfortable in getting some rest.

When I awoke it was late afternoon. I quickly ate my ration and had a couple of sips of water before I made my way back down the tree and headed, with as much silence at my 445 pound body could to the lutin encampment where I took up station in one of the surrounding trees. By now the lutins were even more terrified of the unknown threat in the trees beyond the apparent safety of their camp. This was what I wanted, the more that they feared me the more that their fear would work for me. Their fear would quickly turn to paranoia at any imagined enemy that they would find including those among themselves. Once again that night they posted their sentries and once again I made progress by killing them all and taking their right thumbs and their heads. When they got up in the morning and found all ten of their night sentries dead the feeling that was in the camp was so strong I could smell it from where I was sitting in a tree overlooking the camp. This was exactly what I wanted, them to fear my very presence in the area. One of the survivors of the previous day’s patrol looked around and shook his head before he said

“This only get worse.” Another lutin spoke up

“What you mean?”

“I mean we all be dead soon if we no leave here.”

“You know what Bammfist will do if we come back before we supposed to.”

“You know what happen to us if we stay, we all DEAD!”

“Fine you go back. Bammfist squish you into bloody pulp with hands.”

“He not that bad.”

“He ogre, he very cruel.” As silently as I could I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the name of Bammfist and the fact that whoever he was he was an ogre, whatever that was. Then I went back to listening to the conversation to see if I could pick up any more information.

“Why he work for Nasoj? Nasoj not winner. He lost winter campaign; he lost campaign seven years ago, he always loosing campaigns.”

“I not know but Bammfist hear that he squish you into bloody pulp then feed bones to devil wolves. Reason Nasoj loose is because evil Keepers stop him from winning. If they not in way then we feast in Pyralis by time snow falls.”

“Why not go round them like we did?”

“If army do that then Keepers stop us from getting food, we starve.” It was apparent even from my point of view that these lutins did have a basic understanding of both strategy and tactics. The were able to get a small patrol past the Keep but anything larger would be spotted and stopped rather quickly. I put a few more notes in my book before their morning patrol left the Keep and I shadowed it like I had done with the patrol the day before. However this time it wasn’t quite as easy for me to pick off stray lutins because they were paranoid and thus traveled in a compact mass without many stragglers get lost. The simple reason for this is because if one straggled along behind the main group he would never live to catch up to the rest of the group. Since this was the way things were I went back to my base tree and climbed up it had something to eat and went to sleep.

Later on that evening I once again went back to their camp, this time before their patrol got back and quietly made my way around seeing if I could cause any more chaos without any of them noticing it. At one time they had been able to leave twenty in the camp and patrol with twenty, but now that had changed. There were only seven lutins in the camp, while the rest of them were on patrol. If anything the small number of lutins made things more hazardous for all involved, including themselves. At one point while I was staying perfectly still in a tree a lutin shot an arrow at a moving leaf, causing him to hit one of his comrades in the chest, killing him instantly. This was where the fear and paranoia that I had sowed with my clandestine tactics were beginning to pay off. They were so frightened that they were shooting arrows at ghosts that their minds made up. I knew that in their minds they thought that they were seeing a Keeper behind every tree, rock and hummock of dirt. I was looking forward to the chaos that the return of the patrol would bring because it would be a chance for me to finish off this group once and for all. I wasn’t disappointed because as soon as the patrol arrived in the clearing their terrified comrades began shooting arrows at them because they saw the patrol unit as their hidden enemy. Even though I was up in a tree across from the spreading fight between the two groups of lutins I added a few spear-darts to melee to enhance their paranoia. As the fight degenerated into a shapeless mob of fighting lutins I finally decided that it was time for this black tiger to put in an appearance. I swung down out of my tree, drew both of my swords and began the ‘Sung Dranatk ek Grect.’ Dancing through the depleted ranks of my enemies with grace and power until not one was left alive. When the fight was over I grounded the Claw of the Dragon and looked around. The majority of my enemies had been killed by their own friendly fire, but there was still a goodly number of them that were sheared in half from the power of my cuts with my swords. I carefully wiped the blade of my weapon off on a dirty jerkin that one of the lutins had been wearing before I began the grizzly job of collecting the thumbs and heads of all of the dead lutins in the clearing. When I had collected all of the heads I left the camp for a moment and gathered the other heads that I had already harvested before I returned and stacked the heads into a pyramid with the faces all facing outwards. The reason for this was as a simple and graphic object lesson to any other lutins who thought that coming into the region was a good idea. With all of that done I checked all of supplies that they had brought with them and availed myself of some of the somewhat fresh meat that their hunters had brought in before I arrived and began killing them.

It was dark by the time I left the camp but I still acted with caution because I believed that a few of the enemy may have escaped and gone back to report not only my appearance but also what I had caused. Of course that would both help me in some ways and hinder me in some ways. On the one hand a frightened enemy is easier to trick and demoralize, but on the other hand now that they were aware of what I looked like and what I could do then my tactics might not all work because they could adapt a defense against them. The beauty of my kind of warfare is that it put my opponents minds under tremendous stress, and eventually that stress would cause their minds to buckle and crack like an old rotten stick.

The next morning I took all of my things with me as I began to track two survivors of the encampment that I had just decimated. Their trail was ridiculously easy to follow, I could have followed this trail had I still been human with only one eye. They were sloppy and careless about the trail that they were leaving behind.

Roughly a week later I finally was able to track the lutins to their main encampment. I would’ve been happy if I had been able to begin terrorizing them right away but I was low on supplies so I had to make my way back to the Keep to resupply. My ration pack was empty and I was beginning to feel hungry when I finally arrived in the Keep, four days after I had left the lutin encampment. The first thing that I did after I dropped my pack off in my apartment was go to the nearby mess facility and get some food to fill my growling stomach. Once I had taken care of that immediate desire I went back to my apartment and pulled out a bucket in my forge that was filled with a highly caustic mixture that would strip the flesh from the thumbs that I had collected on my most recent trip out into the wildlands. I quickly dumped all forty thumbs into a wire rack before I dipped it into the bucket. Once that was taken care of I went to bed and thought about what I would do once I was fully resupplied.

The next morning after breakfast I took myself to the baths to clean my fur and my skin, though I didn’t take any of the special soap that I needed to get the black dye out of my fur with me. I enjoyed the bathes and finally an hour after I arrived in the baths I walked out and down the hall. I was just comming around a corner when I almost bumped into the slightly smaller, though still quite sustantial form of George, the Patrol Master, standing int the hallway.

“Well,” He said coldly. “Are you here to stay or do you have more killing to do?”

“I’m here for a couple of days but I’m heading out as soon as I get all of the supplies that I need.”

“I thought so.” He answered in a contemptuous tone of voice. “Care to tell me what’s happened out there so far? Anything important to report?”

“Not really. I just wiped out a camp of lutins southeast of the Keep.”

“Just? How many did you kill?”

“Oh I would estimate that there were roughly forty or fifty of them in that camp. I killed most of them, though I believe that maybe two or three of them may have escaped my final actions.”

“And?” George asked me. “You’re leaving some information out. What else did you find?”

“There’s another encampment four days northwest of the Keep, but I will deal with them in due time. The leader of the encampment is an ogre named Bammfist.”

“I wouldn’t think of stopping you little killing raid Oberon.”

“I would appreciate if you kept your patrols out of my way on all of my trips out there.”

“Are you going to make more piles to scare the lutins?”

“Piles? Oh you mean my object lessons to those little monsters. Those are just reminders to them of what is going to happen to them if they keep trying to raid this far south.”

“Yes I mean the heads. A scare tactic that might work for a little while, but they will get used to it in time.”

“Oh they will get more than that. When they do eventually find the rest of the corpses they will find that besides not having heads the corpses will also be missing their right thumbs.” George shook his head

“First Misha and that stupid collection of ears and now you and your thumbs. Why do people collect trophies like that anyways?”

“I think it’s a warning to others to stay clear of that person and also a way for the person to keep score. You should’ve seen my grandfather with his skull collection. I would’ve enjoyed collecting something like that but thumbs are easier to carry around with you.” He shook his head again.

“It’s a silly habit, and I’ve told Misha that at least a dozen times.”

“Has it caused him to stop collecting ears?”

“Not yet but his fiancé, Caroline, will break him of that habit soon enough!” I shrugged my shoulder and dodged around him before I turned and said.

“I’ll probably be going out tomorrow to deal with that encampment with the ogre. Before I leave I’ll have my full report of my last mission on the desk of your aide for you perusal.”

“Remember Oberon to try and not get yourself killed in the process. Come back alive.”

“Trust me I’m very careful with my own life George, and I’ve done this lots of times in the past. The lutins should be the ones who should worry because I’m going to kill as many of them as I possibly can. My trick is going to be that I’ll kill them without them even knowing I was the one responsible for the deaths.”

“Don’t loose your calm out there cat.” He warned. “Or your anger will lead to your own death.”

“Trust me when I am angry more of them will die. I’ve learned how to funnel my anger into what I do.”

“Be sure that it stays that way my friend. I’ve lost too many friends already in my life time.” I shook my head and turned around and swept my way down the hall towards my apartment where I could check if my caustic solution had finished its job of removing the flesh from my thumb collection.

When I pulled the wire basket out of the solution I was very pleased at the results, because the bones were bleached white by the solution and there wasn’t a single trace of the flesh that had, until recently, covered the bones. I rinsed them off and before I took my smallest drill and began to drill holes in the thickest part of the thumb. Once all of the thumbs had a hole in them I strung them all on a leather thong and then put the newly strung necklace of lutin thumbs around my neck before I headed out for the day to get some supplies. My fletcher had outdone himself and he had two hundred fully prepared long arrows ready for me to pick up at a copper penny per arrow. I handed him his money and then went and picked up a few more things before I went back to my apartment where I struggled to write out my full report of my actions over the past two weeks for George. Even though I didn’t want to trust him with some of the information that I had picked up I included it in my report because I didn’t like shorting any of my reports of information, and he would probably chase me halfway to the Giant Downs to get what I had left out of my report from me.

The next morning, true to my word I left the Keep once more with a full pack and a steady heart to face the threat of the lutins again. This was going to be a lot of fun.

{{series bar
|previous=[[The Ambush]]
|next=[[A Friend in Need]]
}}

A Friend in Need

2008-05-02T15:37:37Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friend in Need, A}}
[[Category:Metamor Keep]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I wearily walked into my apartment in Metamor Keep and looked around before I spotted a piece of paper on the floor. I placed my long range scout pack on my bed before I picked up the paper and read it.

''Adòn Naharél you are commanded to present yourself in hall 1437 in the Scout Hall on June 17th 707 at 12:00 for orders concerning your future operations.
George, Patrol Master of Metamor Keep''

Oh great. That was just what I needed, him digging into my business. I was, after all, doing things that most of the people here probably didn’t want to hear about. I just hoped that I could continue to operate as I had. I had probably made a bigger impact on lutin operations in the area in the past month and a half than I had in the entire rest of my time at the Keep.

On my latest operation, I had actually overheard a pair of them whispering together about a strange force that was making its presence known in the lands north of the Keep.

“I be hearing there is new Long to be afraid of.”

“He more than normal Long. He as bad as Brightleaf with Whisper at his side.”

“What you mean?”

“This new one black as night and just as deadly. The chieftain calls him Black Tiger and he carry the Icicle at his side.”

“What big deal about him?”

“He leaves nothing but corpses and piles of heads behind him. He also removes right thumb from all victims and keeps them, like Brightleaf keeps ears.”

“That bad.”

“That very BAD!” They didn’t say anything else ever again because I put the same arrow through both of their necks.

Now here I was back at the Keep for re-supply, and George wanted to ask me what I had been up to. This was almost as bad as when I had run into him at the bathhouse more than a month ago. He had treated my whole attitude about my missions as a destructive thing. Well, I would show up to his little interview and listen to him ramble on before I went out again, if only to make the old jackal happy. I knew that the Solstice Festival was coming up, and I had no intention of wasting my time celebrating it.
The patrol forces of the Keep would be at their weakest point during the Festival; which would make an excellent time for the lutins to strike. Hence, I would do my part to ensure that the Festival would be safe, and that the lutins wouldn’t be able to exploit this loosening of the Keep’s patrols.

After I sorted through my pack, I lifted out the large oilcloth-wrapped package of lutin thumbs that I had harvested on my last trip. For some reason, despite my campaign of deliberate terror against the lutins, my haul had gotten larger instead of smaller. This time, I had close to sixty-five thumbs in the package.

The stupid creatures weren't taking the hint to clear out. I placed the entire haul of thumbs into a wire basket before I lowering them into a caustic solution that I normally used for etching steel to let the fluid do its work in removing the flesh from the bones in half a day or so. With that taken care of, I looked out the window at the sun sinking in the west and decided that I needed to get some sleep. I had been operating on short sleep for the past two and half weeks, and had been looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a change instead of up in some tree at odd hours of the day.

The next morning, I slept in quite late before I finally pulled my ancient carcass out of bed. For some reason, I was feeling every single one of my seventy-two years this morning, though few people realized my age. Only my eyes showed people how old I really was. Once I finished with my normal stretching, I quickly got dressed and put on my latest necklace. This one was made with twenty lutin thumbs and one ogre thumb.

The ogre had probably been the most challenging opponent that I had run into yet north of the Keep. Even though he was a little smaller than the troll that I had faced before I started my hunts as the Black Tiger, he had been a much better fighter. Instead of a great clumsy club, the ogre had used a two handed sword, a weapon much more suited to the kind of fighting that I preferred. In the end, he had ended up making a stupid mistake that I had been able to capitalize on for the kill. I dressed for hunting, black on black, since I planned on leaving again immediately after the interview. The only things that relieved the black was the silver buckle on my sword belt and the hilts of my weapons: the Claw of the Dragon, a short sword, and a dagger, all attached to my belt.

At exactly noon I arrived at Hall 1437 in Scout Hall, my orders in my belt pouch along with the most recent report of my actions.

When I opened the door, I found myself in a room full of people seated around a long table, all of whom I recognized: George, Misha, Drift, Caroline, and Finbar along with at least a dozen others. There was only one I did not: a female pine marten morph seated beside Finbar.

George stepped forward and said, “Sit down, Oberon. We have some things to say which I believe you would do well to listen to.”

I looked around at them all before I sat down, weighing the look of each in turn. "Alright, then." I said, tailtip twitching with annoyance at my wasted time. "You've called me here when I could be getting ready for another hunt. What do you want, and why should I wait to hear it?"

Finbar went over and closed the door, which I had left open, before he sat back down beside the pine marten.

Misha fixed his eyes on mine and said, “We are your friends, Oberon, and we want to help you.”

“Over the past thirty years, I’ve found that friends are a luxury that I can do without,” I replied coldly.

“All you need are your weapons?”

“At least they are reliable and they won’t die on you like people.”

Finbar glanced over at Misha before he sarcastically said, “They’re not generally chatty, though, at least when they don’t have some spooky thing in them.”

I looked the ferret over, lifting my chin in disdain. “The Claw isn’t spooky, he’s dignified and sombre almost all of the time. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“But he’s still just a weapon. A tool meant to kill people with,” Caroline countered.

“And I have to wonder how he feels about massacres,” Drift added thoughtfully.

“He’s never uttered a word to me against my actions in the past couple of weeks.”

The Samoyed looked over at me with that same thoughtful expression on his face, “Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad to see fewer lutins around, but... Something’s not right, Oberon.”

“When was the last time you worked in you forge, Oberon? When was the last time you relaxed and didn’t think of killing?” Caroline added.

“More than a month and a half, and that was before my unit was ambushed by those little fiends.”

“So since then, your whole life has been just killing things," Misha pointed out. "No friends, no enjoyment. When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep with no nightmares?”

“I don’t have nightmares.”

“Do you ever dream?” Caroline asked softly.

Drift looked away suddenly and his ears started to dip, but he forced them back up. For some reason, it seemed that Drift didn’t dream, either. However, that wasn’t something that I was about to point out.

“I haven’t dreamed since I left my homeland, more than thirty years ago.”

“And you don’t think that’s a little strange?” she went on.

“Not really.”

Drift shook his head, “You think you’ve got it all locked away, then? It must be nice. Right up until that lock breaks. Which it will. It always does.”

“Believe me I’ve had my troubles, but they are all long gone into the past.”

George laughed openly. “That’s what you think. We know better.”

I growled low in my throat before I countered, “What do you know about me? NOTHING, really.”

George was slow to respond, but when he did he said, “I know that you stopped being alive thirty years ago. Since then you’ve only existed, but not really lived.”

“How in the name of the Three Forsaken Ones can you possibly say THAT?” I shouted

“You don’t drink, you don’t laugh, you don’t enjoy going out with friends. That is living.”

“I tried that here, but all it got was people KILLED. They were my responsibility but they DIED.” My ears were by now flat against my skull, and my tail, which had been lashing in anger, fell to the ground with an almost audible plop as I remembered the faces of those who had died under my command.,

“And you think that all of them died because of you? You didn’t stab them in the heart. Your enemies did.”

“If I had been paying attention, they might not have died.”

George snorted. "That’s a lie, and you know it.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?” I roared, causing nearly everyone in the room to clutch their ears.
George, however, didn’t even flinch.

“I can see it in your eyes. I’ve spent my whole life burying friends and enemies.”

Drift had flattened his ears against his skull and closed his eyes at my roar. He waited until the echoes died down before replying, “You're not the only one here who’s lost people.” His head was bowed, his hands flat on the table as if to steady himself, his expression sad.

“You think that any of you has anything to compare with the loss of an entire clan of relatives?”

Drift’s head came up, eyes flashing in anger. “Don’t talk down to me, Oberon. I am the last child of an only child. Yes, I do know what it’s like.”

“I had brothers, I had sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, and hundreds of others who died, and yet I alone survived.”

“At least you had them in the first place.”

“We’ve all lost people, Oberon. Not just you,” George softly said.

“Do you have any clue what it’s like to see your youngest brother lying on the ground, dying from an arrow wound while you hold him, unable to do anything?”

“How does being trapped in sight of your home burning and under siege, unable to get to it or do anything for three days but hide and pray that you'll have something to come back to strike you?” Drift asked again, ears flattening and his hackles rising.

I growled again, my temper rising before a small figure tugged on my tail. It was Guy DeHarancourt, and he looked frightened. He held out his arms in a silent request to be picked up, but I coldly turned my back on him and concentrated on the conversation.

"This is Metamor, Oberon. I'd say over half the town has been through a similar scenario." He paused. "And at least you got to say goodbye," the Samoyed continued bitterly. "I didn't even get that much."

“How did I get to say goodbye? If you mean I got to watch as the life drained from him like a sieve, then yes, I did get to say goodbye," I roared. "But he was only seventeen years old! He was barely even a man!!"

Drift rose snarling from his chair, eyes snapping, ears down, and his hackles up all the way down his back. His bared teeth flashed as he yelled back, "At least you got to hold him! Do you know what I would have given for that chance? When my mother died, my father wouldn't even let me in the room! -He- was murdered outside Glen Avery! My brother-in-law froze to death while I was trapped outside the Keep during the Yule attack! I -fought- with my sister the last time I saw her! Who do you think you are, you self-centered son of a-."

“Sit down, Drift,” Misha warned coldly.

As Drift shouted, Guy tugged on my hand once more. This time I could hear him crying softly. Without even thinking, I picked him up and placed him in my lap, like I had done so long ago for my youngest cousin.

At the same time, Drift checked himself and sat down, though not without a growl of anger. His hackles stayed up.

“Why did you just do that, Oberon?” Misha asked me softly, looking to the young wildcat in my lap.

“I don’t know. For some reason he reminded me of my youngest cousin, Jacques Naharél, but he died more than thirty years ago,” I replied in an equally soft tone.

“For someone with no family, you’re treating him an awful lot like family,” Caroline commented.

“I’m sorry, but I just have a weakness for children. To see one killed is the worst thing that you can possibly imagine.”

Drift smoothed down the fur of his hackles with one hand. I could see that he was bringing his temper back under control for the time being.

For some reason I was glad of that, but I didn’t really know why. I looked him in the eyes and apologized, “I’m sorry for angering you, Drift.”

He nodded before responding, “I shouldn’t have let my temper get away from me like that. It’s going to get me in a lot of trouble someday.”

Misha nodded. “Both of you need to control your anger better.”

I nodded in response to Misha before I looked around the table and said, “It's just that you don’t understand what could happen to you if you insist on this course of action.”

“Then explain to us what could happen,” Misha asked, though I could sense that it was really an order.

“There are risks in my life that none of you are even remotely prepared to deal with.”

“Oberon, in my life I have faced death a hundred times. I have been personally attacked a dozen times JUST by someone who wants to get a hold of my axe. What could be worse then that?”

“Well I can think of about a hundred things, but assassins from my homeland are the biggest threat that come to my mind right now.”

“Is that all?” George asks. “You’re worried about some knife- wielding killer?”

“I’ve dealt with assassins before,” Misha added. “Killed a few of them too.”
I shook my head before looking at him in a patient manner. “These assassins are unlike anything that you have every experienced. They operate in cells of four and use a drug called Narrelat to enhance their reflexes and speed. They will not stop coming until their target is dead or their employer impoverished.”

“So? If you cut off their heads, they’ll die just as easily as the rest of us,” George commented. “But we will need to come up with a plan to deal with them.”

“That will be hard to do, because their employer is the richest man in the Kelmar Clanlands. He can afford to send assassins until the day I die, more than four hundred years from now.”

“When were you planning on telling Misha and George about them, Oberon?” Drift asked me pointedly.

“It is my own danger to face, and I wouldn’t want any of you to risk your lives trying to help me.”

“And what if they came after others to get at you?” Drift went on.

“They WILL come after us no matter what you think,” Misha commented. “So we are already targets.”

“These assassins are completely devoted to their targets, and they virtually ignore other people unless they get in their way.”

“Killers like that WILL kill anyone that gets in their way, and we Keepers ARE in the way,” Misha pointed out.

“Do you really think people are going to stand by and do nothing if they see you in trouble?” Drift asked, his expression suggesting the question was rhetorical.

I reached into my right side belt pouch and pulled out the vial of Narrelat, that I had taken from the body of one of the assassins that had tried to kill me more than two months ago, and flung it onto table. “If you want to help out, then it’s your funeral, but in any case you should all get a good sniff of that. I can guarantee that you will be smelling it in the future.”

Misha picked the vial up, worked out the stopper and took a sniff. “Smells like vanilla… and something else.”

He handed it to Drift, who also took a sniff before asking, “What is it?”

“It’s called narrelat. One swig of it and you’ll be moving three times faster than normal. It is one of the reason why the Racteganect are so dangerous.”

