Dylan wants to see a real wolf fight. It isn't exactly safe. First time meeting Rip. A bit of violence, blood and emeto.
Dylan didn't want to meet Isaiah Wolfson, yet everywhere he went to the city, the guy kept following him around.
Was the guy as tough as Isaiah Wolfson? Is there an Executioner as strong as Isaiah Wolfson? Did you ever meet Isaiah Wolfson?
Oh my god. There was no escape of hearing the name.
But Dylan didn't want to meet this surely stuck up arrogant wolf with a giant shadow. And it wasn't because he must have been wealthy as heck or had reputation over three countries or was from the coolest, most powerful wolf family with probably the best training in the world.
It was the least because he managed to charm his sister away from them. That was one reason Dylan would never admit to and never forgive.
Okay, they weren't getting along that much, when he was 17 and his shadow was all over the place and his grades took a nose dive...and yeah, Seline was academic and too smart and a show off and always the best at everything that his parents expected him to be at least half as good at.
But she was his sister and he missed her. It felt like giant fail that she moved to Vienna without him (1) that she found a pack in matter of months after leaving (2) and that she had the Isaiah Wolfson for a boyfriend. Jesus fucking Christ. It couldn't be any worse.
While Dylan was the famous packless high school dropout of 19 that had loving but entirely human parents and absolutely no connections to get into one.
Yeah, he had friends in all towns he lived in, in Bratislava and in Vienna, from primary school and high school and then the other high school and then from the little summer jobs and bigger jobs he kept switching up.
He had many wolf friends too. Peers. Other pups. They sparred together and worked out and gave each other tips on the best shakes to get the right kind of toned muscles. And boxed and trained and everything.
But they had their own packs and now they had girlfriends and dads they could spar with and not protect.
Yeah, he was ungrateful. He had great loving parents. Who loved staying home and working in the garden, making their own tomatoes and shit. It was awesome.
For them.
It was boring as hell to a 19 years old shadow wolf, who just wanted to feel like...like a proper wolf for once.
And yes, he had advantages for being so "human". He was one of those rare wolves who had friends across packs, who also got along with human kids his age, who was great at break dancing, got invited to every and each big beach volleyball play on the Donaukanal. He was invited to all parties, human, wolf, everything.
But he wasn't a damn witch to be invited into a pack in three months. And he wasn't Isaiah fucking Wolfson to be recognised on the streets.
So when Dylan heard of that not so offal street fighting ring in the lawless district, where wolves of different packs could fight with shadows and fists - unsupervised - he was intrigued.
His friend was explaining the risks and safety measures and the rules that came with wolf fights and shadows in public and blablabla.
Dylan heard 'unsupervised' and 'wolf fight' and knew what to do with his Friday night.
He was a decent fighter. Maybe never been in a real fight, like hostile 'we aren't friends' kind of fight, but he would do well, right?
No better way to learn a bit how he would fare.
...
He imagined it a bit like an underground Fight club, not a few wet streets between apartments, but hey. It was a start.
The wolves looked the right kind of scary. Torn up shirts and even earrings! The guy had to pierce his ear everyday for it to work, his shadow would heal it up with each sweep.
He watched the fights in fascination. There really was no referee, just a circle of wolves and the two guys currently fighting.
No shirts, contact allowed, no gloves. And shadows, all naked and black slashing out at each other.
Maybe the pavement wasn't wet just from yesterday's rain. Now that he looked closer, maybe it was kind of bloody too.
He had never been in a party where the wolves truly made the best of their healing. Meaning, they didn't mind getting injured quite drastically. Making them lives bleed or tear up the arms or muscles or break bones, knowing they would heal up with a sweep.
Or until morning.
"Hey. What pack are you from?" It came from the guy with huge arms in a white undershirt.
"Oh, me? I'm Dylan Sil-"
"No, dumbass. Your pack."
"I'm packless at the moment," Dylan said with a grin. "You?"
The wolf threw a look behind him, then returned the smile. Though there was something about the crookedness of it that didn't seem genuine to Dylan.
"Forrester. And my friend over there is from the Starks." He said it in a way like Dylan should know them. Dylan was a little behind on all the names and packs he should keep track of.
There were the old ones, but he wasn't sure if that meant they had the oldest members (guys that looked 40 but were actually 140) or they were in the city the longest.
Then there was pack order by size and number of branches, which wasn't necessarily by importance, money, property, profession or size of district they claimed as territory. And allainces. And proness to fights.
