I'm a ninja! [Jenn]

[Shinigami]

A black form made her way stealthily from rooftop to rooftop, strong legs powering each leap of the darkly furred being. She was a stealthy ninja, running along the roofs like the ninja she had read about in Japan - or was that China? It didn't matter! She ignored the little splatters of blood that she left behind with each leap, pretending she didn't have to stop occasionally to cough and spit out her usual mouthful or the red liquid, because in her mind, none of that existed. Ninjas left no trace of themselves!

Finally Biyuse had to stop at a rooftop because of the pain that had been building in her legs, and she huddled down to ride out the worst of it. However, she couldn't leave well enough alone, and so turned the huddled position into something more like a hunting crouch. Even better, though, she could smell human blood on the breeze, and the hunting anticipation that thrilled through her made the pain go away.

She threw herself forward as soon as she could move, her imaginations of being one of the mythical ninjas forgotten in her urge to satisfy the hunger-lust in her. There! She crouched on yet another rooftop and licked her lips with her small tongue, huge ears coming back to make herself even more aerodynamic. Her butt wiggled once before the huge rabbit feet kicked off, and she was sailing through the air to impact the human who had been wandering through the alleyway, her full weight coming to slam into him. Dinnertime!

Or supper. Maybe breakfast. Whatever.

[Jenn]

Standing tall in his bipedal form, cloak billowing around him as he made his way through the winding alleys of London's poorer areas, Atreju glanced about for signs of homeless humans sleeping in the filth around him. He felt peckish, the meal from a few nights ago having long since worn off, and another human to gnaw on would be just what his appetite craved. At least, what the appetite he allowed himself to acknowledge craved.

He hadn't yet come across any conveniently placed bums, tucked away with the trash, when he heard a soft noise above him and looked up-

-just in time to be slammed with a face full of bloody lapine! He made an odd, muffled yowling noise and immediately shifted to his quadrupedal form, writhing and twisting to get out from under the weight of his attacker. He hissed angrily like a kettle as his mask was endangered, managing to keep it securely on his head where it belonged as he emerged from the encumbering cover of the cloak and glared at the Euclides who had just fallen from the sky in an attack.

"What do you think you're doing, you crazy hare?!" he hissed, surprised enough to drop the flowery speech for the moment. An all-out assault from above was the last thing he expected on a relatively calm night like this one had been.

[Shinigami]

To hear her target turn into a teakettle wasn't at all what Biyuse had been expecting. No, she'd been expecting a yummyyummy human to be standing there and to hear a snapcracklePOP when she'd broken their neck and to have a good munchy meal. Instead she'd gotten a teakettle? Except for the fact that teakettles didn't wear cloaks, which completely negated her entire previous thought train. Well, they could, she supposed, but they also didn't promptly turn into pretty Masquerades (maybe?) and then start yelling at her. Oh, why was he yelling at her? She was just a poor little bunny wabbit!

"I am not crazy!" She protested loudly, and then reconsidered that. "Well, maybe a little bit. But not much!" Biyuse sniffed, injured by his accusation, and then sped on to the next emotion with the quicksilver speed that she'd trained into herself. Agony-types were in constant pain, it was true, but emotions made the pain go away, at least for a while, and the more intense the emotion, the more pain disappeared, and for longer. She'd taken advantage to that little physiological trick of being an Agony since she'd figured it out, because pain, well, hurt. A lot. And she didn't like it when it hurt. So it was best to jump from emotion to emotion, topic to topic, before the previous one ran out and she had to hurt again.

"Hey, who are you? You're really pretty, you know. You a Masquerade? You look like it, really pretty. Did I say that already? Sorry! I'm Biyuse, what's your name?" Try to keep up with her. I dare you.

[Jenn]

White eyes narrowed at her stream of babble, first indignant and then curious, followed by cheerfully oblivious. Her attitude tweaked at a part of him, piquing its interest. His Emotion-influence rarely poked its head through except in times of extreme stress. Well, this could technically be described as a moment of extreme stress. Attacks, whether deliberate or accidental, usually were. Regardless, he eyed her with irritated interest as she rambled and ran herself in a circle, finally ending with an introduction.

