A solemn and rather dejected party slowly walked up the stairs of the Hinata Apartments. Flanked by Naru, Shinobu and Haruka who all wore expressions of silent shock, and with everyone else falling into line behind them, Seta quietly opened the door. Although Motoko had sensed Keitaro's energy surge as he had begun to change, her and her search partner Kitsune had been too far away to get there before Keitaro had fled the scene, and all they found was a stunned Haruka propping up the limp form of Shinobu, whose face was white as a sheet, gently against a rock while an equally stunned Naru looked on. The new arrivals at first feared that Shinobu had been hurt, but the fear was quickly put to rest as Haruka managed to revive the young girl. Shinobu looked around groggily as though trying to confirm that this whole thing was just a bad dream, but was quickly forced to abandon the idea as she once again became aware of her surroundings. Upon this realization her eyes filled with tears and she again whimpered the word, "sempai ...," at which time Naru kneeled down and embraced her in a hug, her own eyes glistening with tears, as Haruka said simply to Motoko and Kitsune, "let's get everyone home." They had met up with Seta, Sara and Suu on the way back, Suu's enthusiastic questioning about whether or not they'd seen Keitaro fizzled out as she took in the somber and solemn looks on their faces. Seta and Haruka had looked into one another's eyes silently for a few moments, and then Seta, as if her eyes had communicated everything, simply nodded and fell into line with the rest of them as they marched quietly homeward.
Everyone sat around the kitchen table as the 3 witnesses to Keitaro's change told their stories of what they had seen. Naturally, there was some disbelief, but as the discussion went back to include the events of the event that had started it all, the attack upon Keitaro, Naru and Kitsune one month ago, and made mention of Keitaro's impossibly fast healing that up until now no one had wanted to question, and his sudden increase in strength, stamina and grace, Kitsune decided that perhaps her theory was now worthy of mention.
"You know ...," Kitsune began, to capture everyone's attention, "doesn't this whole situation bear uncanny similarity to the legend of the werewolf?" As looks ranging from the old and irritated 'what the hell are you talking about Kitsune' to a look of genuine anger from Naru appeared across the faces of the residents, she continued nervously. "Seriously! I know it sounds crazy, but think about it ... he gets bitten by a monster last full moon, he heals completely almost overnight from a wound that should have taken months to heal and should have left him with all kinds of scars, he's suddenly solid as a rock and now this? I mean ..." she trailed off, now wishing that she hadn't said anything as she wilted under the gazes of her friends. Only Motoko seemed to be giving Kitsune's words due consideration.
"Kitsune could be right ..." Motoko said quietly after a few minutes, attention shifting to her as she did so. Motoko's gaze rose to meet theirs. "I remember ... when I was learning the history of my family and our role warriors against demons and monsters, some small mention was made of 'shapeshifters' in a few of the texts regarding the types of demons in this world ..." The looks of irritation and anger that Kitsune had seen quickly evaporated as Motoko continued, "not much else was said about them and none of our training emphasized these 'shapeshifters,' but ..." she paused for a moment, "Kitsune's theory cannot be ruled out. However crazy it sounds, it does fit the facts, and that I am at a loss for any other explanation to explain the powerful energies that Keitaro has been radiating all this time."
The entire assembly sat their in awkward and uncomfortable silence for what seemed like an hour, all the residents with their own thoughts. Everyone was having a hard time with that explanation but were lacking for any other. Even the first hand witnesses, Haruka, Shinobu and Naru, despite what they had seen, found their rationality tearing at them whenever they had even the faint idea of accepting it.
