07-26-2016, 11:46 PM
“Red... Red? Are you alright?” Things still looked blurry in the shimmering light of his tail, and Christa loomed over him, her brows wrinkled with concern but he managed a nod. White knuckles had wrapped around her flashlight while she redirected the florescent ray to identify the corpse and hopefully prove herself wrong. “Shit.”
After tugging Red upwards, she gave him a long, hard look. Her words were daggers and ice, “Never do that again.” To her, he had just forsaken her to die. And no, she wasn’t fucking over it. The Prime turned her attention away from the feline and onto the deceased. You owed me a new gun, damn it. Took arrived as she was patting down Karl’s pockets, “He must’ve died from the landslide,” Christa announced as she stood up.
William saw the largest gash on Karl’s cranium, blood lapping in his sable hair and giving it new definition, “Find anything?”
“Only a mystery, why isn’t he shimmering? And shit, now they might not even come to rescue us. Karl was our best ticket off the island.” the sniper’s shoulder was cold and she had turned away from her favorite beast, though admittedly, it took some effort to keep it there. Had she taken the time to look over, she would have seen the beast’s pure anger, perhaps the woman would have even realized that he had done it to save them from whatever was chasing him; as a light source, he made the most obvious prey. But from what? Maybe there was something to Took’s fairytale after-all. Suddenly the world started to tilt, there was a small crash, the sound of Red collapsing.
“Shimmering?” Took thought next maybe he’d examine the intricacies of her psyche, but each huddled around the lion again while he informed, “He’s out cold, but with a little rest he should be alright.”
“Yes, Karl was a Prime, after death, his body would erase and go elsewhere, just like mine will,” Christa felt the crushing weight of sorrow cause her to stagger. Giving herself a minute, she looked down at the motionless Red, her hand fell on the immense heat of his fur, Red. “Have you caught your bearings? Which direction is town?”
A smile slithered along his lips, though his brow had creased with worry, What had she meant, ‘Just like hers’? “Oh, I’m very aware of where we are. We ran straight down the mountain. Right into their backyard, no amount of silence will save us here, they already know. Each of us are free game now.” The good doctor crouched down and inspected Karl, as though hoping to catch something Christa missed, but really, he wanted to see if the meat was still warm.
“Red said, ‘he’s here’ before sprinting off, what are the odds it was the uh, people you were talking about and not Karl Jak?” Christa posed, but Took’s eyes were distant, narrowed slits as though he was analyzing their situation, looking for a way out.
“I suppose,” he began after a while, talking silently so that she’d lean in, “They could have started the landslide, they probably sense the presence of intruders on their island. Do you... Hear their voices too? At first you they call only at night, but after a little while, you’ll hear them every hour of the day.” The hairs on her arm sparked up like a porcupine, she was wordless, fear had taken the breath from her lungs, “Because I’m sure he hears them, this man has been dead for at least an hour. There is no possibility your friend heard his scream.”
“Voices? You’re crazy, Red’s just tired... That’s all,” Instant denial. So predictable. “And you still don’t even know who they are, how can you be so afraid of something that doesn’t even fucking exist?”
“This island isn’t what it seems, even people who come from afar, this place has a way of... Bringing out their true colors. You say they do not exist, you say you can’t fear them. Well, you don’t know yet. You can’t possibly know. The tribe’s children wanted to explore the forest, chasing the same legend after calling the elders liars, They didn’t like that. You learn to fear them, because of what they do to you if you don’t do what they tell you... Oh the look on those poor children’s faces.”
Trickling in the deepest part of her, was the vaguest notion of an undeniable epiphany, “You... You didn’t... Are you saying this mythical They told you to kill those kids? And you just did it?” Christa stumbled back, tripped on a fucking log, and tried to edge away from him.
Each, predator and prey, never looking away.
The silence was unnerving, but oh how it confirmed the truth. Pure horror crawled beneath her skin wriggling like a mound of cold snakes, she fumbled for her knife, surely, it was in its sheathe–but no, he had lifted her up during the rockslide, and helped her down the tree, plenty of time for it to go missing. “No... You’ve just been here too long, living with those savages...”
