Mister Ōkami
A Close Call

“WOLVES! WE KNOW YOU’RE HIDING! SURRENDER NOW AND WE MIGHT SPARE YOU!” a loud voice booms.

The ground is shaking, but we are hidden deep in the grotto. It’s Kurai, Ziff, Bounce, Springy, and Wall who ducked in at the last second. That’s 11 wolves still not accounted for. Kurai has peed herself in fear and now we’re all lying in it because there’s not enough room to spread out.

“I REPEAT! SURRENDER NOW AND WE MIGHT SPARE YOU!” the voice booms again. “What the-“

Suddenly, there’s a loud roar and an explosion noise. The helicopter exploded! We all gasp in shock, the flashes of fiery material falling down from the sky. We’re trapped!

“Alright, fellas. There’s only one thing we can do in this situation…” Ziff says with a groan of annoyance.

“Die?” Kurai suggests.

“No, dig,” Ziff says. “We’re close to the actual hideout. It’s just a short dig away. We put up a thick mud barrier just incase anyone thought to enter the hideout through the grotto, but, we’re wolves and can dig through easier than the herbivores can.”

“I peed,” Kurai says.

“Yes, we can tell,” Ziff grumbles.

“I’m actively peeing again,” Kurai announces.

“DIG!” Ziff calls out.

We all start digging towards the den. That is, until somehow, the herbivores who were piloting the plane crawl into the grotto through a hole that we couldn’t fit through. Great…now we’re trapped between a mud wall and our enemies… I can still hear the fire crackling outside.

“HALT! YOU’RE COMING WITH US!” one of the two exclaims.

“How? There’s chunks of helicopter blocking the grotto. You’ll never be able to get us out!” Springy says.

“Uhhh…” the other animals say.

It’s a squirrel and a fruit bat. The squirrel is doing all the yelling and the fruit bat is just nodding. Kurai, suddenly realizing these guys can’t hurt her too badly, turns on them, snarling. Oh, well, now we see that we’re not trapped in here with them, they are trapped in here with us!

“So, we have a few options here…not many, but a few,” I say. “We can kill you both and feed you to our pack, or, you can be our prisoners, but, if we spare you, you have to promise NOT to tell anyone we’re here. Otherwise we’ll personally hunt you down and kill you AND your family!”

“Oh. That doesn’t sound very fun…” the fruit bat says.

“Dang, man, we’re doomed either way!” the squirrel exclaims, throwing a tantrum.

“Do you ACTUALLY believe we deserve this treatment? Or are you just blindly following instructions? Can’t you see? We want to live just as much as you do,” I say.

“Yeah!” Springy says.

“Ugh… I can’t believe I’m saying this, while standing on a dead horse, but it seems we have no choice but to join you if we wish to live…” the squirrel grumbles.

“I much prefer that to having my body eaten,” the fruit bat says.

“Aw darn! Suisen! I wanted to eat these bozos!” Kurai wails.

With that out of the way, us wolves continue digging. Our prisoners are silent, well aware that they are trapped in a pit with 6 hungry wolves. Kurai keeps eying them, so I gently nudge her, trying to refocus her on the task ahead of us. BOOF! The wall crumbles and we tumble into the den in front of Bella.

“You’re alive! We heard a commotion outside!” Bella exclaims.

“Yeah, we had a close call…” Ziff says. “I don’t know where Mouth, Crisp, Toosh, Oil, Noise, Moov, Lucy, Dilly, Bound, Pip, or Rip are, to be honest, but thanks to Suisen’s quick thinking, we’ve got two new servants.”

The squirrel and the fruit bat are escorted to the front as they were hiding behind us. They are just a couple of small herbivores stuck inside a den full of wolves. I’m not sure how Mr. Ōkami will react when he finds out what I have done. I could be ranked down, probably, and lose all favor I had.

The few wolves who are standing around murmur anxiously amongst themselves. Ziff heads for the entrance to the cave and gives a long howl to summon the rest of the hunting patrol. Hopefully, everyone has caught something or else Mr. Ōkami will be mad. Now we wait.

So far, we still have 14 servings of meat in the coldest part of the cave, plus the horse Kurai caught, my bread and cheese, the two fat rabbits I caught, a beaver, three plump little mice, and the sheep Wall caught before the helicopter incident. We already have plenty enough food if nobody is greedy, but it’s always good to be stocked up. What if, for example, it is storming outside and we can’t catch anything? Then having food in storage would come in handy.

After some time, the rest of the hunting crew appears. We also still need to repair the mud wall just in case of emergency. Mouth shows up with three mice and lets loose a string of explicits after dropping them at our feet. I frown deeply at her, wishing she would stop cursing.

“Why are you ******* frowning?! Like, *****, I went and did the ******* hunting thing like I was ******* asked to!” Mouth yells.

“Watch your language,” I say.

“**** no,” Mouth says.

Dilly also has 3 mice. Luckily, so far, it doesn’t appear anyone has found Sage. Toosh is next with her 3 mice. It seems they were more focused on following the minimal directions and didn’t want to try their skills on anything larger.

Pip has 3 mice, too. Oil has retrieved a small donkey. Noise follows them with a naked mole rat. Fun fact, naked mole rats are like the rodent version of ants in that they have a queen, dig tunnels, and have specific rules such as guarding the nest, bringing back food, and raising the queen’s babies. Oh, and also, they are nearly deaf, which is PROBABLY how such a loud wolf was able to successfully hunt one.

