(Untitled)

[screeee]

who ; Kato and Red
what ; Hunting, blowing off steam, distracting the pissed off raptor
where ; Garden zone 3
when ; Right after Zaeed blew Grid's brains out

Comments

[purelydriven]

He didn't want her to die.

Did his reasons have to be any more complex? Kato liked the self-gravitas that Red possessed, and he was a pack animal at heart, so it was no wonder that they ended up hunting together.

"Red!" he said as he trotted up. Kato had dressed for evening adventures in the forest with a black long-sleeved, ribbed shirt, blue jeans and a pair of boots. He'd stolen everything, and his conscience didn't hurt him a bit. He needed the clothes, they obviously didn't, so he took them. A steak knife from a restaurant completed his ensemble.

Kato flashed her a smile as he approached.

[screeee]

Red waved at him in greeting and closed the short gap between them. She scented the air subtly, pulling his smell in to familiarize herself with it. He didn't smell like gunpowder, which, while comforting, made her wonder just how he was expecting to hunt. Humans had no claws and their teeth were small and blunt. She had been told that they needed guns to hunt.

"Are ready, yes?" she smiled, voice low.

[purelydriven]

"Yes," he said, dropping his voice in return. He pulled out the knife, and Kato had sharpened the stainless steel to a razor point. It was soft metal and would dull quickly, but if he was going to kill anything, Kato wouldn't want to hack and slash in any case. "I bring a knife. Do you have one?"

She moved like a predator, not holding still, and he echoed her impatience. She was definitely feral, but the song of violence is common to all species, and so he understood.

"I used to hunt with Blitt," he said suddenly, thinking of how they would drive to methlabs, kill everyone inside as a message to whoever they were trying to piss off, and run. "Do not worly, I do not mind blood."

[screeee]

"Have weapons," she nodded, taking her first steps off of the beaten path and into the dense underbrush. There was only the faintest whisper of branches brushing against her smooth scales.

"Experience is good," she murmured as she navigated toward their prey. They were still a ways off, but the wind was in their favor. It would carry their scents and, to a lesser degree, their sounds, away from the twitchy herbivores. "Hunted deer? Fast. Fat. Jumpy."

[purelydriven]

"Ah, yes," Kato lied. He'd never hunted deer, but one time at Britt's house they had been smoking up and watching television, and there was a National Geographic on mountain lions. Mountain lions were incredibly lazy hunters, as it turned out. They would find a game trail, go to sleep on a branch and wait until deer walked beneath. Then they dropped down.

Kato didn't have claws and teeth, but he did have a razor sharp steak knife, and he figured if he got one good hit on the thing, it would be weak enough that they could both work together and run it to the ground.

It seemed like a good plan, anyways!

"I hunt, ah, find where deer walk. Hide up, in sa trees, and sen jump down," he said. It was a method that would take hours. It was perfect for keeping Red distracted while she calmed down.

[screeee]

Red stopped and looked back at him. It was a very clever method of hunting, especially if one only had a knife and less than two hundred pounds of body weight to throw around. "Tricky, tricky," she grinned at him.

She continued on, eyes flitting back and forth and nostrils flared. When they were close enough to warrant being quiet, she turned to him with a finger to her lips. She hunkered low, picking her way carefully. The deer were grazing in a small clearing up ahead. She could see the game trail that they frequented. If spooked, that was where they were most likely to go. If they actually saw predators? They would scatter. She analyzed the scene with predatory stillness, trying to figure out the best way to approach. The open, flat land didn't exactly make for an effective ambush.

[purelydriven]

He just nodded and followed behind her, as quietly as he could. He was noisier, of course, because he wasn't a velociraptor in disguise, but he didn't weigh close to two hundred and so he moved with surprising lightness.

Kato's breath quickened when they crept close enough to see the deer. Their ears were wide and their jaws moved ceaselessly, one of them keeping its glassy black eyeballs on the others.

After a few moments, Kato glanced over at her. He had ideas regarding encircling them, but she was clearly more experienced here. Besides, he was curious.

[screeee]

Red shot him a meaningful look, hologram pointing subtly to the spot he was in, before she crept off into the brush. She wasn't thinking about the fact that her hologram was still engaged. The solid blocks of colors didn't break up her form the way her own mottled scales did. She had to pause more frequently as the deer looked up to scan the area

[purelydriven]

He saw the hologram flash through the trees, and Kato's sharp eyes caught only a single moment of Red's hologram flying, feet and hands extended like claws and mouth bared in a hellish snarl.

There was the bark of startled deer, a distinctive sound of alarm that carried sharply through the blue-black underbrush, and crashing branches. A deer whined, then whuffed, then there was silence.

A large bird chirped. Kato rose to his feet. He jogged over, the knife suddenly feeling a little useless, no matter how carefully he'd sharpened it, and he resisted the urge to drop it into the grass.

Kato huffed in surprise when he saw what was left of the deer's innards. His immediate thought was, What sort of footprints does she make in blood? A woman's or a dinosaur's?

"Red...?"

[screeee]

Red nudged him between the shoulder blades and grinned. "Good, yes? Easy easy. Stupid and fat." She circled the corpse excitedly with an expectant look on her face.

[purelydriven]

"G-!" he grunted when she poked him between the shoulderblades. He took a step forward and glared over his shoulder in annoyance--until he saw the huge grin plastered over the woman's face. He had to exhale a smile at that, then he covered the expression by rubbing his nose with the back of his wrist.

"Stupid and fat," he said in agreement, now happy that he'd brought the knife and a lighter. He had no salt, but somehow Kato doubted that tonight was about refining his pallete.

He approached the messy corpse and tried to decide what meat he'd go for. On wild animals that had hooves, didn't they have really good meat along their back? He stopped short of actually touching it, though. Technically it was her kill, and Kato wasn't stupid. After looking it over and determining that yeah, it had been disemboweled by some nasty meathooks, he backed off.

"Prease," he said. "Eat."

[screeee]

Red laughed. "Are the hungry one, not me." She took a seat a short distance away. She knew how particular humans were about their food. Somehow, she doubted Kato would be at all pleased with having to eat something that she had chewed on first.

[purelydriven]

He didn't really care.

He wasn't expecting any of it to be sanitary to begin with, and though he wasn't particularly hungry it might be fun to hang out in the woods for a bit. Rough it before he returned to that stupid fucking hostel.

Kato glanced around, grabbed some ferns and used that to grab one of the largest chunks of liver he could find. Wild beasts could be baited with liver, he knew. Maybe it tasted good to them?

"Here, sis is for you," he said, then pulled out the knife and resigned his forarms to getting covered in blood. Kato frowned with effort as he sawed through the warm flesh. The blood was hot and steam rose in the cooling air as he hacked out some clumsily butchered chunks of meat for himself. They were the nicest cuts he could find.

"Ahhh. Do you like se food of people, Red?" Kato asked.