The two bandits continued along the path that Ravendor had instructed them to follow, both saying nothing about what had happened earlier. Dario was tactfully ignoring it as he carried Kaitlyn with him, the girl still upset over what Romero had done to her, and the other bandit scuffed his shoes nearly a pace behind, on Dario's left side, hands sullenly shoved in his pockets. Sulking, Romero cursed his boss for interrupting him, and also the damn near assault he had afflicted upon the blonde man. Romero's palms were cut up from the sharp slivers of rock that had bit into his skin, not badly, but it still irritated him a lot.
I hate my life… Romero moped, kicking a rock around as he continued onwards, I'm always stuck with the crappiest jobs, and the most psychotic bosses. Why can't I be the boss for once? Hey, that'd be cool. But nah, I'm just stuck babysitting a kid I can't even touch without bein' beaten up…
They reached the aforementioned room, and entered, Romero's own thoughts being cut off as he looked around the chamber. Dario was gaping, and even a semi-distressed Kaitlyn looked moderately impressed. The chamber was huge, and not just big enough to house a sandcraft or two, far larger than that. Maybe, Romero reckoned that, if placed neatly beside each other, they could fit about seven hundred sandcrafts in this area, so gigantic that it was. They could not even see the other end of the chamber, or any of the other walls except for the ones they had emerged from. The ceiling was so high up that it was nonexistent, and Dario reckoned that nobody less than a Guardian could have hollowed out such a great room. The dimensions were truly mind-boggling. Dario and Romero suddenly felt like tiny little ants in comparison.
"This is the place that the Boss mentioned," Dario announced, "So all we have to do is wait and make sure Kaitlyn don't disappear, and we'll be all set. I think this might be the easiest part, eh?" He deposited Kaitlyn in a corner, and sat down himself, stretching. Romero began to pace, disliking all the many shadows around them, and the chance that any one of them could hold a thousand terrors.
To combat this, he had to act tough. "So…" Romero drawled, stretching his arms out behind his head, as a languid support. "This looks like one of those haunted places we were goin' on about last night." He grinned. "You think there could be ghosts?" In arrogant confidence, Romero waltzed into a shadow and poked the upper half of his body out of his, so that it looked like he had no legs. "Scared, Bro? I betcha there are tons 'o ghosts around here, maybe we should call them? Hey kid," He directed his attention to Kaitlyn, who was now quite withdrawn and quiet, "You wanna see some ghosts?" His grin took on an evil quality. "The ones that come and steal little girls away in the middle of the night?"
"Bro," Dario warned, "That's enough."
Not taking a hint, Romero only continued his tirade. "Heh, maybe the Kelly Gang are in here somewhere? I'm gonna call them." Turning to the black shadows before them, Romero cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered as loud as he could, making Kaitlyn tense from the noise and recoil inwards, and prompting Dario to shake his head sadly. "HEY! NED! DAN! STEVE! JOE! KELLY GANG, YOU HERE?!" His voice echoed horribly in such a large area, like there were at least fifty versions of Romero's voice all calling the same words, at different rates and speeds. The effect was incredibly spooky. "Ol' Dario here wants to see your faces! Come and give us a look!" They received no answer, except for reverberating echoes.
But, though it was very faint, Dario thought he heard the sound of a small stone rolling somewhere in the darkness. Romero turned back to the others, pleased by his show of courage, puffing his chest out proudly. "It don't matter," The blonde ninja announced, scratching the scar over his eye lightly, "Not like ghosts and monsters scare me, anyway. In fact, give me one right now an' I'll show you just how brave I am!"
Dario's face paled. As if on a perfect cue, a pair of glowing red eyes had just opened in the vast shadows, just over Romero's shoulder. They were filled with malice, hunger, and a contempt for all mankind. It looked like, as the shock hit Dario like a meteorite and he fainted dead away, that the legend and curse was true. Romero found out, far too late.
He was grabbed from behind, yanked back by his bandanna with a sudden sharp pressure enclosing around his right wrist. He was nearly pulled clear off his fist, and dragged back a couple of steps, away from the cringing Kaitlyn. The bandit suddenly smelt something rather musky close by, and felt a presence as cold as ice behind him, bearing absolutely no warmth whatsoever. From out of that, cold breath washed across his neck and he heard a low growl, the grip on his body intensely tightening. Romero, startled enough as he was, would have taken the chance to scream, but-
A powerful pair of jaws closed themselves over Romero's unprotected shoulder, biting down as dagger-like fangs pierced through the cloth and into his weak, soft flesh. They scraped through the thin layer of fatty tissue and met his moderately toned muscles, clamping down like a bear trap and holding firm. His clothes, absorbing a vast amount of his spilt blood, dampened and went dark, collecting most of his lost life force. Clive drank in the rest fitfully, feeling the warmth from Romero's body transfer to his own. There, it was abolished forever. The blood was rich and full of iron, nourishing and plentiful. His one eye wide, the pain finally hit Romero and he did scream, out of sheer surprise, alarm and fear. He struggled against the lycanthrope for a chance to escape, but that just made Clive's teeth tear even further into the flesh, ripping tendon and muscle.