Keitaro looked up from his kill at the sound of approaching footsteps. The human was a good 100 yards off, but in the otherwise dead silence that now surrounded him, even a that range the quiet sound of footsteps was as clear as music to his ears. As he had wandered the night aimlessly after fleeing his friends he had quickly been consumed by a fierce hunger the likes of which Keitaro had never known. To his own horror, as he would silently watch from cover the few humans he encountered pass him by, the thought of killing and eating them at the same time made his stomach growl in anticipation and revile in disgust. However, Keitaro retained more control over himself than he lost, and he merely hid himself from view until the humans had vanished from sight. But with every minute his hunger gnawed at him a little harder. Fortunately for him and for whatever humans might have been in the area, Keitaro shortly picked up the scent of a horse. Following his nose, he came across a small private stable in which a single horse was housed. The scent of prey then overwhelmed him, and with a snarl he had smashed down the heavy wooden door of the stable as though it were made of rotten toothpicks. His senses had immediately locked on to the startled animal, and this time it was neither dream nor memory as he tasted blood and felt bones shatter in his jaws.
Mr. Ozawa and his wife were reading quietly in their living room when they first heard the noises. A loud crash resonated from the stable, followed quickly by the sounds of a panicking horse and then something that sounded almost like a roar or a growl. But silence returned within a few seconds.
"What the hell was that?" Said Mrs. Ozawa.
Her husband went over to the window for a moment and said, "I don't know. I don't see anything."
"Well you'd better go check it out. That's your daughter's horse out there. You know how much she loves that thing."
Mr. Ozawa nodded. He put down his book, grabbed the flashlight by the door, and went outside. The door into the stable was on the side that was just out of the line of sight from the house, and as such Mr. Ozawa couldn't see it until he actually reached the stable.
Mr. Ozawa stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon the smashed door. "What the hell ..." he said quietly to himself as he heard the sound of movement inside, "well, at least that horse didn't get out," he said. But as he went through the door, he once again halted in mid-stride, a look of stunned horror spreading across his face. Right in front of him, or more accurately, all over the front of the stable, were scattered the barely recognizable remains of his daughter's horse. The huge animal had literally been torn to pieces.
Keitaro looked down on the man from his perch in the rafters above him. was at this point keenly aware that his control over his actions was less even than when he had fled from his friends earlier that night, and it took all of his remaining self-control not to add the man's remains to the grisly scene that he had already created. In the most simplistic sort of way, he was angered at having his meal interrupted. He had only just begun to satisfy his hunger when the sound of someone approaching had brought him back to his senses just enough to remember that he did not want to be seen like this by anyone else than who had already seen it. But as he watched the man below him, the man who'd interrupted his feeding, his primitive anger welled up. His clawed fingers unwittingly tightened their already powerful grip on the wooden beam he was perched upon, and the wood splintered beneath them. At the sound, he suddenly found himself illuminated by the man's flashlight. At that point, a combination of surprise, fear, and rage momentarily overwhelmed Keitaro's self-control, and he reacted.
Hypnotized with disgusted horror as he examined the shredded horsemeat around him, the sound of wood splintering startled Ozawa. Reflexively he moved to look at the source. What his flashlight put in the spotlight gave him his second great shock in half as many minutes. It was clearly man-like in overall shape, but the similarities ended there. Its skin was a sort of dark gray color, and thick sections of hair striped its head and back. But more disturbingly, the creature was covered with blood. The hands that gripped the now splintered wood ended in talons, and it had an elongated jaw that was filled with a fearsome set of fangs which now bared themselves at him. Before his brain could process anything else, the creature flung itself at him with terrifying speed. Only the fact that he had already been in the process of stumbling backwards allowed him to avoid the worst of the attack. The jaws missed him, but the creature, seeing that it was going to miss its target, lashed out with its clawed hand instead. A fleeting swipe though it may have been , the creature's strength was such that even that glancing blow broke the ribs that it connected with, and the claws left four deep lacerations across Ozawa's chest. Hitting the ground as the creature landed just outside the doorway, he tiled his head back, expecting to see the creature turning around to finish him off. The creature did indeed regard him as though to do so for a moment, but then seemingly thought better of it, and as he faded into unconsciousness, he remembered seeing the creature vanish from his sight as though disappearing into thin air.
