Rage Story Line: Chapter 1 First Team 28
Sorry, No werehyena heroes. That was the next partially done chapter.
Here's the teaser from canon that I was debating using. It gives things a dark twist. Mainly I couldn't decide whether to use it for the first chapter or save it for later.
Then, as though the veil were torn, the sixth Sign showed itself to me.
In these last days, Gaia shakes in rage. Fire boils from the depths. Ash shouds the sky. The Wyrm skulks in the shadows made by theses. . . and rears to strike. The old ones are gone; the guardians of the Pathways and the Crossroads are finished. In these final days, the sixth Sign will make itself known in the Packs that form. Each Pack will have unto itself a Quest, a Sacred Journey it must perform. Such is the will of Gaia.
--"The Prophecy of the Phoenix" W:tA 2nd ed.
“Brell! Clip!” Melvin Spivey bellowed as he let off another burst from his Kalashnikov and backed closer to the pipeline. At least the bastards won’t get me from behind.
The striped hyenas yipped and scooted back into the scrubby, sandy hillside. When the spray of bullets stopped the clan began inching closer to their prey.
Where is that woman? Melvin calculated he only had enough bullets left for one more burst and the African sun was beating down on his bald head with all its savage heat. He had started out the day on a standard patrol of the Apophis Pipeline on the boarder between Egypt and Sudan, on the look out for the standard environmental protesters. Those loons never knew where to stop. The barrel of a Kalashnikov was a definitive stopping point. The oil must flow.
Unfortunately, Melvin didn’t have as many guns as he would like for this operation. As he stood amid bodies and overturned Jeeps, Melvin could picture his superiors sitting securely around a meeting table and cutting costs by under-funding security. The Middle East is just one big desert anyway, who needs more than twenty-five men for one patrol? A classic example of military policy from a boardroom, with no consideration of reality.
“BRELL!” Melvin let the last of his bullets fly and caught two of the hunched-backed creatures in the face. He ejected the clip. Some sort of mutant hyena had gone rolling down the hills with his weapons officer and she was taking her sweet time finishing the battle. The person in charge of the weapons should never be late.
To the right, Leergo shifted into his white-furred Crinos form and raked his claws through an outsized hyena standing on its hind legs, while a second, normal-sized hyena dangled by its jaws from his left arm. A sickening crunch and a howl indicated the hyena’s success in breaking Leergo’s arm.
A boom noise startled the clan surrounding the Jeeps, and they twisted to look where the noise had come from. Melvin used the distraction to pull out his utility knife. The eleven hyenas remaining in front of him stood as tall as his hip. They seemed to sense he was out of firepower. Yeah, come on, you SOBs. Come closer. I swear to you I am not going down like one of those ‘When Animals Attack’ shows. Especially not to some mangy half-dogs. I did not survive Kuwait for this.
The lead female jumped, with her siblings trailing behind. Melvin crouched low with the knife pressed to his left forearm. He batted the first one to the side with the butt of his Kalashnikov, twisting to put his full weight into the move. He let his knife hand trail behind him for the second hyena to take as an easy target. Except that he popped the knife up and caught her in the heart before she could get to his elbow. The weight of a full grown hyena brought him down on his right knee and left his shoulder exposed for the next one. It leapt at the opening, but Melvin was experienced enough recover from any flaw in his form. He pivoted to the left, reversing the knife to catch this one in the throat. The gun slid up against his chest like a shield as one of the creatures snapped at his throat. He fed it the gun instead.
The remaining ones gave war cries of defiance. Melvin could sense the first one he’d hit with the gun getting up and shaking off the dizziness. There were just too damn many of them for him to manage alone. With security so poorly trained they were falling to hyenas, he should have brought Stern and Slicer along rather than leaving them at HQ. “Leergo, take the one to the left. Now!”
“You got it, boss.” Leergo ‘Cat Swallower’ landed a final slash on the human-hyena thing, which seemed to shift into a smaller hyena as it collapsed. He grunted as he shook his left arm, but still could not dislodge the hyena attached to his arm. Determined not to fail, he threw himself, hyena included, on the second animal, trying to disconnect its spine with his teeth.
“Yo. Old Man.” The sweet-honey voice was a relief to Melvin. The clip flying through the air made his day. He caught the clip in one motion and, with a flick of the wrist, turned it into an underhand attack at the belly of a hyena currently attaching itself to his gun. It gave a howl of pain as he exposed its guts to the air, but it let go real nice, just the way he wanted.
“You take this long next time and I will have your ass in a sling, Brell.” Melvin plugged the clip into the gun and let off a stream of bullets that finally drove the hyenas off in a panicked retreat.
“You want my help, you get the monsters offa me. I don’t recall no one coming for little Charlene with two of them lupine-hyena things at her throat.” Though Charlene Brell would never be described as little by anyone else, she stood 6’2” with the build of a born African warrior woman. She turned her attention to finding a position she could shoot from without hitting her teammates.
