neniadellafine:

warning is in place for extreme gore.

     _{Stepping over a carcass, he notes that the light is considerably dimmer.  These ruins have many twists and turns in them, possibly with a few gangster corpses along the way.  The kids these days like to play tough, but most of them lack the abilities of survival and direction.  Perhaps, when the world is kinder, such skills will have no real requirement, but privately Valentine prefers the wilderness—
     Especially when there is hunting to be done.  But there is one thing to ascertain first:
     The girl cannot see.  No one can see.  He hesitates to show even the paramour his consumptions, though he has surely seen it before, been it before.
     Midgar makes for a favored hunting ground.  Not enough people to leave a strong scent that dissuades the beasts from roaming, close to his home, and no one to question the unnatural dismemberment of bodies—feeding is m e s s y business.
     He thinks to himself, ‘Why am I so obsessed with this today?  Has it…truly been that long?’
     ‘i’M HuNGRY, HoST.’
     Encased in a shadow, he hunches, fighting the wave of nausea that bubbles up from his middle.  His gauntlet slaps the wall, adding his own claw marks to the stone structure, far above the tussle melee from pack fighting.  He thinks himself far enough into the shadows that he is hidden from the girl’s sight, for light in this rubble is severely lacking.  An ordinary human would not make it so far here; even he relies mostly on his other senses, for the patches of sunlight that occasionally little the floor are more of a hindrance than a help, especially on days where the sun is bright.
     His very spine seems to rattle.  Eyes snap to attention, slowly hollowing from deep crimson to a bottomless black depth.  His breathing becomes more ragged, and he knows he cannot stay here.  With his skull nearly cracking in two as a foreboding hockey mask emerges from his flesh, he takes off running.  Heavy footfalls echo off the cement walls, and more than once his skin catches on large nails and jutting pieces of metal framework.  Cold, stagnant water splashes his feet and soaks his toes through the cloth that is emerging.  Blood is slowly starting to flow through his flesh as a new body takes over, and pain circulates as the warmth occupies veins that would have otherwise remained empty.  The growls from his burdened breaths edges on metallic, almost i n h u m a n.
     Crashing into a fallen pole, he tumbles rather fantastically into a circlet of feasting guard hounds.  The impact hurries the transformation of his left arm into a weapon, completely breaking off the hand from the wrist.  He lets loose a bloodcurdling sCREAM that frightens most of the wolves into retreat, and that hand begins to change: elongates, grows teeth, starts its new pattern—whir, whir, whir.  Round and round the chain whips, shuddering on the cold ground, catching the hair of the abandoned meal.
     They had caught a human.  Already dead, and…are his aesthetics not ground down enough?  The new form, nearly only skin and bone, bound only by its jersey and hockey mask, crawls toward it.  A ghastly hand grips the hilt of that living chainsaw, and still-warm crimson splats across his arm as the belly is pierced.  That sweet aroma, the one he c r a v e s, of the excretion, explodes.  A jagged laugh spills forth from the wired-over mouthpiece of the mask, and a long tongue unfurls and slides over the spreading pile of yellow liquid on the floor.  A sigh, almost orgasmic in nature, fills the tunnel.
     ‘Hellmasker, no—’
     “You HaVe DeNieD Me Too LoNG, HoST.  i WiLL TaKe WHaT iS MiNe.”
     ‘Its a human—!’
     “FRaNKLy, My DeaR, i DoN’T GiVe a DaMN.”
     Mental disgust fills him, and he is repulsed by the monster he has become.  He can do nothing but sit and watch while the H e l l m a s k e r consumes what it requires.  And then—
     The one guard hound that has remained pounces, attempting to gnaw on the bony leg that sprawls on the floor.  But—lazily, the humming weapon is swung.  Two halves of hound fall to the floor, and a new scent of simple piss fills the area with the pool of dank blood.  And it laughs…l a u g h s.
     “THouGH i HaVe a CHoiCe…iT WouLD HuRT MoRe To See a HuMaN Be CoNSuMeD, RiGHT~?  aND BeSiDeS—“  Long fingers slick through the stained water and it brings them up to be sucked.  Muffled, the grating voice comes: “HuMaNS aLWayS TaSTe BeTTeR.”}

<sup>█{{✰}}██ The scent changing had done nothing other than make her pause, the scent was enough to drive her to worry she might be about to step into. She’s been around the smell of death long enough to know whenever she needed to be careful. As inhumane as she is, she held no desire to enter into combat unless she must with him; especially if he turned around attempting to fight her whenever she had shown herself as being peaceful. There isn’t much else she could do other than begin to make her way slowly forward. She can’t just sit back with chances of stagnation increasing if she were to allow fear to take hold. No, she owed too many people her life to continue onward. She won’t allow herself to turn into food for whatever is awaiting ahead. That’s all she had decided with knowledge in mind that whatever happens, will not easily happen if the parasite had a say in it. Her own guest if one wished to call it that, all created from her stunted emotional growth.

                 She’s not going to give up so very easily if that’s what was going to be desired, for her to just stand there and die before him. Never, she wouldn’t surrender if that was the last thing out there. She’d die fighting than give up so easily with her own possible paramour out there and wondering if she were safe and sound. The marionette deserved to see her safe, not die to someone so easily.

