This wasn’t just a heist. This was payback.
Syd had made sure to spell that out to Lexi when they were getting ready for her first assignment—no, her first hunt.
It was Saturday, about one week after Lexi’s first transformation. That meant that today was the last quarter moon, which in turn meant that it was time for her next dose of black market strength-enhancing nanobots. Lexi’s thigh was still sore from where Sabrina had injected her earlier that evening. The pink bandage she had put over the injection site was a cute touch, though.
Lexi was going to need all the help she could get from those nanobots. She had been training with Syd every day after classes this week at her den’s surprisingly large basement gym—large because it had to accommodate beastesses training in both their human and beast forms—and she had quickly found out that as wonderful as wild magic could be, there were still some limitations in how it was changing her body. Her strength, endurance, and agility had gone up, but Syd quickly adjusted the exercises to provide as much of a challenge as possible. Lexi found that she often overestimated her skills or underestimate her strength, causing her to overshoot her target while practicing parkour, or topple over while trying to carry a weight she thought she could handle.
It was fucking frustrating. But she didn’t give up. She knew that choosing to do the hard thing was what had gotten her here to begin with, and it was the only way she was going to get stronger.
Despite her challenges, there was one thing during her training that had surprised both her and Syd, and that was Lexi’s proficiency in combat. They practiced sparring in both human and beast forms, and in both cases—probably for the first time in four years—Lexi was able to actually leverage her combat training. Even if she lost to Syd most of the time in their sparring matches, her paladin combat training allowed her to recover, keep her guard up, and even surprise Syd every so often with a sudden dodge, strike, or grappling hold. Lexi was pulling moves out of her memory that she didn’t think she had internalized or gotten the hang of at all.
It turned out that she had been learning more than she thought, especially from Sophie’s private lessons. She had just needed to believe in herself.
… Okay, the strength from her wild magic and nanobots probably also helped. A lot.
But still, she actually knew how to fight!
Hmm. She might actually have a shot at winning a few matches at the Harvest Moon Tournament after all. Who knows—at the rate her training is going, maybe she actually has a shot at winning the whole thing.
And what better time and place to test her combat training for real than at her first ever hunt?
[So when you say ‘payback’, what kind of payback are we talking about here? What did this guy do, anyway?] Lexi asked Syd in her mind, clinging to the giant wolf woman for dear life as they zipped around the Abraxas evening traffic on her motorcycle, which was a jet-black sports bike decked out with purple decals and violet under-glow lighting—to match her hair color, of course.
They were going to meet Meg, Audrey, Roxy, and Sabrina at the rendezvous point in just a bit, but they some had time to kill, so Syd had decided to take the scenic route. The light of the half moon in the twilight sky was joined by countless massive picture screens and neon signs, advertising everything from brand new cars to the latest fashion trends, from paladin recruitment centers to magitech gadgets courtesy of Gnosis Industries. All of them drifted past their view like clouds, punctuated only by the blurry chrome smears of the cars they were weaving around and between. It’s a damn good thing Syd had been driving motorbikes for years, or they’d be smears on the asphalt by now.
[Some utterly fucked-up shit, that’s what,] Syd replied. [You might be better off not knowing.]
[I can handle it, Syd. Like you said, he’s a casino owner in Abraxas. They taught us at the academy about what the sin of gambling does to people’s souls, especially the people who encourage it.]
[Don’t say I didn’t warn ya,] Syd shrugged. [And you don’t really believe that crap they taught you anymore, right?]
[Of course not!] said Lexi. [Rumor has it that some of the most preachy cadets in my class are big-time gambling addicts. I’m not gonna listen to what a bunch of hypocrites say.]
[Attagirl. All right, so, for context—the Four Packs of Abraxas have a bunch of people under our protection. Some of them are individuals, some of them are businesses, and some of them are even other beastesses who aren’t part of a pack.]
[Sounds like a racket.]
[It would be, if we weren’t actually providing much-needed services. If anything, it’s the Church, the megacorps, and the other crime syndicates in Abraxas who run rackets. Forcing people to pay for laws and services that claim to help them, but which really just line the pockets of the elites and keep their goons at bay a little longer. Nah, us in the Four Packs? We weave the ties that bind.]
[The paladins say that the Four Packs are crime syndicates too. What makes them—I mean, us—different from, say, the Mandrake family?]
[In the eyes of the Supreme Church? Nothing, really. We commit crimes and break the law, sure … except what the Church calls ‘sinful’, we call ‘justified’. We follow our own code of ethics. We’re the hunters of Mother Moon, and hunters provide for their community. Anyone in need of an odd job, protection, food, shelter, medicine, magitech, or anything that the Church deems ‘illegal’ or ‘unsanctioned’ to provide to the underserved people of Abraxas who desperately need it? We take care of them. And in return, the people we help pay it forward and provide their services to us. It’s all favors for favors. Why do you think Club Demiurge lets us run ceremonial fights? How else do you think we got access to that abandoned soccer stadium for the tournament? How do you think we got you hooked up with those nanobots and that ovary implant—all for free, in just a few hours?]
