i am in heaven. thank you all for your reviews, especially sf for your words of encouragement =) yoong, X-parrot (love your work), gallatica, konzen, labrynth, krimson, NekoMegami-chan, and K. Firefly, i'm grateful to you for taking those extra moments to make a museless writer happy!
UltraM2000, the typo is fixed and NAZE AAIU HEN NA MONO O SHITTERUNO? Makibishe tte koto, makibishi!! are wa ninja no dougu darou? o_0;;
.............................................
It is said that birds of a feather, flock together.
Nowhere does it say what happens when birds of very different feathers are told to flock west.
Given their distinctive shares of Personality and Ability, History and Destiny, it was basically anybody's guess. Obviously it was somebody's, for it was no more coincidence that the four of them were reunited in this lifetime than it was coincidence for an apple, when dropped, to fall down. In both cases, there was a large force at work in a myriad of small ways.
For example, it was amazing how many differences were reflected between the members of their group. At first glance, they had nothing in common. Indeed, the second and the third glances only strengthened that impression. It took a keen observer at the right times to see what they themselves sometimes could not, that their differences were actually what made them strong. An even keener observer would have seen that underlying those differences was something that pulled them in the same direction.
It is said that opposites attract.
This may not be true, but they can learn to get along...
...eventually.
...................................................
Sleep. He really didn't see how it was possible to argue over sleep. Everyone needed it, didn't they? It was just a question of how much, and when. But apparently that was enough to make trouble. He slept lightly, except when drunk, which was perhaps why he liked getting drunk so much. It was a habit he'd picked up in his childhood and hadn't been able to let go afterwards, because what with one thing and another, it seemed to help keep him alive. At times like these, he really wondered if that was a good thing.
It was a bad night. Goku never seemed to have them, and it was hard not to be jealous. As long as he knew where Sanzo was, he slept the sleep of the eighteen-year old who has just eaten a meal for three. It was a sight to make the just and weary envious. Adversity only seemed to make him snore the louder, and kick the harder.
For Hakkai, a bad night started with a smile. Hakkai, who smiled perpetually when awake, almost never did so in his sleep. When he did, it was a smile that didn't belong to him anymore, and always ended in a feverish scrubbing at his hands. He didn't know the details of those dreams, though he could guess them. He knew enough not to ask.
Besides, as nightmares went, he had his own. For him, a bad night meant his mother and an axe. It came from different directions--sometimes it began with a warm fleshy woman on top of him, sometimes he was five and had been very bad. Each time it was as terrifying as the first. After so many years, he could almost feel them coming, the way farmers could smell rain.
Apparently, so could the monk. On the nights that Sanzo felt were bad, he simply didn't sleep. Instead, he would stay up and smoke, then appear in the morning, red-eyed, deathly pale and foul-tempered. What kind of dreams could cause a man to do that? He never wanted to know.
It looked to be one of those nights. Having gone upstairs when Hakkai's comments seemed to wander a little too innocently towards the events of the morning, Sanzo had then pointedly refused to be baited into stepping outside the room. He stood at the window now, smoking and looking at a cloudy half moon, three crumpled ends already lying at his feet. To Sanzo, the world was his ashtray.
Hakkai sometimes said (in that way which made you wonder if he was joking) that if they took more than three years to reach Tenjiku, they would all fall to lung disease. But Sanzo could still move without hard breathing and his voice was clear and strong. He smoked two packs a day but if he was addicted, it didn't show; he'd seen him go without for more than a day.
It seemed to be one of those little ways in which the monk was able to cheat, like being a holy man who could drink beer and eat meat. Like being sarcastic and beautiful and violent and still, somehow, a Good Guy. You had to hand it to him. He had an uncompromising attitude towards Life, which was famously full of compromises. And so far, he'd gotten away with it.
