"How did you get in here?" I had my katana pointed in the stranger's direction, the blade emitting a ghastly white aura from the city lights.

"I walked in. Don't worry though, time has fully stopped, it's just you and me..." He was straight forward, I liked that.

"Who are you?" He had a serious glare in his eye. The strange part was that he looked exactly like me, down to the color of the eyes and the length of my queue. He wore a black business suit with a red tie.

"I'm the one who can give you what you want, another life.” His vague omniscience was unnerving to say the least. It only made me tense my grip on the hilt of my sword.

"What do you want with me?"

"Nevermind what I want, it's what you want that really matters." He waved away his last remark as if it were an insect in the room. "But since you asked, I just want to make you an offer, one you cannot refuse."

"What makes you say that?" I started to get really uneasy, taking a step back towards the window of my apartment. I look outside to see a still image of the Special Assault Team. Time really did stop.

"Hmm... so... your offer..." I started to look at him with more of an interested curiosity.

"Think of it, a new world, no one knows who you are, what you're past's like, and the best of all, YOU get to start a new life there, whether it's happy or sad is up to you," It sounded too convenient, too suspicious. His posture showed all spades of an attempts to swindle me. If it wasn't for the Butai breathing down my neck at the moment I would have kicked him out right then. As it stood though, I was only in a position to play along. I pressed him further.

"Fine Print, NOW!” I growled. I had some notion of credence in him, but the belief of him being powerful enough to give me a way out of this mess barely held. I needed facts.

"Well, of course you have to abide by the world's laws, you're not going to be human, I can assure you that, but I can turn you into whatever creature you want, be it dog, cat, wolf, dragon, pony, pick your poison; all of them can pick up things and walk upright. You're going to start off completely naked, but so is almost everything else in the world I'm sending you.” What kind of world was he sending me to?

"And the place is a complete Utopia, all sunshine and rainbows, at least most of it..." I mulled the entire concept of his offer in my head:

Completely defenseless, but almost no likelihood of an outward attack, in case of an attack I can handle myself just fine. Different creature other than human, likely an anthropomorphic version of some animal. Weighing many possible options, I decided to go with a low profile yet high natural defense creature: a wolf. Naked, no supplies, which means I'll have to rely on instinct and survival methods. Compared to going up against the SAT, looks like this would be a better alternative. But why was he just giving this opportunity to me? I had to press him once more.

"Why are you offering me this?" I reached behind my back to grab my pistol.

"Because I like you, you have potential, but never got to use it.... With my help you can..." He knew how to pull strings, I give him that much... "I take it you're looking for this?" He pulled out my pistol and pointed at me. I looked behind me and found it gone from where I had placed it. I glared at him. "Relax, I'm not stupid enough to shoot a man I'm doing business with." His gaze turned from smug to sincere. “Besides, I still have a debt to pay, so what'll it be? Take your chances with the battalion outside, or come with me?”

He sounded like I had a choice in the matter. I had no chance against an entire rank of heavily armed personnel. I was between a rock and a hard place.

"Alright." I stuck out my hand as to seal the deal. "By the way-" He took my hand in response. "-What's your name?" I felt a blow to the back of my head.

"I thought you were done with the questions." My vision started to blur, I fell into unconsciousness.

I woke up in the middle of a forest, It was raining and I found myself under some sort of palm tree. Main instinct, I'm alive, try and control my motor skills, curling one finger and then the other, then opening and closing my hands. They felt rough. I did the same to my other hand and my legs. They felt crooked. The bottom of my foot felt smaller than the rest of my leg, which felt longer. My vision was different: I closed one eye and saw everything in a strange bluish green hue; I closed the other eye and saw the world in full color.

My senses were immediately overloaded with various scents and sounds; my nose smelled everything, even the rain had a scent. I focused my ears and felt them move, depending on the direction I moved them, they seemed to magnify the source of the sound they detected. All signs pointed to the new concept of I was now a wolf. I tried to stand up, the new legs made it hard, since I now had to balance my entire body on circular feet. Now for checking past psychological states...