Slowly, he was stalking closer. White teeth, save a few stains from the human flesh he had eaten, glistened through the all encompassing blackness. He was a monster and it was so easy to see the evil in his eyes after he had thrown off the mask, “Savages? Ha! They’re the sane ones. It’s people like you that we mark, the outsiders who will never learn the way, you will never understand the truth. So you’ll be our dinner.”
Perplexed, Christa pulled up her rifle, the gentle press against her shoulder as she aimed at his chest, “Do they even give you a goddamn reason? Or do you just think you’re God, that you get to choose who lives and who dies?”
“That was a might ironic, considering whose finger is on the trigger of her gun. Do you know why we eat the people we kill, Christa? Because of the essence. Some of it is retained after death and none is so pure, as it is in humans, the most complex organism of all. You and your friend are particularly strong, filled to the brim with it. You’ve been sent here by the gods, chosen for our feast. You’re a worthy sacrifice,” he chanted, “Kii Ga Shi...”
“We... We burnt your camp, sent your entire tribe straight to Hell! There’s no one else! You, you think you hear voices, but you’re just sick! Back down now Took, or I’ll have to kill you.” Christa gritted her teeth, her heart hesitating in her chest more than her index on the trigger.
With a coy smile he cocked his head, “You think you have the favor of the gods simply because you have that steel contraption in your hands, but I stole your bullets while you slept, straight out of the chamber. My dear, you’ve been outplayed.”
A bluff, surely it had to be a fucking bluff. Click. Click. Click. It was empty, the hollow echo delivered the doomed news straight to her ears; there was no time to reload. The cold iron nearly fell from her hands, he was closing in on her, and she could only move backward so fast without looking to see the mountains of boulder below her feet. And fuck, she needed Red. “NANAKI WAKE UP!” her words shivered with desperation, “RED!”
“Oh, he can’t hear you, that concussion on his head was pretty bad last I checked, he might’ve even fallen into a coma.” Triumph and esteem warped together as he confidently strode forward.
“I’d rather die than be your dinner,” the gunslinger growled, pulling out a grenade and juggling it in her hand, “Stay away or I’ll kill us both, fucker.”
The smile smudged as it turned downwards, but there was still a glitter in the madman’s eyes, “They tell me you won’t kill yourself, that you can’t. I wonder why they would say something like that if it wasn’t true?”
“You wanna bet?!” she roared as she leapt at him, pulling the pin of her grenade and letting it explode with light. The immense ringing came after and her eyes had been set afire, but she brought the base of her rifle down right on Took’s already crooked nose. The surprise etched into his expression which was laden with pure astonishment, the fact that this woman dared to bluff with her nonlethal flash-bang and stomp his nose in caused the vessels in his eyes to burst with rage. Blood streamed between them, and movement came in one fluid motion.
The insane cannibal wasted no time, while he was getting a nose-job, the scrawny bastard somehow already had the knife against the skin of her neck. She’d been caught, a smile flashed in front of her. Another second, and she was pinned to the ground. Large, carnivorous eyes upon her flesh, white, pale, and untouched by disease. Yes, she’d be the best meal he’d ever had, on this island, or before, “So, if I kill you first, your body will evaporate, is that it?” WHAM! she threw her head at him with all the strength she had, letting the blade scorch her neck.
“You are so fucking dead, that’s a promise.” After rolling a few feet away, she grinned and revealed silver reflecting in the glint of the dropped flashlight, wrapped in her palm was the blade he’d stolen from her. Even ground. “There are no voices, I’m just looking at a pathetic man who’s simply been alone too long, forced to kill because it’s the only way you feel anything and when you decided that the murder alone was not enough, you took your place among the very cannibals you preyed on. Now, I don’t know how you got marooned on this shit-hole, but mark my words, you will never leave.”
From the stream of the dropped torch she could see the monster in his final form. White shirt, pooling with blood, puffy bruise forming over his eyebrow. Not six feet separated the two, each had killed before, and for one of them, this would be their last fight. She dropped her sniper and both directed the curve of their blade at one another; each ready to slice their kill on contact. All the sound and time in the world had stilled, as though waiting for the strongest to strike first.
“Kill.” Christa heard a rasping whisper demand, but Took’s lips hadn’t moved.
