DISCLAIMER: This author claims no ownership of SKIP BEAT! or its characters.

Warning: NSFW.

Trigger warning: Sexual assault

The Wild Hunt:

Chapter 2

Kyoko woke up with a jolt, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

Even before she truly found her bearings, she felt it—a certain electricity in the air, as if the world was waiting for something. Something was slouching towards her…just outside of her sight, just outside of her hearing. There was nothing she could point to, but she felt it pulsing like a red warning light at the edge of her vision.

Danger, her senses said. Danger. Danger. Danger!

With a start, she realized she wasn't in her bedroom atop the Darumaya anymore. She wasn't in a room at all. She shivered in the sudden chill, missing the warmth of her futon. The world was oddly silent—she could hear the sound of the blood in her ears. Above her all she saw was the rising moon, still large and close to the horizon, and the night sky beyond. She realized she was lying on the grass; it felt cool and wet under her back.

Was this a dream? she asked herself. This had to be a dream. This entire day had to be a dream—she remembered running away from Tsuruga-san at TBM, having him confess to her, and then right as he'd taken her hand, he disappeared. She'd been looking directly into those chocolate-brown eyes of his and poof!, gone.

That was an absurd set of events.

Ren Tsuruga was not going to confess his love to her and then disappear into thin air. She must've had something rancid at the station's catered lunch.

The only logical conclusion was that this was a dream, and she was dreaming. And yet everything felt so real. She ran her hands through the grass, feeling every detail on her fingers. She saw drops of dew on her hands when she raised them up off the ground.

Again, that pulse. That silent warning, coming from nowhere and yet impossible to ignore.

Dream or not, she knew she wasn't safe.

Head for cover, Kyoko, something told her.

She made herself rise up off of the ground, and took a look around. She was standing on a lone hill, an oddly rounded mound surrounded by a flat plain. Moonlight gilt the landscape all around in silver, and she saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others all around her; all of them were sitting up, dazed, from the grass. All of them—every single one—caught the moonlight on the white clothing they wore, draped elegantly on both male and female forms. Kyoko was reminded of a ballet she'd seen once, where the entire corps de ballet had been dressed in something similar. The ballerinas had looked ethereal and weightless and beautiful in white, just like the others who were surrounding her. But what had been a magical bit of stagecraft took on a sinister implication now. Targets, Kyoko thought. Their white forms were far too visible, and from too far away.

She looked down at herself, wondering if she'd been the lone exception. She had no such garment in her closet. She'd gone to sleep in a ratty old t-shirt and shorts. But with some consternation, she found that she, too, was in a diaphanous white gown that looked as if it were made to float in mid-air.

You have no time, Kyoko, the voice told her again. There would be time to wonder at her clothing later, but everything in her told her to hide, to run, to find safety. She was the first to rise from the grass, the first one to look with critical eyes at the alien landscape beyond the hill where they'd awakened. There, she thought, viewing the line of a dark forest. She could see it, a small distance behind their hill, a fringe of dark that promised a modicum of cover. There was more than a little danger to entering an unknown forest at night, but here, she was exposed. There was no way to hide under the open sky; what little clothing she had only made her a beacon.

Around her, the others had started talking. She heard a cacophony of languages—she was discomfited to find that there were people from all over the world here. "I think we should wait here for rescue," said a voice to her rear. It wasn't anyone she knew, but she knew the type. That one would be a bossy, popular girl who was often the ringleader of bullies.

"I'm just so scared," said another voice. "I want to go home!"

"We should run," Kyoko said. Her voice sounded querulous to her own ears. "We're not safe here."

"Where would we run to?" said a boy behind her. "We're safest where we are. It's the first rule of survival," he said smugly. "Stay in one place."

"I agree," said the girl who wanted to go home. "If we stick together, we'll be safer."