Take, for example, the way they went West. There were many roads that led toward Tenjiku, but Sanzo had chosen none. Instead, they charted their travel in a straight line, due west, and took the roads as they came. He didn't argue when Sanzo said that this way saved time. He was no cartographer, and for all he knew, Sanzo might be right. But he had a sneaking suspicion that Fate wouldn't take kindly to such travel plans. Fate liked curves.
Beside him, Hakkai bedded down for the night, seemingly resigned to letting the matter slide. Clever, gentle Hakkai also knew the signs of a bad night, and had lived long enough to know that talk, unlike milk, will not spoil if you let it stand until morning. The fire was dying, leaving them in darkness and the gleam from the window. He let his mind drift where it would, knowing that sleep was like a stubborn woman: call it and it never came, but pretend to ignore it and sooner or later it would sidle over with a gleam in its eye.
His last thought was of Sanzo, reaching through bars of moonlight to free a hungry child.
............................................
The monk roused them almost an hour earlier than usual, and even Hakkai yawned as they prepared to go. One look at the shadows beneath his eyes sufficed to quiet all complaints; not even Goku was oblivious enough to risk Sanzo's anger after a bad night. The innkeeper was already up and had packed them a generous day's worth of meals, having checked their credit last night and found it good. They set off in Jeep as the sun began to rise, filling the spaces between the trees with fire. This time, Goku was the first one in.
The early light was too weak to filter through the layers of branches over head, and they drove carefully in the dim light along the narrow road, which was no more than a simple path worn flat by the passage of hooves and their herders. Eventually they came into denser forest, where the dark boles of pine trees rose all around. Here, hewn stumps squatted at both sides of the road, which grew narrower.
The air was moist, and Goku sniffed it.
"There's a stream, somewhere ahead."
"Aa, that must be where they usually take the animals to be watered," Hakkai said. "I'd wondered why the road was so well-packed." The scent of pine needles, leaf rot and cool earth rose to meet them from the surrounding wood. They had gone only a few miles when they felt a jolt, and a cheeping sound of distress came from under the hood. Jeep rumbled to a halt. Sanzo, who had been dozing stiffly upright in the manner of those uncomfortable with being seen sleeping, lifted an eyebrow.
"I'll go see what it is," Hakkai said, a slight frown crossing his face as he climbed out. He circled the vehicle, then stopped and crouched down by the rear left tire. "Oh dear." He straightened up. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask everyone to step out for a moment."
"What's happened? Is Hakuryuu ok?" Goku scrambled around to where Hakkai stood. "Hey! Look, the tire's punctured! Can you fix that?"
"I can try," the response came, as green eyes fixed thoughtfully on the trembling white frame. "Hakuryuu, can you change? I'll try to make it better." Almost immediately, the vehicle began to shrink, the mass melting away until only a little white dragon lay in the middle of the road.
"Good boy--no, don't try to fly--let me see first." Hakkai scooped up the small body gently, and eyes like ruby chips fixed on him mournfully as the hind left foot was held out for inspection. One talon was broken and bleeding. "I think I can make it better. I hope our bodies are similar enough to use the same kind of energy. Hold still, now." His brow creased wih concentration, and a small white line of energy crept out of his fingertip, winding itself around the dragon's foot. Slowly, it pulled tighter, until it vanished into the skin. The bleeding stopped, and the nail mended.
Hakuryuu flexed its toes twice, then launched itself out of the hands and flew around Hakkai's head, nipping at his hair affectionately. He laughed. "Guess that did it."
"What's this?" Goku was holding something in his hands, turning it over. "Ouch!" He dropped it, and sucked at a finger. "It's sharp."
Gojyo reached down and picked it up gingerly. "What the fuck? This ain't no pinecone. Who left this lying around? This must be what Jeep blew his tire on." He examined it. It was made of metal, four spikes twisted together in a way so that no matter how it fell, one spike was cruelly pointing up.
"Look, there's more up here!" Goku had gone several feet ahead. "Wow, a whole bunch of them! Who would leave something like this lying around?"
