Grey was not frequently prone to speaking. When he did, it was usually quick consice sentances which involved as few references to himself as possiable. Raised for most of his life with a section of Humans who spoke French, one might have thought his Uni would be poor...or at least an accent would show through. But Grey was adept with words...when you got further into his past it was relitively easy to identify why. Grey looked human, entirely human unlike other species which had their own slight departures from shape or size. Grey was anything but Human though. The thin, scarred boy had been an experiment by the Rulerists...part of a series in fact, to develop a sort of backwards slide in the Human line. The purpose of the experiment was to breed a Human-shaped creature with the sole intent on using them for warefare. A soldier breed, using various animal genetic codes spliced with the normal Human code to give them higher speed, endurance...Kyotoshi wasn't exactly clear on how they'd done it or for that matter why...but it was this sort of testing which yeilded Grey- a subject so unpredictable and self destructive he had to eventually be released to a foster family. The scars which formed their own version of a jungle across his hands and feet, Kyotoshi was certain, spread over the rest of his body like a net. Even his face was marked with the white and faintly red lines of scars in various stages of development. Some of them might have been unintentional, Kyotoshi thought. It was far more likely, though, that they'd been self inflicted. This kind of spontanious unpredictability drove the dark Inhuman away from people, and visca versa, enticing them to call him a demon and him to accept the title as what he truely was.

Living in an entirely scientific enviroment had left Grey's language skills fairly well developed, and his social skills nonexistant. But some things went beyond speaking and facial expresion, beyond the visable and into what you could only trust yourself to feel. Kyotoshi identified with Grey for this reason...he could understand what the Inhuman felt, rather than said. It still didn't make it any less disturbing when Grey seemed to read Kyotoshi's mind in response. All this is what made it seem so strange that, when later inside one of the three tents they carried on their backs, Grey initiated a conversation.

Coiled into a small ball of black and camoflage, dark chocolate eyes slashed with silver watching from under black and similarly silver streaked bangs like a following ferret's head, Grey watched Kyotoshi as the Hekshanian dropped backwards onto his own sleeping roll and fished a hand in the back pocket of his jeans, a silver flask reappearing in his hands like a card in a con artist's. The smooth surface of the flask, slightly concave, distorted Kyotoshi's reflection in the surface, shirtless yellow furred torso pressed together in a thin stick. The flask was a funhouse mirror to Kyotoshi, sometimes showing him tall and thin, short and fat, whatever shape he felt like distorting himself to. It would be a few minutes before he would actually drink the contents, Grey knew this from watching. Like a child with a cookie shaped like a car, the Hekshanian would play silently before actually consuming. On the thin side of the flask, Grey's own reflection sparkled...but Grey couldn't see that for himself. Blind, except for the impressions of heat in the air, the Inhuman relied on other means to precieve what others saw.

Grey could hear and see the thoughts of others on the inside of his mind. At least, it seemed to be that way. He could count the number of beings who believed him there on one hand, and name them all in turn. Soshika, Solla, Ashido and Ro Koji, their missing six-legged white furred Nikitak compatriat. They...and...her. Grey felt the thin hairs on his back raise and burried his face in his coiled arms, fighting the shaking voices and sights trickling through his mind. Aslilin Talsica Ralbasha. A bounty huntress and a lab creation like himself...one who had chosen Grey as her prefered area of study. The cloths he wore now, a tattered black hooded shirt and a pair of military pants far too big for his skeletal body, were the cloths she had given to him. All around him at times, was what Aslilin had done. Frantic to escape the march of small gremlins bearing memory across his mind, Grey spoke aloud. His voice was dark and flatline, like a dark licorice. Like the inside of a lightless comic store to which only a select few would venture.

"It was worse this time," the Inhuman muttered haltingly through his knees and arms, the brush of rough old fabric against his skin. For a while, he wasn't even sure to what he was refering.

The silver flask stopped dancing in the air, stopped twisting Kyotoshi's face and decended, falling downwards in the Hekshanian's hand as Kyotoshi rolled his head to the side to regard the dark creature. Lightly coloured bangs drifted into his face like cobwebs, lancing across Grey's body in his vision like little knives of light. The thin blue walls of the tent shimmered with the falsity of their production, alight even in the darkness within. Unmoving in his curled tight orb, silver snakes running through his jet black hair and intertwining silently, he couldn't have spoken. Not like that, nobody talked with their face down between their knees. Doubt fluttered like a butterfly and landed on Kyotoshi's chest, a slight twinge through his heart and stomach. Grey isn't someone normal, he reminded himself. Query halfway out his throat, Kyotoshi found himself interupted again by the speaking shadow.

