So here's the rest of the first chapter, now completely translated. I'm still looking forward to knowing your opinions on grammar or any corrections that are to be made.
Editors and betas volunteers are more than welcome.
*Art of this fic will be posted on my DA account as this project gets bigger, specially what regards character design.
Dedicated to M. Falen.
Enjoy.
Wendigo
Summer night
2
She was calmly walking down the stairs of the biggest and most crowded pedestrian bridge in the Tenth ward of Tokyo when her coat's loose button finally came off and fell to the ground. The sound was almost silent, inexistent, but her ears were not human and she could not help but noticed the click it made at the exact moment it hit the metal step. Her eyes immediately found it, because they were not human either. And a hand, a hand that was not hers, was quickly handing it in to her before she could process the time's variation. The boy –who was blond and perhaps a bit younger than her-was stretching his arm towards her and she could feel how he scrutinized her from behind his shades, as if telling her without any verbs: "I know what you are, mate".
"Prey-and-predator or predator-and-pray?" The relation was never evident for the others.
She very deep inside knew that she could never be the victim.
Because once the executioner, once impure and sinful, the claimed fall would not the doing of a ferocious predator: It would be divine justice.
"Thanks" She took the button from his hand, barely looking at it, barely attempting to take her eyes off the dark lenses of his glasses "How kind of you".
"You are welcome".
The guy continued climbing up the stairs while she went down the bridge, slightly amazed. She contemplated the option of taking the subway to avoid getting 'home' too late, for the Third ward neighborhood she was heading to was not near at all and she was not inspired enough to speed her calm pace up.
In a couple minutes she was inside the station of her current neighborhood. She took a look at the recently stolen watch around her right wrist before getting down the vehicle. 10:02, it showed, while her pace started to slow down even more.
She was tired. She wanted to sleep because she hadn't slept for two days and because she wanted to get rid of the memory of all the faces that haunted her from the shadows.
She walked for ten minutes. The unusually quiet path ended with her favorite entrance to the abandoned factory that she occupied as her den. She jumped up the metal fence and headed to the machinery room. She went up to what used to be the control floor and turned on the lights. The thin foam mattress and the blankets, the bottle of water and the sack which contained two or three pieces of clothing were all in place, unperturbed.
Most of her clothing abandoned her body. The imperceptible breeze embraced her with its mischievous coolness.
The night was too cold to be a summer night.
Under the blankets, she saw his face for the last time that day.
And, after his beautiful face vanished completely, a couple dozen other faces from her worst nightmares appeared in wicked wakefulness. Being asleep, there was no way she could fight against them.
'The needle is inserted in the mucous membrane. Repression is the result. You then inject the general anesthesia and you'll see she won't move a muscle. Remember to double the dose that you use with humans. You open from here to here. You know what to do after that'.
It was that language that she learnt to understand within the seven years of constant meticulous and brutal chatter. It sounded so loud, loud, loud, loud, loud inside her head.
The metallic sound rumbled in her ears like a drill directly to the tympanum.
The bones of the father cracked when they broke. The ring around his finger shined gold and his blood –the old pestilent crimson- filled the enigma in his orbs. And the man was getting nearer and nearer with the injection and a serious and imperturbable grimace. The night was coming and the day followed. Two thousand five hundred and five suns, a million moons. The screams exploded against the walls of glass, cold and dead.
The crimson red was now vermillion and then dark burgundy. She opened and closed her eyes, said inconsistencies, added and subtracted numbers as incomprehensible as incoherent.
Do not say the name…
'Never say the name. It's a secret; they'll kill him, they'll kill him'.
White, brown, blue, ash grey. All shades were spinning around, while the lights burned her eyes and skin and the men's voices fueled a hole in her stomach. A monster like her, surrounded by tanned tones, was getting inside her crystal prison cell. Her blood, though stinky, smelled good. It sprouted endlessly and she could not bear the ravenous pain in her bellies.
'I haven't eaten in many, so many days'.
Her blood stained lips evidenced a disgusted grin within a few minutes.
It tasted bad, but it was starting to become a custom. She was starting to welcome, embrace and cling to it. She was starting to like it.
She felt the tremors breaking her body.
"Ah!"
Finally awake, she felt the delicate coldness freezing the moist sweat on her alabaster skin. Her hyper-sensitive touch felt the dusty fibers of the improvised bed; her ears heard the steel cables and chains swinging in some factory room; her eyes saw his eyes in some dark alleyway in the Thirteenth ward.
"I wish I could finally turn completely insane".
But the night was merely beginning.
3
He recognized her immediately: It was the girl whose button felt in the crowed bridge.