"My name is Atreju," he told her in a cautious tone, automatically slow to counteract her quick chatter. The speed was unconscious. Her automatic assumption of his type wasn't unusual, not since he'd begun wearing his raven's mask as an affectation, a memento of childhood. It fit his muzzle perfectly and gave him something to work off of in his decorations. Feathers to go with his bangles, and didn't they make a pretty picture. "Masquerade is fine. Whatever you like...Biyuse. Crazy one. Attacker from above."

He allowed himself a small smirking smile, irritation swiftly transforming into amusement at the whole situation. Such was the benefit of his now-active Emotion influence. His mind could crack any number of terrible jokes, many of them at his expense, but he kept them all to himself as he continued to observe her. Maybe if he stood really still she would do something funny...

[Shinigami]

"Ooh, Atreju," Biyuse cooed, putting an emphasis on the "ju" at the end so that it came out as a hard "joo". Which only prompted her to further heights of...whatever it was she was doing, "Ju, ju, ju..." she muttered, rolling the syllable around in her mouth as if it had a taste and she was trying to get at all the subtle variances, like poking your tongue as far back into your mouth after a meal to get all the nuances of whatever it was you just ate. "Ju-ju!" It seemed that Atreju's new name had been decided.

"I'm an Agony," she confided, leaning close as if it was the world's biggest secret. However, her words were garbled as the blood which habitually welled up finally made talking difficult, and she turned away to cough, hack, and spit politely. Well, as politely as she could Who was she to know that he was part cannibal, and the scent of Euclides blood around him probably wasn't the smartest thing ever? "Sorry 'bout that, it kind of comes with the type. I'm an Agony, is what I said, which is probably pretty apparent from all the blood and the oozing and stuff." She beamed at the titles he gave her - "crazy one" and "attacker from above," though she was still rather miffed at being called crazy, because she wasn't really crazy, honest! Only a little bit!

"Ju-ju, what are you doing out? I thought you were a hobo, you see, and I'm hungry, and that rhymed!" Biyuse was fascinated by that thought, and it led her on a little thought-circle as if she was chasing her own stubby tail before she finally brought her mind back around to where she'd started and continued her original thought. "Anyway, I'm hungry, and I thought you were a hobo, so I jumped on you and you weren't a hobo, which is pretty obvious, 'cause Euclide aren't hobos! Or at least not human ones, because only Marionettes can be human and they're pretty, not hobos." Hack, cough, spit. "So, what are you doing out?"

[Jenn]

Part of him stayed out of fascination, part out of morbid curiosity, and part - the part he didn't like to think about - stayed because her bleeding body smelled positively delightful to his attention-starved Cannibal instincts. The fact of it revolted him at the same time as it made his stomach rumble quietly. He silently thanked his father for the umpteenth time that his genes had proven stronger in conjunction with the Emotion than his mother's Cannibal quarter. His urge to lap at the discarded blood covering the floor was firmly tamped down. One inadvertent attack had been more than enough to show him the folly of that path.

"Agony certainly makes sense for your appearance," he agreed, alternately disgusted and interested in the way her body continually oozed blood from many small cuts. He raised a brow-ridge at the nickname, but put the thought aside as she continued to ramble on about hobos and hunger and Marionettes, of which he was rather fond. She finally ended with a question, punctuated neatly by a hacking sound as more red liquid was expelled from her lungs.

He watched her for another moment before responding. "I am, or was, on a small hunt myself. I could use a snack, but alas, the...hobos...of the city continue to elude me, despite my efforts to scour their filthy resting places and unearth the creatures. They're never around when you need them." He snorted lightly and shook his head.

Despite the fact that her high-speed commentary and easily distracted focus annoyed the ever-living fuzz out of part of him, another part continued to laugh in silent delight at the ridiculousness of it all. That part urged him to speak next. "Would you care to stalk the scum of the streets simultaneously, searching and seeking out the scrumptious slime?" Ah, alliteration. Was there sentence it could not improve? Some would disagree, but they were just ignorant.