Keitaro spent the next couple hours fighting to stay in control. The excitement of the kill, or feeding, and of fighting had brought his blood to a boil. The few mouthfuls of the horse that he'd managed to consume before the man had showed up had only taken the edge off his hunger. Ravenously, he had hunted down and devoured every living thing he could find other than humans. Squirrels, birds, rats ... over the course of those few frantic hours he must have eaten a score of them before his hunger died down and he once again was more or less in control of himself. His driving hunger satisfied at last, he found it relatively easy to hide himself away for the remainder of the night.
Breakfast passed without the customary cheer that was the normal but also without the stunned silence that had dominated the scene after the past few late-night scares. The potential implications of last night aside, everyone was becoming strangely, or perhaps sadly, used to this sort of thing, and it no longer left them totally at a loss as it once did. They even managed light conversation. Afterwards, everyone had gone about their daily business with as much energy as they could manage. Although little else had been said about the matter after Kitsune had made her contribution, Haruka had indirectly admitted that, whatever the truth might be, there was little chance of finding him if he really did not want to be found. That idea was not well liked either, for Keitaro had fled from them more than once in the past and he had never proven too terribly difficult to track down. But Haruka's powers of persuasion, even when unintended or unemphasized, were quite extraordinary, and the icy tone of her soft voice sucked the energy, such as it was, right out of the suggestion that they should resume their search. But everyone, Naru and Shinobu in particular, knew that she was right.
Shinobu and Kitsune were the only residents left downstairs by that afternoon. Seta and Haruka had had to head over to the tea shop for a few hours to take care of a few business issues there. Suu and Sarah had disappeared on their own as they often did though the usual sounds of their mischief-making were distinctly absent, Motoko was training on the roof, and Naru had quietly gone into her room and nothing more had been heard from her. Kitsune, whom at the request of her interest Dr. Hasagawa had cut down her drinking considerably in the past month, was quietly reading on a couch in the lounge instead of engaging in her formerly routine morning alcohol binge. Shinobu was absent-mindedly channel surfing after she had cleaned up from breakfast.
Keitaro forcibly made his way through the relatively thin but slow moving crowds that were now filling the sidewalks. He had not, as he had seen in werewolf movies before, simply woken up naked somewhere with no memory of what he had been doing the night before. Rather, as daybreak had approached, the feral instincts and his sense of only being half-there had waned quickly, and he had been quite aware of himself morphing back into his human form. He was in fact naked though, as none of his clothes had survived his rapid growth spurt from the night before, and after doing his best to rid himself of the bloodstains that covered much of his body he had been fast about snatching the first unflattering set of clothing that he had been able to find. Not many people left their laundry out to dry at that dreadful hour of the morning, but he had been fortunate enough to find a minimum of garments before being seen by any of the early morning joggers and dog-walkers that always led the day. Very quickly after resuming his previous figure, the haziness of the night before began to straighten itself out in his head, and his desire to get home overrode his utter exhaustion and he made a good pace in that direction. Throughout the night, if not more by instinct than by cognitive thought, he had never wandered too far outside the areas he knew well, so he knew right where he was going and how to get there, and was in no mood to mingle. Irritably, almost angrily, he elbowed people out of his way as he nearly ran towards the Hinata Apartments, and his aura was such that no one raised much of a protest. His previous night's hunting had taken him quite a walk away, so even at his pace it was well into the late morning before he made it home.
As he was about to begin walking up the front steps of the Hinata Apartments, it suddenly dawned on him that he was not sure how he should approach his residents after what had happened the night before. The steely resolve that had driven him here despite his spent state quickly gave way to fear and hesitation, and suddenly he dreaded the thought of being seen by any of them before he could figure that out. Taking a quick look around and being satisfied that no one who knew him had seen him, he tucked himself away around the back and snuck in through an open window.
Motoko slowly and deliberately sheathed her sword and stood still. As she had brought her senses up to full bore during her morning exercise, she had just managed to get enough of an impression of Keitaro's energy to be pretty confident that he had returned. But his energy was weak now, weaker than it had ever been since he had come back from the hospital. Indeed, had she not been training at the time and thus focused, she would probably have missed it. Motoko stood still for a moment, collecting her own thoughts, and went back inside, quietly making her way to Keitaro's room.
