Why did the world have to be so complicated? I had just wanted to stay by myself in my little grotto and practice my craft. I was completely self reliant and involving others would only things harder.

Sadly, the men around me couldn't comprehend leaving a small child out in the woods by himself. I suppose I could understand that, I wouldn't have just turned a blind eye to me either if I was them. Still, I wished they would have just accepted that I neither wanted nor required their help and just left me be.

If only they tried to take me by force. Then I would at least be able to knock them down from a position of moral superiority and move along with my day. Unfortunately they didn't seem at all inclined to do so and knocking teeth in when they were only trying to be nice would have left a bad taste in my mouth.

So in the end I found myself tracking through the forest behind them, occasionally glancing down at their feet. It wasn't until I looked closer at them that I noticed the odd stitching jobs on there clothes, as if done by an untrained hand, even though the fabric looked modern enough. The shoes on their feet were much worse though. They looked more like socks than shoes. Messing lumps of fabric and duck tape.

Though they all acted as though they were in high spirits, it didn't seem to reach their eyes, as if they were all scared of something, or sleep deprived.

"Don't worry kid. You don't have to be on your own anymore. We get ya." One of the men, the man with the bow said, giving me a heavy pat on the shoulder, causing me to stumble a bit. "Name's Hunter, probably can guess why." He laughed, tapping at his quiver. The arrows were of an extremely poor quality, but more surprisingly, the man had made them himself, and he had used them. Not on any human targets, just in normal hunts of wild animals.

"It's... nice to meet you... I guess." I said, feeling rather awkward. Meeting new people wasn't something I was used to. Even in my previous life, meeting new people was usually coupled with a bloody fight, not with hellos. It didn't help that English still felt like a second language to me, leaving me with an accent. "My name's Shirou."

"Shirou huh? Strong sounding name. Got any clue what it means?" The man asked me, scratching at the stubble on his chin.

"Its Japanese. The meaning changes based on how you spell it. It can either mean, white, the fourth son, or castle. I usually spell it for the castle meaning." I wasn't exactly about to tell him my name was Oscar Myers. Honestly, who on earth names their child after a whiner? Besides, telling them that my name was Shirou meant that they couldn't turn around and look up my uncle.

"Japanese? You don't look very Asian to me." Hunter said, giving me an up and down look. I'd have to give him that, even in my old life I hadn't looked too Japanese and my rust red hair hadn't gone anywhere. Before I could respond I felt something passing over me and halted in my tracks.

My shock must have showed on my face because the older man who had first talked to me in the clearing, Chase, started to laugh. "It takes a bit of getting used to, but you'll learn to live with it." Chase said with a shrug. "They call it an unplottable spell. Stops people from being able to just stumble into this part of the woods unless they know its there. Of course, it doesn't really effect our kind the same way as it effects normal people."

"A bounded field. I... how had I never noticed it." I said looking around as if it was going to make a difference. It wasn't something that could be seen with the naked eye. The entire area was placed under a spell, one that hid it completely from the outside world.

The woods vanished just a few feet into the area to be replaced by a large plantation like area. Fields of wheat, strawberries, tomatoes, apples, lettuce and more. Things that should have been out of season in the summer were growing without a problem. A large group of sheep was grazing on a nearby pasture. All of it hidden from the outside world. The amount of raw prana needed to sustain something like this. It reminded me of something I had seen Caster do. It must have required at least four separate five line spells. Could normal people real do something on such a scale using just Mana?

Where all these people hedge mages? Had there been an entire community of hedge mages just around the bend and I had never even noticed a thing. The scent of wolves must have come from their common origin, the source of their magecraft.

It seemed possible, but something didn't feel right. All of these people didn't seem related, so was their common origin something that was put in them rather than inherited?

"Home sweet home." Hunter said with a thoughtful smile before shifting his quiver and moving forward.

"How did you make all this?" I asked them. Suddenly distancing myself no longer felt like the most logical idea. While they were no doubt a sort of cult, their knowledge of with world's mystic arts could help me move forward in vast leaps.

"Well, most of it was set up with magic, but we still have to put in effort tending the crops and building the houses. If you want to know about all that stuff, you're going to have to talk to Remus. He's the only one around here who's been formally schooled in that stuff." Hunter said, scratching at his hairy chin again. "Come on, we'll introduce you to him. He's the one who looks after all the kids around here anyways."

We walked along a path between the crop fields and towards a wire fence that surrounded a group of houses. Though to call them houses would be rather generous. They looked more like shacks that were set up for refugees rather than homes that people lived in, with board plank walls and tin roofs. And the fence seemed a little larger than what was strictly needed, being well over thirty feet tall. I was put more in mind of concentration camps rather than a little gated community.

The fences were drawing mana from the surrounding area, though not to produce a bounded field. The faint smell of oxidizing silver and plant oils came from the chain linked construction.

The fenced in area only had a single opening, and extremely thick steel door with an rather heavy looking metal slab to lock it in place when closed. It looked easy enough to open though, from either the outside or the inside, so I couldn't even began to guess the purpose of it.

Large dogs came barreling up to us as we walked through the entrance, big playful great danes that tripping all over themselves in there clumsy attempts to be the first to get their ear's scratched and meet the new comer.

I had to admit, it was uncomfortable to be bending my head backwards to look up at dogs. There drool came out of them in waves and slapped all over me. I was knocked clean onto my butt and had to be rescued as they shoved their noses in my personal space. This was why I was a cat person.

"Hey now, get off the poor lad. I said get, you stupid mongrels." Chase laughed as he gave on of them a playful slap on the butt. All of them were laughing at me, even the kids who had gathered to see what all the noise was. What a great way to be introduced to people.

