Under the snow lathered ruins of GrimmFall, there were so few left. The streets rewinded to gambrel origins while the endless lathering snow pelted softly from the layered natural stonework of olden times. The building rendered hollow and minimalist, bodies of the long dead laid in orgiastic patterns, layered or unlayered, the footprints of those still living swept and covered with the endless snow.
Those left either mined for Dust to restock the dust generators, gathered what little they could to make anything resemble the lost sense of comfort for those they hold dear, or to simply give up and begin a trek to the old ruins of Empire City, where a rumored 'Black Palace of Endless Pleasure' laid.
One of the second examples was under an old farmer's market, once thriving with customers and wealth until the end came. Under the store, beyond the abandoned rusted shelves, and the unstocked delivery areas, in a bunker decorated with dirt mottled rags and decayed clothing, was a 20 year old woman and her 23 year old brother.
The sister was quite beautiful, short black hair with unflawed face and a shapely figure, though she was in a horrific state. Her legs amputated from horrid frostbite and her hands nearly crippled, she neared blindness and her hearing slowly faded, her only locution was dragging her self across the floor.
The brother was gruff and hardened, waist length black hair with an unkept beard and mustache, doing what little he could to give comfort to his ailing sister knowing she had little time left.
He would go out and murder survivors to provide for both of them, be it clothing and food, sometimes unchaining morality to collect the bodies of the dead for sustenance. Eventually, they got used to eating people as much as they loathed it, though in such times, one must do what they must to survive.
On this day though, he has been gone for hours. The sister dragged herself out of her bed of many uncouth rags to the flaming barrel, eating the last of a box of saltine crackers. She looked and dragged herself to the stairway where her brother usually arrived on snow covered boots with an assortment of supplies so they could live.
The sister would often ask why. Why would they want to keep living in this lifeless hellhole? Why would he continue caring about her, though she had little time left?
He would smile and say, "Because you're family. And when I just want to savor the time we have."
That was enough to keep her going, knowing that her big brother was there even in the darkest times. But he should have been back by now.
Hours passed, she continued to stare at the stairway, starting to get worried and maybe hungry. Her body positioned at the door frame of the bunker akin to a small child peeking at a conversation between disgruntled parents.
Suddenly, a crash. She flinched and looked the ceiling, gunshots rang and mixed over inhuman screechs and very human screams. Footsteps crunched over the ceiling, the loud thud of two human bodies crashing onto the metal floors.
A gunshot.
A secondary gunshot.
A tertiary gunshot.
A feral screeching, a loud slam, additional slams akin to rainfall, a softer series of footsteps from one side to the opposite side.
A harder and faster series of footsteps from the same direction as the previous series of footsteps.
Another gunshot.
A screech, a hard slam, and a series of thuds as something came through the vents.
The thuds through the vents travel down as a queer object falls near her.
It was a right arm, severed at the elbow, but the limb was unusual. It was ebony with red pronounced veins, small bone spikes, and a patch of ivory skin resembling a keloid scar or third degree burn.
The sister took the severed limb into her hands, her near sightlessness and crippled hands obscuring her to truth of the limb's nature. She briefly pondered if it was a piece of meat her brother sent down the vents to hold off her hunger.
Deciding to wait for her sibling a moment more, she continued to cradle the limb in her arms as she sits in the lenient doorframe and wait.
Hours and hours passed, he still had not returned.
The sister was starving, the saltine crackers being the last of the food in the bunker while the brother was gone. She felt around the severed limb, blood still wet and meat still tender.
Unable to restrain her blinding hunger, she sunk her awaiting teeth into the arm.
She hacked violently, the meat tasted of a bitter and metallic pulp with a noxious ichor akin to tattered paste, but she pushed the festering reluctance out of herself and took another bite.
An hour later, the pulped remains of the arm resided in the sister's grateful stomach, bone and claw included. She laid her satisfied back on the cleated doorframe with a pool of dark blood and saliva beside her hip, the result of her gag reflex overtaking her hunger.
The sister's breath echoed as the singular sound in the bunker besides the crackling fire in the old rusted barrel as she fell soundly asleep.
