All's Well That Ends Well [Aurelia]

He greeted her with a simple nod this time. Sparing no time for pleasantries, Aurelia went straight to business, rattling off the basics of their mission. Her information coincided with that which he had been given. Another nod. "They travel together, so we'll have to take them all out at about the same time." Little chance of them scattering; based on their informant, the three were a tight-knit group, more likely to seek revenge than to turn tail and run. The main concern was finishing them off quickly so the others wouldn't get the chance to attack while he and Aurelia were preoccupied with another.

He picked up the case, following a half-pace behind Aurelia as she struck out in a northeasterly direction. She was familiar with the forest, he'd been told, and her strides were deliberate and confident.

"Your weapons?" Aras asked, picking his way among the twisted roots wrestling along the forest floor. Humus and decomposing needles and muffled their footsteps, making their passage silent save for his voice. "I've a compound bow, hunting arrows. A knife and pistol, too, for backup." She didn't look like she was carrying a lot; hopefully, she had some sort of ranged weapon on hand that wasn't a firearm.

And finally, the question that had been bothering him ever since they'd brought up the topic at the cafe: "And your talisman?"

It was quite ironic, really. Now that he was able to ask without hesitation, he was no longer certain he really wanted to know. He almost preferred it when he was in the dark about her allegiances; the label of 'Hunter' weighed heavily in his mind, although it would have been worse for him if she were and Innocent. It would have, however, been much simpler if they were both neutral--but that was no more than wishful thinking.

The vulture, uncharacteristically silent, raised its head and glowered at the mention of the machete. It had clearly not put the incident behind it, but it knew better than to divert Aras' attention in the middle of a mission. He needed all the help he could get, and that included not being distracted by shrill warnings if he was in no immediate danger. So it opted to keep quiet (which Lammergeiers usually were--it was just Aras' luck to be saddled with a particularly talkative one).

It could, however, still raise a fuss afterward.

While Aurelia's reluctance to tell him her talisman was understandable--he himself felt much the same way, after all--it was a bit frustrating. Like hell we're telling her, his talisman grumbled. A slight frown creased his features, but he didn't press the matter. If she planned on using her animal form in combat, she would have told him. In that case, it wouldn't have been a matter of trust; it would have been a matter of rationality and good judgment. Withholding such information would have compromised the mission. Armed as she was, she was evidently planning on fighting in human form.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. The place was unfamiliar; Aras rarely entered the forest, and the few times he did, he'd never traveled this deep. It took him a minute or two to select a tree for a proper hiding place. It had to be solid enough for him to climb; the branches and leaves had to provide enough cover but not impair his line of sight.

Finding a tree a good many meters west of the cluster of bushes into which Aurelia had crouched, he hauled himself onto a stable branch, pulling the bow case up after him by means of a length of rope. Quiver at his hip, bow strapped to his left wrist and trigger to his right, he was left with the tricky job of securing the case to the branches. It was an ungainly task, and the result could only be described as a chaotic snarl of rope, but it worked.

Now came the waiting. By their given estimate, they had about a half-hour until the targets showed up. The three were creatures of habit, visiting the stream at more or less the same time every day.

He didn't use the time to think. He merely stared absently at the stream, watching the clear water carry bits of debris downstream and out of sight. A flicker of motion, but a false alarm--a pair of mourning doves had taken wing, settling on an adjacent tree, their soft coos subsiding after a while.

Fifteen minutes more. With an inaudible sigh, he nocked an arrow and clasped the trigger to the string. He didn't bother checking the time after that.

The lynx appeared first, followed closely by the hyena. The serval was the last to come into sight, bounding behind its fellows.

Taking his best estimate, Aras adjusted the sight to accommodate the distance. He drew back the string, took careful aim--

--and a feathered cannonball came screaming at his face.

The shot went wide.

He didn't even see where his shot went because the shrieking blur was diving at his face again. Swearing with surprising fluency, he instinctively raised an arm to shield his face. Talons and beak tore at his sleeve and skin. The bow was weighing his other arm down; he needed to get it free before he could properly defend himself.

A swipe at the raptor made it release its grip and loop around for another pass at him, buying Aras enough time to work off the straps on his bow arm. The bow fell, clattering on a few branches before landing on the ground with a thump. He reached for a weapon--

--but the bird, still screaming, was going for his eyes now, and with a shout and a curse, he had grabbed hold of something and was swinging it in front of his face. The action, however, was enough to make him lose his already-precarious balance, and before he could right himself, the bird was upon him and he was falling.