A few light sparks danced in the air above us and the dogs scatted as if someone was going after them with a water hose, each retreating a short distance before turning around and waiting with wagging tails, as if hoping to be persuade.

"You shouldn't just let those dogs do whatever they won't. Otherwise they will be running this place before the end of the week." A new man said, coming up from where the other children were gathered. He was middle aged, his hair starting to thin and a less than well kept appearance. His eyes had the same tired look as the rest of them but he still kept up an expression of playful disapproval on his face.

In his hand was a short wand. I didn't know what it was made of or what allowed it to function. It was not a sword, or comparable to a sword, and as such wasn't entering into my Unlimited Blade Works. I would need to find a way to preform a structural analysis of it, but in order to do that, I would need to touch it. Something made me doubt that a mage would just willingly let me touch their medium to learn its secrets.

"Come off it Remus, you know they have been running this place for a while know. You can tell by all the tracks they've ran in the grass." Hunter said with a cheeky smile. "Besides, they just wanted to say hello to the newest pup." Hunter said, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me forward.

Remus's face fell a little as he looked me up and down. "Another abandoned in the woods. Well, we'll try to make you feel at home." He said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I couldn't help but wonder if children being abandoned in the woods was a common occurrence. "I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Remus Lupin. I suppose you could say I am the closest thing we have to a teacher in this little pack of ours. If you have questions, you know who to ask." He said, presenting me a hand.

"I'm Shirou." I said, taking the hand. His hands were smooth, but his nails were bitten down to stumps. He must have had a nerve habit of bitting them.

"Hm... an interesting name." He commented giving me an up and down look. "Well, class seems to have ended for today, so how about I show you around a bit and help you settle in. You can stay in my place until we find the time to build you up one of your own." He said, leading me away from the group.

His 'place' seemed to be a two room run down shack with a single old bed, a table and a few spare blankets. "Its summer right now, so there shouldn't be a problem with me just sleeping out on the floor. I'm sure I can conjure up something only slightly hard and you can use my bed." He said with a smile. "I'd prefer that to you trying to use magic when you haven't had any proper training and no medium."

I froze a bit at his casual comment of it. "You can tell?" I was surprised that I had been found out so quickly.

"Your clothes, you've been using magic to resize them over time, haven't you? You did a pretty good job considering, but the coloring and thickness is uneven and there are several spots were the threading pattern reverses without reason." He said, pointing to my clothes. "However, I'm going to have to ask you not to try to force yourself to do magic any more. Its dangerous. You're lucky you haven't been hurt."

"Cou... could you take me as an apprentice? You can do... magic." I said, using his word choice, even though it wouldn't have been my own.

"Heavens no." Remus said, shaking his head. "I wouldn't even dream of doing that. You're too young to legally start learning how to use magic and the last thing we need is for the authorities to start hounding us about breaking the rules. They hardly let us have this place as it is."

"Authorities?" I said. Did he mean the Enforces, or this world's equivalent? Would they really get involved just because a hedge mage decided to take an apprentice?

"That's right. Underaged magic is serious business. They wouldn't hold it against you when you can't control yourself but there are strict rules about teaching children how to control magic. You will need to wait until you turn eleven... even then there might be complications, but I could see about getting you into a school." Remus said, shaking his head.

"I'm not going to wait. With or without help, I'll start training myself." I said defiantly.

"No in this community you won't." Remus said, wagging a finger at me.

"Then I guess I'll be leaving then." I said, making my way to the door.

Remus's eyes widened and he rushed himself to the door to stop me. "Hold on a second, you can't just leave. Its a hard world out there, and there is a bad moon tonight."

I didn't understand the comment about the moon. Maybe magic in this world was somehow tied to the moon. I'd never really noticed. "I've taken care of myself for years now. If I can't practice magic here, then there is no use for me to stay. I won't just wait around until I am eleven."

"Please tell me you aren't serious." Remus said, but he could see how stern my expression was. "Kids these days. Its even worse than with... never mind. How about we compromise?"

"...I'm listening."

"I'll teach you about the theory of magic, but you won't try to practice it. That way, when you become old enough, you will be more prepared to start practicing right away, but you won't be doing anything that will get you into trouble. Do we have a deal?" He said, spelling out our little compromise.

In all honesty, it was better than I could have hoped. Good enough that I actually became suspicious. What exactly did this man get out of it? Was he seriously so concerned about the safety of a child he had just met that he would give away knowledge? "Alright. I promise I wouldn't try to practice magic if you teach me about how it works."

He gave a sigh of relief. "Well then, now that that is how of the way, how about we prepare some meals for us. Better if we don't face tonight on empty stomachs."

He opened up a chest which appeared to have had spells placed on it to make it act as a fridge and started to pull out some things. My heart went up into my throat as I saw all the different ingredients. "How about I cook?"

Someone suggested that my difficulties with the first chapter might have had more to do with it being the first chapter rather than my sudden use of first person. While I don't feel like the first person perspective is doing it for me, I have to admit it has its charms when it comes to irony, mostly because everyone knows just what is about to happen and how screwed Shirou is other than Shirou himself. Still, it doesn't feel right to write in first person.

My reasoning for why Shirou hasn't realized that they are werewolves is that in his own world, mages and the church were a lot more brutal and hunted werewolves to extinction. Unlike the Dead Apostle where any human who figures out how can become a vampire, werewolves require a werewolf to bit them in order to become one. So they could easily be hunted to extinction by people who didn't care about the ethics of it.

Why would Shirou be looking out for werewolves were werewolves shouldn't exist. Though if I actually went by Fate canon, werewolves were something completely different anyways, not being cursed humans but rather just a species.