Author's Note: Um, well, my first Bloody Roar fic. Heh, and unfortunately, it has SELF-MADE characters, which EVERYONE hates. But bare with it, I'll of course introduce the original characters from BR through the course of the story. And also note that my writing skills are any but good so bare with it, pls?
P.S This is set when Tylon was destroyed by the ZLF back in Bloody Roar 2.
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"Xan!" the baboon zoanthrope raised his head, sniffing the air with sensitive nostrils. Prying information from the scorching heat around them. Tylon was going up in flames and the Zoanthrope Liberation Front were going through the wreck of Tylon, saving any trapped zoanthropes and killing cruel scientists.
"Wind due north..." said the baboon, eyes narrowing as his brain made sense of the burning aroma.
"Scent...smell of dirt! Head for the southern warehouse, go down, some of us are still down there!" ordered the baboon, instructing his partner.
"Gotcha, Tean!" replied Xan, running towards the collasping warehouse.
"Damnit, Xan! Transform already!" snarled Tean, turning around to other areas.
"You don't show ya butt to me, Tean!" laughed Xan, "I'll transform when I need to, no worries about it, Tean!"
The light-haired young man, in a white sleeveless singlet and blue pants charged into the inferno, dodging helter skelter from falling debri and burning computers.
The smell of over-burnt flesh and fur met his nose.
"Ah..." growled Xan, shielding his nose and his eyes, "Too late up here..."
Jumping over a support beam, Xan finally found the elevator shaft, empty, with the crushed elevator itself at the bottom. Burning metal and rubber straps, almost overpowering for Xan but he gritted his teeth and jumped towards the elevator straps.
Swinging down as fast as he could, he reached the next level and and swung in.
"Thank God! The fire hasn't spread here!" Xan exclaimed, wiping his sweat that thundered down his forehead like a waterfall. He could sense it, many pairs, or more, of eyes, peering at him from the dead cages in the lower level of the laboratory.
"...help..."
"...what's happening...I hear so many things up there..."
"You're not one of 'em scientists...right? Right? RIGHT?! RIGHT?!"
'Bloody hell...some of 'em gone nuts...' Xan thought to himself, walking down the aisles of cages and cells, looking at the experimented zoanthropes and humans, half formed or worse.
"...save us...please..." gasped an old man, half-formed with an ape, stretching out a grizzled hand through the bars.
"That's what I'm here to do, don't ya worry..." comforted Zan, holding the hand.
"...I'm not like the others. This ape half of mine is calm and well. I'm old, I won't last this night, not without my drugs or medicine," said the old man softly, gripping Xan's hand, pulling him close to the bars.
"No way! You'll be fine! I'll just transform and get you guys out of here!" cried Xan, "I'm from the ZLF! We're the good guys! We're help you!"
The slumped and hunched figure shook his head and continued softly, "There is no help...for us...men and animal, were never meant to be simply fused on a whim. Nature governs that...not men..." the old man started to lie down on the cold floor of his cell slowly, his apish face weary and wrinkled from age and tiredness.
"Hey, don't give up..." Xan tried to pull the shivering man towards the cell bars, tried to bring him close to his youthful warmth.
"I'm not giving up. I have no more life left to give up...Boy!" with a surge of effort, the old man sat bolt up and grabbed Xan's head from behind the bars.
"If you must save someone, boy, save the one down the hall, twenty paces fast..." gasped the man, then his grip loosened and he collasped on the cell ground, weezing with short breaths.
"But you! And the others!"
"Don't...prelong their lives...suffering...the one...she isn't man-ma..." the man stopped twitching and his large, doleful eyes, stared and reflected the gray ceiling.
Xan became alone, alone except for the furious and crazed howls from the people in the cells and cages, claws stuck through the bars and formed a moving, killing corridor.
Xan stumbled backed away from the old sage's cell, and into the powerful arms of some maddened subject.
The log-like arms choked back on Xan's neck, crushing his head against the thick iron bars, the sound of an animal growling and laughing, the smell of rotting flesh between its teeth, it drove Xan to rage...
"RRWAARR!" he roared as he transformed, burning the creature that tried to keep him captive. It cowered from the bright light and the pain, not daring to peer through the bars again as the transformation completed in seconds.
Xan stood on his powerful clawed feet that had destroyed his shoes. His chest stretched his shirt, that was usually comfortably loose and free. His neck rippled with lean muscles, his arms rivaled that of the creature before. His spine had extended into a stiff tail, with two brown stripes near its base. His face had lengthened into a wolf-like (note wolf-LIKE) snout and two large ears. His fur was light coffee brown (or for Singaporeans, like teh-tarik :)) and there were another two brown stripes on his back.
Xan, the Tylacine, surveyed the imtimidated corridor once more, though perhaps, it has become less than imtimidating. The creatures, hearing his roar, and smelling the predatorial scent about him, retreated to the far corners of their cells and whimpered.
With heavy strides, Xan stalked down the single path, sniffing the air for anything strange, ears pricked for murmurings from the darkness, eyes piercing the deep and claws poised, waiting.
Counting, Xan calculated that though he wasn't going quickly, 13 strides would be about the same as a man brisk-walking and did a countdown.
However, Xan didn't need to go the full 13, by the 8th, he saw.