By the time he regained his bearings, he was lying face-up on the forest floor, the blanket of needles having somewhat cushioned his fall. Black spots danced at the edges of his vision, and his mind vaguely registered the snarls and hisses of a fight nearby. Hurriedly pushing himself up into a half-sitting position--the world wobbled sickeningly, and he shut his eyes for a few seconds in an effort to make his head stop spinning--he quickly checked for any injuries. Astonishingly, the fall had not resulted in any broken bones. Something--obviously blood--trickled down the sides of his face, and his hand was still clutching an arrow. But there was no blood on the tip, which only had to mean...

The hawk came at him once more. Aras swung his arm in a swift arc, and the arrow caught the bird full in the chest.

He didn't even get the chance to take a deep breath or two before the hyena was on him, jaws fastening around his upper arm.

Her trusty backpack slung over her shoulder, Melissa's soft footfalls barely made any noise as she walked over the carpet of pine needles. Everything seemed peaceful, but she knew that the forest was only pretending, like everything else in the world. There was only silence as she moved towards the stream, her backpack weighing heavily on her shoulders. Everything she couldn't live without was in the bag, because her flat was no longer safe to live in. The police had set up a surveillance system for the building, but if Vicky came back like she'd said she would then they would arrive too late to do anything for her. She'd already be gone.

There was a stream up ahead, and Mel angled towards it, looking for a nice place to get a drink. There was still a cover of trees in front of her, shielding her vision of the actual banks, and she'd just thought about setting her heavy load down when there was a shriek from somewhere nearby. Instantly sinking into a crouch near the ground, Mel carefully crept forward, towards the sound. Idiot! We should be going the other way, you know...away from the scary noise? Her talisman continued to rant in this manner while Melissa's body sank closer and closer to the ground until she was practically army crawling between the trees.

There were snarling and spitting noises coming from up ahead, and the more frightening the sounds became the more frantic her talisman got. We really should go; it's none of our business anyways. Please, please, please can we leave? With a firm mental 'No!' from Melissa it still didn't settle, but held it's tongue for the time being. Finally reaching a gap in the trees where she could see, Mel came upon the grossest sight ever. There were four animals and one person present, and it was obvious that they had been fighting. By the mismatch of animals, Mel knew that they were Hunters and Innocents fighting each other. There was a lynx, who appeared to be hurt pretty badly, a hyena, who seemed to be doing fine, a serval, who looked like it was dead . . . or nearly there, and some sort of large lizard, who'd transformed into an Asian woman. How many Asian people are there in this town?

The woman was running towards the only other human present, a man with blood running down his arm, which the hyena seemed to have just released. Listen Anthony, don't you dare die on me or I will never forgive you. So the man's name was Anthony. Well, one name was better than none, and as Mel watched the lynx send the hyena away, with the woman in hot persuit, she couldn't help but feel sorry for all parties involved. Moving out of her hiding place behind the tree a little, she moved carefully towards the man, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw his bloodied face. Aras. Stunned, Mel froze where she was, not moving a single muscle. The woman had called him Anthony. Who are you? Keeping one eye on the lynx, Mel's question was for both of them. Are you okay? There was a lot of blood coming from Anthony's Aras's? arm, reminding Mel of what her own injury had looked like before. With blood everywhere, Mel didn't touch anything. The thought of staining her hands with someone else's pain made her want to get sick.

Aurelia sat on a rock, her elbow against her knee as she stared blankly at the hyena corpse that lay in front of her. She took a deep drag of her cigarette and let the smoke float from her mouth in a plume before flicking the butt away from her. The Vietnamese woman had finished her job that she had set out to do, and she thought that maybe she could sit here for a bit longer and relax a bit.

With a deep sigh, she picked up the hyena's body by the hole in it's neck and grabbed it's severed head by the mane, careful of her thumb. The hyena had given her a nasty bite that had nearly torn off half her hand, but she had decapitated it just in time. Despite coming out on top, she was anything but unscathed. If Aras had somehow been killed by the already nearly dead lynx back there... Well, she didn't want to think about it at the moment. Her gait was slower and had a slight limp to it, but she managed to get back to the side of the stream in good time.

There was another person there. A woman, blond hair, standing near Aras. Damn, did he call for reinforcements? Was he really a double agent? A gruff, almost defeated sigh as she dragged the hyena's corpse and head out, dumping both bloody and gruesome items next to the mauled serval. She walked over to Aras, grabbed the lynx and threw it into the growing pile of bodies, along with the hawk laying nearby. Their informants had failed to mention the hawk, but she would worry about that later; she had other things on her hands right now.