Drift’s ears tipped forward with interest. “How does it work?” he asked.

"I'm no physician, so I don't know how it works, but I can tell you that it does, and that the results are scary. The Racteganect have cultivated the herbs used in it for millennia, coupled with magic that they have developed for that very purpose."

“A trick,” George commented in disgust. “A mere trick. A trick will never replace skill.”

“Narrelat isn’t the only reason that these assassins are so dangerous. They are trained like every other Kelmar Warrior, from childhood. ” I looked over and noticed that Drift’s tail had started to wag. From the look in his eyes, I could tell that he was thinking over some ideas involving narrelat, and maybe he was trying to puzzle out what it was made of. Sir Saulius, who was sitting beside Drift, gave him an elbow in the ribs at that point to get his attention back on the matter at hand. I looked around at everyone before I asked, “So can you all see why I can’t socialize too much?”

“No, I don’t,” Caroline answered flatly. “Life is full of risks, Oberon. I’ve survived three attacks on my town, and I’ve...” She paused at that point before she finally said, “I’ve been raped. Life is hard sometimes.” As soon as she finished saying that Misha hugged Caroline and kissed her gently.

At her mention of rape my eyes went flat and I quietly, with deadly intent, asked, “Who was responsible for that travesty?” I noticed that Drift turned to look at Caroline with shock written on his features. Apparently, this was news to him, too.

“Doesn’t matter,” She answered flatly. “They’re all dead now.” Misha nodded and gave a feral grin that suggested he had seen to it personally.

Drift’s ears flickered, and his head bowed slightly. “I’d heard something about that, but I never knew it was... you. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she answered softly.

“That is the second most despicable crime in the world. The first is killing a child.”

“We got through that, Oberon. Those enemies died. All that’s left of them is bones and the terror that the lutins have for me,” Misha pointed out grimly. Just then the door opened and a young woman came in bearing food on a large tray,

“I though that you all would want something to eat,” she said cheerily.

“Thank you,” George answered. “Now, please leave.” She placed the tray on the table and left.

I shook my head and looked down at the now sleeping figure of DeHarancourt before asking
Father Hough, “Do you mind taking him out of my hands now?”

At the same time Drift glanced over toward Misha and George. After a second he took his cue from their reactions, or lack of reaction, and reached for a piece of cheese from the tray.

“Who ordered the food?” Finbar asked. “I don’t remember anyone asking.”

Father Hough stood up and took the sleeping child from me, before returning to his own seat without waking the little guy up.

I thanked him before I grabbed a piece of smoked meat off of the tray and then said, “If that is all that you folks want to talk to me about then I think that I’ll be bidding you a good day. I have to get ready for my next patrol up north.”

As soon as Finbar made his comment about the food Drift’s hand had stopped. He looked over at me and said, “Oberon, wait. Don’t eat that.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked before I took a sniff of the meat. It smelled fine to me.

“You’re under an assassination threat, and you’re going to eat food that nobody ordered, without testing it?”

George picked up a piece of cheese from the tray and sniffed it before he popped it into his mouth. As soon as he swallowed the morsel he said, “I trust the girl. It's safe.”

Misha looked at me as I laid the piece of meat in my hand back on the tray before he asked,

"Why exactly do they want you dead, Oberon?”

I sighed and looked into his eyes before I slowly said, “I wasn’t just some simple warrior in my Clan: I was much, much more. The reality is that I am the fourth, and last surviving, son of my father. He held the position of Lord of the Sundering Stone Clan.”

“And,” George asked, “why did they wipe out your clan and yet still want you dead?”

“Since my father was the Lord of the Sundering Stone, and I am his only surviving heir, then I am in fact the Clanlord of that clan, and I can prove it as well.” I reached into one of my belt pouches and pulled out a thick gold ring, tossing it onto the table with a heavy thunk. It was a signet ring that I had held onto of a long time, the engraving on the ring depicted an eagle holding a lightning bolt cracking a stone in half. Misha examined it without picking it up.

“Family ring?” George’s pronouncement on the safety of the food appeared to have satisfied Drift and he snagged some cheese, tipping his ears towards Misha to listen.

“That is the hereditary treasure of the Sundering Stone Clan, along with this.” I unhooked the sheathed Claw of the Dragon from my side and laid it on the table in front of me. George picked up the ring with one hand while holding a second piece of cheese in his other.

“This is the symbol of your whole clan, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the eagle sundering a stone with a lightning bolt is the symbol of the Sundering Stone Clan.”

“Who is attacking you, and why do they want you all dead?”

“As the Clanlord of the Sundering Stone Clan, I have two things that my enemies wish to possess. My sword,” I laid my hand on the Claw, “and my life.”

George placed the ring on the table with a loud clack. “Who wants you dead?”

“I suspect that it is the Clanlord of the Bleeding Sun Clan. He’s already broken Kelmar Law by killing four other Clanlords.”

George shook his head. “I don’t need to know why. People like that always seem to find some stupid reason to butcher others.”

“In this case, it is because he wants to rule the Kelmar Clanlands with no opposition in any form.”

“It doesn’t matter what language they speak – a tyrant is a tyrant, and they always wind up dead sooner or later.”

“I certainly hope so, because this man has broken so many Kelmar laws that he is in dire need of killing.”

“There are a lot of people who need killing,” Misha answered. “Nasoj for one.”

I looked at each of the people around the table before I said, “If that is everything that you want to talk about George I have better things to be doing than sitting here rehashing the past.” With that said, I stood up.

“Sit, cat!” the jackal ordered. “That door stays closed until I decide to open it.”

“WHAT do you want from me?” I roared out, my temper rapidly rising once more.

“We want you to stop cutting yourself off from everyone who cares about you!” Caroline shouted.

“What if I like myself the way that I am?”

Drift, unlike the others maintained a normal voice. “How long before you snap, Oberon? Any bets?”

“What do you mean SNAP? I am in PERFECT control of myself at all times.”

Drift laughed. “Says the guy who’s making my ears ring with all his yelling.”

George shook his head. “You're as taut as a bow string.”

I could think of nothing to say in reply and my anger was rapidly rising. In response, I let out my loudest roar yet, shaking the fittings on the window in the far wall. This roar wasn’t coherent; it was merely an expression of my frustration at what they were trying to do.

Drift rubbed his ears. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought.”

At the same time that I roared, I felt my finger-claws flex out of their hidden sheathes and penetrate into the thick wood of the table. These people were really trying my patience. I was about to let out another, louder roar when I felt something tug on my tail. It was Guy DeHarancourt; I guess that the noise that we had been making had woken him up. This time I didn’t take any prompting; I picked him up and settled him on my lap before I looked over at Misha

“You know that you can’t-” Guy’s finger snuck up and placed itself on my lower lip.

Misha laughed and even George snickered. “It seems that Guy has a comment to make,” Misha said.

“What do you-” Again the finger came up and placed itself on my lip.

“What?” Caroline asked softly. I noticed that Drift had put a knuckle to his lips to hide a growing smile.

“I’m not going-” Guy stopped me again with his finger. Finally, I looked down at the kid and saw nothing but love come back at me from his eyes. “Why does this-”

“It seems that you have a family. Whether you want it or not,” Caroline said softly.

“But I don’t-”

Misha shook his head. “Just accept it my friend. He won’t take no for an answer.”

“Why should-”

“Tell him no,” George said simply and pointed at the young face of Guy.

I looked down at the child’s face, and I could still see his open feelings on his face. I tore my gaze away from him, but he did something that brought all of the pain that I had buried for the past thirty years to the surface. He said a word, one word that brought all of my suffering to the surface, “Papa.” I crumpled on the spot, hot tears running down my muzzle as the pain of my life ever since my Clan had died came to the surface. I didn’t even look up as I felt another pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders. After a moment of letting the hot tears run down my muzzle I managed to say, “I don’t know what I would do without people like you around me.”

“You will never need to find that out ever again,” Misha said calmly from behind me, his arm around my shoulder. My voice betrayed me and I could do nothing more than let the tears course their way down my muzzle. I could just barely make out Drift sitting across from me at the table, nodding his head in apparent empathy. I felt a second set of arms wrap themselves around my shoulders and I tried to bring my emotions back under control. The control that I sought, though, was as elusive as a roach in a barn full to the rafters with hay.

“You’re as tense and taut as a drawn bowstring.”

I tried once more to regain control; I got enough back to respond, “Would you expect any less if you-" That was all that I got out before I was swept away in another heavy bout of weeping.

Someone hugged me tighter and then I heard Caroline’s voice say, “Let it all out.” Then a strong pair of hands slowly began to massage the huge muscles behind my shoulders. After a few moments the storm began to fade and I managed to get back some of my control.

“How can I ever thank you?” I finally managed to ask.

“No thanks needed. So long as you are well.” I finally managed to sit up and looked into the eyes of the child on my lap. His eyes reflected nothing but love. He opened his mouth and uttered one word that almost caused me to lose control again,

“Papa.”

“It looks like Guy has made up his mind. You are his family now.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a family that has loved me?”

“Too long,” George answered my question.

I looked up at the people around the table and realized that the best friends that a man could ever ask for surrounded me. Slowly, I stood up and smiled, with my tail, ears, whiskers, and a grin. This was the first time that I had really smiled in a very long time.

“You are right there, George. It has been far too long since I was able to truly call someone my friend.” As I said that, I stepped from where I had been sitting and held out a large hand to George to thank him for what he had obviously arranged here. George took my hand and shook it with a strength that surprised me. I smiled down at the jackal while a series of soft snores announced to me that Guy had fallen asleep once more. I continued going around the room, shaking everyone’s hands. When I got to Misha, I said, “Even though this has changed me, don’t expect me to stop with my object lessons out there when I’m on patrol.”

“No, I don’t expect those to stop. We need to put the fear of you into the lutins. Just understand when to back off.”

“Yes sir. When do you want me to return to my patrol duties?” At that, George came over to where Misha and I were standing,

“At least a month. Do not come back to my office for duty for a least a month.” The jackal ordered.

“What am I supposed to do? Sit around and twiddle my thumbs?”

“You are supposed to relax, Oberon. Drink, sleep late, write, play, go fishing and hunting. Relax!”

“Relax? I haven’t done anything like that in...”

“Then you are long overdue,” Misha added.

“I guess that once this month is up, I’ll go report to you again, George.”

“No. When you do come back, report to Misha, not me. We’ve decided to change things a little.”

“Why?”

“We’ve decided to let you join the Long Scouts.”

I felt my ears perk forward and I smiled before I finally said, “I would consider it a great honour. I will do my best to ensure that I will live up to your standards, Misha.”

“You will have to work a lot to uphold that honour, Oberon, but you do deserve it.”

I nodded slowly before I sniffed the air. “Do either of you know where Father Hough is, I think that his charge needs him right now.”

Misha laughed. “I’m not sure that he wants him right now, but I do know that he is nearby.”

“Well nonetheless, unless either of you is in possession of his supplies, I can’t really do anything about this little problem.”

George shook his head and backed off. “I am the scout master. Not a baby changer.”

I looked at George, “You’ve never had any children George? That is a real pity; you would make someone a very good father. Even with all of your faults.”

“Thank you. I have no kids,” George said.

“At least, none that you know of,” Misha added. George gave a slight cough and I could see from the look on his face that he was a little chagrined. He quickly took a couple more steps back before he turned and went to the door, which he opened before leaving the room.

“I see that he doesn’t really like to stick around when there is a question that involves children.”

“He’s never been good with kids,” the fox explained.

“That’s a real pity. In my homeland, a man is considered a success if he has a good family and numerous friends who would trust him with their lives.”

“George hasn’t seen any of his family in twenty years,” Misha answered. I shook my head slowly before Guy began to whine out in distress. The cries were almost heart-rending, and also highly disturbing because of their pitch.

“What’s wrong with him?” I wrinkled my nose and replied with a sarcastic comment

“What, your nose stopped working?”

“Eh!!!!!!!” came the groan, and everyone stepped back.

“He seems to be in desperate need of a change.”

“Well, I would, if someone would tell me where Father Hough has vanished off to.”

“With that smell here? He’s probably halfway back to the cathedral by now.”

“How are we going to deal with this then?”

Then there was a shout from the far end of the table, and Caroline pulled a large satchel out from beneath the table. “I think that you’ll find all of the supplies that you need in this bag.”

I rolled my eyes as the rest of the people retreated from me like I was carrying the plague. Drift even had a hand over his nose.

“Is everyone in here afraid of a little work?”

“Work, no, but clearing poo off of someone’s butt is NOT taught in scout training,” Misha commented.

I rolled my eyes again and then moved closer to the table. “Well, having a family as big as I used to have, this was something that I had to learn before I was fifteen years old.”

“I was an only child,” Caroline commented. “Thankfully.”

I chuckled softly. “Misha, you and Caroline will probably have to deal with something like this within the next couple of years.”

“I’ll worry about that task when the time comes, but not before then!” Misha joked.

I shook my head and quickly finished with the distasteful operation as quickly as possible before I said, “Well I guess I had better get this little guy back to his caretaker.”

A small babbling childish voice spoke up then. “No, Papa.”

Misha laughed. “He has other ideas for you, Papa.”

“What about when I have to go out on patrol?”

“Perhaps the good Father can let you share in raising Guy. Helping out while you can.”

“I will certainly think about it, Misha. What do you think about that, Caroline?”

“I think that you both need each other,” the otter explained. “You are now a big part of his life.”

I could do nothing more than nod my head before I asked myself rhetorically, “How did I get myself into this mess in the first place?”

“Life has a way of sneaking up on you and smacking you on the back.”

“That’s for sure, Caroline.” I shook my head slowly. “Right now, though, I’m not really prepared to take care of a child.”

“If not now, perhaps later. I’m sure Father Hough will be willing to help with the child until you are ready.”

I could do nothing more than nod before I headed for the door, pausing only to pick my ring and my sword off of the table. I reattached the sword to my belt and looked at my ring for a second before I slid it onto my right middle finger. With that done, I headed for the door, stopping once more to shake Drift’s hand.

He looked up into my eyes before he said, “Welcome back, Oberon.” I laughed at his comment and then headed out the door with the child in one arm and his bag in the other. Before I went home to my own apartment, I stopped at Father Hough’s chapel to drop off Guy and explain to him the situation. He fully understood me and told me that everything would work out in the end. Guy didn’t take our parting well, but I had promised Father Hough that I would be by in a few days to take Guy out to see the first day of the Solstice Festival. That was going to be a real experience, and I was looking forward to it.

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A Friend in Need

2008-05-02T15:36:14Z

Oberon: New page: Category:Story Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT:Friend in Need, A}} Category:Metamor Keep Category:Oberon {{editing requested}} By: Oberon I wearily walked ...

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friend in Need, A}}
[[Category:Metamor Keep]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I wearily walked into my apartment in Metamor Keep and looked around before I spotted a piece of paper on the floor. I placed my long range scout pack on my bed before I picked up the paper and read it.

Adon Naharel you are commanded to present yourself in hall 1437 in the Scout Hall on June 17th 707 at 12:00 for orders concerning your future operations.
George, Patrol Master of Metamor Keep

Oh great. That was just what I needed, him digging into my business. I was, after all, doing things that most of the people here probably didn’t want to hear about. I just hoped that I could continue to operate as I had. I had probably made a bigger impact on lutin operations in the area in the past month and a half than I had in the entire rest of my time at the Keep.

On my latest operation, I had actually overheard a pair of them whispering together about a strange force that was making its presence known in the lands north of the Keep.

“I be hearing there is new Long to be afraid of.”

“He more than normal Long. He as bad as Brightleaf with Whisper at his side.”

“What you mean?”

“This new one black as night and just as deadly. The chieftain calls him Black Tiger and he carry the Icicle at his side.”

“What big deal about him?”

“He leaves nothing but corpses and piles of heads behind him. He also removes right thumb from all victims and keeps them, like Brightleaf keeps ears.”

“That bad.”

“That very BAD!” They didn’t say anything else ever again because I put the same arrow through both of their necks.

Now here I was back at the Keep for re-supply, and George wanted to ask me what I had been up to. This was almost as bad as when I had run into him at the bathhouse more than a month ago. He had treated my whole attitude about my missions as a destructive thing. Well, I would show up to his little interview and listen to him ramble on before I went out again, if only to make the old jackal happy. I knew that the Solstice Festival was coming up, and I had no intention of wasting my time celebrating it.
The patrol forces of the Keep would be at their weakest point during the Festival; which would make an excellent time for the lutins to strike. Hence, I would do my part to ensure that the Festival would be safe, and that the lutins wouldn’t be able to exploit this loosening of the Keep’s patrols.

After I sorted through my pack, I lifted out the large oilcloth-wrapped package of lutin thumbs that I had harvested on my last trip. For some reason, despite my campaign of deliberate terror against the lutins, my haul had gotten larger instead of smaller. This time, I had close to sixty-five thumbs in the package.

The stupid creatures weren't taking the hint to clear out. I placed the entire haul of thumbs into a wire basket before I lowering them into a caustic solution that I normally used for etching steel to let the fluid do its work in removing the flesh from the bones in half a day or so. With that taken care of, I looked out the window at the sun sinking in the west and decided that I needed to get some sleep. I had been operating on short sleep for the past two and half weeks, and had been looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a change instead of up in some tree at odd hours of the day.

The next morning, I slept in quite late before I finally pulled my ancient carcass out of bed. For some reason, I was feeling every single one of my seventy-two years this morning, though few people realized my age. Only my eyes showed people how old I really was. Once I finished with my normal stretching, I quickly got dressed and put on my latest necklace. This one was made with twenty lutin thumbs and one ogre thumb.

The ogre had probably been the most challenging opponent that I had run into yet north of the Keep. Even though he was a little smaller than the troll that I had faced before I started my hunts as the Black Tiger, he had been a much better fighter. Instead of a great clumsy club, the ogre had used a two handed sword, a weapon much more suited to the kind of fighting that I preferred. In the end, he had ended up making a stupid mistake that I had been able to capitalize on for the kill. I dressed for hunting, black on black, since I planned on leaving again immediately after the interview. The only things that relieved the black was the silver buckle on my sword belt and the hilts of my weapons: the Claw of the Dragon, a short sword, and a dagger, all attached to my belt.

At exactly noon I arrived at Hall 1437 in Scout Hall, my orders in my belt pouch along with the most recent report of my actions.

When I opened the door, I found myself in a room full of people seated around a long table, all of whom I recognized: George, Misha, Drift, Caroline, and Finbar along with at least a dozen others. There was only one I did not: a female pine marten morph seated beside Finbar.

George stepped forward and said, “Sit down, Oberon. We have some things to say which I believe you would do well to listen to.”

I looked around at them all before I sat down, weighing the look of each in turn. "Alright, then." I said, tailtip twitching with annoyance at my wasted time. "You've called me here when I could be getting ready for another hunt. What do you want, and why should I wait to hear it?"

Finbar went over and closed the door, which I had left open, before he sat back down beside the pine marten.

Misha fixed his eyes on mine and said, “We are your friends, Oberon, and we want to help you.”

“Over the past thirty years, I’ve found that friends are a luxury that I can do without,” I replied coldly.

“All you need are your weapons?”

“At least they are reliable and they won’t die on you like people.”

Finbar glanced over at Misha before he sarcastically said, “They’re not generally chatty, though, at least when they don’t have some spooky thing in them.”

I looked the ferret over, lifting my chin in disdain. “The Claw isn’t spooky, he’s dignified and sombre almost all of the time. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“But he’s still just a weapon. A tool meant to kill people with,” Caroline countered.

“And I have to wonder how he feels about massacres,” Drift added thoughtfully.

“He’s never uttered a word to me against my actions in the past couple of weeks.”

The Samoyed looked over at me with that same thoughtful expression on his face, “Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad to see fewer lutins around, but... Something’s not right, Oberon.”

“When was the last time you worked in you forge, Oberon? When was the last time you relaxed and didn’t think of killing?” Caroline added.

“More than a month and a half, and that was before my unit was ambushed by those little fiends.”

“So since then, your whole life has been just killing things," Misha pointed out. "No friends, no enjoyment. When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep with no nightmares?”

“I don’t have nightmares.”

“Do you ever dream?” Caroline asked softly.

Drift looked away suddenly and his ears started to dip, but he forced them back up. For some reason, it seemed that Drift didn’t dream, either. However, that wasn’t something that I was about to point out.

“I haven’t dreamed since I left my homeland, more than thirty years ago.”

“And you don’t think that’s a little strange?” she went on.

“Not really.”

Drift shook his head, “You think you’ve got it all locked away, then? It must be nice. Right up until that lock breaks. Which it will. It always does.”

“Believe me I’ve had my troubles, but they are all long gone into the past.”

George laughed openly. “That’s what you think. We know better.”

I growled low in my throat before I countered, “What do you know about me? NOTHING, really.”

George was slow to respond, but when he did he said, “I know that you stopped being alive thirty years ago. Since then you’ve only existed, but not really lived.”

“How in the name of the Three Forsaken Ones can you possibly say THAT?” I shouted

“You don’t drink, you don’t laugh, you don’t enjoy going out with friends. That is living.”

“I tried that here, but all it got was people KILLED. They were my responsibility but they DIED.” My ears were by now flat against my skull, and my tail, which had been lashing in anger, fell to the ground with an almost audible plop as I remembered the faces of those who had died under my command.,

“And you think that all of them died because of you? You didn’t stab them in the heart. Your enemies did.”

“If I had been paying attention, they might not have died.”

George snorted. "That’s a lie, and you know it.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?” I roared, causing nearly everyone in the room to clutch their ears.
George, however, didn’t even flinch.

“I can see it in your eyes. I’ve spent my whole life burying friends and enemies.”

Drift had flattened his ears against his skull and closed his eyes at my roar. He waited until the echoes died down before replying, “You're not the only one here who’s lost people.” His head was bowed, his hands flat on the table as if to steady himself, his expression sad.

“You think that any of you has anything to compare with the loss of an entire clan of relatives?”

Drift’s head came up, eyes flashing in anger. “Don’t talk down to me, Oberon. I am the last child of an only child. Yes, I do know what it’s like.”

“I had brothers, I had sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, and hundreds of others who died, and yet I alone survived.”

“At least you had them in the first place.”

“We’ve all lost people, Oberon. Not just you,” George softly said.

“Do you have any clue what it’s like to see your youngest brother lying on the ground, dying from an arrow wound while you hold him, unable to do anything?”

“How does being trapped in sight of your home burning and under siege, unable to get to it or do anything for three days but hide and pray that you'll have something to come back to strike you?” Drift asked again, ears flattening and his hackles rising.

