If someone had looked up at that dark night sky, at the black wisps covering the world's roof, they might have noticed celebration lights in the distance.

Off in that forgotten corner of the city, they might have investigated and found a mixed celebration and mourning on the old campus. Heard the clinks of glasses and the soft thumps of ambling feet around a bright lit room. Soft laughter as friends all smiled together, knowing and not caring that their home's bright atmosphere wouldn't last forever, and that their world's darkness would soon engulf them again.

They would have peered in through the windows, and watched as six friends all watched each other, not wanting to end the night. Or... five out of the six. There was one, staring down into her barely touched glass, not paying the slightest attention to it all. If the intruder was desperate enough they could press their ear to the cracked and scuffed glass, listened to the shaky voice of one single celebrator, who even with all her best efforts wasn't doing a great of job fooling anyone. She was black, a funeral attendee who'd somehow found themselves in a circle of celebrating friends.

But lucky for the ones inside, whether they were happy or not, they were alone. No one was nearby, no one stalked them, no one wanted them dead.

...Yet.

On the other side of town, walking through the streets with his head held high, a single man crisscrossed through Beacon's alleyways. Standing tall, he stared down his path, squaring his shoulders as he closed in on his destination. Doing his best to catch his breath and slow down his heart beat, he eased up on his pace and slowly meandered the rest of the distance. The messenger who'd been sent to warn him, just a kid no older than seventeen who'd been quaking in his boots as he stuttered out his simple report had been left behind, probably lost in some back alley somewhere on one of his quick turns. The receiver of the message had sprinted off here, inadvertently shaking the young teenager.

'Good,' the man thought to himself, straightening his black leather duster as walked forward. He could already see the old dust shop, and the broken in door hanging ominously on only one hinge inside the frame. That kid, whose name was escaping the cloaked man as he shook out his sandy blonde hair, was young and innocent. After meeting him a few times, and how indescribably good the youth was, the man knew the child shouldn't see this. The world was brutal and he'd probably seen worse... but maybe, he hoped, the kid just hadn't seen enough.

That concern inside of him, for a simple kid who wasn't anything more than a stranger really, was fading. He was going gray, and it wasn't his hair's shade that was shifting. His soul, while he was entirely unaware of the change, had really started resonating with another's. They were on two opposite paths. They were different in look and sound, yet he and the mourning girl were also the same. They both were in the same dark place tonight, and they were both trying best they could to wear masks for those around them.

But, while her scars were just starting to fade, and were becoming invisible to not only everyone else but herself as well... he'd just been inflicted with his own tonight. They were going to be fresh, painful... he'd want to inflict scars of his own, share his own pain, ease his by spreading the agony around.

Fate had set him on a path, almost parallel to that other girl, who was more like him than either would have admitted. And neither of them could know that those paths would slowly come closer and closer together, intertwine... and eventually collide.

Closing the distance he rushed in through the door, the gust of air following him causing the split door to sway slightly in his wake. Into the shop, around the scuffed up countertop's corner, and towards the back. As he passed one of the aisles, out of the corner of his eye he noted a few men circled around another, who looked completely and totally destroyed. His face was red and bloodied, and the medic tending to him had tied his arm to his torso in white gauze, immobilizing the limb completely.

He weaved through the shop, and passed through a back door that led to a stair case. As he stepped through the door frame, he felt somebody follow behind. But the man paid no attention to the presence. Listening to the short, choked breathes that simply screamed obesity, he'd been expecting this one to talk.

To apologize and grovel at his feet... beg to not be killed in retribution for the night's toll.

Ignoring the man behind him, he taller man cast his thoughts out to someone else. 'So... this is how it ended for you, huh? I told you this was a bad idea, that these were vial, evil people... but you wouldn't listen. And you were right about one thing. They did pay well...'

A single light behind him illuminated his path. The tall flame of a lone candle that had been carried out of the shop by the man following him. Walking down a flight of steps, hearing every wooden board underneath his boots creak viciously under his light weight, the man in front let his hand drag across the wall as he made his way into the cellar. Pulling it away, he rubbed his fingers together and ground the dust clinging to his fingers to even finer powder.

"So what happened yesterday?" As he made his way down the staircase, he could hear the sound of even heavier footsteps creaking their way down behind him.

"I don't know, I still don't know!" The harsh, raspy voice echoed forward off the slick cold walls of the staircase leading down to the storage basement. Even though he came out sounding strong, there was no way to hide the wariness in his voice. It rang clear like a bell.

"Nobody saw anything! Only one of my boys made it, and he's still sittin in a corner with stars circle'n his head, staring round dumb as a brick." As an afterthought the voice added bitterly: "Never was much good for anything else though..."

