.::Romantic, Like I Could Ever Be::.
"Kiba, why do they have the virus?" came Haku's voice. His voice cut through the thick air and finally snapped me out of my reverie. My face was plain for a moment, then I growled.
"I don't know, and I don't know what they're planning, but no matter what it is, we have to stop it." I said, looking each of my pack in the eye to make sure they understood. They did. "Run." I ordered, and they set back off, except for Temari, who lingered behind a moment to stuff a few of the syringes into her coat pocket.
"Shino." I barked, and Shino came up to me from his place a few feet back. "What do you make of this?" I watched the smaller teens eyes widen, then hide furiously behind their pale black.
"I can't say. My guess at the moment is that the vampires are looking for a way to get rid of the virus by collecting the gas and siphoning it down into those syringes. Of course, I could be wrong. Many things change quickly." Of course, he had to use our catchphrase. In the hollow recess of what our country used to be, it was more true than anything else. I nodded twice, signaling for Shino to make his way back to his position.
Our formation was formed of leadership, but also by identity. I, the alpha of the pack, ran at the front, with Shino, my beta, running behind me on my right flank. Hinata took the left flank, her scouting ability needed to be first and foremost. Zabuza and Haku ran behind Hinata, their skills in fighting placed there in the event someone were to ambush them. Without Hinata, our chance of survival dropped disastrously. Thus, Zabuza and Haku. Behind Shino ran Lee and Temari, not placed there for any real reason. Shino had insisted that because he had been the one to save their lives, they should run behind him. I wouldn't argue with him. Every single member of my pack were in perfect position to morph at any time.
Yeah, more explanations. You've probably read a lot of stories about werewolves. And probably more about those vampire scum. So you must already have some pre-composed idea of what werewolves look like. Human, just furry? Gigantic wolves? Wrong. Dead wrong. We literally split in half. The wolf center inside our bodies splits our skin open, causing our true core to come out. During this, a small rift is created, tugging at our more human halves. It basically swallows our human halves to allow our wolf halves to grow out and become fully realized. Luckily, this rift also swallows our clothes and anything on our bodies into it. It makes traveling easy, believe me.
Yes, and if you caught that, if swallows our clothes. We are fully naked when we morph. But it's not anything embarrassing or anything, even to a pack of teenagers like us. The only moment we are naked in our human forms is the split second when the rift appears. After that, our wolf bodies take over. How can I describe what we look like to you? Yes, we do somewhat resemble wolves. But yet, not fully...imagine a man, completely naked. Now, cover his body in microscopically small spikes, clumping together to former longer, thinner spikes. They completely cover his body, and he can turn them to be flat and smooth as silk or sharp and brittle as razors. To help you, it almost does resemble hair. These spikes change color with each werewolf. My spike coat, for example, is red. A dark, bloody red.
Next, I should explain our fangs, our rather, our heads. They are a bit different...and also similarly hard to explain. Here we go with imagining things again. Imagine the head of a wolf. Now, elongate the muzzle, enlarge and move the ears further up the sides of the head, and set the eyes a bit farther in. Now, these characteristics too, change with each werewolf, just like the color of his spikes. No, we're not too pretty. We're not meant to be. Deadly, that's what we're meant to be. A dagger into the heart of our enemies.
Hah, I can make a pretty good metaphor, can't I?
We ran quietly for the next five hours, each of us deadly silent, focusing on the mystery laid out before us. Under normal circumstances, the vampires shouldn't even be able to touch the virus, let alone put it into syringes. It was designed so that it could be inhaled without doing any damage to the outside body, only change the inner workings of anything besides werewolves, and we all knew that.
"Kiba, there's a town fifty miles north of here. What should we do?" Hinata said, squinting her deep purple eyes. I stopped immediately and took my supplies off of my back. My pack stopped with me, feeling my intent a second after I decided it.
"We're going to make camp for the night. Lee, tents. Temari, mark a perimeter." As I assigned them, they ran off to their jobs. "Zabuza, Haku, food." They nodded and began digging through their packs. "Hinata, get some rest, okay? You're doing an awesome job, but we can't afford to have you damage your eyes." she nodded and turned to her tent, already set up by the energetic Lee. "Shino...there's a river to the east, I smelled it earlier. Come with me." I began walking, knowing Shino wouldn't be far behind me. I nodded to Temari as we passed. "We'll be back shortly."
Once they had walked out of the eyesight of their pack, Kiba grabbed Shino's hand and dragged him the rest of the way down to the water. Kiba looked up at Shino, only to see him gaze back into his eyes. He knew why he was here. Why they had stopped early. Why only he, Shino, could be Kiba's beta. No one else could handle him. Kiba grinned when they hit the water, and Shino relaxed as Kiba's arms wrapped around him, pulling him under.