Next, there was a sharp arc, slicing through the darkness. Parrying the movement, her hair fluttered in its wind as the gliding blade cut right through it. The Prime sidestepped him before the frayed lock hit the ground, steadying herself to deliver a vicious swipe with the full extension of her arm. A rush of blood gushed from his shoulder, flooding downward and coating him in crimson while its iron stench flooded through her nose. In response her nemesis grabbed her broken wing and squeezed. Flames of agony bolted to her brain, grinding her teeth she drove her knee into his pants WHAM! and he wobbled back keeling over like a woman that had gone into labor.
“What’s the matter, can’t take what you dish out?” Christa taunted and burst forward, the muscles in her legs tightened as they braced for their next impact. There was a metallic scream as iron met iron, Took’s fist extended a blow right into the hollow of the sniper’s eye. Her weight forced her to fall, collapsing on several rocks while her good arm barely caught her in time for the collision a sharp boulder would’ve made with her head. Steaming air pulsed through her nostrils, resembling a scarlet-eyed bull. The fighter roared upward, digging in her heels and directing every muscle in her body to charge forward.
In her hands, the blade jousted forward and caught between the cannibal’s ribs. His knife was flung aside while his weight crushed her. With a splash, her face was submerged in a glacial puddle just deep enough to drown her.
Out of weapons, out of time, Took saw the opportunity and sunk his teeth in.
Christa’s scream could’ve summoned the dead. Instead, lucky for her, it brought Red. The female plunged her knife into the fiend a second time, oozing warmth lathered her grasp around its hilt, making it impossible to pull excalibur free from its stone made of bone. Tears of pain streamed down her face as she clawed at the man desperately to release her clavicle from his jaws.
The pungent decay of his repulsive breath caused her eyes to burn with pain while the sniper thrashed against the shock of the water and the power of the pain. Took squirmed under the mercy of her blade in his lung, his crazed eyes rolled around in his head while his tongue savored the hot taste of live human.
Thud... Water engulfed her nose. The cannibal had pounded her head with such force that it had hit the base of the rock just below. Clumps of blood jutted out, tainting the pool with the mixture of the enemies’ colors.
Above her, it took Red seconds for his teeth to sink into the attacker and pull him off of her. The man began to gargle, spitting blood on the lion who had him at his mercy. Around his saber teeth a snarl formed at the metallic taste of him, mammoth claws held nothing back as Red's fur was painted the spray of the dead man’s blood.
After tugging Red upwards, she gave him a long, hard look. Her words were daggers and ice, “Never do that again.” To her, he had just forsaken her to die. And no, she wasn’t fucking over it. The Prime turned her attention away from the feline and onto the deceased. You owed me a new gun, damn it. Took arrived as she was patting down Karl’s pockets, “He must’ve died from the landslide,” Christa announced as she stood up.
William saw the largest gash on Karl’s cranium, blood lapping in his sable hair and giving it new definition, “Find anything?”
“Only a mystery, why isn’t he shimmering? And shit, now they might not even come to rescue us. Karl was our best ticket off the island.” the sniper’s shoulder was cold and she had turned away from her favorite beast, though admittedly, it took some effort to keep it there. Had she taken the time to look over, she would have seen the beast’s pure anger, perhaps the woman would have even realized that he had done it to save them from whatever was chasing him; as a light source, he made the most obvious prey. But from what? Maybe there was something to Took’s fairytale after-all. Suddenly the world started to tilt, there was a small crash, the sound of Red collapsing.
“Shimmering?” Took thought next maybe he’d examine the intricacies of her psyche, but each huddled around the lion again while he informed, “He’s out cold, but with a little rest he should be alright.”
“Yes, Karl was a Prime, after death, his body would erase and go elsewhere, just like mine will,” Christa felt the crushing weight of sorrow cause her to stagger. Giving herself a minute, she looked down at the motionless Red, her hand fell on the immense heat of his fur, Red. “Have you caught your bearings? Which direction is town?”
A smile slithered along his lips, though his brow had creased with worry, What had she meant, ‘Just like hers’? “Oh, I’m very aware of where we are. We ran straight down the mountain. Right into their backyard, no amount of silence will save us here, they already know. Each of us are free game now.” The good doctor crouched down and inspected Karl, as though hoping to catch something Christa missed, but really, he wanted to see if the meat was still warm.
“Red said, ‘he’s here’ before sprinting off, what are the odds it was the uh, people you were talking about and not Karl Jak?” Christa posed, but Took’s eyes were distant, narrowed slits as though he was analyzing their situation, looking for a way out.
