Chapter Text
Cathleen Bate, better known as the No. 1 American pro hero Star and Stripe, sat hunched over her desk in the dimly lit hero office atop the towering New York skyline. Papers were scattered like fallen soldiers—reports, casualty lists, condolence drafts that blurred together under the harsh glow of her monitor. The TV mounted on the wall droned on with the latest broadcast from the northwest coast, the reporter’s voice cutting through the quiet like a siren.
“…ongoing clashes between pro heroes and the Garou Werewolf Nation have escalated into what many are calling a full-scale shadow war. The Garou’s ‘Rage Across the Northwest’ targets Pentex facilities, with alleged eco-terrorist alliances providing heavy military-grade support—IEDs, ambushes, the works. This all stems from the Endron Massacre in Oregon, where 40 hero students from local academies rushed an Pentex electric plant under the belief villains were striking. Instead, they encountered Garou in full frenzy. Only 15 survived, reportedly leading the evacuation; the rest… their bodies were found mutilated, strung up as warnings when pro heroes finally arrived.”
The screen flashed grim footage: charred ruins, yellow tape fluttering in the wind, censored images of the aftermath. “Casualties now stand at 180 for heroes and students—dead and injured—versus an estimated 10 to 20 Garou. Civilian and terrorist losses remain unconfirmed, but pro heroes have fallen to IEDs in ambushes. With Garou attacks temporarily halted, hero students are barred from patrolling their territories. Meanwhile, vampire factions—the Sabbat, Anarchs, and Camarilla—are exploiting the chaos, launching night raids in depleted Oregon cities. The state is a powder keg beneath the surface calm.”
Star and Stripe’s fist clenched around her pen, snapping it in half. Ink bled across the form she was filling—a routine patrol schedule that felt mocking now. “Damn fools,” she muttered under her breath. “Sending kids into that meat grinder? They needed bodies, sure, but Garou don’t play by quirk rules.
One of those wolves can rip through five low-ranks or students like tissue paper.”
She glanced at the stack of letters beside her, envelopes addressed to grieving parents. Your child died a hero… The words tasted like ash. She’d written too many since the massacre, picturing torn limbs and vacant eyes.
The eco-terrorists weren’t helping—Garou-trained, armed with tricks to bait heroes into kill zones. And Pentex? Scum, always had been, but the Garou’s rage didn’t discriminate. Anyone in the way got shredded. America had it worse than Japan; here, the werewolves infested the Midwest and West Coast like a plague. Hero agencies hoarded their top-tiers, calling Garou ops suicide runs. Strength, regeneration, that delirium haze that scrambled minds, spirit magic—it turned fights into containment games, praying the frenzy burned out quick. Underground hunters took the brunt, casualties sky-high.
At least the Tradition mages and Technocrats were pitching in against the vamps, and reinforcements trickled from other states. Oregon burned anyway.
A lawsuit headline scrolled at the bottom of the screen: Parents sue Pentex and hero academies over Endron—‘Our kids were cannon fodder!’ She snorted. About time someone called out the recklessness.
Her gaze drifted to her reflection in the window—blonde hair tied back, eyes tired but fierce. A few months ago, everything changed. Fighting that Black Spiral Dancer, something snapped inside her. Rage surged, bones cracked, and she shifted—war form erupting in a blur of white-and-yellow fur, horns curling from her skull in lupine shapes. She tore the Dancer apart, saved her team. But the aftermath? Disgust. I’m one of them now. A monster for some Gaia spirit I don’t even believe in.
Registering as supernatural on the hero database was mandatory. Whispers followed: Murderous beast in hero clothing. Public reveal? Career suicide, with anti-Garou sentiment boiling. Some colleagues accepted it—supernatural pros who knew the shadows. Her brother, that slick Technocracy syndicate mage, had coached her through the despair, gadgets and logic to tame the beast. Fat Gum in Japan had awakened too, a Glasswalker thriving.
But her? Métis breed, “blessed” by Gaia with mutations. No horns in human form, thank God, but her Crinos was a freakish patchwork. Garou she’d encountered sneered at the “defect”; heroes eyed her as a potential spy.
Isolated. Hated by both worlds.
The wolf inside stirred, cooped up too long in this human skin. Itchy, restless. She flexed her fingers, imagining claws. Oregon needed help—real help. Her New Order quirk could teleport her there in a blink. Garou nature? It’d give her an edge against her own kind. Contain the rage, stretch the form, prove she wasn’t the monster they feared.
She pushed back from the desk, chair scraping. Grabbing her cape, she eyed the portal coordinates on her phone—northwest border. “Time to remind them why I’m No. 1.” The TV flickered on, oblivious, as she vanished in a ripple of enforced rules: Star and Stripe arrives in Oregon.
Chapter 2: Garou with a smoke and shotgun
Summary:
When patrolling Oregon forest, Cathleen runs into a strange garou
Chapter Text
A ripple of enforced reality tore open the night sky above the Oregon wilderness, moonlight fracturing as Star and Stripe stepped through. Pines loomed like silent sentinels, the air thick with sap and distant smoke. She exhaled, rolling her shoulders; the wolf inside had been pacing for weeks. No cameras, no crowds—just the wild.