I growled again, my temper rising before a small figure tugged on my tail. It was Guy DeHarancourt, and he looked frightened. He held out his arms in a silent request to be picked up, but I coldly turned my back on him and concentrated on the conversation.

"This is Metamor, Oberon. I'd say over half the town has been through a similar scenario." He paused. "And at least you got to say goodbye," the Samoyed continued bitterly. "I didn't even get that much."

“How did I get to say goodbye? If you mean I got to watch as the life drained from him like a sieve, then yes, I did get to say goodbye," I roared. "But he was only seventeen years old! He was barely even a man!!"

Drift rose snarling from his chair, eyes snapping, ears down, and his hackles up all the way down his back. His bared teeth flashed as he yelled back, "At least you got to hold him! Do you know what I would have given for that chance? When my mother died, my father wouldn't even let me in the room! -He- was murdered outside Glen Avery! My brother-in-law froze to death while I was trapped outside the Keep during the Yule attack! I -fought- with my sister the last time I saw her! Who do you think you are, you self-centered son of a-."

“Sit down, Drift,” Misha warned coldly.

As Drift shouted, Guy tugged on my hand once more. This time I could hear him crying softly. Without even thinking, I picked him up and placed him in my lap, like I had done so long ago for my youngest cousin.

At the same time, Drift checked himself and sat down, though not without a growl of anger. His hackles stayed up.

“Why did you just do that, Oberon?” Misha asked me softly, looking to the young wildcat in my lap.

“I don’t know. For some reason he reminded me of my youngest cousin, Jacques Naharél, but he died more than thirty years ago,” I replied in an equally soft tone.

“For someone with no family, you’re treating him an awful lot like family,” Caroline commented.

“I’m sorry, but I just have a weakness for children. To see one killed is the worst thing that you can possibly imagine.”

Drift smoothed down the fur of his hackles with one hand. I could see that he was bringing his temper back under control for the time being.

For some reason I was glad of that, but I didn’t really know why. I looked him in the eyes and apologized, “I’m sorry for angering you, Drift.”

He nodded before responding, “I shouldn’t have let my temper get away from me like that. It’s going to get me in a lot of trouble someday.”

Misha nodded. “Both of you need to control your anger better.”

I nodded in response to Misha before I looked around the table and said, “It's just that you don’t understand what could happen to you if you insist on this course of action.”

“Then explain to us what could happen,” Misha asked, though I could sense that it was really an order.

“There are risks in my life that none of you are even remotely prepared to deal with.”

“Oberon, in my life I have faced death a hundred times. I have been personally attacked a dozen times JUST by someone who wants to get a hold of my axe. What could be worse then that?”

“Well I can think of about a hundred things, but assassins from my homeland are the biggest threat that come to my mind right now.”

“Is that all?” George asks. “You’re worried about some knife- wielding killer?”

“I’ve dealt with assassins before,” Misha added. “Killed a few of them too.”
I shook my head before looking at him in a patient manner. “These assassins are unlike anything that you have every experienced. They operate in cells of four and use a drug called Narrelat to enhance their reflexes and speed. They will not stop coming until their target is dead or their employer impoverished.”

“So? If you cut off their heads, they’ll die just as easily as the rest of us,” George commented. “But we will need to come up with a plan to deal with them.”

“That will be hard to do, because their employer is the richest man in the Kelmar Clanlands. He can afford to send assassins until the day I die, more than four hundred years from now.”

“When were you planning on telling Misha and George about them, Oberon?” Drift asked me pointedly.

“It is my own danger to face, and I wouldn’t want any of you to risk your lives trying to help me.”

“And what if they came after others to get at you?” Drift went on.

“They WILL come after us no matter what you think,” Misha commented. “So we are already targets.”

“These assassins are completely devoted to their targets, and they virtually ignore other people unless they get in their way.”

“Killers like that WILL kill anyone that gets in their way, and we Keepers ARE in the way,” Misha pointed out.

“Do you really think people are going to stand by and do nothing if they see you in trouble?” Drift asked, his expression suggesting the question was rhetorical.

I reached into my right side belt pouch and pulled out the vial of Narrelat, that I had taken from the body of one of the assassins that had tried to kill me more than two months ago, and flung it onto table. “If you want to help out, then it’s your funeral, but in any case you should all get a good sniff of that. I can guarantee that you will be smelling it in the future.”

Misha picked the vial up, worked out the stopper and took a sniff. “Smells like vanilla… and something else.”

He handed it to Drift, who also took a sniff before asking, “What is it?”

“It’s called narrelat. One swig of it and you’ll be moving three times faster than normal. It is one of the reason why the Racteganect are so dangerous.”

Drift’s ears tipped forward with interest. “How does it work?” he asked.

"I'm no physician, so I don't know how it works, but I can tell you that it does, and that the results are scary. The Racteganect have cultivated the herbs used in it for millennia, coupled with magic that they have developed for that very purpose."

“A trick,” George commented in disgust. “A mere trick. A trick will never replace skill.”

“Narrelat isn’t the only reason that these assassins are so dangerous. They are trained like every other Kelmar Warrior, from childhood. ” I looked over and noticed that Drift’s tail had started to wag. From the look in his eyes, I could tell that he was thinking over some ideas involving narrelat, and maybe he was trying to puzzle out what it was made of. Sir Saulius, who was sitting beside Drift, gave him an elbow in the ribs at that point to get his attention back on the matter at hand. I looked around at everyone before I asked, “So can you all see why I can’t socialize too much?”

“No, I don’t,” Caroline answered flatly. “Life is full of risks, Oberon. I’ve survived three attacks on my town, and I’ve...” She paused at that point before she finally said, “I’ve been raped. Life is hard sometimes.” As soon as she finished saying that Misha hugged Caroline and kissed her gently.

At her mention of rape my eyes went flat and I quietly, with deadly intent, asked, “Who was responsible for that travesty?” I noticed that Drift turned to look at Caroline with shock written on his features. Apparently, this was news to him, too.

“Doesn’t matter,” She answered flatly. “They’re all dead now.” Misha nodded and gave a feral grin that suggested he had seen to it personally.

Drift’s ears flickered, and his head bowed slightly. “I’d heard something about that, but I never knew it was... you. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she answered softly.

“That is the second most despicable crime in the world. The first is killing a child.”

“We got through that, Oberon. Those enemies died. All that’s left of them is bones and the terror that the lutins have for me,” Misha pointed out grimly. Just then the door opened and a young woman came in bearing food on a large tray,

“I though that you all would want something to eat,” she said cheerily.

“Thank you,” George answered. “Now, please leave.” She placed the tray on the table and left.

I shook my head and looked down at the now sleeping figure of DeHarancourt before asking
Father Hough, “Do you mind taking him out of my hands now?”

At the same time Drift glanced over toward Misha and George. After a second he took his cue from their reactions, or lack of reaction, and reached for a piece of cheese from the tray.

“Who ordered the food?” Finbar asked. “I don’t remember anyone asking.”

Father Hough stood up and took the sleeping child from me, before returning to his own seat without waking the little guy up.

I thanked him before I grabbed a piece of smoked meat off of the tray and then said, “If that is all that you folks want to talk to me about then I think that I’ll be bidding you a good day. I have to get ready for my next patrol up north.”

As soon as Finbar made his comment about the food Drift’s hand had stopped. He looked over at me and said, “Oberon, wait. Don’t eat that.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked before I took a sniff of the meat. It smelled fine to me.

“You’re under an assassination threat, and you’re going to eat food that nobody ordered, without testing it?”

George picked up a piece of cheese from the tray and sniffed it before he popped it into his mouth. As soon as he swallowed the morsel he said, “I trust the girl. It's safe.”

Misha looked at me as I laid the piece of meat in my hand back on the tray before he asked,

"Why exactly do they want you dead, Oberon?”

I sighed and looked into his eyes before I slowly said, “I wasn’t just some simple warrior in my Clan: I was much, much more. The reality is that I am the fourth, and last surviving, son of my father. He held the position of Lord of the Sundering Stone Clan.”

“And,” George asked, “why did they wipe out your clan and yet still want you dead?”

“Since my father was the Lord of the Sundering Stone, and I am his only surviving heir, then I am in fact the Clanlord of that clan, and I can prove it as well.” I reached into one of my belt pouches and pulled out a thick gold ring, tossing it onto the table with a heavy thunk. It was a signet ring that I had held onto of a long time, the engraving on the ring depicted an eagle holding a lightning bolt cracking a stone in half. Misha examined it without picking it up.

“Family ring?” George’s pronouncement on the safety of the food appeared to have satisfied Drift and he snagged some cheese, tipping his ears towards Misha to listen.

“That is the hereditary treasure of the Sundering Stone Clan, along with this.” I unhooked the sheathed Claw of the Dragon from my side and laid it on the table in front of me. George picked up the ring with one hand while holding a second piece of cheese in his other.

“This is the symbol of your whole clan, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the eagle sundering a stone with a lightning bolt is the symbol of the Sundering Stone Clan.”

“Who is attacking you, and why do they want you all dead?”

“As the Clanlord of the Sundering Stone Clan, I have two things that my enemies wish to possess. My sword,” I laid my hand on the Claw, “and my life.”

George placed the ring on the table with a loud clack. “Who wants you dead?”

“I suspect that it is the Clanlord of the Bleeding Sun Clan. He’s already broken Kelmar Law by killing four other Clanlords.”

George shook his head. “I don’t need to know why. People like that always seem to find some stupid reason to butcher others.”

“In this case, it is because he wants to rule the Kelmar Clanlands with no opposition in any form.”

“It doesn’t matter what language they speak – a tyrant is a tyrant, and they always wind up dead sooner or later.”

“I certainly hope so, because this man has broken so many Kelmar laws that he is in dire need of killing.”

“There are a lot of people who need killing,” Misha answered. “Nasoj for one.”

I looked at each of the people around the table before I said, “If that is everything that you want to talk about George I have better things to be doing than sitting here rehashing the past.” With that said, I stood up.

“Sit, cat!” the jackal ordered. “That door stays closed until I decide to open it.”

“WHAT do you want from me?” I roared out, my temper rapidly rising once more.

“We want you to stop cutting yourself off from everyone who cares about you!” Caroline shouted.

“What if I like myself the way that I am?”

Drift, unlike the others maintained a normal voice. “How long before you snap, Oberon? Any bets?”

“What do you mean SNAP? I am in PERFECT control of myself at all times.”

Drift laughed. “Says the guy who’s making my ears ring with all his yelling.”

George shook his head. “You're as taut as a bow string.”

I could think of nothing to say in reply and my anger was rapidly rising. In response, I let out my loudest roar yet, shaking the fittings on the window in the far wall. This roar wasn’t coherent; it was merely an expression of my frustration at what they were trying to do.

Drift rubbed his ears. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought.”

At the same time that I roared, I felt my finger-claws flex out of their hidden sheathes and penetrate into the thick wood of the table. These people were really trying my patience. I was about to let out another, louder roar when I felt something tug on my tail. It was Guy DeHarancourt; I guess that the noise that we had been making had woken him up. This time I didn’t take any prompting; I picked him up and settled him on my lap before I looked over at Misha

“You know that you can’t-” Guy’s finger snuck up and placed itself on my lower lip.

Misha laughed and even George snickered. “It seems that Guy has a comment to make,” Misha said.

“What do you-” Again the finger came up and placed itself on my lip.

“What?” Caroline asked softly. I noticed that Drift had put a knuckle to his lips to hide a growing smile.

“I’m not going-” Guy stopped me again with his finger. Finally, I looked down at the kid and saw nothing but love come back at me from his eyes. “Why does this-”

“It seems that you have a family. Whether you want it or not,” Caroline said softly.

“But I don’t-”

Misha shook his head. “Just accept it my friend. He won’t take no for an answer.”

“Why should-”

“Tell him no,” George said simply and pointed at the young face of Guy.

I looked down at the child’s face, and I could still see his open feelings on his face. I tore my gaze away from him, but he did something that brought all of the pain that I had buried for the past thirty years to the surface. He said a word, one word that brought all of my suffering to the surface, “Papa.” I crumpled on the spot, hot tears running down my muzzle as the pain of my life ever since my Clan had died came to the surface. I didn’t even look up as I felt another pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders. After a moment of letting the hot tears run down my muzzle I managed to say, “I don’t know what I would do without people like you around me.”

“You will never need to find that out ever again,” Misha said calmly from behind me, his arm around my shoulder. My voice betrayed me and I could do nothing more than let the tears course their way down my muzzle. I could just barely make out Drift sitting across from me at the table, nodding his head in apparent empathy. I felt a second set of arms wrap themselves around my shoulders and I tried to bring my emotions back under control. The control that I sought, though, was as elusive as a roach in a barn full to the rafters with hay.

“You’re as tense and taut as a drawn bowstring.”

I tried once more to regain control; I got enough back to respond, “Would you expect any less if you-" That was all that I got out before I was swept away in another heavy bout of weeping.

Someone hugged me tighter and then I heard Caroline’s voice say, “Let it all out.” Then a strong pair of hands slowly began to massage the huge muscles behind my shoulders. After a few moments the storm began to fade and I managed to get back some of my control.

“How can I ever thank you?” I finally managed to ask.

“No thanks needed. So long as you are well.” I finally managed to sit up and looked into the eyes of the child on my lap. His eyes reflected nothing but love. He opened his mouth and uttered one word that almost caused me to lose control again,

“Papa.”

“It looks like Guy has made up his mind. You are his family now.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a family that has loved me?”

“Too long,” George answered my question.

I looked up at the people around the table and realized that the best friends that a man could ever ask for surrounded me. Slowly, I stood up and smiled, with my tail, ears, whiskers, and a grin. This was the first time that I had really smiled in a very long time.

“You are right there, George. It has been far too long since I was able to truly call someone my friend.” As I said that, I stepped from where I had been sitting and held out a large hand to George to thank him for what he had obviously arranged here. George took my hand and shook it with a strength that surprised me. I smiled down at the jackal while a series of soft snores announced to me that Guy had fallen asleep once more. I continued going around the room, shaking everyone’s hands. When I got to Misha, I said, “Even though this has changed me, don’t expect me to stop with my object lessons out there when I’m on patrol.”

“No, I don’t expect those to stop. We need to put the fear of you into the lutins. Just understand when to back off.”

“Yes sir. When do you want me to return to my patrol duties?” At that, George came over to where Misha and I were standing,

“At least a month. Do not come back to my office for duty for a least a month.” The jackal ordered.

“What am I supposed to do? Sit around and twiddle my thumbs?”

“You are supposed to relax, Oberon. Drink, sleep late, write, play, go fishing and hunting. Relax!”

“Relax? I haven’t done anything like that in...”

“Then you are long overdue,” Misha added.

“I guess that once this month is up, I’ll go report to you again, George.”

“No. When you do come back, report to Misha, not me. We’ve decided to change things a little.”

“Why?”

“We’ve decided to let you join the Long Scouts.”

I felt my ears perk forward and I smiled before I finally said, “I would consider it a great honour. I will do my best to ensure that I will live up to your standards, Misha.”

“You will have to work a lot to uphold that honour, Oberon, but you do deserve it.”

I nodded slowly before I sniffed the air. “Do either of you know where Father Hough is, I think that his charge needs him right now.”

Misha laughed. “I’m not sure that he wants him right now, but I do know that he is nearby.”

“Well nonetheless, unless either of you is in possession of his supplies, I can’t really do anything about this little problem.”

George shook his head and backed off. “I am the scout master. Not a baby changer.”

I looked at George, “You’ve never had any children George? That is a real pity; you would make someone a very good father. Even with all of your faults.”

“Thank you. I have no kids,” George said.

“At least, none that you know of,” Misha added. George gave a slight cough and I could see from the look on his face that he was a little chagrined. He quickly took a couple more steps back before he turned and went to the door, which he opened before leaving the room.

“I see that he doesn’t really like to stick around when there is a question that involves children.”

“He’s never been good with kids,” the fox explained.

“That’s a real pity. In my homeland, a man is considered a success if he has a good family and numerous friends who would trust him with their lives.”

“George hasn’t seen any of his family in twenty years,” Misha answered. I shook my head slowly before Guy began to whine out in distress. The cries were almost heart-rending, and also highly disturbing because of their pitch.

“What’s wrong with him?” I wrinkled my nose and replied with a sarcastic comment

“What, your nose stopped working?”

“Eh!!!!!!!” came the groan, and everyone stepped back.

“He seems to be in desperate need of a change.”

“Well, I would, if someone would tell me where Father Hough has vanished off to.”

“With that smell here? He’s probably halfway back to the cathedral by now.”

“How are we going to deal with this then?”

Then there was a shout from the far end of the table, and Caroline pulled a large satchel out from beneath the table. “I think that you’ll find all of the supplies that you need in this bag.”

I rolled my eyes as the rest of the people retreated from me like I was carrying the plague. Drift even had a hand over his nose.

“Is everyone in here afraid of a little work?”

“Work, no, but clearing poo off of someone’s butt is NOT taught in scout training,” Misha commented.

I rolled my eyes again and then moved closer to the table. “Well, having a family as big as I used to have, this was something that I had to learn before I was fifteen years old.”

“I was an only child,” Caroline commented. “Thankfully.”

I chuckled softly. “Misha, you and Caroline will probably have to deal with something like this within the next couple of years.”

“I’ll worry about that task when the time comes, but not before then!” Misha joked.

I shook my head and quickly finished with the distasteful operation as quickly as possible before I said, “Well I guess I had better get this little guy back to his caretaker.”

A small babbling childish voice spoke up then. “No, Papa.”

Misha laughed. “He has other ideas for you, Papa.”

“What about when I have to go out on patrol?”

“Perhaps the good Father can let you share in raising Guy. Helping out while you can.”

“I will certainly think about it, Misha. What do you think about that, Caroline?”

“I think that you both need each other,” the otter explained. “You are now a big part of his life.”

I could do nothing more than nod my head before I asked myself rhetorically, “How did I get myself into this mess in the first place?”

“Life has a way of sneaking up on you and smacking you on the back.”

“That’s for sure, Caroline.” I shook my head slowly. “Right now, though, I’m not really prepared to take care of a child.”

“If not now, perhaps later. I’m sure Father Hough will be willing to help with the child until you are ready.”

I could do nothing more than nod before I headed for the door, pausing only to pick my ring and my sword off of the table. I reattached the sword to my belt and looked at my ring for a second before I slid it onto my right middle finger. With that done, I headed for the door, stopping once more to shake Drift’s hand.

He looked up into my eyes before he said, “Welcome back, Oberon.” I laughed at his comment and then headed out the door with the child in one arm and his bag in the other. Before I went home to my own apartment, I stopped at Father Hough’s chapel to drop off Guy and explain to him the situation. He fully understood me and told me that everything would work out in the end. Guy didn’t take our parting well, but I had promised Father Hough that I would be by in a few days to take Guy out to see the first day of the Solstice Festival. That was going to be a real experience, and I was looking forward to it.

{{series bar
|previous=[[The Rise of the Black Tiger]]
}}

User:Oberon

2008-05-02T15:16:16Z

Oberon:

Enter the Tiger

2008-01-16T05:46:23Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Enter the Tiger}}
[[Category:Metamor Keep]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{editing requested}}

By: [[User:Oberon|Oberon]]

I looked back down the road at the caravan that was making its slow laborious way around the treacherous road to the castle that stood in the middle of the valley far off in the distance. The weather up here was unseasonably warm for this time of year. For the most part the snow, that would normally be still on the ground at this time of year, had melted, though there were some patches still remaining in shady spots and on the north side of the mountains.

This early melting of the snow had made the road, that we were currently traveling muddy and very treacherous. I had been called upon, more than once, to put aside my longbow to help prevent one of the wagons from sliding off of the road and down the side of the mountain. Some of the guards who were more experienced with this route traded stories while the merchants chivvied their beasts along the road almost as if they wanted this section to be over with quickly.

In the cities of the Midlands I had heard many tales of this keep from common citizens and soldiers. They had said all sorts of weird things only half of which I believed. I had seen a lot of things in the past thirty years and I wasn’t about to believe a bunch of drunks at a local tavern, because I had long since learned that many nightmarish creatures that people told tales of were born in the bottom of an ale tankard or a wine bottle.

I had been wandering the Midlands for the past twenty-eight years as a mercenary since I had arrived on the continent from my homeland after my clan had been exterminated by one of its rivals. It had become my doom, as the last member of my clan to wander the lands of the world for the rest of my long life forever exiled from my homelands.

Though, my skills as a warrior had grown much since I had left my homeland, those many long years ago but it didn’t matter since I would never be able to go back. I was an outcast and the first Kelmar Warrior that I met would try to kill me without hesitation. When I had left the Kelmar Clanlands I had been ranked as a Swordmaster of the Black and hence a match for just about everyone that had challenged me over the past few decades. However, I knew that if I ever met another Kelmar Warrior I would probably end up dead since any warrior that would come after me would probably be a Swordmaster of the Bronze, or maybe even of the Silver and hence a much better swordsman than I was.

So here I was acting as a mercenary caravan guard on some insignificant caravan into the mysterious Metamor Keep. The Keep was located in the only major route between the Giantdowns and the Midlands and hence was strategically of very high importance. If the Keep could be held against an enemy army, they wouldn’t be able to advance any further into more civilized lands where people weren’t as used to the dangers of an enemy.

I use the term civilized only lightly because they had some rather interesting beliefs in the Midlands. I had been kicked out of more than one garrison job because of my faith in the Kelmar gods and my Soul Guide. The Soul Guide was something that every Kelmar Warrior possessed. My particular guide, Oberon, was in the form of a large black and white Snow Tiger, only one thing differentiated him from a real Snow Tiger; he had the ability to speak to me in the Kelmar Language.

I looked down at him, he wasn’t visible to those who weren’t Kelmar, and noticed that he was nervous about this place for some reason. It was easy to see why, was the perfect place for an ambush. I had heard that this country was crawling with a small type of people known as lutins who were perfectly willing to kill those in the keep and those who supplied them.

However, from what I had also heard that threat had been reduced of late and now we were only supposed to be guarding against the more normal threat of raiders and bandits that infested areas of roads where ambushes were possible and caravans with high value cargos passed through. This spot was certainly a candidate for that because there were rocks on one side of the road and a straight drop off on the other side. Our caravan was also a firm candidate for raiders because it was one of the early caravans of the year and hence had a great deal of things to carry that were of some value.

After another look at Oberon I loosened my swords in their scabbards before I reached over the wagon that I was walking beside of and pulled my long bow from its place behind the driver’s seat.

When I had first joined the caravan the master merchant who had hired me had asked, “Why on this green earth do you have a full chest of things to bring with you?”