Unknown to her, cells from the severed arm spread through her body, along with the components broken down by her digestive enzymes. They spread through her arteries, bone marrow, and remaining muscles, finally reaching her nerves endings.
The sister awoke in a scream akin to screeches of metal, clutching her abdomen as an unfathomable pain spread through her body. Muscles contorted, bones strained, organs pulped, blood boiled, and skin tore as she gripped her hands on the floor, still screaming.
Slowly, the pain faded as her muscles uncontorted, bones unstrained, blood cooled, and skin resealed, she breathed out a steaming sigh of relief as her head fell to the metal floor softly.
It was then she noticed the crackling of the fire had grown in volume and luminescence. She swung her head towards the rusting barrel in fear that it had spread from the interior of the barrel, only to witness the listless flame had not exceeded the container's limit.
Blinking, she then noticed that she saw and hear the room and sounds around it in perfect clarity. The fine details of sense which she had been denied from her ailments was now clear as the word could suffice.
Each singular individual weave, each flake of skin, and each vein flowing with oxygen-filled blood. Each whirl of machinery, crackle of fire at the gaping air, and footstep against the metal floor.
Her attention was then focused on her hands, for the feeling of the heldering limbs began to differ. She felt the numbness and immovability that plagued her for an untold number of years recede as nerves in her crippled hands rebuilt and remodeled, the severed tendons in her wrists reconnected, and the scars of self inflicted wounds reabsorbed into her previously necrotizing hands.
The woman stared at her restored hands, opening and closing them experimentally, in disbelief.
Suddenly, there was a pressure on her damaged legs. Turning her head to her lower half, only for a gasp to escape from her lips. A large mass of tissue issued from her legless thighs, firstly clusters of nerves, then masses of bone marrow, and finally the soft tissues. Just as fastly, tissues formed into the calves, then the fibula and tibia, then the foot, and finally the toes.
The marrow hardened, the clusters buzzed, and the muscles strengthened. The skin flowed over, the veins flooded with blood, the tendons reconnected, and the bones held.
The sister could only stare at her newly regrown legs in awefilled eyes, then doing something she hadn't done in so long.
She laughed.
She laughed frothing joy and relief, clutching the limbs she lost years ago. Grabbing onto the nearest and lowest shelf, she pulled herself up to the empty bed of the metal shelf. The woman grabbed another shelf and lifted herself upright, then planting one of her returned feet to the floor.
The sister yelped, pulling back her foot at the cold burn of the steel floor. She then pants in pleasure at the feeling of the cold on her foot, setting it to the floor again only for her not to feel the cold.
She blinked, planting her other foot on the floor only it to feel the cold neither. Standing on her two feet, she wobbled taking her first few steps then it felt as though they were a part of her for years. For the next hour and a half, she walked, ran, jumped, and did acrobatics around the bunker.
Then an idea entered her head, one that she both desired and dreaded; As she could now walk, she could find her brother.
But what if he was dead? What if all that she would find is his bloodied corpse? The sister thought over this questions but she made up her mind and decided to find him regardless. She looked at the stairwell and had a determined expression, ascending out of the bunker.
As she ascended the cold stairs of the bunker, the stinging of the blizzard air faded, feeling as if her skin was a thick coat. Looking down, she gasped. She was naked but her skin became a thick grey leather hide with ivory shaded grey fur from the neck down, and short needle-ish claws issued from her fingertips.
The woman looked at herself in shock, she didn't remember undressing or feeling the fur or claws grow in. That said, she was grateful that they did, as with them, the cold razor wind seemed as the lost and gentle summer breeze.
Making her way out of the abandoned store, the sister found herself in the snow lathered streets with only alit gaslines and still working lights from maintained dust generators providing the long lost sense of day in this dark and cold ruin. Her footsteps issued a crunch in the snow as she explored the ruins of GrimmFall.
A roar and scream, the latter human and the former inhuman, pierced her heightened hearing. Turning herself to their direction, she ran towards the sounds, maneuvering around whatever obstacle with grace she never performed in her life, yet she performed with easy akin to breathing.
