Insanity Manifest (Ry-san)

[Halcyon Hero]

Dante ran. And ran. And ran. Rain fell down in thick sheets, and the blood covering his body just wouldn’t seem to wash away. His white hoodie was nearly crimson, and his manacles were slick with the red liquid. Sloshing through the muddy road, the fleeing young man fell to his knees and allowed the sickness of his thoughts to come forth in a retching torrent. His stomach emptied (again), he struggled to his feet and resumed trudging through the thick mud of the road. He tasted bile and started to reach up to wipe his mouth, but stopped, noting his blood-soaked arm. Instead, he forced his mind to go blank, trying to forget what had happened.

Actually, he couldn’t really remember what had happened. Brief images flashed through his head, images of blood and slashing and death and flames. Faces frozen in ice. Dismembered limbs. Soundless screams. Bits and pieces bounced around his head, and he didn’t want them. He didn’t want to know what had happened. He clamped his hands against the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as it doing so could possibly help. Of course, despite not having the whole picture, Dante knew what had happened. It was Him. He didn’t know why or how, but he knew that it had been Him.

Dante hated Him. He hated Him, and himself because of Him. He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he had contemplated ending his own life simply to rid himself and the world of His wretched existence. Yet he couldn’t. He didn’t want to give up on life or himself, despite all of his hatred for the thing inside him. He wanted to live! He couldn’t give up. Not yet. But even still, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to be rid of the thing or how to fight him, so he did the only thing left. He ran.

The mud road Dante traversed was easily ten feet wide, and shoulder-height grass spread out from it on either side in opposing viridian seas. The sky was blanketed in black clouds, sheets of gray rain pelting the lone man relentlessly. Dark outlines of trees stood on the horizon, and Dante made that his goal. Maybe if he could make it there, he could be safe from his thoughts and the murderous ghosts that surely chased him.

“You!”

Maybe not.

[Ryorinin-san]

Raina reached in her pocket again, feeling the rough paper packet, several pages long, stuffed into an envelope. It had been delivered only hours ago. It was an execution order. In about seven pages of lawyer-ese it said she was to use any means necessary to execute the individual, or individuals, responsible for the massacre of a nearby town.

She stood in the town square, quelling the beast inside her, feeling it pace within the cage of her body, smelling the carnage around her. The smell wasn't just blood, though there was enough of that, but it was that smell of true slaughter, a mix of raw hamburger and outhouse that turned your stomach, or just flat did it for you, depending on your particular ilk. The human in her was disgusted by the scene, the beast however...

She left the cleanup to the people who got paid for it. She'd seen all she needed to see here, and caught the trail of someone leaving the scene hours before. It was easy to follow. They made no attempt to hide their trail, and the smell of blood and thicker things clung to it's scent. It wasn't afraid... Not of being followed anyway. She dodged and weaved along the trail of her prey like a ghost, keeping off the road her quarry seemed to favor. This posed an interesting question. What manner of monster slaughters so many people, then staggers away like a bewildered child?

Looks like I may soon get my answer... She slowed to stalk along beside the road alongside a lone figure, wreaking of blood and fresh death. No sense in drawing things out... "You!" As the figure turned, she leaped over the drainage ditch and onto the road with catlike grace. Her hand was already buried inside her coat, ready for one of her guns. She stood in a well of calm, even as the beast paced within her, willing her to make her move. "My name is Raina Lunawyn, licensed Executioner. For the murders you committed only hours ago, I have your papers." Why did she warn him?

[Halcyon Hero]

The rain and not-so-distant thunder drowned out most of her words, but Dante caught all of the important ones.

Executioner. Murders. Commited.

“NO!”

Dante clamped his left hand over the same side of his face in anguish and instinctively brought his right snapping up, the chain at the end of it lengthening and shifting. The Executioner fired off a bullet as she whipped her hand out of her jacket, deflecting the incoming blade. The wide, jagged blade spun through the air, imbedding itself by Dante’s foot. Yanking the blade from the ground, the wanted man turned and sprinted away from the woman as quickly as he could. Bullets chased him, and he knew that he could never outrun her like this. Dante spun about on a heel, gesturing with one hand and shouting out. It practically exploded out of thin air, the rain drops freezing and fusing together, an opaque wall of ice that spanned the entirety of the road and even reached out into the grassy field on either side.

Dante’s momentum carried him back around, and he kept on running.

[Ryorinin-san]

What the hell? Raina did not skid to a halt before the wall, but rather shifted her hands. Her fingers grew hard, gargoyle-like talons and dug them into the ice, vaulting over the wall, and landing at a run on the other side. Why do they always have to run first? First they run, then they try to bargain with you, or worse yet, give you some sob story. Then, they try to sucker punch you. I guess Aurora was right. She closed on him quickly. People are painfully predictable...

She dodged off the road, melting into the undergrowth. Then, she Ran in earnest. In the wilderness, lycanthropes don't run. They Run. It is an exhilaration unlike anything else. The forest seemed to melt before her, like water for a fish, and she would not tire. She gave herself to the movement and knew when she passed her prey. She ran ahead of him and errupted onto the road before him. The Executioner landed in a wide, two-handed shooting stance, her gun levelled for a perfect chest shot, firing twice even as his eyes widened at her surprise appearance.