Hard to Kill [Closed|Shinobu]

[Dracula]

An old predator in a new world. Marius Ardeleanu, newly revived Bount, was in the midst of a pilgrimage across twenty-first century Earth. The New World had been fully colonized. Wars had been fought on a scale he never thought possible. Planes, cars, lights in the night, maps. Though it was the same world he knew, everything in it felt so much bigger. What he was incapable of knowing at the time was that the world had revived him in the midst of a new renaissance. A he discovered how much the world had changed from his time. The world was busy leaving this era behind. The spirit worlds becoming more than esoteric knowledge kept by the sensitive few. Governments were acknowledging them as fact and the information was leaking into the masses. His revival alone was a product of this developing shift in the world.

At this time, Marius was traveling through Shinjuku Japan. In his time, he knew of the Quincy branches of the country but had no association with him. His own family had just recently branched from the main Germanic house. So they had yet to develop any strong ties outside of their own designated region. In new clothes and in a new setting, Marius was seeking something that he didn't have words for. He dressed himself in something that the store attendant called "goth business CEO". A suit with much less parts than he was used to. Black pants, jacket, shirt, and tie that used different materials to create lines of altered textures. Silk panels with velvet lines and velvet panels with silk lines. There was a use of metal accessories on the tie, buttons, and belt buckle to give some tone. Finally, and this one was mainly Marius's choice, a velvet vest adorned and decorated with an intricate pattern. Though he enjoyed the sharp straight lines of the shoulders and lapel, this intricate vest served as a reminder or callback to the fashion he was used to from his century. The luxury of the clothes was coloring the modern world in a way to him. They were soft, well fit, and just generally "better" than his old clothes. It made him wonder if this new world was indeed something "better".

"It's time to eat." The Bount let out an audible sigh and displayed a visible scowl as his Doll made their needs known. "If you don't then this little tour is over."

"I know... I know." Darius turned his vision inward and searched the crowd with his mind rather than his eyes. People began to light up like the neon signs of the cityscape. Tiny blue lights indicating their literal souls. Precious little lights that were completely unappreciated by their host but intrinsic to their very existence. This was the food that he needed. A larger one would keep the Doll sated for longer. Preserve some silence and time to think.

Out of the shadows of an alley with fewer than ten neon signs, the charming European approached a young business woman with a smile on his face "Good evening madam, I was wondering if you could help me get to the subway?"

She's confused for a minute as she tries to decypher the man's English through his deep voice and thick accent. After a moment she regains herself and in rough English she manages to say that she doesn't speak English. "Sumimasen, nihongode. Konbanwa, chikatetsu o sagasu no o tetsudatte kuremasen ka." She's surprised further but now that he's speaking her tongue she becomes more relaxed. He manners deeper into the alley, looking for the subway platform and she follows to correct him. Once deep enough though, adrenaline greeted her once more. In a second she was pinned against the wall- he was so strong she couldn't pry herself away. A hand on her mouth and a hand on her shoulder to keep her still. Something else whipped out from behind him to take out the closest light. He had a somber face that conveyed how sorry he was. He didn't want this.

"We get to eat this one?" The man's mouth didn't move but he was definitely talking. No, that wasn't is voice. Someone else was talking. "Yes, this one." The man opened his mouth wide and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Large fangs, a vampire. They were real. At least, that was the best she was able to comprehend what was happening. And that was all the time she would get to understand it. His mouth wrapped around her neck and the teeth sank in to kill her.

[Shinobu]

Sometimes, all Shinobu wanted was for her old life back. Back before things became so complicated.

Says the doctor, a sardonic voice said in the back of her head. As though treating patients isn’t complicated. Why can’t people take care of themselves?

Which was true. There was an endless parade of people coming through the hospital, and all too many of them were there because...because they’d put off an illness for months, because they’d thought something would be funny, or a great idea, because they’d tried to juggle knives before they juggled balls, because they’d actually tripped falling down the stairs. So many stupid people! Oh sure she understood why...but they had to be more careful! There was already enough out in the world that could harm them or kill them and they’d never even know! Monsters she’d only just started to encounter more and more, ghosts of the deceased, black garbed men and women armed with swords and an ego bigger than the monsters they hunted...there were a lot of things!

Humans really had no business making it even harder for themselves to live.

