CHAPTER THREE: SUBTERFUGE

❝No hard feelings. No soft feelings. Just no feelings.❞

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[Day 2︳Oct.17︳X784]

AIR QUICKLY CAME and went out of her lungs as her bare feet rapidly carried her through an unknown place. She couldn't stop running. She refused to stop running. It was a luxury she couldn't afford at the very moment.

The monster above her had her life placed on the line.

"Stop."

Came a distorted, demonic voice.

"Don't run."

She chose not to listen to those words and continued to move her legs at a rapid speed. The throbbing pain in her thighs came and went, but she didn't care about that. Staying alive was the only thing she was focused on.

"I only wish to play with you some more, my lovely rose."

A large shadow looming over her body went ignored as she was too caught up in trying to escape the horrible being who was persistent in having her for himself. What that man did to her was horrendous and traumatizing. Having that happen to her once more was something any person least wanted.

Her head whipped around to steal a glance at the monster chasing her. A rather large hand was drawing near her, causing her to stop in her tracks. Her entire body froze into place, not one muscle making a move.

Everything seemed slow…very slow as the hand continued to grab at her.

Fierce emerald eyes fluttered themselves openly, the blurry image of a painted surface hovering above her coming into unobstructed view. She lied still and allowed her sights to adjust themselves to her surroundings. With the ceiling staring back at her, she could see that she was no longer in the same place she once was.

The dimmed room greeted her along with warmth caressing her skin. Curious about where the tiny light was, she carefully turned her head and found a small candle resting on a nightstand. What honestly confused her the most was the small plate of food right next to it.

What happened?

The memory within her mind was hazy and unclear. No matter how hard she tried, Moka could vaguely remember what else had occurred before being rendered unconscious.

"N-No! Please, don't! I'm begging you! Stop!" she begged, only to have her mouth covered by his hand.

"Don't worry. It'll hurt for a moment." The man smirked and immediately slammed himself inside her, causing the girl to scream in agony.

She tightly shut her eyes as the pain repeatedly came in her lower region along with every thrust.

Moka promptly sat up at the sudden, horrifying event replaying itself in her head. A hand found its place to her mouth in horror and despair, tears brimming in her eyes. A large piece of her that had wished that it was all just a nightmare she could wake up from and it'll be away.

No.

What she endured turned out to be real, judging from the tiny amount of pain that lingered between her legs.

Moka roughly threw the covers back and quickly but discreetly got out of the bed. Being well aware of her nude body, she took the white sheet and hugged it to her chest. The effects of the traumatizing experience never went away. It was a horrendous impact that she could never erase from her mind even if she wanted to.

'I-I…have to get out of here…' she inwardly panicked to herself as she desperately started the search around the room for an exit to escape through. After everything that happened to her last night, there was no way in hell she would remain in this place. Moka couldn't trust one single person. Not now, and not possibly ever.

A small hope filled her eyes when she found a framed window that led to the outside. She wasted no time in bolting to it, taking the sheet with her. Fumbling with the latch in the center, she lifted the bottom of the window with both of her hands and put one foot through the opening before the other. Once she was on the outside, she immediately sprinted away through the quiet town without hesitation.

Where she was going mattered little to her. All that truly mattered to her was not allowing herself to relive that incident again.

"Moka…" echoed a familiar female voice. "With the seal permanently destroyed, your soul has finally been released to where people will accept you for who you are. Vampire or not." Said the voice. "You'll also discover something that no one, not even you, knew you had. Please, I'd pray and hope that you'll use it wisely."

A silent moan came from the vampire's throat as she stirred awake on the hardwood floor. A rickety framed window was the first thing she saw as she opened her tired eyes. A small gust of wind picked up, causing a shiver from the young girl. She pulled the sheet further over her frame to warm herself from where she laid.

Her eyes roamed and scanned the utterly dark room she was in. It was all now coming back to her. She had fled the house she woke up in and ran away into the woods of all places. During her run through the trees, she remembered spotting an old abandoned shack nearby. Moka didn't care about its appearance. All she knew was that she needed a temporary haven. Somewhere safe away from everything else.

Very much to her discomfort, everything was quiet. Her ears only picked up the sound of crickets out in the night. However, the bugs didn't seem to calm her down any less. Her hands were unconsciously shaking. Tremors racked her body as tears brimmed near her eyes. Moka lay there, unmoving, her whole body quivering with fear. She made no move to wipe the tears that were now falling from her orbs. She started sobbing uncontrollably in fear and sorrow, traumatized by what happened to her.

'W-Why…?' she mentally questioned herself, curling herself into a ball.

She didn't understand.

Why do people that held nothing more but malicious intentions exist? How sick does a person have to be to do that to someone? Why her of all people? What did she do to deserve any of it?

Moka wanted to disappear back to her world altogether. The home she truly belonged to with her friends and the man she loves dearly.

"T-Tsu…kune…" she whimpered through her hoarse voice, hoping somewhere that her beloved would hear her. "…s-save…me."

Moka leaned into the balcony's railing in fear, trying to get away from the man who was attempting to rape her. "Please...p-please stop it!" she pleaded as she continued backing away from the person that was walking towards her.

