To Lyger 0: Quite the reversal.
Looking down the length of the Knight's drawn sword and into the expressionless helmet, Lucie swallowed anxiously. Glancing past him, she could see his flying partner, still hovering at least three meters off the ground, her arms folded and eyes wide in surprise and confusion. Carefully, Lucie slid down the side of the car behind her and sat on the pavement, her hands still raised in front of her face in a gesture of surrender. The sword tip followed her down, never more than a few centimeters from her throat. Her arms ached; she could feel stickiness on her nose and neck. "Please," she managed to croak. She coughed thickly, her throat parched, and tried to find her voice. "I–I need your help."
The Knight cocked his head to one side, the sword remaining steady. "What are you?"
Lucie gulped. Here it was…
"We have met someone else who could transform into an animal," added his companion while Lucie hesitated. "He helped us to defeat the Tarasque in the spring. Only, he actually transformed into a bear – he came from an ancient Atlantean outpost."
Lucie furrowed her brows in confusion. "Wait, 'Atlantis'? Like the myth?"
"Well, it's not exactly a myth…"
The Knight cleared his throat pointedly, turning his helmet the slightest bit toward the woman. "Never mind that, Valkyrie," he interjected, before refocusing his attention on Lucie. "Who are you? Why do you say you 'need' our help?"
"What are you?" Valkyrie pressed. "Are you really a…?" Her voice trailed off, her eyes wide.
Lucie shrugged her shoulders and finally lowered her hands to fall in her lap. The Knight's sword dropped to his side, though he did not sheathe it. Sighing heavily, her shoulders sagged, and she looked back and forth between them. "I guess you would say I'm a werewolf," she admitted. Valkyrie's breathing hitched. The Knight remained rigidly still. Lucie gulped. Every fiber of her being urged her to remain quiet… but she had come too far to stop now. This was her only hope. Gritting her teeth, she continued, "My pack lives… about a week south of here by foot, in the Black Forest – that's been our home for centuries."
"There are more of you?" The Knight shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gauntleted hand opening and closing around his sword hilt. "How many?"
"Not as many as there once were," she confessed, looking down at the ground in front of her.
"And all those stories of how werewolves would attack people?" Valkyrie pressed, folding her arms and pursing her lips.
"No. Absolutely not." Lucie shook her head adamantly. "Maybe three or four hundred years ago that was the case, but not today," she insisted. "Most of my pack are peaceful and content to live their lives and just want to be left alone. We stay in our village for the most part and try to avoid interacting with the outside world – especially when it gets closer to the full moon."
"Is that when you – wait, no; you were just transformed!" The Knight started, looking her over carefully.
Lucie grimaced, heat rising in her cheeks despite the chill in the air. "We can transform whenever we want to; it's just that at the full moon, it's possible to… lose control." Valkyrie glanced up toward the half-moon, and Lucie's stomach clenched guiltily. "I'm not dangerous to you," she protested. "I would never hurt someone! None of my people would – under normal circumstances. That's why when the full moon gets close, we normally lock ourselves in, just in case."
Valkyrie nodded, her cheeks turning a darker shade, and drifted a little lower, though she still remained a meter above the ground. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to–"
"No… it's okay." Lucie gulped, her back and shoulders shaking with a wave of chills. "There's a reason I normally don't tell people what I am: that's their usual reaction."
"So…" the Knight began, placing the tip of his sword on the pavement and leaning on it slightly. "That still doesn't explain why you came here."
She frowned. "As I said, my people have tended to keep to ourselves and avoid interacting with the outside world. For the last few hundred years, no one really even knew about us. But that ended back during the War, when Hitler sent people to meet with our pack – my great-grandfather was the pack leader at the time, and he at first didn't want anything to do with the Nazis. But they wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. They kept coming back, laying more and more prohibitive restrictions on us. In the end, if our island was going to survive, my people had to work with them."
The Knight hummed, finally sheathing his sword and resting his hand on the pommel. "And how did Hitler employ them?"
"We – or they – were supposed to foment an uprising against the occupation, after the surrender. Only the order never came and my great-grandfather refused to act." Lucie let out a breath. "I think a couple of them did end up going to war on their own, but not the pack as a whole."
"I thought Unternehmen Werwolf was just a story…" murmured the Knight, watching her carefully.
Lucie shook her head. "No. It was a very real possibility; had cooler heads not prevailed, it could absolutely have happened. And if that had happened, there's no way the pack could have stayed hidden"
He nodded. "Very well. Then why are you here now?"
"Some of my people have been getting restless lately," she explained, her stomach churning anxiously. "Most of my people aren't prone to violence, but a small group – really just one man and his followers – they want us to reveal ourselves and use our power more. They want to carve out their own little… kingdom. They think that they can surprise the humans living around the Forest and overwhelm them before they can do anything." She frowned, shaking her head in frustration. "But I know what would happen if they did that. If they really did try to take over land and scare people into running away, then you would come to stop them – you, plus the Heroes of Paris. And if you did that, then there's no way that my people would survive. But I don't want to see my people wiped out for something like this. I need your help to stop this man before he does something stupid."