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When Chell is ready, Adrian's going to try the door back out of Milliways again. Right now, though, he's content to train as hard as he can. General Rogers (Steve, Rojhaz, Captain America- whatever other names he might have don't matter when there's a rank like that to fall back to, retired or no) was right. If Shephard is the last Marine alive then he's got a duty to continue the tradition, and he's not going to be able to do that if he can't prove he's a worthy heir to the Corps' traditions to everyone around him.

He can still feel Tim Hutchence's forearm across his throat, if he thinks about it. That's not going to happen again.

Right now, all that any of this means is that he's outside on a training run, this time through the woods along whatever trails he can find. It's no Pittsburgh city sewers, but it's the most complicated ground he's got access to, and he'll eventually come to the end of it and see if he can't find that punching bag he saw earlier. He's got a lot of work to do before they go back.

[tinytag: Adrian Shephard]

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About the time he's coming toward the end of it there is another man coming out to do some training of his own.

Spoon is one of those people capable of bristling with weapons even when the only obvious thing he's got is a mask on his belt. A familiar mask, if the person watching enjoys science fiction movies of a certain era. He's also got a little bit of metal that will become a disk, and a long gauntlet.

Tell you the truth, Adrian is a profoundly un-geeky person. He's seen Predator, but only once, and only because he likes watching Ahnuld make things explode. He probably remembers Jesse Ventura's lines somewhat better than anything the Predator had on in the movie.

Nevertheless he glances in the newcomer's direction for a quick assessment before bringing his run down to a moderate cool-down speed. It can't hurt.

There are roughly three days until the next full moon. Two days until the start of the three day event that the Wells house plans around. So the pale green eyes that meet Adrian's are slightly mad with horrible anticipation, and more than slightly feral, and the easy smile offered has more bite to it than Spoon would like to admit.

... so he looks like Chainsaw Lundberg back in Terra Alta, then. Okay. Good to know.

(Preston County's kind of a weird place sometimes.)

"Afternoon," says Shephard, who's running in his civvies, for all that he'd probably be warmer with his fatigues and gas mask. "How's it goin'?"

"Been worse." Spoon says quietly, dipping his head in a not-quite-human nod of greeting, "Been better, too, but moon's coming. Spoon." he offers his hand if Adrian stops, otherwise just watches.

Might as well; he was going to stop soon anyway. He leans over to shake the offered hand, his own being about as rough as you'd expect given several years in the Marines and several weeks roaming the wilderness. "Shephard," he says. "Good t'meet you, Spoon. Moon problems?"

Hey, you get all kinds of crazies in the hollers. It's part of why the Shephard family and others like them have such a hard time with the rest of the country. Everyone assumes the quiet respectable people are just wackjobs who haven't eaten anyone yet.

"Pleasure to meet you, too. Werewolf." Spoon says with a shrug. He doesn't try to keep it secret here, he's too obviously off his rocker and infectious on top of that. "I can feel it coming, gets me on edge."

"Huh. Y'know, I done met all kinds of people 'round here so far, and it's weird as shit back home 'n all right now, but I gotta say I ain't never met an actual werewolf before," says Shephard.

One step at a time, eh?

Spoon takes his hand back, flexes it, and grows the thick brown skin and thicker, black claws.

"Woof. Woof." it's said very blandly, "Now you have."

"Sheeeyit," says Shephard approvingly. "Now that's just impressive. You born like that, or you get bit?"

Spoon snorts and rolls up his left sleeve as far as it'll go, "You could say bit. Or mauled, lost most of the meat of me left arm. Got to keep me nails short as possible to make sure that I don't nick Cora, me youngest. She's normal human."

That gets a low whistle. "Bad fuckin' business," he says. "How long you been a werewolf, anyway? If y'don't mind my askin'."

"That gets kind of complicated." Spoon says with a shrug, "Me wife's a Time Lord, I did a two year stint in ancient Dardania, so it's a little in the air. About six years, as I've lived them."

Shephard, for all his issues, is profoundly un-geeky.

"Time Lord?"

"You know how time goes from past to present to future and history happened?" Spoon says, drawing a line in the air, "She's one of the people who makes sure that it stays that way. Do not ask me to explain it better, the math makes me head ache."

"Oh, I"m not gonna," says Shephard fervently. "I don't know the math either. I've just got this fuckin' huge gap of a good twenty fuckin' years in the middle of my life where I got slapped into suspended animation or somethin', and I wouldn't mind gettin' those twenty years back."

"If you meet her you can ask." Spoon says with a slow blink, "She comes to about here on me, got brown hair, a square face, eyes you could fall into forever, and the best tits a woman has ever been born with."

"... huh."

Shephard might not be much of a geek, but he's got a pretty damn good imagination.

"Huh."

"I am a very lucky man." Spoon says without any hesitation or mockery. He means it.

