The Bloodbath
Sept 15, 2020 21:51:37 GMT -5
Post by WT on Sept 15, 2020 21:51:37 GMT -5
knife·knife·knife·knife·knifeIn all the years since you were weaned, your only direct contact with humans has been through a fence or while unconscious. Every training session in your life has been opt-in and reward-driven: if you want the snack you follow the cues, and if you don't, you trot freely away. And even then, your small suite of learned behaviors has are all aimed only at easing your care; no one in your life ever wanted you to be pet or machine, only yourself, and you were taught not to snuggle or bite on command but to let a veterinarian examine your teeth or draw blood without incident.
It was a good approach right up until it made you—fond enough of humans to let yourself be collected, wild enough to bare your teeth when something runs—perfect for today.
When your eyes drift open in a cramped, dim box, you wake to the first time in your life you have ever been collared.
On a better day, in familiar surroundings with your clan and near humans you trust, you might—at least at first—have regarded this new accoutrement as an uncomfortable but interesting puzzle to solve. Right now, struggling to groggy wakefulness with the ground roaring furiously beneath you and a cacophony of unfamiliar sound and smell assaulting your senses from every direction, it's one thing too many. You panic. Before you're even fully awake you're scrabbling clumsily at the thing around your neck with one front paw and then the other, staccato alarm rumbles punctuating your breaths; when it fails to loosen you try to escalate to hysterical cackling, only to panic harder when you realize that the unfamiliar weight around your muzzle won't budge. Heaving breaths through the sliver you can open your mouth, you stagger to your feet and toss your head, as much looking for escape as simply trying to throw off the things around your head—
Every point on the circlet around your neck catches fire.
You fall back down.
"Not too high," an unfamiliar human voice scolds, "we only have so many backups—"
There are a lot more words you don't understand, then, interwoven with animal noises you recognize from home but can't place. Stunned into silence, you pant on the floor and can't tell whether it's still shaking or you are. Part of you wants to believe that the presence of humans means this will turn out okay somehow—means someone will take care of you, put you back under, give you a meatball when you wake up back home. But these aren't your humans, and you're not surprised, not truly, when no one climbs into your compartment to help you.
You want Adi and Murtaza. More than them, more than anything, you want your clan.
You have yourself.
You do your best. By the time the vehicle grinds to its final halt the light tranquilizer dose has all but worn off, and while the humans gather themselves, so do you; muzzled or no, you're ready when they open your compartment, barreling into the nearest human in a bid to make a run for it.
It's a decent effort. It might have worked, if not for the collar.
They have to haul you bodily into the tunnel, but once inside—once they've held you down to strip off the muzzle, shocked you just enough to stun you while they get out of the tunnel themselves—they only need let you go. You pelt away from these humans toward the light at the other end, and when the gate there opens to a stretch of sand, you don't think twice about throwing yourself out.
The gate slams shut so quickly it almost clips you.
Where you expected sanctuary, you find an assault no better than the box you woke in; sun glares off the sand while more humans than you have ever seen in one place, some of them down with you and many more hollering down from every direction above you, scream. A lion bowls through the clump of humans on the sand with you; ears flat to your head, you shy away from him more than any other part of the scene, not quite recognizing him as your natural competition but not needing any prompting to avoid someone that large and powerful without the rest of your clan as backup.
You rumble, pure frustration piercing through your terror, when you look far enough ahead to see that clinging to the wall puts you on a collision path with another cat.
It's a good thing, you consider as the rumble gives way to a giggle which builds into a cackle, that your jaws are free now. You're still reeling, but being able to snap your teeth and feel the bone-crunching power behind them makes it easier to treat the terror like fury; it makes it easier to decide that if you have to fight every creature in this trap to get out, to get home, you can.
[Gilda attacks D11M Dustin Carter]
hcgNo04vEfknife
[Shallow Cut on Left Shoulder - 3.5]
[Gilda attacks D8M Ander De La Cruz]
knife
[Shallow Cut on Cheek - 3.5]
[Gilda attacks D11M Dustin Carter]
knife
[Shallow Cut on Left Bicep - 3.5]
[Gilda attacks D3M Auden Wren]
knife
[Deep Gash on Chest - 9.5]
[Gilda attacks D8F Luella Duval]
knife
[Shallow Cut on Left Shoulder - 3.5]
As you tear into the first human in your path, you brace yourself for the ring around your neck to blaze again.
It doesn't.
Far too keyed up to feel exactly relieved, you nevertheless plant your feet with a little more confidence. The humans outside seemed insurmountable; these humans are younger and uncoordinated and wield no fire. You have to dodge and dance, circling tightly from a second human back to the first before a gap in the shifting crowd opens a new path to you, but if the speed and awkward angles make those first few blows shallow and clumsy, they're still clean cuts. Your jaws do better work still on a third human, and you shove easily past that one, coming to face your fourth with the third's blood splashed down your jaws and chest; and you lunge again, still terrified but no longer flinching.