A/N - My first fanfiction for this fandom.
Hope you all enjoy it! :)
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Deadly Circumstances
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The body was a shambling, tattered figure, more like a bundle of old clothes than a man. At the sight of him, Shilo and GraveRobber slowed their pace and drew instinctively close to the one another. GraveRobber smiled as he approached the body with greater haste, inhaling the scent of rotten flesh from afar.
In a dreadful blur of unreality, hoarse, shrieking black shadows rushed down from the sky, and two large rooks swooped at the corpse. GraveRobber and Shilo staggered back, shouting, thrusting their hands up to protect their faces. The birds flapped their great wings in a black vicious whirl before soaring back up into the dark sky.
Shilo cowered back against the gate as the head-splitting racket from the frenzied flock grew overhead. Three more whirling black shapes were swooping after the first flock, diving wildly at the corpse who lay hidden in the alleyway. She saw bushy, greasy grey hair below a dirty old cap; a torn brown overcoat tired with string, and some other garment flapping beneath it. A lone boot with a loose sole was visible from beneath GraveRobber's jacket as he hovered above the body after the birds had retreated.
"Fear of the unknown is irrational, kid," GraveRobber said, carefully placing the Zydrate gun within the nostril of what seemed to be a long forgotten corpse. "If there is, in fact, another life, there's no reason to believe it would be a better life. So why look forward to it? It seems to me that if there isn't one, then you're simply dead. Worthless. Miserable. Unusable." He paused at the sight of the glowing liquid. "But under what circumstance?"
"Disobedience? Dead."
The high whirling above their heads was dwindling into loops of slow flight, and the rooks began to settle one by one into the trees. They were still talking loudly to one another in a long cawing jumble, but the madness and violence were not in it now.
"Carelessness? Dead."
Dazed, moving her head for the first time, Shilo felt her cheek brush against something, and put her hand on her shoulder, finding a long black feather there. She pushed it into her jacket pocket, moving slowly.
"Laziness? Dead. The one fine thing about my occupation is that, whatever the condition, death is still profitable."
Shilo said at last, "Rooks don't do that sort of thing. They don't attack people like that." She was moving in a detached half-dream, not fully aware of what GraveRobber had been talking about.
"To the dead, yes. To the living, they're classified as a mighty fine nuisance," GraveRobber responded with a low growl, still absorbed in his work. "Oh, look! He has a friend! Hello, my dear. You are quite the sight."
The victim had been young, perhaps eighteen and petite, estimating from her rotten clothing. Size six, a single open-toed shoe found amongst the gravel. She'd had a small ribcage, or what was left of it. Organs stolen – another victim of sub-market financing. "Someone forgot to pay their debts."
The skull of the young girl had a narrow forehead and a narrow, slightly receding chin. Cheekbones were high and sharp – very distinctive characteristics. "Were you pretty, my dear?" he said, touching the petite corpse delicately on her lips before placing the Zydrate gun at her nostril. "You know that 'pretty' gets you in trouble."
Shilo stood frozen, staring at the young woman lying before her. "The Repo Man?"
On the asphalt, the dead girl's hair lay in lustrous sinuous strands. GraveRobber reached out to touch it, before rising to his feet when the job was done. "There's always a new dead girl to sing about, isn't there? Always a dead girl."
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