"It seems you found yourself at an impasse, haven't you, Aoi?" I opened my eyes to a familiar region, a fog laden void with a familiar face. "A rather peculiar Diamond dog came to me, rather, his spirit came to me." The form rose out of the fog, immediately recognized. "How have you been, Aoi?" he said with a welcoming voice.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I clasped my throat, wondering what was keeping me form speaking.

"Oh? It seems you've lost your means to speak to me... perhaps I can help." My reaction asks my mute question at hand. "The spirit left me a message to give to you. You'll find an ancient at a place called the Oblong Tomb, one I remember from my early fledgling years. From there you can start your... campaign, if you can really call it that." Blackfire gave a disgusted grimace, "Hade was mere child's play, a nuisance that I'm glad you gave the cold wing to. However, other more regal dragons might not yield to a simple pup.

They're ignorant of their history, turning a blind eye to many millennial ago, thinking that they've become stronger than what has been lost to time. But I know different."

'How so?' I thought, somehow he heard me.

"Hmm... very interesting," he pondered before continuing, "No matter, as I was saying, the other dragons have started to think that now they rule Gem Fido, ignorant to bliss on the return of their long feared enemy: you." I cocked my head, "That's right, I keep forgetting that you are rather ignorant of the blood that flows through you.

As you may or may not know, the wolves had a rather, special trait. Where dragons had unbelievable reserves of magic, and the star beasts their immense strength, another quality was bestowed to wolves and their kin for generations: unmatched speed. You however have not even breached one millionth the speed you could achieve, and that worries me. But my time is short here, and so I cannot spare anymore time to teach you of your lost threads, you must learn how to tap into your ancient blood.

But before you can even begin, you become stronger than you already are. Killing me was simply a matter of courage, an endearing quality no doubt, but you must hone that quality with power. As I said, go to the Oblong Tomb, and what you find there will lead you to an even larger goal: the Stars of Lupus." My eyes widen. "Ah, so you've heard an inking about it, or should I say, her.

Remember, become stronger than you already are, and you may find what you seek at the Oblong Tomb." he looks off into the distance. "Dawn fast approaches. Now... AWAKEN!"

I woke up with a jolt, breathing heavily, letting loose a heavy sigh afterward. I rubbed my eyes from their weary hold. My body felt heavy as I pulled myself up from the bed. I stretched, loosening my stiff muscles. I looked towards my sword propped up against the wall, thinking of the dream. I grabbed it and headed down to the training room.

I entered determined. Like Griffin said, this was a new body, not like my old one, I had to retrain, rebuild, and rethink everything. I started by putting it through its paces.

First off was Cardiovascular Endurance. The concept was simple: Run as fast as you can for as long as you can. I started pushing myself to the breaking point, running across the entire ship, the other crew members wondering what I was doing, speeding past everyone at how many miles per hour. I finally collapsed back in the training room after about a surprising length of a two hour long sprint, panting like mad, my legs sore enough to hurt by mere movement alone. I crawled over to one of the benches, grabbing a canteen hanging from a rack. After an ice cold shower followed by a warm bath: a routine I picked up to help recover my muscles. After resting for a few hours, I felt famished, having nearly exhausted all my energy stores. I headed down to the mess hall.

"What can I get you?" Maria asked me, noticing sweat glistening off my fur. Strangely enough, even with fur, I still had sweat glands.

"Something with lots of Calories and Protein," I huffed, "Please."

"Alrighty then." She disappeared inside and brought an immeasurable amount of Lean beef, cheese, and yellow fin tuna. Immediately I started digging in, ravaging the entire plethora of food, finishing in a little less than 30 minutes, with Maria wide eyed.

"Wow, you weren't this hungry when you first got on the ship." She stared in amazement, bones picked clean, not even a micro gram of cheese left on the table, "Do you mind me asking what you did this morning to work up an appetite like that?" I sighed, satisfied.

"Well," I thought about it a bit, I had just eaten a little over half my entire body weight in less than about half an hour, far beyond the stomach capacity of a normal creature, with an approximate caloric value of near 300,000. Something was different, very different, "All I can say is I ran all over the entire ship like a maniac for over two hours straight, then became so tired and hungry that I had probably almost exhausted all your supplies of meat. My apologies by the way..." I rubbed the back of my head nervously.

"From what I could tell you needed it, I'm just glad I could help." She said before disappearing back into the kitchen.

