Author's Notes: It has come to my attention that my chapters have gotten progressively worse as I was writing. Therefore, I have planned to revamp my writing style, which would give better description, less dialouge, and more coherence. Right now, this is somewhat the last chapter for this Bloody Roar 2 storyline, and the first of the BR3 one or so. Look out for hopefully, better work in future, from me, in the next story arcs. Admittedly, I do not have much experience with BR3 and BR3 Primal Fury's storyline, therefore it might be a bit off. Hopefully, not too much. Well, read this, I've put more time into this, and more thought, so, enjoy.
After the destruction of the Tylon labs, an intelligience investigation was carried out in the deployal of the 'Search and Destroy' unit by the ZLF, who was found to be in affliation with Tylon. It was found that the ZLF's records were hacked in by an unidentified person, and several orders were sent to various factions to attack the Tylon laboratories. The person was never found, nor named.
Similarly, the massacre that was carried out on the unit sent to the laboratories was never explained. Survivors' explanations of a great red dragon, who killed and burned over half their number, were never justified. The identity of the zoanthrope that the survivors and their believers deemed simply as 'Red Dragon', was never found.
It was also after the destruction, the appointation of a Yugo Ohgami, as the new leader of a volunteer group of zoanthropes aimed for the global peace of all human and zoanthrope kind, also soon followed. The first order of business was to gather as much of the original ZLF members into their fold, much who were unaware of the Liberation Group's true intentions, nor that the laboratories were also under the control of their own leader, 'Alpha'.
Among these volunteers, Alexander Brockett was quick to join, hoping to prove himself a true do-gooder in the eyes of the world. Many people who knew Xander, as he prefered to be called, said he was equal to Yugo's optimism and tenacity, though not as fanatic. Therefore, he was often dubbed as a 'poor-man's-wolf', which also applied to his Tylacine beast form.
There was also the mysterious girl who was always close to him, but somehow distant. They only knew her as 'Kris', but not much else was known. Even her features were never clear, all was known was that she usually kept out of sight by day. And then, there were those who said, they have spotted her wrapped in thick cloaks, prowling in the night, leaping from the top of buildings and climbing up walls straight up with wild abandon.
Night was a time that Kris was allowed those precious moments to go outside without interference. Be it from curious or overly-agressive company, or a certain annoying compatriot. She stayed in the same apartment as Xan did, but their relationship was not as one might perceive. The tension was there, she herself could feel it, which unfortunately, could not be said for Xan, clueless in his innocent friendship with her, he was willing to take care of her every whim with not the least bit suspicion nor question.
In all frankness, Kris regarded Xander as an idiot. A clueless idiot who for the life of her, could not see that everyone else were not too keen having her around. Alienation did not seem to register in that moron's simple mind, which was why she had made some arrangements of her own. She could not care less for company of any sort, she was content to muse and linger about whereever she may be, alone and peaceful. Which she noted would not have worked for Xander, which was why she, in the closest thing anyone could call a 'caring gesture', she kept a wide berth from Xander if she ever did went out with him. A very wide berth, sometimes it was not enough to be in a seperate corridor, and she left the area completely.
Alienation, she had solved that problem for Xander, though he assumed her distance from him was only because on her own solitary nature. Which, then again, was probably a correct asumption, she would never have walked anyway near him in the first place. The only thing that kept her 'here', in his company, was the fact she had a grudging problem of not having anywhere to go too, noone else to turn to, and of course, that nagging fact that he 'saved her'.
Kris resumed her night vigil with the thoughts passing like a hollow wind through her mind. She stared out of the window, seating herself on the windowsill with a cat-like compactness. Her legs were drawn up to her chest, her hands laid lazily ontop of her knees, and her eyes glinted with a hint of hidden and restrained power.
She had a large green cloak wrapped around her body, it was heavy, but soft and refine. A smaller, slightly darker cloth was wrapped around her face, now pulled down to reveal her set mouth.
Exhaling softly, she stood up from the windowsill, and lifted the catch. She lifted the window pane, and set a bare, clawed foot on the open sill. She hated shoes. It effected her agility, and accuracy. At best, they were protection on hostile ground, but as she has not ever met ground that she felt painful enough, shoes could wait.
She stuck her head out, and took a breath of the cool air outside, the cloth about her neck began to ripple like dreary leaves as a gentle gust blew by. She pulled up her other leg onto the sill, and there she perched, like a humanoid gargolye, spying on the mostly clear street below her.
For a few moments, she stayed still. It was a full moon, its light shone on the irremovable golden rings on her fingers, the flesh now dried in place, and healing with new skin.
Kris grimaced. She remembered how Xander, in his furtive attempt to 'ease her pain', had tried to pull out those rings despite her steadfast refusal. She had rewarded Xander's fruitless efforts with a nice slash across the hand.
She regretted it now. She should have bit him instead.
She laughed softly at the thought. Won't Xander be surprise to have a third set embedded with the other two marks.
"Well," she said to herself, pulling up the cloth to cover the bottom half of her mouth.
Her arms swung up, to grip the ledge above her. With graceful ease, she flipped herself upside down seemingly without the slightest effort. Her feet came to rest on the solid brick and cement of the building, her face now facing inwards at the blank white wall. A small, innocent worms it way into Kris' face.
With a sharp but controlled force, the girl pushes off from her strange position, watching as the wall gets further and further away with her outwards freefall. She falls in an arc, clear away from the building. In mid-air, she flips her upper body and arms outwards beneath her, and stretches them out to greet the ground below as it silently climbs to meet her. But the meeting is not to be. Her hands soon feel the round and cool surface of the lamppost on the near opposite corner to the apartment block.