Kyoko listened as the voices rose among them. Couldn't they sense the danger they were in? She could see where this was going—they were all going to try and band together, perhaps have an election, put together a committee. But Kyoko would not stick around long enough to participate. She didn't care if anyone followed her, but she was heading for shelter under the trees immediately. Her instincts screamed that she'd already stayed put for far too long. She got up, slowly, weaving her way through the groggy bodies of others around her, not wanting to call attention to herself. And when she got to the bottom of the hill, she plotted her course out to the forest. It would be difficult, she knew, barefoot as she was. And with the moon so bright, stealth was not an option.

She paused and took a breath, relieved that none of her companions were paying attention, and then, gathering her courage, she began running.

Those that noticed her go uttered cries of surprise, but no one followed. The grass underfoot was wet and slippery; more than once she felt her balance shift and alter. But Kyoko was a runner, and she was fast. Not for nothing had she worked three jobs while commuting on a bicycle. What she lacked in mass she made up for in speed and endurance, and she covered as much ground as she could as quickly as she could—on and on until she reached the cover of the tree line.

She stopped then, unsure of herself. Out on the field, the moon had made the world bright. Not as bright as daylight, but enough so that she could see every detail, rock, and feature before her. But the forest…well. The forest was a void, staring at her. Under the branches, there was very little illumination and she found herself stumbling in the dark. Little branches poked at the tender soles of her feet…she found herself wincing as she stepped over jagged edges and gnarled roots. It would've been bad enough even if she had been dressed for a night-time hike, but felt nearly impossible as she was right now. She was just like any other modern human, unused to wandering around barefoot and alone. She found her heart was racing as she stepped deeper in—she didn't know how deep into the woods she needed to go to be safe—didn't even know if she could be safe—all she knew was that the thing screaming danger at her hadn't stopped and she had to keep going—

A horn rang out, crystal clear and so loud she could feel it resonating from her feet up through her very bones. It reverberated throughout the landscape, over the plain and the forests and the dark outlines of the mountains she'd seen beyond.

Startled, Kyoko whipped around. The moonlit field was still visible, past the cover of trees. She was overcome by the need to run, and yet she was frozen stock-still as she heard it.

She braced herself against a tree as a second fanfare echoed the first—she had the sense that things were waiting beyond that call, things that were merely listening and waiting for something. Something she did not know and could only dread.

A third call, louder than the first two—so loud that she could see some of the figures on the hill cover their ears.

She had the feeling that a great dam had burst. Wind whipped through the trees of the forest, bending their top-most branches and wuthering against the field. She heard them before she saw them. Faintly at first, but at a steady rhythm. A great host. A mass, floating on air. Riders. A fog preceded them, seemingly taking over the sky and covering over the vast plain. Some were on what looked like horses, others on winged steeds. And the riders themselves—they took her breath away and terrified her all at once. Fae was a word she was familiar with, of course—she'd loved fairies and fantasy from her childhood onwards. But though her mind knew what they were, they still shocked. Beautiful faces, angular, unlined, and ageless, all bent towards a group of silly young boys and girls in white. Some were winged and some had horns. All had keely perceptive eyes, glinting coldly as they came. They rode on the wind and she could hear their whoops and cries as the very first riders peeled away from the rest. These were not the Fae of her childhood. Kyoko could feel their alienness, their wrongness, their malevolence. She felt small and frightened, helpless. She felt like prey. And she understood—very, very quickly—that they were predators.

Kyoko jumped as the first white-clothed figure was caught. It was a rider all in black, his cloak unfurling behind him, who took first blood that night. She stifled her own scream as she saw the rider grasp a girl by her hair, lift her from the ground and then licked what she could only imagine were tears from her face. The girl kept screaming as the rider stripped off her dress and then mauled her breasts, tasting them slowly even as the girl writhed in terror. Kyoko covered her mouth to silence herself as the rider bent the girl's body backwards until her spine snapped. Though she'd tried to make it into the forest as far as she could, Kyoko was still close enough to see the blood drip out of the girl's open mouth.

It was blue-black under the moonlight.