A transparent, glass-like column, filled with a pale, glowing liquid. A girl, with long black hair that grew from her head and low on her neck, like a mane, was floating within it, attached to cruel and hurtful tubes that spun to the top or bottom of the column. Held in the middle of the deadly mesh, air was given to her through a mask over her mouth. Alone and naked, an over-grown child within a machinical womb.
With a quick lunge of anger, Xan slashed at the column repeatedly. Though his sharp claws left marks, the column stood. Pounching backwards on his hunches, Xan ran forward and leaped in a powerful pounce and spread his arms outward. As his arms are around the column, he slammed them together, crushing the glass between. The liquid gushed forth through the rapidly widenning cracks and Xan lunged back as the column collasped into a myriad of light. The girl flopped down but hung painfully from the tubes. With quick slashes, Xan cut them and the girl fell gently into his warm chest.
"Hey, are you alright? Wake up...come on!" said Xan softly, a hand gently tapping the girl's face.
"Uh..." the girl slowly opened her eyes, tiny slits that peered around blurly.
The girl turned to face the pointed nose of Xan, peering innocently with his marsupian eyes, a deep chocolate brown. Immediately, she began to struggle out of the beastman's grasp, whimpering and dotting low growls, like a frightened animal. She pulled and knocked backwards into Xan's hard chest and then slammed forwards. For a small girl, she was exceptionally strong, strong enough to knock the wind slightly out of his chest.
"WOAH! Hey, kid! STOP IT!" yelled Xan, trying to pin the girl down onto the wet floor with his body. But that made the girl paniced even more.
"WRA!" the girl grabbed her assailant's arm and bit down hard, unusually sharp fingernails digging in the growingly red flesh around the puncture.
"GOD DAMNNIT GIRL!" roared Xan, tossing his arm up in pain, with the girl still hanging on.
By instinct, he swung his injured arm around, with one mighty swing, the girl went flying and slammed into some computers. Her eyes shut silent, with a last soft growl in her breath, the girl slumped to the ground and lay there unconcious.
"SHIT!" Xan spat, checking his bleeding arm and quickly going to the girl's side.
"What the hell..." Xan took a closer look and his throat rumbled in displeasure, "These puncture marks...only two deep ones...like fangs, animal canine fangs. And these claw marks too...too deep for a human..." he continued to think as he kneeled by the girl's side and checked her pulse. Some blood ran down the back of her head, and some of his trickled down her jaw and...
"Claws!" he quickly raised one of the girl's hands. Besides the irremovable metal rings around each of her fingers and thumb, there was another abnormality to her fingers. Her fingers had lengthened beyond normal length, they ended in full flesh stumps instead of the top being with a fingernail. But, from those tips, animalistic claws, talons, extended forth. Not all were like the fully extended ones, some were in the middle of the formation, being sharp points with skin stretched over them.
"Tylon...what the freaking hell have you done to this girl..." he growled angrily, his tongue flicked between his teeth.
Immediately, he saw other strange features of the girl he couldn't see before within the tank. Along her her arms and even her body, scales grew, baige, skin covered scales that nearly completely blended in with her skin, as there were a handful and widely spaced. Along her back, small forming nobs grew along her spine. Her toes were almost like her hands, though they were not so extreme and looked simply that she had sharp nails. checking her teeth, Xan saw her two long canines surrounded by her human teeth. Even her nostrils were a bit malformed and her ears were long at the points. Her long black hair was truly a mane, growing on the whole back of her neck instead of stopping just at the start of the neck.
"Not man-made? Old man, how could she be anything else..."
Suddenly, a loud explosion shook the foundations and underground chambers of the lab. Xan's nose was raised in the air, taking in large streams of air, sensitive nerves deciphering the melee of smells. His ears pricked up, focusing into cups and swiveling around to catch any other, quieter noises.
He detected a distant scent of smoke and got up in haste.
BOOM!
Another blast, one that blast right across the cells down the hallway, the bright light briefly illuminated the wide pupils of maddened, frightened cage beastmen that squawked and raced within their small confines.
"Come on, we've gotta get out here one way or another..." he gathered the naked girl in his arms and raced back down the hallway, the smoke and burning ash stinging his face as he charged through, his ears filled with all the howls and plaintive cries of those he left behidn to roast and burn within their metal prisons. Lest any of them cried out in pain in words, Xan could only charge ever forward with his head bent low.
Arriving at the elevator shaft, Xan howled in anger and disappointment. The shaft shone with flames, their tongues surged and boiled from below like some unearthly gate way to Hell.
"What do we do now...noway up, nothing!"
Large booming creaks and and slams from above distracted Xan. Just as he peered up, the floor gave way. As concrete and wood tumbled down, Xan snarled savagely and curled into a ball with the girl within the middle, protected. As the debri finally reached his floor, he felt the heavy and shocking pain as the support beam slammed onto his arched back, forcing it down arkwardly and crushing him and the girl beneath.
The flames pushed further in to their level. Xan, losing so much energy from the collaspe, transformed back in his weaker human form, and immediately felt the pressure of the beam increased nearly thrice fold. With a last ditch effort, he pushed the girl from beneath him to clear ground, just before he himself flattened onto the ground from the pressure and, as smoke flowed in wide strands, the world became dark.