"I'll believe it," says Shephard, shaking off his head. "Shit. Where I come from we got a fuckload of alien fuckin' overlords who've turned off the whole goddamn planet's urge to fuck. Tits wouldn't mean a goddamn thing."

Spoon's eyes get wide and he says very seriously, "D' you need help killing them all off?"

"We're workin' on it," says Shephard. "I got dumped on my ass in the middle of fuckin' nowhere, western fuckin' Pennsylvania, a couple weeks back. Took me this long to meet up with any kind of a human resistance and what happens but I wind up with my ass here on the way to the fuckin' dorms... Next time I get to talk to the base commander I'll know who I'm allowed to bring and who I can't."

"Keep me in mind." Spoon says, grinning tightly, "In addition to being a werewolf, I'm the god-ranked Hunter Kau'te-bpe Blooded of Claw-in-Check of Broken Meteor. Killing dangerous things is a religious thing."

Shephard considers this, and starts digging through the pockets of his cargoes. Eventually he comes up with a hooked claw or talon as long as two of his fingers. "Best I could do on that fuckin' squid thing, I didn't see any teeth after all the fuckin' acid it spit at us..."

Spoon passes across the wallet he keeps photos of trophies in as though it was a resume and nods, "Looks down me alley."

After a few photo flips, Shephard shakes his head. "Jesus. Either your world's fucked worse'n mine or you get in a shitload of hunting trips a year."

"Mostly the second." Spoon allows, "I've got friends in dangerous places."

"Lucky fucker, I ain't hunted anything interesting that wasn't hunting me first in I don't know how long now."

Spoon snorts, "It's not a Hunt if there wasn't an equal chance it could kill me. I've regrown most of me limbs after Hunts. Before coming home, so that Ace doesn't kill me. I am smart enough to fear me wife and me mother."

"Nah, what I mean is- it ain't hunting if you're trying to kill it because it started chasing you first," Shephard clarifies. "That's just self defense. Different story if you're the one who started the wait grew back? What?"

"Werewolf." Spoon says, wiggling his fingers, "Shite grows back. God damn near no original parts left."

"Fuck that's a sweet deal," says Shephard. "Hurt much when it happens?"

Because otherwise it'd just be too damn convenient, wouldn't it?

"Even more than losing the limb does." Spoon says with a shrug, "I'm just used to it."

"Ah. Shit." Shephard shakes his head. "Never mind, then. I got enough shit to deal with as it is. Figured I'd ask, though."

Spoon lifts an eyebrow, "There's also the three nights of being a monster, the need to be vegetarian so that you don't eat people, the fact that suddenly you're infectious, an' a host of little things. Not bloody worth it."

"There ain't been a human being born in my world in sixteen years thanks to those Combine asswhackers callin' themselves our fuckin' overlords," says Shephard. "I'm the last Marine left alive on the entire fuckin' planet. I dunno how many doctors there are alive on Earth any more, but I can't figure there's a whole lot of 'em. I like makin' sure I know what my treatment options are before I wind up tryin' to find my arm on the floor with my teeth."

Spoon says very quietly, "An' if you were to ask I'd still say no. I don't hunger for alien flesh."

Long, long silence for a while there.

Eventually:

"So... that one thing with the mouth that does this in your pictures. What the fuck was that again?"

"Kainde amedha. Exoskeleton, me boots are made out of it. Acid blood, melted off most of me torso. It's how I became yautja." Spoon says, happily changing the subject.

"Huh. The squid things just spit acid, they had regular blood... well, sorta regular. It was sorta yellowish gray, but it was blood, not acid." He shakes his head. "How d'you hunt shit like that, anyway?"

"I killed that one with me teeth." Spoon says with a sudden and more than slightly psychotic smile, "Usually with wristblades, plasma cannon, or hand held throwing mines. Last resort, nuclear weaponry."

"Fuck. The goddamn blue thing was bad enough... four meters tall, spat fire, didn't even notice fucking gunfire. Just explosives... wait a second, mister, nukes?"

He's thinking the one the black ops guys planted at Black mesa.

"Kainde amedha reproduce by shoving an ovipositor down the throat of sommat else, growing inside, and bursting out through the chest. They can do it so fast that the world becomes naught but a seething black mass of hell." Spoon means it very, very literally, "So if I ever get to the point where I can't kill one, and there isn't another yautja available to do it?"

He holds up his arm, "Not just blades in here. Could take out most of North America with this arm."

"... shit me blind. How the fuck d'you fit that kind of payload into a casing that small?"

Adrian speaks and acts like what one might expect of a standard hick, but let us be honest here: when destructive or strategic force is at stake he knows exactly what he is talking about.

"No clue." Spoon says with a shrug, "I'm a Hunter, not a builder."

Adrian shakes his head. "Damn. 'n here I thought the living grenade barfer was impressive."

"...The whut?" Spoon asks, blankly.

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