Her ears picked up a sadistic chuckle. "It's useless." the man expressed with a dark smile. "No one will come even if you do scream for help. With the festival going on, everyone's busy playing this and that to even notice."

Moka held a hand to her chest and looked away with both sadness and worry. 'That's right...even Tsukune is with everyone else right now...'

A rough hand reached out and grabbed ahold of her chin, abruptly breaking her thoughts. Moka still turned her head away, refusing to bring herself to even look at him. "Come to think of it, you look even more beautiful with every glance I take," he said, perversely licking his lips. "There's a shortage of women in the human world. But today, I have such a pretty woman. Let's have some fun."

His hands moved from her chin to the cloth that was hiding her body, ripping half of it open to reveal her bra. "W-What are you doing?! Stop!" she shrieked, trying to pull her kimono closed.

'Tsukune!'

"H-HELP! HEEELLPP!" she screamed out, hoping somewhere and someone in the forest would hear her cries. When she only listened to her voice echo back at her in response, she once again cried out. "S-SOMEONE…HELP! H-HELP ME!" Her screams ranged through the dark forest, but the silence was only being received.

The man above her chuckled darkly with amusement at her efforts to escape. "It's useless," he said dryly. "You can try your hardest to scream all you want. We're practically in the middle of nowhere, so no matter how loud you scream, no one will hear you." he finished sadistically, leering down at her body.

But in actual reality, he wouldn't. He wasn't there to save Moka from her assault, so why would he? There were other times where he saved her from enduring a fate even worse than death itself.

But not from this one.

Not this time.

No matter how much she screamed his name, he never appeared. It was useless.

Tsukune was gone for good.

"It's okay...We'll always be together. Forever and ever..."

Moka cried harder as she remembered the words Tsukune promised her. It hurt knowing that she would never see him again. Her friends back in her world would have the pleasure of seeing his face every single day. Even the other Moka. The superior Moka.

Just the very thought of her friends, Ura included, getting to be around him made her angry.

Sorrow wasn't the only feeling that she kept buried in, but envy and self-hatred as well. Moka wanted to hurt someone. The very person who took everything away from her, he was to blame.

Blond.

That was the only trait she could remember of him and nothing more.

The blond man.

Rage overpowered the sorrow in her heart as she recalled the malicious grin the blond man wore on his face while he continued to violate her. Remorse was nowhere to be found in his soul once he got what he wanted and left her in the dark forest to die.

No. The man didn't leave her to die.

After he had finished brutally ravaging her, he was left with the golden opportunity to put her out of her misery without a single thought if he wanted to; that way, she could not name him if she wanted to alert the authorities. Much to her shock, he didn't. He simply left her alive to suffer for the trauma and humiliation that will continuously follow her until her last day on earth. To add more insult to injury, there was not a single thing she could do about it.

Although she had such a despicable act done to her, little to her knowledge, things were about to become strange for her than she expected.

Her eyes broadened in disbelief and terror. "W-What...w-what's happening?!" she worried, nearly trembling over her words.

"Your power..." echoed a female voice within her thoughts.

"Wha...w-who said that?" she asked, her eyes scanning around the room for the said person.

Out of the ordinary, a red aura was emitting brightly around her right hand. Moka only lay there and stared at what was taking place, not uttering a single word. Oddly enough, it felt warm.

And then, from there, things became disturbing than strange. A gasp left Moka's lips as her nails outgrew into sharp claws.

"Your true power..." the voice continued. "You must find a way to trigger it..."

She immediately sat up on her knees and clasped her left hand over her right one.

"S-Stop..." Moka commanded weakly, her hoarse voice ringing silently across the shack. She found her hands reaching themselves to her head as if she was about to lose her insanity. "G-Get out of my head..."

Stop.

She wanted it to stop for good. Not just "it," but everything. Moka's inner pain, her trauma, the voice in her head, and the aura that was glowing on her hand. When the crimson energy didn't go away as she wanted, she held her hand close to her chest as if it would vanish.

"P-Please...m-make it stop..." she begged, now almost crying again.

A severe problem couldn't multiply itself into another, could it?

"Over there! I saw that light comin' from that shack." sounded a male voice along with the sound of a couple of footsteps.

"You sure you've seen whatever it is around here?" questioned one of the men.

"Yeah, it could be just your imagination." added another male voice.

Moka quickly went to cover her entire body and hurried to the back of the small cabin. To silence her loud breathing, she slapped both of her hands over her mouth and nose.

Moka heard a snort from the other side. "The hell do you think I am? An 8-year-old?" the man questioned, a hint of aggression in his voice. "You tryin' to say I can't see for shit?"

"W-What?! Hold on, you got it all wrong." panicked one of the men.

"Y-Yeah, we're just double-checking to see if what you saw was true before with follow through with our usual procedure, that's all."

"R-Right. What he said."

But before one of the panicked men could finish, the other one roared out a laugh. "Sheesh! Relax, can't ya see I'm pullin' yer legs here?" she heard the man teased.

"No, we can't," one of them replied with an exhausted sigh. "It's hard to tell if you're just joking around or not, especially when you're mad."