“And I don’t recall you listening to me about keeping near the Jeep. You let dogs knock you so far back down the hill on your ass, woman, I can’t help you. You either learn to stick together with the Team or this is the shit that happens.” Melvin steadied himself on a flipped jeep to get up off the ground.
“Those weren’t no dogs. They stood on two legs and threw the Jeeps over with us in them. Those were like the Garou, but smaller and nastier looking.” Charlene put a bullet in one of the wounded hyenas, methodically checking that they were all dead.
“They ran off like mongrel dogs anyway.”
“Yeah, after they ripped up my arm. I’m going to need a day’s R&R and a new shirt.” Leergo shifted back to his human form. He searched the ground for his Brooks Brothers sunglasses, and found them miraculously intact under one of the security guards’ bodies. Using the attached security uniform as a rag, he managed to clean off the worst of the dust and blood before sliding the sunglasses back into place.
“Tough. I’ve taken worse. I’ve seen you take worse. WE are on assignment, soldier. No rest, no relaxation, and no slacking off. That is how I run THIS Team. And there’s no room for complaints.” Melvin glared at his primping underling. The women fuss less then the men in this unit. How in God’s name did I end up with two men who want to be fashion plates and soldiers rolled into one.
“I can’t wait for Dr. Backman’s new traps to arrive. Then we can get us off this shit tour of duty.” The honey in her voice couldn’t hide Charlene’s bitterness.
Melvin grunted and looked over the meaty mess of Leergo’s shoulder, which was already starting to ooze back into its usual shape. “And just where were you, Brell, on this shit tour of duty while giant hyenas were killing our staff?”
“After I got my butt knocked down the hill? By two of them dog-men?”
“Yeah.”
“I shoved a grenade down one’s throat. Boom,” She wiggled her fingertips mimicking a shower of gore. “Figured it would work even if they were like those god-men on the temples everywhere. Can’t chase real well when you’re scattered over the sand. Other one. . . well, I got mad skillz.” Charlene and Melvin eyed each other for a minute; then she spat blood, “He lunged for my throat. I bit his instead. Don’t think I’ll get the sand out of my mouth anytime too soon. Got him to ease up some. Got the weight offa my shooting arm. I pulled my 9MM and finished him.”
Charlene turned to the mess of the jeeps and began retrieving weapons. She took his measure out of the corner of her eye. First Team 28 had been together in its current configuration for little over a year, and the boss was the newest member. Melvin was well past the expiration date on soldiers of fortune, he looked somewhere in his late forties. So far as she knew Pentex hadn’t given him any enhancements. By rights he should be on the ground dead with the rest of the human staffers. But after watching him over the past year, she could see he was still improving and refining his techniques. Some days his sheer skill was more terrifying than watching Leergo and Slicer go to work with their claws. “Not even going to check for survivors?”
“Nope. Waste of time. They’re not part of the unit. They broke and ran. They’re not us.” Melvin grabbed a side of the Jeep they rode out in. “Come on, together.”
“And if they were us?” Charlene took up position next to one side, Leergo to the other.
“Then they’d be up and pushing the damn jeep.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
“Yes.” Melvin gave the simple, uncomplicated answer.
“It’s survival of the fittest.” Leergo chimed in. “The humans didn’t make the cut. Never do.”
Charlene growled “Gettin’ all top-of-the-food-chain on me again, wolf boy?”
“As if you’re at all a norm underneath those cargo pants of yours.”
“Enough chatter!” Melvin gritted his teeth. “More pushing.”
“You wish, wolf boy.”
“We all have our flaws, Charley, and somewhere yours must show through.”
“Then you’d better keep on guessing.”
“Well, it’s for-“
Melvin dropped his grip on the jeep and shifted to horseback stance, utility knife to Leergo’s crotch and .38 to Charlene’s head. “Perhaps because I don’t howl or speak African lingo the two of you didn’t understand me. I said push the damn jeep. Enough with the chatter. You got me?”
His underlings nodded slowly. They flinched as his hands flickered, but Melvin made the weapons disappear into his clothes rather than turning his threat to reality. He resumed pushing on the Jeep. “Only the best soldiers become part of a First Team. And the best of the best become leaders. You had better remember that, because you two didn’t make the cut when Patterson died. I did. And you will listen to me.”
“Yes, boss.”
The Jeep finally rolled upright.
“Now let’s get back to HQ and brief the big boys with their fancy teleconference stuff.”
“Yes, boss.”
Melvin settled into the passenger seat, while Leergo put the Jeep into gear. He glared at the sandy length of Apophis Project. Maybe the executives will have pulled their brains out of their asses by the time we get back to the New Cataract Hotel. What a fuck up this whole pipeline is. Who cares about were-thingies and environmentalists when the pipeline is on one side of the river and the ports are on the other?
