Pieces of You
Chapter 7
Hinged
It just hurts. At first, all he can feel is fire. It burns through his bones, it sears across skin. It erupts like a volcano within him, from a specific source, his center, and leaking to each part of his body. So powerful, it's a fire burning with enough fuel to last a lifetime. He roars out. He's almost shocked at his own hoarse rumbling. His jaw clenches, his muscles flare. The fire heightens, but it almost feels good now. His muscles are working again; they constrict and loosen with each movement, and the fire only makes him faster.
He lurches into the air, faster than lightning itself, and runs. It's always the instinct. Run, run, run, run. He only wants to move, to surge through the brush, leap over fallen trees.
He sees movement in the corner of his eye; a rabbit. As he pauses in his run for a little snack, the fire diminishes. A voice inside him encourages the hunt. Yes, yes, this is something. This is good. Hunt. He can almost imagine the feel of the blood as it gushes from a vein punctured by his fang, almost taste the rich, saltiness of the warm liquid oozing from the wound.
The rabbit takes in its surrounding with one eye, unwilling to budge first until it knows its path is clear of predators.
He doesn't even have to hunt; he doesn't have to crouch silently within the brush or conceal himself; he has more than enough speed to outrun the little rodent. But the hunt is a game; it builds up fire and releases tension. It feels good to rip the thing into shreds, to dig sharp fangs into the tough skin, soak himself in warm blood.
The rabbit moves again; it hops a few yards and looks around.
Now, he's almost completely behind the rabbit. He poises himself for pouncing, his front legs down and tense and ready to push himself into the air. He's silent, as always, and the rabbit doesn't even know he's around. He edges closer. And closer. He's ready, almost ready…but then…
"…to eat, that's all."
The rabbit dashes away, but he doesn't feel the need to chase him. There's another matter at hand; a far more challenging one—humans.
He raises his muzzle and sniffs the air for the meats. They smell of sweat and blood. One has a smell of sulfur on him; he must carry a…a gun. He sniffs again. There are two more. A female, another male. Silently, he leaps to his feet and draws closer to the humans.
"He's off taking a piss or something," one was saying. "Let's just stop and rest a while all right?"
There's a silence, and then another male speaks. "I need to clean up my wounds. My stitches have come undone."
His nostrils twitch as the meat's wound is unwrapped and bared. The blood is fresh, warm. His mouth waters; a hunger develops in his belly, his stomach rumbles.
He lowers himself to the ground, tenses. It's that meat with the scarlet clothing that disappeared. He sniffs again for the dog; if it's just these measly humans, it will be easy to kill them, dig into the soft, meaty flesh. The female especially. But he doesn't detect the domesticated meat.
Instead—he jerks back suddenly. He knows that scent too. It's so familiar. It strikes fear into him, fear like no fear he's ever experienced. His body rages; it's as if that scent takes away his mind; it's a drug. He whole body sways, and in a fit of rage, he thrusts himself forward. He will have that meat.
He plows right over the female meat. It yelps as he sends it flying backwards, but it recovers quickly. The injured meat, clad in crimson, has it shiny metal stick in hand, pointed. It fires, and it meets flesh. He howls and dodges the next bout of bullets. The female meat has rolled to its feet and comes at him with its foot. He ducks and nips at it. By luck or chance, it evades his maw.
The meat with the gun hails him with more bullets and the meat with the red fur rushes him with a silver stick. They are all fast, but their movement is disconnected, unlike the red-clad meat and its domesticated creature had been previously. They clearly don't hunt together normally. He uses this to his advantage.
The red-clad meat disappears in a cloud of red and reappears face-to-face, shooting again.
They all seem to plunge toward his face. He rolls to the side, evading them. They are fun, but he wants the blond, the blond that causes madness to flow through his veins. He wants to gnaw on its bones, savor the flesh.
He sees the redhead and the female meat almost collide; he bares his teeth at them, as if grinning. He launches himself into the air over their heads, but the red-clad meat is persistent. It materializes in front of him. Its shiny firestick, its gun, glints in the afternoon sun, catching a stray beam. It points and fires.
He roars, his warning echoing through the canopies, and flows toward the meat, his maw wide open. He takes the red-clad meat down and roars again. Without further ado, he clamps down on the bleeding shoulder, the blood oozing onto his tongue. But he doesn't get any time to savor the taste; the other meats attack, and so he jumps off and runs toward the blond's scent. It gets closer and closer.
The meats run after him, but they are much too slow.
He skids to a stop at the sight of the blond, crouching over a creature of the forest. Its shiny sword is soaked in blood and is stuck in the ground beside them. He takes a step forward. The blond is unsuspecting. Its head is down, but he makes a mistake, then. The madness that has infected his veins has made him mindless. He steps on a branch; it cracks under his paw.
The blond is up and holding its weapon. Without its moving wheels, it is not fast enough, but it is nonetheless ready for a challenge.
He doesn't attack; he simply stares. And finally, when he hears the other meats' voices drawing nearer, he backs away and runs off into the forest. The fire that drives him to hunt has receded. He's just tired now. He wants to sleep; he wants to forget the blood of the blood, how it tasted on his tongue. He wants to forget the rage he feels whenever he catches the scent.
/ - / - / - / - /
Red hopped from a boulder and examined the large footprints Yuffie, surprisingly, found. He lowered his head enough to get a whiff and confirmed it aloud. "It's his," he told the rest of the group.
"That mean he's close?" Yuffie eyed her surroundings more closely, dreading the moment of contact.
"The prints aren't fresh. I can't smell him in the air, either." Red took a few steps and checked the next set of footprints. They disappeared after a few more sets into the wilderness, the intense scent completely masked. It was annoying but not particularly surprising. There was something simply odd about this enemy, something eerie and not encountered before.
Rude, who had stood above him to watch every move, folded his arms across his chest with a grunt but offered no sense of the directions of his thoughts. Red could detect no fear on this human, no uneasiness or tension as he did with all his companions—Cloud emanating the most anxiety and Reno and Rude…nothing. He didn't like it.
"We 'bout done here, yet? Shit. I'm getting eating alive in this jungle!" Cid, who radiated unease since he'd stepped foot off his ship, wouldn't stop complaining. He and Yuffie would take turns complaining, then go off on each other to the point where Red almost wanted an attack from the wolf.
"We'll get there before nightfall," Red assured him. "But—" A vibration in the air cut him off. Very faint at first. His ear twitched. Louder.
"Um, but what?" prompted Yuffie.
"Shhh." He stepped toward the sound, straining to isolate it from the birds and insects and life of the forest. It grew louder, suddenly. Elongated and painful. His body tensed, his baser instincts warmed his blood and prepared him for action. It was a cry of a very large creature—a wolf. The wolf.
Red sprang forward before his thoughts processed.
"Hey! Waiiiit! Where're you goin'?" Yuffie and the others followed at a dead run.
Fresh blood. It wasn't, possibly, the best moment to engage the creature, but something was wrong. He could feel that. It permeated the air, and it came from the western side, Cloud's group's side. He bared his teeth. He needed to be sure that they were safe.
Author's Note: short, abrupt, but at least it's an update, right? I really love the wolf's p.o.v. :)