Stavanger Bay take what you can, give nothin' back!

This is a challenge for @Ford! Please let them reply first / primarily, and if you would like to add your character to this thread please PM/DM myself or Cactus beforehand so it doesn't get out of control!

When they woke that morning the sun had just barely risen, and Firefly had been up for a couple of hours, restless and trying to use up his extra energy. He was unsettled and didn't know why - he didn't want to think too hard about how uncertain he felt with his choices lately, but that attempt at inaction made his anxiety spike. He couldn't stop thinking about Rusalka as he fished up their breakfast; then, after rousing @Yami and convincing her to hurry up and eat, he whisked her away on a new adventure. The pair headed westward; they moved together through a misty, heavily-forested hillside until the scent of brine returned to the air.

It wasn't his intention to go back to Rusalka — or to the coast at all really — but the scent of the sea was powerfully nostalgic for him. He wanted to keep on running from his problems but he knew he couldn't; at the very least Firefly needed to look like he had some kind of plan for Yami's sake. Then there was something new - a few patches of grass smelled of wolf, and further along there were marks in the hard-packed soil; there was a pack here. The man looked to Yami as a brief sense of doubt slipped through him, playing across the slight frown of his features, but Firefly didn't let himself look too startled for too long.

He could make this work. She wanted adventure right? He could be adventurous — thus, he began to cover the scratches in the dirt with his own claw marks, and even lifted his leg a few times to defiantly piss all over the borders. C'mon Yami, get to work, he urged with a conspiratorial edge to his voice — working his way along until he was almost out of piss. If this goes to shit, run for the forest. He made sure to mention, but Firefly was already situated on another point along the border and was dousing it with his own claim.

The titan was not so disconnected from his land that he would have missed the blatant and infuriating actions of the stranger at his border. If he had not been patrolling, he might have lost the scent against the smell of saline and woodland ash. Instead, he was ignited with a violent flame that had engulfed any portions of him that had been deemed composed. The length of his limbs carried him across the sands at a rapid pace until he had latched his mismatched gaze on the figure of a orange-tinged brute.

A snarl escaped from his dark lips. Ford lunged toward the foreigner with bared fangs in an attempt to aim for his shoulder. All that he had been raised for was in that moment. If he could not defend his pack and those who had requested to make it a home, he was no leader to them.

Yami didn't particularly appreciate being hurried through her meal, but there was an odd energy about Firefly that day that made her unwilling to refuse. She couldn't exactly put a finger on what it was about him. It wasn't exactly... excitement. It seemed a little manic, honestly. But whatever it was, she was hesitantly intrigued, and so she obeyed and she followed down whatever this new road was her paramore had chosen for them.

When they arrived at the pack's borders, she looked curiously at him after sweeping her gaze across the terrain. There was an amused smile on her face right up until the point where he began to scratch at the other pack's markings. Even then, it didn't fully falter until he was lifting his leg to mark. Even then, it didn't shift to full on what the damn hell until he urged her to join him in this... activity.

"What.... the fuck, Firefly," she said slowly, bewilderment showing plain upon her face and in her tone, "Are you out of your fucking mind? I'm not getting to work, you fucking lunatic." Prior to this moment, Yami had been convinced that she was completely in love with the man. But even before the dark form of the pack's alpha came darting out of the territory with a roar, she was quite abruptly changing her mind.

Yami didn't run at Ford's appearance, but she did back the hell off and hunker down safely away from where the pair fought. Her mind was reeling still over this turn of events, but she didn't feel compelled to interfere. From what she'd seen, Firefly deserved to get his ass handed to him. And there was no way in hell she was going to be going down with him. Still, she didn't run. She didn't want him to die. But still she OMFG is THIS why he had so many scars?? Not from bravely protecting his loved ones but from being a complete fucking psycho moron??? WHAT THE FUCK.

So yeah, Yami stayed put. She was too shocked and appalled and amazed to do anything else.

We rolled out this fight on Discord, rip.

