A/N: Etaerus (Εταίρος) is the Greek word for partner. It'll make more sense in later chapters! :)
Big things happen quiet. They don't burst, or bang, or break. There is a quiet creeping involved, a winding process about it that ensures that each step goes precisely as it should. Sometimes, if you listen close enough, you can hear the whispers of change. A shattered window. A fallen tree. "A body, drained of blood, punctured in the neck," notes a man dressed in all black.
Obviously, change looks different in different places. In Konoha, it means: "Vampires," mutters his companion. There is a hardness to him not seen in his partner. His stature is rigid, his voice stiff around the word, brows perpetually furrowed. Everything about him gives off a hatred beyond his decades, which couldn't be more than two and a half. And yet, his chin remains trained up and forward. A man of pride.
That is not to say, however, that the man beside him is any less grave. With a back perfectly straight and an expression set in stone, the man in black is, though not tense, serious nonetheless. He is serious about his job, and this case. And yet his eyes are liquid as he inspects the cadaver: sparkling with a curiosity for the truth no hardened man's eyes could see, able to bend and twist and change his preconceptions. He will ask the right questions.
These musings keep the shadow that lay mere inches below the men's sight line occupied. It hadn't been a choice–a conscious one, at least–to run into them. Running into them had, in fact, been the last thing it wanted to do. And yet, here now, it can't deny the compulsion to reach out, beg for its own existence. The choice is taken from it–because life always seems to work that way–by the pattering of a rabbit. It takes a split moment before the oncoming fight to envy that simple existence: if it wished to be known, it simply appeared.
Much like the rabbit, it supposes, I will get my wish. And so, the shadow shuts its eyes tight, braces itself, and awaits the fray.
And the men do not disappoint. Already on edge from the suspicious appearance of the body, further exacerbated by the implications of its wound, even the slight rustle of a rabbit in the shrubbery beneath their feet is a monster. It just so happens that they are right.