I used to work with an associate of sorts, said he busted from Area 51, something like that, but then again, he was drugged when I found him, so I didn't take many of his stories with even the tiniest grain of salt. He wasn't really right in the head, but that didn't matter to me, what I needed were weapons, and what he gave me instead was something better. He worked on a virus based 'switch' he called it that would instantly trigger the flight or fight response at will, to the point of extreme levels, useful yet temperamental. He said once someone was infected with the virus, it changed their entire neurological profile, linking together the mental area's of intent and instinct. I was willing to try the new product of his work, only when he said he had everything worked out, from Alpha-Beta wave differences, to even genetic variation. His instructions were quite simple:

"All you have to do is thing you're in danger, not really think but sense it, kind of like trying to sense someone behind you..." I did what he said, instantly I felt the world slow down, movements blurring, I felt adrenaline course through my body, my muscles itching to move obstacles out of the way, I stopped it with surprising ease, with the only side effect being my movement being laggy half a second after I stopped the effects. He had created bullet time, and I liked it. With months of training afterwards, even bullets slowed down to an arrow's speed, and an arrow to a lightly thrown softball. After 3 more months, I was able to redirect a bullets' flight paths by hitting them with the flat of a katana. I gave him as much funding needed from my personal accounts. He enjoyment of his new found source of funding was fleeting, he was gunned down a few weeks after I told him by punks who say he stifled them on payment. Payment for what, I didn't want to know.

The perfect time to test if his creation stayed with me had come, I heard the inhale of breath to my left. I went into bullet time, and ducked, moving my hand into the trajectory of a dart, and catching it as if it were nothing at all. I looked at the tip, blow darts, interesting. It was the “rare” case of having come under attack. I was immediately surrounded by a gang of 7, all of them seemed to look like dogs with collars instilled with gemstones. I kicked up a nearby stick and grabbed it, Long, sturdy, a perfect staff. I heard the charge of some kind of cannon, I reeled back and threw my staff at an oncoming net, the net closing around it and the momentum returning the staff back to me. They wanted to capture me.

Rule of Combat: When dealing with non-lethal hostiles, main objective is pacification, but if intent is potentially life threatening, hostiles are expendable.

I had a staff, they had blowdarts and net launchers. I heard one of them grab a glass vial from a belt and throw it. I focused mainly on the vial coming towards me to give myself a few cycles to think. Glass vial, intended to break on impact, releasing contents on target. Contents, according to non-lethal intent contained either a vaporizing knockout gas or other chemical meant to debilitate me. I dodged the vial and grabbed it with the hand furthest from the source, then threw it back. It broke on a nearby tree and turned into gas, rendering its original user unconscious. Knockout gas? I used the staff to deflect two incoming blowdarts. I grabbed the unconscious dog's launcher and fired, the net caught both of them and bundled them into the net. Three down, four to go. I threw my staff similar to a javelin, the adrenaline giving my muscles an enourmous boost, it went straight through the fourth dog's head.

I dashed across the clearing, grabbing two incoming vials thrown at me, and dodging a net one launched at me. I reached and grabbed the staff, pulling it through the now dead dog, and grabbed a nearby rock. I threw it up and batted the rock into the fifth dog's head, hearing a satisfying crack on impact. It occured to me: my muscles were stronger, the fact that I'm able to lift this staff with one hand effortly is testimant to that. I held my breath before a glass vial smashed on my staff, the gas vaporizing then dispersing in less than 2 seconds. I didn't take any chances, I swallowed the air in my mouth and ran full sprint towards the sixth dog, who seemed to panic at my speed. I swung at full power my staff crashing into the dog's skull, giving me a confirmation that the dog was unconscious. The sixth dog started to run away, I took the blowdart out of my staff and clenched it between my teeth, I burped bringing back the air stored in my esophagus and inflated my cheeks, I spit the blowdart out with enough force for it to be sent flying, embedding itself into the last dog's neck, instantly dropping it and ending the fight.

I looted the dogs' bodies with some reward: gems, a couple of vials of knockout gas along with a belt to hold the vials, a blowgun from one of the dogs in the net, which I got by dumping the contents of a knockout vial onto the net. I had no use for the net launcher, too bulky, but I kept the staff.

I looked at a nearby pool, I really did look like a wolf except for a few outlying features, I had a long tuff of fur ranging from the front of my head to my lower back, resembling hair. The world looked different, somewhat of a racked depth perception, like cutouts. The man had kept his end of the bargain with almost every letter of fine print: no one knew who I was, I was now a wolf, the laws of the world probably being the entire world being different and that sentient life was all in the form of anthromorphic animals, but I happened to get thrown into the part of the world where it wasn't a Utopia.

I had a minor hypothesis about the dogs who had attacked me. They were most likely slave traders, looking to capture people for cheap labor in some form or other, the currency being the gems they carry. They weren't poachers, since they would've been carrying lethal weapons to kill me and take my fur. I wasn't royalty so they wouldn't kidnap me for a ransom. All signs pointed to slave traders. So much for a utopia.

First hour in this world, and I was now armed with a semi-lethal weapon, 2 non-lethal weapons, some currency (valuable by the color of the gems), and some manner of bearings from a map of what looks like tunnels. Thankfully they were labeled with the towns in the area. I locate myself in an area close to what looks like a major border, Equestria and the Dominion. I had an idea of where I was going next...