A/N: Here's the second chapter.
The first thing Yuffie Kisaragi registered when consciousness climbed back into the drivers seat of her mind was the smell of pine, ash, and a smell she couldn't quite place.
With a groan she shifted, pulling her blanket more tightly around her. Her eyes snapped open as she gripped the blanket in her hands. And here was where she had her first coherent thought.
"Where am I?" she breathed, eyes wide.
She was in a bed, in what looked to be some kind of log cabin. A fireplace across from the end of her bed dimly lighted the room. She tried to sit up, and her body shook with the effort. Had she been rescued from the storm? Was she in Icicle Inn? And what was that fuzzy thing brushing against her legs?
"You shouldn't do that." A deep voice warned quietly.
Yuffie felt something on her head twist around at the sound, and she jumped slightly in surprise at the feeling. "What the-" she quickly reached up a hand, her hand grabbing onto a cold fuzzy something. What alarmed her though was the fact that she could feel her hand. She could feel as her hand traced up the fuzzy things edge, to the tip, and she could feel as the fuzzy thing flicked at the feeling. Yuffie's throat went dry, the other person, whoever they were, were forgotten in the face of this new dilemma.
With trembling hands, the girl felt the sides of her head. She screamed.
Her ears. They weren't on the sides of her head anymore. They were on top of her head, and they were anything but human.
Yuffie grew hysterical. "Ohmigod! Ohmigod! My ears! My ears, what happened to them!?" she struggled to get out of the bed she was in. Someone pushed her back down, and she started to flail, though she was getting more and more tired doing so.
Narrowed black eyes bored into hers and Yuffie panicked. "What did you do to me!?" she screamed, tears flowing from the corners of her eyes. The blankets had long since been kicked off in all the commotion, and Yuffie glanced down for a split second.
It was all she needed.
"A tail!" she screeched. "You gave me some goddamn tail!?" her anguished fear gave way to anger. Furious anger.
"You turned me into a freak!" she screamed, her face turning red. She gripped the arms holding her down with a death grip, her nails…her claws cutting into the skin. "You made me a monster you fucking bastard! I'll fucking kill you!!"
There was a bang, and a shaft of white light flashed onto the walls as the door to the room flew open. Yuffie could hear several people coming into the room, some of them shouting. But before any of them could do something, the man pinning her down punched her in the side of the head, hard.
Yuffie blacked out.
****
Pain.
It was searing through her head like a knife, and Yuffie let out a loud groan as she tried to move. She felt the ropes restraining her in her chair.
Eyes slowly fluttering open, Yuffie stared groggily around the room, smells invading her senses like little battering rams, making her head hurt worse than before. That smell from before, the smell she couldn't place, was thick in the air, mixed with the fainter smells of pine, ash, and alcohol. Her eyes gradually came into focus, and she made out five figures. One, a dark figure, was sitting in the shadowed corner of the room, dark hair shading his face. Two figures stood at the doors, one large with blonde hair, and another, shorter with red hair. One figure sat in another corner, arms wrapped around his knees as he rocked slightly back and forth. The figure closest to her, also had red hair, but was distinctly more feminine than the others, leaving Yuffie to believe it was a girl.
Yuffie's tail wriggled in anxiety, and it was this reminder of her current state of physical being that once again got her riled up.
"Kisamas…" she breathed hoarsely, her voice weak from the screaming she had done before. "What do you want from me? What good am I to you?"
A cold, despondent voice sounded behind her, causing the girl to jump. There was a sixth person?
"You're a well of information. And we're determined to get every last drop out of you."
Yuffie twisted around, her eyes narrowing, "Information? What are you talking about you quack? All I know is that you're a bunch of sick sadistic freaks who like to change innocent girls into cats!"
The dark silhouette of a man towered over her from behind, a warm glow outlining his body from the fireplace. Yuffie began to second-guess her audacity.
"…You know nothing of the swarms surrounding the Northern Crater then?" he asked slowly.
Yuffie blinked, "Swarms? What swarms?"
"The demon swarms. They've been showing up all over that place lately." It was the girl that spoke this time, Yuffie turned around again to glare at her properly. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she snapped.
One of the men, the large one, growled. "She's lying."
"Quiet." The man behind snapped quietly. He stepped out from behind Yuffie, coming around into her line of vision. The glow from the fire was weaker now from before, but there was still enough light for Yuffie to see him clearly.
He had long silver hair that descended around his shoulders and piercing golden eyes. Yuffie gulped at the sight of them, and instead diverted her attention to the necklace tied around his neck, a shark tooth tied onto it.
He spoke softly, "What were you doing so far away from Icicle Inn, if I may ask?"
Yuffie grit her teeth defiantly, "I don't have to answer you." Without even thinking she began to lash her tail in anger. She hated being in such a helpless position.
The man narrowed his eyes at her, "You will tell me, or you won't leave this room."
Yuffie sat there, her teeth bared, and her tail lashing violently. She shifted, trying in vain to wriggle free of the restraints on her wrists and feet. She knew it wouldn't have mattered even if she did get free. It was six to one. Yuffie wasn't stupid.
She glared at each and every one of her captors with as much loathing as she could muster, and without warning, a low hiss began to sound from deep within her throat. She choked it back in surprise, blinking rapidly. Yuffie looked to the ground immediately, suddenly feeling ashamed. Tears welling up in her eyes she whispered harshly, "Why did you do this to me?"