I had looked at him for a second before I had replied, “I have a full chest master merchant because it contains all of my weapons and clothing that I am not wearing.”

What I hadn’t mentioned was the fact that this chest was no ordinary chest. It was a special chest that could literally store tons of things in it without getting any heavier. Some compartments contained my fortune that I had raised in the past thirty years of fighting as a mercenary. In other compartments there was the riches of my former clan. But I told him of none of that.

Now he looked over at me before he asked me “What’s the problem Adon you seem a little nervous.”

“Master merchant it has nothing to do with being nervous and everything to do with being cautious. This is an excellent place for an ambush and I would hate to have made you feel good, just by not being prepared for the eventuality that we do get ambushed.”

He looked up at the rocks in apprehension before he fumbled for the short sword that he wore at his side. He was obviously a man who wasn't used to the idea that he may have to fight for anything.

As he fumbled about with his weapon I kept my eyes on the rocks above the road. Although I did spare more than a moment to ask Oberon what he thought of road.

“I don’t know, but I can tell you that there is danger in the area.”

I mentally nodded my head before I looked at those blasted stones. The problem with Oberon was the fact that he could never be specific about his information because he was only an ethereal spirit and not a true person.

We were more than half way through the rock garden when it happened. Suddenly the air was full of arrows raking the caravan, killing the caravan master by hitting him in the neck and wounding or killing a few of the other guards. I ducked behind the wagon the instant I heard the arrows but none-the-less I still received three arrow hits, none of which was major. The first hit my left shoulder pauldron, the second embedded itself in my right chest plate, and the third caused a spike of pain as it managed to hit flesh. It hit me on my right arm, just above the elbow, though it wasn’t all that much of a hit.

I took a second to yank it out before breaking off the two that were embedded in armour before I returned their fire with my own longbow.

In my own lands I had been only considered a merely adequate bowman, but here at the ranges at which I was firing I was able to score a hit almost every time.

I had managed to kill six more bandits before they came running down the hill to meet the caravan guards and merchants who were defending their livelihoods. I dropped my bow and threw all six of my throwing knives in roughly ten seconds taking down six of them before I drew both my hand and a half long-sword and my short-sword before getting up close and personal.

This was the kind of fight that I had been bred and trained for. Before they could realize that I was no ordinary country caravan guard I had killed five more of their number. Several of them stepped back and gave me some space while some of the more desperate men tried to get through to attack me. I wasn’t a cheap prize after all considering the fact that my weapons and armour could probably be sold for quite a lot of money.

At that point a large man in fine armour with a talbard of Knight of the Holy Order of the Protector stepped out from his followers and looked at me before he asked, “Why in the name of Eli do you guard this caravan when those who are paying are working for the demons that live in that Keep? Besides they probably don’t pay you what you are worth mercenary.”

“I guard it because I am being paid and because I swore an oath that I would guard it until it reached the Keep down in the valley.”

The man who had shouted his question at me shook his head almost regretfully before he yelled that he would give any man who put me down a large pile of gold for killing me. I smiled at the challenge as I brandished both of my swords and replied

“Come to me and meet my swords, they thirst for the blood of those who will serve my Kryta in paradise.” This was a battle that any Kelmar Warrior would be happy to engage in. Hopeless odds, little chances of escape, a determined enemy, and no retreat were things that any Kelmar Warrior would relish as I did.

They rushed me en masse in a clear attempt to get in too close for me to do any damage but it was a flawed tactic when coming up against a Warrior of my prowess. I used my swords in concert with each other to create a whirling, singing net of steel that sprayed out bright red blood almost constantly.

These bandits had numbers and desperation in spades, but they had little real training. However, even the most ill trained horde can eventually beat a well-trained enemy given enough time and willingness to take casualties. As they pushed me back towards the cliff to the left of the road I sustained several more small injuries to my extremities. My armour managed to protect my torso from any damage. As they pushed me towards the cliff several of caravan guards rushed to my aid though they didn’t possess my skills in combat, but every little bit helped and our efforts were beginning to show on the bandits.

I was almost at the edge of the cliff when a huge man in rough jerkin came up beside me and tried to hit me with a massive battle-axe. I managed to parry his blow with my short sword but it rattled my arm to the shoulder. I ducked under his next huge blow before I thrust up with the very same sword and spilled his guts all over the dusty road. However, as he fell the massive axe that he had been wielding hit me in the head and I knew no more.

{{Separator|d}}

“How is he Brian?” One of his assistants asked cautiously as the raccoon morph leaned over the large dark haired warrior who had been brought in with the caravan that had just arrived from the Midlands. The caravan had been ambushed by bandits just outside of demesnes of the Keep and hence was in an area that the keepers weren’t responsible for.

The mercenary who had brought the man into the infirmary had said, “He was injured roughly a day ago and he hasn’t woken up. His injuries are outside of what I am capable of healing.”

Brian had told the man that he would do what he could to save this mercenary’s life.

“Can you do it in a couple of days because we don’t intend on sticking around to get whatever it was that turned you into what you are now.”

“I highly doubt that I will be able to heal him in such a short amount of time but I will do the best that I can for him.” The mercenary that had brought in his patient had nodded before leaving the room to leave Brian and his assistant with their patient.

Before he could do anything He had to get the warrior’s armour and equipment off of him. “I don’t really know Jasmine, this could be difficult. With head wounds you never know, but considering that he’s survived long enough to get here I have some hope that he will survive. First though, we have to get him out of this armour.” The armour in question seemed to be a composite type with plates, chain-mail, and hardened leather integrated in its construction.

“One thing’s for sure this guy definitely likes his weapons considering how many he had on his person.” Jasmine commented, Brian spared no more than a glance at the goodly sized pile of weapons lying in a pile by the bed. When his compatriots had brought the man in he had at least a dozen bladed weapons on his person, Brian and Jasmine quickly removed all of the hardware before they got down to work.

As soon as the man’s armour and clothing was stripped off Brian gasped in shock. The man’s torso was a maze of scars, in some places there seemed to be scars on top of other scars.

“This man has seen a lot of action Brian.” His assistant quietly mentioned

“That he has Jasmine. I didn’t know that you could pick up this many scars in a lifetime and still be a functioning human being. Although in his profession getting some scars is a part of the job.”

Over the next several hours they worked hard to save the strange mercenary’s life. It was a difficult proposition especially since Brian knew so little about his patient. He was obviously human but there were some things that puzzled him to end. For instance the man appeared to be healing at an increased rate when compared to normal humans. For another when Brian had opened the man’s right eye to check to see if his patient was still alive he noted the fact that the man had golden eyes instead of any normal hue. Once the man was stabilized late in the evening Brian managed to get some sleep while his patient slept on not knowing what was going on.

{{Separator|d}}

Over the next few days things didn’t seem to change much although Brian could tell that the man’s personal ability to heal was still functioning because his head wound appeared to be nothing more than a simple bump that one would acquire from getting hit on the head with an acorn falling from a high branch on a tree. After more than a week with no change to his patient Brian was beginning to wonder if the man would ever wake up.

I opened my eyes slowly and looked around without moving my head. The last thing that I remember was the sight of the large man with the axe that I had just killed with a thrust from my long-sword stiffening and then beginning to slump forwards dropping his axe at the same time. After that everything was a blank. I could already tell that I was in a bed in medical ward in some town. I had spent a lot of time over the past thirty years in a bed like this after getting wounded in some battle or another. It was a hazard that I knew went with my profession.

Finally after looking around for a few moments I propped myself up and then rapidly let myself back down onto the pillow as my head started spinning like a Ptaen Death Spiral.

At that point a man, at least I think it was a man, who had had the facial features of a raccoon came into my vision and asked me “Do you know where you are?”

I thought back to where I had been going before I had been hit in the head with a stupid axe before I replied “I believe that I am at Metamor Keep, and that you are one of the residents if I am not mistaken.”

“Well at least I am glad that you kept your mind my mysterious mercenary, you are indeed in Metamor Keep and I am the Healer Brian Coe. I have served as healer here since before the Battle of Three Gates.”

After a moment I looked around again before I asked, “Do you know where they took my sword?”
The raccoon looked confused before he nodded his head and responded by saying “Yes they took them up to a room that has already been prepared for you.”

“Are you meaning to tell me that I was expected?”

“The people may not have been expecting you but the Keep on the other hand may have known that you were coming.”

“What do you mean that the Keep knew that I was coming?”

“The Keep here has a spirit of its own and it knows when someone is coming to join the population full time.”

“I have no intention of staying here. There is money to be made out there in service of anyone who is willing and able to hire me.”

“Do you know anything about the keep at all sir?”

“I have heard quite a bit but I don’t really make it a habit of listening to all of the gossip that I hear in city taverns where I am serving as a mercenary. Most people’s tall tales come from the bottom of an ale mug or a wine bottle.”

“Well in the case of Metamor Keep most of those tales are true, although I haven’t heard any of those tales myself since I spend most of my time here in the Healer’s Quarters in the infirmary.”

“Do you at least have one of my swords still here?”

“Yes we do, but why should you need it.”

“It’s not that I need it but that to my people a warrior’s sword is the centre of his being. So if you take a warrior’s sword from him you are removing his honour.”

“I think I see your point there my strange friend.”

“If it would make it easier on you I will give you one of my names.”

“That would be much appreciated.”

“I am known as Adon Naharel.”

“That is a usual name Adon, I haven’t ever heard of one like it.”

“Well you’ve probably never met a Kelmar Warrior and nor are you likely to meet another one Mr. Coe.”

The racoon nodded slowly and then pattered off into one corner of the infirmary before he returned with my hand and a half sword lying across his hands.

I took the weapon from him with a grateful smile and then slowly drew it out of the scabbard a couple of inches before I returned it to its normal position and let myself fall asleep once more.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed this time but when I awoke again I was feeling much better. When I sat up this time there was no trace of the spinning in my head. I looked at my arms and noted the fact that there were distinct stripes of black and white skin running from my shoulders to my hands. What was more noticeable was the fact that the palms of my hands were now black in colouration. After looking at my body for a few moments more I shrugged my shoulders. This really wasn’t something that I was looking forward to the effects of the curses that this place was under. After all how would Oberon manage to find me when I didn’t look anything like myself?

“Hello I see that you’re awake again, I sure hope that you don’t intend on spending to much more time in here. I’ve other things to do besides watch someone sleep and I would guess that you probably need to get some food into that body of yours.” At the mention of food my belly grumbled like an agitated beast and I felt very hungry.

“I guess that as soon as I get some clothing I’ll leave you to your little domain, while I explore what I would quite simply guess is going to be my new home.”

The raccoon nodded slightly before he handed me a robe before telling me that as soon as I got my own clothes on I could return his robe.

“I will make every effort to be prompt with its return Mr Coe.”

“I would appreciate that Adon.” After I threw the robe on and took my sword in my left hand I made my way to the door

“By the way how in the name of Savnator am I supposed to make my way around this pile of a castle?”

“Oh that’s easy all you have to do is think of where you want to be and the Keep will get you there eventually. That is if she isn’t playing games at the time.”

I smiled at his comment before I walked out the door and headed down the hallway to the right.
Within ten minutes I found a door that was marked with the five Kelmar Runes that made up my full name, not the name I used in public but my full name Adon Naharel Sahana’Haudorn of the Sundering Stone Clan.

I put my hand on the latch and quickly made my way inside. The wall by the door had at least twenty pegs on it for my weapons which were either lying on my bed or still in the travel chest at the foot of the bed. I quickly opened the chest and pulled out my collection of weapons and began to put them on the pegs. I had several different swords that were each suited for a different style of combat.

As soon as I cleared my considerable collection of normal weapons out of their compartment in my chest I pulled out my clothes and got dressed. My normal walking clothes were comprised of a simple black leather vest and breaches. Once I was properly dressed I grabbed my heavy belt with its double baldrics and slung it around my waist before settling the centre of the baldric with its enamelled Snow Tiger head over the middle of my torso.

For some reason the other mercenaries guarding the caravan had managed to retrieve all of my throwing knives.

Once my weapons were comfortably settled about my body I contemplated the quiver that was hanging on my right baldric before removed my heavy belt once more to detach said quiver and replace it and the sword that was slung on the left side with a twin set of single handed double edged straight sabres before once more reattaching my belt and baldric to my person.

After that was finally taken care of I put on a pair of boots and one of my dark grey hooded cloaks before I opened to door to go exploring. I almost ran smack into a large man, or rather creature that was at least half a foot taller than I was.

He looked down at me before he asked me “Is all of that really necessary?”

“I am a Kelmar Warrior and that means that you will never ever see me unarmed.”
The creature, I could only call him a he since I had heard his voice raised and eyebrow before he settled down again and introduced himself, “My name is Copernicus and I have several functions in this place the least of which is guiding you new folks around this place so that you will know some of your way around.”

I looked at the lizard man for a second to get some impression of what he was like from my Soul Guide, who it turned out could recognize me right now. Though the fact that I mostly still looked like myself probably helped him locate me. He stood beside me and looked up at the strange lizard man before he nodded his great, ruffed head to tell me that I was safe with this man.

“I’ll be glad to have your assistance in this matter. I have a lot of experience in castles but from what the Healer Brian told me this castle is somewhat unique in its architecture.”

“Well I will show you the basic areas of the keep so that you know your way around but once we get past that you will have to make your own way. I can already tell that we won’t have to ask you if you will be serving with the local reserves or even army because that is evident in the way that you carry yourself.”

“Is there some form of standing group that I can join that will go out into the enemy lands frequently?”

“The Keep does possess a group of scouts but they don’t possess anywhere near the amount of weapons that you carry.” I slowly muttered a Kelmar phrase under my breath that meant ’To deny thyself options is to doom thyself to death and dishonour.’

“I would guess as much since scouts by their very nature normally like to proceed through enemy territory by stealth and secrecy. They don’t seek combat but instead information that the army can use to defeat those enemies.”

“You sound like you know a lot about war.”

“I have served for the past twenty eight years as a mercenary throughout the Midlands.”

“That’s quite the achievement…”

“I go by the name Adon Naharel.”

“Yes Adon as I was saying that number of years in service is quite an achievement. Normally a person leaves the mercenary trade after ten years because fighting for that long tends to wear heavily on the body.”

“I am not most people, I am a Kelmar Warrior and I have only just reached the prime of my life. Besides I was bred for battle and trained for war since I was very young.”

He looked surprised before he shook his head and began to walk down the hall all the while explaining several things, “This keep has never been taken by and enemy force although there are those that have tried in the past. The curse is one of the effects of one of those attempts to take the Keep and break out into the Midlands”

“The defenders must have fought very hard if they managed to beat the enemy even when they had their forms changed.”

“That we did, although our magic users should also be praised as they managed to somehow reverse most of the major effects of the three enchantments. You see the enchantments were originally a Bimbo Spell, a Baby Spell, and an Animal Spell but our local magic users were able to reduce the effectiveness of the spells making them so that the people who got caught by them could still function. From the look of your arms I can tell that you’ve started to change from the curse and that you’ve been hit with the animal spell.

I nodded before he went on to explain some of the other features of the keep including some of the military areas of the Keep including the Arsenal Tower in the inner ward. He also showed me a large number of areas were common citizens were allowed including the Deaf Mule, the Baths, and the Library.

When he finished the tour he turned to me and said, “If you want to practise with those weapons that you carry I would suggest that you go to the inner ward where there is an archery range as well as a parade and practice grounds where you can practice your skills.

“Thank you for the tour Copernicus I shall make a point of visiting those practise grounds.” With that said I turned and headed back to the Bath were I could get cleaned up.

I hadn’t had a bath in days and I knew that I was beginning to smell, indeed if I was in my home town of Hollow Stone I would get chased out of town until I took a bath for stinking up the place.

Half an hour later I lounged in the warm water of the bath looking up at the domed ceiling while letting the stink of the past few days get washed out of my skin. I spent a good amount of time in the bath going from one pool to the other until I was sweating out all of the toxins in my body in the hottest water that I had encountered since leaving my homeland decades ago.

In my mind I saw that this place had a chance to become a new place that I could call home after so many years of wandering and fighting for nothing but my own purse.

As I finally pulled myself out of the hot water I looked over at Oberon and he seemed to be nodding at me before his spirit voice said, “You do great credit to your mind Adon if you plan on staying here. No Kelmar has lived his life with only the pursuit of death and slaughter as his lone occupation and nor should you.”

I knew what he said was true but it would be hard to change the habits of fifty-five years of war and violence.

I had of course learned some of the other things that Kelmar Warriors could do when they weren’t fighting but I had little time for those pursuits when I was living in my homeland and even less time for them when I was an exile.

I spent most of the rest of the day exploring this place that had just become my home before I went to the Deaf Mule to meet some of the inhabitants of the Keep. The place was full and there were people of all different forms and sizes walking through the room. Sitting at the end of the bar there was someone who appeared to have some of the characteristics of a dog though his fur was thick and white.

I sat down at an empty stool beside him and watched as an apparently young girl made her way to the table and asked, “What can I get you Drift?”

“I’ll have an ale if it’s not too much trouble.”

“As long as you don’t get caught up in a fight again Drift, After all you remember what happened the last time you drank more than one ale.”

“Yeah I remember what happened, that ale was enhanced by someone to the point where it could knock over an elephant and you know that.”

She looked at Drift for a second before she laughed and turned to face me and asked. “What can I get for you stranger?”

“I will try the ale as well.” She nodded at me and then turned to go back to the bar to retrieve our orders from the bar.

The white dog turned to look at me before he asked, “Do I know you?”

“Not likely considering the fact that I’ve never been here before other than earlier when Copernicus showed me around.”

“I see” He mused as our ale arrived.

I sipped the drink to see if it was any good and was surprised to find that this ale had some body to it. Granted it wasn’t quite as strong as Kelmar Mountain Beer but it was a close second in strength.

I stood up after a second and went over to a line that had been marked on the floor several feet from the dartboard. I pulled three of my throwing knives out of their sheathes before placing them in my left hand.

Drift watched as I stood there as if waiting for a signal before I threw all three weapons at the dartboard in less time than it takes to blink three times. All three knives had impaled themselves in the bull’s-eye. I smiled slightly, took a drink and went to the board and pulled the knives out before I returned to the line to throw again.

I had always been good with throwing knives and I enjoyed the practice until the ale began to affect me. I knew that it was time to stop because I had always made it a practise to stop drinking when I began to feel it. After all a drunk isn’t all that capable to defending him or herself when they need to. I wasn’t exactly sure when I left the Deaf Mule but I was enjoying myself as I made my way back to my room.

That night while I slept Oberon came to me in a dream, but not one of my waking dreams where I saw him beside me. Instead this was a full dream and he was standing beside me like he had always done since he had become my guide when I was fifteen. “Adon something is changing you and there is nothing that I can do to guide you through the change.”

“What can you do Oberon to help me?”

He looked around before he replied; “The only thing that I can do Adon is to join you as one being instead of our split beings. You will need my insights into instincts but you will be yourself as you have always been.”

This was something that was very difficult to contemplate since Oberon had been with me for more than fifty years. Then he walked away from me before he turned and charged me at full speed.
I knew this game, he would charge me and we would wrestle for a bit and then discuss what had happened since the last time we had been together in a dream. This time it was different because when we came together instead of knocking me down like he always did he seemed to pass through me, but he didn’t come out the other side. Instead my own form began to shift until I looked like he had, but I was standing on two legs instead of four. soon after that happened the dream faded and I entered a dreamless sleep.

When I opened my eyes the next morning I wasn’t all that surprised to find that my face seemed little different from the form that Oberon had given me the night before.

After several moments of thinking things over I stood for the first time in my new form I looked at my whole body in the mirror. I looked much different than I had only a few days ago. My whole body was covered in thick white and black striped fur. I was roughly a foot and a half taller than I had been as a human being.

After I did a full inspection of my new body I tried to contact my spirit guide. Just as I expected there was no response and knew that he had left me for good. I would have to make my way through the world without the guidance of Soul Guide and that was something that frightened me greatly.

I had no intercessor with the gods if I did something that they didn’t favour. I was even more alone than when I had left my homeland after I was exiled by the destruction of my clan.

After considering things for a few moments I finally resolved that I wouldn’t hide in this place without my guide I would try and patch my life back together on piece at a time. When I put on my clothes I was surprised to find that just about everything fit even though I was much bigger than before.

I guess the Keep, or the magic that was woven into my Kelmar clothes had made sure that my clothing and weapons still fit. I did have to change the swords I used as my sides since they seemed a little shorter than they had been before. On my left side I put on my largest sword, a two handed long sword, and on my right I put a single-handed broadsword to replace my short sword.

Once those changes had been made to my equipment I put on my obligatory black cloak and headed out into the keep to locate one of the mess halls. As I walked to the nearest mess hall I thought about my dream again.

Three hours later found me in the inner ward practising with my double sword; or rather it was my two double-edged straight sabres joined at the hilts to form a single double bladed sword.

As I brought the weapon to a halt in front of me I saw a battered looking red fox morph come into the courtyard with a five foot long black axe in his hands. He looked over at me in my striped black and white fur before he came over to me and asked “You new around here?” I nodded slowly looking at the way he stood. He was obviously skilled because he held himself like a warrior and not a citizen. The way he held the black axe in his hand also confirmed my suspicion that he was a warrior.

I slowly bowed at the waist in a show of respect for a fellow warrior before I replied “My name is Adon Naharel Sahana’Haudorn formally of the Sundering Stone Clan and I am a Kelmar Warrior, but you can call me Oberon.” This was the first time that I had ever used my guide’s name to identify myself, but considering what he had done with me last night I believed that I had every right to use his old name. After all it was much easier than using my own name.

The fox’s one remaining ear twitched and so did his tail and he introduced himself, “My name is Misha Brightleaf. I am pleased to make your acquaintance Oberon. Are you actually any good with that thing?” He indicated my double sword with his free hand.

“I can hold my own if that is what you are asking. It isn’t my favourite weapon but it is one of my most formidable weapons.”

He nodded slowly regarding the almost seven foot long weapon before he put down his axe and asked me if I minded a little sparing practice.

“I don’t mind practice at all sir.” I replied and pulled apart the weapon before sheathing both blades while he ran over to the armoury to grab a pair of staffs. As soon as we started banging away at each other with the seasoned pieces of wood I could tell that this man was very, very good.

His reflexes were good as was his positioning and footwork. It probably didn’t help that I was fighting in a body that I had yet to get used to; his familiarity with his body countered my greater reach and power. Finally after a concerted effort his staff struck the back of my knees and I ended up flat on my back with a growing lump on the back of my head.

“Are you ok Oberon?”

I rubbed the back of my head ruefully with my hand before I replied, “I’ll survive Mr. Brightleaf.”