Here's the teaser from canon that I was debating using. It gives things a dark twist. Mainly I couldn't decide whether to use it for the first chapter or save it for later.
Then, as though the veil were torn, the sixth Sign showed itself to me.
In these last days, Gaia shakes in rage. Fire boils from the depths. Ash shouds the sky. The Wyrm skulks in the shadows made by theses. . . and rears to strike. The old ones are gone; the guardians of the Pathways and the Crossroads are finished. In these final days, the sixth Sign will make itself known in the Packs that form. Each Pack will have unto itself a Quest, a Sacred Journey it must perform. Such is the will of Gaia.
--"The Prophecy of the Phoenix" W:tA 2nd ed.
“Brell! Clip!” Melvin Spivey bellowed as he let off another burst from his Kalashnikov and backed closer to the pipeline. At least the bastards won’t get me from behind.
The striped hyenas yipped and scooted back into the scrubby, sandy hillside. When the spray of bullets stopped the clan began inching closer to their prey.
Where is that woman? Melvin calculated he only had enough bullets left for one more burst and the African sun was beating down on his bald head with all its savage heat. He had started out the day on a standard patrol of the Apophis Pipeline on the boarder between Egypt and Sudan, on the look out for the standard environmental protesters. Those loons never knew where to stop. The barrel of a Kalashnikov was a definitive stopping point. The oil must flow.
Unfortunately, Melvin didn’t have as many guns as he would like for this operation. As he stood amid bodies and overturned Jeeps, Melvin could picture his superiors sitting securely around a meeting table and cutting costs by under-funding security. The Middle East is just one big desert anyway, who needs more than twenty-five men for one patrol? A classic example of military policy from a boardroom, with no consideration of reality.
“BRELL!” Melvin let the last of his bullets fly and caught two of the hunched-backed creatures in the face. He ejected the clip. Some sort of mutant hyena had gone rolling down the hills with his weapons officer and she was taking her sweet time finishing the battle. The person in charge of the weapons should never be late.
To the right, Leergo shifted into his white-furred Crinos form and raked his claws through an outsized hyena standing on its hind legs, while a second, normal-sized hyena dangled by its jaws from his left arm. A sickening crunch and a howl indicated the hyena’s success in breaking Leergo’s arm.
A boom noise startled the clan surrounding the Jeeps, and they twisted to look where the noise had come from. Melvin used the distraction to pull out his utility knife. The eleven hyenas remaining in front of him stood as tall as his hip. They seemed to sense he was out of firepower. Yeah, come on, you SOBs. Come closer. I swear to you I am not going down like one of those ‘When Animals Attack’ shows. Especially not to some mangy half-dogs. I did not survive Kuwait for this.
The lead female jumped, with her siblings trailing behind. Melvin crouched low with the knife pressed to his left forearm. He batted the first one to the side with the butt of his Kalashnikov, twisting to put his full weight into the move. He let his knife hand trail behind him for the second hyena to take as an easy target. Except that he popped the knife up and caught her in the heart before she could get to his elbow. The weight of a full grown hyena brought him down on his right knee and left his shoulder exposed for the next one. It leapt at the opening, but Melvin was experienced enough recover from any flaw in his form. He pivoted to the left, reversing the knife to catch this one in the throat. The gun slid up against his chest like a shield as one of the creatures snapped at his throat. He fed it the gun instead.
The remaining ones gave war cries of defiance. Melvin could sense the first one he’d hit with the gun getting up and shaking off the dizziness. There were just too damn many of them for him to manage alone. With security so poorly trained they were falling to hyenas, he should have brought Stern and Slicer along rather than leaving them at HQ. “Leergo, take the one to the left. Now!”
“You got it, boss.” Leergo ‘Cat Swallower’ landed a final slash on the human-hyena thing, which seemed to shift into a smaller hyena as it collapsed. He grunted as he shook his left arm, but still could not dislodge the hyena attached to his arm. Determined not to fail, he threw himself, hyena included, on the second animal, trying to disconnect its spine with his teeth.
“Yo. Old Man.” The sweet-honey voice was a relief to Melvin. The clip flying through the air made his day. He caught the clip in one motion and, with a flick of the wrist, turned it into an underhand attack at the belly of a hyena currently attaching itself to his gun. It gave a howl of pain as he exposed its guts to the air, but it let go real nice, just the way he wanted.
“You take this long next time and I will have your ass in a sling, Brell.” Melvin plugged the clip into the gun and let off a stream of bullets that finally drove the hyenas off in a panicked retreat.
“You want my help, you get the monsters offa me. I don’t recall no one coming for little Charlene with two of them lupine-hyena things at her throat.” Though Charlene Brell would never be described as little by anyone else, she stood 6’2” with the build of a born African warrior woman. She turned her attention to finding a position she could shoot from without hitting her teammates.
