Its not where your going, its how you got there...

[Mateo Benavides]

Mateo sat, all alone in his room at the Den, in the darkness. He leaned back, laying almost too heavily in the chair, and looked at the glass tumbler of whiskey on the dresser beside him. His eyes looked around the room, slowly taking in all the little things he had sitting around his little domain of the Den. An axe here, and sword there, some random stuff, books on smithing, spare tools, and bottles, many many bottles of Jack Daniels sitting in a corner, piled nearly two feet tall. A small sign is taped above the pile noting "Honor the Fallen". He smiles, and laughs a little, looking at the little sign above the big pile. All that alcohol, and he still will never drink enough. "I drink so I wont remember... but it's never enough to forget" He thinks at he stares at the bottles, his eyes unfocused as he drifts back in time, into a past of pain, rage, anger........

Mateo thoughts went to the day, not too long after his tribal initiation into the Blood Talons, when he found out all about his father and sister.

He didn't know him well, he had died when Mateo was only six years old. He didn't remember much of his father, not because of his young age at the time, but rather because of his father's absence. Now he understood the reason behind this, and he was told how his father had fallen, after fighting gloriously against the Pure. They told him how the anshega had torn his father limb from limb in the end, and how he had smiled and howled in triumph, knowing his pack would make it away safely.

His older sister... such a bitch, literally too. She was a great fighter, thats what his pack told him. She had died fighting the Pure too, charging in and taking a brutal hit from one of them, she went into kuruth, taking three of them before finally being brought down and having her throat torn from her.

Mateo cried that day, his new pack, his family, standing around him. Too-Tall, the way overly tall, overly skinny Omega of the pack bent down and smacked him upside the head with a smile. "C'mon man, cut that shit out, you gotta smile, drink, and go about your day like shit ain't never happened." He said, handing Mateo a large bottle of Jack Daniels.

Mateo took those words to heart, he bottled all sorrowful emotion away, and drank away his pain. With Too-Tall, Heart of Iron, Jenny "Breakface", and Eric "The Gentleman" running beside him, he had a family. He would be alright, he wouldn't have to think about the sadness cause they'd drink and talk and laugh, and overall they would push the pain that was uratha life to the side, so they would break inside. Mateo learned to be happy, to revel in his role as a warrior Rahu, and to embrace the teachings of the Blood Talons.

Everything was good, until the Pack lost Too-Tall.....

To be Continued

[Mateo Benavides]

The fight had been brutal, over the course of three nights, the full face of Luna shining like a beautifully pissed off bitch. They had disabled atleast four of the Pure in that time, but the anshega Pack was atleast twelve strong. This last fight, the pack came at them in force, twelve against five. Mateo's Pack, three of which, himself included, were Blood Talons and the fight was a brutal one. They gave back everything they recieved and then some, until finally The Gentleman, Pack Alpha, called the order to retreat. Mateo didn't want to, but had no choice. As they ran, Too-Tall was shot in the leg by silver buckshot from one of the anshega, and fell. Gentleman ordered him to leave him behind, tears in his eyes as he did so. The last thing Mateo saw or heard of Too-Tall was screams and howls of pain, and Too-Tall being swarmed by the rest of the anshega Pack...

Hours later.....

Mateo was sitting in the Den, still reeling from the fight, feeling sick over the loss of Too-Tall. The rest of the Pack was restless, barely holding in their rage at having to retreat and leave a packmate to the Anshega bastards. Sitting in the dark room, with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, Mateo grieved, chugging shotsized gulps every couple of minutes. Too-Tall had taught him this, but the more he drank, the more it hurt in this case. Then a loud horn blared outside, and they could hear an engine tearing in the direction of the Den at a fast speed. A couple seconds later a large unmanned pick-up truck smashed into the room adjacent to them. Mateo hefted his hammer, running to the doorway, expecting another brutal fight. What he saw, brought him, his Alpha, and the rest of the pack to thier knees. There was a body, nailed to the front of the truck with silver spikes. Skinned completely, it hung limp, not breathing, its eyes ripped out. Carved into the meat of the shattered corpse's chest was two words... "Too-Short"

There was no whiskey getting that sight from his eyes.... No howl with enough mourning to ever get over that pain... Too-Tall was his Packbrother, and his closest friend within the pack.....

[Mateo Benavides]

Mateo still looked at the bottles, his eyes in a thousand yard stare, seeing them, but not seeing them. They were blurry, as the moisture began to coat them as he remembered the pain, and the loss that that hit him and his pack. He twitched, as he heard a gunshot boom loudly in his mind, as if he were there, so long ago...

Jenny "Breakface" dropped like a hammer on an anvil as the silver buckshot tore into her chest and stomach. It hurt her, Mateo could tell, and she howled like a demon, but it wasn't enough to kill her. She stood up, wobbly for just a second, roaring and charging the anshega who had shot her. Shifting to the war-form as she ran after him, she pounced and brought his small hishu form to the ground. Breakface lived up to her deedname, clamping the anshega's head between her massive gauru jaws and crushing his head. The sound was sickening to Mateo, but at the same time he was happy to see the face break and head be pulped. It had been five months since Too-Tall had fallen, and the Pack had been waiting for this for far too long.

Mateo tore forward on his motorcycle, ramming and barreling over the urshul Pure before him. He dumped the bike, swinging his hammer brutally and crushed the chest of the werewolf. Even to the hishu nose the smell of battle, anger and blood, was rank in the air. Mateo revelled in it, looking down on the urshul, seeing its forelegs bent at odd angles, he knew it was done for, that hammerblow combined with the damage his bike had done was a finishing blow. He looked around, assessing the situation quickly like his Blood Talon training had taught him to do. Breakface was charging an urshul... Alpha "the Gentleman" was standing his own against two anshega, but easily holding his own... Heart of Iron was sneaking around to flank the urshul that Breakface was fighting... and a large urshul, fur blue-black with skulls braided into it, was stalking up on Mateo's Alpha....

Mateo charged, catching the wolf off guard and smashing into his hindleg with his hammer. The blow was heavy hitting, but seemed to down next to no lasting damage to the massive urshul. The near-wolf turned, smashing his back with a brutal swipe of its claws, tearing Mateo's chest open and sending him flying back. The blow was so powerful that Mateo didn't even have a chance to fall to kuruth, the just collapsed where he landed, and lay there unconscious. The last thing he saw before passing out from the pain was his chest, near shredded, ribs and sternum shattered.

He heard a loud barking in First Tongue <SKUNK?> someone had shouted, but he didn't know if it was from without, or the wolf within trying to wake him. He felt that in the time he had been knocked out that his chest had healed almost completely, meaning he had been out for a long time... He sat up bolt upright, looking around and not seeing any from his pack. It took him a long moment, laying there naked, eyes darting back and forth between the bloody clothes on the floor to the faces around him, before everything clicked into place. This was The Longfangs, a neighboring pack. Their Alpha, Fang of War, stepped forward and grabbed Mateo by the shoulder, "Skunk, I cant believe you fucking made it..."

"My... Pack?" Mateo asked, his chest strained and burning as he tried to speak.

Fang of War nodded his head in the negative...