Since the first time he saw her, he knew that he will see her again sooner or later.
Never did he think that it would be that soon.
Two weeks that felt unnervingly short.
"Good evening, nee-san. We meet again it seems".
She, blue from head to toes, limited herself to look sternly at him, mournful, with any intention of moving. Her fringe half-covered her gaze and the bad lightning was not able to reveal the divine details, but he could see through her shadows directly to the shine escaping from behind her tangled brown hairs.
That shine, that oh so well known shine of being prepared to attack in any moment.
And it was no wonder, he thought. To nose around in alien territory in the Fourth ward could easily cost an arm and a leg if lucky, especially if you had killed and half cannibalized one of his subordinates.
Her head seemed like a fair price. An eye for an eye.
How tasty would her eyeballs be in his palate? Would they keep on shinning in the victorious nothingness?
"You caused us some trouble, you'll see. Hiro-kun, your dinner, was my subordinate. Do you understand nee-san?".
He took two steps towards her, hands in his pockets. "Nee-san" followed his hand mindfully before averting her eyes to look at him, kakugan activated. He did not sense fear or hesitation in them. A funny feeling prepotency ran down his neck like a satirical itch.
He reached her with a single jump while lunging with a fist of his.
He had to have fun, hit the prey a bit, make the flesh more… tender.
His visual functions had barely registered her jumping backwards to dodge him when his ears heard an annoyed sigh. His overwhelmed senses were processing it all: She being in front of him, the murmurings and bets and ovations from his comrades in the distance. He let himself be in all the chaos that was about to come.
"Uta-san is gonna fight", "He'll sure win".
Her hair was being swung by her odd breezes, extremely cold before him.
"What an altruist. Avenge a subordinate? Isn't that romantic ideal a little too old-fashioned these days? I'm in no mood of fighting, sir. I beg your understanding".
"Is she challenging Uta-san?", "That girl's gonna die", "She looks tasty, do you think the leader would share a bit of her flesh when he finishes her out?".
The voices, all of them, were dancing: Theirs, his ghouls'; hers, quiet, cursed.
She was surrounded by hidden voices that will remain silent until the end of time.
He smiled a bit.
"I'm the Fourth ward leader and whatever happens to its ghouls is my business, whether I want it or not. We are not gonna let a foreigner play freely in a territory that is not hers… let alone go eating our people".
"Ward leader?" The pause in her thinking was reflected in the scrutiny of her orbs. It was one of those pauses that search for something inside the memory, inside the uncountable possibility of oblivion "So that's how it works, isn't it? Now I understand".
"Nee-san there wants to die", "Leader, tear her head off; the skull right off the vertebra!", "C'mon, sir, we wanna see you!"
"I did not have the intention of disturbing. I'm sorry for the inconveniences, but I've got to go" She stated rather calmly, slowly.
"Too late".
He began with a new strike that she dodged again and he resumed the offensive as many times as she managed to avoid them. She was extremely fast, even without having the intention to be it.
They continued, immersed in the series of useless strikes and dodges.
He did not even get to touch her.
Who was that girl?
He managed to corner her against the back wall of one of the many alleys of the ward. He was going to hit her at last. The stomach, the stomach would be. His fist was already moving, he could already feel the disgusting taste of her tripes in his curious palate.
I was coming, it was coming.
But his body was the one which reached the pavement first, ejected by the power of a kick of inhuman prophecy, ribs broken.
"What-?".
He did not get to understand it.
"Do you want to fight this bad? Alright then, Uta-san. I guess this is when the real problem begins".
She ran to him, armed with another kick. His back met the wall painfully. It hurt, but he did not waste the time to place himself in a better position and get some good impulse. The new target was her arm: A clean, quick and accurate cut that could immobilize her for a few seconds at least. His right hand, ready in front of him, attacked her in no time.
She seemed not to move a single bit. She did not quiver. The only thing that moved was the arm, the target, which made an unusual movement when the impact took place.
It had to rain blood.
Never did he think that it would be his.
In the hand that was extended by the targeted arm, a portion of murky flesh sparkled in a puddle of blood. She smelled it; she licked it. Her teeth creaked with the first bite and the meat being grounded. Her lips, painted with the most dazzling lipstick ever, moved pleasurably slowly.
"You taste so awful".
Uta took a look at his arm and noticed that it was bleeding red. The blemished hole stood out because of the asymmetrical tearing of five pitch-black fingernails. He then looked up to see her face, so nosily close, to observe her features…
… the worst nightmare.
"How about I eat your whole arm?"
The moon shone and shone bright up in the sky. The night cold, too cold to be a summer night.