#volkovs.

But no longer was she a child incapable of shooting something first, so the past years Daiyu had sat at the full table, filling her plate with the meats of creatures killed by herself and the rest of her family. The pungent smells of meat and alcohol filled the room. The candles flickered softly. Something classical and dull played in the background. The scent of stale cigarettes stuck to her uncle like glue. Daiyu pushed around the meat on her plate. It would be a death sentence to say that a traditional American Christmas Turkey might be preferred over the tough meat of an aquasturge, but she sure was thinking it. At least the gravy helped. And the deviled stymphalian eggs? Those were a hit, every fucking year.

So logically, she got up from her seat, placed a knee on her chair and reached over the table to grab some more. Immediately, like a knife cutting through the muscles and sinew of the slayed bies (the centerpiece of the table, killed by Vissa), her father spoke up, “Have you lost your ability to ask for things politely, Daiyu?” It was the first thing said in five minutes. 

Her hand remained floating mid air, fork sticking from her grab as it pointed towards the plate of eggs. Her sister sat close to them, looking up at Daiyu with amusement in her eyes. Her immaculately painted nails reached for the plate, pulling it closer to her. How Inna’s manicure remained so perfect after a bloody and long hunt, Daiyu didn’t know. Hers chipped immediately after putting it on. 

Of course, she knew — you weren’t supposed to stretch your body over the dinner table to reach for something. Her arm was passing her brother’s face, obstructing his view. It was considered rude to do such a thing. But what the fuck did politeness matter, here? With people she’d known all her life and had shown her their ugly sides over and over? They had been shooting their bullets and arrows in living creatures for the past few days. She had elbowed Vissa in his stomach to get somewhere faster. Inna had messed with her rifle. Her father had demeaned all three of them on separate occasion for their many flaws and failures, in hopes of improving them.

God forbid, though, that she obstruct her brother’s view and didn’t ask her sister to hand her the deviled eggs.

Daiyu stretched her short body further, trying to stick her fork into the white of at least one of the eggs. Inna pulled it even closer. “Do you want something?” Her voice was honey sweet, her eyes blinking as if she had no idea what Daiyu was after. Her eyelids were smeared with glitter that looked bloody. Daiyu’s own eyeliner was already smeared onto her cheek. She hated how pretty her sister was. “Maybe I can … assist you? I don’t know.” 

It was just eggs, was it not? Vissa, quiet as always, now also turned his gaze onto his sister. She felt it burn into her, making her cheeks red. Daiyu had no alcohol to blame for this, only the history between herself and every single individual at the table. It was just eggs. She was just supposed to ask Inna to hand her the fucking plate so she could scarf down a few more of the eggs, but she had it in her mossgreen claws and was looking at her the way she often did. Like she was something small and helpless that simply needed a hand. Like it was so nice that Inna didn’t step on her throat every chance she got. As if she was so charitable, helping out her simpleminded, less capable sister when she simply could not. 

And Vissa? Her oldest sibling, her great and strong brother who had once seemed like a protector? He was the silent watcher, begging her with one crease of his brow not to cause a scene. 

“Sit,” her father said, a distant voice at the head of the table. Daiyu never understood why manners mattered to a man who locked humanoid beasts into cages, who was covered with blood in most of the memories she had of him, who’d treated her and her siblings in ways no polite father was supposed to. 

Daiyu did not address the demand, in stead staring daggers at Inna, “Give it.” 

Inna continued to look confused. “Give what?”

“You know what.”

She shook her head, “I don’t think I do.”

Daiyu was sure Vissa was begging Inna with his stupid eyes now, too. “You’re fucking touching it, you know —”

“Language,” said her father, who had taught her most of the swearwords she knew. Who thought there were places and time for such expletives, who saw the world as his design and figured this dinner table as a place of control. She wondered how long it’d take before he’d shove her back into the seat.

Her uncle drained his glass of wine and refilled it. He never had to reach for the bottle — it always seemed closest to him. Vissa was non verbally communicating with the younger sisters that had long stopped listening to any of his cues.

Inna picked up an egg and nibbled a tiny bit off it, not spilling any of the filling. She chewed thoughtfully and Daiyu sniffed angrily, wanting to go off on a tangent that was interrupted once Inna had swallowed her tiny bite: “Whatever do you want Daiyu? I’d gladly give it to you. But you’ll have to ask nicely.”

Daiyu raised herself to her full, unimpressive length. (At least Inna only had one inch on her, and not the ten her brother did.) Her fork was jabbing in the direction of the eggs. “The. Eggs.” 