By now Keitaro's energy was virtually gone. He was in the arduous process of removing his borrowed clothes when to his horror his door quietly opened. His thoughts momentarily froze as he found himself locking eyes with Motoko. He had not yet prepared himself to face his friends, and as such he was frozen silent. Motoko did not leave him to suffer the awkwardness for long.
"Are you hurt, Urashima?" She asked in a quiet, almost whispering voice. Taken slightly off guard by the question, he made no immediate reply other than to flash this fact across his face. Seeing this, Motoko motioned to the crumpled shirt that lay at Keitaro's feet. It lay inside out, and the inside was spotted with light but unmistakable bloodstains. Following her gaze, he quickly looked back up at her. "No," he answered back. Catching the 'are you sure' look that Motoko returned, he closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. "It's not mine," he said in a choked up voice, motioning back at the bloody shirt.
Motoko immediately understood his words. For a few long minutes, the two stood their in motionless silence, Keitaro's emotions seeping to the surface and Motoko unsure of what she should do or say. Then Keitaro suddenly dropped onto his knees and looked back up at Motoko, his eyes now filled with tears. "What's happening to me Motoko?" he said with his voice radiating the sort of hollow anger that happens when one lacks the energy to back their emotions. "I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I can't ... I can't ..." he broke off into a quiet sob as he clenched his jaw against his feeling. Motoko first was overcome with the desire to comfort him, and then almost immediately became aware of the deeper feeling she now felt. It was true that since the Tsuruko ordeal had come to its satisfactory end that she had ceased to regard Keitaro in the negative ways that she previously had, and it was also true that she had come to respect and care for him on a more personal level in the weeks that followed his attack. But now ... at that moment ... she wasn't sure exactly what it was that she felt within her own heart. This raised a hundred questions within her own mind, but she quickly decided that the answers could wait. Softly she crossed the gap between them and kneeled down in front of Keitaro. He did not raise his head to meet her gaze, he simply lowered his forehead to her shoulder and let his tears flow silently. Motoko gently put her arm around him and allowed a few tears to well up in the back of her own eyes.
Motoko was not aware of how long they sat there like that, but eventually she became aware of the fact that Keitaro was now silent and that his leaning against her seemed more like dead weight. Slowly pushing herself backwards, she looked at his face, and against the red puffiness from his crying she could see that he was sound sleep. His exhaustion had caught up with him at last. Carefully she laid him down where he sat, then went and grabbed his blanket and lightly covered him with it. Slowly standing up and once again collecting her own thoughts, she silently exited his room, closing the door behind her.
As it turned out, it was now nearly lunchtime, and a distinctly apathetic group had assembled in the kitchen. Haruka and Seta had also returned in the meantime and were helping Shinobu make the meal while Kitsune, Naru, and even Suu and Sara sat quietly around the table, frequently making eye contact with one another but not saying a word. They all acknowledged Motoko with the same silence as she joined them in the kitchen. Looking around and seeing the solemn faces, Motoko took a deep breath and spoke.
"Keitaro has come back," she said, as a matter of factly as she could manage.
Her words resulted in the immediate cessation of what little noise was being generated in the room. Before anyone could give much reaction, Motoko spoke again. "He's sleeping in his room. He's not hurt. But he's exhausted, he's confused, and he's frightened. Let him sleep in peace for now and come to us when he's ready."
Everyone but Naru exchanged looks with one another, and seemingly reluctantly agreed with Motoko's words. Naru though closed her eyes for a moment, then quietly got up.
"Naru ..." came Haruka's soft but firm voice.
"I just want to see him. I won't wake him," replied Naru in a half-choked voice. Motoko and Haruka exchanged a look with one another, after which Haruka simply said, "alright."