Bones cracked. Muscles swelled. White-and-yellow fur erupted across her skin as she shifted into Crinos, nine feet of horned war-form stretching luxuriously. The itch under her human skin finally eased, replaced by raw power thrumming in her veins. Better, she thought, claws flexing into damp earth. She loped through the underbrush, senses exploding—every heartbeat of a deer miles away, the copper tang of old blood on the wind.
Rumors gnawed at her. Pentex. Always Pentex. Whispers of black rites in boardrooms, executives with eyes that didn’t blink right, a stench of wrongness clinging to their suits. She’d shaken hands with one in D.C.—his palm had pulsed like a second heart. No proof. Just instinct. And now the Garou were tearing the state apart over it.
She found a stream, moonlight silvering the water. Kneeling, she cupped handfuls to her muzzle, washing blood and city grime from her fur. Her reflection stared back: lupine jaws, golden eyes, curved horns like a demon’s crown. Harpy, the Garou called Métis like her. Freak. Hero society saw a monster. Garou saw a defect. She was neither and both—order in a cape, chaos in claws. Why not a mage? A changeling? Anything but this.
A green glow flickered through the trees. Fire. Not natural—emerald flames licking a spit-roasted deer. A massive Crinos sat beside it, green-furred, cigar clamped in jagged teeth. A Boomhowler shotgun leaned against a log—pump-action, runes glowing faintly along the barrel. Glasswalker tech.
Dangerous. One slug could pulp a durability-quirk hero; the magic bypassed quirks like they were paper.
Her stomach growled, loud enough to echo. The green Garou’s ears swiveled. She stepped into the firelight, claws raised in cautious greeting.
“Name. Breed. Tribe,” he rumbled, voice surprisingly clear for Crinos—fluent English, not the usual broken snarls.
“Call me Howls-at-Dawn,” she lied smoothly. “Métis. Ronin.”
He sniffed, nostrils flaring. “You reek of the Weaver. Like that Star and Stripe hero.”
She bristled, shifting to human form in a blur—boots crunching pine needles. “I am Star and Stripe, damn it.”
The Garou recoiled, shotgun half-raised, then lowered it with a chuff. “Apologies, ma’am. Didn’t recognize you under the horns.” He shifted too, shrinking into a lean Japanese man in his forties—plain face, tired eyes, cigar still smoldering. “Didn’t expect the No. 1 to go feral.”
She shifted back to Crinos, snatching a haunch of deer. The meat was hot, gamey, perfect. “Awakened a few months ago. Hate it. Don’t want to be Gaia’s attack dog.”
He nodded, poking the fire. “Know the feeling. Name’s Hisashi Midoriya. Awakened in a Pentex deal gone bad—exec turned fomori, tried to eat me. Your brother hid me, explained the rules.” He grinned around the cigar. “Helped him clear a nephandi nest in Portland last month.”
Stripe choked on venison. “My brother consorts with Garou terrorists?”
Hisashi shrugged. “I don’t kill kids or capes.
Stealth’s my game—Glasswalker theurge. Hunt Wyrm-spawn, leeches. Sabbat’s been busy while you heroes bleed out here.”
He gestured north. “Pentex is doing rituals. Some of those ‘dead’ students? Reeked of taint. Fomori conversions. Heroes don’t know Wyrm from quirk backlash.”
She growled low. “I smelled it. Kept quiet. No one believes a ‘werewolf’ hero.”
“White Howlers take in strays like us,” Hisashi said. “Spontaneous awakeners. Other tribes spit on us—tainted blood. My tribe gives ‘em refuge. Your brother’s glasswalker contacts smell Pentex rot too. Enemy of my enemy.”
Stripe stared into the fire. Her brother comforting her suddenly made sense—technocrat logic wrapped around Garou politics. “Izuku’s your son?”
Hisashi’s eyes softened. “Kid’s a mage now. Steps sideways to visit. We bond over the weird.” He tapped the Boomhowler. “Garou ain’t just brutes. Tech, spirits, umbra—more than claws.”
She licked blood from her fangs. “Some of your kind strung up children.”
“Sacrifices,” he said grimly. “Wyrm doesn’t negotiate. But I don’t touch innocents.”
Silence stretched, broken only by crackling fat. Finally: “Got a caern nearby. Glasswalkers and Howler exiles. Come. See what’s really burning Oregon. Promise not to arrest us, I’ll show you the rituals.”
Stripe’s ears flattened. Trust a Garou? But the wolf inside wanted answers—and the hero needed proof. She bared her teeth in what might’ve been a grin.
“Lead the way, Midoriya. But if this is a trap, I’ll teleport your ass to the Arctic.”
Hisashi laughed, shifting back to Crinos and hefting the deer carcass. “Fair. Follow the green fire, Howls-at-Dawn.”
Together, the No. 1 hero and the terrorist’s father vanished into the pines, moonlight glinting off horns and shotgun steel.
Chapter 3: Garou Joan of arc
Summary:
Cathleen arrives at the caern and learns she has been chosen by destiny to help this fallen gaoru tribe in their darkest hour
Chapter Text
The moon hung low and swollen over the hidden valley, a bruised silver coin pressed against black sky, when Cathleen Bate (back in her human skin, human skin, boots crunching on frost-rimed pine needles that cracked like thin bones) followed Hisashi Midoriya through the last veil of the caern. The air itself felt thick, humming with something that pressed against her quirk like static on the inside of her skull. Spirit wards. She could taste them on the back of her tongue: ozone, old blood, and the low, wounded roar of something ancient and proud that refused to die.