And Shino also knew that he was temporary, as cruel as the realization was when it had hit him a few years ago. Kiba would only continue to take him until he found his true mate. Until then, Shino would happily make do with making Kiba smile what little he could.
He reached up to pull Kiba's shirt off.
Of course, the rest of our pack would be able to smell what we had been doing, but I didn't care. I didn't need to explain himself to them, and they wouldn't ask me too. Each one of them had experienced the same thing. The need to release the ever-present, itching white pleasure was one thing they understood very well.
You got me. We're driven by our emotions. We pretty much give ourselves up to them. It isn't hard. I guess you could say it comes from our werewolf natures. When we morph into our werewolf forms, we give up our humanity, and we grip nature, tight, so very tight in our hands. We are ruled by the laws of nature. So yeah, we do tend to go overboard on emotion. Well, I once heard someone say it makes us good lovers. I think my dad might've said that. He was strange though. I mean, he kept me, what does that tell you, I mean, besides the fact that he was willing to give up his life for his child. Which is something I can't say about other vampire parents.
Where I used to live, our street had one of the worst cases of the virus. Or best, in my opinion. It was nearly impossible for a couple to produce vampiric offspring. Most of the people who came to live there moved away after two or three failed, their opinion, births. But some stayed. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part is that time after time they would hand over their children, their babies, to the government. In an instant. They would do it over and over. They are just...heartless. Every last one of them. Yes, some, like my parents, have the capacity to love. But, I'm afraid that's too small of a percentile to save them from me. Yeah, you could call me a rebel. A revolutionary. But not by any normal means, no. I won't sit back while my people are hunted, enslaved, drugged, beaten, murdered. I cannot, and will not allow myself to be like other werewolves I have known; lazy wastes of life that sit back and watch it all happen, watch as the house they built and lived in for forty years burn to the ground.
No, I will never allow myself to become like that.
I rolled off of Shino and jumped into the river. The cool water was refreshing against my body, and it made my eyes jump open. I writhed around in it, wanting to splash it into every crevice of my body. I stopped when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at Shino. "Let me." I just smiled and stood still, letting Shino's hands massage me. After a few minutes, I switched positions with Shino and rubbed him down. When finished, I walked to shore and grabbed my clothes, pulling them on.
"Thank you, Shino." Shino just nodded, pulling on his own clothes. I grabbed his hand and led him back to our makeshift campsite. It was getting dark, so I held it a bit longer than when it was light before letting go. I sat down between Zabuza and Haku, who were shielding a small fire behind their tent. Haku handed me a warmed meat pack, and I gladly ripped into it with my teeth. I swallowed my first bite before speaking. "Tomorrow, we're going to scout the village, check if there's any werewolves there."
Lee came to sit beside him, his half gone dinner dangling from a tooth, his favorite way of storing food. "And if we find any vampires?" he asked, the hope nearly bursting out of his eyes.
"You know what? Lee, you can have any you see, how about that?" I said, taking another bite. Lee jumped on my stomach though and jumped up and down, smiling. "Yes! That's so awesome, Kiba! Thank you so much." Traveling long enough with someone gave you a clue to what they were like. And Lee needed little stimulation to keep going. I just wanted to keep his pack happy, well, as happy as they could be under the circumstances. "Lee, I am enjoying my dinner, unless you want to make me another?" I asked, trailing my voice off. Lee finally noticed what he was doing, and jumped off, giving my ribs a final assault. Lee's face seemed to turn down. "Sorry." I shook his head, and Lee's smile was back. It made me almost smile, almost, but not quite.
"I'll take the first shift." I said, standing with my meat pack. "Temari, how far is the perimeter?"
"Ten yards around." She had shortened it because we were near a town.
"Good. Haku, you're after me, then Zabuza. Shino, the morning shift." They all agreed. I thought it better to take shorter shifts, two hours each. That way the whole pack could be more rested to be on the move.
I kicked a stone into the darkness as I reached the perimeter, hearing the satisfying crunch as it sank into an...oak tree, it had sounded like. The strength, that was something else I loved about being a werewolf. Vampires seemed so fragile, what with their perfectly smooth skin and thin frames. They were porcelain to me. So easily breakable, and so fake in their beauty.
I found a large rock inside of Temari's boundary and leaned against it. I would walk around to the other side of the perimeter in five minutes, always moving in a clockwise rotation. Moving clockwise was like speeding up the time to me. Twelve full rotations, and my shift would be over. I looked up towards the sky. Twelve more rotations to go. Twelve more, and I could rest. Shino was great relief, but he could never be enough. He knew that as well as I did. And I knew Shino wouldn't be able to please me the way he did for much longer.
Yeah, many things change quickly, and unfortunately, I'm changing, and I don't think Shino will just be enough anymore...
KibaShino. Rather unexpected, wasn't it? Thankies for the review guys!! You really make a person want to write ^^ and omg I did.
So anyway, please review if you likey! Or if you don't like it, flames do count as reviews...