Notes: Squick alert! This chapter contains some content that some people may not like due to the fact that Ivy slaughters a bunch of soldiers. Though, if you stomached the torture chapter way back, you can probably handle this. Enjoy and review!

Chapter Thirty Eight

Kar spat out a string of curses, quickly shoving another magazine into his mini-Uzi before releasing a short burst of fire down the corridor. He could feel Ivy at his side, a solid presence of warmth and tension. He risked a glance downwards to find that she had staunched the blood flowing from her thigh. The bullet had missed her femoral artery, thankfully, but it was still lodged inside her and needed to be removed quickly. Until then, the best she could do was slow the bleeding and numb the pain.

Bullets whizzed past and Kar snapped his attention back to the fight, only vaguely aware of Ivy popping a small, white pill into her mouth. She swallowed it and held still for a moment until the drug began to take effect, then grabbed her gun up off the floor and stood up, albeit with a small grimace of pain.

"We're a bit stuck, Ivy," Kar said quietly, twisting around the corner to fire another small burst. He knew he wasn't hitting anything, the soldiers were too smart and too protected, but at least it kept them from advancing down the corridor towards them.

"I noticed."

"Any suggestions?"

Ivy hesitated before nodding. "Just one."

"I'm all ears."

"You cover me whilst I go down there and slaughter the bastards."

Kar snapped his head around to stare at her in amazement. She glared at him, silently daring him to question it, and after a tense second he just nodded. He knew she didn't want to do it but they'd both agreed to do whatever it took to complete this mission, even if they didn't like it.

Ivy closed her eyes for a second, trying to cling to her sanity, her humanity. She could feel the beast lurking in her back of her mind, a shadow waiting to consume her, to turn her into a vicious beast that thought only of food and survival. It knew what she was thinking, what she was going to do, and she felt it swell up, grow larger, pushing at the bars of the cage she kept it in. Gritting her teeth, Ivy unlocked that cage and let the beast free.

It swarmed over her like a plague, consuming her like fire, and she felt all rational thought get burned away like paper. She was only vaguely aware of her body changing, shifting into a physical representation of the beast, but she was mostly focused on the battle in her mind. The beast enveloped her mind completely, pushing her into the cage it was forced to live in, locking the door and forcing her to watch, helpless, as it took control of her body and did brutal, savage things that would haunt her for years.

She growled, glad to be free after weeks of imprisonment, and looked at Kar with fierce, feral eyes. He stood still, watching her warily, until she had decided that he wasn't a threat, that he wasn't food. But something nearby was… She sniffed, tasting sweat and fear hanging in the air like smoke, and growled again. Kar turned around and fired a short burst of gunfire down the hall and that was a signal, somehow, meant something that her primitive brain couldn't understand, but then she was racing down the hall, rushing towards her prey, her food, and she didn't care about not understanding it.

The humans weren't ready for her, not prepared for her savage attack. They crumpled like paper dolls underneath her claws, screaming and moaning as she slashed and bit and killed them. Blood flew in arcs through the air, splashing against her torn clothes, staining the walls and floor like paint. When the last weak human had fallen to her, she started to feed, biting into their delicious, human flesh and swallowing their sweet, warm blood. She was so hungry, hadn't fed in weeks, months, and they were so tasty, warm and meaty, plenty of food to slake her hunger.

She felt someone approaching and growled warningly, licking at the blood that had splashed onto her chin. She crouched protectively in front of the corpses, willing to defend her food, but hesitated when Kar stopped just a couple of feet away. Something inside her, some instinct that she wasn't familiar with, told her that this human wasn't food, wasn't a threat. She didn't understand that-everything was either prey or threat, but that instinct, that voice, told her again that this human was neither. He was… something else.

"Ivy?"

His voice, it was familiar, but she didn't know why. She made an uncertain, mewling sound, shifting back a step.

Kar took a tentative step forward, hands held up to show that he was unarmed. "Ivy? It's me, Ivy, Kar. You don't want to hurt me, Ivy; I'm your friend. I'm… a friend. And I need you to be Ivy again. You did a good job, killing them, and I thank you, but I need you to be human again."

No! She didn't want to be Ivy again! Ivy was weak and pathetic and human, and she never wanted to be that again. Wait, when was she ever human? She was an animal, wasn't she? She let out a loud snarl of confusion, not used to this storm of complicated emotion and thought. She dug her claws into the nearest body, feeling the soft flesh tear and break, and felt something in the back of her mind break free, pushing its way towards the front of her brain.

She snarled around, letting out a long howl of pain, and somewhere along the way it changed and became a human screaming.

Ivy drew in a ragged breath, staring up at Kar for a moment before looking down. Her hands were still buried in one of the corpses, blood staining her clothes and skin. She looked around at the blood-splattered corridor, at the mutilated corpses, and felt nausea well up within her. She scuttled to the side, and vomited loudly, feeling her stomach twist and heave, the sharp smell of blood hanging in the air still. She felt a hand on her forehead, holding her hair out of her face, and another was rubbing at her back, but she could give it no more than a cursory thought before she vomited again, and again, until she was dry-heaving.

It was several long minutes until she stopped, and she gratefully accepted the small bottle of water that Kar grabbed from his pack. It helped wash away the lingering tastes of vomit and human flesh, and when she was done, breathless and sweaty, she just curled up against Kar's warm body, too tired to care about the position. And he apparently didn't mind, because he just wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently like a child, not even worrying about the mission or being out in the open because for the moment, this was more important.