[… Ah. Makes sense.] Lexi had never really thought about all of that.
[The Four Packs have spent years carefully building up and maintaining a complex network of alliances and deals all across Abraxas,] Syd continued as they came to a stop at a red light, [and this web of connections has allowed us to consolidate power while staying hidden from the authorities. We’ve got spies and allies all over Abraxas. A lot of people in this city fear beastesses, especially the Four Packs, but for those who understand us? They know the depth of our loyalty to our allies.] Syd revved her engine and took off as soon as the light turned green. [And they know exactly how ruthless we are to our enemies.]
That must have been why Syd was unnerved by Snake Mandrake’s death, Lexi thought to herself. A beastess disrupting their allies’ trust in them, by shifting that delicate balance ever so slightly with one betrayal, could threaten to tear down their network of allies like a house of cards.
[So I get it,] Lexi said, [the Four Packs of Abraxas have a strong network of allies they protect. Cool. But when you say we’re ruthless to our enemies …]
[… I’m talking about enemies like Pluto Sebastian.]
[Yeah, the casino owner. Now tell me what he did already, you sly wolf!]
Beneath her hands wrapped around Syd’s waist, Lexi could feel Syd tense her muscles slightly.
Syd sighed, before saying, [One of the people that our pack—the Pack of Abraxas West—has under our protection is a man named Jasper. He runs a small corner grocery store in Shadow Town that kept getting robbed, which is how he first came to us. We stepped in and … well, let’s just say we made it very clear to the criminal underworld of Shadow Town that we would hunt down anyone who dared to rob Jasper’s store again.]
Lexi could hear the smile in Syd’s mind-speech. The wolf woman was definitely grinning under her helmet.
[In return,] Syd continued, as she took a sharp corner at a speed that made Lexi’s stomach do backflips, [Jasper gives us extra ‘expired’ food from his store that’s still edible and would otherwise get tossed. It’s too much for him to haul away on his own—he can barely afford repairs on his beater of a car, much less a brand-new truck—so we take it and give it to some food banks we help out with, and the unhoused of Abraxas get a little extra free food each week. Sometimes he even sneaks us a pallet of fresh goods before they even hit his shelves! Dude’s rock solid. A real saint, just the nicest and most generous guy you’ll ever meet.]
[So what the hell did Pluto Sebastian, of all people, do to mess with a grocery store owner in Shadow Town?]
[Oh, nothing much really …] Syd swung the back end of the motorcycle around suddenly, sliding sideways along the pavement until they came to a stop. [… He just made Jasper’s daughter his own personal sex slave. That’s all. We’re here, by the way.]
There she was. Lady Luck Casino.
A waterfall of moving green and gold lights seemed to flow down the surface and edges of the monolithic building, cascading downwards to the giant glittering sign spelling out the casino’s name. The sign was perched on the awning above the massive porte-cochère, where cars dropped off various guests. Some had suitcases to stay at the casino’s hotel, while other more party-going types, already drunk, laughed and stumbled out of taxis to have a fun night inside one of Abraxas’ biggest tourist destinations.
Looking up, Lexi could see that Lady Luck Casino was no ordinary skyscraper. It looked more like a jumbled half-solved puzzle box composed of glass and steel. It was covered in jutting balconies, cubical and octahedral structures that looked tacked-on or merged with the larger central body of the casino, and covered bridges spanning between gaps and indentations in the building itself. There were outdoor covered pools, bars and slot machines visible in the windows, fancy restaurants at various levels, atriums with exotic gardens enclosed in glass half-pyramids on the sides of the building, and so, so, so many flashing lights within and outside.
High up, close to the top—where Pluto Sebastian’s penthouse office was located—was the biggest neon sign Lexi had ever seen in her life. A giant woman clad in a revealing sequin dress made of gold coins sat cross-legged in mid-air. She kicked one high-heeled leg, winked, and blew a kiss in a rhythmic pattern as the neon turned on and off in sequence. Below the woman, in cursive neon, was a sign that said ‘Lady Luck Casino’, and below that,‘Fortune Favors the Bold’.
Shaking her head from the momentary distraction of the luxurious resort in front of her, Lexi returned to their conversation.
“Wait, that’s all?!” Lexi said, out loud, in exasperation as she tilted up the face shield of her helmet. “That can’t be the whole story!”