[Shinigami]

"Ooh, you're hunting too! That's fun. I was being a ninja, up on the roofs and all, and I smelled blood-stuffs and I was hunting it and that's when I saw you, which is why I thought you might be a human, but you aren't. So maybe there's one close! That'd be awesome!" Biyuse bounced back onto her hind legs, absently bouncing up and down on the huge, fuzzy feet. She was incredibly mobile for an Agony because it meant keeping her energy up and thus not feeling that ever-present pain that usually slowed every other Agony down. "So there is one around, you just hadn't gotten to him yet! Well, maybe. He might have run off, 'cause you were kinda loud when I hit you and all." She looked contemplative, and idly turned one satellite dish/ear toward the direction that she thought the hobo she'd initially been hunting might have been. Mmm, hobo.

After his long and lovely liturgy of 'lliteration, there was a moment of complete silence where Biyuse actually fell completely still, staring at him with her irised eyes in utter confusion as she attempted to work her way through that sentence. It contained a lot of words that had multiple syllables, which she really wasn't all that good with (she tended to stop paying attention after two syllables), and all the hissy s-es just reminded her of when he'd turned into a teakettle for a short while upon their initial meeting.

"...huh?"

[Jenn]

Atreju's ear cocked back in a half-annoyed expression of its own at her oh-so-intelligent "huh?" and blank stare, but he firmly put it back to rights in favor of turning his head to listen for prey. Far be it from him to question the hearing of a lapine, no matter how scatterbrained and easily distracted said lapine might be. He first turned left, then right, and paused, going very still as he listened for the most minute sound.

...there, off in the distance to his right. A quiet shuffling noise caught his attention and caused both ears to perk up like a curious cat, which he was. Whatever shifted and shuffled in that direction was likely the blood-smell Biyuse had been hunting before he so conveniently appeared in her path. He nodded that way and looked back at her.

"I think your hobo ran that-a-way, Deffa," he told her with a more cheerful tone. Something about her just sparked the shreds of Emotion within him, sending his moods from annoyance to focus to cheerful. It was at the same time unsettling and exciting. He even came up with a silly nickname to rival her own in his good mood, though he doubted anything could top the stupidity of Ju-Ju. At least he would get a quiet laugh whenever he thought of hers. Deffa. Death from above. Silly and pointless, but it felt good to play around when confronted by absurdity at every turn.

[Shinigami]

As his attention turned from her a bit, she thought the previous sentence over. There had been "stalk", and "scum of the streets", and basic stuff like that, so she was pretty sure he had asked her to be his hunting buddy for the evening, which was always fun. She nodded, and then pivoted her ears around like not-yet-existant radar dishes, though it seemed that he was also looking/listening. He'd probably have more luck than her, due to the fact that he could, y'know, pay attention to something for more than five seconds. But she wasn't bad.

She caught the same sounds that he did, the shuffle and rasp of a human body and human cloth causing both ears to pivot and point at the sound. Biyuse grinned ferally at the feline with the pretty birdy mask, and asked, "I'll come from above, Ju-Ju? You get him from the side? Maybe he'll have a friend, so there's extras! My pretty little fish-bird hasn't had some good fresh meat to start rotting for a while." She liked the nickname a lot, and decided then and there that she'd keep it, and quite possibly introduce herself with it, which would be fun in the confusing people department.

The thrill of the hunt raced through her again, bringing life to her bones once more, and she crouched and leaped upward to her previous post on the rooftop, huge feet throwing her up there in a single jump. There were distinct advantages to being a bunny, yes there were. She scooched along the rooftop edge, surprisingly stealthy for something that was dripping blood at every moment, holding back the cough that would normally get rid of the blood in her throat and mouth, because it could alert the human. Instead it just dripped from her jaws, pooling on the roof and then falling down to the ground below. Biyuse kept one eye out for Ju-Ju as well, though she was pretty sure he was at least partially competent. After all, if he wasn't, he would never have survived to adulthood. How could he eat with the mask, though? It didn't block his lower jaw any, but could he bite anything, or would he have to take the mask off? No, she knew that Masquerades never took their masks off, so he wouldn't. Maybe he cut things up into little bite-sized chunks with his claws.

[Jenn]

"Make sure to block any escape route to the other side," Atreju called out softly as she ascended to the rooftops, her characteristic trail of blood smearing against the brick walls of the building she climbed. After she had disappeared over the edge, he gave in to a moment's impulse and ripped off his mask, shoving it in a large pocket of the cloak on the ground and leaning down to take a single lick of the blood mingling with the unmentionable filth covering the floor of the alley.