A heavy silence fell upon them all, and for a moment no one dared to speak. It was becoming more and more clear to them that this girl wasn't who they thought she was, and the weight of their mistake began to press on them insistently.
The man with the yellow eyes crossed his arms stubbornly. "Answer the question and we'll let you go: What were you doing so far out in the middle of nowhere?"
The red head girl began to protest but the man's eyes silenced her. "Well?" he prompted, raising an eyebrow.
Yuffie didn't answer for what seemed like ages. Then she spoke, softly, and with a broken spirit. She didn't lift her eyes from the ground, "I was lost."
The man said nothing, and she continued in a low voice, "I was lost and I tried using my compass but for some reason it wouldn't work." She sniffed and when she spoke again her voice cracked, "I found a cat out in the snow, it was almost dead. So I nursed it back to health. I stayed there, where I found it, for two nights." Yuffie lifted her head slightly, "When we went out the next morning, we were hit by a blizzard, and I fell and didn't get up…" she looked at the man with narrowed eyes, "Then I woke up here."
He didn't say anything for a long time. Yuffie's story seemed to be all they needed, for what, however, she wasn't sure, but she knew she wouldn't like it. The golden-eyed man turned and walked back toward the fireplace, his boots clopping loudly on the wooden floor. "Beatrix, Taerk, explain to our feline friend how you came to find her."
The redhead girl bit her lip and glanced back at the large blonde man near the door. He looked back at her with an unreadable expression. The redhead sighed and kneeled down next to Yuffie, who flinched away from her.
"We…were on our way back home when I caught your scent. It was…faint, because of all the snow, but it was still there. It was something I had never smelled before, and we almost passed you over when I picked out the human scent." She glared behind her at the large blonde man, who Yuffie surmised was the one named Taerk.
Yuffie chose this moment to ask a question she could find no answer for, "How could you smell me?"
"Because we're lycans." Said the redheaded man next to the door. Yuffie jumped at his voice. It was the first time he had spoken throughout all of this.
Yuffie frowned, "What? What's…what's a lycan?" she grew nervous.
"Werewolves." Said the dark man in the corner. Yuffie's eyes snapped in his direction, widening in surprise. That smell she couldn't recognize. Now she knew what it was…
It was the smell of wolves.
With a sigh the redhead, Beatrix, turned back to her, "Anyways…We dug until we found you under at least a foot and a half of snow. We pulled you out, and that was when we finally could smell the aura coming off you…at first we thought we should just leave you there. But we checked for a pulse and saw that you were still alive, that's when we brought you here. You were the only thing we found. We saw no cat."
Taerk finally spoke up, a solemn expression on his face, "You smelled like a cat demon, but not a full-blood, because you still smelled like a human. On our way here we found our compasses didn't work if you were too near. You aren't just a cat demon," Yuffie glared at him resentfully, "You're a lightning cat demon."
Another thick silence fell upon them. Yuffie stared down at the ground, shaken from all of this news. If she had passed out with the cat with her, then was unearthed from the snow as some kind of cat-demon, then that meant… "The cat-"
"Was a demon in its lesser form." Beatrix finished.
Yuffie continued to stare down at the ground, the color draining from her face. "Ohmigod…" she breathed, squeezing her eyes shut, "I'm a hanyou!"
A large hand clasped her shoulder. Yuffie turned her head away, shaking.
"I'm afraid you rescued a demon who had somehow lost its brethren. You nursed him back to health as best you could, sacrificing for him though he looked like nothing more than a cat, and in return, he gave what was left of his life energy to you, who was also dying. It's the only reason you survived the blizzard, and with no frost bite to boot."
Yuffie spat in disgust, "Lucky me."
The hand gripped her shoulder more tightly, "To a demon, there's nothing a human values more than life. What are the one-thing demons hear before they kill a human being? Them begging for mercy. Not to be killed. To be given a chance to live. In his eyes, not only did he make you stronger, he gave you a second chance at life. For a demon, that is the greatest gift they can give a human."
"I don't want it…" Yuffie whispered in anguish, "What good is any of it if I can never show my face in human society again?"
No one had anything to say to that. So no one tried.
One by one they left the room, until it was only Yuffie and the golden-eyed man left.
He cut her loose from her restraints. She didn't look up from the floor, only rubbed her wrists gingerly. He whispered in a low voice, barely audible. But thanks to Yuffie's new hearing, she caught every word. Her ears twitched in the man's direction as he turned to leave the room, boots clopping on the floor.
"You're welcome to stay here in this room as long as you like. Beatrix can lend you some clothes to wear. Just don't expect any regular meals. We're busy people."
He closed the door behind him.
Yuffie stayed like that for the longest time, the light from the fire so dim now it was barely lighting the room. A bitter silence was in the air, screaming at her tauntingly, tearing at the frayed ends of her sanity.
She was coming apart.
The ninja curled into a tight ball on her chair and wept silently, her tail hanging limply over the edge of her seat.
A/N: Kisamas = bastards in Japanese. And if you've ever watched Inuyasha, a hanyou is a halfbreed, half human, half demon.
Like my other story, 'Of Shadows and Nightmares', I'm going to try and keep the chapters short. That way I can update more often, and keep the story going at a steady pace.
Until the next chapter then. In the meantime please review!