That opened the floodgates. One after another, in quick succession, the white figures were captured. Some were merely torn apart roughly, their bodies dismembered and scattered on the field. But it was the ones that were kept alive longer that truly horrified. She watched as the girl she'd called The Ringleader was captured by a tall figure on foot—and then watched as he restrained her on the grass. When the rutting began, Kyoko nearly vomited in horror—the girl was screaming, begging for her captor to stop.

He didn't.

But that girl wasn't alone on the field. Kyoko watched as figure after figure was caught and brutalized, and only when the head of a boy she thought she knew from class landed near the forest's edge did she come to her senses. Run. She had to run.

She turned around, mastering her shaking knees, mastering the terror and the horror that gripped her body. The night would give way to day eventually, wouldn't it? Would these phantasms survive past dawn? Adrenaline coursed through her, sped her on her way. She could deal with the cuts and the bruises from sharp rocks and sticks tomorrow—tonight, she needed to hide in the depths of the forest as far as she could. She ran—she didn't know in which direction, she only knew she had to get away from the field. So long as she could hear the screaming, she knew she hadn't gone far enough. She redoubled her efforts and her speed until her breath came in quick gasps and her body was tight and aching.

Finally she came to a river running through the forest. She stopped, panting, waiting for her heart to calm, catching her breath for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. She stayed in the shadows, afraid that her dress would make her visible to winged riders. She looked up at the sky, looking for the North Star. Looking for Orion. Looking for anything familiar that she could orient herself by. But the skies above her were unfamiliar and strange. Only the moon looked the same, an implacable silver face revealing her to her would-be predators. She would not run along the riverbank, she decided. She would try to cross the water—wasn't running water a deterrent to fairies? She thought she'd read that somewhere.

Gingerly she viewed the river from the treeline. She saw rocks protruding from the bottom of the riverbed, saw the water flow briskly but calmly. Not a strong current then, she thought. It reminded her a little bit of the Kamo River, all breadth but no depth. Now or never, she told herself, and stepped out from the trees. She winced as her tender feet hit the stony riverbank and then waded into the water, going as quickly as possible so she could enter the safety of the canopy.

The river proved as shallow as she expected, having been no deeper than the tops of her shoulders. She emerged drenched on the other side, ran up the steep bank and then under the trees, as far as she could before stopping to squeeze the dripping water from the garment she was wearing. She knew she wasn't safe, and yet she couldn't hear the sounds from the killing field anymore. She could even hear the sound of birds in the trees—would birds remain in trees when they were in danger? She allowed herself time to take stock of the situation. How long could she stay here? Could she fashion herself shoes out of bark? Shelter? She looked around her, searching for berries or plants that might be edible, but nothing looked familiar. Things were…odd. Fantastical, even. The night muted their colors but even in the near-dark she could see the vivid yellows and pinks and purples on the foliage. She spotted berries growing from a vine and reached towards it, only to stop herself immediately. What was she doing? She had no idea what those berries were, or whether or not they were poisonous. And worse, she'd forgotten the cardinal rule for humans wandering in Faerie: no matter what she did, she must not eat the food.

There must be a way to escape. Surely she could find a way to wake herself up. Some portal back to safety, to her warm world where the most urgent priority was not survival but…giving Moko English lessons. What could keep her safe? What weapon could she fashion? Quickly she found a fallen stick, straight and just a little shorter than her height. She hadn't trained extensively with a staff, but she'd knew enough—perhaps this would give her a running chance. She wished she had salt, or rowan berries, or iron…she wished for consecrated ground. All the things the stories mentioned to keep her safe from the Fae were out of reach in another world.

A chill wind blew behind her, raising goosebumps on her skin. She was reminded all over again that she was barely clothed in that dress, and that dress was clinging to her skin and wet, nearly transparent even in the dim light. She shuddered. Again, that little voice inside her said, DANGER. You idiot. Run, Kyoko, she told herself.

