[Abandoned Warehouse]
Rosella watches and listens closely as Daniel, her beloved pack leader, gives clear instructions.
"Your job is to guard this box," he says, pointing to the wooden box beside him.
Rosella nods, though her eyes briefly shift to the object. She'd seen him put things in there before. Pretty strange things: a bunch of blueprints, a flying broomstick, and what looked like a pistol.
It was weird, yes, but Rosella doesn't dwell on it. She's not here to question her leader. That's not her job.
"Yes, boss!" she responds firmly, raising a hand to her forehead.
"I'll guard this box with my life!"
He only nods at her answer, as if he expected nothing less.
"Also, you have enough food. And this scroll," he adds, handing her a device with metallic details.
She takes it, recognizing it as some kind of magical or technological communication artifact—or maybe both.
As she examines the object, Daniel turns to speak with the Odontodactylus beside him. Rosella watches silently, brows slightly furrowed. She understands none of what they're saying. It all sounds like a bunch of clicks.
"Damn it," she mutters inwardly, "I knew I should've taken those extra language classes at university… Advanced Crustacean or something."
But it's too late for regrets. Daniel turns to her.
"I'll call you often to check on you."
Rosella blinks. She knows she should just nod and leave it at that, but something stirs inside. Instinct reacts before logic. Without thinking, she steps forward and rubs against him. Brief, but clear: she's going to miss him.
To her surprise—and relief—he returns the gesture without saying anything. As if he understands.
"Heh," she laughs inwardly, feeling her affection is mutual.
And just like that, Daniel says goodbye, walking away without looking back, taking Aegis and GLaDOS with him. The warehouse door closes with a hollow sound, and the silence left behind is heavier than she expected.
Rosella looks around. Everything still. The high ceiling, the metal walls, the unmoving wooden box in front of her.
She feels alone. Very alone.
As a werewolf, the need for a pack is constant. She's not made to be alone. None of her kind are. But she quickly shakes her head as she straightens up, planting her feet on the ground.
"I promised to guard this box," she tells herself, filling with determination.
"And that's what I'll do."
[Five Minutes Later]
"I MISS HIM ALREADY! AWHOOOOOO!" Rosella cries out, her wail stretching into a drawn-out, emotional howl that echoes through the entire warehouse.
She wipes away a tear with her sleeve before it can fully fall.
"NO! I CAN DO THIS!" she growls, straightening up again.
"I have to stay distracted."
She looks at the scroll Daniel left her. Sitting on the floor, legs crossed, she unfolds the device and taps one of the symbols. It activates instantly, projecting a floating interface in front of her.
"Let's see what this world has to offer," she murmurs as she begins browsing through the screens.
[Thirty Minutes Later]
"Monsters that kill humans called 'Grimm', generally animal-shaped," she reads, hopping from one forum to another with a flick of her finger.
"Uh-huh… uh-huh… sure." She swipes through tabs, opening reports and files.
"And humans… can 'externalize their aura'—also known as their soul—to protect themselves and fight them." Her voice drops, brows knitting in disbelief.
"Using their soul as a shield? These people are savages!" She shakes her head, incredulous, and keeps reading.
[Twenty Minutes Later]
"Four kingdoms. Each with its own institution to train hunters," she mutters while switching pages.
"All kingdoms are walled."
She snorts. Can't help herself.
"Cowards!" she spits, staring at the image of one of the walls. "They're like rats."
[Ten Minutes Later]
"The only fuel they use is called 'Dust'. Crystals with various properties, mostly found on the continent of Solitas." Her eyebrows rise, caught by curiosity.
"Ohhh… so that's why there are so many refineries out there," she murmurs, remembering her night stroll. When she went out for a snack, she noticed the massive factories on the outskirts, but hadn't understood what they were for. Now it makes more sense.
"Still… relying on a single energy source. This is really primitive." She can't help but shake her head. "This world is insane."
[Fifteen Minutes Later]
Rosella raises her eyebrows at a section dedicated to the faunus.
"Ohh…" she lets out excitedly, leaning closer to the scroll. But as soon as she starts reading in detail, her excitement fades just as fast as it came.
"Ah… what a shame. They're just humans with ears, tails, and the odd animal trait." She clicks her tongue, disappointed. Boring.
Still, she can't help but wonder to herself: Would they taste different from each other? Would a pig faunus taste like pork or like human…?
She makes a playful face but lets the thought pass… for now.
