Rolling snake eyes isn’t always a bad thing

Kato darted back, without thinking, his right hand brushed through the rough undergrowth coming to a stop against the dying warmth of the felled blurson’s spear.

His hand coiled around the pitted wooden shaft.

His blood ran cold, the very weapon used against him, now in his hands.

A low hiss emerged from his teeth.

‘Fitting’ a foreign voice whispered amidst the rage in Kato’s head.

If Kato had stopped to think he’d have realised that foreign voice was his own.

But he didn’t.

He raged.

Became something else.

Something different.

His eyes narrowed and his pupils itched, morphing into jagged swords filling blood red eyes.

He blinked instinctively, but the motion was sluggish, wrong. His world shifted. Blues and greens taking over what had once been a veritable sea of colour.

“Rahhh” A primal inhuman scream, escaped from somewhere deep inside him, begging for him to stop.

But he didn’t care.

He couldn’t. Not now. Not after he’d been walked over for far too long.

A thin glossy sheen slid across his eyes, and the world morphed again, the warmth the sun had brought bleeding into colder hues.

Kato stared forward, stock still. It was all so clear now.

He dropped the spear.

He smiled, the motion twisting his face as if he knew what it should look like but couldn’t quite get the motion down.

The tallest blurson stumbled back.

Kato’s head whipped upward, locking onto the lean but muscular monster. It appeared much bluer than before. It mattered not, nothing could stop him now, not even himself.

His muscles tensed, shifting and tightening around his body. Winding tighter and tighter against themselves, he shifted his weight to his legs and sprang.

“//??///?” The blurson muttered in shock breathlessly.

Kato arced through the air in a blur of motion, wind ripping against his side, fighting against his descent, desperate to slow him down or veer him off course. But it couldn’t not now, everything was calculated, everything was planned. Kato’s neck flexed outwards, and his jaw unhinged in an inhuman display of agility. Drops of liquid coalesced around his canines as he soared towards his prey.

“SHRIEEEEEEE” A sharp whistle pierced the air, Kato’s eyes widened slightly, his cold, calculating, expression giving away to confusion.

His peripherals briefly caught sight of a trail of motion as something shot out towards him, but he didn’t even have time to tense, let alone react meaningfully.

The impact slammed into him, and he finally saw what it was. One of their spears. It bit into his chest with wild abandon, seeking his heart. Agony erupted from deep withing him, a sharp hot white-hot flame igniting every nerve in his body. His body involuntarily recoiled, desperate to escape the agony that had replaced the rage in consuming him.

“RAHHH” he screamed again. The pain had awakened something in him, something his blind rage had buried. Memories of his life flashed past him, love, loss and sacrifice. ‘This isn’t me’ he thought shocked, a single moment of clarity gifted to him before his end, ‘I’m not some primal beast consumed by its own rage, I’m more than that I’m human!’ It may have been silent, but his declaration did not go unheard.

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His pupils dilated, desperately rippling outwards seizing on that brief moment of clarity. The lines had been set but they hadn’t been set in stone. Brutal fighting broke out in pockets as the soft roundness of humanity pushed back against the pitch-black swords that had taken what was theirs. The sharp, cold edges were pushed outwards, bit by bit as they struggled in turn, refusing to go back, back to roundness, back to softness. They were here to stay, and they would not go down so easily!

Unaware of all of this, Kato watched, as in slow motion the spears’ head began burying into his side, his skin denting and giving way, forcing the breath from his lungs, beneath its metallic point.

‘This will not be the way I go out!’ He roared internally. His rage rose its ugly head once again, and the head smiled.

‘You are mine.’

His pupils snapped back, contracting viciously. The struggle of his humanity brief and short-lived. The jagged pitch-black swords reclaimed their rightful place, demarcating their territory at the gateway to his soul.

Kato stiffened, his flesh hardened and flexed back against the crude metallic weapon. The spear bounced off him, it could seek all it wanted but he had no heart to find.

Not even a mark that it had ever been there remained, but the damage had already been done.

“Thump.” Kato fell from the sky, his body sprawling across the ground in a cloud of dust.