                  He’s alright, isn’t he?
                           Be ready Rock, I got a bad feeling about this.
                                 Okay…
                
                 Her friend of course was worried about this, not that Ron’s advice didn’t go unheeded knowing he usually was better at noticing things than she ever will be. At least on terms of people, given that she could very well be wandering into a trap now with blade held in gloved digits tightly by the hilt. There’s always going to be her own sense of danger, knowing this will not end well if her dear friend had felt so. Perhaps this is why she had paused at the hum of that chainsaw ringing through the stale air of piss and now blood. This wasn’t a good sign, really wasn’t.

                 The chances of her safety were depleting again and now at this point she must assume that she is going to be dragged into combat. Perhaps that’s what led to blue jetting from her azure hue in the form of flames so brightly. Blue like her soul, like every part of her dear soul and heart knowing this is going to be dicey.

                 She’s ready for the consequences to happen, always had been with her resuming her slow stride onward. Has to be close now, with how loud the chainsaw hummed at this point. Whatever was there has to be hungry anyways for something.

                 So be it then, she’ll at least be ready for whatever is waiting for her only to find her hues trained in shock. The blood, the open carcasses, the being that stood ready to feast only for her to be uncertain on what it even is for that matter. No, really, what the hell was that she could see before her gaze? It was nothing she had seen; enough that it drove her curiosity and at the same time made her grow sick to her stomach with what was around it and her prospect end at it’s hand if she were not careful.

                 This won’t be ending pleasantly, one could notice that as being certain with what awaited her if she didn’t defend herself, more so if she made a mistake during what was along the possible outcomes.</sup>

neniadellafine:

     _{Noting her, but not giving much of consequence to her presence, he continues on.  Monster extermination is…fun.  If she winds up in the way, well…too bad.  His mood borders on very negative today, as the inner demons need to feed.  And by the scent in the air, the den of other monsters is close by.  Guard hounds are not the most intelligent of creatures, though rather territorial.  The stench of excretion and carcasses proves his point.  ‘I am certainly not an animal, and I don’t like even being here.  How…disgusting.‘  During his many months of cleaning Midgar, patterns have arisen, and he has dutifully taken note: guard hounds are the lowest beasts outdoors and the easiest to manipulate, which is likely the reason DeepGround chose them to act as decoys.  It appears that though they could easily dismantle a human, other creatures of the wild were either smarter or stronger.  Another conclusion is that the canines are like vultures, feeding off whatever is already dead; perfectly logical considering they remain inept after a leader is killed.}

warning is in place for gore.

     _{And…fortunately—they had physical aspects that supplied each superhuman need that he required for his…mental…g u e s t s.  Sweat coats the body, running between each individual hair and collecting on the belly and under the ears and tail; bile is found once the hound is dead, stagnant in the abdomen; piss is found in the bowls after the bile has been broken; and there is minute but valuable poison in the tails of those excluded creatures.  Each demon the gaunt houses within requires one of those for sheer sustenance.
     How disturbing that he sees no problem with it now.  Perhaps degrading into something sub-human has…eye-opening effects.  Of course…he had been in the habit of taking the blood, too, but…that one had been sacrificed to the E n d, and Valentine’s own sanguine pulse with it.
     Perhaps it is because he merely understands now, and so thus is the reason for his graceful acceptance.  Each of his pets provides a different function of his body; they are the reason a c o r p s e can live without a heartbeat.}

warning is subsided.

     _{Stepping further into this makeshift cage, his armored toes seep into something wet.  Mold promptly reaches his nose, and he finds himself wishing the WRO would hurry with their project to rebuild the old capital.  If not Geostigma, the Planet would have a new ailment to worry over with all the fungi and pathogens collecting here.
     …Though perhaps that is why Reeve sends him and no one else.
     …What a dick.}

<sup>█{{✰}}██ That scent she caught was familiar enough, the heavy scent of death that grew thicker with each passing moment. She knew this stench because of one person, it actually made her tense inwardly at thought that she had followed her here. If she did, then it would only mean that there is a greater chance that this could get far more worse with the thought of the damage that can be caused by her. Green death is one way to go that she wouldn’t wish upon whatever poor soul had gotten involved with her of all people. It’s bad enough that there’s a risk now in place for the consequences that could create further danger for the two of them. It would mean that she’d have to watch out, much as she knew he gave off the sense he can handle himself involving whatever had come to mind. Call it her wanting to make sure that she didn’t have to prepare to burn something down; for a good reason of course.

               Her thought soon vacated upon noticing the creatures that gave off the scent… the ones that were torn apart, feasted on for food and substance with nary a thought of repulsion as oceanic scanned them over. She’s committing it to memory what to look out for thankfully, however much this scent grew irritating inwardly for the reminder it held within her mind. Memories were not pleasant when it came to certain things, now especially could count when settling her gaze briefly upon the man in red. Almost as if she were curious to what he may wish to do now before recalling he didn’t like to be stared at, best not to push it.

                So far, she could safely say that she’d prefer to not be next on the menu which was a good thing. It’s for the best to watch it in places like this, especially if the guests were not as… welcoming to put it lightly. Unsurprising enough, the whole thing involving the hound reminded her that home can be just as cruel as this place before dropping it again. Memories were not what she needed at this point to go through.

                Survival of the fittest, it really was not what she had expected to have run into again even in this world. Yet she would say nothing of it, nothing except follow and watch his back if needed be. At least since she’s tagging along without real reason to do so other than to find out more about where she is.

                Soles soon hit the wet substance shortly with the next scent being unfamiliar to a degree yet nothing entirely. Quite honestly, she had a feeling that this can only get worse considerably if this housed anything more than just that dead hound back there. It seemed likely it did, knowing it wasn’t killed then eaten without reason.</sup>