“You don’t have to call me that you can just call me Misha.” He said as he extended a hand to help me get back to my feet. His plan backfired though because he didn’t take into account my own massive weight as he pulled.

I let go of his hand before I levered myself into a sitting position and then stood up.
“You definitely have some skills Oberon and you gave me a run for my money, and that doesn’t happen all that frequently.”

“You’re the best fighter that I’ve run into since I left my homeland thirty years ago.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been fighting for longer than I’ve been alive?”

“There’s a good probability that I have Misha.”
He shook his head before he turned and headed back towards one of the gates in the wall with his axe in hand and his tail held high.
There was one highly skilled warrior that I wouldn’t want to meet in the field of battle.
The one disappointing thing about my practice came when I was trying to shoot my bow. Inadvertently the claws in my fingers cut the twisted gut string of my bow. What that meant was that I couldn’t use it while I had claws.

That evening when I sat in my room on my knees in front of the small altar that I had set up to the gods I asked for guidance in going forward into the future.
This had been a hard week and it had all started when I had first seen this castle in the distance from the road on the mountain with the caravan. I should’ve looked for something else to do instead of signing on as some caravan guard.

Well as my father had once said ‘You never get anywhere by looking at what might have been.’ That was the truth and I had to get used to what I was now and live for the future not the past.
Things had changed but I was Kelmar and thus bound to this fate like everyone else. With those thoughts in mind I went to bed with a somewhat clearer head. Tomorrow would be the first day in a new week and a new beginning for me.

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Enter a Wolf

2007-12-30T20:50:50Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Animal]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Enter A Wolf}}
[[Category:Pig and Whistle]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{byline|user=Oberon}}
{{editing requested}}

{{side note|This story uses "Commonwealth" spelling, so extra "u's" may show up in some words and not be an error}}

I stood outside of the bar and looked at the door whilst one of my ears twitched at the sound of the music coming from within. I hadn’t lived in this city all that long, though I had been here long enough to appreciate the locals’ attitudes towards TFORs.

In my last city I had been treated badly by some of the local bigots, though that was a mistake in my case. The reason was really simple; I was a semi-retired North American Republic Army Officer. My commission in the army had predated the Collapse and thus I was originally a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Now here I was standing outside of bar in a somewhat run-down part of town contemplating my past. I shook my head at the weirdness of the situation and pushed open the door. The first thing that struck me about this place was the multitude of odours that tried to climb up into my nose. The second thing that I noticed was the number of people that were currently in the bar, there seemed to be every single possible form of person that you could imagine in sitting in various seating devices all throughout the room.

I made my way to the bar where I had to wait for the bartender to serve me. I rubbed my upward pointed ears and sighed, the years weren’t getting any easier for me these days, though my age didn’t show at all. I was approaching my fifty ninth birthday without any outwards signs that I was older than the day I had left the forces twenty eight years ago when I was thirty years old. Of course for some people getting a read on my age was pretty hard considering the fact that I no longer appeared human. In fact the only human traits that I had left were my hands, my somewhat human voice, my ability to walk bipedaly, though I was capable of going on all fours if I wanted to, and my ability to see the full spectrum of colours, though my eyesight in the dark was also improved over what it had once been.

Finally the barkeep came over to me and asked me what I would like to drink in a very deep voice that could make James Earl Jones sound like a tenor.

I wagged my tail slightly, since the barkeep was based on a herbivore probably wouldn’t react all that well if I grinned at him like a human and said “I’ll have a beer, still in the bottle if that is possible.”

He nodded and then went back to collect the drink while I thought about my past.

{{Separator|j|May 7th 2010}}

I was sitting in the C-130J Herky Bird with my full halo gear on. All around me were the troopers of D Company 1st Canadian Special Forces Regiment.

The chaos that had gripped the world with the appearance of Blowtorch Fever had resulted in the balkanization of our southern neighbour, the United States. After a time the PMO and Parliament had finally decided that enough was enough and that we had to move against the chaotic elements that were running rampant in the former U.S in order to stabilize our southern border.
Our company was part of the leading elements of the PPCLI Regimental Battle Group that was slowly advancing into the northwestern state of Washington State. We were going to be responsible for securing the State Capital Buildings in Olympia.

I checked my silenced C-10A-1 assault weapon, the newly introduced Canadian version of the German G-36C Assault Rifle. Our regiment had been one of the first ones to receive this new weapon to replace our old C-8SFW rifles. Then I checked my respirator gear before I looked back to the lieutenants who commanded each element of my combat team. One of the young troopers in the second file of soldiers abruptly fell onto his knees and I went over to see if he was ok. I was afraid that he might have the Fever. If he did then all of us in the platoon would probably be getting it as well. If that happened we would probably end up being quarantined until we had all recovered.
T
he trooper looked up at me and then finally said “Sir I don’t feel so good.”

“Ok son you’re staying behind on this drop.” I couldn’t have any sick troops on this drop. In fact allowing this man to drop was against regs.
Finally the loadmaster of the place came up to me and said, “Five minutes sir.”
I nodded and slipped on my facemask, which contained my high altitude breathing assist unit, my special scrambled comm. pickups, and my NVG array.

As we neared the drop position the loadmaster opened the rear cargo ramp and activated the jump light. The light was currently red, but it would change to green when the pilot gave us a go for jump.

As soon as the light turned green I flung myself out into the pitch black freezing night sky at eleven thousand meters. Behind me the rest of my company soon joined me in freefall. We would continue to fall like this until we reached three hundred meters when we would open our chutes.
Finally I gave the signal over our special scrambled comm. and pulled the cord on my chute. The complex nylon black para-foil unfurled with a sudden shock and I was suddenly going a lot slower than before. Below me I could see the lights of the Capital buildings and my primary objective. Surrounding the building there was a number of armoured vehicles of the State Guard. I just hoped that they wouldn’t be adverse to our landings.

As soon as I hit the ground I detached my parachute gear and ran towards the nearest vehicle only to be fired upon. A glowing streak of tracers arched towards me and I hit the ground just as it arched overhead.

{{Separator|j|Present Day}}

“Sir are you ok?” I looked up at the bartender and he smiled and asked again if I was ok.

“Oh I’m all right I was just thinking about something in the distant past before I became what I am today.”

He nodded and then pointed to the beer on the table and told me “That’ll be four-fifty.”

I nodded and pulled out my wallet, inadvertently showing him my shield. I was now a NAR Federal Police Services Officer. I had joined the FPS shortly after I had left the Armed Services to begin a slightly less dangerous profession. Not that I had really noticed a lessening of risk since I had left the Armed Services, perhaps it was because I was the Captain of the Local FPS Regional Station, and perhaps because I was one of those lucky few who could never truly leave the Armed services.

Finally I managed to pay him and grab my drink before I retreated to a booth in the corner of the place where I could watch the goings on in the place. While I watched the people come into the bar I thought more about my past.

{{Separator|j|May 7th 2010}}

The defences around the Washington State Capital Buildings in Olympia were somewhat formidable considered the fact that my unit didn’t possess anything heavier than shoulder-launched rockets.
I didn’t want to kill these people but they were asking for it by firing on my troops and I. I looked through my NVG scope on my rifle and found the person that was firing on my. He was using an early series M-16A3.

I shook my head slightly and altered my aim slightly before I pulled the trigger and let loose a three round burst from my own weapon. The burst tracked up his torso, hitting him in the belly, upper chest, and neck.

He fell back and I advanced with four other members of my platoon towards the central building where we could establish a CP from which to begin the orderly gathering of weapons in order to disarm the local militia. All of the heavy weapons would be placed back into their old armouries under the supervision of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Within fifteen minutes we were able to secure the building and I went out to the back lawn to get my breath and look out at the skyline and the lightening horizon in the east.

This was where I found a horror that took my breath away. There were at least fifteen to twenty bodies lying in the lawn. They had all been shot in the back of the head and they were all victims of Blowtorch Fever and its attendant disorder TFOR.

I placed my rifle on the ground began to look around for any sign of the animals who had done this. From my point of view they were far worse then the animals that the poor victims of the torch had been turned into. This was an atrocity and that was the kind of thing that I couldn’t stand.

{{Separator|j|Present Day}}

“Is it anything that you need to talk about?”

I shook my head to bring myself out of the memory to look across the table at the man who was sitting opposite me. He was a large man with the head of a mule deer. I looked into his eyes before I finally managed to say “Not really I’m just recalling something from my past.”

“How long ago was it?”

“Back during the war.”

“You remembering something about the resistance?”

I shook my head softly before I replied, “I was involved in the invasion. I saw some of the worst atrocities during the war.”

“What atrocities?”

“The killing of unarmed civilians by radical racist groups and mobs of wild bandits throughout the former United States.”

The man slowly nodded his head before I took a slug of my beer and pulled out my mini-computer and brought up a picture that had been publicized in the years after the war. It was a picture of a man sitting with his back against a tree with a rifle beside him. In front of him was a pile of dead bodies. I handed the man the device and he looked at the picture before he said, “That was a terrible time.”

“You’re telling me. I was the man with my back to the tree.”

“Where was that?”

“Would you believe that was in Olympia Washington?”

He looked at me for a second as if to confirm what I was saying was true before he finally said, “That was a bad time in history.”

“Yes it was, considering the fact that we thought that the human race was beyond that sort of racism.”

“The problem is that we are inherently an idiosyncratic species.”

“That’s for sure.” I took a swig of my beer before I went on, “I have seen a lot over the past fifty years, and not a lot of it has been good, but then I come into a place like this and it renews my faith in the human race.”

“Renews your faith? Colonel, I’d have thought what you went through getting that second VC would have proven that the human race is full of monsters. And I am no less of monster than any other soldier that fought in the war.”

I looked up at the figure that was now standing beside the deer. Instantly I recognized him. It was Capt. Scott. S. Jameson from a small black ops group that was known as Havoc’s Hounds back during the war.

He looked a little different from the picture that I had received of him roughly 32 years ago. When I was told that he was making life difficult for the advance on the eastern seaboard.
“Captain what are you doing in a dive like this?”

The beer stein that he held in his hand clattered as he set it on the table. “I live in the hotel next door. Damned government gave me fame when I didn’t want or deserve it, and now I’m doing what I can to hide from the cameras so that I can get on with my life. That doesn’t explain you though, Colonel. Thought you’d be down south with the FPS rooting out the last of the ‘New Confederacy Resistance’ group.”

“I got out of the army after the war was pretty much over, but I still have to serve my damn reserve stints every so often. I’ve seen enough death and destruction for one lifetime during that blasted war. As for my FPS posting here, I requested it!”

The wolf facing me laughed, and I could tell that it wasn’t forced. “You know, before Pennsylvania signed the annexation I was worried that you’d be shifted east to hunt for me. Your counterpart on this coast once told me that he’d requested it…Right before…” His eyes seemed to darken for a moment and he chugged half of his stein. “Right before I put my .45 to his head and pulled the trigger. He’d killed the man who’d first given me respect without any fear motivating it.”

I nodded my head. “I was getting ready to move my unit east, when a group in California started executing POWs.”

“That group from outside LA? I heard that action was nasty. Right after we got the news to report in – Pennsylvania had agreed to become part of Canada.” He replied pensively he rubbed his arm. From what I knew of his medical reports he’d broken that arm in several places just before he’d been given his commission in the Canadian Army.

“Remembering old battles?” I asked as I took a drink of my beer.

“Something like that.” He commented, taking a drink of his own beer. “The New York Irregulars had been folded into the army about six months before, but they never forgot how frequently I’d bloodied their noses. One of them almost go me with an IED when I went to commandeer and abandoned truck to move some stores to one of my camps.”

I shook my head; I hated IEDs as much as the next man. I had my own fare share of encounters with the blasted things. “I’d heard that they were particularly vicious just before we managed to pacify the region. They really loved their IEDs.” I told him before I tipped my bottle up, only to find that it had somehow gone empty. “Damn that one went down quickly.”

“Vicious? Bark was bad, but I had a worse bite. I’ll never figure it out, but they’d managed to get a hold of 15 M1A1s about a week before you guys hit upstate. I was sent in to capture as many as I could, and to destroy the rest. If it hadn’t been for old Murphy showing up they wouldn’t have known we were there, until their ammunition, fuel, and remaining tanks went up.” He said as he finished his beer and looked over at the bar. “Gordy, a refill and one for the Colonel here, on me!”

I wagged my tail a little before I commented. “I’ve heard some old stories from some of our old tank veterans that the battles between our Leopard 2s and your M1s were really something else. Two of the world’s best tanks going head to head against one another. The only problem your tankers kept facing was the fact that they were always running out of gas.”

He cocked an ear at me. “To true, until the geniuses in charge remembered that the turbine engines in the M1 can burn almost any type of fuel.”

I chuckled slightly. “The Leopards could also do the same thing, but in reality the tank battles in the war were mainly decided by the skill of our crews. After all when you look at it now both tanks were virtually identical in terms of firepower, armour, and mobility. You guys had the advantage in armour, and we had the advantage in mobility.”

“Well you do know that the Leo 2 had a design flaw? It was something that I discovered during the battle of Stroudsburg. One Heat round to a specific part of the turret would put it out of action.”

“That flaw was rectified in Kodiak 1s that we started sending to the front in the later part of the war. But all things considered most of the battles that we fought in were ridiculously lopsided. Your people always had more, more equipment, more men, and more ammunition. Your only problem was the fact that your battle organization was terrible. I could find better command and leadership in this bar here, not counting us of course.”

“Don’t blame me. Remember, it wasn’t until you put that million-dollar bounty on my head that I was an officer, and even then I managed to keep my team streamlined. But most of the brass hats had come from the old US Military, and the were all mostly what were known as ‘Ring Knockers!” The captain growled the last two words; obviously he still felt some resentment towards some of the officers that he’d served under in the early part of his military career.

I nodded at that; every front line soldier in the history of warfare generally had at least one or two gripes about his senior officers. “Well considering how much your military liked to brag, before the collapse and the war, about how attacking them would be a useless and futile gesture it must’ve been quite a surprise that we managed to pull off as many victories as we did. Of course it probably didn’t help your soldiers on the ground that your Air Force was MIA during the whole war. Our ability to call for reliable air support was probably one of the main factors that won the war for us.” I concluded before I took a swallow from the bottle of beer that Gordy had just placed in front of me.

“Well you can’t fly if you can’t fit in the seat. Really can’t fly if most of your pilots wind up dead from the same disease that gives the rest tails. Of course if our Navy hadn’t turned Privateer, well…”

“You’ve probably heard this before, but for some reason we managed to dig up enough pilots that were healthy, and able to fit into our planes for us to be able to continue operations as if nothing at all was happening at all, other than the war that is.”

He nodded and chuckled dryly. “I’ve heard it all before. Military research seems to half a dozen guys who were up in the Sierra Madres on a survival-training course as the source of the branch of TFORs that took out most of the Air Force. Apparently it was only the bases in Texas and the New Confederacy that had enough pilots left healthy and able to fit into the cockpits of their aircraft. And as we both know Texas stabilized itself about the same time as you started crossing the border and coming south.”

I took another drink of my beer and leaned back in my seat a little, letting my eyes close for a second. “Well our CF-18, and CF-35 pilots did run into some resistance when they first began flying over your border on sorties. But it was never a really serious threat to them. My own wife said that ground-fire, SAMs, and triple A, were a more serious threat then your fighter pilots. Hell the highest scoring ace of the war, Ken Wright was able to bag twenty-seven kills during the whole war. You remember him? Major in the Air Force. He was killed five years ago by some wacko with a misplaced grudge.”

“Yeah. I raised a glass with him once. He saved my ass during the Atlanta Campaign.”

I nodded slowly and raised my beer bottle to honour Major Wright’s memory and drained it before I called Gordy to get me another one. “There was a time that I knew the Major. I did some training up at Cold Lake two years before the war and I met him a few times. He was a nice guy; he had a wife and two kids. He was also was very devoted to his job, flying for 404 Squadron RCAF.”

He quirked an ear at me. “I met him once at the Officer’s Mess at Camp A15 outside of DC. He surprised me by being one of the few people not to be scared by my appearance.”

“Well I did have the privilege of tracking the nut bar that killed him. Turns out it was a young man who thought that the Major been the one to put a bomb through the deck of the former USS North Carolina.”

Scott looked at me, his ears rocking back a little as he shook his head in disbelief. “Wait…The Major was killed because of the North Carolina? I was running the LTAD for that – it wasn’t an CF-35, but one of the F-117’s captured in Nevada that dropped that bomb.”

I nodded in concurrence since I was also familiar with that op. “At that point in time he wasn’t even using an CF-35 any more. 404 Squadron had moved onto the F/A-22 Raptor by that point in the war, and I should know. My wife was a Captain in that Squadron.”

“I know that. Besides that bomb may have caused a lot of damage, but if the limpets hadn’t blasted a hole in her engineering spaces she’s still be floating.”

“Last I heard they did re-float, two years ago, but she was a mess. They say that the restoration is going to take at least another five years before she can go back on display again. It was pity to sink that old battlewagon, but I guess that the New Confederacy would’ve done something awful if they had managed to get her operational”

“Well they deserved it. One of the Light Cruisers that the NC got through the blockade torched Old Ironsides. What a sad, sad loss…” From the tone of his voice I could tell, that like most citizens of the former US that he had a genuine affection for that old wooden sailing ship. In a way his affection for Old Ironsides was like the pride that Canadians had for the Bluenose.

“I know what you mean Scott. The ship that torched Old Ironsides was only a Light Cruiser, now can you imagine if the North Carolina had gotten free? She would have been almost impossible to stop, after all she was a battleship, she was designed to take enormous amounts of damage and still be able to float and fight.”

“I heard that you were on the short list of people that they were thinking of using to track down the Enterprise and the America. They ever find those two ships? Two rogue flat-tops, even after all these years of peace, is a problem. Hell, Europe is still pretty quiet, the countries in Africa and South-am are still trying to settle their borders…”

I nodded before I twitched an ear slightly and said in a low tone of voice that was not meant to be overheard. “Well my sources inside of Military Intelligence tell me that the Germans have managed to pull themselves together again, with Austria, Poland, Denmark, and Belgium all included in their borders. Now they are all under the command of a new Human Centric government that is stirring up echoes of the past. To tell you the truth that scares me quite a bit!”

Scott nodded, took a drink of his beer before he pointed out. “What really scares me is that after the Soviet Union collapsed back in the early 90’s there was barely any control on their Nukes, and now… Think about it – the rest of the world went the same way we did. What do you think happened to all of those weapons in the international arsenal?”

I nodded slightly and rocked my ears at the same time. “You think that the government is going to try and do something to secure all of those weapons of mass destruction?”

He shook his head and frowned a little before taking a drink of his beer and saying. “There is no way that we can. We’re already having enough problems with the NCR’s running free, and even if they had somebody like me or you put together a powered TFOR team to work in the bag there’s the question of diplomacy.”

I finished off my beer and ordered yet another one before I slowly said, “I don’t want to have to fight again, not like that. I would rather live out the rest of my days here in peace, well relative peace at least.”

“I have to agree with you there. Back before the collapse I considered myself a pacifist.”

“Yeah now I believe that any politician who want to start a war should go out and spend some time on the front lines and live a few days in the shoes of the soldiers that he or she is sending out to do the dying. See what the war that he or she is voting for is really like!”

“Yeah, better yet, put them in a black-ops guerrilla team.”

“Like my boys in the 1st.” I commented before I took a swig from my new bottle of beer. “The worst part of the whole god-damned war was the letters that I had to write.”

“I got lucky there. I only lost one and she had… She was my fiancée. I’d even tried to getting her to stay back at the base that day – one of those gut feelings you start getting after a while.”

“I know what you mean. There were times when knew that one of my troopers wouldn’t be coming back even before we moved out.” I took a drink of my beer before I gazed wistfully at the ceiling over my head. “My own wife, Captain Elizabeth Strong, also died during the war, and our only son caught the torch and died from it just before I did.” I felt a pair of matching tears run down both sides of my cheeks as I said that.

“Jen was… She was a wonderful person and a hell of a soldier. Her mother had been in South Carolina when the collapse hit, in a hospital, recovering from the Torch as one of the first thousand survivors of TFOR. The last contact to come through before the phone systems failed was from the aunt that had been providing housing for her. NC goons took both of them to one of their ‘Quarantine Facilities.” Scott’s eyes had gone cold and hard and I could feel raw energy that seemed to crackle around him for a few seconds.

I shook my head. “Those places had a very, very bad reputation.”

“Sorry… The Hounds freed one of those places. Remember Hitler and his concentration camps from WWII? Well the Quarantine Camp was like that, only worse. The food-animal teefers were turned into food for the carnivore teefers.”

I let out a low rumbling growl off my own and I could feel the fur on the back of my neck starting to stand up. I forced myself to calm down before I finally managed to say, with a hitch in my voice. “My wife died in a mission over Tampa Bay three days before the cessation of hostilities and the end of the war. Her wingman told me that triple A from near the Tampa Bay Convention Centre hit her F-22 as she was making a bombing run on the place. That was where the remnants of the 13th Confederate Armoured and 5th Confederate Infantry divisions were holed up.”

Scott’s ears pricked up. “Tampa? I was in the hospital during that one, recovering from almost killing myself taking out those NCA Tankers that had killed Jen. She died in my arms and I couldn’t do anything about it. But I did avenge her, as much plasma as I could muster. You must’ve seen some of the pictures of those tanks after I was through with them.”

I laughed a little and wagged my tail. “Yeah. You really didn’t leave much there that could be identified as tank, other than the craters, and a few pieces of melted metal. From what I know the Satellite Intel boys said that they were able to pick up your heat bloom on their orbital scans.”

Scott chuckled as well. “Almost killed my whole team with that idiocy.” His tone turned cold as he continued. “I’d gone to offer those tankers a chance to surrender, and they opened fire! I was carrying a fucking flag of truce, and they opened fire!”

I could feel the air beginning to crackle around him as he said that in a tight, angry tone of voice. “That was a stupid thing that they did, but then again war is probably the stupidest thing that the human race does.”

“Like I said before, humanity is composed of monsters. Some move beyond it, but not many.”

“What about us old soldiers?”

“I think that we’re both monsters who have had our fill of the normal things that monsters do. And we’ve done what we could to make the world a place where more of humanity can grow beyond being monsters.”

I morosely finished my beer and said slowly. “We keep this up much longer and Gordy’ll have to carry us to a room to sleep it off.”

Scott laughed. “Suite 10F in the hotel next door is mine. Besides Gordy wouldn’t be carrying either of us – that’s what the elk over by the door is paid to do.”