Clive eventually let go, after the wound had been drained of most of it's blood, and pulled up, ripping a huge chunk of flesh from the shoulder in the process. A sickening snap indicated that his collarbone had been broken in the process, crunched into splinters with the spongy marrow gushing out of the fractured cracks. Thin trails of blood were strung through the air as Clive pushed Romero away, claiming his prize of stolen flesh and bone. The bandit's expression was blank with overwhelming pain, now missing a fairly large portion of his left shoulder. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, suffering from a temporary paralysis of his limbs. Blood pooled around his open wound like a small lake, the arm more closely attached to the shoulder going deathly cold. Clive dropped to all fours and separated the cloth from the tender meat, biting down on the latter and beginning to feed. The sound was gory and terrible, almost aqueous and sloppy as the meat was devoured in great chunks, followed by the sharp crack of bone being chewed and swallowed, the marrow slurped up and away.
The fur around Clive's muzzle was flecked with splashes of blood, small strips of gore spotted here and there. Clive cleared them away with the back of one claw and prowled closer to the injured bandit, where the removal of the flesh and caused the wound to spill out more blood, visibly draining from his ripped-open veins. Romero's face was pale with pain and the lack of blood, twitching and quivering from the damage done to his nerves. Everything had hit him so fast, that he still had no idea of what was going on. All he knew was that he had been attacked.
"Dario…" He rasped in a weakened voice, still twitching spasmodically. "Where the… hell d'ya go, Bro?" His chest became heavy as a pressure was planted upon it, tentative, and then was slowly withdrawn. Romero, through his fit of agony, felt something freezing cold touch his open wound, and he fought with all his strength to hold back a scream. If his limb had not been as frosted over with numbing cold, so similar to the monster that had attacked him, Romero would have easily fainted dead away from the unbearable pain. Clive, leaning over Romero's abused body, licked the blood out of the injury that was steadily collecting in the lumps of remaining flesh, gruesomely drinking the rest of the blood. Romero wheezed, and tried to move away, but he could not even summon the strength to shift an inch.
When all the blood was gone, the lycanthrope began to tear small strips of meat off the wound, less tender than the flesh that had come before, but still edible and wholesome. Romero whimpered as his left hand flinched whenever another chunk of flesh was ripped off, knowing that he should be at least grateful that he felt no direct pain from the act. But he had to do something soon, or he would die. "Dario…" He tried again, hoping that he would get a reply. "For fuck's sake… kill it… kill it now…" The only answer he got was his own breathing, the icy breath of the monster, and Kaitlyn's harsh, though distant sobbing.
His left hand flimsy and useless, Romero focussed on his more-or-less healthy right hand, which was lifelessly flopped by his side. Gradually, it inched over to Romero's belt, near the small compartments where he kept all of his deadly throwing stars. The bandit's fingers touched the metal surface of the container weakly, and slowly fumbled with the lid to open it, cursing under his breath. Here he was, being eaten alive, and he could even flip open a damn lid!
There was a slight 'click', and the lip snapped open, the sound as wonderful and as beautiful as he had ever heard it before. Reaching two fingers into the compartment, they closed around the sides of a sharply honed ninja star, the edge serrated and jagged, so that when it ensnared itself into a body, it would take a whole lot of suffering to pull it out again. Romero may not have been talented enough to wield any kind of ARM, but these small weapons would just do nicely, as long as he could muster up the strength to use one…
Clive yelped suddenly as a small explosion of pain burst with razor-sharp fury into his side, neatly entering the space between two of his ribs and getting caught there, the area blackening with demon blood. Romero took his chance and lashed out at the lycan with his foot, kicking the monster hard in the stomach and managing to knock him to the side. Now free, the bandit heaved himself up into a sitting position and howled out in agony as he finally saw his own wound, a huge gaping hole where his shoulder used to be. He didn't even have a left shoulder anymore, his arm only still attached to his body by a few measly tendons. Romero went as white as a ghost and shuffled his body up against the wall, tears of pain stinging his eyes. This just could not be happening. He could see the injury, it was a fatal one…
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit… fucking SHIT! I'm… I'm gonna die… I'm gonna die…No! I don't wanna die!