Very quickly a small puddle of tears formed at Naru's feet as she stood in the doorway of Keitaro's room. He was sleeping soundly, quietly and without movement, but his face bore the unmistakable signs of his pain. He had clearly been weeping heavily quite recently, for his whole face was still red and puffy, and crust was beginning to form around his swollen eyes. The silent look of pain on his face tore at Naru's heart. She wanted so desperately to embrace him, to share his pain and ease his burden, but she knew that to wake him from his rest now would only worsen things for him. So she just stood there for a while, taking in the fact that she could see him and see that he was at least physically OK, and wanting all of this to just go away. After a time, she wiped her own eyes dry, quietly closed his door, and went back downstairs.
The rest of the afternoon passed with a sense of apprehensive concern, but the fact that Keitaro was confirmed to be home and safe did at least allow the residents enough energy to go about their daily routines.
Later that evening, just after sundown, the doorbell rang. Naru, on her way back to her room after getting a drink from the kitchen, just happened to be nearest to the front door and answered it. As she met the eyes of the 'guests,' the color drained from her already wearisome face and the glass tumbled from her hand, shattering as it hit the floor.
The sound of commotion coming from the entryway was enough to grab Haruka and Seta's attention away from their respective books, and the sound of a muffled scream caused them to shoot to their feet and rush towards the entryway. But before they even got there, they nearly ran into the cause of the commotion. Three men came around the corner. They were all dressed in dark clothing and gray trench coats, and one of them had a firm grip on Naru, one arm holding hers behind her back and the other covering her mouth. They were making as thought to head up the stairs when confronted by Seta and Haruka, and they stopped.
"Who the hell are you and what the hell do you think you're doing?" hissed Haruka.
"Our business is not with you, any of you, or her," the lead man of the three said in calm but somewhat irate voice, nodding to Naru as he said the last part, "stay out of our way and this will end nicely for everyone."
"Interfere my ass. Indeed and truly, you've picked a bad place to play games," said Haruka, fixing her eyes on the speaker as she drew the small dagger that she always carried from within her sleeve.
Seta followed suit, slowly producing a small dagger that matched Haruka's from within his own sleeve, and said, "Let her go, and we'll talk."
The speaker of the intruders snorted angrily. "We don't have time for this crap," he said. Motioning to the man holding Naru, the man violently pushed Naru at Haruka, sending the younger woman hard against the ground as she failed to keep her balance. Turning to look back at her assailants, Naru spoke.
"You sons of bi ..." she began furiously, then broke off as saw what was happening. The three men had tossed off their trench coats and torn off their shirts. Facing the residents in a very threatening manner, they began to change. Naru and Haruka had seen this before. Much quicker than they had seen Keitaro do the night before, they finished their transformations and three fearsome monsters now bore down on the Hinata residents.
"Holy shit ..." Seta said under his breath, as he and Haruka held up their daggers in defiance.
"STOP!" Came a deep and serious voice from behind them. The creatures stopped in their tracks, and the others turned to see Keitaro standing there, his own eyes now flat gray as he gave the creatures a steely glare. The creatures regarded him for a moment as if pondering their next move, and then the lead creature made a small gesture with it's hand. They then morphed back into their human forms.
"I will go with you," said Keitaro, his voice maintaining his ironclad resolution.
The speaker for the intruders eyed Keitaro right back with a similar icy stare. "Much could have been avoided had you come with us the first time," he said.
"The first time?" Said Haruka to Keitaro. "Keitaro, do you know these men?"
"Yes I do."
"Who ..."
"Don't worry about that right now. I'll explain the whole thing some other time. For now, I must go with them."
"Keitaro! You don't have to go with them! Why don't you just smash the shit out of them like you did last time!" Said Naru angrily. Seta and Haruka looked at each other.
"I was wrong. Please just trust me. Everything will be OK. But now I have to go."
"Goddammit Keitaro, don't ..." began Naru, but she stopped when Keitaro's gaze flashed over to her. He stared at her for a moment with his gray eyes, then his eyes shifted back to their old brown.
"I'm sorry," he said in a surpassingly calm manner, "you'll hear from me soon."
With that, Keitaro walked forward, joining ranks with the three intruders as they put their trench coats back on. Naru, Haruka and Seta watched in silent confusion as Keitaro lead the three men out the door.