"Nobody who means well," snapped Sanzo. "Give me that!" He snatched the object from Gojyo's hands, ignoring his outraged protest. "It's a caltrop," he said, "and it certainly never fell from a tree, or without a reason."
Hakkai glanced up suddenly, and all eyes followed his.
"I don't see anything," Goku ventured.
Hakkai shook his head. "Don't look. Listen."
"But I don't hear anything either!"
"Exactly. Just now the birds all went quiet."
He was right. There was a sudden hush that made all of them tense and reach for their weapons. For one long moment nothing came, and then out of nowhere a knife buried itself in a tree trunk just to the left of Sanzo's head.
"Get down! And scatter!" he shouted, and they all ducked and rolled with the automatic reaction of those who know that it is better to present a smaller and preferably moving target. "They're all in the trees!" As he headed away from the bare exposure of the road, he spotted movement from the corner of his eye and felt the rippling ki of murderous intent wash over him. Without stopping to look back, he fired over his shoulder, and was rewarded by a screech and a crackle of impact, as of a body hitting undergrowth below.
There's one, he thought grimly. But how many were left? The forest was thick and he dodged behind a trunk, shooting at two more shapes that came leaping through the trees. They moved with a speed and silence that was positively uncanny, and something about their coloring made them difficult to see. He could track them by the bending of the branches as they moved, but by then they were somewhere in between. He squinted to see if he'd hit any, then began running again as two arrows thumped into the ground by his feet.
His mind worked furiously as he stumbled through the knee-high ferns. Every few moments, the whistle-zip of an arrow would sound and a shaft would land, sometimes in the dirt and sometimes in a tree, but always close. He had the feeling that they were toying with him, almost, and he didn't like it at all.
Got to stand and fight, he thought, I won't last long like this. Ahead of him it grew brighter; the trees seemed to thin into a small clearing. He wondered if it would help him to escape the trees. He couldn't see well enough to shoot in this thick cover.
One the other hand, that meant exposing himself first. And he made target, to their several. He looked back once more and fired at a figure perched on a bough. It leaped straight up, but not fast enough. Twisting with a shriek as a bullet caught it in the leg, it missed the branch on the way down.
As he turned to run, an arrow hissed so close to his ear the fletching cut into his cheek. He threw himself forward into a diving roll. Fleetingly he felt his shoulder strike a rock, and then the ground fell away abruptly into a slope he hadn't seen. He looked down wildly as he slid, his feet lashing out for purchase, feeling skin and clothes tear on rock and root. He was headed straight towards a large creek.
The thought flashed through his head. The water ran almost twenty feet wide, and no trees grew immediately over its steep bank. Once he crossed the water, he would have a clear shot at his attackers as they came over the crest.
If he survived the crossing. Surging to his feet, he desperately tried to keep his legs ahead of his nose as gravity carried him down at a plunging run. He hit the water and lost his balance at the same time, feeling a hot wrench of pain in his left foot as he flailed for a moment before staggering towards the low bank and its fringe of trees. Cursing his sodden robes, he expected every moment for an arrow to arrive in the small of his back. To his amazement, he gained the cover of the other bank before the first shape appeared.
"All right, my turn," he snarled and picked it off before it could so much as start down the slope. Two more dodged back behind the trees, having seen what had happened to their more precipitate comrade. Then, as he was taking aim, he saw another further downstream, trying to sneak its way across. "Oho," he muttered, changed direction, and fired. The figure toppled back into the water with a splash.
The remaining attackers had vanished. Gone back for reinforcements or fled, it was hard to say. He thought he could hear shouts; perhaps the other three had caught up and were sorting them out. They would get one alive, if they were lucky. There had been too many attacks lately. He wondered if one more had joined the ranks of those out for their skin, or whether Gyokumen was simply bored.
At any rate, he now had time to breathe. His shoulder was welling blood from a gash and his robes were sodden. He wiped a hand across his bleeding cheek, still struggling not to gasp great gulps of air, and swore once more to cut down on the cigarettes. The shouts came once more, closer, and he could now make out his name. Limping a little--it seemed he'd twisted his ankle when he'd stumbled into the creek--he went forward to meet them.