“Of course not! It’s called sarcasm, sweetie.” Syd replied, tilting her own shield up. “Jasper’s daughter, Jade, works for the casino as a cleaner—a second job to help earn extra money for her family. One day, Jade came home covered in bruises. Her father asked her what had happened. All she said was that she saw something she really, really shouldn’t have. She wouldn’t say what, but it was something secret enough that Pluto was furious when he discovered she had witnessed it. Jade would have been killed on the spot, but Pluto had … other ideas for her. He ‘spared’ her life, but in exchange she became his personal sex slave, at his beck and call at all times. It seems that Pluto Sebastian gets his fuckin’ rocks off from beating the shit out of pretty young girls.”
Syd wrenched off her helmet and spit onto the sidewalk in disgust. She ran her fingers through her purple locks, grabbed the handlebars of her motorcycle, and beckoned Lexi with one hand to join her.
“Jasper was outraged, he told us,” Syd continued as they walked the motorbike into a nearby alley, parked it, and locked it, “but when he went to the paladins, he found out they were all in the pockets of Mr. Sebastian.”
“I’m not surprised, honestly,” Lexi said, taking off her helmet and locking it in place next to Syd’s on the seat of the motorcycle. “Why else would the Supreme Church let ‘sinful’ institutions like Lady Luck Casino exist in Abraxas?”
“A few of Pluto’s goons even showed up to his grocery store,” Syd said, “saying they would kill his whole family and burn down his store if him or his daughter Jade ever talked to the paladins again. Lucky for Jasper, however, he remembered that he had protection. That’s why he came to us for help a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve been planning this heist ever since. He may be helpless to get revenge against Pluto Sebastian for what he did—what he’s doing—to his daughter … but we can take care of it for him.”
“By robbing from him?” Lexi asked.
As they approached the rendezvous point in the alley where the van was parked, the wolf beastess punched one fist into the open palm of her other hand and grinned that wolfish grin of hers down at Lexi.
“Not just robbing from him. We’re gonna hit that motherfucker where it hurts.”
“Salutations, partners in crime!” Audrey shouted at the pair, waving one hand above her head back and forth excitedly.
“Audrey,” Roxy said, rubbing the bridge of her nose with two fingers, “please don’t yell to the whole damn world that we’re about to commit a heist, thank you very much.”
“Howdy, you two,” Meg said with a nod. “Y’all ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Lexi said. She puffed up her chest and gave a cocky grin.
“Here, put these on!” Sabrina shoved bundles of neatly folded clothing into Syd and Lexi’s arms. “You’ll be matching with us! Meg cooked up some hella rad magitech clothes for us to wear—I think they’re not colorful enough, but for this heist, fashion must take a backseat to stealth, I suppose.”
Lexi and Syd ducked around the back of the van to change. Not out of modesty—they had all seen each other naked, after all. Rather, it was to allow them to sneak in quick kisses every now and then as they changed. At one point, the coyote girl couldn’t stop staring at Syd’s muscles and forgot to keep changing. The wolf woman caught her looking, smiled, gave Lexi a mind-meltingly passionate smooch, and told her to hurry the fuck up. Eventually they were done, and they stowed their street clothes in the van and came back around to join the others.
Each of the six beastesses wore black joggers with a hole in the back for their tails to grow through if needed, tight-fitting cropped tank tops with built-in bras, and grippy cloth wraps around their hands and feet in lieu of gloves or shoes, for maximum dexterity whether they shifted form or not. Additionally, each of them had a sleeveless hooded black leather jacket with spiked chrome studs along the lapel and shoulders.
“The magitech in our clothes,” Meg assured them, “will stretch an’ shift the fabric to fit us, whether we’re in human or beast mode. There’s a few adjustments I added to increase durability too. They’re bulletproof and stab-proof, but yer probably gonna still wanna avoid gettin’ hit. These ain’t paladin armor, but they’re pretty dang close. Much lighter, too.”
“And much better than what we used to have to do,” Roxy said.
“What did you used to do?” Lexi asked.
“We had to buy cheap clothes in bulk,” said Roxy, “that we didn’t mind ruining if we had to shift during a mission. Trust me, it’s not fun having to run through a crowd of people half-naked to get back to your getaway car, because you were forced to go beast mode and didn’t bring a cloak.”
“With these,” Meg said, tugging on the sleeveless jacket, “there’s no need to worry ‘bout being caught butt-naked in public.”
“We’ll look stylish, even with our fur coats on!” Sabrina giggled.
“Everyone, please also take your masks,” Audrey said, handing them out one by one. “These are simultaneously disguises which will obscure your true visages from cameras and security guards, and bone conduction headphones with built-in microphones by which we shall remain in communication without impeding our situational awareness via blocked ear canals. Mind speech can only travel as far as regular speech, after all. Our dear Megara here has also modified them with magitech to adjust to our changing craniums accordingly, including with retractable fangs, if we choose to metamorphose during our little caper.”