She was considering which direction to run to when she heard a twig snap behind her, and she was off. Blindly, heedlessly, she ran into the woods again, not caring where she was going so long as it was away. She could almost feel her predator now, stalking her from behind. Mist was rising all around her, disorienting her, keeping her from seeing more than a few feet ahead. She could not see him, she only hoped she could outrun him. Was he mounted? If he was on a horse, or whatever those winged things were, there would be no way she could outrun him. She wondered, vaguely, if she could throw him off by taking a hard turn further into the forest. She did just that, going as quickly as she could. She stumbled onwards, always onwards, until she realized she'd been going in a circle, over and over again. She stopped running, trying to catch her breath again.

I am *not* giving into this, Kyoko thought. Again, she thought back to her fairy stories—about how hapless humans became lost in a malevolent fairy glamour before disappearing into the woods. She made herself stop to think about each step she took, making certain that she wasn't being fooled into an endless loop in this dark forest. She was afraid that she would have no choice but to be led astray—what chance did a human have against magic?

She listened for pursuit, and found only silence. But her intuition told her not to relax, not to give in, that her predator was out there, lurking in the shadows.

She nearly gasped aloud when she heard him, chuckling from behind her. She whirled around and found that she was in a clearing, exposed underneath the open sky. When had she come to a clearing in these woods? Surely she would have seen it ahead of her. Something had brought her here.

The time for stealth had passed. She knew whoever chased her knew exactly where she was. No amount of hiding was possible now. She hazarded a call into the void. "Who's there?" she asked.

In a blink of an eye he was there, floating in front of her at the center of the clearing. It was a figure from her nightmares.

"Kyoko-chan," he said. "Fancy meeting you here." The moon illuminated the silver mane on his head like a halo. A sardonic smile parted his lips as she recognized him.

Her eyes merely widened in horror. She turned to run—as bad as Reino had been in Karuizawa, there was something wrong with him here in Faery. Though he'd been no less a predator in her world, there had been some petulance…some playful immaturity in him. This Reino was animated by something far darker, far more powerful.

But he blocked her path. She held the branch she'd found between them like a quarterstaff, keeping him at bay. "Uh uh," he said. "You are Prey, and under the Compact of the Hunt, I am well within my right to claim you."

She didn't understand the words he was speaking. Prey? Hunt? Compact? All of these were alien to her, and yet he acted as if she should know.

"Reino," she spat. She tried to keep her voice from quavering. "Let me go. Let me go and I won't tell anyone—"

"You won't tell anyone?" he laughed. "No, I daresay you wouldn't, dearest."

She turned and tried to run again, but there he was again, each and every time, in front of her and laughing. Laughing hard enough to clutch at his belly and wipe at his eyes. "What was that about letting you go again?" he asked.

"Take me back home," she demanded. She tried to keep the note of desperation from her voice, but she was certain he heard it as he advanced towards her. She stepped backwards, trying to avoid him, but he grabbed her by her arms and dragged her towards him.

The makeshift staff fell out of her hands and onto the forest floor. She was certain he could feel her heartbeat through his gloves. He drew her closer and then breathed her in, bringing his nose along the curve of her neck until his lips nipped her ear.

He snarled and Kyoko swallowed a scream as he lost whatever sanity was in his purple eyes. Faster than she could blink he had her restrained against him, her back against his chest as he ran his long, sharpened nails up and down her body. The branch she was holding fell to the ground with a thud. She was breathing hard but struggling against his grip, her chest rising and falling frantically. Images of the killing field played themselves on a hyperloop in her mind—what would be her fate? Would her head be torn off her body and then tossed into the air? Somehow thought her fate wouldn't be so easy. She thought about the girl being held down in the grass and what Reino had already done to her. Horror…fear…the dread of inevitable suffering—she fought against him with all of her might, unwilling to go down without a fight.

