Me and my friends replaced the four cardinal heros-shield hero fan fiction Vol 1

Extra chapter 1~ Nate POV: One Eyed Skelton Coyotes!!

They advanced onwards, saying their goodbyes to the town they'd momentarily stopped off in, before trudging down the dirt road ahead, Nate focusing intently on his detailed map, trying to make sense of the baffling directions while striding ahead, Ruth, surprisingly joyful, despite the recent turn of events, taking leaps in her steps and attempting to catch up to Nate in vein. Foster examining his shiny new claw gauntlets with a slight satisfaction, but still evidently perturbed by something noticing Foster was dragging behind, which was unusual for him as he usually scouted ahead, springing on any enemies they might come across, Ruth turned to look to Foster's face, and noticed his forlorned expression. She pulled at his arm to gain his attention. lowering his gauntlets and slowing to a halt he sighed, looked down towards the small filolial girl and asked "what's up, Ruth?"
Snapping out of his tunnel vision, Nate looked up from the map he'd been examining, he turned to look behind him to where Ruth and Foster were standing and  queried "is something up?" Only yesterday, they'd all gone into the wild looking for monsters to beat so that they could gain exp and level up, however, they had came across a flock of filolials. Ruth had decided it would be a good idea to sneak up on them before jumping out and surprising them with a loud "boo!" which had turned to disaster almost instantly, the wild filolials were sent into a panic and in the commotion, Ruth was pecked in the eye.

The chaotic scene of spooked stampeding filolials continuing to panic around the injured girl, Nate saw a gap in the commotion and took his opportunity to advance through. He took the now crying Ruth by her one free arm, as she was now cupping her wounded eye with her other one, but, an intense fear building up inside him, Nate began to panic when he realised the gap was gone and they were both now stuck. tripping over, Ruth fell to the floor, pulling Nate with her. Foster knew what he had to do, he could pounce through the flock to get to the other two, but there was no way they'd be able to get out together as he was much more agile than both of them combined. So this was the only way, he thought, as he sighed to himself and took out his sharp, claw-like nails. "hey bird brains, I'm gonna eat you!" he exclaimed in a low, intimidating growl which momentarily caught the attention of the filolials, as Foster lunged towards them baring his sharp teeth in a wolfish grin.

The filolials fled in a panic, hurrying to get away from their supposed predator, as Foster landed neatly on the ground, he'd hit none of the filolials, just as he'd intended.

he got up and brushed himself off, striding towards Ruth and Nate to lend them his hand as he pulled them up from the ground. "thanks Foster!" Nate exclaimed hurriedly, in a panic as they all knew they'd have to rush to a nearby town to get Ruth's eye checked out

"it's no problem" Foster muttered, avoiding eye contact, not that Nate would notice, since they barely made eye contact anyway.

Foster tried to push old memories away. He'd saved his friend, that was what mattered, he thought to himself. But the thoughts had still ambushed the back of his mind, refusing to leave him alone. 'see? you're a monster' 'they're all terrified of you' 'you're nothing but a dangerous predator' but he'd shook his head and hastened after his two team mates, scouting ahead as they headed towards the nearby town to get medical attention, and unbeknownst to them at the time, to afterwards buy new weapons, some shiny razor-sharp claw gauntlets for Foster, and a cutlass for Ruth 

and now, as Nate asked "is something up?" Foster attempted to keep himself from crumbling Nate had initially thought that perhaps Ruth was upset, what with the recent loss of her eye and all, but it dawned on him that it was not Ruth, but Foster that looked down

stepping towards the two awkwardly, Nate tried to say something, anything that would help "hey.. you okay buddy?"

Foster glanced to the side and took a sigh, "no it's nothing, seriously"

"but you're sad!" Ruth exclaimed "I know you are because you look all like this!" she pulled the corners of her mouth down with her hands Foster exhaled through his nose slightly, attempting to keep himself from laughing at the small filolial girl's impression of him

"okay, okay" he gave up trying to hide it "I'll tell you what's up. You're going to have to listen for a bit though"

Ruth and Nate looked to Foster intently, Nate attempting to make eye contact terribly as he glanced up at Foster's eyes and then back to the floor again a few times "it started before I was taken to the slave trader" Foster began "I would always mind my own business as I knew many of the people around me were always nervous around me, as.. they were afraid of me. I'd been minding my business, trying to make some new alchemy potion or something, and for some reason, I'd been really happy, so I'd started grinning, wide like there was no tomorrow. But then.. they saw me. And the mumbling started, and the hushed voices , the pointing and the staring and..." he trailed off, trying to stop the warm tears that, he hadn't noticed until now, were trailing down his flushed whiskery cheeks

he swallowed before starting back up again "look, I'm a frightening predator with sharp scary fangs and everyone is terrified of me, you should probably be too.."

he covered his face with his hands, and tried to wipe it dry with his cloak

Ruth looked up at the dejected coyote, hugging him around the waist "but that's not true, zebra man! how can they say that when you're so cuuute???" Foster looked down at the girl in slight bafflement

".... cute?"

"of course you're cute!" Nate joined in, patting Foster's head "how could you not be? you're like a giant adorable dog man"

Foster paused for a second, realising that now he had to deal with not only the nickname "Zebra man" from Ruth, but now also "Dog man" from Nate. and with the downcast expression almost completely disappearing from his face he pushed Ruth gently away from him and grabbed Nate's hands, flinging them away from parting his head "I am not cute!" he exclaimed "sure you are!" Nate insisted "like some sort of kitten attempting to be sneaky and mischievous but failing miserably"

"yeah!" Ruth added "or like a pie rat!"

appalled at being likened to a cat, Foster almost made an exclamation, but something else confused him further

"... pie rat?"

"yeah! when I was really sad about my eye, Nate told me I could be like a cool Pie rat! then he got me a cut lass so I can be like one!"

Foster looked to Nate and queried, "what's a Pie rat?"

face palming, Nate responded "I said pirate, not pie rat. P I R A T E"

"ohhh" Foster exclaimed "I love pirates, they're so cool"

"oh my god same" Nate added "my favourite character ever looks like a pirate but he's actually not a pirate but he's really cool and-"
Foster groaned as he knew what was coming and that Nate would go on about this "fallout 4" game for hours. Ruth listened intently at first but started losing interest around the point where an hour later Nate had gone completely off track by this point and was going on a tangent about how the game could have been even better if the "bethesda" hadn't been so lazy

snapping Foster out of his nap, Ruth interrupted with her sudden idea  "we can all be a pirate crew!!"

A little saddened that nobody was listening to his amazing infodump about fallout 4, Nate responded "oh my god yessss!!! What should we call our 'crew'?"

almost instantly, Ruth fired back with "One eyed skeleton coyotes!!!"

Foster and Nate both thought this was a terrible sounding name but it was pretty cute of Ruth to come up with, and they knew there was no arguing with her

"One eyed skeleton coyotes it is then" foster laughed "Let's goooo, one eyed skeleton coyotes!!" Nate exclaimed, pointing to the horizon as he held his map ahead of him. Ruth pranced ahead, and before walking ahead himself Nate turned to Foster and awkwardly tried to console him one last time "seriously though, you're not scary Foster. Those people were horrible so please don't listen to what they said about you"

"thanks, Nate" Foster smiled slightly, and with that he sprung ahead of the team to scout for enemies.

*Note: this was written by my friend Nate ,who is the bow hero in this story*