“I suppose,” he began after a while, talking silently so that she’d lean in, “They could have started the landslide, they probably sense the presence of intruders on their island. Do you... Hear their voices too? At first you they call only at night, but after a little while, you’ll hear them every hour of the day.” The hairs on her arm sparked up like a porcupine, she was wordless, fear had taken the breath from her lungs, “Because I’m sure he hears them, this man has been dead for at least an hour. There is no possibility your friend heard his scream.”
“Voices? You’re crazy, Red’s just tired... That’s all,” Instant denial. So predictable. “And you still don’t even know who they are, how can you be so afraid of something that doesn’t even fucking exist?”
“This island isn’t what it seems, even people who come from afar, this place has a way of... Bringing out their true colors. You say they do not exist, you say you can’t fear them. Well, you don’t know yet. You can’t possibly know. The tribe’s children wanted to explore the forest, chasing the same legend after calling the elders liars, They didn’t like that. You learn to fear them, because of what they do to you if you don’t do what they tell you... Oh the look on those poor children’s faces.”
Trickling in the deepest part of her, was the vaguest notion of an undeniable epiphany, “You... You didn’t... Are you saying this mythical They told you to kill those kids? And you just did it?” Christa stumbled back, tripped on a fucking log, and tried to edge away from him.
Each, predator and prey, never looking away.
The silence was unnerving, but oh how it confirmed the truth. Pure horror crawled beneath her skin wriggling like a mound of cold snakes, she fumbled for her knife, surely, it was in its sheathe–but no, he had lifted her up during the rockslide, and helped her down the tree, plenty of time for it to go missing. “No... You’ve just been here too long, living with those savages...”
Slowly, he was stalking closer. White teeth, save a few stains from the human flesh he had eaten, glistened through the all encompassing blackness. He was a monster and it was so easy to see the evil in his eyes after he had thrown off the mask, “Savages? Ha! They’re the sane ones. It’s people like you that we mark, the outsiders who will never learn the way, you will never understand the truth. So you’ll be our dinner.”
Perplexed, Christa pulled up her rifle, the gentle press against her shoulder as she aimed at his chest, “Do they even give you a goddamn reason? Or do you just think you’re God, that you get to choose who lives and who dies?”
“That was a might ironic, considering whose finger is on the trigger of her gun. Do you know why we eat the people we kill, Christa? Because of the essence. Some of it is retained after death and none is so pure, as it is in humans, the most complex organism of all. You and your friend are particularly strong, filled to the brim with it. You’ve been sent here by the gods, chosen for our feast. You’re a worthy sacrifice,” he chanted, “Kii Ga Shi...”
“We... We burnt your camp, sent your entire tribe straight to Hell! There’s no one else! You, you think you hear voices, but you’re just sick! Back down now Took, or I’ll have to kill you.” Christa gritted her teeth, her heart hesitating in her chest more than her index on the trigger.
With a coy smile he cocked his head, “You think you have the favor of the gods simply because you have that steel contraption in your hands, but I stole your bullets while you slept, straight out of the chamber. My dear, you’ve been outplayed.”
A bluff, surely it had to be a fucking bluff. Click. Click. Click. It was empty, the hollow echo delivered the doomed news straight to her ears; there was no time to reload. The cold iron nearly fell from her hands, he was closing in on her, and she could only move backward so fast without looking to see the mountains of boulder below her feet. And fuck, she needed Red. “NANAKI WAKE UP!” her words shivered with desperation, “RED!”
“Oh, he can’t hear you, that concussion on his head was pretty bad last I checked, he might’ve even fallen into a coma.” Triumph and esteem warped together as he confidently strode forward.
“I’d rather die than be your dinner,” the gunslinger growled, pulling out a grenade and juggling it in her hand, “Stay away or I’ll kill us both, fucker.”
The smile smudged as it turned downwards, but there was still a glitter in the madman’s eyes, “They tell me you won’t kill yourself, that you can’t. I wonder why they would say something like that if it wasn’t true?”
“You wanna bet?!” she roared as she leapt at him, pulling the pin of her grenade and letting it explode with light. The immense ringing came after and her eyes had been set afire, but she brought the base of her rifle down right on Took’s already crooked nose. The surprise etched into his expression which was laden with pure astonishment, the fact that this woman dared to bluff with her nonlethal flash-bang and stomp his nose in caused the vessels in his eyes to burst with rage. Blood streamed between them, and movement came in one fluid motion.
The insane cannibal wasted no time, while he was getting a nose-job, the scrawny bastard somehow already had the knife against the skin of her neck. She’d been caught, a smile flashed in front of her. Another second, and she was pinned to the ground. Large, carnivorous eyes upon her flesh, white, pale, and untouched by disease. Yes, she’d be the best meal he’d ever had, on this island, or before, “So, if I kill you first, your body will evaporate, is that it?” WHAM! she threw her head at him with all the strength she had, letting the blade scorch her neck.
“You are so fucking dead, that’s a promise.” After rolling a few feet away, she grinned and revealed silver reflecting in the glint of the dropped flashlight, wrapped in her palm was the blade he’d stolen from her. Even ground. “There are no voices, I’m just looking at a pathetic man who’s simply been alone too long, forced to kill because it’s the only way you feel anything and when you decided that the murder alone was not enough, you took your place among the very cannibals you preyed on. Now, I don’t know how you got marooned on this shit-hole, but mark my words, you will never leave.”
From the stream of the dropped torch she could see the monster in his final form. White shirt, pooling with blood, puffy bruise forming over his eyebrow. Not six feet separated the two, each had killed before, and for one of them, this would be their last fight. She dropped her sniper and both directed the curve of their blade at one another; each ready to slice their kill on contact. All the sound and time in the world had stilled, as though waiting for the strongest to strike first.
“Kill.” Christa heard a rasping whisper demand, but Took’s lips hadn’t moved.
Next, there was a sharp arc, slicing through the darkness. Parrying the movement, her hair fluttered in its wind as the gliding blade cut right through it. The Prime sidestepped him before the frayed lock hit the ground, steadying herself to deliver a vicious swipe with the full extension of her arm. A rush of blood gushed from his shoulder, flooding downward and coating him in crimson while its iron stench flooded through her nose. In response her nemesis grabbed her broken wing and squeezed. Flames of agony bolted to her brain, grinding her teeth she drove her knee into his pants WHAM! and he wobbled back keeling over like a woman that had gone into labor.
“What’s the matter, can’t take what you dish out?” Christa taunted and burst forward, the muscles in her legs tightened as they braced for their next impact. There was a metallic scream as iron met iron, Took’s fist extended a blow right into the hollow of the sniper’s eye. Her weight forced her to fall, collapsing on several rocks while her good arm barely caught her in time for the collision a sharp boulder would’ve made with her head. Steaming air pulsed through her nostrils, resembling a scarlet-eyed bull. The fighter roared upward, digging in her heels and directing every muscle in her body to charge forward.
In her hands, the blade jousted forward and caught between the cannibal’s ribs. His knife was flung aside while his weight crushed her. With a splash, her face was submerged in a glacial puddle just deep enough to drown her.
Out of weapons, out of time, Took saw the opportunity and sunk his teeth in.
Christa’s scream could’ve summoned the dead. Instead, lucky for her, it brought Red. The female plunged her knife into the fiend a second time, oozing warmth lathered her grasp around its hilt, making it impossible to pull excalibur free from its stone made of bone. Tears of pain streamed down her face as she clawed at the man desperately to release her clavicle from his jaws.
The pungent decay of his repulsive breath caused her eyes to burn with pain while the sniper thrashed against the shock of the water and the power of the pain. Took squirmed under the mercy of her blade in his lung, his crazed eyes rolled around in his head while his tongue savored the hot taste of live human.
Thud... Water engulfed her nose. The cannibal had pounded her head with such force that it had hit the base of the rock just below. Clumps of blood jutted out, tainting the pool with the mixture of the enemies’ colors.
Above her, it took Red seconds for his teeth to sink into the attacker and pull him off of her. The man began to gargle, spitting blood on the lion who had him at his mercy. Around his saber teeth a snarl formed at the metallic taste of him, mammoth claws held nothing back as Red's fur was painted the spray of the dead man’s blood.
![[Image: -Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif]](http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35600000/-Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif)
"I have never met a strong person with an easy past." -Atticus