Hisashi moved ahead of her, silent as falling ash, then paused at the edge of the treeline. “Caern of the Wounded Lion,” he murmured, voice barely louder than the wind. “One of maybe three loyalist White Howler septs left breathing on the whole continent. Maybe the whole world.”
Cathleen snorted. “You people and your theology. Weaver this, Wyrm that, Triatic circle jerks every full moon. My quirk lets me rewrite reality in a fifty-meter bubble. Garou call that ‘Weaver-tainted’ and clutch their pearls like Victorian aunts. I call it Tuesday.”
Hisashi’s mouth curved, tired but fond. “New Order screams Weaver to any spirit older than electricity. Imposing rules on the world whether it wants them or not? That’s the spider-song, Cathleen. Doesn’t mean you’re evil. Just… loud. Like bringing a brass band to a wake.”
They stepped into the clearing.
A ring of standing stones rose around them, moss-eaten Celtic knots glowing faintly silver under the moon. Cabins huddled in the shadows (some hand-hewn timber, others gutted shipping containers welded together and painted with warding glyphs that hurt to look at directly). At the center burned a massive bonfire whose flames were green-white and perfectly still, as though the fire itself had been ordered to stand at attention.
Around it: maybe forty Garou. Most in homid or lupus, a handful in the towering war-forms that made Cathleen’s shoulders itch with remembered pain. Every single one carried scars like medals. Every single golden eye turned toward the newcomers.
At the fire’s edge stood the elder.
He was old Crinos (twelve feet of muscle and fury wrapped in fur the color of fresh snow streaked with old battle-black). One ear was simply gone, the other notched like a battle standard. A heavy silver torc gleamed around his thick neck. He was speaking in low, rolling growls to a woman in a charcoal suit and mirror shades who screamed Technocracy from her perfect posture to the faint ozone smell rolling off her. Behind them, crates stenciled with hypergeometry sigils sat open: sleek black rifles that looked like someone had mated an M4 with a Tesla coil and then taught the resulting abomination manners.
The elder’s head snapped around. Golden eyes narrowed to slits.
“Hisashi, my cub,” he rumbled, voice like granite dragged over gravel. “You bring meat-scent and city-stink both.” His gaze slid to Cathleen and pinned her in place. “And the Number One hero of the United States herself. Explain. Slowly.”
Hisashi dipped his head, respectful, never submissive. “Elder Storm-of-Winter, this is Cathleen Bate. Star and Stripe. She is Garou. Awakened. Kin to Lion through blood and deed.”
A ripple went through the sept. Whispers in the First Tongue, sharp as broken glass. The Technocrat mage lifted one perfectly sculpted eyebrow behind her shades and took one deliberate step backward, hands visible and empty.
Storm-of-Winter padded forward on digitigrade feet that left frostburns on the ground. He towered even over Cathleen’s six-foot-four frame, close enough that she could smell wintergreen and old blood on his breath.
“Gaia’s joke, perhaps,” he said softly. “The Weaver’s greatest champion, kissed by the Mother herself?” He inhaled, nostrils flaring. “Shift, child. Let us see what Luna carved from your bones.”
Cathleen rolled her shoulders, feeling the wolf pace behind her eyes. “Fine. But if any of you faint, I’m leaving you on the ground.”
She let go.
Power punched through her like a railgun. Bones lengthened with wet cracks, muscle exploded outward in cords of white-and-gold fury, fur pouring over her skin in a tide. Nine and a half feet of horned Crinos filled the clearing, horns sweeping back like a war-crown, cape shredded and then re-forming around her shoulders because New Order refused to let her costume die.
Silence thicker than the wards.
Then someone whispered, reverent and terrified: “Métis.”
Storm-of-Winter circled her slowly, one black claw tracing the curve of a horn, following the seamless merge where winter-white fur became threads of sun-gold. “Perfect,” he rumbled, and the wonder in his voice could have lit cities. “No twisted limbs. No madness behind the eyes. A perfect Métis. In ten generations of shame and exile, we have not seen one.”
Hisashi, still human, arms folded, supplied quietly, “Perfect Métis are born maybe once a century if Gaia is kind. No deformities of body or spirit. Living proof the Mother has not turned her face from us completely.”
Cathleen bared fangs longer than combat knives. “Great. I’m a limited-edition collectible. Do I come with a certificate of authenticity?”
Storm-of-Winter pricked her forearm with one claw before she could jerk away. A bead of blood welled, bright as a ruby. He lapped it, eyes rolling back white for a heartbeat.
“By Lion’s bleeding heart…” His voice cracked like splitting ice. “Spontaneous awakening against a Black Spiral Dancer—and you tore its heart out with your bare hands. Your blood sings of highland moors and thunder over the Irish Sea. Your Gnosis carries the taste of pride and sacrifice and refusal.”
He threw his head back and howled.