"The massacre," the quiet mid-toned voice managed to find its way, muffled, around Grey's knees and to Kyotoshi's ears. Perking like raised sails, the ears rose slightly and Kyotoshi pulled his body up, sitting, staring at the Demon. Lighting streak of red hot pain struck down through Kyotoshi's forehead, travelling downward in a straight line, through the middle of his chest, stomach...His eyes squinted slightly as he felt it, but didn't move otherwise. Grey's voice continued to move like mist across the floor of the tent to Kyotoshi. "Was worse. Did things this time...against the walls...pressed them there and-"

Kyotoshi's cobalt eyes shook in the dark, pupils dialating, his lightly furred chest heaving as his breathing grew erratic.. "How..." His voice came out choked the first time, claws of the creatures inside him tight around it. Swallowing them down, he felt them fall to his stomach and prowl there, slamming into the walls and trying to pull themselves back upwards. "How do you know?"

In the darkness, like a dead sun rising over a world somehow still alive, a silver flecked eye appeared over the rim of Grey's crossed and coiled arms, flickering once as the long dark lashes closed and opened. A silver black snake of hair drifted down next to the orb, twisting as if to follow Grey's gaze. "I could Hear them..."

Silence pounced off Kyotoshi's back and imposed itself on the floor between them, an angry cat with its tail puffed high in the air. Inside Grey's mind, the frantic voices of the Magins who had been tortured beat against him to tell their story. What had been done to them should be done to no creature, none at all. To be beaten down and then...it wasn't supposed to be that way! They screamed the injustice. What the Rulerists had done was tear through a ground so sacred, it was reserved for those emotions which we hold secret. To be held and loved, to be kissed lightly and then more deeper, to have something more and then...that was what it was meant to be. Not this way, not that way, not as it had been...Squinting his eyes shut and pulling himself tighter together, Grey's teeth came down sharply on his own knee, white squares biting hard through the fabric of the pants, digging into the flesh below. Biting to regain control, to not speak what they wanted him to. It wasn't for the pain...he couldn't feel pain...it was for the holding of his own tongue.

Pushing past the animal prowling in Kyotoshi's mind, the Hekshanian realized how insane that sounded. You couldnt hear ghosts...at least he thought not. But there was something strange about all of his sister's travelling companions...including Grey. They were the type of people whom you could swear had something more to their preception, but your doubts would grab hold and shake you out of it telling you that was rediculous. Why was it, though? Why couldn't it be believed? Doubting them was the same as someone doubting Kyotoshi's feelings, telling him he couldn't be upset over something for five years, no matter how horriable it was. We're all in the same boat here...why the hell should we be thinking eachother insane? Clenching his teeth and folding his body forward, Kyotoshi hugged his knees as well, more loosely than the Inhuman, and stared ahead of him. "Could you tell-"

"Not far," came a premature response. The Inhuman lifted his face away from his knees, a dark pool spreading in a ring on the spotted pants from where he had bitten himself. If Kyotoshi kept talking, maybe he could keep all the voices shut up. He wanted to feel as he used to be able to, having the ability to just ignore them completely. It didn't work like that anymore, not after Ralbasha. She'd made him pay attention to them, to try to take control of them completely. Sometimes it worked, but the mere acknowledging them constantly made it harder to keep control of his own body...Distractions were needed constantly now. Distractions, or isolation. Turning his head upwards, towards the annex of tent poles at the top of their temporary home, the muddy eyes blinked once. "Very near."

The fur on Kyotoshi's bare back rose slightly as a chill of fear hit the alien, washing through him and making him shiver visably. His head was starting to ache, now, the animal inside throwing itself around in more and more violent efforts to gain attention. His hands were shaking now too, and his stomach whining in protest. Kyotoshi's voice became fainter, sick, as he fought nausea. "Think it was a bad idea to camp here?"

"Yes," Grey answered simply, his voice with a slight more measure of authority to it now. Kyotoshi's own frantic thoughts were coming at a toddling crawl across the air, and Grey heard them. His sudden attention towards the Hekshanian was that. Moving his head slightly to one side, resting a pale scarred cheek on a black covered arm branched out over the little mountain of his knee, Grey's eyes watched the warm orange shape of Kyotoshi in the darkness, watched the shaking and cooling of his body. He said nothing, merely watched.