Stopping on a step, halfway down, he couldn't help but turn back and glare at the portly man behind him. Even though he was three steps below the other man, they both were at the same eye level here.

"Snips, you don't sound too upset." Raising an eyebrow, looking the short, balding, fat gangster up and down, he asked: "you lost seven men, and it looks like one was beaten to the point that he's not gonna be doing much any time soon. And on top of all that, you seem fine telling me that all you know is that you still don't know?"

Glaring at the taller man, Snips barked: "Boy, just because you're tough doesn't mean you get to speak like you're on my level!"

Quickly stepping back twice, so that he was only one step right before Snips, the front man now glared down on him. "You're right, I'm not on your level. Fat lazy middlemen like you don't get your hands dirty." Leaning in so that there was less than an inch between him and the gangster, he growled in a voice that made the hardened criminal go pale as a sheet. "In case you're too dense... you just told me my best friend for over a decade is now dead. I'm around an inch away from stringing you up like the pig you are."

Leaning in a couple more inches, making Snips nearly fall back on the stairs behind him, the man sneered his last thought, making sure he was clear enough.

"Do. Not. Test. Me. Today."

Looking pale as a sheet, nearly shaking out of his boots, Snips stuttered out: "Alright, alright, sorry, sorry."

"Hmph!" Whirling around, not caring as he felt one of the hanging tassels on his overcoat swung and pelted Snips on the face, he continued his way down the steps. "Alright then... what have you done in the past few days?"

Following behind, waddling down the steps with his pride bruised, Snips muttered meekly: "Nothing really..."

"You're always doing something shady Snips! Think, anybody you'd have pissed off!"

Finally at the bottom of the staircase, the two finally got to take in the carnage of the cellar.

It was a gruesome sight, blood everywhere. Splattered across the walls, speckling the ceiling... leaking out onto the floor. There were dead bodies lying in corners and slumped up against walls. Riddled with bullet holes and knife wounds. Most hadn't drawn their weapons, and the few firearms and knives that weren't holstered looked clean or unfired.

His storm gray eyes scanning the room, the tall man thought to himself out loud. "Whoever did this wasn't looking for a surrender, they were here to kill..."

Turning back to Snips, he saw the gangster had pulled out a handkerchief, and was dabbing at a bit of sweat that had beaded up on his forehead. After he finished wiping up his greasy face, he pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket, and sliced off the end, a quarter inch of brown cork flying through the air. "I don't... well, we haven't done anything recent. No pushing out territory, no real power plays... it's actually been a pretty boring month."

"Snips! Whatever did this, it was for a specific reason! Whatever you did, it was an event that had this as the immediate reaction!" Turning around and glaring at the piggish man, he shouted: "Think!"

"...we didn't do anything." Scratching the bald spot on the top of his head, the look on Snips face made it seem like he was going over a checklist in his mind. He pulled out a small match book, wasting the resource on such a stupid addiction as he lit the tobacco he'd been chewing on. "... uh, we made an arms trade, exchanged some rations, grabbed a few girls, stole a ba-"

"Who?"

"Who what?" Snips squirmed under the steely eyes of the man watching him, a few ashes falling off the cigar in his mouth.

Sighing loudly, the man in front of snips was obviously running out of patience. "Who did you grab? ...And the hell are you harassing people for?! Don't we all have enough problems?!"

"The, the usual..." Snips mumbled meekly, trying to glaze over the topic he knew wouldn't go well.

It was well that he did squirm. The man in front of him twitched, for a half second beginning to reach into a pocket and pull out a tool to end the mobster. But a moment later, he relaxed. 'I need his whole story...Then I can decide what to do with him...'

A large portion of his conscious hated that he let the man in front of him live. It used to be his job to bring these types of people in. Snips wasn't just a backstreet gangster. He wasn't just some drug dealer and weapon broker.

Snips, and his tight knit group of cadets, was a human trafficker.

'Evil fucker...,' he thought to himself, trying to keep himself from slicing up the man right there. Even in this rotten of a world, people like Snips could still make a profit... really, he would have loved to kill the man right then. But if it hadn't been for how well Snips paid and how desperate they'd been, he and his partner would have probably gutted Snips the day they met him. "Who did you take?"

"Uh... I know there were seven women, uh...?"

"Didn't you say you had an old camera?" Watching Snips nod, he snapped his knuckles and replied: "I'm assuming you took pictures... you've gotta show them around before you can sell..."

Snips's eyes widened, and he started nodding, the fat under his chin jiggling with the motion. "Yeah, somewhere there aughta be-"

"Good, go look. Maybe I'll see somebody who'll make me get all this." Waiting for a second, he then asked: "Now, where is...?"

