Coming of Age in the City

Masao was born in Detroit, now housing millions of people as one of the biggest cities in the country.
With the economy having split the population almost exclusively into rich and poor, those not lucky enough to be born into one of the few wealthier districts grow up intimitely familiar with financial struggles, food shortages and violence, especially the gang affiliated kind.
This was the case for little Masao.
His father left the family when he was still too young to form any lasting memories, leaving his mother to raise her only son alone. Unfortunately she was about as loving as her relationship had been, frequently ignoring the boy outside of feeding him in favor of going out on her own, never giving much of an explanation of where she was going and with whom...or when she would be back.

As such, Masao spent most of his time wandering alone, watching tv or staring out the window. He learned to rely on only himself, watching other people act the way they did and growing very independent quite early on.
When his mother finally managed to get her son into public school - if you could even call it that - the young boy at last started to develop his social skills. As it turned out, his habit of simply watching and listening made him learn to be very empathetic and understanding of the people around him, no matter their age, and he caught up to his peers with little difficulty. Unfortunately, while he got along fine with the other kids, Masao had trouble truly opening up to them and struggled to develop real friendships, leading him to simply drift along, knowing about the people around him but never being known himself.

By the time Masao became a pre-teen, he had grown frustrated with the world and people around him.
Though he didn't outright antagonize his classmates and teachers, he displayed a clear disinterest in holding proper conversations. It was at this age that he started to increasingly skip school and wander the city, getting to know things and people outside of the world previously known to him. The unkown was exciting and Masao would go looking for shortcuts, unlocked doors and new people to understand and learn from.
Even when he started to get into contact with the more dangerous elements of the city, the consequences didn't worry Masao. His mother and the school of course were nothing but an afterthought, nonoe had ever shown genuine interest in him as a person with feelings there anyway. But when it came to his safety: he had grown up in this world, he could feel the air changing when trouble was on the way, could see the people slinking around corners and pulling their children indoors when the wrong crowd started to gather - and he loved getting as close as he could without getting caught in the middle.

The Bite

Unfortunately, the ego of a teenager started to get the better of him. He had grown confident in his knowledge and abilities and while he usually knew when it was time to shut up and avoid conflict, he was itching deep inside to express his frustrations with his situation, with the city, with the world.
Due to his reclusive personality and his mother's negligence, Masao was quite skinny at this point in time. Despite this, when his 14-year-old self heard strange sounds during one of his evening strolls that rang every single alarm bell in his cocky little head, he chose to investigate. He had noticed the distance noise of some sort of big altercation - but none of that could compare to what appeared in front of him when he peaked around the rusty old gate on an abandoned construction site. He had known of the desease and its prevalence, even knew some people in his school that were known to be infected with the werewolf syndrome. But having one stand right in front of him, snarling, clawing, snapping its jaws at a boy maybe a few years older than himself...he couldn't think.
It was stupid. Foolish. Suicidal, even. In fact, it made no sense at all.
But before he could really process the situation, despite every fiber of his body screaming at him to ditch this random guy and run, he got involved.

Without thinking he picked up the nearest piece of trash heavy enough to at least be an annoyance, in this case part of a broken window frame, and threw it at the beast. Obviously the wood barely scraped the wolf's skin and all it really achieved was to show the attacker that Masao was clearly on its prey's side, but the distraction proved enough to allow the older boy to slip out of the corner he had found himself in and find his footing again. Frustrated to lose its advantage the wolf lunged at Masao, and even though the stranger tried to reingage the beast, there was a big difference between fighting off a stronger opponent for yourself and trying to fight them off of someone else.
Masao would later realise that what he had walked in on wasn't a beast hunting its prey, but two members of rivaling gangs fighting over territory - had he simply left them to it, he would curse to himself, things probably would've been fine. He wouldn't have felt the sharp pain of teeth pulling on his leg when he tried to run, wouldn't have seen his vision flushed with red when he turned to face its claws.
He didn't know much about what happened after this point, he could tell the fighting noises were getting further away as the boy succeeded in leading his opponent away. He remembered crawling off and hiding between some wooden palettes covered in a dirty tarp, holding his leg. Trying to wipe the blood off his face, but it just wouldn't stop.