The sound rattled the standing stones, made the green-white fire bow. “Gaia has not forgotten her lost cubs! She sends us a champion born of the enemy’s own fire! Star and Stripe is White Howler, kin and blood and bone—she is the perfect Métis foretold two winters ago, the one Lion promised would come when hope was ashes! She may not carry our lineage in her veins, but she wears Lion’s pride in her soul!”
The caern exploded into answering howls. Crinos dropped to their knees in the frost, lupus rolled belly-up, throats bared in submission and joy. Pups yipped from the doorways of cabins, tails whipping.
Cathleen pinched the bridge of her muzzle with two massive claws. “Goddamn it. I am not a White Howler. I have a passport that says United States of America, not ‘Lost Tribe Prophecies R Us.’”
Storm-of-Winter’s laugh boomed like artillery. “Child, your fur is the white of Scottish snow and the gold of Lion’s own mane. Your horns curve like the royal torc of old Pictish kings. Your rage carries the echo of every White Howler who spat in the Wyrm’s eye and chose death over the Spiral. You awakened knee-deep in Wyrm-gore, standing over a Dancer’s corpse—and you think Gaia stumbles?”
He placed both massive paws on her shoulders, claws dimpling fur but not breaking skin. “You are White Howler, Cathleen Bate. Kin-sister. War-leader. Prophecy walks on your claws tonight.”
The chant started low, then rose like a storm tide: “The Lion’s Mane returns! The Lost Tribe rises! The Lion’s Mane returns!”
Cathleen groaned so hard her horns actually ached. “Do you have any idea what this does to my approval ratings? I can’t even come out as Garou without half the country deciding I eat babies, and now I’m the messiah of the single most radioactive tribe in the entire Garou Nation? Fox News will have a field day. ‘America’s Top Hero Secretly A Werewolf Cult Leader.’”
Hisashi stepped close, voice soft against her ear, barely audible over the chanting. “They’re dying, Cathleen. Shunned by their own kind for the crime of partially falling. Hunted by the Wyrm. Hunted by heroes who see claws and think monster. Forty souls in this caern. That’s all that’s probably left of a tribe on this continent. Maybe others exist but who knows. They need a symbol. You’re the only Number One who can stand in both worlds without burning. If you could take the lead, maybe more white howlers will return ans rally to your banner, once again the children of lion will be reunited once more”.
She looked past him.
Old warriors with missing limbs and fresh, desperate hope in their eyes. Pups peeking from behind their mothers’ legs, ears pricked forward. A teenage Garou in homid form clutching each other, tears cutting clean trails through soot on their cheeks.
Cathleen exhaled, long and slow, the sound rumbling like distant thunder.
“I’m not swearing any oaths to Gaia tonight. And I’m sure as hell not killing human kids or heroes who are just doing their jobs. Supernatural threats only—Wyrm, vampires, whatever the hell Pentex is cooking in their boardrooms. That’s my line. Cross it and we’re done.”
Storm-of-Winter’s grin showed every yellowed fang. “A champion with boundaries. Lion likes his daughters fierce and stubborn.”
The sept howled again—agreement, fealty, joy that tasted like salvation. One by one they came forward. Ancient Ahroun with silver in their muzzles pressed foreheads to the fur of her chest. Lupus pups licked her knuckles in frantic devotion. A grizzled Philodox touched the base of her horn and whispered the oldest oath of pack and protection in the First Tongue.
Cathleen stood in the heart of it all, horns catching moonlight like twin blades, and for the first time since her First Change (since the night she tore a Black Spiral Dancer in half and felt the wolf scream in triumph inside her chest), the beast didn’t feel like a curse.
It felt like coming home.
She bared her teeth in something between a snarl and a smile that would have sent most villains running.
“Fine,” she growled, and the caern fell silent to hear her. “Let’s go save the world. One apocalypse at a time.”
Chapter 4: Order-Who-Claws
Summary:
Cathleen goes through a brief garou training montage
Chapter Text
The caern smelled of pine smoke, wet stone, and old blood that would never quite wash out of the rocks.
Cathleen sat cross-legged on a fallen cedar, the orange firelight licking across the new scars on her forearms and painting gold into the tired lines around her eyes. Around her, Storm-of-Winter’s pack circled like restless moons: some in sleek Lupus shadows, some towering in Crinos war-form, a few slouched in battered human clothes that had seen too many shifts. Seven nights of this now. Her bones still sang with the ache of learning what her body could become.
Storm-of-Winter herself stood at the head of the circle, a Crinos silhouette cut from winter itself, silver fur rimed with frost even in high summer. The elder’s voice rolled out like distant thunder.
“Again, cub. Glabro to Hispo. And this time do not shred the only pair of jeans the kinfolk lent you.”
Cathleen exhaled through her teeth, tasting smoke and iron. She let the Rage uncurl slow, deliberate. Muscle piled onto muscle; her shoulders cracked wider, spine lengthening; fangs slid from her gums like ivory switchblades. She halted just shy of full Crinos, breath fogging in the sudden furnace of her own body. The borrowed flannel stretched, seams screaming, but held.
A wiry Ragabash teenager in Lupus form yipped approval, then flipped to Homid with a grin full of too many teeth. “Damn, heroine. Took me a solid month before I stopped mooning every cop in Oregon.”
“Show-off,” Cathleen growled, the Glabro register turning the words into gravel poured over glass. She snapped back to Homid so fast the air popped. Pine needles rained from her hair. “Next.”
