The young group stared around the abandoned hangar. They couldn't fathom what could have happened here at all and were stuck speculating on it. It was Mr. Shotuku who took the lead, striking out on his own to go find the faculty office and leaving the rest to their bewilderment. Slowly they shuffled off to one side towards their homeroom class and pondered what to do next.

"What could have happened here?" Nami was wildly looking from one destroyed area to the next with growing unrest.

"I wouldn't worry, ladies, it's nothing I can't handle anyways," Chase said with his usual cocky demeanour, which was received with a strong knee from Nami into his pelvic area that left him winded.

"We're tough girls Chase, we can handle ourselves," she replied, with a snort of derision. "However it would be nice if our ringer was awake." She gave a sidelong glance at Porter who was still snoozing while draped over Raul's shoulder. The older boy was more than capable of carrying the extra load and his serious face would not let on if he was struggling anyways.

"We need to investigate what's going on here." Ardwen pushed his glasses up his nose gently with his fingers, smudging the lenses. "But we must retain the group. Mr. Shotuku aside, the seven of us should remain in an organized assembly in case there is still an enemy lurking about."

Nobody disagreed as a slow creeping terror was forming amidst the students. They began to move down a corridor, finding more lights knocked out and doors busted up. Now though, some disturbing images were appearing along the walls, floor and ceiling, with scratches engraved in the metal and smears of blood trailing alongside them. Riya, Nami, and Gretta were holding hands, teeth chattering, while Ardwen and Chase stuck out in front and Raul, still carrying Porter, followed up behind.

The group arrived at their classroom and found its door closed, with little dents and cut marks playing across its surface. It slid open upon their arrival, something that would normally seem so common but in this case it was cast in a spooky atmosphere. Fearing what could be inside, the teens collectively poked their heads in.

On the ground they found some of the missing students, lying in prone positions on the floor, their eyes flung open in terror staring into empty space. The girls huddled against a corner of the room immediately with Raul in front of them for protection, while the two remaining boys slid over to the closest bodies and began to check them.

"It would seem they're alive," Ardwen exclaimed with a great sigh of relief. "But they're in a bit of a coma. No response in the pupils at all." He waved his hand in front of a student's face for example. "Nothing, like they're frozen. But they have a pulse, so that's a good sign."

"And they've all got these funny marks on them." Chase pointed out a couple of scratches on some of the bodies, and little holes that looked almost like bite marks from some sort of animal.

Ardwen surveyed the scene in bewilderment. "What could this all mean? It doesn't look like any sort of enemy attack that I know of."

"Scared into a c-c-coma." Nami's teeth had started chattering as she hugged herself against a wall.

"And you're next!" Chase jumped at her in jest. Nami screamed and slapped him across the face, leaving a glowing handprint on his cheek.

"The school is too big for us to sit together," Raul stated. "Let's split into two groups and explore. One group will head towards the faculty to meet Mr. Shotuku. The other can go towards the gym at the far end of school. That should cover everywhere in between."

The girls looked at each other nervously but reluctantly agreed and so Ardwen divided them into two teams, one lead by Raul with Nami and Gretta, another made up of Chase, Riya, and Ardwen. They got back to the door before splitting off in opposite directions, waving goodbye until they lost sight of each other down the hall.

Nami's group rounded the first corner to be met with more of the bizarre markings all over the walls, with students lying across the floor or sitting against walls all over the place. It was a chilling sight that Nami felt would haunt her dreams for the next few weeks at least, until Porter resumed taking them up in her private fantasies.

"Is this how your school normally is?" Gretta asked. "I'm not sure I should've agreed to come up here."

"Oh no, it's normally so bright and...lively," Nami replied. I've never seen this before." She felt a faint breeze behind her and spun around, wondering for a moment if she saw the faint twitch of a shadow swirl out of sight. But, then again, what could be following them in a school filled with knocked-out students?

She shrugged it off and rejoined the other two as they continued a search for anyone still conscious...

* * * * *

Ardwen and Chase were bickering over who would be leading the group. Regardless of Chase's astonishing argument that his devilishly good looks should put him as frontrunner, he was always beaten out by Ardwen's higher grades, his age, his height, and his rank, which was just slightly higher than Chase's. The two had come to a complete halt back in the hangar as they were aiming to follow Mr. Shotuku to the faculty lounge.

"You know Glasses, you're a tough one to crack, but I think we should give it over to Riya to vote on who gets to lead."

"Fine, but we both know who she will pick."

"Exactly, me." Chase turned to face Riya, but found her missing completely from where she had been standing just a moment before. "Riya? Oh Riya? Now where did she go?"

"Maybe your overconfidence scared her away. Or perhaps it was your poor performance on the battlefield," Ardwen snickered.