[Ten Minutes Later]
"Annnnd... I think that's everything noteworthy about this world." She sighs, arms crossed behind her head, lying atop the box and staring at the warehouse ceiling, bored.
"Aside from the semblances and transformable weapons, there's not much else. And not a single decent explanation for why the moon's all busted. What a waste of a world." She yawns, her enthusiasm fading fast.
"Well, it was fun while it lasted." She sits up a bit and glances at the clock.
"Daniel should be back soon...." she murmurs, hopeful.
But when she sees the time, she recoils in horror.
"Only 90 minutes have passed?! Fuck!" She jolts upright, annoyed.
"I need to find something to do or I'm gonna go crazy!" She scans the room without moving much, until her gaze lands on one of the windows.
"What if I go out for a bit...?" She bites her lower lip, hesitating.
"No, no... I promised I'd watch the box." She frowns, determined… until an idea slips into her head.
"Although... the boss never said I couldn't leave. He just said to watch the box." Her expression shifts into something mischievous.
"Mmmhh..." she hums, as the idea takes shape.
She stands up, a playful glint in her eyes.
"Hehehe! I've got an idea!"
Without wasting time, she starts clawing at the floor. The concrete resists, but not for long. With some effort and a few grunts, she digs a wide hole right next to the box.
Once the pit is deep enough, she pushes the crate with both hands until it drops in with a dull thud.
"Perfect. No one will find it down there." She grins in satisfaction as she begins covering it back up with dirt, making sure to leave no trace.
She brushes off her hands, knocking the dust away.
"Now then… technically I am guarding it. Just... more thoroughly." She stretches, relaxed. "Now... what to do with my free time?"
She pauses, thoughtful for a few seconds.
"I could terrorize the city... but that doesn't sound very productive." Her expression shifts as something comes to mind.
"Daniel went out to get money. So… money's important now, right?" She growls softly, tapping her chin with a claw.
"I should... I know! I need to get money! Yes!" She snaps her fingers in excitement.
"And when the boss gets back and sees the huge pile of cash I gathered… he'll totally praise me!"
She can't help raising her voice in joy.
"I'm gonna get so much money or my name's not Rosella!"
[City of Mantle]
Rosella walks the streets in a different form. Not human, not her full werewolf shape either. This time, she's opted for something more discreet: a medium-sized wolf with a friendlier look… something that could easily pass for a regular stray dog.
And it works.
No one pays her any attention. Maybe they think she's someone's lost pet. Perfect.
She keeps a steady pace, heading toward the lower districts.
"Criminals are always in the slums," she tells herself confidently. Robbing a bank would be faster, sure… but also way too noisy.
Better to go for something quieter: steal from the ones who already steal.
As she walks, her mind wanders.
"Would Daniel want a baby when he sees all the money I'm gonna bring him…?" She frowns, thinking it over.
"Mmm… probably not."
She doesn't mind. She knows Daniel isn't planning on having pups anytime soon, but that doesn't worry her.
"After all, in the end, he'll be a werewolf too. Sooner or later, those instincts are gonna wake up."
Her eyes glint with mischief and excitement as she licks her lips lightly.
"And that need to have a pack… he won't be able to fight it. When that day comes… he'll give me some adorable little pups, sooner or later."
"Hehe…"
It really doesn't take long to find a criminal gang.
She just had to follow a few shady figures with a shoulder tattoo that caught her eye: a wolf. Poorly drawn, rough lines, clumsy design.
"How offensive..." she frowns, tailing them from a safe distance. As they walk through the streets, more individuals with the same symbol begin to appear. Their numbers grow block by block.
She's close.
No one suspects the wolf walking among them. Her current form lets her blend in, move through their ranks without raising any alarms.
When the group turns a corner, Rosella picks up the pace, crouching low. She sees them stop in front of a large building, set apart from the rest, guarded by several armed punks.
The area is rundown, covered in graffiti, trash piled up in the alleys. Still, there's a clear difference compared to the abandoned warehouse where she and Daniel had been staying: this place has heating. Weak, barely noticeable, but enough to keep from freezing to death.
"That's probably why they'd rather hole up here than in the warehouse zone, even if the warehouse is better shielded," she thinks, eyeing the surroundings critically.
She's already getting ready to break in, poised to take what—by right of conquest—should belong to her boss.
But then, something stops her.
A scent.
Peculiar. Almost familiar.
She's smelled it before… on Daniel. Though this one is fainter, less intense.
Rosella freezes. Sniffs the air more carefully, focusing, until she pinpoints the source: a tall woman with braided hair and a long coat, calmly walking among the others. Before Rosella can get closer, a man steps out of an alley and accidentally bumps into the woman.
