Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership over Wolf's Rain, any cannon characters who may make an appearance or the Wolf's Rain universe. Any characters who are created in this story are strictly figments created for this story.

Notes: This story takes place after the conclusion of the anime Wolf's Rain and in the modern suburban time period.

I took out the songs for this chapter to get it up faster.

Chapter Five

The Show Must Go On

Jay settled onto the cushion of the armchair, the black and white folded faces of the newspaper crinkling in his hands as he searched out a comfortable position.

"It's silly to argue about dreams," Neil quipped from where he lounged, spread across the arm of the old tan checkered couch. It had been an argument surviving the span of the week, and Jay was long ago tired of interjecting to silence the children on it.

"No it's not. Not when you actually have them," Caleb retorted. Neil sat up in his seat, trying to get a better view of him from across the room.

"I do too have dreams-"

"I dream of Paradise," Cailean interrupted, glancing up from the crayon-smeared sketch book, where red and green had somehow found a place amongst one another in the finite threads of the paper.

"Of what?" Jay asked, peering up at him over the crossword section of the newsletter. Cailean never actually saw him solve anything, but Jay professed that he liked to look at the questions and answers and learn things from them. From the corner of his eye he could see Caleb look up from his Silverstein cover book to sneer at him.

"I dream of paradise, too," Neil said with a chuckle. "It's called an all you can eat buffet, endless arcades and maybe some girls, too." Jay scowled and rounded on Neil, but before he could reprimand him, Cailean continued.

"No, I mean I dream of a place… I'm not sure how I know. But I know that's it. That place is Paradise…" He turned back to his crayon drawing and pursed his lips, a furtive little expression to enunciate his struggle to form the seamless nighttime delusions into communicable words.

"Paradise, huh?" Jay grunted, flipping the page of the newspaper as though he were still paying any sort of attention to it. "What's it look like?" Cailean frowned at the lumpy shape of a brown wolf on his paper. A mashing of silver crayon pock marks for petals, barely visible against the white of the page, waved on their delicate green stalks in a wind he could almost see in the bend of the blotchy smears.

"I can't tell you," Cailean murmured.

"Yah, 'cuz it doesn't exist," Caleb snapped. He slammed his book shut, reveling in the hard sound such soft papers could make, because even paper seemed to have their sharp edges these days. Cailean fidgeted with the drawing page before grabbing a tiny fistful and watching as the image fractured along the lines of the creases he made.

"Maybe he's right," he murmured, tossing the paper onto the flames of the open fire that crackled in the hearth beside him. The smears of waxy color melted with the heat, running like paint off of the curling black edges of the picture.

The beauty of the human mind, scientists have attested to for years, is its ability to analyze a situation and, whether they are right or wrong, form an idea about the circumstances that are witnessed and respond to them accordingly.

The real killers start as ideas.

Cailean pivoted on his heel, staggering back from the swinging jaws of the half mad dog. It spun wildly, searching for the missing target, but caught sight of Tate instead.

Before he could regain his attacker's attention, a second member of the pack crashed into Cailean's side, sending them rolling in a writhing heap. The scent of musk and dirt filled his nose, bringing with it a wild smell that drifted into his senses and swelled inside his brain like an overflowing dam.

Static flooded his ears, blocking out the howls of the dog, the feral cries of the pack and his own savage snarling. Muscles constricted beneath flesh and fur and he could feel the raking teeth on his neck and jaws, opening small, bloody cuts, but unable to get a firm enough grip to cause any serious wounds.

The flow of memories, awoken with the bitter tang of blood on his tongue, reminded him of his job. The Mascot—the representation for the Kadzaits, the Wandering Wolves. They didn't need guns, they didn't need bullets. All they needed was fear and the tool with which to inspire it.

Then everything else became obsolete.

Guns couldn't kill if the hands holding them trembled with fear. Knives couldn't cut if the hands seeking them were too slick with their own sweat.

He creaked with the movement, like an old marionette drawing doll, and sweat beaded on his skin from the exertion. It trickled across his collarbone, down his shoulders, soaking into the crusted bandages to sting the broken skin where the stitches had popped.

And then he found the tidy, pulsing throb of the jugular vein, engorged with the adrenaline of the fight. He sank his teeth into the fragile skin, stopping before the threat of death was a reality and held the dog in a scissor-hold that could quickly split the vein with the slightest of exertion.

The animal whimpered, recognizing an imminent end to its life and sinking down to its belly as its tail slipped between its legs. Satisfied, Cailean released his hold, and the sounds of the world seemed to rush back as a gust of wind caught in the tunnel of a building.

Like a ghost in a mansion, her wail raised his hackles and reminded him of the thick, salty-sweet taste of blood on his tongue.

The pack stepped away, for the first time recognizing the scent of wolf.

Danger.

It was a smell that, in their territorial fury, they had failed to come to recognize before they had attacked.

Cailean turned on the dog closest to Tate and it recognized the threat that he posed that she did not. It turned away from her, squaring off with him, and he could see the red smeared on its muzzle and its lips quirked back to show the yellowed canines. Its tail curled high over its back and its ears followed him as Cailean crept closer.