Inna waited patiently, putting her nibbled egg on her plate and picking up the dish holding the eggs. She made no move to hand it over, though. Daiyu knew what she wanted to hear — that six second word that they had all been taught was a sign of weakness. Asking people for things was a concession, tacking on that pleading word was even worse. They had been drilled not to use it. You don’t ask for things. You take them when you deserve them. Unless, of course, it was at the dinner table of her father’s home. Then, suddenly, these human etiquette rules played a role again. Performance.

Daiyu let out a long, dramatic sigh. “Please.” A beat. “You bitch.”

As if it was choreographed, her father put down his glass like a punctuation to the insult. “Sit down and spare us the rest of your foul vocabulary, Daiyu. We have heard it enough times to know it by heart — and besides its obvious rudeness, it has grown tedious.” 

Daiyu considered flipping him the bird, but in stead continued to stare at Inna and the eggs. Her sister raised the plate, Daiyu moved the fork in her hand so that she could balance both plate and cutlery, and for a moment it seemed like it might all be okay after all. She had sacrificed some of her pride, but she’d get her eggs. 

And then Inna’s hand slipped and the eggs slid from the plate, falling face forward on the tablecloth. They made unimpressive sounds, but they might as well have sounded like falling bombs with how destructive this simple slip was.

“Whooops.” The plate followed the eggy avalanche, slamming onto the eggs and plastering them against the deep red of the cloth after shattering in three pieces. Daiyu stared at it for a moment. Vissa sighed the longest sigh known to men. Her uncle was fingering around for a cigarette. Alexei looked at both his daughters, wondering why they could not leave their feral behavior at the door, as if he had not taught them to be as feral as the creatures they killed.

The fork moved in her hand, finding its way back between her thumb and index finger and before Daiyu could think twice, she had pulled herself up straight and was throwing it at Inna. She squealed as she evaded the thrown fork, which ended up in stuck in the wood paneled wall, quivering like an arrow. 

And then, all notion of manners went out the window. Daiyu dove over the table to her sister, who met her attack with her own. Her claws pulled at her hair while her clever tongue rained an endless torrent of insults about her sister’s temper and immaturity. Her uncle lit his cigarette, as smoking inside was a smaller sin that brawling during dinner. Vissa looked at his father and apologized, as he was sure he could have stopped this and felt the burden of their misbehavior weigh on his eldest chest. Alexei pretended not to hear him as he unconsciously mimicked the child he thought himself least similar to: he took his glass and threw it at the same wall Daiyu had thrown her fork into. 

Glass flew and spat and this time, when he demanded everyone, “Sit down!”, they would listen. Because once Alexei forwent his beloved manners, all knew that the tide could turn quickly and nastily.

Xifeng and Alexei – Daiyu’s parents – were not quite in love when they married, but they were greatly attuned to one another. Both Rangers, both ambitious and both vicious, there was little that stood in their way. One might say that they came closest to loving one another was after a successful hunt, washing the blood of one another. 

They set to raise their children similarly to they were raised, another team effort. Soon after they marriage the pair relocated to the West coast of the US, where they’d begin their children’s training on the outskirts of Seattle, in the thick woods. Xifeng never got to quite settle into this role, dying right as her eldest was about to turn eleven and her youngest was five. And so parenthood fell onto Alexei’s shoulders. It suited him fine, or so he’ll always claim. He looked at his brood and saw potential. Vissarion, his eldest, a son who hung onto each of his words. Inna, his middle, a daughter with a mind so sharp that she might one day rival his own. Daiyu, small and fierce and violent, even at five years old.

The three siblings grow up in those woods, near that city. They attend school, but spend their weekends and breaks hunting. During summer, they attend camp, where they are closer than they ever are at home — at home, their father prefers to pit them against each other to bring out the best in one another, but among strangers they are supposed to show a united front. Daiyu cherishes these summers most.

The Volkovs are particularly good at hunting lamia, and the story of aunt Katya getting eaten whole still circles around them. The Chens are more adept at hunting werewolves. None of this is to say that the family doesn’t hunt beyond that scope — they’re skilled at hunting any kind of beast that roams the climates they’re used to.

There is something similar between the hunting trips of the Volkovs and those of other upper-class human families. Expensive gear and garb, a tent pitch on the edge of the forest, a ceremonial drink beforehand and aplenty after. They’d extend invitations to other ranger families on full moons, spend three nights in the woods and return home with werewolf remains and perhaps a live one, if they got lucky.

Because not every creature is killed. Their code demands viciousness and no mercy, but there is wiggle room. There has to be a profit, doesn’t there? There has to be a way to subsidize the comfortable way of living. There are people out there willing to collect, willing to watch beasts fight. Researchers who’d pay a pretty coin. This doesn’t protect humans in the way killing a beast might — but it still keeps them away from the outside world where they can roam free.

The Volkovs are not unlike poachers. Not just hunting to maintain some kind of balance and protect those animals and humans without powers — but for profit and glory as well. For bragging rights. For power.