"Hey I didn't exactly see you putting up a good fight out there. This is weird though man, wasn't she just around here?"

"Maybe I could've seen her if your ego wasn't blocking my view all the time!" The two began their protracted arguing once more, until Ardwen felt a rustle as a soft breeze passed by his back and he turned to face the unbearably empty hangar. Chase was looking around as well, swearing he had seen a little movement over behind one of the crates. The two slinked over to the suspected box, one that was just barely too large for them to see over, and they slid around to the side of it to get a look at what had moved around here, in the hopes of finding the missing Riya.

Instead, their screams could be heard echoing down the hallways, through the empty classrooms, but falling just short of Nami, Raul, and Gretta, to warn them...

* * * * *

Nami stopped again, thinking she for sure felt something brush up against her as they took that last turn. But again she was greeted with nothing but a lifeless hall, the comatose students staring back at her in their eerie way.

She continued down with the group though, keeping her paranoia to herself for now. "So Nami, do you have a boyfriend?" Gretta asked as she tried to break the tension.

"Well no, I umm, sort of...it's...I mean I like him and all but he just...well maybe I mean we did...but then..." She blushed a deep red as she struggled to answer."

"Oh, sounds like I hit a jackpot! What's his name? Is he cute? Handsome? A famous pilot?" She drew in close enough so that Raul could no longer hear them and whispered "Is he in your squad?" She threw a little wink on the end of the sentence and Nami blushed even deeper in response. "Eeek," the young girl squealed. "I knew it! I knew there was somebody! I could just feel it."

Nami prepared to answer when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She shrieked and dove past Raul, who spun around to face a potential assault. Nami uncovered her eyes and took a peek behind her, finding a face more puzzling than anything they had come up against so far. "Miss Henderson?"

Miss Henderson was the school nurse, an olive-skinned, dark haired woman who many whispered of as some form of gypsy, who seemed to know almost every kind of cure for every kind of ailment, from modern medicine, to ancient practices of antibiotics, to urban legends involving rituals and sacrifices. She beamed at the students in the midst of a bleak and dreary hallway. "Why, what a surprise to find some students still up and standing!"

"The same could be said to you, though you're not a student. What's going on here Miss Henderson?" Nami even gave the nurse a little poke to confirm that she was real and not some mirage stemming from fear or paranoia.

"Oh you know, just one of those days I guess." The nurse continued to smile at the group as they stared slack-jawed at her, unable to comprehend her completely aloof nature. "It seems that someone came down with a little case of Space Wolf, and they're on a bit of a rampage through the school. Looks like they got most of the student body."

"I'm sorry, Space Wolf? Is this some kind of outer space disease we can catch, because I did not sign up for this at all?" Gretta was deeply regretting leaving Earth every second she stayed in this orbiting academy.

"Oh well I suppose it is something like that. It's a very rare virus that seems to go around between the space stations every so often, usually comes off a passing asteroid or something like that. Gives you a nasty cold for awhile until the moon starts to get close or the station gets close to the moon. One or the other, the closer you get the more you get affected by the virus until sooner or later you end up turning into this big furry beast with sharp claws and fangs and you go about hunting down just about everyone you can find. I think they used to call them werewolves in folklore."

"This was all caused by a mythical creature?" Nami's head tilted to the side in disbelief.

"Certainly not! The Space Wolf virus is all too real. I'm sure werewolves were never real back in those times because nobody was in space, but nowadays it is a scientifically-proven illness." The nurse held up a couple of textbooks. "See, there are even medical books written on it." She flipped through one of them in search of a page before the very surprised students' eyes. "Now it says in here that in order to cure it you need a vaccine made of very specific ingredients." She pulled out a little vial with a cork stopper on top and handed it to the group. "If you come across the beast, all you have to do is get it to drink that and presto, it's cured."

"You think we can just ask a savage creature of legend to take a drink of an antidote?" Nami shook her head in extreme confusion.

"Well of course not! You'll just have to force it in somehow."

"But what about all the students in comas Miss Henderson?" Gretta chimed in.

"Yes, that's part of the Space Wolf. You see if the infected bites or scratches anyone it gives them a small dose of the virus, enough to knock their whole system out. They won't do anything unless the host virus is killed, not unless we get too close to the moon. Then the little germ in them multiplies and they too succumb to the Space Wolf. And that might be a bit awkward to have a whole school full of furry teenagers trying to maim their teachers, don't you think?"

The question was met with dead silence as the three students stared at the nurse in absolute shock. From somewhere in the school, a cricket chirped.