"Over in that corner," Snips muttered dismissively, already lost in thought as he walked over to a desk piled high with papers.

Snips turned way, and the man now standing alone in the middle of the bloodshed breathed in once quietly, before turning to where the fat man had pointed. Walking the distance, he could already see feet pointing out before he could see the rest of his friend.

"...oh buddy," he sighed, just as he rounded a stack of boxes and found his old pal. Tall and lanky, propped up against a wall exactly how he'd probably fallen. Whoever had attacked him was probably big and fast, able to get past his quick friend before he could defend himself. His pistol was still in his holster, and he looked mostly peaceful. He could have been sleeping...

Except for the dagger shoved deep into his right eye.

Reaching out slowly, gripping the handle gingerly, he put a hand lightly on his friend's face and pulled. The dagger slid out clean enough, and when the blade was entirely out, his friend's eyelids closed easily, hiding the damage well.

"W-well man," he stuttered, silently noting how shaky his voice was coming out, "at least you don't have to worry about your hair thinning anymore…"

Lost in thought, he didn't notice as Snips came up behind him. "Ahem." Nudging the crouched down man in the back of the arm, he held out a stack of a few old Polaroids. "These are all the girls from last night..."

Reaching out, making sure to not say anything until he knew his voice was no longer quivering, he took the squares in one hand while still holding the dagger with the other. Sliding the pictures like playing cards, he looked through the stack absentmindedly. The colors were bleary and bland, and everything tinted somewhat brown. The first woman, who was pretty enough, just looked… plain. She just looked like an average, normal survivor.

'Nope, average girl. Nope, another plain one.' As he cycled through the pictures, he thought "although really, any one of these girls could have had somebody who would kill for them... really, I'm just hoping to recognize one...

Coughing to get his attention, looking over the crouched man's shoulders, Snips asked: "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

Pausing over the third, not taking his eyes off the photo, he asked: "Would your men take off nice clothes or jewelry before they take these? Most women wear something if they're being looked out for, show that they aren't just open market..." Wincing, he hated the way his words were coming out. They made him sound like one of Snips's lot. Looking through these photos, imagining all the girls that had been abducted and sent god knows where by Snips, he was getting closer and closer to actually killing the man behind him.

"Usually I tell the boys not to... but they don't listen..." The sound of a pad of paper being turned over came from Snips, and after a second he mumbled: "Danny, the... well, the dead one in the red coat over there, left me a note from today. Reads:

'one got way, but blow she took, probably not sell worth.

probably didn't get far, sent Mickey out, search nearby.

no dice, but will keep eye out

be fun to just have around'

After reading that, Snips looked up from the scribbles and said: "Maybe it was this chick then? Maybe it wasn't that we took their girl, maybe all this was retaliation for messing up this one broad here?"

"Hm, could be..." Although he didn't really hold his breath as he continued looking through the pictures. A girl who got away probably wouldn't invoke this kind of wrath.

Nope, nope, nope, no-' his thoughts came to a halt on the sixth picture. He groaned the second he saw her.

He recognized her alright. Orange hair, short, pretty teal eyes. He smirked slightly at the photo, at how she was being held in place of the photo with one man on each arm, a third holding her head straight towards the camera. And even then, she was still pretty blurry, the look of hell's wrath barely visible on her face. 'Probably took a few takes...'

Turning the stack back at Snips, showing the pig the picture on top, he muttered: "She is who all this is about."

Leaning in, Snips stared at the photo for a second. "Pretty, I guess... what's the big deal?"

"That, you stupid fucking idiot," the man muttered, turning the dagger still covered with his friend's blood over and over in his hands, "is who this was all about."

"What, this chick? I don't even recogni-"

"That, my fucking stupid employer… would be Nora Valkyrie." Standing up at his full height, the blonde man turned back and glared at Snips, holding the blade that had ended his friend's life by the cold, sharp edged steel end.

"The... the border guard?!" Snips' eyes were wide, and obviously rattled. He knew what messing with her meant. He could already imagine the wrath harming her would bring down…

"Mm-hm." Flipping the dagger over in his hand so he was holding it like a proper blade, he noted how strange it felt. 'Feels more like a sword...' Squeezing the sculpted metal and leather, something gave on the other side of the grip under his ring finger. And with a cold click sound, the knife's blade disappeared down into the handle. Turning it over, he found a golden 'B' engraved into a small button right where his thumb would have been. "Neat dagger..."

Turning back to his friend, who looked peaceful, the man who should have been raging against the world for some reason seemed to be unnaturally calm. 'It was probably Ren, that or Pyrrha. Considering he didn't get a chance to even fight back, probably Pyrrha. Even good ol stone silent Ren would have probably been a raging madman with Nora down here.'