Above him he heard a slight rustle, but felt no wind...
There was just time for him to bring one arm up before his attacker crashed down. There was a metallic impact and the gun was knocked out of his hands, and then breath was knocked out of his lungs and the world was full of grinning teeth and claws and blood. He clawed back desperately, struggling to keep the teeth and limbs away from his face and throat. Wrenching his knee up he tried to flip himself over, and succeeded in driving a glancing blow beneath the ribs. As it flinched he rocked up and butted squarely in between the gleeful eyes. It howled and clutched its nose, and he threw it off and scrambled upright.
The gun, the gun--he knew what direction it'd gone, but not where. He stumbled and then saw, on the ground, the knife that had slid off his weapon and apparently sliced down his arm. The cut was pouring, his sleeve felt full already. Knowing that his attacker was already back on his feet, he bent down and swiped it. Turning back, arm dripping, he gritted, "Just _die_ already."
"You first, bouzu," came the answer. The voice was shockingly sane, the smile passably so. It was the eyes that were the problem. But his focus was trapped somewhere lower. He wondered briefly if it would be of any use to try and throw the knife.
It always surprised him, the way time would slow down. How everything moved like it was trapped in treacle. Eyes saw everything, and he took in the shape of his attacker, smaller and leaner and hunched, built like a jumper. Ears took in the crackle of footsteps, the hurried shouts. They were coming, but he knew they would be late. Seconds from death, but the senses stretched those seconds slow.
The clawed hands lifted. They held his gun. He saw them squeeze the trigger, felt his muscles bunch hopelessly in the attempt to dodge a bullet coming from six feet away--
He felt, rather than heard the cry. Something crashed into him, and suddenly the smell of the forest floor was in his face. He had a brief sense of deja vu, just before he passed out.
.............................................
*whew* i'm no good at writing action. arrgh, the problems of having a grand, overarching scheme of things and absolutely NO details to fill it in... -_-;; man, when will i get to throw in some yaoi??
UltraM2000, the typo is fixed and NAZE AAIU HEN NA MONO O SHITTERUNO? Makibishe tte koto, makibishi!! are wa ninja no dougu darou? o_0;;
.............................................
It is said that birds of a feather, flock together.
Nowhere does it say what happens when birds of very different feathers are told to flock west.
Given their distinctive shares of Personality and Ability, History and Destiny, it was basically anybody's guess. Obviously it was somebody's, for it was no more coincidence that the four of them were reunited in this lifetime than it was coincidence for an apple, when dropped, to fall down. In both cases, there was a large force at work in a myriad of small ways.
For example, it was amazing how many differences were reflected between the members of their group. At first glance, they had nothing in common. Indeed, the second and the third glances only strengthened that impression. It took a keen observer at the right times to see what they themselves sometimes could not, that their differences were actually what made them strong. An even keener observer would have seen that underlying those differences was something that pulled them in the same direction.
It is said that opposites attract.
This may not be true, but they can learn to get along...
...eventually.
...................................................
Sleep. He really didn't see how it was possible to argue over sleep. Everyone needed it, didn't they? It was just a question of how much, and when. But apparently that was enough to make trouble. He slept lightly, except when drunk, which was perhaps why he liked getting drunk so much. It was a habit he'd picked up in his childhood and hadn't been able to let go afterwards, because what with one thing and another, it seemed to help keep him alive. At times like these, he really wondered if that was a good thing.
It was a bad night. Goku never seemed to have them, and it was hard not to be jealous. As long as he knew where Sanzo was, he slept the sleep of the eighteen-year old who has just eaten a meal for three. It was a sight to make the just and weary envious. Adversity only seemed to make him snore the louder, and kick the harder.
