Snippet #1401036

In his room, Ikari Sudou appreciated the heavy riffs and addictive guitar licks of Angra's 'Angels Cry', the headphones' cord snaking down over his torso and into the red iPod that lay at his side; his dark eyes swept over the pages of a book held in his hands. Most people would think hard rock and reading hardly went together, but then, when was it that Sudou much cared what others thought? If he felt like listening to some hard rock music while at the same time reading a good book, then he would do it; if anyone cared enough to tell him he couldn't do it, well, they could go to hell for all he cared.

At that moment, however, Sudou heard over the sound of his music, a scream--a very girly scream. Well the only girls here were Akari and Yuriko. Akari was far too tough a person to scream, especially not like that, and Yuriko...well, Sudou knew Yuriko to be perhaps more sensitive than the others, but he doubted she was the kind of person to scream like that. And even if something had made her scream in such a way, the rest of the Hunters would be at their feet at a moment's notice--Sudou not least among them.

But of course, it was Gin. Sudou scowled as he set aside his book and, placing the iPod in the pocket of his coat (yes, he wore his coat indoors. Problem?), Sudou pushed open his door and began stepping--or rather, with his heavy footfalls, stomping--down the stairs. "Oi, what's this, then?" was the greeting his harsh voice issued to those in the room already. "That damn asshole screaming like a girl all over the place...it's a bloody wonder every demon doesn't hear him whimpering."


Meanwhile, as Sudou shook his head, throwing himself onto one of the seats around the room, far far away, as if he had been heard, a wicked voice, deep, dripping with sadism and brutality, growled, "Kill the girl, eh..."

Shikari smiled a smirk full of pointed teeth as he wiped a sticky red fluid from the blade attached to his wrist cuff. The beast's monstrous face was contorted into a twisted grin; held in one hand, beneath a similarly bloody blade, was the demon's mask, a tribal-like helmet with a pair of long, wickedly pointed tusks jutting from the front of it. He had removed it to show his vicious face to his latest victim, who now lay at his feet, slashed and destroyed. Shikari had admitted, the man had done far better than many others Shikari had captured and released for the hunt, perhaps because he had formerly been of this country's military. The demon had released the man into the forest armed with a pistol, two clips, and a combat knife; immediately the man, even without knowing the threat he faced, had scoped out his surroundings, making a note of each landmark. It even took Shikari more than five minutes to track him down, a refreshing change from most of the humans, who simply took off screaming and running. The man, however, was not careful enough--all it took was a single footprint in the mud that had not been hidden well enough, and Shikari had tracked down his quarry within seconds.

But now he had been recalled--and though at first Shikari had been disappointed, angered to be disturbed as he relished the adrenaline leaving his eight feet tall body, he had heard what he was to be going after. A girl--a girl about whom something was very special, apparently...

Shikari's hideous grin widened, and he slowly rose an arm to seal the tusked mask around his head before turning to begin a new hunt back in Japan. No matter how special you could say someone was, when they became a corpse, there was nothing special about them anymore.