In a blink, the woman's body is covered in a soft glow.
Without saying a word, she hits him with a single strike, sending him flying several meters. The body drops like a sack of potatoes.
Rosella can't help but watch with interest.
"So those are the famous aura users..." she mutters, tapping a claw against her chin, thoughtful.
She reconsiders her strategy.
Obviously not everyone inside the building has aura, but… how many? Six at most, she estimates?
Aura users aren't common—at least, not according to what she's read. Training the aura takes time, and not everyone has the talent or patience to pull it off.
But if everyone who has aura hits like that woman…
"I'm in trouble," she growls under her breath.
She runs through what she knows about aura.
"Mhmm… it coats their whole body, makes them more resistant, gives them light regeneration, and makes them faster and stronger…"
She clenches her teeth. Tries to recall weaknesses.
The pages she read didn't go into much detail, but she can infer a few things.
"Aura drains over time. They can't keep it up for hours without rest. And if they take damage, it drains even faster."
And the most important part:
"It doesn't block stuff like poison. Or hunger. They're not immune to suffocation… or fear."
"Mhmm... I think I'll go with poison and fear," she says to herself, fully convinced.
She turns away without a sound and begins walking off from the building. Her paws sink slightly into the snow as she picks up speed.
"I remember passing a pharmacy on the way here…" she thinks, now trotting faster back into the city.
When she finally finds it, Rosella doesn't bother changing form. She stays as a wolf, calm, unbothered. Approaches the entrance, nudges the glass door open with her head, and once inside, grabs a shopping basket with her mouth.
The chime alerts the cashier, but from the counter, he can't see who walked in.
"Damn door…," he mutters to himself, not even bothering to look.
"Gotta remember to fix it…"
Rosella slips into the aisles without hurry, guided only by her nose. The air is thick with the scent of chemicals, but even through it all, she manages to pick out exactly what she's after.
"Let's see…"
A low shelf catches her attention. She stops, sniffs a few boxes, and drops one into the basket. Diphenhydramine.
"Perfect."
A few more steps and she finds another. Scopolamine.
"This'll work nicely."
She checks more shelves, hunting for useful combinations. Barbituric acid.
"This would help keep them asleep for quite a while..."
She moves into the supplements and chemical products section.
Sniffs a closed bottle and instantly recognizes it—sodium thiosulfate.
"Now I just need cyanide in microdoses for quick disorientation… yeah, why not?" she thinks, grabbing a couple boxes.
"And if I mix it with a little amyl nitrite, I could knock them out almost instantly."
She moves with precision, grabbing boxes with her mouth and dropping them neatly into the basket.
Then she stops in front of another section. Tropane alkaloids.
"Mmm, good hallucinogens…" she muses with a grin.
"And to top it all off, my personal touch… magnesium silicate!"
The basket's already full, but her eyes light up at the sight of something else—a shelf lined with children's science kits.
"Hmm… way below my standards, but it'll do," she mutters, adding it to her haul.
She heads to the exit, pushing the basket with one paw while using the other to nudge the door open. This time, the movement finally draws the clerk's attention.
"Hey! You! What the hell are you doing with that?!"
But it's too late.
Rosella's already outside, sprinting with her loot clenched between her jaws, vanishing into the alleyways.
"Ahahaha! Stupid human…" she thinks with pride, slipping away without a trace.
She bolts down rarely used paths, avoiding cameras, hopping fences, and cutting through dark shortcuts. Even though it's a bit far, it only takes her a few minutes to reach the abandoned warehouse.
Once inside, she takes a deep breath, drops the basket onto the floor, and shifts back into her more human form.
She rummages through the corners and drags out an old, half-rusted table, placing it in the center of the brightest area. Then she starts cleaning it with ethyl alcohol.
It takes a while to get it decent, but eventually the surface is disinfected.
Carefully, she sets the kid's science kit on top.
The tools are… ridiculously colorful.
Neon green tweezers, test tubes covered in star stickers, a scale shaped like a smiling cat.
She sighs.
"It is what it is," she mutters, slipping on a pair of gloves decorated with little princesses.
She picks up a pink pipette and drops a few bits of liquid diphenhydramine onto a finely grated fragment of scopolamine, all inside a tiny measuring cup plastered with smiling dinosaurs.
Next, she uncaps a little bottle marked with a cheerful skull and carefully scrapes some barbituric acid from a tablet. Stirring the mix slowly with a plastic unicorn-shaped rod, she adds a precise pinch of sodium thiosulfate.