To cut it short, there were many factors. None of which involved Dylan or that someone would explain to him, cause a wolf with human parents was apparently super rare.
Not the fun kind of rare.
"How long do you have to wait for a round?" Dylan asked. Conversation was good right? "Is there like a list or...?"
The guy chuckled. "Hey, Toby. This guy says he wants a round."
"Can you get me inside the ring?" Dylan asked hopefully.
"Nah, man. Only proven guys get into the ring."
"How can you prove yourself?"
The guy snickered, joined up by who was apparently Toby. And another guy to his left.
"You need a lesson. A testing fight so to say."
Dylan was starting get a bad feeling about this. "One on one?"
All three of them laughed. "Nah, newbie. Someone's gotta teach ya the rules."
Dylan wasn't sure how they got away from the crowd, but no one seemed to mind. The circle around the two current fighters cheered and laughed and screamed.
And he was pushed out, just a few meters away, but somehow with his back to the wall. "Hey," Dylan repeated the greeting he heard. "Maybe this is a misunderstanding. You guys could-"
"What? You wanted to fight, didn't you?"
Dylan frowned, eyes narrowing. "I can take you. One by one, so it would be fair, but I can take you like this too. You don't know what you are playing with."
This was posture. Or maybe pure belief. Dylan just knew that face to face to a wolf, you never showed fear. You needed to convince your attackers you were too much of a hassle to fight.
Or so he heard.
The first guy chuckled while the two others exchanged hungry grins.
Dylan crouched down, thinking of the boxing gloves in his backpack somewhere at the feet of the crowd, calling up his shadow.
That triggered another round of laugh from them. It was a little disheartening.
"Oi. What do you guys think you are doing?"
The guy - the wolf - that showed up wasn't the tallest. He didn't have the biggest muscles and he wasn't the oldest either.
If anything, he looked scrawny. Average high, a mop of curly black hair that needed a haircut, his clothes kind of torn up and dirty.
But the trio of would be attackers still froze, each of them averting their gaze.
"We are just playing around with some fresh meat, Rip," Toby said. "He is new. He doesn't know the rules."
"So you are helping out?" Rip said dryly.
The first guy, the one in the white undershirt, growled. "He is ours. Go find your own."
Rip focused his eyes on him. They looked dark from the distance but Dylan thought they weren't black. What kind of colour was it? They looked like catching a sunlight on a sharp knife.
"You are on my turf. You need my permission to fight." He nodded towards the ongoing fight. "You want to fight somebody without it, you fight me."
Even the big guy ducked his head this time. "He needs a fucking lesson."
Rip shrugged. "Alright."
Dylan blinked. That wasn't the kind of answer he expected.
Before he could brace himself or even move, there was a smear in the air and suddenly there was a leg shooting up, kicking his feet from under him.
Dylan fell flat on his back, his shadow flailing around in confusion.
Rip was above him, his leg on the top of Dylan's neck. "You came to fight, eh? You forgot to ask."
Dylan tried to say something, but the weight on his throat intensified. Probably a rhetorical question.
"Let me show you how it's done."
The last thing Dylan remembered was Rip's sneaker heading towards his face.
...
Dylan woke up with taste of iron on his tounge.
He shot up into a sitting position, doubling over as pain immediately flared up in his ribs. His right side was burning.
Gingerly, he reached out towards his face. It had fried blood all over it, from his nose and mouth.
He spit on the ground, doubling over himself. His stomach was doing somersaults as if trying to catch him up on the events.
"How stupid can you be to say you are packless?"
Dylan whirled around towards the voice.
Rip was sitting just a few meters away. Ripped jeans and a bloody shirt with short sleeves, but somehow still radiating danger.
"That's the one thing you never, ever say, even if it was true. Makes you an easy target, fool."
Dylan blinked in confusion. Wasn't Rip the one who kind of saved him...and then kind of beat him up?
He rolled his shoulders, trying to make an overview of what was hurting. His stomach was one thing, his ribs, his nose, his throat...he reached for his shadow then, in a way he never did before. But it was there, jumping to respond, happy and willing as always.
It wasn't something he ever had to. It was usually just fun or a twist of an ankle or hurting teeth.
But this time he pulled his shadow over himself like blanket. The wave of needless ran through him, prickling in a soothing way.
Dylan let out a deep relieved breath as the pain disappeared, carried away by his shadow as it settled back down.
He looked at Rip, understanding downing on him as his skull stopped throbbing. "Thank you."
That had the other wolf jumping up to his feet with a snarl. "Don't you say that. I didn't help you."
