Ooo you fed me so well, I wasn’t even sure if I would get answers! So now I’m gonna try my hand at asking who bit Ark, what happened?! This is so juicy (rubbing my gremlin hands together).
oh rest assured, I will answer any and all OC related questions with overwhelming fervor and I will not be cool about it at all <3
The person that bit Ark was Josie! She's what the girlies like to call "a hot mess" <3
im so sorry this reply is so long. I started typing and kept failing to summarize things until it was. way too many paragraphs lmao.
TLDR; Ark and Mira were attempting to rescue a woman named Josie who'd basically been manipulated into servitude by a very shitty guy. Josie also happens to be a werewolf. At some point during the attempted rescue, Josie had to watch someone she cared about a lot be killed, and she immediately wolfed out and attacked everyone around her, including Ark <3
I did not proofread this after typing it and it's 1am so i'm sorry if some things dont line up correctly, im stupid :)
Josie got bit when she was 18 on a camping trip with friends and it subsequently ruined her life. She survived bc a monster hunter killed the werewolf before it killed her, but she still got bit and ended up running away from home bc the aforementioned monster hunter told her to (it was either "run away and never come back" or "im killing you right now for real") everyone in her family thinks she died except her sister, Rose, who saw it happen and - upon never finding the body - spent the next 10 or so years looking for her.
Because Josie never really had anyone to explain to her what was going on, or support her in any way, she spent a lot of time alone, and subsequently fell into some pretty dark places. She eventually finds herself stuck in a monster fighting ring bc shes been conditioned to think that this is literally all shes good for. At the very least, she makes "good friends" with another werewolf girl stuck in the same spot as her named Cleo and theyre basically the only thing keeping each other alive for the next couple years.
At some point in all this, her sister Rose manages to track her down, but worried about her and her sisters safety, gets in contact with Mira (who is functionally the lynchpin holding the entire cities supernatural community together whether anyone knows it or not lmao) to ask for help rescuing her from the guy basically keeping her prisoner.
Aforementioned guy keeping these monster girls prisoner was named Dekker, and he was basically the scum of the earth. He dealt in monsters and magic and took advantage of a lot of peoples inability to get help (EX: 'you're a werewolf. what are you gonna do? who's gonna help you? no one. theyll just think you're crazy, and then youll end up killing innocent people because you're a monster and that's what you do). Josie and Cleo were his favorite girls and he showboated them around as both arm candy and bodyguards.
The thing with Mira and her work is that she likes to help people as best she can, but she's not like. A superhero with all the latest tech. She's a woman with a smartphone and a handful of 30 year old weirdo friends that share a group chat where someone will text "do we have plans this weekend?" and then someone will reply 3 days later with "i forgot what day it was". They're not exactly the justice league.
All they were trying to do was find Josie and rescue her for her sister. Mira has a lot of power and can do a lot of things, but this Dekker guy was notoriously slippery, and no amount of brute force was going to get them into one of these monster fights without notifying Dekker and giving him a chance to escape with the girls.
So, after tracking down one of these fights, the plan was to sneak in, find Josie and then convince her to leave with them. Originally, it was just supposed to be Mira doing all the legwork. But Ark, who was going thru a fucking crisis of identity at the time and also saw a lot of his own sister in Rose, essentially demands Mira lets him help under the guise of "I'm human, I'm way less likely to draw unwanted attention". Esp since Mira is a 6'4" goddess who attracts attention everywhere she goes lmao (Of note, they had several friends who also urged Ark to Not Volunteer To Do This, but outside factors made it unrealistic for this plan to work without getting caught with anyone other than Ark oops).
So Ark went in to find Josie and Mira was anxiously playing support, ready to rush in and save him if need be. And, to be fair, he did in fact find Josie! He told her who he was and who sent him here (Rose) and told her all she had to do was go find Mira and she would get her out. But Josie was skeptical and, frankly, afraid. She didn't believe that Mira had the power to keep her safe from Dekker, but she also didn't want to believe that her sister had been looking for her for 10 years because she was so disgusted with herself she would have preferred her sister just think she was dead!
However - Cleo, who was with Josie, did not share her fears. Cleo had had Enough, and wanted to run away with her. Josie panicked, afraid that if they ran, they were going to be hunted down and everyone involved with her was going to be killed.