The beast recovered at an alarming rate, trying for a few unsuccessful moments to remove the serrated piece of metal from his side. He eventually gave up and pounced on Romero again, enraged by the retaliation of the bandit. Romero was viciously pressed into the rock wall, shivering from fear. It was going to end, he knew it was going to end, and he understood the definite outcome. He was going to die. Feeling himself becoming lightheaded from the effects of the bite, the injury and his fear, Romero wilted under the pressure, coughing up a tiny amount of blood. Giving up, he gave a weak, ironic smile. "Fuck you." He whispered.
Snarling, Clive leaned over, and tore Romero's throat out.
Blood spurted as his jugular veins were torn apart, more than half of his entire neck ripped out of it's place. Clive spat out this part and smashed Romero's head against the wall, the back of his skull fracturing under the impact. The lycanthrope no longer wanted a good meal, all he wanted now was revenge, and the chance to hurt and kill. Clive hit him against the wall, again and again, until the wall was stained a vibrant red, painted like a blooming crimson flower in it's shape, and Romero's head was nothing more than a bloody mess. Brains leaked out between the smashed parts of his skull, and Clive finally dropped him, his claws and muzzle bloody from the fight.
Now directing his attention to himself, he tried one more time to remove the sharp piece of metal, but his claws just weren't made to be manipulated in that manner, and all he managed to do was just dig it in further and cut himself a little bit. Realising that he would be unable to pull the obstruction out by himself, Clive chose to ignore the pain and drop again to all fours, looking around the room. He was no longer hungry, but something strange told him that his hunt was not yet over. Asides from food, he was supposed to be hunting something else. Scanning his short and damaged memory, he looked for answer, but the voice inside his head that told him what to do, what action to take, was silent. That part of him, the fragment of his human soul was lost.
Changing the focus of his mind, Clive suddenly heard sobbing, and it was coming from very close by. Turning, he noticed the little blonde human child huddled up against the wall, hugging her knees and crying, blocking out the horrors of the world around her. The girl's clothes and hair were disheveled, a small scrape on her knee visible from an old band-aid that was almost falling off. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her eyes squeezed shut.
This sight had the same effect on Clive as if he had been struck suddenly with a blunt object, the lycanthrope sagging under a tiredness that hit him from out of nowhere. This was, that girl was important. He silenced the growl that had been building in his throat and went quiet, slowly moving over to her. She seemed not to notice his presence, so distressed that she was. A dark fire burning in his soul faded, and he discovered that he did not want to hurt anymore. Instead, he lightly touched the girl's shoulder, trying to discern what was wrong with her.
Find… cub… Find? … Kait…lyn…?
Something changed, and Clive, from an unknown place, was called back.
The gentle pawing he had been doing to Kaitlyn became more of a human's hand grip, and for the first few seconds, Clive's mind was a complete blank. It was like awakening from a very deep sleep, still groggy and disordered, unable to tell where he was. With the addition of an unfamiliar body to control, it only made matters worse. Soon, his eyes refocused and he noticed Kaitlyn, as who she really was. Surprised at her sudden presence, he grabbed her other shoulder lightly, just to make sure she was there. "Leave me alone…" She whispered, eyes still closed. "I wanna go home…"
Kaitlyn! Clive cried in his mind, She is here! She is still alive! I have found her… but… Where am I? There is a… huge gap in my memory… Something about fire, and pain. I saw somebody… and I knew the truth. I cannot remember though, and… No, it does not matter…
Looking down upon the girl, Clive became aware of the shape of his hands, which were more like animal claws, and nearly panicked, realising a painful fact. His mind had gone back to normal, but his body was still that of a fully changed lycanthrope. It probably meant that he could not talk either, and he should not try, either, in case he scared Kaitlyn more. Carefully relaxing his grip on the young girl, Clive raised one claw and wiped blood off his mouth, the taste still vibrant and pronounced in his senses. He had been hunting, he knew that. All he could do now was thank the Guardians that Kaitlyn had not been on his hidden agenda. He let go of Kaitlyn fully and nudged her side, trying to get the girl to stand up and walk. She, in response, curled up tighter and refused to budge. Clive decided to take a chance.
"…K-K-Krraaaiittrrinn…." He said.
The little girl went silent, her sobs ceasing. Going limp, she relaxed her body and unhooked her arms from around her knees, surprised. She had just heard her name, though horribly distorted, being called. It had a tone of familiarity to it, and some kind of warmth, though the presence that was radiating it was so cold. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked around for the person addressing her, her grey eyes wide with confusion. Her little heart nearly froze as she spotted Clive, the lycan on his knees, claws in his lap and looking at her inquisitively, his tail wagging slightly. Looking at his rows of gleaming teeth triggered a memory of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and she screamed, frightened of the monster in front of her.
