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His silence made it all that much more uncomfortable. The dank smell of whatever surrounded them make her skin crawl, and what iced the horror cake was the sound of the scarabs nearby, seemingly begging for a meal. Her gasp echoed, until his words filled the stagnant air.

"You're going to stay here for a while..."

“The hell I am.” Her voice shot back at him. Although her fear inside was booming, she surpassed it, trying to show the man no weakness. “You will return me to my room, or so help me, you will regret the choice you are about to make.” She released her grip from his arm, shoving him away from her.

Her mind reeled with any idea that might get her, her way with this creature before her. Something had to ensure that she would find her way back to her “family”: her family that needed her, and the prowess she possessed.

Gracefully, her arms fell to her sides, and the majority of her body was bare, or at least, not hidden well. “What if...” Her voice softened as she spoke to him, a smile stealing the scowl on her facade. “I could promise you what ever man down here wants, but only, you will get the first taste.” Her voice became more sultry as she spoke, her index finger tracing the grime stained chest of the man.

Inside, she was revolted at her thoughts, outside she was putting on one hell of a show. “Take me back to my family, and I will give you what you want. Understand?” She shook her head as she spoke, closing the gap between herself and him. The closer she came to him, the more rancid the smell, luckily, she covered her disgust of him well, very well.

“They need me, and I them. If anything were to happen to them, I would no longer have a reason to go on.” She pressed her body to his now, letting him breath in her smell, which she knew, was much more pleasant then his own. “That would be a shame, wouldn’t it....All the things you could have, have....gone.” Her words were more of a statement, as if she were thinking aloud. She was sure she was getting her point across, but just to seal the deal.....she leaned up and placed a kiss upon the parched cracked lips of the creature. She allowed it to linger.....not for long, but for much longer then she would have if her life, and the lives of others didn’t depend on it....

A twisted smile creeped across the man's face, and while he was certainly responsive to Skylar, he wasn't responding in the intended way. Rather, he seemed a bit more aggressive, almost angrier. As if her request was unreasonable and terrible.

"What, you want to go back to that boy and the little girl? So that pathetic boy can have you? I don't think so. It's been thirty years, and I'm not willing to wait another minute."

The man would push Skylar away violently, towards an old mattress in the corner of the room. It was aged and dirty, much of it likely from the man, and he drew a knife from his waist pocket.

"After thirty years, someone else finally came down here. And we lucked out, too... You were women..."

This was wrong...so very wrong, and now she had no one to blame but herself. Surely it was better that way though. The creatures smile was evil, the only word that came to mind, and her skin would crawl at her own thoughts of what his might be.

“He is no boy, and that little girl is precious to me.” [/i]“So that pathetic boy can have you?” She swallowed hard. Constantine[i]......”Now just hold on a minute and think about this.” It was too late, he shoved her back, violently. Her foot would strike the corner of something, and it would cause her to fall.

At least the landing was soft, but only for her to realize what she had landed on. It seemed rotten and dust rose up from it as she landed. The smell overcame her, or perhaps it was her nerves, either way, she vomited.

His words haunted her. Would he really have the nerve to do what he was speaking? A shiver ran through her body, she was nearly naked as it were, and the sounds of his breath said he grew closer. As she looked up something caught her eye. Was that a knife?

For some time, Johnny and Ishi had been walking. Walking, however, for Ishi, was more like limping around, using a large and dull sword as a walking stick. For the duration, she had blanked out. There was only her and Johnny, no one else--and as she was looking for someone else, someone who might be able to lend her some pills for Constantine, it was important that she find this mysterious someone else.

But then, she heard something. Voices. Whose voices, she couldn't tell from afar. They drew her from her momentary lapse in thinking, though.

Ishi looked over to Johnny. For some reason, she felt like making sure he was still walking with her. She really had no love for the guy or anything. He was probably just as bad as the other people in this hole! Perhaps? Well, he seemed innocent enough, and it ensured that she wasn't even going to feel unconsciously violent towards him.

Once she was content that Johnny was still there, Ishi continued to hobble down the hall, now in search of these voices. Perhaps they had pills for Constantine.

Ishi, with Johnny close behind, was very close to the origins of the voices, which had earlier been too low to hear. In fact, they were just around the corner from the dimly illuminated area. However, Ishi was slowed down...

Johnny seemed worried, though. The voice he heard... He didn't seem to care much for it, certainly. Maybe not for a particular reason, but just... Instinctively...

"We should go faster."

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"Thinking? Yeah, right. This isn't a democracy. It's not a society. They threw us down here to die, and we scraped by. And I'm not going to listen to that damned old man and his bugs if I don't have to."

The man would step forward somewhat menacingly, looking over Skylar perhaps as he might a pile of gold, with the ferocity of a man who believed he was exercising his last chance at pleasure. Even the vomit didn't seem to dissuade him, though it brought him pause if nothing else.