I went back to the training room, refreshed. Something wasn't right. Normally it would take a human being more than 2 days to recover from that kind of cardio work out, I know I had to. But here I am, standing, fully functional, in less than 2 hours. Even stranger was the fact that I felt good, surprisingly good. With the sun barely in the sky, I started the second part of my workout, being in fact half a week ahead of schedule.

Weight training was next, after bench pressing a bit to find my limit, I found myself bench pressing close to near 300 pounds. I stared at my paws, wondering how I could be doing this much? Was it my new body, or something else. I took and Iron rod and strung it through ten thirty pound weights. There I swung through all the basic motions of swinging a sword: men-giri, do-giri, etc. After 300 repetitions of each, my arms were ready to fall off. Even still, I felt that inch by inch, I was getting stronger. I decided to rest for a bit, jogging a bit around the ship alone, helping with some of the crew member's chores, and even visiting some of the other crew members for a brief greeting: Geirmund the engineer, Steelhorn who worked the forge, and Tiras who worked the main gun of the ship.

Afterward I went back to the training room, propping up my sword against the wall and grabbing a wooden sword and my new weapon for the last stage of my training regimen: Combat. I recalled what I had learned about using rope-darts and garotte wires. After taking a deep breath I began.

I set up around a few dozen training dummies, each wielding a shield and sword. It would work much better if I had moving targets. I stood poised among the dummies, spinning the wire around my finger. I stepped forward, flinging the diamond over my shoulder in a spin, impaling the dummy in front of me right between the eyes. I took no pause to dash under it, wrapping the wire around its neck, giving a strong pull to sever its head from its stationary position. A quick tug freed the diamond from its hold, I wrapped the wire around my leg, shooting it to the side, striking another dummy just within reach. I released a bit more of a wire, wrapping it around the dummy's waist, a violent jerk brought it in range to my sword. I swung with immense force, managing to tear through the burlap with the wooden blade.

I dislodged the diamond from the second dummy and started to wind the wire around my torso, making two loops around my elbow and finally held the diamond below my foot. I twisted in the air to fling the diamond straight through three at once. bringing them towards me to execute them in a triple decap slash. I swung the wire in a wide arc, wrapping the remaining dummies around various joints. I placed a strand of the wire between my teeth and the wrapped the wire around each of my outstretched claws. I slipped my other claws under the loops and pulled outwards, causing a chain reaction to occur, tightening each of the strands wrapped around the dummies' joints until they severed, false limbs and torsos falling to the ground in unison. With a loose tug, I gathered the wire around my finger and grasped the diamond tightly, stowing it away in my dobuku.

"I thought I'd find you here." I turn around to see the captain enter the training room.

"Heh, I guess I'm getting a bit too predictable." He looked at me with a suspicious gaze.

"I take it you didn't sleep well?" he asked.

"Nightmares..." I placed the wooden short sword on the rack, kicking aside a couple of the ragged dummies.

"Right..." it was obvious he didn't buy it. "Feel like talking?"

"About what?" I take a few moments to cool down, stretching a few muscles.

"Anything, just to take your mind off of stuff..." He pauses before continuing, "Oh... that's right... you're not very good with 'idle chatter' now are you?" I walk over to one of the canteens hanging off the wall and take a long refreshing sip.

"I guess I'll start." He plops down on one of the benches and starts, "What kind of music do you like?"

"I don't listen to music much, pretty much the only stuff I've heard was the songs Keith blared over his sound system..." I sat down right next to him. "That being said, I've never taken a liking to his choice of music: Metallica, Beatles, all the 'classical' rock bands, I didn't really like them. In fact, it only served in keeping me up at night sometimes while he was working on God knows what..." I lean back on the bench, exhausted.

"Personally, I like soft rock, orchestra, and techno. Kind of an odd combination, but then what does that say about me?" he replies, then pointing a finger towards me, "Alright, your go. Ask away."

I thought about it for a bit, I never really had anything I wanted to know about the captain, I might as well indulge him.

"So what did you do back when you were still human?"

"Besides get beaten up and watch a show originally intended for little girls?" He remarked sarcastically.

"Yeah." He lost his smirk immediately, his expression turning into one of deep embarrassment.

"Well... I... danced." Embarrassment immediately turned to shame. "And I sang..." I could tell it was painful for him to admit it.

"What's wrong with that?"

