The Tooth N’ Claw, a small bar one will not find on any maps when traveling the island of Aos Si. But if you’ve proven to be the sort of person with the luck to come across it, the few hours into the night it’s opened that is, then be sure to mind your manners upon entering through the doorway of this privately-owned establishment. For if you fail to do that much, then you’ll soon learn how the Tooth N’ Claw earned it’s name.

Silence is the scene. The volume of the bar and it’s paetron’s being as low as their lot in life. Few came to talk, more coming to drown away their sorrows for the next day. But Even fewer could put away the liqiud in their glass as Clave could. Seated at the counter top, face down and glass empty. The keeper himself on the other side reached for the glass only for Clave’s palm to grasp the rim and pin it to the counter.

"Not. Finished." Clave said, his face seemingly melting as it droopes. His mouth elongated and flesh under his eyes sagging. Some liqiud excreting from his fingers and onto the rim of the mug he clung as sobberly as he could to. The Bar Keeper, in response, only tightend his grip and tugged the mug away. The glare he gave Clave showed that he was not easily intimidated, or repulsed in this case, by a drunk snarling. His towering stature ensuring that he was not one to be triffled with.

"Your tab’s up." The bar keeper said. "You don’t have to leave, yet. But until I start seeing some tokens, the seat is all you can have in my bar."

"How do ya reckon me to pay ya? No game in the forest, all wagons ain’t returned. What work is a fella to get?" Clave asked.

"That’s not my problem." The keeper answered.

"Have a heart, Tre. Just one more fer ta road." Clave slurred in a wavering slump.

"Trofts outside." Tre answered. Clave grunted and dizzily stumbled off his stool and back a step. He then began to wobble his way towards the exit. However, he had the misfortune of tipping over to the side and landing onto a table with a single pateron seated at it. He looked up and attempted to apologize only to pause upon seeing the face of the man he had distrubed.

The man was tall and lengthy, with bloches on his skin. His hair was as gangly and unkempt as the rest of himself, and lacerations accompined his dried up and slightly gnawed lips. Clave did a double-take, trying to shake his vision more clearly through his drunken haze, but still found himself cringing at the upclose sight of this stranger.

"I’m drunk, so why ain’t ya gettin’ any prettier?" Clave asked. The stranger, in a sudden and bizarre fit of rage, flipped the table over and atop of Clave. Pressing it down onto him by steping a foot against it. Tre, the bar tender, noticed the commotion and leapt over the counter.

"Ya wann kill Clave, do it outside!" Tre said, grabbing the stranger by the shoulder. The antagonizer than turned with berserker speed and socked Tre straight across the face. Tre, with his grip on the man’s shoulder tightend, tilted his head back up to face the stranger and gave a grimmace in response to the attack. His eyes altered shape slightly, reflecting the light of the dimmly-lit bar. Despite the stranger being a foot taller than him, Tre had no problem with lifting him up and off the table he stood on, using the same momentum in throwing him out of his bar through the nearby doorway.

The stranger landed on the road at the foot of the bar’s patio stairway, with Tre standing in the doorway waiting to see what the mans next move will be. The stranger stood up and pulled a hand out of his pocket. Tre readied to leap out of the way if it were a gun, only to have a look of confusion sweep across his face as the man slapped a pad of paper on to the bottom of his neck.

The man’s physique began to alter drastically. Veins bulging, eye’s becoming bloodshot. Something had changed about this twitchy freak. He tore his shirt off, revealing a now built torso and python-sized arms from underneath. The stranger howled at Tre, sounding like some sort of primate, and charged him. This time, it was Tre hoisted off the ground and carried through the air all the way back into the bar.

The two slam into another table, snapping it in half upon impact. Remaining true to the hinted primate nature, the stranger began to repeatedly slam his fists down onto Tre. The arms, back and face of the freak growing with more hair and stretching out in length. His yellow teeth sprouting from his jaw now as long fangs. The apeman stopped once he felt a stool smash over his back, completly unphasing him. He twisted around to find Clave standing there.

"Was worth a shot, right?" Clave slurred out, his true form now fully fleshed out, revealing himself to be a Leechman. The apeman snarled at him and then lunged. Only to stop with Clave bearly out of his fingers reach. The apeman then froze as it felt the snorting and snarls of another beasts maw breathing down from behind its neck. The low rumble of a wolf’s growl filling the silence of the bar.

The apeman was spun around and slammed into a wall, pinned their by a claw digging into his shoulder and pushing upwards, so that it does not go through and pierce the wall behind it. The apeman let out a screech of pain and looked towards its assaulter, the same glowing eyes of Tre’s starring back at him, but now belonging to the face of an enraged wolf bearing its fangs towards him. Tre then swung his free arm at the apeman, attending to finish him and this fight with one final blow. The apeman mustard up all of his strength and gripped the arm in mid-throw with all four of his own limbs.

The two locked in place as the apeman gave it his all to hold Tre back. Tre’s low growl and deadlock stare on the apeman shifting to a full on roar as he widened his mouth and reeled his had back. Lunging his head forward and clamping his jaws together, Tre snapped one of the apeman’s arms off with a cleanbite. The apeman let out a screech of pain. Tre then reeled his arm back once again and began a flurry of blows, using both knuckles and claws to rip the stranger apart.

Tre only stopped once the face of the apeman was fully shredded off, revealing a dripping skull from behind it. The muscles of the of the stranger went limp, signaling that he was no longer able to keep going. Tre removed his claw from the apes shoulder and watched the husk fall to the floor.

"Happy Hour proved to be too much for the wee lad." Tre uttered, calming himself as he reverted back to his human form.

"How’s the tunic and kelt stay after that Throping?" Clave asks.

"Not my first night out in the town." Tre answers, kneeling to inspect the corpse. Tre peels the pad off of the strangers neck. His nostrils altering to a wolves slightly as he takes a wiff of the pad. Tre cringes at the stench. "Nip!" He spoke aloud.

"Nip?" Clave asked. "Oh, that’s sad. Ya did him a favor in that case, Tre ol’ boy. Better dead than livin’ life as a junkie. And that’s comin’ from a drunk."

"First step to recovery is acknowledgment, Clave." Tre said, never turning to the leech. Tre then began checking the strangers pockets. "Nothing." He said.

"Fer what?" Clave asked.

"No leads on the supplier."

"What do ya care?" Clave asked, geting Tre to turn to him at last. Tre simply gestured to the damage in the bar, his bar, caused by a single user of Nip. The realization donning on Clave of where Tre’s concern lied. The two then looked around the rest of the bar, wondering who and how many others were hooked.

Next Chapter: Koranax