“And I don’t recall you listening to me about keeping near the Jeep. You let dogs knock you so far back down the hill on your ass, woman, I can’t help you. You either learn to stick together with the Team or this is the shit that happens.” Melvin steadied himself on a flipped jeep to get up off the ground.
“Those weren’t no dogs. They stood on two legs and threw the Jeeps over with us in them. Those were like the Garou, but smaller and nastier looking.” Charlene put a bullet in one of the wounded hyenas, methodically checking that they were all dead.
“They ran off like mongrel dogs anyway.”
“Yeah, after they ripped up my arm. I’m going to need a day’s R&R and a new shirt.” Leergo shifted back to his human form. He searched the ground for his Brooks Brothers sunglasses, and found them miraculously intact under one of the security guards’ bodies. Using the attached security uniform as a rag, he managed to clean off the worst of the dust and blood before sliding the sunglasses back into place.
“Tough. I’ve taken worse. I’ve seen you take worse. WE are on assignment, soldier. No rest, no relaxation, and no slacking off. That is how I run THIS Team. And there’s no room for complaints.” Melvin glared at his primping underling. The women fuss less then the men in this unit. How in God’s name did I end up with two men who want to be fashion plates and soldiers rolled into one.
“I can’t wait for Dr. Backman’s new traps to arrive. Then we can get us off this shit tour of duty.” The honey in her voice couldn’t hide Charlene’s bitterness.
Melvin grunted and looked over the meaty mess of Leergo’s shoulder, which was already starting to ooze back into its usual shape. “And just where were you, Brell, on this shit tour of duty while giant hyenas were killing our staff?”
“After I got my butt knocked down the hill? By two of them dog-men?”
“Yeah.”
“I shoved a grenade down one’s throat. Boom,” She wiggled her fingertips mimicking a shower of gore. “Figured it would work even if they were like those god-men on the temples everywhere. Can’t chase real well when you’re scattered over the sand. Other one. . . well, I got mad skillz.” Charlene and Melvin eyed each other for a minute; then she spat blood, “He lunged for my throat. I bit his instead. Don’t think I’ll get the sand out of my mouth anytime too soon. Got him to ease up some. Got the weight offa my shooting arm. I pulled my 9MM and finished him.”
Charlene turned to the mess of the jeeps and began retrieving weapons. She took his measure out of the corner of her eye. First Team 28 had been together in its current configuration for little over a year, and the boss was the newest member. Melvin was well past the expiration date on soldiers of fortune, he looked somewhere in his late forties. So far as she knew Pentex hadn’t given him any enhancements. By rights he should be on the ground dead with the rest of the human staffers. But after watching him over the past year, she could see he was still improving and refining his techniques. Some days his sheer skill was more terrifying than watching Leergo and Slicer go to work with their claws. “Not even going to check for survivors?”
“Nope. Waste of time. They’re not part of the unit. They broke and ran. They’re not us.” Melvin grabbed a side of the Jeep they rode out in. “Come on, together.”
“And if they were us?” Charlene took up position next to one side, Leergo to the other.
“Then they’d be up and pushing the damn jeep.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
“Yes.” Melvin gave the simple, uncomplicated answer.
“It’s survival of the fittest.” Leergo chimed in. “The humans didn’t make the cut. Never do.”
Charlene growled “Gettin’ all top-of-the-food-chain on me again, wolf boy?”
“As if you’re at all a norm underneath those cargo pants of yours.”
“Enough chatter!” Melvin gritted his teeth. “More pushing.”
“You wish, wolf boy.”
“We all have our flaws, Charley, and somewhere yours must show through.”
“Then you’d better keep on guessing.”
“Well, it’s for-“
Melvin dropped his grip on the jeep and shifted to horseback stance, utility knife to Leergo’s crotch and .38 to Charlene’s head. “Perhaps because I don’t howl or speak African lingo the two of you didn’t understand me. I said push the damn jeep. Enough with the chatter. You got me?”
His underlings nodded slowly. They flinched as his hands flickered, but Melvin made the weapons disappear into his clothes rather than turning his threat to reality. He resumed pushing on the Jeep. “Only the best soldiers become part of a First Team. And the best of the best become leaders. You had better remember that, because you two didn’t make the cut when Patterson died. I did. And you will listen to me.”
“Yes, boss.”
The Jeep finally rolled upright.
“Now let’s get back to HQ and brief the big boys with their fancy teleconference stuff.”
“Yes, boss.”
Melvin settled into the passenger seat, while Leergo put the Jeep into gear. He glared at the sandy length of Apophis Project. Maybe the executives will have pulled their brains out of their asses by the time we get back to the New Cataract Hotel. What a fuck up this whole pipeline is. Who cares about were-thingies and environmentalists when the pipeline is on one side of the river and the ports are on the other?