Tate screamed again, but this time it was not the agonized wail of hurt—it was panic. The sound of it masked the low snarl of the warning bark the moment before the animal leapt. It slammed into his shoulder, splitting the last of the stitches holding the bullet wound shut. Without warning, his leg buckled beneath him, sending a wave of hot agony into the swampy fog of his mind.

But no further attack came. Somewhere there was a sharp yelp from one of the dogs and the tittering silence that seemed to be trademark to all forests slowly crept back in. It might have been seconds that passed, or minutes, but finally he opened his eyes. The bleary grain of the picture focused and he could make out Tate, her back against the tree, her eyes wide and creased with the crinkled folds of fear. The copper stain of blood dribbled slowly down her ankle from a tear in her leg where a handful of skin hung freely. In her hand, she clutched a silver pair of scissors, from which the same red of blood dripped in a steady line into a tiny puddle in the dirt.

He knew that the attack had frightened her. The fact that a wound gaped out of her leg was perhaps as alarming as the assault itself. But she was not staring at the scissors in her hand or the tear in her leg.

She was staring at him, and somewhere in her mind she was forming an idea to answer what she had seen.

There was once a man who, like many others out there, had an idea. In a city that, compared to the rest of the world, was a tiny blip on the tiny radar that usually sits beneath the other tiny radars, he was as unnoticed as the rest of them.

There was something that he wanted, above all else, and that was to see the world become one big family. And why is that, you ask? Because he had none to speak of.

Sunny Set Orphanage was a square, graying building that lay claim to one squeaky swing, a cracked teeter-totter, a rickety slide, a crumbling jungle gym, fifty-nine self-proclaimed unadoptable children and approximately four acres of dried yellow grass fenced in by one long stretch of chain link fence, which was perhaps the only new part of the entire structure. The yellow walls flaked, the linoleum floors peeled and the screws seemed to have a knack for unscrewing themselves from the door hinges.

At the age of three, the nineteen year old prostitute attempting to raise Igor Tamaska brought the resigned youngster through the creaking chain link gates and dropped him off on the yellowing cot that he would spend the next fifteen years' nights sleeping on.

And in fifteen years' time an idea began to blossom in his mind, joined by fourteen others who shared it.

The shards of glass dug into the palms of his hands as he swept them over the asphalt, grunting as he struggled out of the twisted debris of the truck. Smoke clogged his lungs and stung his eyes, hanging in the air as though it were not yet bade to depart. It obscured the world like an opaque blindfold, hiding away the dingy gray lumps of the big city on the horizon, but he could still make out the tail end of the black Nissan disappearing towards district five, coughing black smog out of its tail pipe.

Cailean staggered towards the driver's side of Jay's old pickup, kneeling down by the shattered window frame to peer inside. Caleb's eyes were rolled up into his head and a thin trickle of blood slid lovingly down the side of his temple.

"Hold on, Caleb. I'll get'cha out," Cailean grunted. He reached inside, craning awkwardly to catch Caleb as he clicked the seat belt and he tumbled down into his waiting arms. He didn't make any sound, but at least his chest lifted with the struggling pants of breathing.

"There's a hospital down Olive," he thought out loud. It was more than a mile away, but he couldn't leave Caleb there. Slinging him across his back, he hunched over and began to walk.

She had fainted, but whether from fear or loss of blood he was not sure. So, just as he had the day he had carried his adopted brother two miles to the hospital, he pulled Tate across his shoulders and began the long march to the village. An hour meant that it couldn't be more than three miles away.

His arms burned by the time he reached the small town, stumbling in on the scene of a group meeting. They turned to hear the scuff of his shoes on the dirt road. He didn't need the smell of the people to know what they were feeling—it showed well enough on their faces, even in the dying light of day. Alarm, shock, fear… anger.

"She's hurt," he mumbled, turning his gaze to the rocky pathway, unable to meet the eyes of the men and women who stared expectantly at him. "Please take her."

As though he had given them some signal, they rushed forward, wary, at first, before concern for Tate brought them close enough to pull her off his back and shuffle her to relative safety. Cailean straightened, relieved to feel the tension in his spine released after the long hike.

"Thank you." It was a man who spoke, his mouth hidden beneath his bushy black moustache. He stepped forward and clapped a hand on Cailean's shoulder, staggering him with the weight of it. "Tate means a lot to this town. She's the only young'in we've got left. But… seeing how's it's your fault in the first place."

Cailean barely had time to register the comment before the fist connected solidly with his jaw, jerking his head back on his neck. The world tilted on its axis, but disappeared long before he hit the ground.

"We don't know how he's going to be yet, sir. Please just relax." The nurse reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Cailean shrugged it off.

"What do you mean he's in a coma?" he snarled, and she shrank back behind her clipboard.

"Sir, maybe you should go home and get some rest. If you just fill out the paperwork, we'll give you a call when he wakes up." But Cailean wasn't listening. He turned on his heel, his shoes squeaking on the shined tile floors as he stalked through the sliding glass doors of Olive General.

"Sir! Sir-" He ignored the cries of the nurse and broke into a run, shoving his way through the manicured hedges. He didn't know what he was planning on doing, but he couldn't go home to Jay now. One thing was for sure: he knew who was to blame for Caleb's condition, and he knew where to find their hideout.

Note: Sooo many apologies for how long this chapter took. It was a lot tougher than it normally is, but I wanted to be sure that I got up the best material I could offer. So, enjoy the chapter!