Reino had already killed his share of souls for the Hunt. He'd known Kyoko would be prey that night and had decided, early on, to play with her for as long as he could before the Hunt's madness claimed him. But having her in-hand like this made the Hunt sing wildly in him. He reveled in its song; he knew it well. "That Fuwa boy couldn't see how beautiful you are," he growled in her ear. "But I do." She whimpered as two sharpened nails converged on her nipple and he tugged as she squirmed. "If only he could see you like this," Reino said, "With this wet dress clinging to your delectable little body—"

Kyoko shut her eyes as his hands ripped the dress from her. "Your soul will be delicious to them," he said. She squealed involuntarily as the fabric pulled taut against her skin and gave way. In her mind's eye, she remembered the other girl from earlier, how that monster had ripped off her dress and snapped her bones as if she'd been a toy and not a person. "The Old Ones will be pleased…"

"Please," she begged, desperate. "Please—don't—"

But his hand was already at her breast, cupping it and teasing at her nipple. Kyoko bucked against him, trying to fight him off, trying to leverage herself against the tree. One good kick, she thought. Just one, to get herself free from his grip.

She hadn't remembered Reino's power, though, and his next assault took her by surprise.

Reino closed his eyes as he invaded her mind, and Kyoko nearly choked as she felt him rifle through her memories. Her mind was full of him—simultaneously, she felt as if her memories were being torn apart with something both sharp and poisonous. She had no defense against his probing—she felt his intrusive gaze examining every memory, every crack inside her. She felt him tear apart boxes she didn't want opened and watched as he tasted what was inside.

The sting of her mother's hand across her cheek.

The take-out meal from Mos Burger, slamming against the wall and onto the floor.

And then he shifted, pushing and pulling at levers she hadn't even known existed.

Tsuruga-san asleep on the pillow she'd bought him.

Swirls from the white of a poached egg as he stood over his stove.

He gave a small laugh and then nipped at her ear again. "And here I thought Tsuruga would have already plucked you from the vine," he grinned, and then threw his head back in delirious laughter. "Leaving you a virgin for the Hunt," he crowed. "He could've saved you the trouble if only he'd taken what you so clearly want to give him." She found that she was being dragged along with his inspection and gasped when pulled forward the memory of her-as-Setsu, sitting on her Nii-san's torso and giving him a hickey. "Some fairy prince he is."

Fairy prince, Kyoko thought dully. Ren wasn't her fairy prince, Corn was. "You're so adorable," Reino said. She could feel him moving through her mind again, one memory after another. Flashes of the child-Corn were interspersed in her mind with Corn-from-Guam. "Such a naive little idiot." His laugh took on a manic edge. "But I think we can establish that you've always known the truth, hmm?"

Had she? The revelation hit her hard. She'd refused to think about it—Corn's appearance in Guam, the similarities between their smiles. The fact that Tsuruga-san had lied, lied, lied—but that was then and this was now. So what if this broke your heart, Kyoko? she asked herself. You're about to be dismembered. She would have laughed, except his hand was at her throat.

She felt the fingers of his other hand caressing downwards, and her skin was crawling, but he was still in her mind.

"Maybe I'll keep you alllll the way until the third dawn," he said. "Wouldn't you like that?" His hands had plunged down and into the cleft between her legs, but she was holding them together as hard as she could, refusing to give him access. Reino grinned. He was enjoying her feeble display of force—

Only to find himself kicked when he least expected it. Agony suffused his body as she made contact with his nether regions. Between his magic and his powers, Reino had had no doubt of his ability to restrain her. But as his bout with Sho had illustrated, he wasn't terribly skilled at close physical combat. Kyoko had only taken advantage of the situation.

He grinned again. Of course. Of course she would fight. She was worthy prey—worth twenty, no, a hundred lesser souls out on that Field. She propelled herself forward and away from him as he continued to recover, giving her the advantage of a few minutes to get lost in the woods again. When he managed to stand up straight, he called out "Ready or not, here I come!" and listened for the sound of her frantic running up and down the woods.

There, he thought, hearing her running, hubwards. She was a typical human, stumbling her way through the trees. He pinpointed her location and gave chase. Though she'd been running all night, she was still strong and fast, easily one of the last remaining humans left uncaptured that evening. He'd had trouble finding her at first, contenting himself with easy kills on the bloodied field. It wasn't until she'd crossed the ley line that he'd scented her on the breeze.

Whether or not she knew it, Kyoko Mogami would be his by dawn.

=.=.=.=