"Guess I'm good at fooling people, eh?" the other remarked with a chuckle, heading around the cabin to its entrance.

"Clearly." the most reasonable one finished as he followed behind.

As her ears picked up on their footsteps growing near, Moka pressed her back into the wall with hopes of magically seeping through it. There was nowhere to run and there was no place to hide. Only one option was available for Moka to take; nothing.

Nothing at all.

Absolutely nothing.

Moka mentally punished herself for making that choice. There were many other things useful she'd rather find to do than to be incapable of doing anything at all. While sitting and waiting for the outcome was incompetent enough, there wasn't much else she could do.

Without moving a single limb, Moka patiently watched their bodily silhouettes come into view on the wooden floor. As expected, the men turned out to be nothing more than a couple of humans. Just by the looks of them, she could tell they were. Despite the men appearing innocent as they seemed, she didn't lower her guard.

One of the men's faces scrunched into a slight frown as they turned to look at one another in confusion and curiosity.

"Tch. Would ya look at that," he said, eying the trembling girl before him. The way he looked at her was unsettling. "Ay, boys, get in here! We got another girl on our hands!" he called, alerting the other men from outside.

Hearing the footsteps of men approach closer, the anxiety that lingered in her body increased. Five more men walked in next to their leader, all clothed in dark hooded robes with guns in their hands.

"Holy shit, dude! She's a fucking beauty." one of them exclaimed with lust and excitement. While it was a compliment, the tone in his voice only made Moka's skin crawl.

"Precisely why you should be thankful you signed up for this job," he smirked.

While the men began to talk about her specifically, Moka only stayed where she was seated. In her situation, she couldn't afford to make any more mistakes. One wrong move was all it could take for everything to shatter into pieces like before.

When they were finished with their discussion, the man that found her move forward towards her, but was stopped by one of his men. "Hey, hold on a minute. Are you sure want to do this?" one of them asked.

"Of course I do," he replied, looking back towards his men with confusion. "The hell kinda question is that? You lackin' balls all of a sudden?" ribbed the leader with a cruel grin. "You're free to wait outside while the big boys get the job done."

"N-No, what I'm trying to say-"

"I think anyone, including me, could give two shits what you have to say." the leader growled darkly, cutting the said man off. He then turned around to grab the timid guy by the front of his robe, pulling his face to meet his. "I only gave you two easy choices; help us or stay outside. But now, you're forcing me to give you one more choice. You can either help us get this job successfully done," The sadistic leader raised his gun to his victim's face, causing his two other comrades to back away in fear. "or you can let me blow your damn brains out to save us the trouble."

"W-Wha...Wait a minute, K-Klaudus! Let's at least talk this out!" he stammered, fearful of his life coming to a gruesome end. When he saw that his companions had yet to lift one finger to put a stop to madman's sadistic antics, he felt himself losing all hope. No. Instead, they all stood off to the side, silently snickering with amusement at how mentally weak he was.

The leader, named Klaudus, only grinned maliciously. "I'd only be doing the boss and even your wife a simple favor of having to deal with a worthless little shit. If only the bitch who birthed you only swallowed you, that whore of yours would've been better off with a man that had balls." he derided, using his piercing gaze to intimidate his prey. Moka silently observed the intense scene before.

She could see the hurt and anger slowly boil inside the timid soul's eyes as he allowed Klaudus to belittle him by degrading his mother and making derogatory remarks about his supposed wife.

Wrong.

That was so wrong on many levels. No. Disgusting was the correct answer to match this scenario. Superior or not, no one deserved that kind of treatment. Anyone with any decency would highly agree with her how messed up it is for someone to say such things.

Moka unconsciously leaned further into the wall, barely noticing the tiny cool air hitting her covered skin. When she realized what it was, her eyes widen with shock. 'That's...'

"It's you. You're the reason we're always falling behind." the leader inculpated, glaring down hatefully at the innocent companion. "We don't get paid enough for you to play your damn touchy-feely bullshit every time we're on the job. If the boss didn't need you to stick around so much, I would've done you in long ago-"

"Hey, Chief! We gotta move it. Our target's gettin' away!" alerted one of the men.

Klaudus immediately snapped his attention back to the girl, who was no longer present as stated. While he was busy panning his teammate about how soft he is, she had managed to slip through the small but secret passageway that led to the outside of the hut without notice. A white blanket was all she had left on the wooden floor.

"Why are you idiots just standing there for?! Go after her!" he ordered.

"On it!" one of them responded.

The burning sensation coursed through her thighs as she continued to sprint through the gloomy wilderness. Because she didn't want to risk staying around to find out what plans they had for her, Moka did the best thing that came to mind; run.

Despite the pain in her legs, she didn't allow herself to stop, not by all means.

"Stop." repeated the same demonic voice in her head. "Don't run."

She ignored it, survival being her top priority. Moka didn't even want to think what would happen had she stayed in that shack with those men. Whatever their intentions were, she knew they weren't good. They either planned to kill her or something far more worst than death...

Moka quickly concealed herself in the bushes and covered her mouth and nose to silence her loud breathing.

TO BE CONTINUED