For Hakkai, a bad night started with a smile. Hakkai, who smiled perpetually when awake, almost never did so in his sleep. When he did, it was a smile that didn't belong to him anymore, and always ended in a feverish scrubbing at his hands. He didn't know the details of those dreams, though he could guess them. He knew enough not to ask.
Besides, as nightmares went, he had his own. For him, a bad night meant his mother and an axe. It came from different directions--sometimes it began with a warm fleshy woman on top of him, sometimes he was five and had been very bad. Each time it was as terrifying as the first. After so many years, he could almost feel them coming, the way farmers could smell rain.
Apparently, so could the monk. On the nights that Sanzo felt were bad, he simply didn't sleep. Instead, he would stay up and smoke, then appear in the morning, red-eyed, deathly pale and foul-tempered. What kind of dreams could cause a man to do that? He never wanted to know.
It looked to be one of those nights. Having gone upstairs when Hakkai's comments seemed to wander a little too innocently towards the events of the morning, Sanzo had then pointedly refused to be baited into stepping outside the room. He stood at the window now, smoking and looking at a cloudy half moon, three crumpled ends already lying at his feet. To Sanzo, the world was his ashtray.
Hakkai sometimes said (in that way which made you wonder if he was joking) that if they took more than three years to reach Tenjiku, they would all fall to lung disease. But Sanzo could still move without hard breathing and his voice was clear and strong. He smoked two packs a day but if he was addicted, it didn't show; he'd seen him go without for more than a day.
It seemed to be one of those little ways in which the monk was able to cheat, like being a holy man who could drink beer and eat meat. Like being sarcastic and beautiful and violent and still, somehow, a Good Guy. You had to hand it to him. He had an uncompromising attitude towards Life, which was famously full of compromises. And so far, he'd gotten away with it.
Take, for example, the way they went West. There were many roads that led toward Tenjiku, but Sanzo had chosen none. Instead, they charted their travel in a straight line, due west, and took the roads as they came. He didn't argue when Sanzo said that this way saved time. He was no cartographer, and for all he knew, Sanzo might be right. But he had a sneaking suspicion that Fate wouldn't take kindly to such travel plans. Fate liked curves.
Beside him, Hakkai bedded down for the night, seemingly resigned to letting the matter slide. Clever, gentle Hakkai also knew the signs of a bad night, and had lived long enough to know that talk, unlike milk, will not spoil if you let it stand until morning. The fire was dying, leaving them in darkness and the gleam from the window. He let his mind drift where it would, knowing that sleep was like a stubborn woman: call it and it never came, but pretend to ignore it and sooner or later it would sidle over with a gleam in its eye.
His last thought was of Sanzo, reaching through bars of moonlight to free a hungry child.
............................................
The monk roused them almost an hour earlier than usual, and even Hakkai yawned as they prepared to go. One look at the shadows beneath his eyes sufficed to quiet all complaints; not even Goku was oblivious enough to risk Sanzo's anger after a bad night. The innkeeper was already up and had packed them a generous day's worth of meals, having checked their credit last night and found it good. They set off in Jeep as the sun began to rise, filling the spaces between the trees with fire. This time, Goku was the first one in.
The early light was too weak to filter through the layers of branches over head, and they drove carefully in the dim light along the narrow road, which was no more than a simple path worn flat by the passage of hooves and their herders. Eventually they came into denser forest, where the dark boles of pine trees rose all around. Here, hewn stumps squatted at both sides of the road, which grew narrower.
The air was moist, and Goku sniffed it.
"There's a stream, somewhere ahead."
"Aa, that must be where they usually take the animals to be watered," Hakkai said. "I'd wondered why the road was so well-packed." The scent of pine needles, leaf rot and cool earth rose to meet them from the surrounding wood. They had gone only a few miles when they felt a jolt, and a cheeping sound of distress came from under the hood. Jeep rumbled to a halt. Sanzo, who had been dozing stiffly upright in the manner of those uncomfortable with being seen sleeping, lifted an eyebrow.