The colours returned to normal, hues other than blue and green filling his vision, he didn’t react.

Not a sound escaped his lips, no groan, no forceful breath, nothing.

The tall blurson sneered and advanced, it apparently did believe in kicking a man while he was down. Its earlier predilection for caution in the face of Kato’s transformation gone. One failure and it was back, is this all it takes? One misstep and your appearance is forever marred?

Its three cronies circled behind it advancing in lockstep, instead of the rage Kato expected they approached resolutely with the fierce dedication of practiced hunters.

One shorter and squatter then the others now held a wooden cudgel, ringed with studded metallic strips instead of the spears its companions brandished.

Kato’s eye twitched. This was the one that had ruined his attack, tried to take away his rage, now he would try to take away its life, it was only fair.

Kato stood, blood gushed from his chest, apparently, he wasn’t as unblemished as he thought.

He stared at them, blood dripped on the ground, but he didn’t watch it fall, his eyes tracking his tormentors. He puffed his chest out and roared, the sound as inhumane as it was angry.

One of the blursons twitched, and tripped forward, its blue face noticeably less wrinkled than that of its compatriots, its inexperience evident.

Kato looked at it for a moment, tilting his head slightly, like it had once to him. He remembered it as much as he wished he didn’t.

This, this was the one that had mocked his efforts, all he had wanted was a friend, but that was the past, this was now. He opened his mouth in a wide toothy smile and winked, a crazy gleam taking over his eyes.

Kato charged towards it, and while the other blursons moved to stop him, the younger blurson stumbled out of the safety of the group.

“Bang! “Kato’s right hand struck against its chin, rocking the monsters head backwards.

He hit it again, dark purple rapidly spread from the impact of his fist.

‘Purple?’ Kato paused for a moment shaking his head in confusion.

Then he screamed, “NO MORE PURPLE!” He hit it again, and again, the flurry of blows happening in less than a second.

“///???///” the taller blurson screamed and charged towards him.

Kato bared his teeth and the taller blurson lunged. Its spear cut through the distance between them near instantly, Kato dodged, shoving the younger poker back, its purple forgotten.

The blade struck true, blood spurting in a fountain from the wound. The younger blurson looked back shocked, its head tilted eyes wide and unblinking at the taller blurson. The spear had cut deeply into its neck, the taller blurson stepped back mouth agape, what had it just done?

The younger blurson’s body went rigid and the taller blurson let go off the spear, the body toppled forward, falling to the ground, with a crunch. The spear stuck upright from it, pointing to the sky.

The taller blurson didn’t move, its eyes stared soullessly forward, trapped by the horrors of its own actions.

Kato however didn’t care.

He darted forward, his hands grabbing the free spear. He lifted it from the corpse with a slight strain and a dull squelch. Twirling it around with a vicious arc, he drew its owner a red neckline.

The blurson joined the other on the ground, they were now as tall as each other, but the younger would never be older.

Kato didn’t even stare at them, his head pounded, the rush in his mind not allowing for any pauses. ‘Make them pay’ his mind demanded, ‘this is far too generous.’

“////????//?” The squat blurson called out to its remaining companion, a lean, muscular blurson that looked as if it had been born, no crafted, to wield a spear, its ability at the pinnacle of generations of dedicated learning, no man, beast or other would best it.

It looked at Kato for a moment, as he strode over the bodies of its once companions.

It turned and ran.

Grass flew by the muscular blurson, as it tore up clumps of dirt from the speed of its retreat, the pale monster would never catch it.

The squat blurson swung its club with deadly precision, connecting with the muscular blursons head as it tried to escape. The body sank to the ground instantly, its muscles not doing much in the face of betrayal.

The squat blurson spat out. A thick glom of liquid arced through the air towards the now caved in skull and thick, black, viscous saliva pooled in the dent.

Kato nodded towards it; his rage had no room for cowardice either.

The blurson did not nod back.

Mechanically it reached down, lifting its felled companions spear and with practiced ease swapped the club to its offhand.

It stared at Kato; its eyes blazed as hard as his did.