But at least...when she hadn’t been aware of that, she hadn’t had to see any of it. Which doesn’t change anything, but ignorance is bliss. And I have to ask a lot of hard questions now. She sighed at that thought, shaking her head. She knew that the hard questions were necessary but...they were stressful and they made her head hurt. It also made her more anxious. How important was it to keep everyone’s identity straight when they could literally kill you!!!

Shinobu let out a pained little noise and shook her head. She might as well be wishing for the sun to rise from the west instead. There was no going back even if she could stop seeing them. So perhaps it was better that she could at least defend herself against the things that went bump in the nigh-

The flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye should have been nothing. She was just walking through downtown Tokyo. But she’d been on edge recently, so she turned and looked for what it was instead of ignoring it as she would have done once. Maybe it was a monster instead of just a drunk. Hopefully it was just a drunk (another thought she never would have believed in the past).

A light was gone. No wonder she’d seen a flicker of movement. Shinobu frowned and then blinked as she walked into the alleyway, eyes peering ahead to see into the gloom. A subtle application of her power quickly changed what she could see before her, eyes with slits now as angular and wide as a cats taking in what had been darkness.

Shinobu felt her face burn. Oh, she thought hurriedly. A man in fancy black and red attire, looking as stylish as a Count, was bent over a woman’s neck. Get a room- the thought began…

And then stopped as she saw something fall. Splatter.

She couldn’t possibly mistake that sound, that sight. She saw it too much. Blood.

There was no time to think or even consider anything else. Shinobu strode forward hurriedly, uncaring that she was making noise. The woman was bleeding! What was the man doing?! ”What’s happening, why is she bleeding?! Wh-”

The last of the gruesome tableau finally clicked into place as she saw exactly what was going on. He was biting her. Well that settled it. This was no one she knew, someone was hurt, and some freak was going to kill someone to satisfy his...his…

Were those fangs?!

”What the fuck?!”

[Dracula]

Blood and soul, both for the Doll. The Bount didn't enjoy it morally but could not deny the peace that came just after a meal. It didn't last long but as the hole in his existence digested the meal it stopped screaming at him to eat more. Once it was all inside him, Marius reared his head back and let out a long breath into the damp Summer air. A mousey protest from just a bit down the alley caught his attention. His eyes turned first, crimson red orbs in the night that tracked onto the woman before his head turned to match the gave. The corpse to his side, freshly dead and still warm, dropped to the ground like a sack. Her joints didn't bend right as they collapsed on themselves. Though his face was twisted with a fresh meal, there was a somberness underneath. Why? Why did another one have to show up.

"This one too!" A voice from the same direction as the man said. But the man's mouth did not move with it.

"We just ate."

"It's been centuries and I'm hungry."

"You're not. Just give it time so sit and you'll be fine."

"I want it and I want it now." As hostility grew, something began to wriggle under the man's clothes. No, that wasn't entire accurate. It was wriggling under his skin. Marius shifted on his spiritual senses to take a look at the new woman. Much to his surprise, this was not something he had encountered before. It was, however, strong enough to sate his hunger for a while longer than a normal human. With a step forward, he made up his mind.

"You're not human, shinigami, hollow, or Quincy. You're not like me either. What are you and why do you clothe yourself in human skin?" The soul looked human enough to consume but there was an anomaly in it. It moved like animated clay, it had yet to decide on what it was. In this regard, it wasn't unlike Marius's own mental state.[/div]

[Shinobu]

Vampire?!

It was the only word that came to mind as she saw the fangs and the blood. As the corpse fell to the ground and twisted like a rag doll, an empty shell that used to be a woman. Shinobu stared, aware she was stunned as she saw him step forward. She’d seen the black garbed men and women, and the masked ones. But not a vampire! He stepped forward again and she flinched, taking a step back reflexively before she stopped herself by force of will. There was a voice there...he was talking to himself? But only one of those voices came from him...no, no there was someone else. Something else.

She trained her senses on him and found him soon enough, a strange aura she’d never felt before. At least that confirmed he was supernatural though. Shinobu’s eyes narrowed, watching something wiggle under his cl- no, skin.

He took another step and her arms twitched. Melted. In seconds a claw existed where there had once been a human hand, its supporting muscles reaching all the way up to her shoulder. “Don’t.” Her eyes flashed as they flicked from the corpse back to the man. “I’m…” She almost trailed off entirely but she continued forcefully, “Human, thank you very much. Been like this almost a year now. I don’t know what any of those are though. This is who I am.” Her sentences were jerky and didn’t provide for everything, but they were truthful. Good luck harming her with them though. She hoped.