Storm-of-Winter’s ears flicked forward. “Step sideways.”
Cathleen turned to the heart-stone: a waist-high slab of basalt older than the mountains, carved with Celtic knots that hurt to follow. She found her reflection in its mirror-black surface and pushed.
The Gauntlet parted like wet silk.
One heartbeat she was flesh and firelight; the next she stood in the Umbra, where moonlight fell upward and the caern rose around her like a cathedral built of lightning frozen mid-flash and the roars of a thousand ghost-lions. The air tasted of gunpowder, grief, and something metallic that might have been hope.
Hisashi’s voice drifted from behind her, calm and amused as ever. “First time I came here I puked ectoplasm for three days. Don’t stare at the moon too long, Bate. She flirts back, and Luna’s idea of a good time leaves scars.”
Cathleen tore her gaze away from the swollen, leering moon. “This place gives me vertigo and a migraine in surround sound.”
“Good,” he said, stepping beside her. Even here his smile looked human, which was somehow worse. “Means you’re paying attention.”
She spent hours running the spirit wilds after that. Portland to Eureka in four impossible strides, the Columbia River a ribbon of molten starlight beneath paws the size of dinner plates. When she finally stepped back through the heart-stone, her boots were gone (still somewhere over spirit-Shasta) and pine needles from three states clung to her hair like badges.
She dropped to one knee, panting. “Better than New Order ever was. My old quirk needed line of sight or coordinates. This?” She laughed, raw and wondering. “I just thought ‘home’ and the world folded itself for me.”
Storm-of-Winter’s ears flicked again, the closest the elder ever came to a smile.
The spirits, of course, were another matter entirely.
She stood in a clearing that existed only when it felt like it, trying to bargain with a hawk-spirit the exact color of the American flag on the Fourth of July, if the Fourth had been drenched in napalm and glory.
“I just need a favor,” she tried for the tenth time, palms open. “Scout Pentex convoys along I-5. That’s it.”
The hawk mantled, wings flaring red-white-and-blue fire that smelled like barbecue and cordite. Weaver-taint! You speak in chains, machine-child!
Cathleen threw up her hands. “I’m trying to keep the world from choking on its own exhaust, you patriotic pigeon!”
From the branches of a tree that was also a humming cell tower, Hisashi lost it completely, laughter turning into a coughing fit. “You’re arguing with a spirit like it’s a Senate subcommittee. Offer it something it actually wants.”
She rounded on the hawk. “Fine. Name your price.”
The spirit cocked its head, black eyes bright as bullet casings. A song. The one your people sing before the game of the violent oval ball.
Cathleen blinked. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” She stared at the hawk. “You are kidding me.”
It bobbed once, solemn.
Cathleen sang. Off-key, half-remembered from little-league afternoons a lifetime ago, voice echoing strangely across the Umbra’s warped acoustics. The hawk flapped in delight, and suddenly wind rushed to fill her lungs whenever she whispered its name (Eagle-That-Watches-the-Freeway).
Hisashi wiped his eyes. “See? Everything has a price. Even patriotism.”
Weeks later, the kinfolk came at dusk.
Four of them, moving quiet as falling ash, carrying a long cedar box between them. When they opened it, firelight danced on the blade inside like it was happy to be born.
The klaive was orange steel folded a thousand times with silver, the hilt wrapped in red leather worn soft by hands that would never hold it again. White runes crawled up the fuller like living ants, and the cross-guard was a stylized blue star sharp enough to cut moonlight. The air around it smelled of summer thunderstorms, gun oil, and the copper promise of justice.
An old kinwoman with a Scottish lilt still strong after three centuries spoke, voice soft as moss. “Forged from the iron of the Pentex refinery we burned last winter in Spokane. Quenched in the blood of the Thunderwyrm the sept finally brought down outside Missoula. Bound with a shaving from Lion’s own claw. We named her Stripes’ Justice.”
Cathleen lifted the klaive. It weighed nothing and everything at once. When she gave it an experimental cut, the air parted with a sound like a flag snapping in a hurricane.
Her voice came out thick. “I love it. But I can’t exactly patrol Queens with a five-foot glowing grandfang.”
“Glamour hides it,” the kinwoman said. “To human eyes it is only a folded flag across your back. To Garou eyes, to spirit eyes, it is what it is.”
Cathleen closed her eyes. The blade’s bound spirit purred against her palm like a big cat asking to be scratched behind the ears. She drew a breath that tasted of smoke and future wars, and spoke to the entire caern.
“My deed-name is Order-Who-Claws.” The name settled on her shoulders like it had been waiting. “I protect humans and Garou alike. The Wyrm, Pentex, the leeches; those die screaming. But I will not become the monster the Nation already thinks we are.”
A broad-shouldered Ahroun named Breaks-the-Chains stepped forward, Crinos bulk rippling with old rage. “Humans cage us. Register us. Send their children to die holding lines for corporations that poison the Mother. Why bleed for cattle?”
Cathleen met his burning gold stare without flinching. “Because I signed those children’s death letters, Breaks-the-Chains. Because I looked their mothers in the eye and lied that it was quick and painless. Because if we start weighing human lives by how useful they are to Gaia, we’re no better than the Black Spiral Dancers who weigh lives only by how much pain they can wring out.”
