When walking to school, there was a hop to Gary’s step. It was a strange feeling, and he didn’t even understand it himself right now. Rather than being scared or worried that he would most likely face Billy today, the high schooler felt excited.
All this time, everything he had been doing, growing stronger by fighting the colour gang members, had all been, so he could beat Billy, and it was time to see if his hard work had paid off.
‘Is this really me?’ Gary thought as he looked at his fist, still not used to its increased size. ‘I’ve always enjoyed watching Altered fights… but I never fought one before. Well, even if the old me had had the chance to, I would have been done in before I could even blink. Now, though, I feel confident in defeating Billy!’
On one hand, the teenager enjoyed this feeling of great strength, but he reminded himself that there were downsides to it. No, not ‘great responsibility’, but more like ‘giant headaches’ in the form of White Rose and the Altered Hunter. Hopefully, once Billy would be taken care of, Blake could claim the credit for it, making both of them disappear from Gary’s life…
School seemed to last forever for him, and while in class, the teenager sent out a message to the Howlers group chat. He informed his fellow gang members that he had plans today. According to Kai, fixes were still being done on the club and with it being the middle of the week, nobody needed their leader for anything.
In other words, there was nothing that would get in his way of what was to happen tonight.
‘Calm down, Gary, there’s no guarantee that we’ll even find him today. It might still be a long time until we do, but it does feel like I’m close to solving one of my biggest problems.’
“Say, what’s got you so happy? Did you find a secret love letter from Xin or something?” Tom asked teasingly, making his best friend blush a bit.
“Do I require a special reason to be happy? Anyway, tonight, Amy and I planned to watch a film together. With my Mum and everything else, it’s nice to do something normal for a change.” Gary lied. He was getting better at it, which wasn’t too surprising with how frequently he did that.
If it was just him, he might have told his best friend that he would try to hunt Billy, but now Blake was involved. It didn’t feel fair to reveal the young Altered Hunter’s secrets, seeing as the other had kept Gary’s secret from his own father.
———
The school day proceeded as normal, and the Rugby practice was similarly uneventful. Neither Blake nor Gary showed any signs that the two of them had very dangerous plans today. They only interacted as was needed during practice plays.
There was still some time before the two of them would head out. According to Blake, the best time to act would be at night, which Gary was fine with. He believed that Billy wouldn’t be out on the hunt until that time anyway.
Right now, the green haired teenager was out in town with an empty bag he had brought from home. Using some leftover funds from their haul on Monday, Gary was in possession of more cash than would be normal for a boy his age, at least in Slough. He was heading to the convenience store to buy plenty of raw meat, placing it all in his back and decided to grab some extra clothes this time.
‘Now that I have a larger Energy pool, I should theoretically be able to go a few days without having to eat anything. It looks like my Energy still goes down at the same speed as it did before, but it also seems to work the other way round. I need to eat thrice as much to fill it back up.’
With 300 Energy, he could afford to hunt a few critters occasionally, but he didn’t exactly want to be carrying around dead animal carcasses in his bag. Eventually, after he had finished all his shopping, the only thing Gary was left with was to wait for Blake to call on him.
He took a bite out of some meat, just to make sure his Energy was full. One never knew when a couple points of Energy might make the difference. Fortunately, his hunting partner didn’t make him wait too long. A text on his phone instructed the high schooler where to meet the other.
Gary was actually led to a part of Slough he was slightly unfamiliar with, though he recognised it well. It was because this was the area of Slough where the Bruntin’s apartment was located, and where the White Rose agents had discovered him the first time.
Enough time had passed without any more news, so there were no police nor any reporters on the scene. They had other work to do, and they couldn’t disturb the lives of everyone in the neighbourhood for too long. Whatever evidence there had been to get from their apartment, the police had retrieved it long ago.
Just as the teenager had suspected, the place Blake wanted him to be at was Billy’s old home.
‘He doesn’t think Billy is still here, does he? Why start here, of all places? Well, I guess it’s as good a place as any… hold on, could it be that Billy might actually be inside?! Surely, Blake would have warned me, right? Sh*t, I haven’t prepared myself.’ Gary felt his heart beat faster.
After a short text, it looked like Blake actually wanted him to come to the roof instead, so Gary happily obliged. The high schooler was careful to avoid being spotted by any of the residents. Using his nose, he tried to find any ‘strange’ scents.
Unfortunately, Gary couldn’t remember Billy’s scent too well, since the last few times they had met, he hadn’t had the chance to. On the night of the full moon, when Billy had attacked Innu, the green haired teenager had been a Werewolf himself, meaning he had no recollection if the other Werewolf had some sort of unique scent. However, there was nothing that smelt like himself, at least.
At the top of the stairs, Gary knocked a few times at the door, only for it to get opened and a plain black mask staring him dead in the face. No gap for the mouth, but only two small square slits for eyes.
“Holy… did you really have to scare the crap out of me?!” Gary complained, realising that it was Blake.
“Sorry, I need to make sure that it wasn’t one of the residents here to enjoy a smoke or something.” Blake replied after shutting the door behind, and clipping on what looked like a padlock.
‘Would a resident really have had a reason to knock though?’ Gary argued mentally, but let the matter rest. Instead, he looked behind Blake. ‘Woah, I guess he really is serious about this stuff. Man, I really never thought I would be here working with an Altered Hunter.’
There was a black bag and laid out, Blake had several weapons on a piece of cloth. On top of that, there were even some items Gary couldn’t even realise what they were. Now that the high schooler was closer, he could tell that the young Altered Hunter was wearing thick armour underneath his outfit, like some sort of knight from the past.
“Is that for protection? from the Altered, I mean?” Gary asked.
“Kinda.” Blake replied while he double checked all his items. “It’s more than that, though. The armour is… let’s just say it’s quite ‘special’.”
Although Blake had agreed to work together, he was careful about not divulging too many of their secrets to the Werewolf boy just yet.
“So how are we going to track down Blake? Do you have like an Altered scanner or something, if that would even work?” Gary asked.
“I guess you could call it that.” Blake scratched his head. “There are a lot of tools that need to be used for tracking, not just one. In our case, we don’t even know what to start looking for because Billy is like you.
“In the case of normal Altered, we can tap into other information networks, like reports from the police, sensors going off at strange hours and so on. If those get reported, then my father is able to use that information to help us look in the right area.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have that, so I chose the area that would make the most sense to start with. As you said, we don’t even know if any of this stuff will work on him because he is not an Altered. As such, if you don’t mind, I would like to test some of these things on you first.”
Blake picked up an object, and clicked a button on the bottom, shooting out from the top of it was what looked like a bat with spikes.
Seeing this, Gary gulped.