She looked back to the corpse, then back to him. Nothing she could do for the woman now. Her throat worked, but the words were stuck, clogged by anxiety and the tension seeping down her spine. He drank blood? Or something else? Not even a ghost from that woman now. The words finally came as she spoke hoarsely, “You need to do that to live?”

[Dracula]

The exceedingly tall man watched as this girl's flesh twisted and warped into a thick and meaty claw. She was trying to threaten like some animal backed into a corner. All fangs and hisses but her heart wasn't into it. She lacked the experience, the drive for this kind of life. It was too bad for her because Dracula had it in spades. This was his third go around with life and he had taken the time to learn a thing or two in the past. Things like, how to scare rabbits that bare fangs.

"Human you say?" Walking ever closer, calmly, collected, methodical. His heels hit the pavement with gentle raps that served as the beat to the conversation. He held up his own hand, thick talons for nails reached out as he made his own claw. There was an antagonistic malice to his face for the moment. Something about the comparison to humans made him delve deeper into his condition. As if he needed to deny her humanity to continue denying his own. "Maybe a bit closer to it than I am but I assure you darling, you are far from it. I am in the midst of my four hundredth century of life and I have yet to meet a soul so twisted up inside."

His foot steps finally stopped when the subject of his victim was brought up. His eyes momentarily drifted over his shoulder to see the life he took. The feeling of having fed had already left him. It was so fleeting and he wasted it. His Hollow was already clamoring for the next meal. "Yes. Like all things I must eat to live. Tell me, what do you kill to preserve your own life?"

With a flash step that left a deep base sound in the alley, the vampire closed the distance on the girl faster than mortal eyes could comprehend. His clawed hand reached out and attempted to skewer her through the heart.

[Shinobu]

She flinched. T-twisted up inside? Her soul? No, no surely that couldn’t be true. She had to be human, human all the way through. The ring of his shoes on the alleyway felt like hammer blows to her self-confidence, digging into her skin like little hooks and trying to tear her apart. Four hundred years old?! Never seen one like her?!

Shinobu’s eyes were dull amber as she tried to argue, but the words didn’t come out as they should have. She felt faded...like she was being denied something important by this malicious man who took such pleasure in telling her she couldn’t be human. Life itself felt distant, her body felt so heavy and burdened by this vampire telling her…

….telling her…

Shinobu’s eyes sparked, the dull haze that had spread across them scattering the instant before his charge. She felt it then, killing intent. She started to react, to bring her hands up to defend herself, but he was much too fast and too close. Her eyes widened and she wrenched her body to do the one thing she could think o-

Blood sprayed as his clawed hand dug directly into her chest, breaking rib bones and tearing into her flesh. Like a spear his claw had impaled her, slamming all the way through her back and out the other side.

Silence, except for the steady drip of her blood on the ground, rang through the alleyway. Then it shattered like glass as bloodied lips parted and spoke.

“You.”

The impaled body squirmed in front of him as it hardened around his clawed arm. She’d displaced her heart and spine in the moment before impact, avoiding death by just bare millimeters. Now her eyes gleamed, golden amber burning as one hand reached out and caught his shoulder, holding him in place. Her body was roaring, wailing, screaming.

Roaring defiance.
Wailing pain.
Screaming revenge.

“I kill to protect myself. I assure you, I am far from you, vampire.”

Her right arm came back, deadly black taloned claws glinting in the moonlight, and dove forward in a rush to impale him in kind. Her body held together, churning as her reiryoku created new blood and flesh to keep her alive. If he was a vampire, could she kill him? Or was he just as tough as the stories?

Time to find out if she could kill a myth.

[Dracula]

He saw the attack but did nothing to imply caring about it. The woman's morphed claw arm ran into and through his body. Unlike her, nothing moved inside of him to shield him from the damage. The truth was, he didn't need those things. Organs and flesh weren't what was sustaining this corpse any longer. Even the blood that flowed from his gaping wound was a falsehood. Before her very eyes he changed into more of the fictitious vampire persona. The whites of his eye shifted into a crimson red. It bled into his iris while his pupil turned pure white. A hiss escaped from his mouth as he bared his fangs.

"Kill me if you can darling but know that it isn't a human that is capable of the feat." He didn't lunge with his neck like some cartoonish headbutt from an action movie. He lunged with his full body. Mouth wide and fangs bared like the vampire he was so often mistaken for. His tightening abdomen would prove difficult enough to wretch her arm free from but there was more to it. He wasn't removing his arm from her chest and the blood that she had covered herself in was changing. It was no longer a free flowing liquid. It was pulling back into his body- trying to pull her into his body!