I nodded and pulled myself to my feet before I staggered to the left a little. “Damn if the change didn’t make me a cheap drinker. When I was still human I could drink most of my boys under the table, but now a field mouse could out drink me.”

“Comes with the territory, Colonel. Dire wolves never did carry much body fat. Look it up sometime – body fat slows the absorption of alcohol, if memory serves.”

I chuckled a bit before I shook my head and asked rhetorically. “How is this old wolf going to get home now? My house is on the other side of the city out in the suburbs.”

“If your not going to be able to make it home safely…” He turned to the bar and asked, “Gordy, overnight 3 is still open, right?” He turned back to me once more. “C’mon, Colonel, we keep a few rooms in the hotel open for emergencies like this. Just take it easy and follow me, I’ll show you the way.”

I took the smaller wolf’s hand in my own and grinned a little, my long sharp teeth showing a little. “At least I don’t have to worry about reporting in late for work tomorrow, after all I am the local station chief.”

Scott was a lot steadier on his feet than I was as he showed me to a door that connected the bar to the hotel next door. “Colonel, this place here – the Whistle and this hotel next to it – is what keeps me sane. I can still remember every battle, and most of the faces of the guys that I took out.”

“You too?” I asked, wondering if he had my kind of memory.

“I don’t think any of us can forget. The war was terrible – worse than any that had come before.

“Well I was referring to your memory Captain. You see I have perfect recall, and I always have had it. So you can only imagine what it is like for me?”

“That is much worse than mine. You spearheaded the Olympia Campaign, didn’t you? God, even in the bone-dry military reports it sounds like it was horrific.” He paused in front of a door. “And here we are, Colonel. Overnight 3 – one of five rooms set aside for bar patrons that can’t make it home. I’ve got to get to bed myself – the lines crossing into Pennsylvania were blown all to hell, and even now we’re still putting ‘em back together.”

I paused at the threshold of the room and pulled my mini-comp from my jacket pocket and handed it to Scott. “Look in the image files under O-Camp and you’ll find some images that you’ll never forget, and neither do I. Image 14 is the worst.”

He looked at the device for several moments and frowned at what he saw on the electro-polymer screen, his eyes seemed to lose their life with each image. The air around him began to crackle with energy and little charges of blue white electricity danced in across and through his fur. The air was beginning to smell of ozone when he finally said, “Sir, I don’t know if I’d have left that city standing.”

“I know exactly what you mean, but I had orders to take the capital buildings and hold them until the PPCLI got there to relieve us. They wouldn’t have been happy if they had found a crater where the city was when they got there. By the way the man in that picture with his back up against a tree and the rifle at his feet was me.”

Scott paused for several moments as if regaining his composure before he said, “Sir… Let me just say that you are a better man. I would not have held back at all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go blow something up. The charge has been building in me for a while, but tonight…”

I took back my mini-comp and staggered into the room. “I understand completely Captain.”

He stalked off down the hall trailed by the slight smell of ozone behind him.

I closed the door and shucked my greatcoat and suit jacket before I removed my two old Sig-Sauer P-229 .357 automatics from either shoulder holster and placed them on the bedside table. With the weapons removed I pulled off everything else and flopped down into bed.

I knew that in the morning I would suffer for my actions tonight but for some reason finding someone to talk to about my wartime experiences felt good.

2007-10-28T01:10:06Z

Oberon:

The Mandalorian

2007-10-24T02:04:57Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Alien]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mandalorian,The}}
[[Category:Xanadu]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{byline|user=Oberon}}
{{editing requested}}

{{universe|[[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]]}}
{{side note|This story uses "Commonwealth" spelling, so extra "u's" may show up in some words and not be an error}}

I looked around the room at the convention center. My blasted helmet was riding on my shoulders and fogging up again. Why in name that was all that was holy had I decided on coming to this convention when I could afford to come as so many other things. My costume was hot, sweaty and uncomfortable but that was the penalty that I paid for being such a big fan of the Star Wars Series. After I moment I removed the helmet to get a breath of fresh air and hiked up my heavy belt; on one side of my belt was a holstered replica of a Star Wars heavy blaster pistol from the time period roughly forty years after the Battle of Yavin. On the opposite side of my belt I wore a pair of silver hilted lightsabers, normally this wouldn’t look that unusual, but the fact that I was wearing what appeared to be black, red, and gold mandalorian armour and a black cloak did make it unusual. My armour wasn’t even standard mando armour either. I had incorporated many elements of ancient Mando’ad Neo Crusader Armour into the design of my armour. However, my armour still gave me excellent mobility and the almost standard number of attached weapons for an average Mando’ad. The reason for my unusual dress was because I had created my own character in the Star Wars universe. He was a young Jedi Knight from the approximate time of the Legacy of the Force series. My character’s grandfather had been a clone from the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars, and his grandmother had been a Jedi Knight from the same time period. During the reign of the Empire his family had kept a low profile on Concord Dawn because the Empire would definitely want to get their hands on any force sensitive person and twist them to their ideals. Once my character was born though he manifested some very obvious signs that he was much more then either his mother or his father when it came to his abilities to sense the force. Hence when he turned ten he was sent to Coruscant for training at the Jedi Temple. Twelve years later he came home to his home system, a full Jedi Knight, and donned the armour that was his by right. He was something unique in the history of his people, a Mandalorian Jedi.

I finally replaced my helmet, but I knew that in a few minutes I would go back to my large suite and get out of my armour. I was getting really tired of smelling the garlic on my breath from the baked lasagna that I had eaten for lunch. I was standing in the middle of a large open courtyard in the middle of the large convention center. In the center of the courtyard were three replica starfighters from the Star Wars series that some rich fan had brought with him to the convention. Whoever had brought the fighters must not only be a superfan, but also have some serious money to burn. The three fighters were surrounded by fans that were separated from the vehicles themselves by a thin plastic ribbon. The three fighters were from two distinct periods in the timeline, though the first one was the one that I preferred by far. It was a T-65 X-wing fighter from the original series of movies. This one had been painted in the same pattern as the ship that had been used by Luke Skywalker in the first movie when he was attacking the first Death Star. The second fighter wasn’t quite to my taste but it still belonged in the Star Wars Universe. It was an Eta-2 ''Actis'' Interceptor painted yellow, the same colours that Anakin Skywalker had used on his starfighter at the beginning of the last of the new Star Wars movies, The Revenge of the Sith. The last fighter was from the same period as the X-wing, and it was probably just as formidable. It was the most powerful member of the TIE Series of Starfighters, the TIE/D Defender.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity I finally got to the front of the line to have my picture taken with the X-wing and I was glad though I wished that the fighter was painted in the colours that my character would’ve painted his fighter. Just as I touched the wooden skin of the fighter the world changed and I blacked out from the over-stimulation of my senses.

I wasn’t sure how much later it was when I stood up and leaned against the port S-foil of the X-wing beside me. It was painted red, black and gold with three different insignia on the s-foils and fuselage. The first two belonged to the Jedi Order and the Galactic Alliance, while the third was from my own culture. It was the symbol of the Mandalorians – namely the stylized skull of a mythosaur.

“Osik!” I swore in Mando’a as I stood up, the thoughts and feelings of all of those around me came into my head through the Force forcing their way into my head like speeders in the skyways of Coruscant at rush hour. The mental chaos caused by all of the voices in the Force made me bring my hands up to the sides of my head as if to block out the sounds. The sound of my heavy Mando shuk’ome hitting the side of my buy’ce brought me to my senses a little. I breathed in deeply and calmed my mind like Master Skywalker had always told me to at the main Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Now that I was calmed down I looked at the other two fighters in the courtyard. Beside the Eta-2 was a slumped figure in black robes who was apparently unconscious. As I looked over at the TIE its P-sz9.7 Twin Ion Engines screamed into life as the pilot, who had already climbed into the fighter brought the engines on line. I couldn’t see his face because he, or she, was wearing a Standard TIE series enviro suit and helmet. The loud scream of the TIE’s engines rose in pitch and volume to the point where I could almost feel the sound through my heavy armour in my chest cavity. Finally the pilot brought the repulsors on line and the fighter shot up out of the courtyard and into the blue sky, which was rapidly filling with helicopters and flighted lifeforms.

After a few moments I turned to my fighter to begin preflight checks to ensure that everything was operating properly. Finally I finished my pre-flight checks, checked my own armour, before telling R9-Q7 to keep the converters warm in case we needed to get out of here in a hurry. There were some things in my room that I really needed to grab, like my jet/repulsor pack, and my short bladed shoto lightsaber. I swiftly grabbed my Proton Carbine out of the storage compartment under the cockpit, checked to ensure that it was set on stun, and headed off into the chaotic hallway with my force senses keyed to their maximum sensitivity. As I made my way down the scene of chaos I was bumped and jostled by panicked sentient life forms, some of which I couldn’t even begin to attempt to catalogue. The Force hummed with darkside emotions, mainly fear and panic, but there were pockets of hate and despair. In one part of hallway a tight cluster of soldiers in archaic Clone Trooper Phase I Armour were milling around pointing their DC-15s at just about anything that moved. While I was quite frankly amazed at the sight of clones I was also comforted by the sight of these troops. Not because of what they had been responsible for at the end of the Clone Wars, but because I was a descendant of a clone. As I got closer to the clones one of them looked down at my belt and noticed my two lightsabers before he snapped to attention

"General! What is going on?" In my own mind I didn't really know what was going but I also knew from my history that it wasn't a good thing to tell the clones that sort of thing.

"Sergeant hold position here and try and keep things here under control. Under no circumstances do I want you to slot any of them. Is that clear?"

"Yes General. Very Clear."

"Ori'jate" I automatically replied in Mando'a. It was then that I recalled that most of these clones understood at least a little Mando’a.

Once I was satisfied that they were doing what I had told them to I continued on my way down the hall battering my way through the crush of panicked lifeforms. At one point the crush became so dangerous I had to point my proton carbine at several of them so that they would clear a small path for me through the horde. I was making some progress towards the elevators in the central part of the convention center until I met a strange civilian in a black suit with a mirrored ocular enhancing device on his face. He looked up at me and then pulled some weird device out of his pocket and caused it to flash with a bright strobe of light that momentarily overcame the optic filters on my helmet's visor. When the glare faded I looked the man in the face and said,

"What in the haran was that for you di’kut?"

"It was to help you remember who you really are." I looked at the man and said

"I know exactly who I am, I am Pieter Skirata Jedi Knight and Mando'ad."

"That's the problem before you came here you were just one of the countless hundreds that came to this event to enjoy the festivities and now you are someone else entirely."

"I don't care what you think you or'dinii mir'osik. I am who I am and no little flashy device of yours is going to change it." The civilian shook his head and then I felt a shift in the Force from behind me. I reached out and grabbed the hands of the second black clad civilian before I said “Trying to sneak up on Jedi isn’t something that many attempt and very, very few succeed at.” The second civilian shook his head and said

“I tried Kay, but he was too quick for me.” I laughed at the two of them before I said

“You really think that there is more to me than a Mando’ad Jedi Knight? Can you prove it?”

“We can prove it – if you will let us.” The first man, who the second had identified as Kay said.

“What do I need to do? And if you intend deceit...” I trailed off in threatening silence.

“We’re here to straighten out this mess.”

“You mean this mess all around here. I just saw a squad clone troopers...”

“Not just the troopers. Look around, you’ll see all sorts of strange creatures and monsters.”

“The only thing that I haven’t seen is a strill.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that all these creatures are in this odd hall? And what is a Jedi Knight like yourself doing here?”

“I was...” I didn’t know what I was doing here. The last thing that I remembered was receiving my armour from my father back on Concord Dawn. “I don’t really know why I am here, if this is an assignment from Master Skywalker why don’t I remember it?”

“Now you’re beginning to understand. With this device we can open your mind to the truth of the matter.” I stretched out with my feelings but I could sense no deception on their part so I took the device in question from them and let advanced sensor matrix in my helmet scan it before I pulled it off and looked at it with my bare eyes and my Force sense. Finally satisfied that this wasn’t a trick I handed the strange device back to Kay, and he activated it while I still had my helmet under my arm.

As soon as the light faded the older man asked me who I was. I looked down at the helmet that I was holding in the crook of my arm before I replied I’m still not really sure. I feel now that I have two names.

"One of them is Jason Hamilton IV, and the other is Pieter Skirata."

"That's better, at least now you know who you really are, sort of."

“What the hell happened here?”

“You’re asking the wrong person kid. As far as we can tell each person here has become in essence their costume.” I replaced my buy’ce back on before looked around and then gave a little nudge to the Force, now that I was sure of who and what I was, to try and get a hint of what was going on. There was still too much disturbance, fear, and puzzlement for me to make heads or tails of it. I opened my eyes before I slowly told him,

“I can’t make heads or tails of this situation but I left a detail of fifteen clones back their in the hall to keep and eye on things to make sure that they don’t let things get too out of hand. Personally I’m going up to my room to pick up a few things.” The Man in Black nodded and then let me go on my way while he and his partner headed down the hallway that I had just come down.

When I reached my room I pulled my key card out of one of my belt pouches, thank goodness it was still there, and unlocked the door. The suite that I had rented out was known as the Ambassador Suite and it was second to only the Presidential Suite in size and luxury. I was on vacation from my job as a special weapons technician at a laboratory for my family’s company. Though I think that would change now because of what I had become. I really didn’t want to be responsible for distributing the kind of weapons that I had access to. After a few moments I located the jet/repulsor pack and attached it to my backplate with a reassuring clunk of the mag latches. I grabbed a few other things and put them into a carryall before I attached my shoto to my belt just behind my DL-50 Heavy Blaster Pistol and went out to the balcony. I was lucky because my balcony overlooked the central courtyard. So now instead of going through the hallways to get back down to my idling fighter I simply swung myself over the railing and down to the courtyards, using both the Force and the lift-pack attached to my armour to achieve a soft landing beside the X-wing. I opened the storage compartment under the cockpit and swiftly jammed the lift-pack, my carryall, and my Proton Rifle into the compartment before I closed it up.

“Took you long enough.” Came the comment in basic from the droid socket behind the cockpit. That was probably the most annoying thing about this particular R9 droid. He had independently decided that he wasn’t satisfied with his communication abilities so he had fitted himself with more advanced vocabulator, one that was capable of producing Basic, Mando’a, Shyriiwook, and Huttese.

“Oh switch off Gett’ad.” I replied in a good natured banter. When I had received my Knighthood I had received Gett’ad and this X-wing as part of the arrangement for me to join the Hardpoint Squadron. The Galactic Alliance’s Jedi Fighter Squadron.

Now I was one of only a handful of Jedi Knights on Earth. This was definitely going to make my life a lot more interesting than it had been before. The fact that my heritage was definitely different from the rest of the Jedi Knights on Earth would only serve to further separate me from the rest of the human race.

When the canopy of the starfighter finished closing I powered up the repulsors and brought my X-wing to a position that allowed me to rocket into the atmosphere with the S-foils in cruising position. The only problem with that was the fact that the sky was even more crowded then when the TIE had left the courtyard. There was even a pair of large red and black dragons twisting and dodging in the sky over the convention center. Once I was clear of all of those low altitude hazards the new engines of the XJ-6 allowed me to breach the atmosphere in less than ten minutes. As soon as the fighter reached orbit I found that this place in space was in some ways even more hazardous then the atmosphere down below. There were hundreds of objects that my targeting computer was tracking as unknowns. The largest of which was a god damned Constitution Class Starship from the original Star Trek series. At the sight of that ship I reached over and switched the S-foils from cruising configuration to attack configuration. The switch also activated my targeting HUD and my deflector shield monitor. Since low orbit was crowded with debris and other objects I brought my X-wing up to a higher altitude where there wasn’t much risk of me running into anything. Finally when my fighter was clear of all risks I shut down the four Incon 4J.4 Fusial Thrust Engines and let my fighter drift in orbit. I needed the calm and peace of orbit so that I could meditate on what had just happened to me. Before my life had been so orderly and comfortable, but now with one event my future was cast in doubt. As a Jedi I couldn’t see myself supplying weapons to anyone. Dealing weapons was antithetical to a Jedi’s sworn mission of protecting people and preventing conflicts, but at the same time the part of me that was Mando'ad had no such compunctions. I had to consider what path I was to follow, that of the Jedi or that of the Mando, or maybe even a combination of both. I also wondered about my family and if they would accept me as I now was. After all having a son who was a successful research director was one thing and a Jedi Knight was something else completely different. For one thing I would have to give up a fair amount of my things, since, according to the old Jedi Code a Jedi was supposed to be without possessions other then his lightsabers. Mind you I had no intentions of giving up my Mando Beskar’gam because it helped define who I was now. At some point later on I heard a voice come across the comm.

“What’s up?” I brought myself out of my meditative trance looked at my combat information display to see that there was a fighter coming in on my six. I instantly reacted by activating the four engines of my fighter and kicking it up on its port S-foil to get the other fighter out of my rear quarter. Once I was confident that I was at least a little safe from laser fire from the other fighter I tried to get him into my targeting cross hairs, only to find that the other pilot was very, very good. He also seemed to have some ability with the Force as well. Finally I managed to get along beside him. It was the Eta-2 from the convention.

“Why were you trying to sneak up on me?”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on anyone Jason, I was trying to get your attention, and I was trying to get away from all of the dangers down there.”

“What dangers?”

“Well for one there is so much chaos down there I don’t know what is going on.” I nodded slightly an looked over at him in the cockpit of his fighter before I finally was able to recognize him. It was Simon Jackson, my best friend who I had come to the convention with.

“I’m up here to try and clear my mind and figure out what I should do next.”

“I was thinking along the same lines Jason.”

“At least you’re a normal human Simon. I’m diferent in that I’m a Mando’ad Jedi Knight.

“Mando’ad?”

“Mandalorian.”

“Ah I see what you mean.”

“There aren’t very many Jedi out there, but at least they are normal Jedi and not Mando’ad like myself.”

“You’re telling me. At least you are unique I think that there are at least five to ten versions of myself down there, not including all of the ones in cybernetic suits.”

“Did you see any other Mando’ade down there?”

“Oh there are a few, but the ones that I’ve seen are all mainly recreations of two characters, either Jango Fett or Boba Fett.”

“So in other words both Mandalores are down there.”

“Mandalores?”

“Mandalore is sort of the Mando’ad Chief of State, and incidentally Boba Fett is my Mand’alor, though any of the versions of him down there are liable to be a lot younger than the Fett that I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“My character was born in the year 19 ABY, while Boba Fett was born in the year 32 BBY and your character was born just over ten years before he was.”

“I can see what you mean. People down there are from all sorts of time periods and places. So what have you got planned now?”

“Well for one thing I’m going to the hanger that my father maintains. There I can store this thing, after all do you think that the government will allow me to keep it if they knew its capabilities?”

“I see what you mean. Do you think that you would mind storing this little thing? Since I don’t own any place to hide it from those same government forces.”

“Sure thing, just stay on my ten-o-clock and I’ll guide you down there.” As soon as I had finished saying that I brought up my forward deflectors to occlude the atmospheric friction of re-entry. However before I could begin re-entry I saw a bone white dagger shaped ship rising up form the surface of the planet. Right now it wasn’t more than a hundred meters long but I knew that soon enough it would be much, much larger. The IFF tagged it as the Executor Class Super Star Destroyer ''Intimidator''. As I watched the seemingly growing Super Star Destroyer five other large warships were boosted up into orbit by some unknown force. Two of them were Star Destoryers. The first was Venator Class Star Destroyer that my IFF tagged as the ''Defender''. The second was an Imperator II Class Star Destoryer that was tagged as the ''Havoc''. The other three ships were easy for me to recognize even though my computer couldn’t tag them. The first one was a Commonwealth Glorious Heritage Class Heavy Cruiser from the TV show Andromeda. The second ship was a Battlestar from the new version of the Battlestar Galactica TV show, and the last ship was a Sovereign Class Starship from the most recent Star Trek Movies. I weaved my way through the growing fleet of heavy warships to make my way back down through the atmosphere.

Twenty five minutes later after crossing the entire continent at over Mach 4, I landed the fighter on the hardstand by the front doors to the hanger. My family’s private airfield was located just outside of Richmond B.C. Just as was popping the canopy my cell, which was in one of my belt pouches rang out its Imperial March. I pulled it out snapped it open and answered.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“Mom its me.”

“This doesn’t sound like anyone that I know. I’m calling the Miami Police, because you’ve obviously stolen my son’s phone.”

“Mom It is me, Jason Louis Christopher Hamilton IV. Something weird happened at the convention that I was attending.”

“How can I be sure that you are my son?”

“Mom the cat is called Horatio and the dog is Bonaparte. You wanted another daughter but you didn’t have any more children. You feel that father should retire now instead of staying on as the CEO of his company. Have I said enough to prove to you that I am me? I could go on if you want.”

“Fine it is you, I will admit that much, but where is your little brother?”

“Mom I’m not sure, but as soon as I get back to Xanadu I’ll make sure that I find him.”

“WHAT YOU LEFT HIM THERE UNATTENDED?!!!” I closed my eyes and then tried to project my calm down the phone connection.

“Mom I’m quite sure that he can take care of himself now, after all he is seventeen years old. Besides as near as I can tell everyone at the convention was turned into their costumes. I highly doubt that anyone would willingly mess with a Nietzshean Highguard Captain like him.”

“Huh?”

“Mom he was dressed that way at the convention, just like I was dressed as a Mandalorian Jedi.”

“Then how can I be sure that you are my son?”

“I can tell you that I am both Jason Hamilton IV as well as Pieter Skirata and I would suspect that he is the same. In that he probably possesses two sets of memories of who he is, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware of who he really is.” There was s sigh over the phone before her worried voice asked me

“Well then where are you?”

“I’m at our private field outside of Richmond I should be home in roughly two hours, depending on the traffic.”

“I will wait until you get here, but if you aren’t who you say you are I’ll make sure that he VPD get here faster than you can think.” The was a click at the other end I I smiled before I snapped my phone closed. I just hoped that mom would understand the reality of me when she finally saw what I had become. I used the fighter’s repulsors to gently coax it into the hanger where I slipped it into an open space on the left side. The right side was taken up by my father’s Gulfstream G-IV. Once I had the ship placed where I wanted it I shut down the engines and shut down the main reactor. Now that the fighter was fully shut down. I removed my harness and climbed out of the cockpit. The sound of a second set of engines shutting down told me that Anakin had put his fighter right up against my own. I jumped down from the port s-foils and began to hunt through the storage compartment for my things. I had just turned and used the Force to close the canopy when a voice asked me

“You really think that you’re going to leave us here?” I turned around to find both R2-D2 and Gett’ad standing beside each other looking at my and Skywalker.

