You let the silence hang awkwardly for a moment, ignoring his hand, and then prompt, "Well? Are you going to show us your true self, sir?" You paw the ground meaningfully. "Or do you plan to finish your book before shucking off the monkey suit?" You've decided that Shadow of the ever-changing name is hard to please. You're going to make this bozo work for his power trip.
"Right," Lord Aconite says, wiping his palms on his knees. "Yes. Right. Uh. Good idea, Shadowrun. An apt request. We will meet in our true forms." He takes off his silly hat, then his shirt— his stomach is so smooth and pale it could be the moon all on its own— and then edges shyly into his tent to take off the rest of his kit. "Surely our Lord's manhood is as impressive as the rest of him," you murmur to Bel, and then the two of you have to stifle conspiratory giggles until Aconite comes back out of the tent. Or... tries. He zipped up the fly before changing. Now his claws are scrabbling at the smooth fabric. "Oh my god," you say, reverently.
You march over and yoink the zipper with your teeth so he can squirm out. He mutters embarrassed thanks, to which you reply, "I'm happy to serve, sir." You look him over. He's a bog-standard timberwolf, somewhere between your size and Erskin's, and he could really use a good grooming. But in the interest of amusing Erskin, you say with great seriousness, "Your proud lineage shows in your bearing. Surely you'll have no trouble completing the Trial of Leadership." You make sure the capital letters are audible.
"Oh! Yes, the Trial of Leadership," you say, bouncing excitedly. "Yes, well spoken, Shadowrun! Surely what happened to the last poor fellow can't happen twice." "Uh. What... what happened?" "He exploded!" you say cheerfully. "Don't worry, you look much tougher." He looks sort of like he wants to pee.
Exploded? How are you supposed to follow up on that? Ah, yes: you scoff. "Lightfoot is just pulling your tail. No one explodes. They get kicked, gored, drowned, and trampled, of course, but only once in a great while is someone even eviscerated. Incidentally, sir, he likes to embellish people's names. There's no knighthood among American wolves, as I'm sure you know. Call me Captain Shadow. Lightfoot, grab my pack strap, I believe we're about to go running." With Erskin's help, you back out of your backpack, then do the same for him. You're not too concerned about leaving your stuff at the clown's camp; even if he tried to steal something of yours, you're pretty sure his wolf form couldn't outrun your human one, let alone you on four paws. Judging that Aconite has stewed long enough, you give him the explanation he didn't dare ask for, lest he reveal his ignorance: "Only a True Alpha," you announce, "can bring down a full-grown buck all by himself."
You stare at Bel with passionate adoration. "Yes," you say, with overtones of fuck me into the ground, you magnificent beast. You cough, shuffle your paws, regain your composure. "Of course, it's not crucial for the test to commence immediately," you say. "We could work up to it, say, after lunch. I could go for some more duck."
"But if Lord Aconite completes the trial," you say airily, "we'll all have venison, will we not? Well, sir? What will it be?"
"Uh— well. It wouldn't do for my subjects, uh— packmates?— to go hungry. It might be some time before we find a stag." Aconite looks nervous, then thoughtful, then dawningly confident. "But with the three of us hunting it down, we should find it soon, and I'll dispatch it quickly. We'll have a feast by tonight! We could cook it over a spit." He trots in a circle around the tent, increasingly enthused. "Men! To me!" he calls, and gallops heavily off in a random direction. Your ardour has cooled somewhat. "If you break his sad little heart right away I'm going to sulk," you say. "I thought we could have days of fun."
"Please, as if he could find a chicken dinner in the deli aisle. He won't be hunting any bucks tonight. I just want to run him around a bit." You lick his cheek consolingly. "It's okay, we can play with him as long as you want, just let's try to arrange things so we don't have to be Shadow and Lightfoot 24/7 or I'll give the game away, do you know how hard it's been not to laugh?"
"Poor baby," you say, and lick him back. "We'll tire him out and leave him back at his own little camp, how about that? Incidentally, I'm not the most educated scholar of camping equipment, but I'm fairly certain it's traditional to pin your tent down. Peg? Tie? You think it's going to tip over while we're gone?"