Looking down on his old friend with a twisted smirk, feeling somewhere between crushed by depression and lost without direction, he thought: 'Whoever it was, they probably didn't even recognize him... just because we're in the same town, doesn't mean we ever ran into each other. It's been a decade, and chances are in the chaos they didn't take the time to look...'

Taking it all in, he thought: 'Probably wouldn't recognize him without the blue hair dye...'

Breaking the tenuous silence, the fat man stuttered out a small grunt. "Uh, Sun?" Snips' voice was quivering again, the gangster sounding more like a scared school girl than the monster he was supposed to be.

"What?!"

Balking, Snip's stuttered: "Y-your tail, it's getting dragged through t-the..."

Without looking, Sun flexed the extra appendage, noticing there was a bit about a third of the way towards the tip that felt stiffer than his fur usually felt. Somewhat matted, a bit sticky...

"I'm not worried about a little blood..." Sun muttered, still sitting there crouched by his friend, his tail resting in the puddle of blood. Under his breath, the man behind him caught a tiny phrase, something like: "...much, much more..."

He stood up, running a hand through his tan hair, and turned back towards Snips. Sun just stood their silently, gazing at Snips with the oddest look on his face. Like the cogs were turning, but there was something in there too that was making the teeth just not align quite right.

Shifting from foot to foot under the steel gray gaze, he asked: "So, I mean... I've heard your story, know you were friends with that bunch before everything fell to shit. Are you gonna... will you...?"

"...Everyone," Sun started, staring down at the knife in his hand, "who had a part in his death is going to pay..."

"…well then, good luck." Snips started backing away, and a shaky grin came up on his face. "I'm not suicidal, and more than anything else I'm hoping they don't decide to hunt the rest of us down. I'm down by half my men."

Snips laughed, not realizing the weight of what he said. "Gotta think about surviving. I've made too many enemies; more than a few would take the chance to bash my head in if they could!" He started turning away, although he then turned back and gave sun a cruel smile.

"And sorry about your little pal by the way. I'll send my regards, whatever you decide to do…"

Sun took a step closer, and looked down at Snips with beady eyes. With madman's eyes. "My little pal?! You know, he was my best friend... way back before all this, way back before I was even a hunter. Since we were children"

Snips was a fool. A fool whose only company had been murderers and psychos for too long, even before the fall. And because of that, he couldn't feel what anyone else would. He'd crossed the line. That the man standing in front of him had just snapped, and made a grizzly decision.

What he did catch, he was not fast enough for. It didn't dawn on him until a fist had grabbed at the hair on top of his head, yanking the wispy little strands of comb over up, that the most dangerous person to him in his life was standing less than two feet away

Not until a razor sharp line of steel was already half way through the skin, muscle and blubber of his neck.

It wasn't even a tenth of a second before the deed was done. When the dagger finished its path a spray of blood shot out, splattering Sun's chest with spacklings of crimson. He let go of Snips' hair, let the man fall to the floor.

Rolling around in his death throws, Snips' hand was clasped to the bulge of his neck. With one hand he tried to stopper the leaking, even though the wound was without a doubt fatal. And with his eyes bulging out, he tried scuttling back away from Sun across the floor.

His consciousness scrambling in terror, he felt a hand wrap itself around the wrist keeping him alive another few seconds. Suddenly, Sun was right in his face, leering down at him.

"I want you to know," Sun started, drawling the words as he slowly pried Snips' hand away from his throat, "that nobody is getting away with this. This is their fault, and I will be going after them, this city be damned to the infected that'll make it through for all I care."

Sun leaned in even closer, his blood soaked tail now over his shoulder and dripping crimson nectar down onto the both of them. "But you are just as much to blame as well! You'll die here in this shitty store room! And when I know your dead, I'll go up there and end every one of your goons and little gangsters as well. It was a mistake to not kill you all the second we met you."

"I'm not worried about a little blood" Sun sneered, watching as the light left the eyes of the pitiful fool below him, the growing pool of Snip's blood growing to consume and extinguish the cigar that had fallen on the ground next to them. "And I'm ready to spill much, much more..."

This whole part, which was originally only a third of a chapter, didn't fit well with the update that was originally going to be coming out today. The tones were way too different, to go from this too…

Anyway, it also made more sense for this to come first and have it stew. Luckily I'm on spring break, so I'll just do a bit more polish and finish up the chapter, which is now a bit too short. But for the best, it'd be better if it was longer. I've been leading up to it for a while

Let me know what you think! I'd like to hear feedback, know if people are enjoying! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you soon!