Her fear turned into shock and puzzlement as she was suddenly and unexpectedly drawn into a rough, though gentle, hug. She nearly tried to resist, but gave up before she even began to try, somehow knowing that the monster would not attack her. There was something familiar about the creature, a vague thought, and the familiarity of his dirty, dusty clothes. They looked a lot like her father's drifting gear, no wait, they were her father's drifting gear. She could see a small stain on the inside of the red coat from where she had spilled a small amount blank ink over it about a year ago, and nothing herself and her mother had tried would get it out. This was, this had to be, her father. Kaitlyn was now certain, even his hugs were practically the same. "Daddy?" She asked, hardly daring to believe…
Unable to respond, Clive just tightened the hug slightly, and that was all the confirmation Kaitlyn needed. She didn't think it was possible, but her father had come to rescue her, it was just amazing. "Daddy!" Kaitlyn repeated, hugging back. "I missed you! I didn't know I was going to be kid-napped and these people took me here! I was scared, but not as much as I was supposed to be! I went hiking and camping and I even left a clue for you to find, did you find it? Daddy, why do you look like that? What happened? Where's Mama? Can we go home?" The girl began to babble happily, trying to say so much at once, her previous fear suddenly forgotten. Clive wished that he could reply, but just remained silent.
However, his silence all of a sudden became an incoherent roar, born of pain, as twin slashes of burning agony were swept across his back. Clive fell forward and kept himself from hitting the ground with one claw, the other wrapped protectively around Kaitlyn. Landing like a graceful cat, Antonio's feet touched the ground with no sound, assuming a ninja-like crouch, the long blades attached to his leather gloves out and slicked with Clive's black blood. The fight was not over just yet. "I see!" The small ninja cried, slowly standing up. "This be the fight that Boss warn me about! You try and take chica? You fight Antonio first!" His eyes strayed to Kaitlyn, who was clinging to her father for dear life, unsure if she should be scared or not. Antonio was a nice man, but he had also just attacked Clive, what was she to think? To believe? "You no worry," Antonio said more softly to Kaitlyn, "I get you away from monster soon enough. You be safe."
Clive comprehended the challenge, and readily accepted it. No bandit was going to stop him from bringing Kaitlyn home. Nobody. Setting Kaitlyn against the wall, and making a simple hand motion that she was to stay put, Clive stood up as best as he could, still having to lean forward a bit because of his skeletal structure, and bared his teeth, snarling. Throughout all of this ordeal, a new way of fighting had been programmed into his body, and he would use it to his utmost degree, seeing that he was basically unarmed without it. He could not lose this fight. Losing the fight meant losing Kaitlyn, and that was simply not an option. He would fight as he was, a monster.
Antonio was riled. Stepping backward a bit, his foot touched something fleshy and he turned his head slightly to see it, balking and paling at the scene of Romero's remains splattered all over the wall and floor. Who had done this to him? The monster? What kind of force was he up against? Maybe he should run. But, on the other hand, it had taken Kaitlyn hostage and he couldn't allow that, he had to save her; it was his duty. Antonio felt anger boil up inside his small chest, knowing which path was right. Romero was nowhere near as talented as he was in ninja skills, he would have to rely on that to win this fight. He had to make sure that Kaitlyn stayed safe. To keep his boss happy, and to keep himself happy. Truth be told, he sort of liked the little girl, she was pleasant to be around with. The least he could do was save her when she needed it most.
Kaitlyn didn't want either of them to be hurt. She liked Antonio, and loved her father, why did they have to fight like this? Over her? What was so special about her? Couldn't they see that she didn't want either of them to die? Antonio shuffled one foot forward, tilting a little bit and lowering his height, raising both fists just so that the steel claws were ready to be used. Fury was imprinted on his hazel-green eyes, and when he finally lunged, they seemed to be on fire. "This is for 'Ro, you bastard!" He screamed, his curly black hair flying out behind him like a wild mane.
Hackles raised, Clive roared and charged out to meet the attack, the two sets of claws, both artificial and real, became locked with each other and they struggled, Antonio for Clive's greater strength, and Clive for Antonio's penchant for shifting his center of gravity every single second, the effect like trying to hold onto a slippery little fish. Kaitlyn, on the sidelines, could only watch, awaiting the inevitable outcome, that somebody was going to die.
The fight for Kaitlyn's life had begun.