"Hmm." You stand up on your hind legs, experimentally push a paw against the peak of his tent, and then lean and it goes right over. You can hear his loose junk rolling around inside. "Whoops, the wind!" Then you race to catch up with your new 'alpha'. He hasn't gotten far. He's as out of shape and clueless as you expected. When he looks indignant, as if he's about to demand where you were, you pre-empt him: "We ranged wide at your flanks, but caught no scent. Have you had more luck, sir?"
"No," Aconite says sourly, moving at a wheezy, lumbering trot. "They're elusive, you know. Deer are silent and cunning." "Yes, of course," you say. "Everyone knows they move like the wind and shadows, my lord. No matter how big they are and what ridiculous headgear they're sporting. And they take great pains to conceal their scent." Bel gives you skeptical look. "I want to go by the lake again," you say. "No!" Aconite snaps. "We press on! Don't admit defeat so easily, Lightpaw, or you'll never be anything better than an omega. Real men aren't swayed by difficulties or discomforts. If you give up on your goals you deserve what you get, which is nothing." "Oh." Your ears have gone back. "I'll remember that. My lord."
"Away from the lake, then? As you wish, sir. Lightfoot, take the left flank; I'll take the right. We'll report back if we find a trail." You slip silently into the ferns. Once out of Aconite's earshot and downwind, you circle around to find Erskin so you can have a word in private. "I don't like when he insults you," you whisper. "Are you sure you don't want to just kick his ass?"
"No, it'll be a lot more satisfying when he orchestrates his own ass-kicking," you say. "Remember that fellow I told you about who thought he could take on a bear?" You grin darkly.
"Oh yes," you grin back. "Well, just let me know when you want him to find his prize stag." You lick his eyebrow affectionately. "For now, shall we lead him into rough ground, or get him lost and go get some ducks?"
"Both!" you say happily. "Both is good. You're so smart." You play with him for a few minutes, indulging each other, then dash back into 'place'.
You lead Aconite on a wild buck chase for two or three hours, exploring interesting geological formations to your heart's content while the poor gullible suburbanite labors along between the boulders you leap across the tops of. You guess you're about eight miles from his camp when you sniff the wind sagely and say, "The weather's closing in. I suggest we take the southernmost route back to camp, sir; one last sweep. We'll meet you at the tent. Is this acceptable?" As you expected, he agrees out of sheer exhaustion and bafflement, and you and Erskin vanish and leave him there. "I actually do want to go to his camp," you say when the two of you are alone, "while I can still use hands. There's some things I want to check." It doesn't take long at all to get back there. You make the hard push to human shape -- feels like it might be the last time until after the moon, it really hurts -- and don't bother to get dressed, just shiver naked with your back to the wind as you rifle quickly and expertly through Aconite's belongings. You memorize his real name and address, go through his phone and copy the contacts list to your own, then set his to vibrate silently and near-continually and leave it on. "He'll have no battery by the time he finds his way back," you explain. "So he can't call whatever prankster turned him, or flip out about some dumb pseudo-emergency and call in a rescue chopper." The important thing, of course, is that he has no weapons, and nothing suggests he's not precisely who he appears to be, but you have a feeling Erskin would laugh at your paranoia if you mentioned that. "Can you think of any pranks that need doing while I've got hands, or shall we go get those ducks?"
"Oooh, beef jerky," you say, sniffing eagerly at a lump of plastic bagging. "Give me some." This accomplished, you give everything a final sniff and go lie down. "All of his equipment is either from the store or a suburban middle-aged lady's house," you say. "Curious. I can't see this buttercup fighting free of an attack, like you did, and he certainly doesn't seem attached to a family."
"All our equipment is from a store," you point out, but you get his point. "This is a summer tent. He's got no groundcloth, and his sleeping pad's not waterproof. His light runs on batteries and the only recharger he has is solar. In the north woods, in the fall. The only coat he's got is that fugly, stinky trenchcoat. And as we just discovered, he can't hunt worth a damn." You put everything back roughly where you found it and fall back into fur with a sigh of relief. "And that's me done shifting for the week, I think. Ouch. Anyway, I'm starting to think if we don't kick this poor bastard into shape, he's going to die."
You flick an ear indifferently. "Should we bother? He's clearly alone by rejection, not choice or bereavement. Feeding him to a bear would be doing the local ecology a favor."