"I'll go see what it is," Hakkai said, a slight frown crossing his face as he climbed out. He circled the vehicle, then stopped and crouched down by the rear left tire. "Oh dear." He straightened up. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask everyone to step out for a moment."
"What's happened? Is Hakuryuu ok?" Goku scrambled around to where Hakkai stood. "Hey! Look, the tire's punctured! Can you fix that?"
"I can try," the response came, as green eyes fixed thoughtfully on the trembling white frame. "Hakuryuu, can you change? I'll try to make it better." Almost immediately, the vehicle began to shrink, the mass melting away until only a little white dragon lay in the middle of the road.
"Good boy--no, don't try to fly--let me see first." Hakkai scooped up the small body gently, and eyes like ruby chips fixed on him mournfully as the hind left foot was held out for inspection. One talon was broken and bleeding. "I think I can make it better. I hope our bodies are similar enough to use the same kind of energy. Hold still, now." His brow creased wih concentration, and a small white line of energy crept out of his fingertip, winding itself around the dragon's foot. Slowly, it pulled tighter, until it vanished into the skin. The bleeding stopped, and the nail mended.
Hakuryuu flexed its toes twice, then launched itself out of the hands and flew around Hakkai's head, nipping at his hair affectionately. He laughed. "Guess that did it."
"What's this?" Goku was holding something in his hands, turning it over. "Ouch!" He dropped it, and sucked at a finger. "It's sharp."
Gojyo reached down and picked it up gingerly. "What the fuck? This ain't no pinecone. Who left this lying around? This must be what Jeep blew his tire on." He examined it. It was made of metal, four spikes twisted together in a way so that no matter how it fell, one spike was cruelly pointing up.
"Look, there's more up here!" Goku had gone several feet ahead. "Wow, a whole bunch of them! Who would leave something like this lying around?"
"Nobody who means well," snapped Sanzo. "Give me that!" He snatched the object from Gojyo's hands, ignoring his outraged protest. "It's a caltrop," he said, "and it certainly never fell from a tree, or without a reason."
Hakkai glanced up suddenly, and all eyes followed his.
"I don't see anything," Goku ventured.
Hakkai shook his head. "Don't look. Listen."
"But I don't hear anything either!"
"Exactly. Just now the birds all went quiet."
He was right. There was a sudden hush that made all of them tense and reach for their weapons. For one long moment nothing came, and then out of nowhere a knife buried itself in a tree trunk just to the left of Sanzo's head.
"Get down! And scatter!" he shouted, and they all ducked and rolled with the automatic reaction of those who know that it is better to present a smaller and preferably moving target. "They're all in the trees!" As he headed away from the bare exposure of the road, he spotted movement from the corner of his eye and felt the rippling ki of murderous intent wash over him. Without stopping to look back, he fired over his shoulder, and was rewarded by a screech and a crackle of impact, as of a body hitting undergrowth below.
There's one, he thought grimly. But how many were left? The forest was thick and he dodged behind a trunk, shooting at two more shapes that came leaping through the trees. They moved with a speed and silence that was positively uncanny, and something about their coloring made them difficult to see. He could track them by the bending of the branches as they moved, but by then they were somewhere in between. He squinted to see if he'd hit any, then began running again as two arrows thumped into the ground by his feet.
His mind worked furiously as he stumbled through the knee-high ferns. Every few moments, the whistle-zip of an arrow would sound and a shaft would land, sometimes in the dirt and sometimes in a tree, but always close. He had the feeling that they were toying with him, almost, and he didn't like it at all.
Got to stand and fight, he thought, I won't last long like this. Ahead of him it grew brighter; the trees seemed to thin into a small clearing. He wondered if it would help him to escape the trees. He couldn't see well enough to shoot in this thick cover.
One the other hand, that meant exposing himself first. And he made target, to their several. He looked back once more and fired at a figure perched on a bough. It leaped straight up, but not fast enough. Twisting with a shriek as a bullet caught it in the leg, it missed the branch on the way down.