Silence fell heavier than any Crinos roar.
She stepped forward until the firelight painted her shadow huge across the heart-stone. The klaive rested easy across her shoulder now, like it had always belonged there.
“We hit Pentex. We burn their labs, gut their boards, salt the earth they walk on. But we do it at shift change when the parking lot is empty. We cut the lights, sound the alarms, give the night janitor time to run with his pictures of his kids. We kill the fomori in the basement, not the security guard who’s just trying to feed his family.”
A younger Garou (Ragnar, barely past his First Change, baby-fat still clinging to his cheeks) raised a tentative hand. “So… we can still blow up the refinery, right?”
Cathleen pinched the bridge of her nose so hard it squeaked. “Yes, Ragnar, we can still blow up the refinery. Ideally after we’ve evacuated every innocent person inside it.”
Ragnar pumped a fist hard enough to dislocate his own shoulder. “Sweet. Precision terrorism it is!”
Hisashi barked a laugh that turned into a real bark as he slipped halfway to Lupus. Even Storm-of-Winter’s tail wagged once, a single betraying thump against the ground.
Cathleen looked around the fire: scarred faces, hopeful cubs, elders who had outlived their entire tribes, and felt the weight settle, not crushing, but like a cloak tailored exactly to her measure.
“All right, you mangy apocalypse puppies,” she said, voice carrying clear over the crackle of flames and the low thunder of Garou hearts. “Tomorrow we start ethics lessons. Try not to eat the whiteboard.”
The White Howlers threw back their heads and howled, half amusement, half challenge, all loyalty that tasted like iron and pine and the first clean wind before a storm.
Under the half-moon’s indifferent eye, Order-Who-Claws took up the impossible task of teaching werewolves how to wage war without becoming the very apocalypse they were born to stop.
And for the first time since the night she had torn a Black Spiral Dancer apart with her bare human claws on a rooftop in Queens, Cathleen Bate smiled with all her teeth and meant every sharp edge of it.
Chapter 5: Battle of elk hollow part one
Summary:
Cathleen leads a war party to take out a pentec refinery. Though things go sideways
Chapter Text
The ridge smelled of frost and diesel. Cathleen crouched at the treeline in Glabro form, broad-shouldered and heavy-jawed, blonde hair still visible beneath the thickening pelt along her neck. Stripes’ Justice lay across her back, hidden under glamour as a folded American flag. Twelve White Howlers and Glasswalkers ghosted behind her, breath pluming white.
Breaks-the-Chains padded up in full Crinos, seven hundred pounds of scarred muscle and silver-streaked fur. “I should take point,” he rumbled, trying for command and failing. “Ahroun leads the war-party.”
Cathleen didn’t even look at him. “Tonight you follow the Philodox with the magic sword and the No. 1 hero license, big guy. Deal with it.”
He huffed, ears flicking, but dropped back half a step. Ragnar, the teenage Ragabash, snickered behind a paw. “Told you. She’s basically werewolf Joan of Arc.”
“Joan got clearer instructions,” Cathleen muttered. “All I got was a cosmic lion going ‘yo, you’re hired.’”
Hisashi, still human-shaped and chewing a fresh cigar, strolled beside her like they were on a midnight hike. “Gaia’s HR department is famously terrible. Also, no dental.”
“Shut up, Midoriya.”
They reached the refinery fence. Chain-link cut and peeled back like tin foil. Floodlights dark. Not a single guard on patrol.
Cathleen’s hackles rose. “Where the hell is everybody?”
Takes-the-Leap, a lupine scout, came loping back, tongue lolling nervously. “Tracks everywhere. Fomori. Big ones. But… something tore through them. Smells like plasma burns and that ozone stink quirks leave behind.”
Hisashi knelt by a corpse half-buried under a ruptured chemical drum. The thing had once been human; now it was a tumorous knot of extra limbs and lamprey mouths. Its chest was a crater of charred meat.
“Someone sprung the ambush early,” he said, tapping the edge of the wound. “High-end combat quirk. Look—clean entry, cauterized. That’s pro-hero work.”
Cathleen’s communicator chose that exact moment to scream.
“Star and Stripe, this is Ironclad! Elk Hollow village, three klicks east—Code Black! Dryad just ID’d the hostiles as ‘fomori.’ Regenerating, multiple quirks, Nomu-class. They’re in the streets. Civilians trapped in the community center. We’re engaged but we are not holding! Requesting immediate—”
The transmission dissolved into gunfire and something wet roaring.
Cathleen’s blood went cold. Ironclad, Dryad, Granite Fist, Tsunami—her old California patrol squad. Good people. Tough. Not built for this.
She stared at the refinery, then at the orange glow painting the low clouds over Elk Hollow.
Hisashi read her face. “They tripped Pentex’s trap. Fomori were waiting here for garou. Your friends walked into the killbox instead.”
“I can’t—” Her voice cracked. “If I shift in front of them, if they see the pack…”
“They’ll see the woman who saved their lives,” he said softly. “Everything else is tomorrow’s problem.”
She closed her eyes, claws digging furrows in the frozen ground.
Then she straightened, turned to the war-band.
