Rosalina sighed as she gazed out the open window of her quarters where her magical practice and observations took place. The moon up in the skies seemed to be quite different than it did despite the view being cloudy not too long ago, and the breeze that blew into the wooden walls around her was almost enough to make her shiver.
"It's awfully brighter than usual," she said to herself. Her star-shaped companion Luma came floating up to her and looked out the window as well. "Maybe this is something those old books I found talk about. What do you think, Luma?"
Rosalina left the view and navigated through the clutter that had accumulated from spending her time upstairs and experimenting with the magic she was learning. She made note that she really needed to take the time and straighten things back to the way they were before, but perhaps she would get to that after this.
Too bad there was no spell in those books to get this place back into a tidy order, she thought jokingly.
After searching around for it, she found the maroon leather-bound book she had been hunting for. She realized how much heavier it was upon lifting it after not doing so for awhile, taking it back to the table and dropping it there.
She opened it and quickly flipping through its yellowed pages that nearly threatened to break up with each one she turned. At last, in the middle of the book's wealth of knowledge about the stars, she started to see some detailed illustrations of the sun and the moon as well as some angelical-looking figures.
Rosalina paused and placed a finger on a page that detailed about all of the different full moons that occurred on different months and some that only appeared ever so often. Her lips mumbled the words of the page as she read it to herself, her eyes widening once she glanced at a piece of information that applied to a time like this.
Once again, she lifted the book up from the table and flipped through it with fast fingers until she reached the very end of it. It was there she found something else that had to deal with the full moon that she had a hunch was strange since she first laid her wyes upon it. Another illustration was what she saw on the page, showing the silhouette of a creature with its head leaked up against a large sketch of the moon. To the left of it were other sketches of paws with thick claws on the ends of them, as well as some other writings that had been jotted there a long time ago.
"This kind of full moon only comes every several decades," she said to herself, "and it's happening tonight. I need to let the others know about this."
It was no secret that a full moon could make people behave strangely, but what she had just read about in that book was on an entirely different spectrum. This moon would only affect a particular four-legged resident in the mansion, but if not stopped it would all go downhill from there.
"Samus!" Rosalina shouted upon seeing her as the closest person she could get to. As she nimbly ran down the steps with worry in her eyes, she asked, "Please tell me you've seen the Duck Hunt dog here somewhere."
"I think he wandered outside and started to roam around after somebody opened the door to step out on the porch," Samus recalled as best as she could.
"Oh dear..." Rosalina held a hand to her head and became even more concerned than she already was. "This is bad. Very, very bad."
"What's the matter?" Samus asked. "I've never seen you look so worried before."
"We need to find him and make sure he doesn't stare into the full moon tonight!"
"Why? What's that going to do?"
"You have to believe me. That moon is a very rare one that happens maybe once in any of our lifetimes. If what I think will happen to him does if he looks up at it, the results are not going to be very good."
Samus had more questions, but she knew that there probably wasn't that much time to ask them all. Instead, she just nodded her head and, knowing that Rosalina had knowledge in things she didn't understand, took what she was told as urgent. "I guess we better go look for ourselves then."
With his tail wagging to and fro and the wind in his face, the brown dog was in the jolliest of moods to be outside on a peaceful night like this. While it was enjoyable to be inside with the others at the party (and most certainly help himself to whatever food had dropped to the ground), he was truly happiest when he was outside in the fresh air.
He made beeline up the hill and headed towards the old apple tree that flourished there. Once he stopped for a moment to take a breather, his tongue out as he panted, he sat down and looked around at what he could see from this height. Quacking from behind was his duck companion as he flew up to him, taking a moment to clean his feathers upon reaching him again.
The canine continued to look around with curious eyes until he picked his head up and looked at the moon. It was when he did this that he felt himself become stiff where he was, almost as if the moon above him had some hypnotizing effect over him. His eyes became blank like all of the excitement and thoughts of running around outside had left him, and he felt himself starting to stand up on his hind legs.
The duck slowly waddled up to his friend out of concern, only to jump into the air when a loud whimper arose from him.
The dog suddenly felt sharp amounts of pain coursing in his head. He tried to bury his paws over his face where it was stinging, but this did nothing to help him at all. He then started to feel the strange feeling he had all over, especially in his front paws and hind legs.
His body like it was beginning to grow and that he was standing up taller and larger than he actually was. His front and hind paws started to grow longer and wider, becoming almost the size of the hands of the human occupants back at the mansion, and the claws on each of them were becoming sharper until they look like the blades of razors. His pupils became dilated as his gaze returned back up to the moon, and the whimpering he made turned into a guttural growl while he started to grow fangs.
His duck friend made fearful quacks as it ran around the tree and hid behind it, peaking his head around the corner to look at what was going on from a distance.