With one smooth motion, she swings around and upwards like a gymnast, going straight up but flipping right side up again as her feet land gently and balance themselves on the thin platform.
A small fanged smile was evident despite the cloth covering her face, her eyes glimmered with a mean mischievous glint, that showed the world the nature that permeated from her only by nightfall. Like her cloak, her jetblack mane rippled with the whispering wind, seeming to be talking to the forces at work with meaningful gestures and sweeping sighs. Her fringe was long as well, long enough to conceal those predatorial eyes from those around, with Kris' exceptional vision penetrating the darkness regardless.
She strode confidently and casually on the extended arm of the lamppost, as if she was nothing more than taking a stroll. She walked inwards, to where the lamppost bends downwards to extend till the ground. At the bent, she makes a light leap that takes her to the side of a redbrick building, where she latches on easily by the nooks and crannies in the rough edge.
With her body flat to the wall and her cloak whipping behind her, she makes her ascent, each clawed hand finding some new crevice for her to pull up to, her feet pushing her body upwards slowly. Such activity would be physically strenous for a normal person, but Kris found herself being quite at home, climbing straight up a building. Perhaps it was because of her tall and lanky size and artificially strengthened muscles, but a certain amount of skill was applied to wallclimbing nonetheless.
She had done this before, this being yet another suppressed memory. She had to climb up a cavern as a test, a trial-by-fire so to speak, except it was a deep cavern where her...parents, placed her in, and made her scale to the top where they would welcome her with cheers and love again, like nothing had happen. By all accounts, nothing had happened, it was the way of her...people, and so, she went by it as did her ancestors before her.
But, it was cruel, and tough. Death from falling, ostracization by failing or happiness and life for succeeding. Those were the results of the 'test'.
So cruel...
Alas, that was a memory, nothing that had to do with her now. Kris pushed it to the back of her mind, concealed it behind other painful memories that no longer held meaning to her, but mere fuel to back up her bid for a life that was aimless and meaningless. What would happen if that 'fuel' ran out, and those memories were revealed again? Kris did not venture to think that far, she would be happy if those memories burned away with the rest of them.
The building was only about two or three stories, and Kris soon felted the weathered edge of the old buildings brick layered roof. With one pull from her powerful arms, Kris was up and over the edge and rolled onto the buildings silent and desolate grey roof. The roof access, those unnamed instruments that were part of some elaborate but standard ventilation system for the building, were all softly illuminated by the bright moon that shone, like the milky eye of some giant and unspoken beast.
Kris faced up to this moon, her own ruby eyes piercing into the great orb, seeing perhaps more clearly than any human eye, the various deep rivers that wove in the moon, the light that was recycled from the greater fury of the sun some half a world away, the way the moon buoyed in the sky.
"It is a nice night..." Kris whispered as she jumped a top of the roof access, staring intently at the moon, that drew her gaze and her mind with power but not overbearing, controlling but not tyrannical or restrictive.
Kris felt some innate stirring within herself, in her spirit and in her mind, that almost irresistable urge, to just abandon all dignified humanity, all noble beastiality, to succumb to the mindless need to prey.
Kris would resist, but only to a certain limit, one which she had reached countless times her past nightly adventures. The end was always the same, she would not fall to it, not to the mindless and reckless slaughter that urged her claws to find warm prey and made her jaws clenched in anticipation for the hunt. She was not going to lose herself, she had no purpose to live, her life was without a goal or support, but she was not going to be taken in by something so trivial and basic.
No, she would not fall, she would accept, accept on the conditions she had control, and as she asserted that desire, so did it happen. She would stand with her body to the moon, her head reared to stand against its pale face, her black mane flitting behind her, her arms spread slightly apart, her claws stretched and primed, her scarlet eyes ablaze with inner predatorial spirit, her throat starting to rumble and shake with a growl, until at last, her jaws would open, all her frustration and pain concentrated into single roar, that sounded with that of countless other beasts and not.
The roar began to thin, toning down to more human sounds, until at last Kris was once again silent, breathing deeply from the roar get required much effort from her. It was done, a kind of silent pact with the unnatural desire that rose from the combined influence of those rogue genes. The roar was merely to expel some part of the urge, perhaps she had a little wolf in her, that made her want to howl to the moon. Kris dismissed. That was a mindless stereotype that attributed to nothing this night. No, she knew why she roared. It was a warning, a warning to all those that would provoke tonight, and be unlucky enough to meet her once she left her perch tonight.
"It is a nice night..." she whispered again, standing straight and tall once more, her face to the moon but with none of her initial, unsettled feelings. Her aura was one calm in her own power, her own control, her own being as it was.
"On nights like this," Kris grinned widely under her fluttering dark green scarf.
"I crave to hunt," she finished, laughing under her breath, her eyes filled with savage and quiet danger.
Those days of past that Kris refused to see or acknowledge, that time when she had been subjected to the trial of climbing the cavern face, it was clear from the start, that Kris had not died from falling. But now, it was clear, that Kris had not failed either.
P.S. A little trivial, can you spot, in the opening italics, the stuff that some of the Bloody Roar characters did? Yugo is apparent, and so is Shenlong as 'Alpha'. The 'unidentified person' who hacked into the computer data files, was also none other than Jenny Bartory. These are all actual story facts that I gathered from playing the Story Mode, in Jenny's case, the fact she had hacked into the ZLF files but the rest I wrote, so they should not be wrong.