Aurelia ignored the new arrival, and instead crouched down next to Aras and took his arm; taking a quick examination. She was no doctor, but she learned a thing or two after getting injured multiple times herself on missions, and a few things from Reyes. The man's arm was beyond her ability to repair, and all she could do was stem the bleeding so he wouldn't die from shock or blood loss.

Being as quick as she could, Aurelia went over to the bush she had crouched in and grabbed the first aid kit, knelt back at Aras' side and began to rifle through it. Just her luck, there was nothing she could use to staunch the blood flow of his arm.

A pause as Aurelia tried to figure out what she could use as a tourniquet, before she reached for Aras' pants. Well, not his pants in particular, but more like his belt. She unclipped the sheath of his knife from his belt, tossed it aside and proceeded to undo and take off the belt, dearly hoping that Aras wouldn't take it the wrong way.

Once the belt was free, she wrapped it around his upper arm--an inch or two above where the bit marks started--and began to tighten it a little before turning back to Aras. "This is gonna hurt a little." Was the only warning he got before she tugged it hard, tightening it and tying it off when it was wound tight enough to cut off the blood flow. Makeshift tourniquet, check.

Next, she grabbed an unlabeled bottle from the first aid kit and unscrewed the cap. The strong smell of rubbing alcohol nearly overpowered the metallic scent of blood. Nearly. The scent of death still hung heavily in the air.

"Okay," Aurelia eased him down until he was mostly laying on his back, then knelt with one leg on his chest and another shin across his wrist so he wouldn't jerk his arm too much. "This is gonna hurt like a bitch, so try not to cry like a little girl."

There was a pause as she let the information sink in, then she took a wad of cotton from the box, poured the rubbing alcohol onto it--a curse as some of it seeped into the tear on her palm--and pressed it into the gore on Aras' arm.

Before he could think of anything to say (that didn’t involve a profanity for every other word, at any rate) Melissa had turned heel and bolted. The faint but unmistakable sounds of retching came from somewhere in the distance, and Aras tuned it out without a second thought. He was in no state to go after her, even if he wanted to. All he could do was dread their subsequent meeting.

He couldn’t, however, forget the way that she had moved to help him without hesitation when the lynx had leaped. Had it been simple altruistic instinct, or did she think so much of him that she would not betray his secret, even after all she’d witnessed here? He didn’t know, nor could he really ask. The girl was doubtlessly traumatized at the scene, too; any attempt to get a coherent answer out of her would fail tremendously.

He said nothing when he saw that Aurelia had returned, only stared blankly at the remains of the hyena she was dragging along behind her. The urge to hurl at such carnage had long faded after the first few missions, and he merely watched numbly as she tossed all the bodies into a bloody pile. The vulture didn’t utter a word either, but it seemed to be eyeing the corpses with—No, Aras snapped at his talisman. It turned a baleful eye at him but didn’t comment.

The rest of cleanup could wait until later, evidently. Aurelia moved to crouch next to him. Aras grimaced—from the pain as well as the sight of the rather nasty condition he was in—when she lifted his arm to examine his wound. It was clear to both that she was in no way equipped with the proper supplies or knowledge to take care of it properly. All she would be able to do was staunch the bleeding to the best of her ability before they rushed off to the clinic. She didn’t appear to be doing too well, either, but since his right arm was essentially useless at this point, he would be of little, if any, help to her.

She brought over the first-aid kit, brow wrinkling in consternation when she failed to find anything that would effectively slow the bleeding. A moment’s thought; then, without a word, she began working off his belt. Too enervated to react as anyone normally would have, Aras gaped at her for several seconds before comprehension dawned. Right. Bleeding. Tourniquet.

A sharp intake of breath when she pulled the belt tight around his arm, above the wound. And he very well knew the worst was yet to come. The pungent sting of rubbing alcohol reached his nose, and he gritted his teeth in apprehension.

"This is gonna hurt like a bitch, so try not to cry like a little girl."

It hurt like a bitch. Thankfully, Aurelia had had enough sense to pin him down before she applied the disinfectant, because it was all Aras could do not to swing at her with his other arm, much less keep the injured one still. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of writhing and shouting and a shameless string of rather foul cursewords involved. He did, however, possess enough self-control not to cry—but that might have been a more matter of trying to regain his battered dignity than one of restraint.