There, bloodied and scared, was her brother running from the most horrific Grimm she'd ever seen. It was a 12 foot tall humanoid laxed in a carapace of obsidian, it's eyes and mouth burning red, steam bellowing from it throat.
The sister grabbed a pole of rebar and threw it like a spear at the humanoid's head.
It glided through the air and pierced it's right eye through the nose. The humanoid Grimm screeched in pain, grabbing the pole and pulling it out of it's head while the sister grabbed the brother and ran off.
With her brother barely conscious, she hid him by some shelter made of rubble. Turning back, she saw the humanoid Grimm pulling out the rebar spear, it's right eye regenerated while a liquid flowed over both eyes then quickly hardened into clear lids of armored carapace.
It moved and in a flash, her left arm was severed before she could even react. The sister screened in pain before another flash and she found herself flying into some rubble.
Dizziness and nausea flooded her brain to where she couldn't resister forwards and backwards. Then it was as if it all flushed out of her system and her sense sharpened to a point.
She screeched at a sudden pain then seeing her fur bristled together then melting into a black shell, it then separated into a series of segments and plates, the flesh between the plates grew in a thicker variant of her fur. Another pain from her left shoulder, to where she saw a mass of black tissue forming into her lost arm.
When the tissues formed into the lost limb, it had changed significantly. The new limb was massive with bulging muscles, larger plates, and serrated curved claws in place of fingers.
Before she could look at the new arm in shock, the sister saw the humanoid Grimm charging towards her, intending for a final strike. It swung it's fist at the sister, only for her engorged arm to catch it.
Suddenly, the engorged muscles grew larger as they glowered red as she roared in rage. In a flash, the obsidian carapace ripped away in chunks while flesh and bone practically vaporized in a waves of red.
The sister blinked as she stared the altered limb with wave of red on the palm, only whispering, "Woah."
She then ran back to where she hide her brother, snow crunching as she race through the dark that now seemed clear as day. When she found him still unconscious, she heaved her brother over her shoulders and carried him back to their bunker.
On her way back, the engorged limb shed itself from her arm which formed one symmetrical to her right arm. While she'd be shocked, she was too happy that she found her brother to care.
As she ended the store, her brother stared to wake up. She gently set him down by a counter as while he was still groggy while she checked around for any food left on the old shelves.
The brother's eyes opened to see something. Silently and not questioning how he was back in the store, he grabbed his gun and slowly backed away to the bunker while opening the door to it.
Then he realized was it was. Something that both elated and hollowed him. His sister, his little sister, was now a 6 foot tall woman covered in thick grey fur and black carapace, but her legs were back and her eyes glowed orange in the pale finite light.
"Sara?" The brother asked, his voice rasped and hollow.
Sara turned around and gasped, "Jack!" She said excitedly as she kneeled down to him.
"Y-You...You..." Jack could barely get out a word as he ran a hand over his sister's fur and carapace.
"Oh..." Sara only said as she realized what he means.
Jack could only look over Sara, his sister, the sister he carried and cared for years, was now a monster.
For some reason, this struck him as unbearably funny and before he could stop himself or put down his gun, he found himself laughing uncontrollably. It was painful laughing so hard, but he couldn't stop, even to catch his breath, not even when he started to slide down the stairs.
Clawed yet gentle fingers wrapped around his arms, pulling him back into place and, when he proved unable to sit up on his own, Jill pulled him onto her lap and held him tight against her chest. It was all hard carapace and thick fur. He could feel things twitching beneath her skin, her heart and blood flowing through her new form.
Whispering wordless reassurances, Sara ran her fingers through his hair until laughter gave way to sobs.
Grimm Database:
*NEW GRIMM DISCOVERED*
Name: Delta Reapers
Species: Subspecies of Reapers
Threat: Omega
Delta Reapers are survivors who ate Reaper flesh. They gain the adaptive and regenerative powers of the Reapers, which can be strengthened though injury, poisoning, or exposure to hazardous chemicals or conditions. This eventually turns Delta Reapers' bodies into a monstrous form, due to their adaptations providing ways to defend themselves better, not merely passive defenses.