“New plan. Ragnar, Takes-the-Leap, you’re still on demo. Plant the charges—main processing tower, pipeline manifold, backup generators. Thirty-minute fuse. Rest of you, with me. Heroes and civilians are dying.”
Breaks-the-Chains bristled. “We breach the Veil for monkey capes? Let them bleed. They have quirks.”
Cathleen rounded on him, eyes blazing gold. “Those ‘monkeys’ are my friends. Those civilians have kids hiding under desks right now. I have spent weeks pounding it into your thick skulls that we do not let innocents die just because they work for the wrong corporation. If you can’t grasp that, go home and let the adults handle it.”
Silence. A couple of the younger Garou actually whimpered and looked away. Hisashi spoke up as he chuckled at stripes' annoyance.
“Listen close,” he called, voice carrying without effort. “Right now, down there, a whole village is learning what real monsters look like. They’re learning that their brightest quirks mean nothing against the Wyrm’s children. They’re terrified. They think the world ends tonight.”
He took the cigar from his lips, exhaled a perfect ring of smoke that drifted upward and became, for just a second, the shape of a roaring lion before it vanished.
“Tonight we give them a different story to tell. We drop out of the dark like judgment itself—claws of silver, howls that shake the mountains—and we tear the Wyrm’s toys apart. We spare the heroes. We carry the children out on our backs. And when the sun comes up, every survivor in Elk Hollow will speak the same words:
“‘We were dead… and then Gaia’s warriors came.’”
He let that settle.
“They will see we are not the savage beasts the Nation calls us. Not the rabid dogs Pentex paints on wanted posters. They will see warriors—proud, disciplined, raging only against true evil. They will tell their agencies. They will tell their students. They will tell the entire quirk world that the Garou are the shield the world forgot it had.”
A low growl of interest rippled through the pack.
Hisashi grinned, sharp and wolfish even in human skin. “And when those stories reach the septs? Every caern from here to the Amazon will sing the names of the warriors who earned renown in the monkey world and still kept the Litany. You want songs that outlast your grandchildren? You want your deed-names carved on the Wall of Heroes? Then follow Rules-with-Claws tonight and show them what Gaia’s rage really means.”
Breaks-the-Chains threw his head back and bellowed, a full-throated Ahroun challenge that rattled windows in the valley below. “FOR GAIA! FOR RENOWN!”
The rest took it up instantly, claws raking the air, eyes blazing with sudden, eager fire.
“DEATH TO THE WYRM!”
“GLORY TO THE WHITE HOWLERS!”
“LET THE MONKEYS SING OUR NAMES!”
Cathleen stared at the sudden avalanche of enthusiasm and muttered, “I spent three weeks drilling ethics and collateral damage, and all I had to do was promise them a good Yelp review?”
Hisashi bumped her massive shoulder with his human one. “Welcome to Garou motivation, boss. Same heart, different language.”
She rolled her golden eyes, drew Stripes’ Justice in a singing arc of red-white-blue steel, and pointed down the slope.
“Then translate this: first one into the village gets to pick the victory howl. Move!”
The war-band exploded past her like a silver avalanche, Hisashi laughing as he shifted mid-stride into nine feet of emerald-furred death, Boomhowler already barking enchanted slugs into the night.
Cathleen took one running step and leapt, sailing over their heads, horns cutting the wind, voice rising above the thunder of paws:
“Try not to eat the heroes, you glory-hounding furballs! That’s an order!”
The pack howled back, delighted, and the night itself seemed to answer.
Chapter 6: Battle of Elk Hollow Part 2
Summary:
Cathleen and her garou descend on the town like Rohan in the battle of helms deep
Chapter Text
Elk Hollow’s main street had become a slaughterhouse.
Ironclad’s gauntlets sparked as he drove a fomori’s head through a mailbox. Tsunami rode a twenty-foot whip of water, carving monsters in half only for the halves to crawl back together. Granite Fist stood like a boulder, fists glowing red-hot, each punch vaporizing limbs that tried to reattach. Dryad’s vines lashed out in green arcs, strangling anything that came within ten yards of the community center.
Civilians on the rooftops fired everything from deer rifles to granddad’s old revolver. Brass casings rained like hail. They’d killed maybe thirty of the things, but the swarm kept coming, dozens more, hundreds of eyes glowing in the dark.
Ironclad’s voice boomed over the chaos. “Hold the line! Stripe’s in Oregon—she’ll be here!”
Tsunami spun, water blades flashing. “Why the hell is she in Oregon?!”
Dryad’s vines snapped a fomori’s neck. “Because she tore a Black Spiral Dancer apart with her bare hands last spring. Word gets around in the Cascades. White Howler refugees everywhere up here. I’m telling you, she’s—”
A howl split the night. Then another. Then a chorus that made every window in town rattle.
Every fomori head snapped toward the treeline.
She stepped out first.
Nine feet of horned, white-and-yellow fury, muscles rolling like steel cable under striped fur. Stripes’ Justice blazed across her back in red, white, and blue fire. Behind her, twelve more Crinos poured from the darkness—silver, black, emerald, scarred white—klaives drawn, fetishes glowing, eyes burning with moon-mad rage.