Crisp, though I had though she didn’t care much about impressing the pack, has brought back a cow. Rip has three mice. Lucy has brought back a duck. Moov also has 3 mice. Now, all that’s left is Bound, way at the back of the precession, who has a flamingo. We have enough food to feed 86 wolves! Mr. Ōkami will be proud for sure!

Speaking of, Mr. Ōkami and the border patrol are returning right now! I immediately smell blood and begin to panic… There better not be any deaths! Especially since two of the members of the team today were pups.

There are TEN new wolves! I’m not even kidding. That’s a TON of new wolves! Out of the 8 wolves we sent out on patrol, Vicious is hardly injured having just gained a nick in her left ear that’s bleeding a tiny bit as she flicks it in pain.

Quickie, one of the two pups, was carried back by Vicious as she has received injuries similar to Hash’s. Ressa, the other pup, has a bit of blood coming from her nose that hopefully isn’t caused by serious internal trauma. Viper has a scratch along her snout just before her nose. Clementina’s tail looks a bit broken as it sags sadly behind her.

Gargle has a gun shot wound in her right shoulder. Frostt has a bit of a limp in her back legs and a little blood dripping from her right knee. After the border patrol recap and dinner, I’ll have to check in on Hash, Chain, and Jewel who is carrying potentially two copies of Wall’s son.

“So, my pack, we nearly decided to skip checking the city and city outskirts. It’s a good thing we gave it a look. Today, we found a young female wolf and her child, completely uninjured, hidden at the back of a restaurant. The child is very young, but not the youngest we have recovered,” Mr. Ōkami reports. “We’ll train the pup when she’s old enough. Next, we found three generations at the outskirts, a young grandmother, her son, and his very young daughter. If it weren’t for the young man missing the toes on his back left foot, he probably could have found a den of his own to raise his own pack. I’ve, quite graciously, offered him a place here in return for his daughter and mother belonging to me. His daughter will be MY daughter!”

“They chopped my toes off when I refused to tell them where my family was hiding… I can still walk, a little, but it hurts… So, in exchange for saving my life, I had to give everything to Alpha here…and become an Omega…” the young man says.

“Yes. So you see, I can have mercy and grace when it comes to my fellow wolves…even the less useful males…” Mr. Ōkami says. “We nearly had a completely successful patrol, but we ran into trouble again with some security guards who were encroaching on The Feral Lands. We just barely got Quickie back from their attack, and we’ll be handing her over to Frostt to hopefully save. Quickie is a strong pup, she might pull through without having to be rebirthed… However, after fighting off the security, we found a litter of three little boys, one of them was nearly dead, surrounded by his brothers, we’ve brought him back here, but he’s not going to survive. His two brothers are a bit emaciated and if we had not found them, they may have all died.”

Three orphans! They don’t even look 3 months old yet! Pups that young should have a mother hunting for them. Viper steps forwards to take the nearly dead pup.

“I’ll save him,” Viper says. “He’s very young, so he likely doesn’t have any happy core memories anyhow. I’ll unbirth and rebirth him like Jewel is doing for Brain.”

“Very well,” Mr. Ōkami says. “Go ahead.”

No resistance this time? Perhaps he just has something against Wall and his son. Everyone watches as the magic is worked again, this time with a much smaller pup. He’s so tiny that he slides in with ease, leaving hardly any lump.

“There. He is now within me…” Viper says. “You two little ones, your brother will return within two months, but he’ll be much younger than you. I need you two to promise to help look after him.”

“Okay,” one says.

“He dead?” the other asks, looking sad.

“No, not quite. I’m turning him back into a newborn,” Viper says. “I can feel the magic at work. He’ll be fine, now.”

Another life saved. What if he also multiplied like Brain, though? We’ll have a lot of clones… There’s a tiny bit of movement in Viper’s abdomen, that’s where this tiny unnamed pup is reattaching to the womb.

“Also, we found a five year old female wolf wandering around in the feral lands and I asked her nicely to join us since the government has been sneaking and killing feral wolves to prevent them from entering Clawderwilde. She agreed to come along,” Mr. Ōkami says. “Then, we were about to turn back, but we heard another puppy barking even deeper into The Feral Lands… It was an orphaned male pup, uninjured, but no parents to look after him. I took him with us since we have a lot of pups already. It’ll be a lot of work for Viper, Walk, and Bounce, but I am considering promoting a few more of you to Omicron next ranking day. That should help lighten the load. Once Viper and Jewel give birth, I’ll hand the pups over to Suisen to raise…if I don’t rank her up before then! Hah hah!”

That concludes the border patrol report. Still, though, we have got to eat our food. The two littlest pups should be able to eat solids now, but, I worry their development has been delayed due to the trauma they have faced. Mr. Ōkami notices our large food stash and looks surprised.

“You guys sure caught a lot of prey for being the worst hunters in the pack,” Mr. Ōkami says. “Wait a minute, those two are still alive!”

“Uh, yeah, about that…” I say, nervously.

“You brought spies into our den?!” Mr. Ōkami asks, then he notices the hole in the wall. “We’ve been infiltrated! KILL THEM!”

“NO!” I argue, leaping in front of the squirrel and bat who are cowering in fear.

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