Then, she sprinkles in microdoses of cyanide, shakes the mixture inside a test tube covered with a rainbow sticker, and finally adds a few drops of amyl nitrite. The liquid turns a strange shade—somewhere between dull pink and cloudy violet.
She pours everything into the toy volcano, which doubles as a compound mixer.
While she waits for it to settle, she lies on the floor with her arms stretched out, staring at the ceiling.
But something gnaws at her. Her brow furrows suddenly.
"Ugh, you idiot! I forgot the gunpowder."
She smacks her forehead, indignant. "How could I forget the most important part?"
Thinking fast… she remembers.
Inside Daniel's box, there was a gun.
With a spark of inspiration, she heads for the hole they'd just patched up a few hours ago.
She starts digging without hesitation, until her claws hit the box. She pulls it out, opens it carefully, grabs the gun, extracts a few bullets, and reseals the box gently.
Back at the toy volcano, she cracks the bullets and adds the gunpowder to the mixture.
"Done!" she exclaims, satisfied. "Everything's ready. Now… just gotta wait."
It's only a few minutes, but they drag on forever. She drums her fingers on the table, glaring impatiently at the toy volcano in front of her.
"Hurry up, you stupid toy volcano!" she shouts. "Do your damn job!!"
Finally, the signature ding of a tiny bell chimes. That's the signal—it's done.
Rosella quickly removes the lid.
Inside, she finds several small purple spheres. The scent they give off is strong, pungent. That tells her they'll work.
Still, as a proper follower of the scientific method, she knows better than to assume.
She carefully pockets the spheres in her jacket and steps out of the warehouse without wasting time. Her destination is set: that mafioso hideout.
But first—she needs a trial. A real test.
Luckily, just a block away, she spots a woman stumbling down the sidewalk, walking alone with a vacant gaze.
"Perfect," she thinks, pulling one of the spheres with calm precision.
She takes aim and flings it straight at the woman's face.
A clean hit.
A small puff of smoke bursts around the woman before she can even react. She inhales instinctively. Two seconds later, her body wobbles and crashes to the ground, unconscious.
"Perfect," Rosella repeats, grinning with satisfaction as she tucks the remaining spheres away and continues on her way without a glance back.
She doesn't care what happens to the woman. She could help her, sure. She could… but she doesn't want to. There are more important things to do.
"Hehe," she chuckles under her breath, picking up the pace.
When she reaches the hideout, now in her wolf form, she circles the building once.
She studies the cameras, the windows, the nearby alleys. There's no real surveillance at the back. Just two women near a door, chatting casually, not even a little alert.
From their angle, Rosella looks like just a stray mutt sniffing around. Not worth worrying about.
"Hey, you, mangy mutt. Get the fuck outta here," one of them snaps when she notices her.
Rosella doesn't budge. She stays there, tongue out, panting with a lazy grin.
"I hate dogs," the woman mutters, grabbing a metal rod and stepping forward to chase her off.
She doesn't make it more than three steps. Rosella lunges. Her body moves like a whip, fangs bared as she leaps. Her jaws snap shut around the woman's throat and tear it out in one clean motion.
The second woman tries to scream, but not a sound escapes. Rosella's already on her, teeth sinking deep, shaking her like a ragdoll as blood sprays across the concrete.
When the body goes limp, she drops it without care and shifts back to human form, her clothes still perfectly in place.
"Ahh~" she sighs, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. There's blood on her lips, but she doesn't mind. The taste was bland. Nothing like her boss's.
She looks at the door. Digital lock. Probably keycard access. She checks the coat of one of the women, finds a card, slides it through—click.
Unlocked.
Before going in, she drags both corpses to a nearby dumpster and tosses them in.
As she opens the door, she listens carefully, searching for any sign of others. Hearing and smelling nothing, she steps through calmly.
The room is small, empty. But the scent in the air doesn't lie. The rest of the building is full. People moving, talking.
"So many prey~~"
She can't help but feel a rush of excitement.
-//-
Author's note:
In the previous chapter I said I was going to move things along faster… Well, I lied. I wanted to write a little something about Rossella and ended up with 6k words of her just doing her thing. Oh well. This is part one. Part two is already done, but I still need to edit it. If I can, I'll upload it on Friday or so, just to speed things up a bit. We'll see what happens.
[Don't forget to let me know if there's any mistake]
See you around!
Hugs and kisses 💕