Lexi looked at the mask she was handed, carefully turning it over and around. It was black and muzzle-shaped, with a coyote-like snout and nose, as well as cyan circles on the hinge of the jaw that looked to Lexi like small hubcaps. The cyan blue fangs on the mask were bared in an aggressive snarl. There were adjustable straps to fit the mask to her face, and as she slipped it on, two much smaller cyan circles on either side of the mask, each with the Gnosis Industries ankh in the center, sat perfectly over her temples. Those must be the headphones, she thought.
She slipped her hood over her head and gazed at her pack-mates. Their masks were also suited to each of their species—wolf, fox, hyena, bear, and lynx. Each mask baring their magitech blue fangs, which glowed faintly under their hoods.
“You did a hella good job, Meg,” Sabrina said with a muffled tone from the lynx mask. “We look like a proper team!”
“Testing, testing … there we go!” Audrey’s voice crackled into the bone induction headphones. It would have felt weird being able to still hear ambient sounds around her while having a voice in her head, but Lexi was slowly getting used to that from practicing her mind speech.
“All right everyone, let’s review the plan,” Syd said, her voice also slightly distorted from the mask’s microphone. She motioned for everyone to come in closer as she whispered, “Audrey—you’re our eyes in the sky. You’ve got the schematics of the casino downloaded and the surveillance cameras hacked?”
“Affirmative, Beta,” Audrey said, tapping her temple next to her green magitech eyes. “I will also be on-site to provide back-up if necessary.”
“Sabrina—you’re our getaway driver this time. Let us know if anything is happening on ground level.”
“You got it, girl!” Sabrina gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“Meg—you take care of the guards and disable the security system. That will clear a path for the rest of us without alerting the big guy up at the top.”
“I reckon it’ll be easy-peasy lemon squeezy,” Meg drawled casually. She closed the metal fingers of her magitech left arm into a fist. When she opened her fist again, the fingers were replaced with sharp metal claws that glinted in the dim light streaming into the alleyway.
“Roxy—you’re our safecracker. Wait for the all-clear from us that the security system is disabled. Then, listen to Audrey’s directions, get in, bust that sucker open, and take what you can.”
“Fuck yeah!” Roxy cackled, rubbing her hands together. “It’s been too fuckin’ long … didn’t realize how much I missed this shit!”
“And Lexi—you’re gonna be an apprentice to me in this mission, since you’re a bit of a last-minute addition and you don’t know how to half-shift yet. We’re the designated hunters and the muscle. We’ll be assisting Meg and Roxy as needed to take down guards, but we’ll be splitting off partway through to do our own thing.”
“That’s when we’ll be hunting down our target, right?” Lexi asked.
“Hunting down our prey,” Syd corrected, grinning ear to ear beneath her mask.
“Right …” Lexi said.
She was nervous, sure … but she reminded herself that she wasn’t Alexander Carpenter anymore. She was a hunter now. Hell, she was Lexi Hunter now. And Lexi could do things Alex never could.
She was so much stronger now that she used to be. She had her training, her renewed self-confidence, and her new powers to thank for that.
But most of all, she had friends to help her. She wasn’t gonna do this alone.
Lexi looked back up at the top of the irregularly-shaped casino. At the neon sign of Lady Luck herself, the gigantic woman winking and blowing a kiss at her.
Lexi took a deep breath and slowly exhaled it. The warm air of her breath condensed in the cool night air to form a faint white cloud, as it slowly dissipated outwards from her coyote mask’s fanged snarl.
Fortune favors the bold, indeed.
“You doing okay, pup?” Syd asked, wrapping one arm around the coyote beastess. The other beastesses turned expectantly towards her. The eerie glow of their fangs under their hoods made them seem like otherworldly phantom creatures. Kindred spirits of the concrete jungle.
And Lexi realized she looked like them too. She fit in. She belonged with them, and it felt … correct for her to be here to help them tonight. To lend them her strength.
Sabrina was right. They all looked like a proper team now.
No—a proper pack.
“Yes, Beta,” Lexi replied with a smile, squeezing Syd’s tattooed arm.
“Good girl,” Syd said warmly. She leaned over and pulled down her mask just long enough to give Lexi a kiss on the forehead before putting it back on again, which made the coyote woman turn beet-red.
Lexi was probably never going to stop feeling flustered around Syd.
And she was absolutely okay with that.
With her free arm, Syd gave a fist-pump into the air and said to her pack-mates, “Now … let’s go teach that rapist son-of-a-bitch a lesson he’ll never forget!”