The canine's brown fur became thicker until it resembled the mane of a wild animal, and he started to become much taller and larger with every passing second. On two haunched legs he now stood as tall as some of the people back at the mansion after this transformation seemed to stop, and he raised his head upward to let out a howl that rung out into the night.
Meanwhile, on the bottom of the hill he stood upon, Samus and Rosalina were making their way up. They quickly realized once they got a look at what had happened, though, that they were both much too late to stop anything.
"Oh no..." Rosalina muttered in disappointment, her mouth wide open in horror as she shook her head. "We're too late."
"What do we do then?" Samus inquired. "How do we get him to go back to normal?"
"He's a were-dog now," Rosalina replied. "As long as the moon is shining in the sky and he's stuck like this, he has no recollection of us."
"Are you sure?" asked Samus in response before she took several steps forward up the hill.
Her friend held out an arm to get her to come back. "No, wait! If he attacks while he's in this form, you'll end up being changed to!"
Samus started to whistle in an effort to call the dog-turned-mythical-creature to look their way. "Come on," she said, the same way she would if she were trying to get his attention back at the mansion. "It's me."
The were-dog turned his head in her direction and stared back at her from a distance with menacing eyes, growling louder than she had ever heard him growl before. Not even when he was angry about something did he ever sound so aggressive as he did now. He started to run swiftly on the much larger legs he possessed then, leaping into the air before landing right on his paws again in front of where she and Rosalina stood.
As he bore his fangs in their direction, the two shouted before sprinting back the way they came, heading back for the safety of the mansion in order to warn everybody. They started to split up in order to get what was chasing them now to stop, but it still continued to chase them despite their attempt at a distraction.
Rosalina found herself tripping on something sticking out of the grass below her, hitting the ground and getting dust all over her blue outfit. "Shoot!" she exclaimed, clutching her leg after hurting herself a bit during that fall.
"Hold on," Samus called back as she started to run up to help her get back up.
"Don't worry about me," Rosalina insisted. "You just get back to the mansion."
Samus looked back behind her and saw the were-dog coming her way. As much as she hated to leave her behind, she knew that she also needed to inform everyone else about what was happening. With that, she bolted as quick as her legs could carry her to one of the side doors that led back inside to the mansion. She quickly opened the door to let herself in, only for the weredog that had followed her to snag onto her and dig one of its claws into the back of her leg. She grunted at the burning pain before breaking free from its grip, slamming the door behind her and taking a moment to catch her breath.
She looked down at her leg, noticing that fresh blood had been drawn where the claw mark had been left. While everyone else seemed to be continuing on with the party as usual, she decided to quickly rush to another room and get a bandage over the scratch, prevent it from becoming an infection before sounding the alarm about the whole were-dog issue at hand.
Samus quickly rushed back to her quarters and went over to her bathroom, rummaging through all of the supplies she had below the sink. She found herself something to clean the mark and a bandage that would cover it up just right. She started to treat her wound and apply the bandage, looking at herself in the mirror while she figured out what she was going to tell everybody. While there was always something going on around the mansion or some misadventure, this was the first time this particular scenario came about.
She let out a long sigh, only for something that sounded reminiscent of a growl escaped her lips. She held a hand over her mouth, finding herself surprised that came out of her. Why did I just do that?
She started to put the medical supplies she had gotten out back where it belongs and shrug that off, washing her hands off in the sink. It was as she was drying them off, though, she started to see a spot of something appear on her right hand. She blinked a couple times to make sure it wasn't her imagination playing with her, only to realize that it was actually there. Her first instinct told her that it looked like fur, the golden kind found on certain dogs like retrievers.
The spot on her hand started to grow and sprout further down her arm, causing her to start to lose control over her calamity. "Something's definitely not-"
That was when something else hit her. Her head was hit with the sharpest ache, making it feel like someone had it under a vice. The golden fur that started on her arm felt like it was beginning to sprout all over her. Looking back up at herself in the mirror, she saw that her face was stretching and looking like a dog's muzzle.
This can't be real, she thought.
She quickly realized that what Rosalina had read and told her about on the search earlier was true. The scratch left by the claws of a were-dog could have drastic consequences, changing whoever was scratched into a canine themselves.
It felt like her fingers were changing as her hands became more like the paws of a dog. She started to shout for help but found herself unable to. She found herself falling to the floor as her breaths became shallow and panicked, a golden tail starting to sprout behind her. Meanwhile, she could hear commotion outside with the sounds of the Smashers screaming as if they were in fear.
Oh no... They must've seen him in that form from the outside. Hopefully, they're all keeping themselves safe.
A Few Moments Later...
Snake rushed down the hall, his head scanning all around him to make sure that everybody was okay with the new situation having arose. "Is everybody in their rooms?" he shouted. "Has anyone seen Samus?"