He could barely get the words out before something big and royally pissed off bludgeoned its way through the trees towards the two of them. Firefly had just enough time to shift his body towards Yami as a means to block the oncoming shape from her path, just in case she was a target, and he felt - and heard - the roar of the wolf as he fell upon him. There was the familiar fierce burn of his flesh being ripped in to and as much as Firefly tried to brace against it, he couldn't help the momentum of his opponent's body as both swarthy wolves collided. He veered from the contact, hitting the dirt hard but not staying down for long.

Firefly roared in return; he knew pain and he knew his limits, but nothing could keep him down for long, even though the sensation of teeth tearing in to his wound-wrought hide brought back flashes of nightmare fuel. Had he known what Yami was thinking in that moment he would've probably lost his mind to laughter, because she was right — he was a complete fucking psycho moron who deserved everything that fate doled out to him. But he wouldn't take it sitting down. 

With a feral roar he rose up against the oppressive force of the larger man, snarling and snappnig his teeth at anything he could reach as he drove the warrior back. Firefly had survived worse than this — he wasn't about to let this guy take him out, even if it earned him more scars and lost him everything. He didn't have much left, if he really stopped to think about it - but there was no time to reminisce about his assorted poor life choices, he had a brawl to win.

Once he managed to get back to his feet Firefly was relentless; he was furious, smelling blood in the air and feeling his throbbing pulse as his shoulder leaked warm blood everywhere — the skull-faced stranger was the perfect opponent, and Firefly was ready to unleash hell upon him, using him as a scapegoat for all of the emotions that he had been locking away for so long. The hurt and the anger and the survivalist's guilt formed a great black pit inside of him, and then, he lunged.

The girl was not a concern to him. She seemed just as alarmed to see her traveling companion take such liberties on a territory that had already been claimed. It mattered little, as the younger girl tucked herself out of harms reach and watched on with an expression of shock and horror on her face. It was not how Ford would have liked to continue their battle. The idiot who had approached his claim would understand that he did not bow down so easily to madness. Ford had endured far worse than the scarred beast in front of him.

Having met his mark, they tumbled through the sands for a moment before the orange-tinged beast found his footing and made an attempt at a counter attack. The sands were his, though; the titan had learned them backwards and forwards in his time in the bay. He moved a step back. The other man was still quick and his fangs still sliced through the flesh of Ford's muzzle. Blood spurted into the sands beneath his feet, but he reared his skull backwards and aimed a dangerous snap of his teeth for the other brute's skull. He wanted to feel the cavern that held his brain crack beneath the pressure of his jaws.

He knew better than to throw himself upon the border of a foreign pack, to the mercy of whoever came upon him. He knew better than to drag Yami along with him on this foolish little quest of his — trying to prove he was too irresponsible to be a father, too young, too busy living it up to go back to Rusalka. Trying to prove, above all else, he didn't belong there with the family he'd started to build. It was more like every choice he'd made in haste and terror had led him to this moment - this bad decision - and he couldn't stop.

Then, there was the hit. Firefly knew it was coming (and maybe wanted the familiar feeling of fighitng to the death back in his life, to some extent); in the fringes of his vision where the shadows did not dominate, there was the grimace of teeth; a skull-face; the feral chorus of both wolves as they danced and snarled and fought.

Something cracked him in the head and he swayed and careened away, so close to falling to the earth, to the mercy of those teeth. The snarling did not pause but for an instant there was peace in Firefly's ears - a rising note of high-pitched whine that got louder and louder until there was the absence, the silence. 



Then all he saw was black. All he felt was rage. He lunged in retaliation even though the world was a mess of blur around him, aiming to bowl the man over and tear him to pieces if need be; loosing a roar within the silence as he brandished his teeth.

There was success in his retaliation. Ford found purchase with his fangs in the skull of the other man. He bit down as hard as he could muster before the other fellow tore himself away. Everything was drowning in the sounds of the ocean beating against the shore. The titan could feel his rage building, but he fought desperately to maintain the control that he had over his body and instinct. The orange-tinged brute did not waste time in this moment. After having freed himself from Ford's grip, the stranger lunged with the force of his body and struck the warhound firmly against his chest.