[Shinobu]

She wasn’t really surprised. This was a vampire after all. Her claws found purchase but that was it. Blood splattered and she felt organs give way beneath her attack, but there was nothing more. His gaze never faltered except to change more and more. Her own eyes burned amber back at them, but she couldn’t help but flinch. Not because it was truly scary, but because anyone would react when faced with a monster out of myth.

He bared his fangs in a hiss, and she found herself hissing right back, albeit with no fangs of her own. But then he was lunging further into her! Uncaring of the damage to his own body, just desperate to drink her blood. Her pupils shrank as a thought came unbidden- did her powers protect her from vampirism?! They better! But even as the thought came and went, she felt something else. His blood was clamping down on her body, trying to draw her into his body!

Shinobu tried to lurch to the side, but they were locked together in a twisted embrace, both trying to eviscerate the other. His taloned hand and her clawed one embedded deep inside the other, and now his fangs found her neck. Blood sprayed into his mouth-

But only for a moment. A hardening shell of chitin grew from the flesh of her body, forming a protective shield even as her skin quickly grew over the wound. Unlike a normal mortal, she could fix such an injury quickly- there was no danger of bleeding out over a shallow wound like that, no matter where it might be. Some blood loss could quickly be regrown. But she was trapped, locked in with him. How might she…

...ah.

Her torso twisted, churning just as they began to touch, spikes began to grow. It wasn’t a morph she’d tried before so it took a bit of time to adjust to, but gradually the spikes began to move, churning over her flesh. An angry buzzsaw bit into him, chewing through more and more of him if he tried to bring her in closer. Her eyes smirked back at him, daring him to continue. Vampire though he may be, how could he feast on her if his body was mush?

[Dracula]

The sweet warmth of bodily fluid filled Marius's mouth for the second time tonight and for a moment it tasted rather human. This strange body he was embracing locked his fangs away from going any deeper though. A thin, yet durable, shell closed off the wound and she began to taste different. The same method was at work around the wound his plunged arm was making in her. A shell was was not bone or flesh yet still durable and strong was sealing her away and preventing Dracula was getting deeper inside. This was obviously some kind of defense mechanism but from what, he was left to wonder for a second. She must've had a very specific worry that went beyond mere damage.

From the woman's torso grew bony spikes with flesh stretched across them. They poked through her shirt and into Marius at first; which wasn't a problem. Then came a gurgling, popping, and churning sound as the spikes whirled into circular motion. The friction of those spiked grinding into the vampire's own torso ripped flesh from both of them. While Dracula's intestines threatened to spill out onto the alleyway, the bones underneath her morphed body became exposed. Marius released the woman's arm from his chest and pulled back his own attacks in order to retreat from the garbage disposal that had become the woman's body. A few feet back with torn clothing, the vampire's body was already beginning to recover from the damage. His blood didn't move as a liquid should. It moved like a living organism. Churning over and into itself, it closed up Marius's wound and prevent the lose of vital pieces. It formed a hard black shell inside the body while readily growing platelets and muscle fiber to stitch him back up.

"As a doctor, do you find this fascinating?" He held her ID card up to the light; picked from her person during the exchange of blood and gore. "Dr. Yagami Shinobu of Tohto Bunkyo Hospital. We two monsters in the guise of humans, ripped to shreds with gaping wounds in our chests, unable to die."

He tugged at the chest wound with his nails so that she could really take in the process of the muscles stitching themselves up. That pink fibrous flesh reaching out to meet its pair at the other end. "So, you run a human identity in this world. I do as well. Or perhaps, you were human first and then became like this. Were you infected with something that made you like this? Is that why you shield your blood from me? Worried about being infected by me? Worry not Dr. Yagami, you'll be lucky to live the night"

A flick of the man's blood took out the light and as near as instant darkness crept over the man's body he vanished from sight. Must seem quite vampiric to the human doctor but for him it was quite the common technique. Normally used for traversing the Dangai, Marius's Shadow technique could also be applied in battle as a stealth technique. Temporarily, he moved out of phase with normal reality but still close enough that a sixth sense could allow for interaction. From the wall to the woman's left, Marius's clawed arm reached out first. A sharp thrust at her temple in effort to damage her brain and find out how immortal she really was. His body came afterwards for the reach he needed until the full top half of his body had emerged from the shadow to strike her down.