So she ran away to a back room to calm down. Cleo went after her, and Ark kind of followed, but at a distance. Cleo did manage to get her settled a little, but the both of them got caught by Dekker, who harassed Josie into admitting that there was someone there trying to get them to leave, hoping he would respect the honesty. He did not.
To try and mitigate some of the flack, Cleo claimed she was the one the guy was talking to, so he would chew her out instead. Josie and Cleo both felt bad that they'd fucked this guy over, but if he was with someone as powerful as he claimed to be, he'd be alright, surely?
Apparently this was not the first time Cleo has been distant from Dekker recently. It was clear she wasn't as afraid of him as he thought she should be. So he made the executive decision to make an example out of her.
The thing about werewolves and the full moon is this: the full moon is the only time when a werewolf is forced to turn. However, they can technically turn whenever if you supply enough trauma. For Josie, that line was watching Dekker kill the only person she'd loved in the last decade.
He'd expected her to fall in line because that's what she'd been doing for the last few years. He didn't really know what Cleo had meant to her, so he hadn't expected any retaliation. But something snapped in her brain and everything kinda went red.
Josie's a particularly large werewolf - at least 13'; there's a reason she was a fighting champion - so when a beast like that gets let loose in a relatively small arena, things tend to go bad fast! She just blindly started tearing people apart (including Dekker, of course).
Ark had heard the muffled gunshots over the music and the crowd and he just went in on instinct, knowing immediately he was fucked regardless of what he did. Things escalated very quickly after that. It couldn't have been more than 30 seconds that passed inbetween Josie wolfing out and her clamping her teeth into his shoulder. And maybe it was just a moment of grief-stricken clarity, but she wavered just slightly - what the fuck was she doing? She hated him because he'd tried to help and if he'd never shown up, they would be fine. But Cleo had trusted him without a doubt, like she just intrinsically knew something about him. And no matter how much she hated him in that moment, It's not what Cleo would have wanted. Dekker was dead.
Josie gently let go of him, mostly sure it wouldn't matter because he'd die either way. She took Cleo's body and she fled. Mira saw Ark, and she saw Josie run - she could choose one or the other. She, of course, chose to help Ark, immediately struck with the guilt of knowing that he was here because she couldn't talk him out of it, and because she thought she'd be strong enough to keep him safe anyway.
The next couple weeks are a blur for everyone. Mira hates Josie and she hates Rose for coming to her in the first place. Ark hates himself, mostly, because he was tired of being the weak little human everyone had to dote on so he decided to get in over his head playing hero. Well, at least he didnt have to worry about the human part any more.
Josie buried Cleo in the woods. She marked the grave and visits often.
Anyway.
Would you believe me if I told you this very sad series of events somehow ends in Ark marrying a professional wrestler? Or Josie going on to become a lawyer with a house-husband who is also part demon? Because it somehow gets much, much weirder.
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didn’t figure out i was autistic at all until my 30s. why? well in a funny twist of what some might call irony but probably isn’t: one of my main special interests since childhood... people. behavior. how folks feel vs how they behave, why they do things, what motivates them. i became a “peacemaker” type as a kid because i could observe an argument between two people and fairly accurately guess how each felt and was able to kind of... do some emotional translation for both of them to help them find an understanding. and BECAUSE of this, people were like “you’re wise/good with people/etc” and for years people also said “that means you’re not autistic, because autism means not being good at socializing”
but like. i’m not? i’m OKAY at socializing. but since childhood i’ve found a lot more success in just being the observer. WATCHING people, paying extremely close attention, that’s what i was good at. i learned early to never TELL people outright i was doing that, people get weird when you say you’re observant and have noticed their behavior/emotions/etc
I don’t regret this being a special interest of mine. It’s been an uphill battle since my 20s to figure out how to be a PART of all that socialization? (and i still feel like i constantly fuck it up, translating the neurotypical habits mid-conversation is much harder than observing it as an outsider and having more time to process it) But... I like that I’m an observer. I like that I can see the clear causes and effects of emotions that people have, their experiences, how it can all bleed together? I like it. I’m glad my childhood brain decided to latch onto the concept of People and humanity in general. It can get frustrating sometimes feeling like the only one in a group of people trying to be considerate of what the others are going through but... I still wouldn’t give that up. I’m glad I’m weird about humans. They’re pretty great actually.
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