A slight laugh of desperation escaped Kyotoshi, a last ditch effort to fight the animal inside his head a little longer. He knew Grey was watching him, a quick glance confirmed it. Watching someone intently wasn't the Inhuman's normal behavior, either. He's curious, Kyotoshi identified the actions to himself. He's concerned. Craika... Giving up on the fight inside him, Kyotoshi's paws moved like shot spiders across the darkened tent floor by his sleeping roll, skittering over cloth until they encountered the cool metal of the silver flask. Lifting it in three fingers, the familiar slight weight made his hands shake worse in anticepation, the metal link which held the cap to the flask itself rattling. With a frantic shaking bundle of fingertips, Kyotoshi twisted the cap loose and quickly took a drink, waiting a moment before releaseing a shaking sigh. The animal in his mind was slowly sedated as a light wave washed over it, sending it back into a soft slumber. Looking first at his mirrored distorted reflection in the flask's surface, then glancing up at Grey, the Hekshanian smiled sadly. "Y'know," he said quietly, feeling depression creep with more intensity as the alcohol enhanced his emotions, "You're the only one out here who knows I'm doing this."

Silent, a listening statuette, Grey watched the feline alien with dark eyes, saying nothing. Slowly in rythem, the lashes and lids would move closed. When he blinked, the time lapse was exagerated and slowed...he looked like a lizard in the sun, thinking of gods knew what...but he understood. He wasn't the only one with the ghosts of the dead over his shoulders...even if Kyotoshi couldn't hear them speaking, Grey knew he could feel them. Like chains draped across his starved body, pulling him downwards. Drinking didn't take the chains away...it just made them tolerable. Outside, the faint patter of the still falling light rain clicked like the sound of a thousand miniature tongues. The dark haired Demon watched as Kyotoshi took another drink, pacing himself quietly. The yellow furred alien's clenched free hand gradually loosened, his movements slowing across the gap of time that was the Magin jungle nightfall. With a lightly uncordinated shake of his hand, Kyotoshi swung the flask back and forth, but there was no sound within. A faint sad smile crossed his face, fingertips loosing just slightly enough for the silver container to slip through and drop to the ground with a dull thud. Watching the place in the air the flask had been, Kyotoshi's fingers curled inwards into a half hearted fist one by one, the Hekshanian whispering aloud.

"S'much for escapes..." he whispered, placing his paws behind him and lowering himself down onto the sleeping roll, eyes turned up to the top of the tent which moved ever so slightly with the rainfall. Misted with alcohol and emotions, the cobalt eyes closed slowly, a mirror action of Grey's demon eyes, but did not open. Kyotoshi lay still, one hand across his bare stomach, the other at his side, fingers spread in the unconcious looseness of intoxication. Grey's voice moved like a chinese dragon through Kyotoshi's head, agile and dangerous.

"Don't fall asleep." Wide awake and staring at Kyotoshi's immobile body now, Grey's speech had an edge of desperation to it. "Don't sleep with her out there..."

"Th'hell'd'ya mean 'her'?" Kyotoshi muttered, body and mind already half asleep. In the darkness, the Demon did not reply, only sat silently on guard. A tingling filled Grey's arms in frustration, and he moved a pale hand to his mouth, biting the back of his left knuckle with his flat white teeth until a copper liquid taste filled his mouth. Tiny blunted canines dug further into the skin, tearing and pinching...but Grey would say nothing more.

******

Rough shaking, a feeling like watching dhower water drip off your face as you stared down the drain, light off, soap swirling away. A dream and an unreality slowly sucking off, leaving Kyotoshi dripping, saturated with its reminants. Moving hesitantly out of his lightly drunk sleep, the Hekshanian drew his arms close against his chest, feeling the fur brush in turn, one hair against the others. Scrunching up his eyes and coiling his tail up and against his backside, his knees dragged with exhagerated slowness to his waist, the alien waking lying face down. The slight sound of rain had grown more pronounced, the shower now a slight storm battering the sides of the now cold tent, sounding like a bombardment of insects. Kyotoshi's hair stuck in his eyes as he opened them slowly, the world dully out of focus in the dark. He was still bleary, blurred, not ready to wake up yet. So what'd gone and started shaking him like that? The answer was obvious when two death-dirt brown eyes stabbed with silver bones flashed before his face. The Hekshanian jerked away slightly, shocked into conciousness. The demon did not receed, Grey's pale bare arms reaching out in the darkness, an A-shaped tent across Kyotoshi's upper torso. Above him with impassive eyes, Grey looked down without saying a word. Tongue still heavy, and throat constricted with confusion, fear...something else? Kyotoshi found his words were not readily coming out. When he did speak, all he managed was a sleepy half-sober mutter. "Th'hell are you doin?"