The hallway was vacant with no noise filling the vacuum whatsoever. He stealthily looked behind him to make sure that this creature hadn't been following him from behind, returning to his search for who he was looking for. He hadn't seen her since everybody became panicked a short while ago, and he found himself starting to get worried.
He discovered a light peaking in from her quarters, the door hanging half open. "Samus?" he called out as he stepped up to the doorway and slowly walking in.
Snake looked around the room and saw no sign of her anywhere. He looked over to his left and instead found a figure laying on the ground over in the corner, belonging to a golden retriever that was laying there with its paws buried over its face. It peaked its head up as he got closer to it, and he became confused upon seeing it. The only canine that lived at the mansion was the Duck Hunt dog, and at the moment he was currently cursed to roam as some menacing were-dog or whatever they were calling it.
The retriever got up and started to bark loudly like it was hoping to get his full attention. What struck him then was a scar that was across one of its hind legs.
"Had I not known any better," Snake said to himself, "I'd say this was..." He suddenly paused when he looked back and noticed the pile of clothing sitting in the corner of the room all bundled up. "Samus?" he muttered.
The dog seemed to nod its head, confirming what he overheard Rosalina going on about during all of the confusion. This was indeed Samus underneath the curse of a scratch from a were-dog, and somehow she had turned into this. He heard the remarks about how this sort of thing would happen, but it took him to actually see something for himself to truly believe that it could truly happen.
The golden retriever turned its head to the side and looked over with fearful eyes, barking louder than before.
Snake turned around to look at what was behind, only to notice that the were-dog himself was standing right in the doorway of the room. While he was the type of man that never experienced any intimidation when he was face to face with something potentially dangerous, seeing the creature standing nearly as tall as him was unsettling.
A snarl erupted from the were-dog before he could defend himself, and he flinched as it ran up with its sickle claws aimed right for him.
Snake lifted his head and looked around the room. Daylight emitted through the windows of Rosalina's space as he stared up at the ceiling above him. "The hell? How did I get up here?" He sighed heavily as he blinked a couple times, refusing to look away from the ceiling. "That was some horrible nightmare I just had."
"What was that about?" the voice of Rosalina asked from somewhere to the left.
"I had a dream where there was this... I don't know how to say it. Just... the dog around here became this creature and ended up attacking some of us and turning us into dogs too."
"Was that actually a dream," Rosalina replied, "or was your brain remembering what just happened before?"
Snake was confused at her statement. He tried to stand up but found his body feeling a bit strange, a feeling he couldn't exactly describe. He tried to turn around and happened to look over at the antique mirror that sat on the opposite side of the room, seeing the reflection of a shepherd looking back at him. His eyes peered downward, noticing that his hand in front of him was actually a paw, one of the ones that belonged to the shepherd in the mirror.
"No!" Snake gasped as he tried to move his arms-turned-paws, his attention returning to the mirror. "That was real?"
"Oh, it was real," someone else chimed in.
"Samus?" Snake said as he looked around the room.
A golden retriever walked up to him and sat a short distance from him. "You, me, Rosalina. We all got attacked by the were-dog's mark and now we're like this."
"Well, are we gonna not be like this at some point? Stuck like this wasn't exactly how I was hoping to spend the day"
"Rosalina's trying her best to fix us as quick as she can," answered Samus. "The only good news is nobody else was harmed and the dog is back to his normal self." She turned her head to the other corner of the room and inquired, "Rosalina, what have you got so far?"
"Not much," sighed Rosalina, who was now a long and white-furred canine that was up on her hind legs. Her new tail flickered as she struggled to flip the pages in the book on the table above her, the paws of the form she became creating a struggle to do tasks that were previously easy as pie. Without the opposable thumbs she normally took for granted, difficulties would certainly ensue. "Shoot, I can't turn these pages. I'm sorry, guys, but this is gonna be harder than I first thought."
"NOOOO!" Snake shouted as he came to terms with the reality he was in.
Author's Note: This came about when I was trying to come up with an idea for a story that involved the Duck Hunt dog that I wrote about awhile back, right around when I just starting out with writing about the Smashers. I still wanted to come up with something involving a mythical creature as well, and so along came this concept of, under a moon, much like how it happens in werewolf stories, he becomes a were-dog. And to add onto it a little bit, and just because I enjoy writing stories with sheer silliness thrown into them, I put in the concept of others being turned into dogs after receiving a scratch from him.
Hey, life's too short, so sometimes you just gotta write something off the wall like that sometimes, you know? And now I'm suddenly wondering what kind of dog some of the other characters would have become as well? Perhaps that could be a whole AU story of its own. Who knows? XD
But anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this little story of mine. There will be plenty more misadventures involving the Smashers where that came from. I know this story was most certainly on the sillier spectrum, both I still hoped it was a short but entertaining read. As always, your feedback, whether good or bad, is gladly appreciated. And thanks to everyone that's been reading my stories and enjoying them.
'Til next time! :)