Saved at the nick of time - Part 2

***

On a normal looking alley, with a few dumpsters and trash cans, plus some bags and cartoon boxes, a homeless man, is sleeping on a bunch of those trash bags like it is some kind of those couches youngers are using it to game on consoles on the Console Cafés. The homeless man hears a footstep approaching faster, and he jumps from his bed, prepared to transform one of its arms into a werewolf one. And when the source of the footsteps has come, Mick transformed his hand back to normal and sees Carmen face changed.

Carmen face now looks like a Vewolf, green hair covering some parts of her face, the nose of her is long, specific for werewolves types, it is by the black colour, and her eyes are green. She cannot see how her face look, but she feels completely different from what it was before.

"A sudden transformation?" asks Mick barely awake.

"You know I am Carmen?" asks Carmen to the hobo man.

"By the smell." says Mick which would have been sending him to the prison if he had said to any other girl. "Anyway, we should do it before you will look like this the entire day."

"Is it bad?"

"…Um… I can say only alright." says the hobo man by the name of Mick, raising from his improvised bed, and he touches the forehead of Carmen.

The moment he touches the forehead of Carmen with his two fingers, the girl is feeling to freeze in place. She cannot move, nor she cannot speak, or she cannot even think. Mick has used a trick to freeze the teenager in place, while he is going inside of her mind to try and stop this transformation of the Vewolf who is going to reach critical levels if it is not stopped sooner or later.

After about a minute, carmen come back to her senses, after Mick took his fingers from Carmen's forehead. The moment carmen come back to life, she touches her face and nose, and she found them being normal, no more green-looking hair or a nose specific for animals such as dogs and wolves. The girl is looking at Mick, and she says to him.

"Thank you so much!"

"No need." says Mick, and he sniffs the air. "I can see you remember to come with something to eat."

"Oh, right."

Carmen reaches her backpack, that was laying on the ground, next to her feet. She takes the meat she took from the refrigerator before she left the house in a hurry. She hands the piece of meat to Mick, he takes it and looks at Carmen.

"You shouldn't be at school?"

"Am I alright? A transformation like this would occur?" asks Carmen.

"I can guarantee you will not get any type of this transformation this day. But maybe two or three days later might be the case. I tried my hardest to put chains to the creature, but I do not think they will be enough. To control this creature, you need to be the one who is doing it."

"But how?"

"You have to close your eyes, and go inside your own mind. Have you done that?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Then, next time when you feel the beast is about to break, I suggest going there, and provoke the beast t an attack. These chains are strong enough to make the beast weak, and be easier to defeat to take its power control."

"Shouldn't I wait a few more days as I was instructed?"

"Wait I did is something that can accelerate this process. If you are able to defeat the beast in your mind. This will require combat, or a weapon."

"A weapon?"

"You can get a knife for example, hold it, and "go to sleep", then you wake up in the mind of yours with the said weapon, and you can fight the creature soul much easier than before."

"Why didn't you tell me that to the first meeting of ours?"

"Because I forgot."

The homeless man, takes a bite of the meat. Even if the meat was still cold, it was still good at the taste for a werewolf who once ate a body of a woman who used drugs on her and ended on the streets of Brighton. After a first bite, she looks at Carmen.

"By the way, weren't you supposed to be at school?"

Carmen takes out her phone, and she sees the clock is 7:24. The girl realize she would be running late at class. The woman thanks the homeless man, and she runs by using the agility of the Vewolf she always has, but never used it. Carmen runs so fast, that she did not notice Lucian, was coming down from the wall, and levitates to the homeless man.

"Oh, hello!" says the homeless man to the ghost of Brighton, Lucian, with a smile on his face as he digs into the meat. "Didn't expect to see me live here?"

"Mick?" asks Lucian almost shocked to see someone familiar end up here. "Are you really him?

"Lucian…" says Mick with a smile. "How do you get here?"

"I live here."

"Oh, right. Ghost of Brighton."

"What are you doing here?" asks Lucian floating closer to Mick, who is eating the meat he was given by Carmen.

"I am eating."

"Beside that. Why aren't you on the streets? Don't you have a house?"

"I got tired of living comfortably." says Mick to the ghost, and puts the piece of meat on the dirty ground that was is walking by thousands of steps every day when they are taking this alleyway. "Living in a house with a salary doesn't cut to me, alright? I am not used to have this kind of life where I have to go somewhere, stay 8 hours in a room and work on a thing called "computer" and get paper that is not nutritious to me. I'd rather stay on the street and eat whatever I get."

"I wonder why you did not move to the forest?"

"Humans have started to take down the forest. It is safer to live here, rather in a forest whose fate is to become a prime source for these humans who are taking paper and using it to get dirty and unnatural food."

"Their food do taste good, and that comes from a guy from Victorian age who ate at least a loaf of bread every three days."

"But that is not the way for me to live. Back when I was hunter, I always was outside the technology, it wasn't my way of life, you know? I preferred to be on the terrain, and get request from my other teammates who are inside that technology and gave me missions to kill or capture my targets."

"Nowadays, we mostly do capture." says Lucian after few seconds he let Mick look back to life. "Like yesterday, me and Louis. You know Louis?" he stopped until he saw Mick shook his head in an approval meaning that he knows who's the Louis he is talking to. "We had to capture a monster by the slime type."

"A slime? You people are capturing now?" he says confused. "We used to kill these creatures the moment we spot them."

"Things have changed since you left."

"How could things change so much in five years?"

"I don't know. We are doing our mission. We have to do this, otherwise we get sent back." says Lucian sounding a bit sad. "Living on the second dimension, is not bad, but it better to live here and have a long life, rather than remain in the second dimension, in constant war with other kinds. Here, there is mostly a fight between two species, humankind and animals."

"You got a fair point." says Mick eating the meat remains he was gifted by Carmen. "The meat humans can make is delicious. And their meat… Is also great. No hard feelings."

"Don't worry. I died a long time ago." says Lucian who didn't have any hard feelings on the thing Mick has said to him. "So. you are going to remain on the streets rather than get a house until your time will come?"

"Yes. There are only six years left if I die of age." says Mick didn't sounding depressing. "I decided to spend the rest of my life here, on the first dimension since this is my new home."

The ghost doesn't know how to feel about this. He has seen lots of things like him, who would rather have miserable lives on the first dimension, rather than going to the second dimension, or at least do have a great life until their death knocks on their door. But he doesn't understand why Mick wanted a life where he lives on the streets, begging for food or hunting for it.

After a few minutes of conversation and exchange of stories, Lucian decides to leave Mick, who is going for a walk around the whole town of Brighton, trying his luck to see if he can find something delicious on the street such as dead cat or dog. Werewolves are known for eating dogs, which is technically a member of their family species.