"I..." his head fell into a forlorn expression, "I was the only one... I loved it and everyone else hated me for it. Called me a 'Glee Fag' and used it as just another excuse to hurt me." He sighed deeply, rubbing the back of his head. "And if you have any basic psychology, the negative reinforcement really killed it for me. I guess when I stopped dancing, I stopped smiling... and started dying..." His expression shifted to one of anger. "They took away my joy..." he clenched his fists, grasping the fur on his lap, "And I will NEVER forgive them for that..."

"Them being the bullies that toyed with you?" I saw repression, like there was someone else... "Or was it someone closer to you?"

"Well, my tormentors were a part of it... my parents..." He spat out the word like it was a curse.

"I see..."

"They're the ones who originally put me in 'dance classes' so I'd stop being such a failure and have a little 'dignity and poise'." He slumped down further, "And I liked it, a lot. As soon as I told them that, all of a sudden, we couldn't afford it anymore, dancing suddenly became for queers, and I was worthless for liking it." I felt sorry for him, to have your parents, who were suppose to nurture and care for their children, treat him like dirt.

"I started learning different kinds: Aboriginal ceremonial, African tribal, Salsa, River Dance, Shuffling. Of course, there was music too, which I loved, and eventually lead me to singing as well. Of course, that just got me labeled as one of 'those kids' and made the bullying a lot worse."

"No matter what I did, It was never good enough, for anyone. I started not caring. My grades slipped, and while I got no appreciation for having mid 90's, as soon as they dropped, there was hell to pay for that, too." He hid his face in his talons.

"I stopped eating, just barely enough to get rid of my stomach pains. You saw me: six foot three and a string bean." He let his arms fall, recalling a single ray of hope.

"And then... heh... 'My Little Pony'. At first, I thought it would be lame, but then I finally found myself enjoying something again. I was secretive after that. I couldn't let ANYONE find out. Nobody could know. It was... my secret joy, one that I wouldn't let the world take away from me, like it did everything else."

"Which is why you were so glad when you managed to end up here..." He nodded.

"Can you imagine? Best day of my fucked up life! I wound up in my dream world. A new start, somewhere where it's actually possible to GET a start and then." His fist clenched, claws almost piecing his canvas like skin. "I found out it's not so perfect after all. It might be selfish, it might be egotistical, I DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS! This was MY fresh start, MY clean slate, MY second chance at a life that could actually MEAN something... and the world wanted to fuck THAT up, TOO!"

I stepped in right then and there, hoping to calm him down, "Listen, the world is cruel, and so is life, you can't expect anything different than that..." It barely helped though, he still continued on his flaming rant.

"I know damn well it is. So you know what I decided? THE WORLD CAN GO FUCK ITSELF! New body, no rules, world of opportunity, time to take it and make it my own." He stood up, wings flared, "I watched ponies get captured in some nets, right in front of me. Back on Earth? I would have just walked by, after all, you know the saying: 'No good deed goes unpunished.' But here.. Oh, you bet your furry little ass that I stepped in. And guess what? I found out I CAN make a difference. If this world isn't going to me the utopia it's suppose to be, then I'll personally kick the living shit out of it 'til it is!" He turned around in a proud air, "I've got nothing left to lose, a lifetime of anger to vent, and an entire continent of proper outlets for aggression!" His wings fell to his side suddenly, turning around to reveal a captain in despair.

"And then... I changed again."

My ears twitched, "Changed?" He dragged his talons on the bench before sitting back down.

"I found others I care about, people who actually mean something to me: Gilda, Trixie, Nadene, Etch, Growl, Maria, Tiras, and everyone else. They're the family and friends I never had, and I don't want to lose them. When Celestia said that I'll die alone... I got scared. I'm not afraid of dying, I've been prepared for that for a long time. It's the 'alone' part that terrifies me... I... I don't... want... I don't..." He started to sway back and forth.

"Griffin?" He clutched the side of his head in pain, "Are you okay?" I touch him, he starts shivering violently, falling to the ground in a fetal mass. I stand up and rush to the deck, finding two of the people he needed the most.

"Somebody HELP! The Captain's DOWN!" Immediately Gilda and Nadene rushed with me to the training room, and all of us carried his unconscious body to the medical ward. Gilda was near tears, clutching her mate tightly like if she let go, she'd lose him. When we laid him down on the bed, I gave Gilda and him a few moments alone, closing the door behind me. I leaned against the wall, thinking about what he had said.

'Griffin... if you don't want to lose those close to you and die alone. Then you'd better hold on tighter than ever before.' I heaved a deep sigh before sliding down the door to Griffin's ward, 'I know I will...'