Author's Note: I revised this chapter extensively, therefore you have my apologies. Enjoy.
"They are all dead. It's actually quite a disappointment."
"Is it now?"
"Dropped like flies in a fire."
"So you think."
The two men stood shrouded by smoke as the sun set, casting shadows in the wreckage and tinting the curling, smothering smoke the many tones and subtones of dawn. The place they stood at, once a thriving Village of trade, war, and class, was but a broken memory of its former self. Twisted, burned husks stood where there was once habitation. A crib with its mattress in tatters was most noticeable among the damage, but there was no babe to squall at the lonelieness and quiet that had descended upon the Village.
What fire had burned through remained only charred wood and singed stone. And then, there were the bodies.
They lay here or there, spread eagle or curled up like a fetus in a womb, until one followed the trail and found, in the exact center of the Village, the 'funeral pyre' the murderers used to condemn their victims to their deaths. There was evidence of struggling, this much the two men had noticed, but they felt... nothing. The suggestion was that the people had been burned alive under the noon sun, but why should they have felt anything for that kind of fate? The people were dead, now. Their screams and wails had long since faded into the air. The smell remained, but it wasn't enough to stir them.
"Actually, it is quite a disappointment." One said eventually. He had a voice like warm honey, sweet and soft and rife with the threat of wasps. "They had such promise and use."
"Does this put a stop to the Plan?" The other man said, his voice like the slithering of a sword out of its scabbard. "I don't see how it can be completed if the main piece no longer lives." His voice was suddenly different, dropping lower into a menacing tone with the hiss of an adder behind it.
"Don't give up hope yet. If they had all died, there would be more bodies here. What it is that we need would not go down so easily." The first smiled with his words. "Search the ruins. If we are lucky, the host may be alive enough to drain."
The moon was at its zenith when the two-voiced man found something. The first man appeared as though from the air at his side in a heartbeat and they stared down at it. The claw marks in the boards of a house that had partially survived. Blood flecked the wood nearby, stating the presence of wounds. The second man inhaled deeply as though the scent of the blood was the most alluring fragrance in the world.
"Delicioussss," he purred.
"Not yet, Zetsu," the first man said. He spoke with amusement. This was the proof he needed that a survivor of some use was to be found.
They followed the flecks of blood, finding that it was smeared more on walls than left as droplets on the ground. The first man seemed to be getting more and more excited the longer they followed the trail. It boded well, this absence of an overwhelming amount of blood. Perhaps they wouldn't need to drain the survivor at once after all. That would make things somewhat easier.
Without notice, the man suddenly stopped. Zetsu sniffed the air. The blood's scent was heavier here, in the jungle just outside of the Village. Perhaps the survivor had settled down for the night in the trees the Villagers had loved so much?
A blur darted out from the trees with little warning, small and quick and decidedly pale. The first man easily caught the arm that swung for him with clawed fingers. The small thing snarled, angry, and tried to kick the man, but he wouldn't allow it to do so. Intercepting the swing, he reached forward and grabbed the child by its throat, lifting it to eye level as it struggled and growled nonsense at him in defiance. Its show of wrath was weakening steadily though the longer the man held the child and he cocked his head at it. Dark irises set in his pale face began to burn with an ungodly red flame, the pupils slitting and dilating and forming strange designs as they spun, almost lazily.
The child needed only to gaze into those eyes for a few moments before it sagged against the hand that gripped its throat. Surprisingly gentle, the man lowered the body to the ground and let it be there. Zetsu, who had stood back and smiled the whole time, grinned wider. His teeth gleamed in the moonlight and the Man with the Eyes shared his smile, although it was subdued.
"Check the sex," he said, turning away to survey the child's little nest in the easily overlooked brambles. Scorched things, like a blanket and a doll, lay on a makeshift mattress of the wide leaves the jungle trees sported. There were little odds and ends the child seemed to have scavenged from the wreck of its hometown but they weren't of much importance. Forks, candelabra, a burnt scrollcase... such things could be replaced or forgotten with time.
He turned around to see what was taking his partner so long to identify the child and found the large, oddly shaped man crouched over the child, cradling it, and lapping at the blood.
"Stop that," the man shouted, approaching and shoving Zetsu away. For a moment, Zetsu's pale eyes gleamed with... the other man couldn't name the emotion to cause the glimmer. Hunger? "We need it alive."
"I'd prefer to eat it now," Zetsu's dark voice said. "It does taste so good," the light voice insisted as an afterthought.
The man rolled his eyes at the antics of the strange man and instead turned to examining the child. A brief inspection that he was sure most protective parents would find needlessly invasive and crude, evidenced the child was in fact a female.
"We have a problem," he said. "It's a female."
"So we eat her?"
The man glared at Zetsu who only grinned back.
"If it's such a problem, remove the reproductive organs. We can dispose of those."
"No. She will have to mature before I can safely have her sterilised. We take her with us."
"Oh great, more babysitting."
"You can stay behind if that's your attitude. I am leaving, though."
And he slung the body over his shoulder and strode off into the jungle, leaving behind the moonlit expanse of what was once the Village Hidden in the Dawn.
Author's Second Note: So, I don't know if I'm 100% in favour of this yet, so I'll see. Editing is a blast.