A/N: There were 132 Wolf's Rain stories with the word "Paradise" in the title, last time I checked. You think anyone has sympathy for this devil who doesn't own it, either? Thanks to Words without for the beta!

We retreated from the platform as quickly as possible. The crowds at the station were both a help and a hindrance: Pops and I had lived in Freeze City long enough to become fairly adept at losing ourselves in a mass of humanity without getting trampled for our trouble, but god help me if I remembered the way out. It's harder to keep track of platform numbers when one is ducking and dodging the foot traffic.

Pops didn't seem to be having a whole lot more luck than I was. He shouldered through the crowd with more ease than I could, but somehow we'd missed a turn and my father simply soldiered straight on, with no immediate destination.

At least we'd gotten away from those men – those… wolves. Even if their senses of smell were superior to my own, they'd have trouble tracking us down with so many others crossing our path. Maybe it was a good thing we weren't headed straight back to the car. We'd have time to circle back, wait until they got tired of guarding it, and make a clean escape. We'd be out of this city by tomorrow, call Detective Lebowski and tell him… something, and then we'd get Toboe and Hige home safe, with Kiba in police custody by Monday morning.

Yeah. Right.

There were two of them waiting by the exit by the time we got turned around properly: the sleepy-eyed blond with the pleasant conversational strategies and our friend with the black eye. Gauss spotted us first. He waved jauntily at us, as if we hadn't spotted them at the edge of the crowd. Pops pulled his hat lower and we attempted to walk around them, but Wormwood cheerfully shoved his way between walkers and grasped me by the shoulder. I definitely felt teeth.

"You don't skip town, girlie. Not on us," he whispered. A quick glance to the side revealed that Pops had been similarly restrained by Gauss. My captor nodded towards the pistol on my hip. "You just keep your bullets for the job tomorrow. We wouldn't want to scare the locals, now, would we?"

"Moss wouldn't like that," Gauss agreed. "He doesn't think much of the violence Zali uses to keep the pack in line." He leaned across my father's back to offer me a grin from his maw.

"Yet he's willing to deal us," Pops said through gritted teeth, using his superior upper body mass to at least put some distance between Gauss and me. "What would he think of you roughing up the hired help?"

"Moss keeps his hands clean," Wormwood laughed. "That's all he worries with." They had hustled us away from the train commuters and workers now, into a blind alley as foreboding and dismal as any of the more run-down sections of Freeze City could offer.

Great.

"I think these two could use a lesson in pack loyalty." My captor shoved me forward, sending me stumbling into a wall. Pops grunted in pain as I regained my footing and turned to face the wolves.

There was no doubt about what they were now. Where a pair of men had once stood were two giant, snarling canines, their fur standing on end and their legs tensing to jump. The smaller of the pair must have weighed at least as much as I did, and as quick as Pops could be on the draw, he still couldn't get his rifle out before those fangs sunk into his arm.

The hell with it. The larger of the pair – I assumed from its lighter coat coloring and relative position that it was Wormwood, but frankly I didn't give much of a damn at the time – moved to clamp in on Pops as well, and I struck out with my switchblade falling into my hand. After all, I'd matched a wolf for speed before.

Barely. While I was already armed. While he was merely toying with me.

Nevertheless, the knife struck, if a little less true than I'd hoped. I slashed at him again and again, hoping to cause enough damage that he'd release Pops. The wolf whimpered, but he didn't release.

My father roared in rage and pain. Still unable to reach a firearm, Pops used this fury to fight back with the only method left to him: lifting the giant dogs clinging to his arm, Pops flung himself into the wall, using the wolves to absorb the brunt of the impact. Between the sudden jolt and multiple, albeit shallow stab wounds, the larger wolf released his bite, tumbling to the dirt beneath our feet and scrambling away, howling in agony.

Pop's arm wasn't hanging right beneath the blood-soaked sleeve. Those jaws had crushed it, and there was still one stubborn bastard son of a bitch wolf hanging from him.

Gauss glared at me through his blackened yellow eye, daring me to do something. My father dropped to his knees, panting heavily. I took aim. It was easy enough, since the wolf never released his bite. That eye would never heal.

I helped Pops tug the corpse loose and wrapped an arm about him, trying not to think of how much we might have jolted his arm in the process. Pops groaned, and I glanced down. Part of me expected it to turn into human body, any second. I didn't know which would be worse.

We made it back to the car before I had to throw up. I'd dealt with corpses before, I'd been injured before, I'd seen my father injured, but that didn't make it easier. I think Pops understood; he never told me otherwise.

That was wolves for you.

And I still didn't know what the hell we were going to do about Tsume.