As he turned to run, an arrow hissed so close to his ear the fletching cut into his cheek. He threw himself forward into a diving roll. Fleetingly he felt his shoulder strike a rock, and then the ground fell away abruptly into a slope he hadn't seen. He looked down wildly as he slid, his feet lashing out for purchase, feeling skin and clothes tear on rock and root. He was headed straight towards a large creek.
The thought flashed through his head. The water ran almost twenty feet wide, and no trees grew immediately over its steep bank. Once he crossed the water, he would have a clear shot at his attackers as they came over the crest.
If he survived the crossing. Surging to his feet, he desperately tried to keep his legs ahead of his nose as gravity carried him down at a plunging run. He hit the water and lost his balance at the same time, feeling a hot wrench of pain in his left foot as he flailed for a moment before staggering towards the low bank and its fringe of trees. Cursing his sodden robes, he expected every moment for an arrow to arrive in the small of his back. To his amazement, he gained the cover of the other bank before the first shape appeared.
"All right, my turn," he snarled and picked it off before it could so much as start down the slope. Two more dodged back behind the trees, having seen what had happened to their more precipitate comrade. Then, as he was taking aim, he saw another further downstream, trying to sneak its way across. "Oho," he muttered, changed direction, and fired. The figure toppled back into the water with a splash.
The remaining attackers had vanished. Gone back for reinforcements or fled, it was hard to say. He thought he could hear shouts; perhaps the other three had caught up and were sorting them out. They would get one alive, if they were lucky. There had been too many attacks lately. He wondered if one more had joined the ranks of those out for their skin, or whether Gyokumen was simply bored.
At any rate, he now had time to breathe. His shoulder was welling blood from a gash and his robes were sodden. He wiped a hand across his bleeding cheek, still struggling not to gasp great gulps of air, and swore once more to cut down on the cigarettes. The shouts came once more, closer, and he could now make out his name. Limping a little--it seemed he'd twisted his ankle when he'd stumbled into the creek--he went forward to meet them.
Above him he heard a slight rustle, but felt no wind...
There was just time for him to bring one arm up before his attacker crashed down. There was a metallic impact and the gun was knocked out of his hands, and then breath was knocked out of his lungs and the world was full of grinning teeth and claws and blood. He clawed back desperately, struggling to keep the teeth and limbs away from his face and throat. Wrenching his knee up he tried to flip himself over, and succeeded in driving a glancing blow beneath the ribs. As it flinched he rocked up and butted squarely in between the gleeful eyes. It howled and clutched its nose, and he threw it off and scrambled upright.
The gun, the gun--he knew what direction it'd gone, but not where. He stumbled and then saw, on the ground, the knife that had slid off his weapon and apparently sliced down his arm. The cut was pouring, his sleeve felt full already. Knowing that his attacker was already back on his feet, he bent down and swiped it. Turning back, arm dripping, he gritted, "Just _die_ already."
"You first, bouzu," came the answer. The voice was shockingly sane, the smile passably so. It was the eyes that were the problem. But his focus was trapped somewhere lower. He wondered briefly if it would be of any use to try and throw the knife.
It always surprised him, the way time would slow down. How everything moved like it was trapped in treacle. Eyes saw everything, and he took in the shape of his attacker, smaller and leaner and hunched, built like a jumper. Ears took in the crackle of footsteps, the hurried shouts. They were coming, but he knew they would be late. Seconds from death, but the senses stretched those seconds slow.
The clawed hands lifted. They held his gun. He saw them squeeze the trigger, felt his muscles bunch hopelessly in the attempt to dodge a bullet coming from six feet away--
He felt, rather than heard the cry. Something crashed into him, and suddenly the smell of the forest floor was in his face. He had a brief sense of deja vu, just before he passed out.
.............................................
*whew* i'm no good at writing action. arrgh, the problems of having a grand, overarching scheme of things and absolutely NO details to fill it in... -_-;; man, when will i get to throw in some yaoi??