"Now if I recall," she continued, "Mr. Toriyama came to see me with a pretty violent cold just the other day. I sent him away with some strong medication but now that I think about it, that might have helped to accelerate the Space Wolf disease. It doesn't really mix well with our common medicines, if it is Mr. Toriyama who was infected. I'm guessing that he will be hanging around his office. Space Wolves are notorious for being creatures to their human habits so he should be in his usual place when he isn't out howling. I have to run back to my office though to check up on any other books I have. Toodles." And before another question could be thrown her way, she was gone down the hallway.

"Well, I cannot believe this at all," Nami exclaimed. "What a load of garbage that was!"

"But it does explain the claw marks all over the walls," Gretta said.

"And on the students," Raul added.

"You two can't be serious." The two students shook their heads that they indeed were. "So what, we're going to go to Mr. Toriyama's office, say 'Hello Mr. Werewolf Space Thingy' and then shove this down his throat?" She held out the little vial and the two again nodded. "You guys are nuts."

"We can just leave you here alone if you like." The cold seriousness of Raul left Nami wondering if he was even kidding just a little bit when he said that.

"You two are still crazy, even if I'm following along. I just want you to know that." The three struck out for Mr. Toriyama's office, not too far up the hallway from where they had been. As they grew closer they began to hear funny noises: little scratches against metal, the rustling of fur, and faint little grunts and growls. "Again, none of this even begins to make scientific sense. This doesn't seem like something in our lives at all."

The noises began to grow louder and the group was assured of it when they came to Mr. Toriyama's door, finding it closed but smashed up, with the same claw markings all over the edges. And the sounds were emanating from within.

Raul silently counted to three for the girls before kicking the door down and bursting into the room. It was a complete mess inside, with papers shredded and strewn about, desks upturned, and chairs tossed around. And in one corner was a massive, hulking, grey-furred creature that spun to face them.

Its eyes were like that of a wild animal, coloured red and filled with a ferocity they could not match. Its pointed ears swivelled around to catch sounds in a dog-like manner while the nose on the end of the snout twitched as it sniffed the intruders out. The fur was sticking out from underneath some of Mr. Toriyama's torn clothing, his business shirt and dress pants recognizable even in their disarray.

"I don't believe it," Nami gasped. Before she could react further though, the werewolf leapt from its two feet at an inhuman speed, its fusion of man and animal giving way to a whole new level of strength. Raul dropped Porter on the ground with a thud and barely managed to dive in front of the creature to keep it from hitting Nami.

The two rolled to the side and the werewolf Toriyama tossed Raul off itself before jumping up to its feet. Raul put up his fists to fight, shifting from one foot to the other like a boxer as the two began to circle each other. "Nami, you must throw me the vaccine, quickly!" He ordered.

The young girl fumbled for the little vial, finding her hands going numb and getting awkward as fear and awe captured her mind. It slipped from her fingers and bounced off the ground as the animal gave out a howl and lunged for Raul, swatting him aside and sending him careening into a wall like he was nothing.

It turned to face Nami and Gretta, advancing on them slowly as it savoured the capture of its prey. Nami continued to scramble to grab the vial, which seemed as though it were covered in butter. "Hurry up Nami!" Gretta screamed. "It's coming!"

As it drew near, Raul jumped up onto its back and wrapped his arms around its neck in a choke hold. It gave out a roar of defiance and began to thrash around, taking Raul for a bit of a ride on top. At long last Nami got a grip on the little antidote and looked over to the struggling Raul. "I can't pass it to you Raul, you're too...bouncy!"

The Space Wolf's jaw came around and clamped down on Raul's arm, leaving the boy shrieking in pain before he froze up, eyes wide open in a trance. The creature reached up and grabbed him off its back, throwing him down onto the ground with no resistance. It restarted its advancement on the two girls. Nami shrieked at its approach and hurled the vial forward toward it.

By sheer luck it shot straight into the beast's mouth and smashed open at the back of its throat, the liquid trickling down into its system and beginning to take effect. Almost immediately, the thing began to shrink down to a more human size, furry coat receding and face returning to a normal shape. It wasn't long before Mr. Toriyama was standing in front of them, clothes torn and body beaten and he collapsed onto the ground.

Nami sat down on the ground in an act of relief and exhaustion, fear extracting all of her energy, and Gretta followed suit. They watched as Raul's eyelids started to flutter as he came back to consciousness and his coma was broken and they could only assume that the same was happening elsewhere in the school.

It was then that Porter's eyes lazily slid open and he rubbed them, sitting up in a bit of a sleepy daze and looking around the room until he caught sight of Raul, Gretta, and Nami. He blinked a little until the sleep wore off and he recognized them. "Hey guys, what did I miss?"

Nami let out a giant groan and held her head in her hands. "Ugh, why do I have to like him!?"

A/N: A spooky turn becomes a bizarre tale in the history of the St. Maurius School. But has the Space Wolf been cured for good? What other strange adventures will the students face next time?!