“Might as well let them come, otherwise we’ll never hear the end of this.” I muttered a few choice oaths in Huttese under my breath before I went over to the front of the hanger with Skywalker and the droids in tow. In the small garage that I had there was, as I expected a car sitting inside. This car was a 2006 Maybach Series 62 Limo. I shook my head at the sheer extravagance of the car and then used the Force, along with Skywalker to get the droids into the back seat before I drove the car home.

Three and a hours later just as I was pulling everything out of the car my mom came into the garage and saw me. From my altered perspective she seemed smaller than she had been before. She looked at me in my fearsome Mando’ad beskar’gam and opened her mouth. I could tell that she was about to yell so I took of my buy’ce and projected calm through the Force before I said

“Mom relax it’s me.”

“You can’t be my son, your too young to be him.” That much was true. Before the the Xanadu Effect I had been just about to turn thirty yeas old, and yet now I was barely twenty one.

“Mom the character that I was representing is younger than I am, hence I lost nine years of age in order to fit my characterization.”

“How am I going to get used to this?”

“Well under the circumstances you should be glad that I’m still human. There are a lot of people who went to that convention who aren’t even human any more.”

“So what are you then? Though I suspect it’s something from Star Wars.”

“I’m a Mandalorian and a Jedi Knight.”

“A WHAT?.”

“A Mandalorian Mom, a highly skilled member of a famous warrior society from the Mandalorian Sector of the Star Wars universe. We’re usually Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters so our reputation isn’t the greatest, but we are honourable men and women.”

“I still find this hard to believe.” I held out my buy’ce before I said

“Mom put this on and you’ll see the truth of the matter.” She did as I told her for a few moments before she took it off and asked me,

“What are all those lights in you helmet? And why is is so stuffy?”

“Mom when I have the full kit on the enviro system keeps everything nice and cool for me, and those lights are the HUD or Heads Up Display. They allow me to see in low light, fog, smoke, and other less then perfect visual conditions.”

“What about all of those other lights?”

“They tell me of the state of the weapons that are attached to my armour and they also give me full 360 degree vision.” After a moment while she digested what I had told her she handed my buy’ce back and said,

“This is going to take some getting used to.”

“You’re telling me mom. At least you don’t have to live in my place.” She nodded and looked at the two of us for a second before she said.

“I guess that you need to place your things in your room. At that point Gett’ad pointed asked,

“Is there anything that we can do?” Mom looked around before she noticed the two droids who were standing beside the car.

“What on earth are those things?”

“Those things, mom, are our astromech droids. They help us with flight controls in our fighters.”

“Fighters, what fighters?”

“Well I have a T-65XJ-6 X-wing and Simon over there as an Eta-2 ''Actis'' Jedi Interceptor. I hope that you don’t mind but for now we’re storing them in dad’s hanger.”

“Well I guess that you have to have somewhere to store them.” I nodded before I replied,

“This is better than letting the government store them since they would never give them back.” Mom nodded before I told her that we were going down to the exercise room for a little sparing practice. I felt that I need to get some practise with my lightsabers or I would loose that skill which had been so hard won. I could tell from her expression that she was worried. “Don’t worry we’ll turn our weapons down so that they don’t cause any damage to the furniture in there.” With that both Simon and headed to the exercise room where I pulled out my two lightsabers and fiddled with the controls before I activated them. The two silver-white blades emerged from the hilts of the weapons and buzzed into existence with the characteristic hum that was known throughout the galaxy. Simon did the same thing with his weapon and soon we were sparing with ferocious energy. Anyone who didn’t know that we were actually sparring would think that we were actually trying to harm each other. At one point in the match I brought my two weapons together and connected their hilts to form a single double bladed weapon. When we finally stopped I bowed to Simon and said

“You are quite the duelist Simon, a lot better than you used to be.”

“Well I wasn’t a Jedi before Jason.”

“True, but I don’t think that even Master Katarn would be your equal.”

“Master who?”

“Jedi Master Kyle Katarn, he’s been my fencing master for the past four years, the only person in the order who is a better swordsman is Grand Master Skywalker.”

“Let me guess, Luke Skywalker.”

“That’s right, he’s the Grand Master of the New Jedi Council. The council is comprised of Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker, Jedi Masters Cilghal, Kyp Durron, Corran Horn, Kyle Katarn, Saba Sebatyne, Mara Jade Skywalker, Tresina Lobi, Kenth Hammer, and Kam and Tionne Solusar.”

“Are you meaning that the Jedi of your time period are permitted to marry?”

“Yup, otherwise the order would die out in relatively short order because there are so few of us. In fact right now when we get organized I believe that having Jedi marry would be the only way to ensure that people like us will continue to survive.”

“Well you shouldn’t be so modest Jason, you are also an excellent duelist. One thing that I noticed was the fact that you were quite familiar and practiced with your double bladed weapon. I haven’t seen very many Jedi who are any good with a weapon like that, if any at all.”

“Ever since I joined the order when I looked into the old records I found that using a double blade suited my temperment. It took me quite a while to get myself prepared to start using it. My fencing Master Kyle Katarn was sceptical when I told him that I was going to take up the Form V style with a variable weapon that could either be two lightsabers or a double bladed weapon.” Simon nodded slowly before he asked me,

“What then are your short term plans?”

“Well we have to get back to Xanadu so that I can pick up my car and check out the other Jedi, and Mando’ad that are still there.”

Three days later, after much difficulty in trying to find a flight into Miami, we both sat in first class seats on a Canadian Airlines 767 to Miami Florida so that we could return to the Xanadu convention. I was slightly uncomfortable because I was wearing civilian clothing instead of my mando beskar’gam, and my lightsabers were in my registered baggage in the aircraft’s cargo hold with the rest of my Mando equipment. The only weapon that I had on me was shoto lightsaber, which was concealed in my left boot. I had managed, through the use of a Jedi Mind Trick to convince the man who had been watching the metal detector and his partner that my lightsaber were merely a harmless toy and nothing to be afraid of. Simon had told me that with Force no Jedi is without options.

“Simon I may be a Jedi but I’m also mando’ad, my people don’t feel comfortable when we are completely unarmed. That is why I had to make them think that my shoto is just a harmless toy and not a short bladed lightsaber.” He had nodded before returning his attention to his champagne, which was complementary for us.

“Is flying first class always like this?”

“Yup, though normally I like to use one of our company jets, but in this case that would be an abuse of my position.” He nodded and sat back to enjoy the flight.

Ten hours later I unfolded myself from my seat and collected my carry on bag from the overhead compartment before I nudged Simon from his sleep to indicate to him that we had arrived at our destination. He looked up at me, shook his head and retrieved his own luggage before the two of us debarked from the plane and went to collect our tagged baggage. In his case that was precisely nothing, but in my case it was my armour and standard weapons load, minus my jet pack, which I had decided to leave at home with the droids. We had already decided that as soon as we could we would sneak back into Xanadu so that we could collect our things and consult with our colleges about what we were going to do next.

However, before we reached the convention center in our rented car we stopped at a local park where I quite thankfully changed out of my civilian clothes and back into my armour, though I left my buy’ce off so as not to get anyone’s suspicions up. Over my armour and weapons I wore a long black greatcoat, I left my helmet and cloak inside my carry on bag while I placed the bag with my civilian clothes into the trunk of the rental car. Getting back into Xanadu was easy when you were a pair of Jedi Knights, all we had to do was the blank the memories of the guards of the several seconds that it took to pass by them. Once inside I removed my jacket, replaced my cloak and helmet before I asked one of the other guards where the Jedi were currently located. He looked at me for a second before I opened my cloak wide enough for him to see my two silver hilted lightsabers at my side and he nodded,

“The Jedi are in a meeting in room 745 on the seventh floor, east block.” First we went to my suite where I placed my bags before heading to the room that the guard had mentioned to get into the meeting. I hoped that everything would eventually work out in the end..

{{series bar
|next=[[Back to Xanadu]]
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Back to Xanadu

2007-10-23T16:27:49Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Alien]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Back to Xanadu}}
[[Category:Xanadu]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{byline|user=Oberon}}
{{editing requested}}
{{WIP}}

{{universe|[[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]]}}
{{side note|This story uses "Commonwealth" spelling, so extra "u's" may show up in some words and not be an error}}

So here I was sitting in a conference room at the Xanadu Convention Center four days after the events that changed my life. Sitting around the room were thirty-five people that comprised the entirety of the population of people who had dressed up as Jedi at the convention. For some unknown reason everyone had become what their costume represented four days ago. I was an anomaly, a Mando’ad Jedi Knight. The man I sat beside was a little more representative of the real Jedi here at the table, since there were roughly a dozen versions of him here in the room. His name was Simon Jackson and he had been my best friend before the event that had changed our lives. He was still my friend but now he was more than my friend he was also one of my comrades in the newly created Jedi Order. Each member of the order sat at a large table and looked at the five people at the head of the table. The smallest had been a child before the change but now he wasn’t even human. Instead he was in the form of Jedi Grand Master Yoda, the oldest and wisest member of the order. However this version of Yoda was much, much younger than the one that had appeared in the movies. The second Jedi Master was a tall bald, inteligent looking black man. The third man at the table was my own master Jedi Master Luke Skywalker though he was younger than I remember him to be. The last two were actually variations of the same person. The first represented Master Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of the Clone Wars and the second was much older, probably from the period when Master Luke Skywalker was merely a farm boy on Tatooine.
Master Yoda looked at me for a few moments before he asked in his small nasal voice

“Who are you?” I removed my buy’ce and replied,

“My name is Jason Hamilton IV but here I am known as Pieter Skirata.” The older of the two Obi-Wan’s asked,

“What time period are you from? And why are you wearing that armour?”

“I’m from the Galactic Alliance Period, roughly forty years after the Battle of Yavin IV and the reason I wear this armour is because I am Mando’ad.”

“You are a Mandalorian?” Asked the younger of the two Obi-Wan’s

“That is correct, my grandmother was a Jedi Knight during the Clone Wars and my grandfather was a Clone Soldier. After the war my father was raised on Concord dawn where he married and had me and my older brothers, none of whom have my affinity with the Force.”

“So I see. How long have you been a member of the Jedi Order?”

“I’ve been a member of the New Jedi Order for the past ten years and I received my Knighthood only six moths ago. However, I have been mando’ad since I was born; my father trained me from the time that I could understand him so that I wouldn’t become dar’manda. That is the worst thing possible for a mando’ad.”

“What were you going to do about that Galactic Alliance, Confederation War, when the Jedi Council told you to fight it in?”

“That probably would’ve depended on what Mand’alor had to say about the war.”

“You mean that if your people’s leader told you not to get involved then you wouldn’t be there for the Order?”

“You have to remember that I’ve only been a Jedi for ten years, but a mando’ad for my entire life.”

“How in the world are you able to reconcile both of your conflicting commitments?”

“I don’t really think that my commitments are conflicting. In both cases I’m devoted to protecting people, by offensive or defensive actions if I must.” Master Windu, I recognized him now from my historic files at the Academy on Ossus and from what Master Tionne Solusar had told me a group of other Apprentices recently about the Fall of the Old Jedi Order and the Rise of the Empire. He looked at me before he looked at both Master Skywalker and Master Kenobi before he said

“Under the current circumstances we are going to welcome all initiates of the order, no matter what time period they are from and what their personal beliefs are.” I nodded slowly in thanks before I slowly said

“I thank you Master I will continue to serve the order as I have done in the past.” With that said I replaced my buy’ce and sat back in my chair to observe the proceedings.

Three hours later I was snoozing lightly in the chair while the four Jedi Masters talked over some obscure little facet of the Jedi Code when man in the uniform of the Miami Police came into the room and said.

“I’m looking for a negotiator, we have a crisis down town.” I looked up as the youngest of Kenobis stood up and asked,

“What is the problem?”

“A gang of thieves has holed up inside a bank with two dozen hostages and they are threatening to execute their hostages unless we meet their demands.” At that I stood up and walked over to face the officer and said.

“Sir some of us are trained for negotiation and some of us are trained for more aggressive means of solving problems. Master Kenobi here is an excellent example of the first while I am an example of the latter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sir I am trained in various methods of hostile take-down, with and without lightsabers. While Jedi Master Kenobi is a master of negotiation and peaceful settlement of issues.” The policeman nodded before he said

“Ok both of you are coming with me.” I nodded and then looked over at Master Windu and waited until he nodded for me to go and I followed Master Kenobi out of the room.

“Master Kenobi would you mind if I collect a tool or two and a couple of comrades for the operation.” He nodded and I quickly made my back to the suite where I was still registered and collected my proton carbine, and four flash detonators. With that done I made my way to another room where I found twenty six clones in the room including the four that I was looking for. The four that I wanted were all dressed in black heavy combat armour.

“Tsikador ner vod. We have some hut’uun holed up in a bank holding a number of people hostage.” As I finished saying that I pulled off my buy’ce and let them look at my face. I bore many features of my grandfather, the broad rough cut features and the hard brown eyes. The four clones also removed their buckets. Each of the clones was identical in facial features, though I could easily tell the difference between them through their auras in the Force. Each of them looked at me and then the lead trooper said

“General what are our orders?”

“You are to follow me until we reach our destination.” As we walked down the halls to the exit where the policeman had parked his vehicle I asked.

“What are your name’s?”

“We are Delta Squad I am RC-1379, he is RC-1380,-.”

“No I want your real names, and don’t tell me that you don’t have any because I know better.”

“I am Geezer, but I also go by the name Christopher Hanson, that is Sev, also known as Charlie Wilson, that is Atin, also know as James Rolston, and that is Burner, also known as Brian Konradt.” I nodded and then looked at each soldier as we climbed into the swat van that would take us to our drop off point. Once we were inside the van a police officer pulled out a laptop computer and activated it to show us a blueprint of the building that was our target.

“The hostiles are holed up in the vault on the ground floor, there is only one way into and out of that vault. They also have clear sight-lines to the front entrance of the bank so we can’t go through that way. They have also told us that if they see any sign of swat then we will be recovering the hostages from the ceiling of the vault with a blotter.” I shook my head before Atin said

“So in essence what that means is that they’ve rigged the whole place to blow sky high at the first sign of police special forces.”

“That’s where you guys come in. Xanadu’s still not fully understood by all that many people so I don’t think that they would react if we had two of you walk by the front of the bank just as we begin the assault. That is if your other compatriot can’t get them out of the building without shooting.” I nodded

“Can we also have two of us go through the rear entrance?”

“I don’t think so, the bank robbers have told us that they have rigged that door with an explosive device.” I opened my cloak to display my two lightsabers before I said,

“Under the circumstances that won’t be a problem.”

“Are you telling me-.”

“I’m a Jedi as well as a mando’ad.” The man nodded his head as the van stopped and we all piled out of the vehicles. I turned to face them and said

“Ok ner vod lets go get those hut’uunla shabla di’kutla but we can only stun them so use your PEP Laser attachments on your DC-17s.” Each of the troopers nodded and then all as one we replaced our helmets and I shouted, “Oya ner vod!” before I began jogging down the street with two of the commandos following me. Four minutes later we I arrived at the back door of the bank and I placed my hand on the door and stretched out my Force senses to see if there was a bomb on the other side. When I felt the weapon on the other side I shuddered at the power that was contained in those explosives. The bomb was a ten kilo device made up of plastique with a simple detonator that was supposed to be set off when the door was opened. I refocused my concentration and extended my senses once more and carefully got a sense of the entire mechanism until I felt how to deactivate the weapon and promptly flipped the appropriate switch. Once the bomb was deactivated I pulled my shoto out, activated it and cut around the lock to allow me to open the metal door. With that done I switched off my weapon and reported over the helmet comm-link

“Rear door accessed and cleared, progressing into building.”

“Proceed to objective 2.” Inside my helmet I brought up a schematic of the bank and looked at it before I located out second objective and began making my way towards it with with the two commandos following close behind me.

“Master Kenobi how are those negotiations going?”

“My name is Jordan Horowitz, and so far I haven’t been able to make much progress. These people are very determined and desperate, I doubt that my negotiations will work.”

“I guess that means that I’ll have to take the lead here and diffuse the situation with my own form of negotiations.”

“What in the name of the Force do you intend?”

“What I intend Master is to use a blaster set on stun to take them down.”

“How uncivilized.”

“Sir I’m not fussy about the kit I use. For every situation there is a right and a wrong tool to use. In this case flash detonators and a stun blaster are the right tools to use.”

“I understand, but remember that their are civs mixed in with the hostiles.”

“That is why we are using non lethal weapons.”
The three of us made our way down the darkened hallway of the bank. We were all perfectly comfortable with the lack of light because the visors in our helmets included an advanced HUD that allowed us to see in almost any light condition. Finally after sneaking around in the darkened building for several minutes we finally found ourselves in a position where we couldn’t move any closer without being seen. I silently activated my comm and said

“Master Horowitz I’ve gotten as close to the safe as I possibly can without being spotted. What do you intend for us to do next? Sit here on our shebs until the sun goes nova?”

“I think that whatever happens next is entirely up to you. The reason being is because you are closer to the problem than I am and are in a position to deal with the threats as you see fit.”

“Under stood Master Horowitz.” I replied and then I switched the comm to the Commandos channel before I said,

“ Tsikador ner vod. I’m working on a plan that will make sure that non of the civilians get slotted. I’m going to deal with the explosives, while you go in there with flash detonators and PEP lasers and take out the threats. When I say Oya. I want you all to go in there as fast as possible. I don’t want those hut’uun to have a chance to re-activate their bomb after I’ve de-activated it.”

“Understood General.” With that dealt with I closed my eyes and slowly began to let myself fall into a Jedi trance. I submerged myself deep in the Force until I could just about see the whole city around me. After a few moments floating on the currents of the Force I focussed myself on my objective. The device that they were using was even more potent then the one that they had left at the back door. This one was approximately fifteen kilograms in weight and was stuffed with nails glass and other miscellaneous shrapnel to increase it’s damage potential. Surrounding the device were seven dark shadows in the Force. They projected a mixture of fear, anger, hatred, and malice. Around them were twenty one hostages which were also marked by their fear, but they possessed none of the other dark emotions of their captors.

{{series bar
|previous=[[The Mandalorian]]
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User talk:Joysweeper

2007-10-22T03:08:06Z

Oberon:

The Mandalorian

2007-10-22T02:50:41Z

Oberon:

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Alien]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mandalorian,The}}
[[Category:Xanadu]]
[[Category:Oberon]]
{{byline|user=Oberon}}
{{editing requested}}

{{universe|[[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]]}}
{{side note|This story uses "Commonwealth" spelling, so extra "u's" may show up in some words and not be an error}}

I looked around the room at the convention center. My blasted helmet was riding on my shoulders and fogging up again. Why in name that was all that was holy had I decided on coming to this convention when I could afford to come as so many other things. My costume was hot, sweaty and uncomfortable but that was the penalty that I paid for being such a big fan of the Star Wars Series. After I moment I removed the helmet to get a breath of fresh air and hiked up my heavy belt; on one side of my belt was a holstered replica of a Star Wars heavy blaster pistol from the time period roughly forty years after the Battle of Yavin. On the opposite side of my belt I wore a pair of silver hilted lightsabers, normally this wouldn’t look that unusual, but the fact that I was wearing what appeared to be black, red, and gold mandalorian armour and a black cloak did make it unusual. My armour wasn’t even standard mando armour either. I had incorporated many elements of ancient Mando’ad Neo Crusader Armour into the design of my armour. However, my armour still gave me excellent mobility and the almost standard number of attached weapons for an average Mando’ad. The reason for my unusual dress was because I had created my own character in the Star Wars universe. He was a young Jedi Knight from the approximate time of the Legacy of the Force series. My character’s grandfather had been a clone from the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars, and his grandmother had been a Jedi Knight from the same time period. During the reign of the Empire his family had kept a low profile on Concord Dawn because the Empire would definitely want to get their hands on any force sensitive person and twist them to their ideals. Once my character was born though he manifested some very obvious signs that he was much more then either his mother or his father when it came to his abilities to sense the force. Hence when he turned ten he was sent to Coruscant for training at the Jedi Temple. Twelve years later he came home to his home system, a full Jedi Knight, and donned the armour that was his by right. He was something unique in the history of his people, a Mandalorian Jedi.

I finally replaced my helmet, but I knew that in a few minutes I would go back to my large suite and get out of my armour. I was getting really tired of smelling the garlic on my breath from the baked lasagna that I had eaten for lunch. I was standing in the middle of a large open courtyard in the middle of the large convention center. In the center of the courtyard were three replica starfighters from the Star Wars series that some rich fan had brought with him to the convention. Whoever had brought the fighters must not only be a superfan, but also have some serious money to burn. The three fighters were surrounded by fans that were separated from the vehicles themselves by a thin plastic ribbon. The three fighters were from two distinct periods in the timeline, though the first one was the one that I preferred by far. It was a T-65 X-wing fighter from the original series of movies. This one had been painted in the same pattern as the ship that had been used by Luke Skywalker in the first movie when he was attacking the first Death Star. The second fighter wasn’t quite to my taste but it still belonged in the Star Wars Universe. It was an Eta-2 ''Actis'' Interceptor painted yellow, the same colours that Anakin Skywalker had used on his starfighter at the beginning of the last of the new Star Wars movies, The Revenge of the Sith. The last fighter was from the same period as the X-wing, and it was probably just as formidable. It was the most powerful member of the TIE Series of Starfighters, the TIE/D Defender.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity I finally got to the front of the line to have my picture taken with the X-wing and I was glad though I wished that the fighter was painted in the colours that my character would’ve painted his fighter. Just as I touched the wooden skin of the fighter the world changed and I blacked out from the over-stimulation of my senses.

I wasn’t sure how much later it was when I stood up and leaned against the port S-foil of the X-wing beside me. It was painted red, black and gold with three different insignia on the s-foils and fuselage. The first two belonged to the Jedi Order and the Galactic Alliance, while the third was from my own culture. It was the symbol of the Mandalorians – namely the stylized skull of a mythosaur.

“Osik!” I swore in Mando’a as I stood up, the thoughts and feelings of all of those around me came into my head through the Force forcing their way into my head like cars at rush hour in Vancouver, which was incidentally my home town. The mental chaos caused by all of the voices in the Force made me bring my hands up to the sides of my head as if to block out the sounds. The sound of my heavy Mando crushgaunts hitting the side of my buy’ce brought me to my senses a little and I breathed in and calmed my mind like Master Skywalker had always told me to at the main Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Now that I was calmed down I looked at the other two fighters in the courtyard. Beside the Eta-2 was a slumped figure in black robes who was apparently unconscious. As I looked over at the TIE its P-sz9.7 Twin Ion Engines screamed into life as the pilot, who had already climbed into the fighter brought the engines on line. I couldn’t see his face because he, or she, was wearing a Standard TIE series enviro suit and helmet. The loud scream of the TIE’s engines rose in pitch and volume to the point where I could almost feel the sound through my heavy armour in my chest cavity. Finally the pilot brought the repulsors on line and the fighter shot up out of the courtyard and into the blue sky, which was rapidly filling with helicopters and flighted lifeforms.

