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Leaf had had a very bad...well, even she wasn't sure how long it had been since she had been stalking down the hallways. All she knew is that she had been taken away and sent on a mission to find 'cake'.

She still wasn't entirely sure what cake was, truth be told, and the scent she had kept following-but never actually found the source of-certainly didn't smell like anything natural. She had since decided that cake was of the Weaver, and the entire point of finding it was to kill it. But she wasn't about to complain about being released from her seemingly endless duty.

Leaf let out a snarl and shook herself before giving the air a few good sniffs, trying to reorient herself to her surroundings. Everything looked and largely smelled the same-it stank of apes and unnatural things, as always. That wasn't unexpected. She had more important things on her mind than apes, anyway. Throwing back her head, she let out a howl-where was the pack?

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The response was almost immediate.

The pack's youngest member appeared almost at once at a full on gallop.

"LEAF!"

Bella licked the other wolf's jaw, shrinking and mincing about with tail wagging low, enthusiastically greeting the older werewolf.

She hadn't seen her in so long!

"The ship spirit brought you back!"

Leaf let out a pleased chuff, her own tail wagging at a higher set as she let herself be licked. "The ship spirit took me away to hunt cake. It may have brought me back because I could not find it," she admits.

Her ears pricked forward as she glanced around briefly, then looked back to Bella. "Where is the rest of the pack?"

Bella flattened her ears a bit, distress apparent. "Plays-In-Traffic is gone, I think he is sleeping again. Wags is awake still. There has just been us! There was a shark creature for a time though."

Leaf's own ears splayed out for a moment in confusion. "What is a shark?" They pricked up again as she thought. "So it is only the three of us. I had hoped more Garou had been woken up since I was taken."

"A shark..." Bella paused, remembering what Wags had told her. "It is like a wolf that is also a fish," she finished. "It was very big and smelled odd."

She was easily sidetracked, this one.

The Talon let out a snort. "Fish should not be like wolves. Wolves should be like wolves, and fish like fish." That was apparently enough on sharks for her.

"Is our territory in the scab still protected?"

"Yes! It is. I protected it!"

Bella seemed proud of this. Then she remembered, and lowered her head. "I did very badly, One-Leaf-Ear. A thing happened. I was sick and I could not think and I hurt someone."

Two someones, actually. She'd been agonizing about this since she'd finally come around from the rage pathogen, too ashamed of herself to go apologize much though she wanted to.

Leaf tilted her head to the side, letting out another short snort. "Sick with what? Was it like something of the Wyrm? Who did you hurt?"

She has some catching up to do.

"I don't know, it was supposed to make Ohm sick but it made a lot of us sick. Then there was fighting. I was very warm." It took some clear effort for her to recall.

"I hurt Kang and someone else, but I do not know her name. I don't remember a lot. It was like..."

She shook herself. Bella lacked the words to describe a frenzy.

Leaf's ears lay back, and she shows her teeth for a moment. "It does not sound pleasant. But you do not smell sick now. Has everyone recovered?"

"I think so. The healers found a way to fix it."

"It was still very bad." Bella was clearly sorry, the body language speaking louder than her voice.

Leaf noses at Bella, her ears going forward again. "But it is dealt with now. There will be more important things to focus on, if things are still as I remember. You cannot dwell on it too long."

Bella huffed a little.

"I do not like it when I cannot do my job. I have to protect my pack and my sept and this crew is all that I have, and if I am fighting them then I am not doing my job."

"I want to fight the Ohm again. I was good at that."

"We will fight the Ohm again. I think the Ohm are like the Wyrm; just because we cannot find them now does not mean the war is over."

She wags her tail a little. "And you protected our territory. That is good."

Bella remembered something.

"There is a new place for territory," she said, perking up again. She did have a Good Thing to report!

Something besides your pack heard your howl, Leaf.

There is a howl in return from something far, far bigger.

Who are you? it says with an edge to it.

"This one is One-Leaf-Ear, cliath Ahroun of the Red Talons, packmate to Bella and Wags-Tail-A-Lot!" she calls back. "Who are you?"

You have too many names, comes the reply. The hard-meat calls me Ulfrekkr.

"It is my deedname," Leaf calls back, her howl sounding rather irked by that. "The ape-born often shorten it to only Leaf."

She pauses, considering the caller's name for a moment. "You are Get?"

What is Get? I am Ulfrekkr.

That's a no.

"The Get are a tribe. You are not Garou, then." She begins sniffing, trying to pick up any unfamiliar wolfish scents. "Where are you?"

Where the meat runs and there is much green.

Ulfrekkr's way of saying Hydroponics.

Leaf goes quiet at that, focused on tracking her fellow canine down. It takes some time, but she eventually arrives in Hydroponics, on alert as she looks around. "I am here!" she calls, her tail at a neutral position and her ears flicking back and forth uncertainly.

There she'd find Ulfrekkr, laying almost casually in the grass, the thoroughly gnawed carcass of some alien creature laying beneath his paw.

As Leaf approaches, Ulfrekkr rises to his full height, over eight feet tall at the shoulder, and covered in countless scars.

You are small, he says, (literally) sizing her up.

Leaf bristles automatically, but holds her ground. "I can become larger," she notes, flicking her ears back for a moment. "But I am used to being smaller than most others."

Ulfrekkr huffs at her response. He's seen stranger in his long life.

The meat here is weak, he says almost disappointedly. Not worth the hunt.

Leaf sniffs in the direction of the carcass, her muzzle wrinkling at the scent. "The prey may be larger when the ship spirit allows us off again. But any prey is better than what the ship spirits gave us when we first awoke."

The bones eventually crunch under Ulfrekkr's massive weight, but he pays no mind.

Pitiful. But I will make do. My two-legs always finds good hunting.

"You follow an ape to find prey?" She pauses, considering this. Maybe Ulfrekkr's ape is similarly gigantic. "Is he is as large as you? Why do you not hunt with a pack?"

Not as large, but he is strong. He challenged me and won, so he is alpha. Until he becomes weak, at least.

Thunderwolves are even bigger on the whole 'beating the shit out of each other for dominance' thing than earth wolves are.

Leaf snorts, splaying her ears to the sides. "Is he normal for an ape, where you are from? Most apes I know of would lose a fight against a wolf without the aid of their Weaver things."

He is not like most apes. He and his brothers are large, their fur is thicker and their fangs and claws are not dulled. They normally wear their hard skin, but he challenged me with only tooth and claw. It only took him three risings of the moon to beat me.

Most Thunderwolves would have been indignant to lose to something smaller than them, but Harald had fought well, and Ulfrekkr wasn't as impetuous as most of his kind were.

Leaf's ears prick forward again as she listens. "They do not sound like any apes I know of, then. They are not so dependent on their Weaver things?"

What is Weaver?

Seriously what.

Wags was a Bone Gnawer, and consequently had learned to sleep pretty much anywhere. Unfortunately, he hadn't gotten down light sleeping yet, and thus was still snoring in a nook in one of the ships walls despite Leaf's howling.

Fortunately, Leaf had other ways of travking her packmates down. She set her nose to the ground and began sifting through the mess of scents, trying to pick out the familiar ones.

Fortunately, luck was finally on her side again, and she found a trail, setting off after at. "Wags-Tail-A-Lot!" she called, still tracking after the scent.

Wags, startled, shot up quickly, and smacked his head into the top of the nook.

"F@#K! Sweet Mother Rat what the hell Leaf?"

Leaf watched and tilted her head; why sleep in a spot that invited injury if you were startled?

"I am back. The ship spirit released me from hunting cake."

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