"The others act like we can start families, and those families can go back to normal lives. Dumb bastards. It's over for us; all that's left is the present..."

Unfortunately, she knew that words he spoke were the truth. By some miracle, some of these men managed to survive this hell, and now, rules meant little to them. As her eyes met his once more, she moved herself back as far from him as she could. The look in his eye was carnal. She was scared.

As he came closer yet, the smell of her vomit, nor the sight of it seemed to stop him or his thoughts. “I don’t think that..” Her words trailed off a moment, she really didn’t think anything she said would make a difference, but she had to try, right? “I don’t think that anyone thinks they can go back and live normally, they expect your “new” families to live down here. Would you really want that?”

He was the monster in the dark. Closer her crept with menacing thoughts that took from her all that was precious. Something had to work. “Help us, come with us. You don’t have to live like this you know. We can help, get you started, something, anything...just.....please.” There was nothing else to be said, really, nothing more she could think of that might persuade him. She had all but gave up at this point.

The voices were now very much closer, but Ishi still could not make out what was being said. One sounded male, the other sounded female. That was all she could discern at that very moment. Something was happening, and it was probably important. Important things lead to important people, and important people probably had those pill things that Constantine needed right about now.

"Hai," she replied to Johnny.

It was just about the most she had said to the man, really. Up to this point, all her interactions with him were just like that, they were either completely silent, done via nods or simply ignoring him but still acknowledging his presence--and other such complexities along those lines. Ishi acknowledged his suggestion with a nod, because he probably did not know Cizokian enough to understand her, and did her best to walk faster. It was a little difficult with her needing a blade no smaller than a bastard sword to double as a cane, else she wouldn't be able to walk at all, but she managed to speed her pace up just a little, nonetheless.

The old resident of the tomb seemed a bit angered by her comments. Go and live on the surface? He would love to. They couldn't, though. After the time they had spent surviving on those damn scarabs... Not only were they always present, they had ruined their ability to go aboveground. He pulled his sleeve back to illustrate. The man's arm bore terrible burn scars, as if his hand had once been held in a raging fire.

"You see this? This is what the sun does to us, now. It's why we can't go up to the surface. It's what makes this all the more terrible. We have to live by their banishment. But I won't obey any of the other rules of those hypocritical bastards that put us down here!"

Stepping forward menacingly, he held the knife in one hand. His other hand was drawn back, and seemed to be fully intending to strike Skylar when he reached her, with other things on his mind besides. He spoke in a low, threatening whisper...

"If you scream, I'm going to cut your tongue..."

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Ishi and Johnny were close to the voices, and an impassioned and angry speech could be heard from a short distance away. A light shadow of some sort of figure was cast out of the door, perhaps 20 feet down. Johnny would eye the building, unsure of what to do, but certain it was their destination...

“So because you are angry, you’re going to take it out on me? I have done nothing wrong!” She strained to look around, but the dark here...it was unlike any darkness she had ever seen. “What were your crimes? Why did you get put here?” Her tone was more gentle, however fear was in every word.

She slide back against the wall behind here. There was nowhere to run. No one to hear her scream, or at least, no one that cared if she screamed. She pulled her knees up to her chest, covering her barely clothes self as best she could. She had wished now she had searched for clothes before she left the room.

She was “innocent” in almost every aspect of the word. Being the daughter of someone as important as her father, she had had a prestigious lifestyle. Not that it was what she preferred, but it defiantly didn’t prepare her for the real world....and this was about as real as it gets.

The man would feel something. It might be slight at first, but the first sign of moisture would be the first sign of pain and pressure--pressure within the front of his body, somewhere, somehow. Such was a sensation felt by at least two people before him. It was always like that, too. A slow, whittling feeling, like time had suddenly slowed down--or, rather, as if life was quickly grinding to a halt, and to the human brain, time itself became slower and slower with each passing moment, until all there was happened to be the feeling and nothing more . . .

The feeling of something inside of you. Something dark. Something evil. Something malicious. Something that wanted little more from you than your death.

Were he to look down at that moment, he'd see a weapon inside of him. It wasn't a knife--it was far from it! What he held was of no consequence compared to this. It was so much longer, but not that of a bastard sword. It was something like . . . like a short sword. A blade longer than a dagger, embedding itself within the confines of his guts, stirring them with its dull, rusted blade.

And upon that blade was a small hand, not the hand of an absolute child, but that of a young girl's, an adolescent girl's, whose grip may have been strong, but not in the manner of determination. No, there was no determination there, nor would there be as she wrapped her other arm around him from behind, like some sort of affectionate embrace, and dragged the dull blade across, to treat his spine like a speed bump, and cruise through his digestive track.

Another Vimal.

Another scarab.

Another bug.

And Ishi Kato fucking hated insects.