After a few moments I turned to my fighter to begin preflight checks to ensure that everything was operating properly. Finally I finished my pre-flight checks, checked my own armour, before telling R9-Q7 to keep the converters warm in case we needed to get out of here in a hurry. There were some things in my room that I really needed to grab, like my jet/repulsor pack, and my short bladed shoto lightsaber. I swiftly grabbed my Proton Carbine out of the storage compartment under the cockpit, checked to ensure that it was set on stun, and headed off into the chaotic hallway with my force senses keyed to their maximum sensitivity. As I made my way down the scene of chaos I was bumped and jostled by panicked sentient life forms, some of which I couldn’t even begin to attempt to catalogue. The Force hummed with darkside emotions, mainly fear and panic, but there were pockets of hate and despair. In one part of hallway a tight cluster of soldiers in archaic Clone Trooper Phase I Armour were milling around pointing their DC-15s at just about anything that moved. While I was quite frankly amazed at the sight of clones I was also comforted by the sight of these troops. Not because of what they had been responsible for at the end of the Clone Wars, but because I was a descendant of a clone. As I got closer to the clones one of them looked down at my belt and noticed my two lightsabers before he snapped to attention

"General! What is going on?" In my mind I didn't know what was going but I knew from my history that it wasn't a good thing to tell the clones that sort of thing.

"Sergeant hold position here and try and keep things here under control. Under no circumstances do I want you to slot any of them. Is that clear?"

"Yes General. Very Clear."

"Ori'jate" I automatically replied in Mando'a. It was then that I recalled that most of these clones understood at least a little Mando’a.

Once I was satisfied that they were doing what I had told them to I continued on my way down the hall battering my way through the crush of panicked lifeforms. At one point the crush became so dangerous I had to point my proton carbine at several of them so that they would clear a small path for me through the horde. I was making some progress towards the elevators in the central part of the convention center until I met a strange civilian in a black suit with a mirrored ocular enhancing device on his face. He looked up at me and then pulled some weird device out of his pocket and caused it to flash with a bright strobe of light that momentarily overcame the optic filters on my helmet's visor. When the glare faded I looked the man in the face and said,

"What in the haran was that for you di’kut?"

"It was to help you remember who you really are." I looked at the man and said

"I know exactly who I am, I am Pieter Skirata Jedi Knight and Mando'ad."

"That's the problem before you came here you were just one of the countless hundreds that came to this event to enjoy the festivities and now you are someone else entirely."

"I don't care what you think you or'dinii mir'osik. I am who I am and no little flashy device of yours is going to change it." The civilian shook his head and then I felt a shift in the Force from behind me. I reached out and grabbed the hands of the second black clad civilian before I said “Trying to sneak up on Jedi isn’t something that many attempt and very, very few succeed at.” The second civilian shook his head and said

“I tried Kay, but he was too quick for me.” I laughed at the two of them before I said

“You really think that there is more to me than a Mando’ad Jedi Knight? Can you prove it?”

“We can prove it – if you will let us.” The first man, who the second had identified as Kay said.

“What do I need to do? And if you intend deceit...” I trailed off in threatening silence.

“We’re here to straighten out this mess.”

“You mean this mess. I just saw a squad clone troopers...”

“Not just the troopers. Look around, you’ll see all sorts of strange creatures and monsters.”

“The only thing that I haven’t seen is a strill.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that all these creatures are in this odd hall? And what is a Jedi Knight like yourself doing here?”

“I was...” I didn’t know what I was doing here. The last thing that I remembered was receiving my armour from my father back on Concord Dawn. “I don’t really know why I am here, if this is an assignment from Master Skywalker why don’t I remember it?”

“Now you’re beginning to understand. With this device we can open your mind to the truth of the matter.” I stretched out with my feelings but I could sense no deception on their part so I took the device in question from them and let advanced sensor matrix in my helmet scan it before I pulled it off and looked at it with my bare eyes and my Force sense. Finally satisfied that this wasn’t a trick I handed the strange device back to Kay, and he activated it while I still had my helmet under my arm.

As soon as the light faded the older man asked me who I was. I looked down at the helmet that I was holding in the crook of my arm before I replied I’m still not really sure. I feel now that I have two names.

"One of them is Jason Hamilton IV, and the other is Pieter Skirata."

"That's better, at least now you know who you really are, sort of."

“What the hell happened here?”

“You’re asking the wrong person kid. As far as we can tell each person here has become in essence their costume.” I replaced my buy’ce back on before looked around and then gave a little nudge to the Force, now that I was sure of who and what I was, to try and get a hint of what was going on. There was still too much disturbance, fear, and puzzlement for me to make heads or tails of it. I opened my eyes before I slowly told him,

“I can’t make heads or tails of this situation but I left a detail of fifteen clones back their in the hall to keep and eye on things to make sure that they don’t let things get too out of hand. Personally I’m going up to my room to pick up a few things.” The Man in Black nodded and then let me go on my way while he and his partner headed down the hallway that I had just come down.

When I reached my room I pulled my key card out of one of my belt pouches, thank goodness it was still there, and unlocked the door. The suite that I had rented out was known as the Ambassador Suite and it was second to only the Presidential Suite in size and luxury. I was on vacation from my job as a special weapons technician at a laboratory for my family’s company. Though I think that would change now because of what I had become. I really didn’t want to be responsible for distributing the kind of weapons that I had access to. After a few moments I located the jet/repulsor pack and attached it to my backplate with a reassuring clunk of the mag latches. I grabbed a few other things and put them into a carryall before I attached my shoto to my belt just behind my DL-50 Heavy Blaster Pistol and went out to the balcony. I was lucky because my balcony overlooked the central courtyard. So now instead of going through the hallways to get back down to my idling fighter I simply swung myself over the railing and down to the courtyards, using both the Force and the jetpack attached to my armour to achieve a soft landing beside the X-wing. I opened the storage compartment under the cockpit and swiftly jammed the jetpack, my carryall, and my Proton Rifle into the compartment before I closed it up.

“Took you long enough.” Came the comment in basic from the droid socket behind the cockpit. That was probably the most annoying thing about this particular R9 droid. He had independently decided that he wasn’t satisfied with his communication abilities so he had fitted himself with more advanced vocabulator, one that was capable of producing Basic, Mando’a, Shyriiwook, and Huttese.

“Oh switch off Gett’ad.” I replied in a good natured banter. When I had received my Knighthood I had received Gett’ad and this X-wing as part of the arrangement for me to join the Hardpoint Squadron. The Galactic Alliance’s Jedi Fighter Squadron.

Now I was one of only a handful of Jedi Knights on Earth. This was definitely going to make my life a lot more interesting than it had been before. The fact that my heritage was definitely different from the rest of the Jedi Knights on Earth would only serve to further separate me from the rest of the human race.

When the canopy of the starfighter finished closing I powered up the repulsors and brought my X-wing to a position that allowed me to rocket into the atmosphere with the S-foils in cruising position. The only problem with that was the fact that the sky was even more crowded then when the TIE had left the courtyard. There was even a pair of large red and black dragons twisting and dodging in the sky over the convention center. Once I was clear of all of those low altitude hazards the new engines of the XJ-6 allowed me to breach the atmosphere in less than ten minutes. As soon as the fighter reached orbit I found that this place in space was in some ways even more hazardous then the atmosphere down below. There were hundreds of objects that my targeting computer was tracking as unknowns. The largest of which was a god damned Constitution Class Starship from the original Star Trek series. At the sight of that ship I reached over and switched the S-foils from cruising configuration to attack configuration. The switch also activated my targeting HUD and my deflector shield monitor. Since low orbit was crowded with debris and other objects I brought my X-wing up to a higher altitude where there wasn’t much risk of me running into anything. Finally when my fighter was clear of all risks I shut down the four Incon 4J.4 Fusial Thrust Engines and let my fighter drift in orbit. I needed the calm and peace of orbit so that I could meditate on what had just happened to me. Before my life had been so orderly and comfortable, but now with one event my future was cast in doubt. As a Jedi I couldn’t see myself supplying weapons to anyone. Dealing weapons was antithetical to a Jedi’s sworn mission of protecting people and preventing conflicts. I also wondered about my family and if they would accept me as I now was. After all having a son who was a successful research director was one thing and a Jedi Knight was something else completely different. For one thing I would have to give up a fair amount of my things, since, according to the old Jedi Code a Jedi was supposed to be without possessions other then his lightsabers. Mind you I had no intentions of giving up my Mando Beskar’gam because it helped define who I was now. At some point later on I heard a voice come across the comm.

“What’s up?” I brought myself out of my meditative trance looked at my combat information display to see that there was a fighter coming in on my six. I instantly reacted by activating the four engines of my fighter and kicking it up on its port S-foil to get the other fighter out of my rear quarter. Once I was confident that I was at least a little safe from laser fire from the other fighter I tried to get him into my targeting cross hairs, only to find that the other pilot was very, very good. He also seemed to have some ability with the Force as well. Finally I managed to get along beside him. It was the black Eta-2 from the convention.

“Why were you trying to sneak up on me?”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on anyone, I was trying to get away from all of the dangers down there.”

“What dangers?”

“Well for one there is so much chaos down there I don’t know what is going on.” I nodded slightly an looked over at him in the cockpit of his fighter before I finally said

“I’m up here to try and clear my mind and figure out what I should do next.”

“I was thinking along the same lines.”

“At least you’re a normal human. I’m quite a bit different because I’m a Mando’ad Jedi Knight.

“Mando’ad?”

“Mandalorian.”

“Ah I see what you mean.”

“There aren’t very many Jedi out there, but at least they are normal Jedi and not Mando’ad like myself.”

“You’re telling me. At least you are unique I think that there are at least five to ten versions of myself down there, not including all of the ones in cybernetic suits.”

“Did you see any other Mando’ad down there?”

“Oh there are a few, but the ones that I’ve seen are all mainly recreations of two characters, either Jango Fett or Boba Fett.”

“So in other words both Mandalores are down there.”

“Mandalores?”

“Mandalore is sort of the Mando’ad Chief of State, and incidentally Boba Fett is my Mand’alor, though any of the versions of him down there are liable to be a lot younger than the Fett that I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“My character was born in the year 19 ABY, while Boba Fett was born in the year 32 BBY and your character was born just over ten years before he was.”

“I can see what you mean. People down there are from all sorts of time periods and places. So what have you got planned now?”

“Well for one thing I’m going to the hanger that my father maintains. There I can store this thing, after all do you think that the government will allow me to keep it if they knew its capabilities?”

“I see what you mean. Do you think that you would mind storing this little thing? Since I don’t own any place to hide it from those same government forces.”

“Sure thing, just stay on my ten-o-clock and I’ll guide you down there.” As soon as I had finished saying that I brought up my forward deflectors to occlude the atmospheric friction of re-entry. However before I could begin re-entry I saw a bone white dagger shaped ship rising up form the surface of the planet. Right now it wasn’t more than a hundred meters long but I knew that soon enough it would be much, much larger. The IFF tagged it as the Executor Class Super Star Destroyer ''Intimidator''. As I watched the seemingly growing Super Star Destroyer five other large warships were boosted up into orbit by some unknown force. Two of them were Star Destroyers. The first was Venator Class Star Destroyer that my IFF tagged as the ''Defender''. The second was an Imperial II Class Star Destroyer that was tagged as the ''Havoc''. The other three ships were easy for me to recognize even though my computer couldn’t tag them. The first one was a Commonwealth Glorious Heritage Class Heavy Cruiser from the TV show Andromeda. The second ship was a Battlestar from the new version of the Battlestar Galactica TV show, and the last ship was a Sovereign Class Starship from the most recent Star Trek Movies. I weaved my way through the growing fleet of heavy warships to make my way back down through the atmosphere.

Twenty five minutes later after crossing the entire continent at over Mach 4, I landed the fighter on the hardstand by the front doors to the hanger. My family’s private airfield was located just outside of Richmond B.C. Just as was popping the canopy my cell, which was in one of my belt pouches rang out its Imperial March. I pulled it out snapped it open and answered.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“Mom its me.”

“This doesn’t sound like anyone that I know. I’m calling the Miami Police, because you’ve obviously stolen my son’s phone.”

“Mom It is me, Jason Loius Christopher Hamilton IV. Something weird happened at the convention that I was attending.”

“How can I be sure that you are my son?”

“Mom the cat is called Horatio and the dog is Bonnaparte. You wanted another daughter but you didn’t have any more children. You feel that father should retire now instead of staying on as the CEO of his company. Have I said enough to prove to you that I am me? I could go on if you want.”

“Fine it is you, I will admit that much, but where is your little brother?”

“Mom I’m not sure, but as soon as I get back to Xanadu I’ll make sure that I find him.”

“WHAT YOU LEFT HIM THERE UNATTENDED?!!!” I closed my eyes and then tried to project my calm down the phone connection.

“Mom I’m quite sure that he can take care of himself now, after all he is seventeen years old. Besides as near as I can tell everyone at the convention was turned into their constumes. I highly doubt that anyone would willingly mess with a Nietzshean Highguard Captain like him.”

“Huh?”

“Mom he was dressed that way at the convention, just like I was dressed as a Mandalorian Jedi.”

“Then how can I be sure that you are my son?”

“I can tell you that I am both Jason Hamiton IV as well as Pieter Skirata and I would suspect that he is the same. In that he probably possesses two sets of memories of who he is, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware of who he really is.” There was s sigh over the phone before her worried voice asked me

“Well then where are you?”

“I’m at our private field outside of Richmond I shoudl be home in roughly two hours, depending on the traffic.”

“I will wait until you get here, but if you aren’t who you say you are I’ll make sure that he VPD get here faster than you can think.” The was a click at the other end I I smiled before I snapped my phone closed. I just hoped that mom would understand the reality of me when she finally saw what I had become. I used the fighter’s repulsors to gently coax it into the hanger where I slipped it into an open space on the left side. The right side was taken up by my father’s Gulfstream G-IV. Once I had the ship placed where I wanted it I shut down the engines and shut down the main reactor. Now that the fighter was fully shut down. I removed my harness and climbed out of the cockpit. The sound of a second set of engines shutting down told me that Anakin had put his fighter right up against my own. I jumped down from the port s-foils and began to hunt through the storage compartment for my things. I had just turned and used the Force to close the canopy when a voice asked me

“You really think that you’re going to leave us here?” I turned around to find both R2-D2 and Gett’ad standing beside each other looking at my and Skywalker.

“Might as well let them come, otherwise we’ll never hear the end of this.” I muttered a few choice oaths in Huttese under my breath before I went over to the front of the hanger with Skywalker and the droids in tow. In the small garage that I had there was, as I expected a car sitting inside. This car was a 2006 Maybach Series 62 Limo. I shook my head at the sheer extravgance of the car and then used the Force, along with Skywalker to get the droids into the back seat before I drove the car home.

Three and a hours later just as I was pulling everything out of the car my mom came into the garage and saw me. From my altered perspective she seemed smaller than she had been before. She looked at me in my fearsome Mando’ad beskar’gam and opened her mouth. I could tell that she was about to yell so I took of my buy’ce and projected calm through the Force before I said

“Mom relax it’s me.”

“You can’t be my son, your too young to be him.” That much was true. Before the the Xanadu Effect I had been just about to turn thirty yeas old, and yet now I was barely twenty one.

“Mom the character that I was representing is younger than I am, hence I lost nine years of age in order to fit my characterization.”

“How am I going to get used to this?”

“Well under the circumstances you should be glad that I’m still human. There are a lot of people who went to that convention who aren’t even human any more.”

“So what are you then? Though I suspect it’s something from Star Wars.”

“I’m a Mandalorian and a Jedi Knight.”

“A WHAT?.”

“A Mandalorian Mom, a highly skilled member of a famous warrior society from the Mandalorian Sector of the Star Wars universe. We’re usually Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters so our reputation isn’t the greatest, but we are honourable men and women.”

“I still find this hard to believe.” I held out my buy’ce before I said

“Mom put this on and you’ll see the truth of the matter.” She did as I told her for a few moments before she took it off and asked me,

“What are all those lights in you helmet? And why is is so stuffy?”

“Mom when I have the full kit on the enviro system keeps everything nice and cool for me, and those lights are the HUD or Heads Up Display. They allow me to see in low light, fog, smoke, and other less then perfect visual conditions.”

“What about all of those other lights?”

“They tell me of the state of the weapons that are attached to my armour and they also give me full 360 degree vision.” After a moment while she digested what I had told her she handed my buy’ce back and said,

“This is going to take some getting used to.”

“You’re telling me mom. At least you don’t have to live in my place.” She nodded and looked at the two of us for a second before she said.

“I guess that you need to place your things in your room. At that point Gett’ad pointed asked,

“Is there anything that we can do?” Mom looked around before she noticed the two droids who were standing beside the car.

“What on earth are those things?”

“Those things, mom, are our astromech droids. They help us with flight controls in our fighters.”

“Fighters, what fighters?”

“Well I have a T-65XJ-6 X-wing and Simon over there as an Eta-2 Actis Jedi Interceptor. I hope that you don’t mind but for now we’re storing them in dad’s hanger.”

“Well I guess that you have to have somewhere to store them.” I nodded before I replied,

“This is better than letting the government store them since they would never give them back.” Mom nodded before I told her that we were going down to the exercise room for a little sparing practice. I felt that I need to get some practise with my lightsabers or I would loose that skill which had been so hard won. I could tell from her expression that she was worried. “Don’t worry we’ll turn our weapons down so that they don’t cause any damage to the furniture in there.” With that both Simon and headed to the exercise room where I pulled out my two lightsabers and fiddled with the controls before I activated them. The two silver-white blades emerged from the hilts of the weapons and buzzed into existence with the characteristic hum that was known throughout the galaxy. Simon did the same thing with his weapon and soon we were sparing with ferocious energy. Anyone who didn’t know that we were actually sparring would think that we were actually trying to harm each other. At one point in the match I brought my two weapons together and connected their hilts to form a single double bladed weapon. When we finally stopped I bowed to Simon and said

“You are quite the duellist Simon, a lot better than you used to be.”

“Well I wasn’t a Jedi before Jason.”

“True, but I don’t think that even Master Katarn would be your equal.”

“Master who?”

“Jedi Master Kyle Katarn, he’s been my fencing master for the past four years, the only person in the order who is a better swordsman is Grand Master Skywalker.”

“Let me guess, Luke Skywalker.”

“That’s right, he’s the Grand Master of the New Jedi Council. The council is comprised of Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker, Jedi Masters Cilghal, Kyp Durron, Corran Horn, Kyle Katarn, Saba Sebatyne, Mara Jade Skywalker, Tresina Lobi, Kenth Hammer, and Kam and Tionne Solusar.”

“Are you meaning that the Jedi of your time period are permitted to marry?”

“Yup, otherwise the order would die out in relatively short order because there are so few of us. In fact right now when we get organized I believe that having Jedi marry would be the only way to ensure that people like us will continue to survive.”

“Well you shouldn’t be so modest Jason, you are also an excellent duellist. One thing that I noticed was the fact that you were quite familiar and practiced with your double bladed weapon. I haven’t seen very many Jedi who are any good with a weapon like that, if any at all.”

“Ever since I joined the order when I looked into the old records I found that using a double blade suited my temperment. It took me quite a while to get myself prepared to start using it. My fencing Master Kyle Katarn was sceptical when I told him that I was going to take up the Form V style with a variable weapon that could either be two lightsabers or a double bladed weapon.” Simon nodded slowly before he asked me,

“What then are your short term plans?”

“Well we have to get back to Xanadu so that I can pick up my car and check out the other Jedi, and Mando’ad that are still there.”

Three days later, after much dificulty in trying to find a flight into Miami, we both sat in first class seats on a Canadian Airlines 767 to Miami Florida so that we could return to the Xanadu convention. I was slightly uncomfortable because I was wearing civilian clothing instead of my mando beskar’gam, and my lightsabers were in my registered baggage in the aircraft’s cargo hold with the rest of my Mando equipment. The only weapon that I had on me was shoto lightsaber, which was concealed in my left boot. I had managed, through the use of a Jedi Mind Trick to convice the man who had been watching the metal detector and his partner that my lightsaber were meerly a harmless toy and nothing to be afraid of. Simon had told me that with Force no Jedi is without options.

“Simon I may be a Jedi but I’m also mando’ad, my people don’t feel comfortable when we are completely unarmed. That is why I had to make them think that my shoto is just a harmless toy and not a short bladed lightsaber.” He had nodded before returning his attention to his champagne, which was complementary for us.

“Is flying first class always like this?”

“Yup, though normally I like to use one of our company jets, but in this case that would be an abuse of my position.” He nodded and sat back to enjoy the flight.

Ten hours later I unfolded myself from my seat and collected my carry on bag from the overhead compartment before I nudged Simon from his sleep to indicate to him that we had arrived at our destination. He looked up at me, shook his head and retrieved his own luggage before the two of us debarked from the plane and went to collect our tagged baggage. In his case that was precisely nothing, but in my case it was my armour and standard weapons load, minus my jet pack, which I had decided to leave at home with the droids. We had already decided that as soon as we could we would sneak back into Xanadu so that we could collect our things and consult with our colleges about what we were going to do next.

However, before we reached the convention center in our rented car we stopped at a local park where I quite thankfully changed out of my civilian clothes and back into my armour, though I left my buy’ce off so as not to get anyone’s suspicions up. Over my armour and weapons I wore a long black greatcoat, I left my helmet and cloak inside my carry on bag while I placed the bag with my civilian clothes into the trunk of the rental car. Getting back into Xanadu was easy when you were a pair of Jedi Knights, all we had to do was the blank the memories of the guards of the several seconds that it took to pass by them. Once inside I removed my jacket, replaced my cloak and helmet before I asked one of the other guards where the Jedi were currently located. He looked at me for a second before I opened my cloak wide enough for him to see my two silver hilted lightsabers at my side and he nodded,

“The Jedi are in a meeting in room 745 on the seventh floor, east block.” First we went to my suite where I placed my bags before heading to the room that the guard had mentioned to get into the meeting. I hoped that everything would eventually work out in the end..

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User talk:Joysweeper

2007-10-20T21:52:10Z

Oberon:

User talk:Joysweeper

2007-10-20T21:50:48Z

Oberon: