07-29-2016, 02:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-29-2016, 02:27 AM by Kenpachi Zaraki.)
Karl Jak.
The lion’s gaze fell upon the corpse of the grand orchestrator, now shattered upon the forest floor. Under the light of his ember-laden tail, Red stared into Jak’s dull, lifeless eyes and felt his stomach drop as he was forced to acknowledge the certainty of the situation. The puppet master, the sole inkling of hope they had had for escaping the hellish isle, had been quite thoroughly dashed, and in more ways that one. Nanaki felt his perception falter, his peripheral vision fading as vertigo set in.
Vincent.
A weight fell upon his tired shoulders, one of loss and of defeat. The hummingbird within his chest began to skip beats, arrhythmia mimicking his fast, ragged breaths. Red’s knees buckled, driving his snout into the dirt beside the conductor. The remainder of his muscular gave out entirely as the puppet was cut from its strings. The curtains began to close, heavy velvet eyelids sliding across the forest stage as their act came to an end.
“Kii Ga Shi...”
The house lights went up, the actors left the stage. In the orchestra pit, the once-frantic drumbeat slowed; the score was nearing its end. The dying cantata had left the stage serene, even peaceful. Despite the stifling calm. among the crowd there was a clamor. The cacophony trumped silence, the noise audible over the waning symphony.
“Back down now...”
The beast’s head swam, brain choked of oxygen by his ragged hyperventilation. Saliva-sodden soil clogged his airway, choking what little chance he had left. Lub dub. Lub. Dub. The drumbeat slowed, the performer dull upon the instrument. Red’s amber optics spun in his head, as bathwater escapes down a drain. Calm. Lub.
“NANAKI, WAKE UP!”
Lub. Dub. Lub dub. Lubdub.
Pain. Nausea. Fear. Old bedfellows, returning and stirring within his mind. Face-down in the dirt, Nanaki inhaled a sharp, soil-laden gasp as his heart began to crescendo. The smallest mote of energy wound its way through his nerves, stopping to force an almost imperceptible shift in his hind leg. The foggy feline felt his body teeter as the balance was broken, finally flopping limp across stony ground, knocking dead air from his lungs. Eyes bulged as he coughed a thick chunk of mud from his trachea, air pouring in to take its place.
”RED!
The wounded Prime’s eyelids sprang open, dim light dribbling over the darkened stage. He lungs worked overtime, pulling in deep, frequent breaths in a desperate struggle to ease the burning sensation that enrobed his every cell. As sweet nourishment returned to his brain, his keen eye caught sight of the commotion that had awoken him. Several meters away, a blurry pair of silhouettes fought for dominance.
Christa.
The lion’s heart leapt, the beat reaching a quicker cadence as the gears slowly began to turn in his mind. He watched as the hyena felled the hunter, forcing his weight upon her as she drove her blade betwixt his ribs. The frenzied predator paid the intrusion no mind, despite the tide of crimson spreading across his snowy pelt. His face, bloodied and broken, split width-wise and sank into his foe’s flesh, eliciting a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the trees.
Rage electrified the fiery feline’s form, numbness receding at once as he shakily pushed away from earth’s chilly embrace. The Prime’s chest was aflame as his poor lungs fought desperately to cough free the wads of dirt that had found their way into his throat. Agony tore at his body, the cruel sensation both reminding him of his mortality and spurring him to action. Blood, now more adrenaline than plasma, coursed through his veins afresh. His eyelids narrowed with contempt as his lips parted, releasing a ragged growl. His vision slowly came into focus, the bloodied form of William Took straddling the thrashing body of Christa Adams. The animalistic human had made a critical error as he reveled in his ‘success’: never turn your tail on a downed foe. Nanaki blinked once, hard. The lowly scavenger may have felled the hunter, though he had forgotten the apex predator. The burgundy beast dragged his tongue across his cracked lips, marking his target. He charged.
“GAH!”
Took scarcely felt the heavy patter of paws upon soil before dual rows of blades sank into his flesh, rending the soft tissue like a hot knife through butter. The beast’s razor-like fangs sank deep into the meat, snagging upon the recesses of the cannibal’s shoulder blade. Red redoubled his effort, clamping his jaws shut upon the man’s forelimb with crushing force. Before the hyena could let go of another cry of agony, the lion raised his mighty head, snapping his prey downward with every pound of force he could muster. The cannibal crashed into the rocky riverbed with a sickening crunch, blood gushing from his shoulder and springing free from a fresh wound upon his scalp. He wore his bloodied crown in the fashion as the late Karl, its rusty pigment dyeing his pale flesh crimson.
“Coward,” Nanaki snarled through gritted teeth, pieces of chunks of skin and muscle clinging to the enamel-coated spears. The burgundy beast ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, tasting the savory tang of blood and sweat upon his palette. He savored the sensation, the taste sweet despite the man’s repugnance. Red cast a glance first at his fallen comrade, now barely moving upon the sand, and back at the crumpled cannibal. He dropped his stance low, azure energy emanating from his scarlet pelt as the man began to stir. The lion allowed the man to raise himself shakily to an elbow before answering the man’s pleading look: “No.”
The Prime exploded forward, closing the distance between the two before the bloodied cannibal could register the movement. As the target raised a hand in vain to defend, the lion’s paws left the earth as he leapt skyward, only to return a moment later upon Took’s back with the force of a falling locomotive. The deceiver let out a feeble cry as his spine shattered, ribs snapping like toothpicks beneath the magically-imbued assault. In a final act of pity, Nanaki rolled the man onto his back, raising a massive paw overhead and extending his claws in an instant, bringing them across the cannibal’s throat. Took’s eyes bulged as blood rapidly poured from the gash, wet sputtering noises escaping his lying lips as his wounds drained him dry upon the riverbed.
With Took dispatched, the feral feline’s gaze quickly turned to his companion, now lying face-down in the shallows. He dragged his tired body to her side, gingerly taking hold of a mouthful of her clothing and lifting her face from the depths. With great effort he heaved the dead weight, dropping her gently upon the grass, face-up, a few feet away. Rage gave way to panic as spied bluing, cyanotic lips gasping for air, murky water gurgling in her windpipe. With no other options, the feline did the first thing that came to his mind, retracting he claws and forcing them down upon her spasming diaphragm once, twice, thrice. A river of bloodied water poured from her mouth, forced free by the cat’s resuscitation to dribble down the sides of her face and chin.. A wave of relief washed over Nanaki as color began to return to her cheeks, the gurgling being replaced by a hacking cough as the last droplets of water clung to her trachea. With a gentle nudge of his nose, Red turned Christa onto her left side as her eyelids began to flutter.
“You okay?” Red inquired, looking down quizzically at his comrade. A stupid question, though he knew the gesture to be something that humans did often in time of trial. Other than the teeth-wound near her shoulder and the nearly-drowning thing, she could have look worse.
“Bastard...” the woman finally spoke, hacking up the last of the water clinging to her insides. “Bastard took a bite out of me.” She blinked away the tears that her coughing fit had brought, touching her fingertips to the trauma. She winced as her dirty fingers touched meat, quickly pulling them away. “You?”
A non-answer, about what he would have expected. “Could be worse,” he responded in kind. His ever-present companion, pain, still hung tight to him like ill-fitting clothing, though it appeared he had managed to at least shake death from his trail. How long it would be until it picked up his scent again, he couldn’t know.
“Where is he?” Christa rasped, forcing herself to sit up. Her face was slick with sweat and stagnant river water, her bangs plastered to her forehead. Red wondered just how long he had been down, leaving her to grapple with the maniac.
Red pointed his nose over his shoulder at the mangled man. “Over there,” he replied, watching as the sniper got shakily to her feet, marching over to meet the corpse. Without hesitation, the blonde brought her foot back and aimed a swift kick at the deceased man’s ribs. The fiery feline watched the spectacle distantly, finding it hard to grasp what had just transpired. Had he been down just a few seconds longer, he might be observing the situation in reverse.
“Fucker,” Christa spat, tugging the knife loose from Took’s ribcage. The weapon as coated from hilt to tip in the man’s blood, giving the blade a metallic sheen in the light of Red’s tail flame. She stared down at the body for a long moment, as if mulling something over. The feline could not pretend to know what was going through he mind at that moment. Perhaps he’d never know. Her hand slid into her pocket, withdrawing the late Karl’s silvery key. “We should get going,” she said, a finality in her voice as she stared down at the chunk of iron.
“Can you walk?” Nanaki inquired, watching as the sniper stumbled over a tree root, barely catching herself on a low-hanging limb. He couldn’t imaging being held underwater did much in the way of strengthening,
“I’ll be fine,” the huntress replied, pacing here and there between trees. She stared at her feet as she walked, retracing her steps like a confused hen. “Let me know if you see-” At at once she stopped, bending down to pull her rifle from the forest floor. “Nevermind.”
“You know where to head?” The feline asked, posing yet another inquiry. He thought back to what Tifa used to say to him years ago: ‘Curiosity killed the cat’.
“We’ll just keep going in that direction I guess,” the blonde replied with a half-shrug. They could see mounds of loose gravel and debris in a clearing ahead, indicating the direction of their previous march. “Let’s hope Took wasn’t bullshitting us.”
Nanaki nodded; he wasn’t in any mood to argue, especially with his headache now back in full swing. A portion of his anxiety had eased with the cannibal now put to rest, though the thought that perhaps they were presently wandering aimlessly in the woods was not quite comforting. As they began their journey anew, the sniper lost her footing, falling to her knees.
Christa swore audibly, slinging her sniper over her shoulder and resting against a nearby tree. She looked to be exhausted, breathing raggedly as if plying Took with kicks and finding her firearm were portions of a triathlon. Fresh sweat dripped down her face, droplets darkening the cloth of her shirt. She looked like shit, as those that had survived a drowning often did.
“Hop on,” Red said, turning his back on her and sitting patiently. The gunslinger opened her mouth to argue, though she could barely find the words to quarrel. Following a nod from her feline friend, she swung her leg over the beast’s back and held tight to his fur.
Slowly, yet surely, the two continued along their path. Beauty and the beast wove their way through the inky tapestry of the island’s endless night. The moonless sky above offered nothing by way of guidance, even the stars having been snuffed out by the darkness hanging overhead. The two lost warriors followed only their hope, the forest floor barren of any sort of breadcrumb trail. They could only try their best to maintain a steady heading, marching straight toward what they both prayed was a hope of leaving the island, and not an unfathomable creature of the night.
Upon reaching their destination, what could they hope to find? Hope. That was the word of the evening. Though Karl Jak now lay dead not far from the body of the cannibal guide, Nanaki had to hold on to hope that the producer had some sort of backup plan wherever the key lead. A man like Karl always seemed to have something hidden up his sleeve; perhaps his slights could even assist them from beyond the grave.
“There!”
The fiery feline stopped a the woman’s exclamation, his rider dismounting. She was pointing straight ahead, eyes focused on a dim light emanating from just beyond the nearest patch of trees. They made haste, doing their best to remain hidden by the amble brush.
The lion’s gaze fell upon the corpse of the grand orchestrator, now shattered upon the forest floor. Under the light of his ember-laden tail, Red stared into Jak’s dull, lifeless eyes and felt his stomach drop as he was forced to acknowledge the certainty of the situation. The puppet master, the sole inkling of hope they had had for escaping the hellish isle, had been quite thoroughly dashed, and in more ways that one. Nanaki felt his perception falter, his peripheral vision fading as vertigo set in.
Vincent.
A weight fell upon his tired shoulders, one of loss and of defeat. The hummingbird within his chest began to skip beats, arrhythmia mimicking his fast, ragged breaths. Red’s knees buckled, driving his snout into the dirt beside the conductor. The remainder of his muscular gave out entirely as the puppet was cut from its strings. The curtains began to close, heavy velvet eyelids sliding across the forest stage as their act came to an end.
“Kii Ga Shi...”
The house lights went up, the actors left the stage. In the orchestra pit, the once-frantic drumbeat slowed; the score was nearing its end. The dying cantata had left the stage serene, even peaceful. Despite the stifling calm. among the crowd there was a clamor. The cacophony trumped silence, the noise audible over the waning symphony.
“Back down now...”
The beast’s head swam, brain choked of oxygen by his ragged hyperventilation. Saliva-sodden soil clogged his airway, choking what little chance he had left. Lub dub. Lub. Dub. The drumbeat slowed, the performer dull upon the instrument. Red’s amber optics spun in his head, as bathwater escapes down a drain. Calm. Lub.
“NANAKI, WAKE UP!”
Lub. Dub. Lub dub. Lubdub.
Pain. Nausea. Fear. Old bedfellows, returning and stirring within his mind. Face-down in the dirt, Nanaki inhaled a sharp, soil-laden gasp as his heart began to crescendo. The smallest mote of energy wound its way through his nerves, stopping to force an almost imperceptible shift in his hind leg. The foggy feline felt his body teeter as the balance was broken, finally flopping limp across stony ground, knocking dead air from his lungs. Eyes bulged as he coughed a thick chunk of mud from his trachea, air pouring in to take its place.
”RED!
The wounded Prime’s eyelids sprang open, dim light dribbling over the darkened stage. He lungs worked overtime, pulling in deep, frequent breaths in a desperate struggle to ease the burning sensation that enrobed his every cell. As sweet nourishment returned to his brain, his keen eye caught sight of the commotion that had awoken him. Several meters away, a blurry pair of silhouettes fought for dominance.
Christa.
The lion’s heart leapt, the beat reaching a quicker cadence as the gears slowly began to turn in his mind. He watched as the hyena felled the hunter, forcing his weight upon her as she drove her blade betwixt his ribs. The frenzied predator paid the intrusion no mind, despite the tide of crimson spreading across his snowy pelt. His face, bloodied and broken, split width-wise and sank into his foe’s flesh, eliciting a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the trees.
Rage electrified the fiery feline’s form, numbness receding at once as he shakily pushed away from earth’s chilly embrace. The Prime’s chest was aflame as his poor lungs fought desperately to cough free the wads of dirt that had found their way into his throat. Agony tore at his body, the cruel sensation both reminding him of his mortality and spurring him to action. Blood, now more adrenaline than plasma, coursed through his veins afresh. His eyelids narrowed with contempt as his lips parted, releasing a ragged growl. His vision slowly came into focus, the bloodied form of William Took straddling the thrashing body of Christa Adams. The animalistic human had made a critical error as he reveled in his ‘success’: never turn your tail on a downed foe. Nanaki blinked once, hard. The lowly scavenger may have felled the hunter, though he had forgotten the apex predator. The burgundy beast dragged his tongue across his cracked lips, marking his target. He charged.
“GAH!”
Took scarcely felt the heavy patter of paws upon soil before dual rows of blades sank into his flesh, rending the soft tissue like a hot knife through butter. The beast’s razor-like fangs sank deep into the meat, snagging upon the recesses of the cannibal’s shoulder blade. Red redoubled his effort, clamping his jaws shut upon the man’s forelimb with crushing force. Before the hyena could let go of another cry of agony, the lion raised his mighty head, snapping his prey downward with every pound of force he could muster. The cannibal crashed into the rocky riverbed with a sickening crunch, blood gushing from his shoulder and springing free from a fresh wound upon his scalp. He wore his bloodied crown in the fashion as the late Karl, its rusty pigment dyeing his pale flesh crimson.
“Coward,” Nanaki snarled through gritted teeth, pieces of chunks of skin and muscle clinging to the enamel-coated spears. The burgundy beast ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, tasting the savory tang of blood and sweat upon his palette. He savored the sensation, the taste sweet despite the man’s repugnance. Red cast a glance first at his fallen comrade, now barely moving upon the sand, and back at the crumpled cannibal. He dropped his stance low, azure energy emanating from his scarlet pelt as the man began to stir. The lion allowed the man to raise himself shakily to an elbow before answering the man’s pleading look: “No.”
The Prime exploded forward, closing the distance between the two before the bloodied cannibal could register the movement. As the target raised a hand in vain to defend, the lion’s paws left the earth as he leapt skyward, only to return a moment later upon Took’s back with the force of a falling locomotive. The deceiver let out a feeble cry as his spine shattered, ribs snapping like toothpicks beneath the magically-imbued assault. In a final act of pity, Nanaki rolled the man onto his back, raising a massive paw overhead and extending his claws in an instant, bringing them across the cannibal’s throat. Took’s eyes bulged as blood rapidly poured from the gash, wet sputtering noises escaping his lying lips as his wounds drained him dry upon the riverbed.
With Took dispatched, the feral feline’s gaze quickly turned to his companion, now lying face-down in the shallows. He dragged his tired body to her side, gingerly taking hold of a mouthful of her clothing and lifting her face from the depths. With great effort he heaved the dead weight, dropping her gently upon the grass, face-up, a few feet away. Rage gave way to panic as spied bluing, cyanotic lips gasping for air, murky water gurgling in her windpipe. With no other options, the feline did the first thing that came to his mind, retracting he claws and forcing them down upon her spasming diaphragm once, twice, thrice. A river of bloodied water poured from her mouth, forced free by the cat’s resuscitation to dribble down the sides of her face and chin.. A wave of relief washed over Nanaki as color began to return to her cheeks, the gurgling being replaced by a hacking cough as the last droplets of water clung to her trachea. With a gentle nudge of his nose, Red turned Christa onto her left side as her eyelids began to flutter.
“You okay?” Red inquired, looking down quizzically at his comrade. A stupid question, though he knew the gesture to be something that humans did often in time of trial. Other than the teeth-wound near her shoulder and the nearly-drowning thing, she could have look worse.
“Bastard...” the woman finally spoke, hacking up the last of the water clinging to her insides. “Bastard took a bite out of me.” She blinked away the tears that her coughing fit had brought, touching her fingertips to the trauma. She winced as her dirty fingers touched meat, quickly pulling them away. “You?”
A non-answer, about what he would have expected. “Could be worse,” he responded in kind. His ever-present companion, pain, still hung tight to him like ill-fitting clothing, though it appeared he had managed to at least shake death from his trail. How long it would be until it picked up his scent again, he couldn’t know.
“Where is he?” Christa rasped, forcing herself to sit up. Her face was slick with sweat and stagnant river water, her bangs plastered to her forehead. Red wondered just how long he had been down, leaving her to grapple with the maniac.
Red pointed his nose over his shoulder at the mangled man. “Over there,” he replied, watching as the sniper got shakily to her feet, marching over to meet the corpse. Without hesitation, the blonde brought her foot back and aimed a swift kick at the deceased man’s ribs. The fiery feline watched the spectacle distantly, finding it hard to grasp what had just transpired. Had he been down just a few seconds longer, he might be observing the situation in reverse.
“Fucker,” Christa spat, tugging the knife loose from Took’s ribcage. The weapon as coated from hilt to tip in the man’s blood, giving the blade a metallic sheen in the light of Red’s tail flame. She stared down at the body for a long moment, as if mulling something over. The feline could not pretend to know what was going through he mind at that moment. Perhaps he’d never know. Her hand slid into her pocket, withdrawing the late Karl’s silvery key. “We should get going,” she said, a finality in her voice as she stared down at the chunk of iron.
“Can you walk?” Nanaki inquired, watching as the sniper stumbled over a tree root, barely catching herself on a low-hanging limb. He couldn’t imaging being held underwater did much in the way of strengthening,
“I’ll be fine,” the huntress replied, pacing here and there between trees. She stared at her feet as she walked, retracing her steps like a confused hen. “Let me know if you see-” At at once she stopped, bending down to pull her rifle from the forest floor. “Nevermind.”
“You know where to head?” The feline asked, posing yet another inquiry. He thought back to what Tifa used to say to him years ago: ‘Curiosity killed the cat’.
“We’ll just keep going in that direction I guess,” the blonde replied with a half-shrug. They could see mounds of loose gravel and debris in a clearing ahead, indicating the direction of their previous march. “Let’s hope Took wasn’t bullshitting us.”
Nanaki nodded; he wasn’t in any mood to argue, especially with his headache now back in full swing. A portion of his anxiety had eased with the cannibal now put to rest, though the thought that perhaps they were presently wandering aimlessly in the woods was not quite comforting. As they began their journey anew, the sniper lost her footing, falling to her knees.
Christa swore audibly, slinging her sniper over her shoulder and resting against a nearby tree. She looked to be exhausted, breathing raggedly as if plying Took with kicks and finding her firearm were portions of a triathlon. Fresh sweat dripped down her face, droplets darkening the cloth of her shirt. She looked like shit, as those that had survived a drowning often did.
“Hop on,” Red said, turning his back on her and sitting patiently. The gunslinger opened her mouth to argue, though she could barely find the words to quarrel. Following a nod from her feline friend, she swung her leg over the beast’s back and held tight to his fur.
Slowly, yet surely, the two continued along their path. Beauty and the beast wove their way through the inky tapestry of the island’s endless night. The moonless sky above offered nothing by way of guidance, even the stars having been snuffed out by the darkness hanging overhead. The two lost warriors followed only their hope, the forest floor barren of any sort of breadcrumb trail. They could only try their best to maintain a steady heading, marching straight toward what they both prayed was a hope of leaving the island, and not an unfathomable creature of the night.
Upon reaching their destination, what could they hope to find? Hope. That was the word of the evening. Though Karl Jak now lay dead not far from the body of the cannibal guide, Nanaki had to hold on to hope that the producer had some sort of backup plan wherever the key lead. A man like Karl always seemed to have something hidden up his sleeve; perhaps his slights could even assist them from beyond the grave.
“There!”
The fiery feline stopped a the woman’s exclamation, his rider dismounting. She was pointing straight ahead, eyes focused on a dim light emanating from just beyond the nearest patch of trees. They made haste, doing their best to remain hidden by the amble brush.
Quote:2248 words.
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