The man's mouth would open in a snarl to answer Skylar, but no words would issue from it. In fact, no words would ever issue from it again. Curiously, the man's first reaction was that of almost vomiting, a trail of blood quickly issuing from both corners of his mouth, as the bleeding began from his torso. The blood that issued forth was tainted, black and yellow, from the wound Ishi had inflicted with her sword.

"Ishi! What did you do...?"

Johnny, curiously, was the one who spoke. His voice had a certain detached calm along with the shock; a child-like reaction despite his middle-aged appearance. Ishi would quickly become covered in the man's blood, as he fell forward to his knees, likely pulling the sword out of her hands by sheer weight. Johnny would place his hand forward on Ishi's shoulder to prevent her from falling, and by extension keeping her from pursuing the weapon.

"UUghhhh...."

The man's last cry would quickly trail off, the huge wound Ishi had inflicted enough to render him partially unconscious, and just as quickly render him dead. If nothing else, the pain and gruesomeness of the death spoke for itself...

As his mouth opened she waited for words that never came. The darkness was so unforgiving that she missed most anything visual. But the sounds were horrific. He girggled and she drew back from him, as if she had more room.



"Ishi! What did you do...?"

“ISHI!” Skylar quickly came to her feet at the sound of the childs name. The man before her was no longer a concern to her. It soon be came obvious that Ishi had inflicted some kind of bodily harm on his, but Skylar cared little. Not now anyways. “Ishi, sweetheart, come here!” She landed on her knees in front of the small girl, wrapping her arms around her. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

That is when her eyes met the hand upon the girls shoulder. A hand not as strong as the ones she had come to know. Her eyes snapped up as she looked at the creature with Ishi. It appeared Ishi trusted him, else he would be the one with the sword protruding from his abdomen.

“Honey, where is Constantine?” She wanted her “family” and she wanted to get the fuck out of this place.

Ishi did not move to retrieve the blade, as the man's fall to the floor reduced her chances of ever getting it back to, well, nothing. But that was okay. She remembered where to go to find other blades like it. And she had this bigger one, too.

"Bug," Ishi replied to Jonathan as she pointed towards the fallen figure before them.

Many things could be interpreted by this, but that was all. None of those interpretations would be out of the ballpark, either. The man was a bug. A scarab. Something like Vimal. She killed that bug, and she never showed remorse for killing a bug before, nor was she going to start today.

"Bug dead." Incidentally, Ishi's Common was even more broken, now that she was in a tremendous amount of pain.

Albeit pain that she didn't show in any way, shape, or form. It was getting bad enough that she was starting to go numb, anyways. She stood still with a stoic expression upon her face, regardless of the fact that her injured leg felt like it was on fire. This only felt worse when Skylar practically leaped forth to hug her. Ishi struggled to keep herself up. Ishi wasn't able to return the hug, as she had to hold onto the hilt of the bastard sword she was using as a cane in order to keep herself from falling to the ground. There was only a wince before she held it with both hands and tried to back up. As much as a hug could be appreciated, the more weight someone put on her leg, the worse her leg felt.

"Skyrar-sama find pirr?" the girl asked, still lacking any emotional spike in her voice whatsoever. She was remarkably unfazed by the fact that she'd killed at least three people in the course of a week: Vimal, a nameless fellow on the street that had attacked Skylar, and now a nameless fellow in an underground cavern that had attacked Skylar.

And yet, despite the trend of killing people to save Skylar, Ishi seemed likewise unfazed by seeing Skylar again. The girl was on a mission. That mission was to find pills for Constantine, and she was focused on that mission.

Nothing else seemed important now with Ishi near: the dead creature on the floor, or the live one hanging around behind Ishi. “Thank you sweetheart.” It was her broken dialect that confused Skylar for a moment, but like a mother that spends day in and day out with her child, Skylar soon figured out what it was Ishi was searching for.

“Ishi, he doesn’t need pills now that you have found me. We need to get back to him, so I can make him well again.” Finally, as if she had been putting it off, she stood, and locked gaze with the creature that escorted Ishi. “I need you to take me to Constantine, and as soon as he is well, we need to get out of this place.”

It was not a question, nor orders, it was fact, and as of this point in the game, he was the only one that seemed to be helpful, she only hoped he was helpful enough to help them escape this hell they fallen into

There was no movement, no one said a thing. While worried, the adrenaline was still rushing through her body, which, in this case...was a good thing....

“Listen to me, both of you!!” It wasn’t like Skylar to raise her voice, let alone sound angry. Perhaps anger is the proper term for the sound in her voice. Desperation was more like it. “We do not have much time. We must get to Constantine, and we must get outta this place, NOW.” Her chest heaved with every breath, she couldn’t stress the importance of them leaving and as soon as possible.

“Ishi, can you walk?” She would carry her, for minutes, hours, days...it didn’t matter to her. The thought of those damn scarabs crawling over her made her shudder outwardly, but the thought of the men that dwelled down here taking advantage of her or Ishi was even worse.

She pointed back in the direction that Ishi and her companion had come. “Is Constantine that way?”