He can't be sure how much time passed between then and the voices ringing in his head, asking him what happened.
A small group of people investigating the aftermath of the conflict had stumbled upon the wounded boy, quickly determining the lifethreatening nature of his wounds. Weak from bloodloss, all Masao was capable of was refusing to be taken to a doctor or hospital, as like most people in his district he had neither money nor health insurance. The group turned out to be part of a gang home to a neighboring district, called the Steel Claws. After doing what they could for him on the fly, they transported him to the hideout used by the squad that found him, knowing he would need help getting through the infection that was clearly coming.
Never having experienced this kind of selfless support in his life, Masao found the familiarity amongst the pack members and their attitude towards him strange to be point of being uncomfortable, like he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not knowing his name, one of the wolves called him "Rake" as a jab at the deep scars left on his head, something Masao first assumed was supposed to be demeaning but later grew to realise had more of an endearing tone to it.

The infection took a toll on his body, lasting for days, until one morning he woke and found himself to be almost entirely cured.
He had become a werewolf. He could feel the difference deep inside him, the cursed disease flowing through him, changing the way he felt and thought. He decided to leave for now, returning home after being gone for days - but his mother saw the wounds still marking his body after the fight and immediately asked the right questions. Not liking the answer, for once in her life she wasted no time and promptly threw Masao out, telling him to stay gone and not bring his disease into her home, if you could even call it that.

Heartbroken despite their spiteful and distant relationship with nowhere to go, Masao returned to the place that saved him, where he was promptly taken in as a member of the Steel Claws.

Claws of Steel

He is vouched for by the leader of the squad that found him, a slender man in his late twenties called Raven, with long black hair bound together in the back. He's recognised and once again called "Rake", which ends up sticking and somehow feeling much more comfortable after a while.
Noone really knows what they expected, but the newbie impressed the other members with his social awareness and observation skills. His knowledge of the city and its districts is surprisingly extensive and broad, making supplementing it with the werewolves' side of things much easier. Despite his knack for dealing with people, Masao struggles the most with adapting to his new feelings. There's so many nuances that come with the way werewolves think and feel, it's like all his new insticts merge a little into one thing at a time - be it anger, pride, sadness, the heat rising in his body or simply this new yearning to be part of a group, a family.
Most of his time is spent learning about pack life and culture, watching and accompanying the other wolves around the place and trying to wrap his head around this new situation. Raven also chastises him for not taking advantage of the free knowledge, education and contacts school provides, which ends with Masao attending classes regularly again and eventually graduating.

For the first time his life felt somehow stable, which came as a surprise considering he had to be infected with a "disease" for it to be this way.
Masao comes to appreciate the new sense of communicty he had become a part of, growing, sparring and learning from the people around him. The older he gets, the more his alpha genes start to become more apparent. He starts striving for responsibility and goes out of his way to make himself useful, forming his own contacts with the other packs and even districks, eventually proving to be a surprisingly good source of intel and advice in general for his age, especially when it came to social politics, recruiting and conflict management.
The raised rate of contact with other wolves leads Masao to be part of way more confrontations than he'd ever been in his life, as he had always preferred to wiggle out of trouble just in time or avoid it altogether. Fortunately the training with his packmates and his improved living situation as well as his new condition had made him less skinny and quite capable of handling himself, always using his opponents weaknesses to his advantage and not being afraid to fight dirty when the circumstances required it. Despite this, he held on to the sense of morals that got him into this situation in the first place and flat-out refuses to condone or partake in the kind of things he won't stand for, like human trafficking, violent recruiting or preying on the people already screwed by life. Not only does he oppose those types of actions morally, he also believes them to be strategically counterproductive.
Despite his impressive development, his biggest struggle remains regulation his emotions, especially anger. As a human, he was never the emotional type and now struggles to handle them when they rush to the surface after having bottled them up for long periods of time. This can sometimes make it seem like his frustration comes out of nowhere

Many years after his recruitment, Raven ends up gravely wounded in a huge altercation with the "Rabies", another werewolf gang of a neighboring district they had been on bad terms with for quite some time. They were able to get his body back into their territory but he still succumbed to his injuries a short while later.
Of course he knew that people like him and Raven didn't exactly stand much of a change of making it to retirement and it's not like this was the first death in his gang, or even squad, but losing what was essentially the only real parental figure he'd ever known deeply shoock and enraged Masao. He ended up taking over the squad after Raven, mainly taking part in scouting missions, negotiations and defense of the district and other squad's operations.
Rake, a name that now carries a decent amount of recognition, not least of all thanks to the very apparent, deep scars that remain on the left side of his head, also serves as a point of contact to the Steel Claws for many other people in the gang scene, both of human and werewolf nature.