Dylan smiled. "Of course you did. You saved me from being torn to pieces by three by beating me up yourself. Really smooth. Not the most comfy approach," he said with a wince. Somehow his stomach was still rolling inside him, despite the healing.
"You are an idiot. What are you doing here?"
Dylan carefully got to his feet, not liking how Rip towered over him when standing. "Just looking around. Exploring." He gave him a wide grin, hoping there wasn't blood stuck on his teeth. "What pack rules here?"
"Why do you think it's called the lawless district, huh? So that wolves could claw at each other in the open, without pesky humans."
"But we can't use our shadows in public to seriously hurt someone.."
Rip's head went back. "That's the kind of rules that work in the center. Where humans would get scared if your shadow as much as stuck out. Not here. You could freaking die here, man."
Dylan nodded, trying to take it seriously. The intent in those guys definitely wasn't friendly. He had a little trouble focusing though, with the nausea making the hair on the back of his head stand up.
He swayed a little. It just all seemed so foreign and too far away from reality. His reality.
Rip shook his head. "You better head home, city boy. This is not the park for you."
But that was exactly why Dylan was there. To prove it was, that he could make his way- a sudden burp snuck out.
Dylan pressed his hand against his lips, swaying again. What the hell was this about?
His stomach rolled and flipped and then suddenly rocked up with a twist.
Dylan barely manged to brace himself on his knees before his lunch loudly lurched out of him onto the grass. They were standing on grass?
Dylan burped, his stomach churning angrily. "I don't-uuuurp- understand. I just healed up-" another wave of vomit shot up his throat and splashed in the grass between his feet.
Rip sighed. "Punch to the gut. You can heal the injury, but not the effect."
"Oh, that's interesting, I never heard- urghh..." Dylan vomited again, almost losing his balance. He managed to take a few steps away from the pool of sick, falling to his knees.
Everything was spinning, so leaning his forehead against the cool grassy ground felt good. Grounding.
"Nice meeting you. Rip, right?" he said in the general direction of the other boy. "I'm Dylan." Which would have been a lot cooler of an introduction if he didn't burp right after. He wrapped both his hands around his stomach as it bubbled, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Hey, Dylan," Rip said, sounding nearer. He sat down near the sick wolf. Not moving closer, but not moving away in disgust. "You just hurled all over your shoes."
It started out as an idea of what Extreme Ghostbusters would have been like if the writters hadn’t been effing cowards, I mean, if they’d let Janine and Egon be married in the series. Then I was thinking about how Jillian looks like she’s related to Spengs. Then I was thinking about how upsetting the notion that the gang just split up and left Egon to himself in the firehouse for ten years has always been to me. And it ended up being like an AU in my head where it’s Extreme Ghostbusters except instead of Egon living alone and lowkey depressed for years on end, Janine and him get together, they get a kid, and the gang, albeit not being into the Ghostbusting business until the big comeback of 97′, still periodically visit each other and stay in each other’s lives. Cue Jillian being a little smartass thanks to the influence of Peter and her mom, owning a smol tool set courtesy of Ray, knowing how to use it both because of him and Winston and having sort of a mad scientist complex thanks to her dad, which results on her modifying toys and blowing up stuff periodically. And then the new kids come and EG happens.
adela ‘della’ west. / fc: catherine missal. future journalist, very into social justice & other causes on campus. bisexual switch.
bennett josephs. / fc: haley lu richardson. future vet, friendly chatter box, lives to remain neutral & out of drama (although usually ends up smack dab in the middle of it). heterosexual switch.
coral hanslet. / fc: ksenia daniela kharlamova. future fashion designer, a puck bunny through & through, always the life of the party side by side with her dorm mate mia, if a rumor was started … coral's to blame. bisexual switch.
francesca martinez. / fc: maia reficco. future undecided, the quiet nerdy type, works backstage in all of the school's productions & in the library, she can usually be found with her head in a book sitting under a tree. bisexual sub.
mia novak. / fc: mirela balic. future in public relations, the fun one in any group, shamelessly takes up a lot of space, doesn't give a fuck whether you like her or not, makes onlyfans content to pay for college, is a sweetheart underneath all the armor. bisexual switch.
mackenzie 'mack' ames. / fc: olivia holt. future lawyer, the girl next door, doesn't have a mean bone in her body, naive & inexperienced, from a small town & has lived a sheltered life until moving to boston, not a puck bunny but actually enjoys going to the hockey games because her older brother is in the nhl. heterosexual sub.