There was a sickening wheeze as the air was sucked from his lungs. He pitched his head back and parted his jaws, hoping that he could fill himself with oxygen again. This was his mistake. The force at which he was struck was enough that his body was thrown backwards. There was a split second in which his body seemed to be suspended in air – back to the ground – before he was dropped to the earth by the vicious pull of gravity and the force that had been applied to his massive frame.

A sickening crack sounded as his skull was slammed into a large stone, half buried in the sands. Blood pooled from the back of his head and coated the protruding rock, but Ford did not move. His eyes were half-closed. The jutting of the stone had wedged at the base of his skull and between his shoulder blades. The crack had been devastating. Blood had formed in his skull and was leaking through the crack in his head. The light of the bay did not reach his gaze. Instead, Ford had slipped into a dismal void of darkness and hopelessness.

Watching the fight quickly began to make Yami feel physically ill. Especially as the alpha who’d come to defend his territory went down with a sickening crack. She didn’t know anything about the dark wolf that apparently owned this land. The only one here she knew was Firefly, but seeing as he’d just gone and proven to her that she actually didn’t know him at all, she felt no qualms whatsoever when her limbs were suddenly flying her forward to slam against Firefly’s side and try to shove him away from the alpha.

”That’s ENOUGH, you asshole!!” she screamed as she lunged. She kept her jaws to herself, not wanting to actually engage in a fight with him. She just wanted Firefly to stop before he murdered this guy and sent the whole of his pack down on them.

The silence was everywhere, but gradually he began to feel the pressure of his pulse, the beating of his racing heart that boomed and boomed within, like an angry sea shifting and carving him out.

Then he heard the crack.

Yami, screaming, That's ENOUGH— and rushing in with a snap of her own teeth, her body a crescent as she rounded between the two of them. Firefly's eyes were wide and it looked at first glance like they were dominated by the blackness of his enlarged pupils, eclipsing the gold of his iris — but only for a second. The blurring continued. The haze, the shadow.

But as he came down from the adrenaline spike and tasted the blood in his teeth, he could finally begin to refocus. There was the skull-faced wolf on the ground, bleeding, and as Firefly moved towards him there wasn't any aggression left inside of himself. He swaggered over like he was sleep-walking and whether Yami tried to stop him or not, he would push by her and then investigate with a few prods of his snout.

He took a few more steps and with a brazen lift of his leg, let a tiny stream of his urine collect upon the soil - soaking the man's pelt - and when he was standing on all-fours again, kicked the dirt with his hind claws, dusting his masked face with soil in the process. Firefly was still breathing heavily when he finished but he looked to Yami, smirking red, and said, There. Adventure. Guess I'm the boss now — and you, a queen.

Firefly fell back easily enough, which at some point in her life she might be thankful for. She was too angry at him just now for that, though. Her offense-driven rage over discovering he wasn’t her perfect prince but a complete fucking lunatic was all she could hold in her mind at that point. And good lord was she pissed.

She didn’t pursue him as he stepped past her. He seemed more collected now and not a threat, but still she watched him warily. It might’ve been saved then. Yami might’ve found a way to let this slide as just a bizarre, one-off incident where he maybe had deluded himself into thinking this was necessary to keep her interested in him. But then he stood over the man and desecrated his very body. And that was the final nail in the coffin.

Yami looked away, feeling sick to her stomach. She should’ve stopped him again, but she stood still with her legs trembling as fury over his actions and her inaction consumed her. She looked back only when he spoke to her, and her eyes were narrowed with absolute disgust and loathing. ”I am not your queen you sick fuck,” Yami hissed, trying to murder him with her eyes, ”You’re disgusting and I want nothing to do with you, or with this.”

With that, she turned and walked away. She was done with this. Done with him, done with all of them. She would rather be in Moonspear than be a part of this madness.