The lead Garou planted a clawed foot on the hood of a burning pickup and roared, voice shaking the earth:
“I am Order-Who-Claws, Philodox of the White Howler tribe! In the name of Gaia and Lion, this village is under our protection! Your corruption ends tonight!”
Then they hit the swarm.
It wasn’t a fight. It was an extinction event.
Breaks-the-Chains charged like a freight train, grabbing a fomori by two of its six arms and ripping it down the middle with a wet crunch. He used the torso as a flail, beating three more into paste. Ragnar, teenage and grinning like a maniac, vaulted over a monster, landed on its shoulders, and drove twin silver daggers through its skull while laughing.
Hisashi and the Glasswalkers took the high ground. Boomhowlers barked—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—each enchanted slug punching basketball-sized holes that smoked with spirit-fire. One fomori tried to regenerate; the wound simply widened until the creature fell apart like wet paper.
A White Howler Theurge raised a bone fetish carved like a lion’s head and screamed a single word in the Garou tongue. Lightning—real lightning, white-blue and crackling—speared down from a clear sky, chaining through six fomori at once, cooking them inside their own hides.
Granite Fist’s jaw dropped. “Did… did that wolf just call down a thunderstorm?”
Tsunami stared, water forgotten. “They’re tearing them apart like tissue paper…”
Dryad whispered, eyes wide. “That’s not strength. That’s myth.”
At the center of it all was Order-with-Claws.
She moved like war given flesh. Stripes’ Justice sang as it carved a fomori from collarbone to hip; the two halves hit the ground still trying to scream. Another lunged—she caught it by the throat with one hand, lifted it overhead, and slammed it down so hard the asphalt cracked in a perfect circle. A third tried to regenerate; she snarled a word and frost exploded across its body, freezing the black blood solid. One claw strike later and it shattered like glass.
Twenty minutes. That was all it took.
When the last fomori collapsed in smoking pieces, the street was silent except for the crackle of burning cars and the low, satisfied panting of wolves.
Civilians crept out of the community center, saw nine-foot werewolves, and half of them screamed. The Garou lowered their Delirium auras as one—shoulders relaxing, ears drooping, tails still—until the panic ebbed into stunned awe.
Ironclad approached first, boots crunching on shell casings. His armor was scorched, dented, streaked with black blood.
Order-Who-Claws shifted down to Glabro—taller, broader, horns still proud, face unmistakably Cathleen Bate.
Ironclad’s faceplate retracted. His expression was thunder.
Tsunami’s eyes went wide. “No way…”
Dryad smiled, soft and knowing. “Told you.”
Cathleen exhaled. “Yeah. It’s me.”
Ironclad’s voice was low, dangerous. “You’re a werewolf. Leading White Howlers. You just brought a war-pack into a civilian zone.”
“I just saved a civilian zone,” Cathleen snapped. “You’re welcome.”
Granite Fist whistled. “You saved it by turning the street into a blender. Those things were Nomu-level. You made them look like piñatas.”
Ironclad ignored him, stepping closer. “The Commission is going to crucify you, Cathleen. You’re the symbol of American heroism. And you’re running with terrorists.”
“They’re not terrorists tonight,” she growled. “Look around. Not one civilian dead. Not one hero touched. I gave them orders and they followed them.”
“Orders?” Ironclad laughed, bitter. “You think that matters? You blew up a refinery five minutes after we called you for help! Property damage, Veil breach, association with a tribe the Garou Nation itself keeps at arm’s length—”
“I’m trying to fix that!” Her voice cracked like a whip. “I’m teaching them restraint, ethics, collateral damage charts, for Gaia’s sake! You think I wanted horns and a prophecy? I wake up every day wondering if today’s the day the public finds out and decides I’m the next monster to put down!”
Ironclad’s armored fists clenched. “Then choose, Cathleen. You can’t wear the cape and the klaive. You can’t be No. 1 hero and a White Howler alpha. Pick a side before the Commission picks it for you.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
Dryad stepped between them, vines curling calmingly. “Ironclad, stop. She just saved our lives. Cathleen, breathe. We’re friends.”
Cathleen’s claws flexed, Stripes’ Justice half-drawn before she forced it back. “I’m sorry,” she said to Ironclad, voice raw. “I’m still figuring out how to be both.”
Ironclad looked away. “I’m sorry too. But I can’t have you on my team right now. I don’t… I don’t trust the wolf. Not yet.” He met her eyes, pained. “The Commission will hear about this. You know what that means.”
Dryad squeezed Cathleen’s arm. “Call me later. We’ll talk. Really talk.”
The heroes turned to help the civilians. In the distance, the refinery detonated—four successive fireballs blooming into the sky like hateful flowers.
Cathleen watched the light paint the clouds red, horns silhouetted against the blaze.
Hisashi lit a cigar off a burning fomori corpse and offered it to her. She took it, inhaled, coughed.
“They’ll come around,” he said quietly.
She stared at the village—children hugging parents, heroes directing ambulances, smoke rising from a factory that would never birth another nightmare.
“I hope you’re right,” she whispered. “Because I just drew the line in the sand, and I’m standing on both sides of it.”
Behind her, the White Howlers began their victory song—low, proud, ancient. Cathleen tilted her head back and added her voice, raw and defiant, letting the howl carry every complicated, furious, terrified ounce of who she had become into the night.