"Get up," came the deadpan reply, the Inhuman still imposed above Kyotoshi. Eyes adjusting slowly to the unlit interior, Kyotoshi could see that two dark lines slashed themselves down across Grey's shoulders and disappeared behind him...it took a moment to realize the Demon was wearing one of the packs they carried. Blinking in still confusion, Kyotoshi found his thoughts interupted by Grey. "Pack everything you don't want soaked," he continued, his voice still unchanging. It was practiced, professional, unsurprised. Maybe Kyotoshi would have been impressed or curious...if it wasn't for the fact that the half-naked scarred Inhuman was practicly lying on top of him.

"Uh-huh," he drawled slowly, eyelids lowering slightly as he reforced eye contact, this time not flinching away. It crossed his mind again how irrational Grey could be...did he even realize what this looked like, or possiably felt like to Kyotoshi? And what was so important he get up and pack up his belongings anyway, as if the tent was going to leak... Resigning himself to humor the Inhuman for now rather than invoke a nameless violent rage of the deceptively frail body. "That'd be considerably easy, Psycho Boy, if you got off me."

Right hand lifting in the dark, Grey pulled away, turning his body away like a tiger stepping off a cornered quarry. A sharp exhalation from the Demon brushed downwards in a tickling line against Kyotoshi's chest as Grey moved away, a chill running through the Hekshanian's body and making him feel as if he would twitch. Kyotoshi made a mental note to slap himself for being so damned spastic when he got a minute and sat, a paw with extended claws raking lazily through his unkempt blonde hair as he yawned loudly. Knees drawn halfway to his chest and one arm draped lazily towards his footclaws, Kyotoshi's free hand moved slowly as he scratched at the fur on his abdomen. He was starting to hate only one thing about Magos above all...the humidity tended to make him itch. Moving the ritualistic grooming from his hips to his far shoulder, Kyotoshi shook his head once sleepily and focused now upon the Demon who was set back upon his knees, hands clasped together in a camoflaged lap. Even in the darkness, the pearlescent scars Kyotoshi had always expected shimmered across the Inhuman's smooth flat stomach, branching across and along his protruding ribs and looping up around his shoulders, running like waterfalls down his arms. Grey wore a cape of scars, a cape that shown like a moonlight shadow. Smiling slightly, not entirely aware of himself doing it, Kyotoshi placed his attention upon the Demon. "So, what's so important now?"

With a serpentine blink of his muddy eyes, Grey's voice was still dead as he spoke crypticly. "We'll be leaving any minute now."

Mouth open and forming a question on the very tip of his tongue, Kyotoshi's words fell to his stomach with a sick tumble as a sharp weighted shreik ripped through the soaked air, the sound hammering into his ears and kicking his conciousness aside, the fur on the Hekshanian's back leaping up in alarm. The scream was so urgent, so violent, so real with the wet throat of its owner that all other sounds in the night seemed to still in awe of its fury and terror. Beside the scream came a sudden shouting, and the spat-spat of feet running on muddy loam. The night was suddenly filled with the voices of their camp, screams and shouts.

Beside Kyotoshi, Grey's hands had begun to shake against one another. When the shadows of lanterns began to rush across the sides of tents like will'o wisps in a bog at night, the boney white spider of Grey's own fingers closed in a vice grip around Kyotoshi's wrist, pulling. Without heed, dragging the other being behind him, Grey plunged through the tent opening and across the campsight, his heart pounding. Already, her Voice was forming in his head, shreiking and screaming and filling his ears and brain with nothing else. He had to get away, had to get far away because if he didn't, there would be more. Running now, bare feet crashing through the underbrush as sticks tore at the fabric of his pants and ripped into the flesh of his feet, he paid no attention. The protests of Kyotoshi behind him were lost, he would drag the other alien as far away as he could run. He would not stay there, he could hear them raising their voices behind him as he ran.

"MICHA TA NODDA!" An anguished scream ripped, a hawks cry through the night air. Solla Flint.

"They're coming, it's the Rulerists, they're close-" shouted yet somehow angry with authority. Misuka Sakura.

"GREY! Kyo! Craika, who killed her, where are they going?" Frantic with uncertainty, a voice torn between following and staying. Soshika Lypha.

"Best leave them to it." Shaking...shaking but cooled...Ashido Tsukiyo.

But Grey's eyes could not forget what the eyes of the others showed them, their guide's torn body sprawled across the muddy ground with her stomach and entrails strewn across the forest like halloween paper. Ribs cracked back, lungs folded over the broken white sticks, jaw slack and eyes rolled back with a white film...hands flopped like fish left long out of water, stranded, unmoving, dead in the rainy soil. Dead, mutilated, torn to peices by some uncomprehendable cruel force. Hell driven, as far as he could run, as far as he could drag his unwilling companion, Grey could not escape the Voices that shouted across the forest into his head, hissing down from above at him like cruel seraphims. It was him. It was the Demon.