• A.K.A Wolf Act XVII- Determination


    Screaming, blood, tears, cries of pain and…what is this other feeling? I-I can’t quite place it…heartbreak? No…it can’t be not after what happened last night with—

    I jerked awake and I was lying on my back against the edge of the pool and, of course, nude. To say the water was freezing would be a wonderful understatement. I leapt out of the water as a wolf, shook off all of the water that confined my body to this extreme cold and then became human again as I walked towards my clothes.

    Splat…

    I looked down at my foot to see my foot coated in blood from the puddle I stepped in. I almost fainted from the smell that overcame me. It was Zero’s. Looking around with shaky eyes I realized that huge claw marks were carved into the sides of the cave and they were aligned with white fur and more blood.

    I began to realize that a major factor was missing form this equation…

    “Zero? Zero! ZERO!?”

    I couldn’t even think straight as I quickly got dressed and ran out of the cave in an organized panic. I felt like I was hyperventilating. Zero was gone and his blood was everywhere. Was he attacked in the middle of the night while I slept? Did he—

    He couldn’t have just left during one of his episodes and not come back. No…no, I’m just over exaggerating. He’s back with the rest and probably getting teased as to why we both went missing last night. A brief flashback of that night and what took place flashed into my mind and my vision was possessed by it for a millisecond.

    I covered my ruby face and tried to suppress my embarrassing giggles. I walked back up the hill to see Hotaka looking like something the cat brought in and Ichio was with Sparks, crying. Kumori was pacing back and forth, cursing to herself.

    “Guys?” I said hesitantly. All heads shot up at me, Hotaka just looked so relieved that he could melt. Sparks immediately started sobbing and ran over to me to give me a heart-wrenching hug. Ichio was soon to do the same.

    “We…we thought we’d n-never see you again, Yukiru!” Ichio sobbed in the middle of my chest. I chuckled and placed a hand in his head, “What are you talking about? I wasn’t kidnapped or anything—“

    “We thought Zero killed you,” Kumori said bluntly.

    My body went rigid. “Wha…what? N-no! Nothing like that happened! Last night Zero and I…” I paused and dared not to speak of the intimacy. Kumori just rolled her eyes at me and continued to pace. “What the hell is going on?” I asked sternly as Ichio and Sparks backed away from me. Kumori just groaned loudly, threw her hands in the air, and resumed her relentless, repetitive walking.

    “Zero went missing at about 4AM early this morning, roughly five hours ago, and we had not heard or smelled you since then so, we assumed the worst. The reason for such assumptions is because…”

    Dammit! Why was he pausing? Just tell me already you—

    “Zero’s become a full-blooded Scraper now.”

    Please…please tell me that wasn’t true. Anything but that! No! He couldn’t!! Not now!!!

    Kumori took my gun from Hotaka’s pack and held it in her hands as she walked towards me. Once standing in front of me, I could actually see guilt and remorse in her eyes as she did was put the gun in my hands and started to walk deeper into the forest.

    I won’t need this gun…right?

    “We’re going after the stubborn b*****d,” Hotaka said with a laugh as he stood up and put all of his writing utensils neatly inside of his pack. Ichio quickly followed him and Sparks just waited right next to me with an anxious face.

    I couldn’t move. I didn’t know how. Zero had turned into a complete monster. I could have died. All of us…could have died. But, as far as I know, my heart is still painfully beating. And everything around me wasn’t melting away like in a dream. Sparks yanked on the bottom of my dark green tank top, “Are you coming, Mommy?” he cooed softly.

    I held back the erge to just hold him in my arms and pretend that this wasn’t happening. But, now was the farthest thing from the right time. I just blinked into a wolf, with my gun strapped around my neck, and ran like there was a monster chasing me. But, the irony was…was that I was chasing a monster.

    /-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/


    We only traveled by scent. We took some remains of his shirt in the cave that had some fur and blood on it and that was more than enough to track. I noticed something rather shallow as our pack ran; almost the entire time I’ve been a member of this pack, all we’ve ever done was look for someone or something. And we always had to run. I know to the normal person, that seems rather boring and repetitive but not when your very existence and those around you is hanging by a thread.

    I was at the head of our squad of runners and the faster I ran, the fainter Zero’s smell seemed to grow. Ichio made it quite clear that after only 2 hours that we needed to stop. The area we were in wasn’t that wide spread apparently and if we traveled for about eight hours, we would be traveling too fast to search as thoroughly as we would like. Or to hear Kumori tell it, ‘You’re running us ragged on a wild goose chase ya freak!’

    Just as Ichio and I were bringing back a male deer for dinner, I heard that incredibly obnoxious ringing that I heard back at Nobell. It made me drop the deer’s neck form my wolf jaws and my head bowed in agony. Ichio seemed unaffected by the whole noise. I blinked into my human form with my hands clenched tightly over my ears but to of no relief. Again and again I became a wolf then human. Human, Wolf, Human, Wolf as if I had absolutely no control over what my body was doing. I heard a pained howl coming from where we set up camp.

    I quickly told Ichio to try and bring the meal back to the rest himself. Just as I saw Hotaka curled over in pain, the ringing stopped. A dead stop. I ran towards his pack, pulled out a rag and rushed over to Hotaka. I originally was going to have Kumori wet the rag to try and cool Hotaka down he was sweating so much. But, then I saw some red ooze seep from the inside of his ears. I balled the rag up and lightly blotted his ears with the holey cloth.

    “Are you ok?” I asked, concerned.

    Kumori scoffed, “He’s bleeding from his ears! Does he look ok!?”

    I ignored her rudeness.

    “That hurt.” Hotaka said with a forced smile.

    “Isn’t that the same noise we heard before Nobell arrived and while we were in Nobell?” I spoke again when I moved to the other side of Hotaka.

    “Yeah,” he replied.

    “What does it mean? If anything…”

    “I dunno.”

    “It’s the Calling of the Scrapers,” I heard Kumori say bluntly.

    “The wha?” I beseeched with a raised eyebrow.

    Kumori sighed at me like I was an ignorant fool, “It means that who ever controls the beacon is calling out to whomever wants or is becoming a Scraper…i.e.; Zero.”

    My heart sank. Not only am I relentlessly searching for a man that has more than half a mind to kill me, but also, the only way to find him is to follow a screeching roar.

    Fun.

    End of Act XVII


    ~!~!RANDOM QUESTION TIME~!~!
    Should, along the way of trying to find Zero should...
    a) A love triangle form
    b) Sparks discover a new "friend"
    c) There be some treachery
    d) Other (give examples)