...delicious.

Snarling at himself for the moment of weakness, he assumed bipedal form and donned his cloak, mask remaining in the pocket. Hunting was always easier if he could use his jaws as well as his claws. If she saw him without, oh well. It was easy enough to explain away and nothing hinged on his type at the moment. With his cloak settled comfortably across his shoulders, he pulled up the hood and stalked slowly down the alleyway. Completely covered, he could pass for a human with a slightly awkward gait, possibly a limp or shuffling walk. It had worked many times before.

He hadn't gone more than twenty feet before he saw a small movement in the distance, his feline eyes able to pick out the telltale signs of life, regardless of how much covering they used. They still breathed, after all, and their heavy jackets rose and fell with every shallow breath. No doubt the scuffle had sent them into 'hiding' with all of the strange noises.

Two of them. This would be perfect. He grinned a fangy grin and slowly began to walk by, his stance more stooped and fumbling than it would have been otherwise. Look helpless...until Biyuse made her move.

[Shinigami]

Biyuse saw Atreju in his cloak staggering down the alley, and was not at all surprised that he had managed to fool her into thinking that he was human in that cloak. He was good, but she spared no more than a moment of admiration for his technique before turning her attention to the pair of homeless people - hobos - that were supposedly hiding in the little nook of the alley. Yes, they'd been quite terrified by the little scuffle that had taken place between the two Euclide, and she shivered with glee. Terror only made them taste all the better.

She edged along the rooftops, careful not to let herself become siluetted by the moon, and then crouched once more into her hunting pose. She'd gone further than was absolutely necessary, so that she could come at them from sort of the opposite way from Atreju, to drive the other one right to him. Carefully she pinned her ears back, tensed her muscles, lined herself up on the target, made sure that her throat and mouth was clear...and then leapt.

"DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!" she roared as she sailed through the air, claws reaching for her targeted hobo. She could hear them both yell in fear, but neither could move very far before she slammed into her target. Finally she heard the satisfying SNAP of a neck breaking under the full force of her however many pounds hitting him at high speeds. The other hobo shrieked in a very unmanly noise and took off away from her, directly toward Ju-Ju, who she hoped was waiting for him. She was currently too enamored of her beautiful, beautiful munchy meal, who was lying so perfectly still under her paws as she bit into his throat, tearing out the soft fleshy bits with her fangs and swallowing them down. Oh, it felt so good to have someone else's blood on her fur, especially blood that tasted so sweet and lovely and yes! She feasted upon the human, delighting in someone else's agony, though he was already dead, and didn't even think to look up and check on Ju-Ju's sucess just yet.

[Jenn]

The Agony's scream of death, so beautifully ironic given her new nickname, spurred Atreju into action. Even as she landed on one of the men and drove him into the ground, breaking his bones and feasting upon his flesh, the feline lunged for the other man. His momentum combined with the human's own speed sent them crashing into one another - or, more specifically, sent the human's face crashing into the Euclides's open maw. With a delightful gurgling noise, the shocked body slid to the ground as his claws were busy tearing at back muscles. This morsel would be going nowhere besides his stomach, of that he was sure.

These meatbags were tasty, though not as nice on the tongue as the blood back a ways had been. They lacked any form of appealing elegance and thus were good for nothing besides food, something the writer firmly believed.

Allowing the now-dead body to slump fully to the ground, he raised his head with a satisfied smirk, white muzzle bloodied. Strands of black hair hung in front of his face, some of them stuck together with fresh blood, so dark that the red was invisible. Were his companion to glance over, she would see his face, plain and unmasked, for the first time. "Beautiful leap, Deffa."

[Shinigami]

Nom, nom, nom, nom... Biyuse contentedly tore apart her prey, ignoring the fact that normal bunny rabbits were supposed to be eating carrots and lettuce, not the flesh of human beings. Screw them, she wasn't a normal bunny rabbit. She was a Euclides! And that made all the difference. So she buried herself inside the lust that she felt at that moment, the sheer pleasure of fresh, hot meat and blood, delighting in the taste of the human. And if some of the blood in her mouth happened to be her own, well, she was used to that, and it didn't spoil the flavor of the fresh blood. She had to resupply her apparentl never-ending bleeding somehow, didn't she? That had always confused her, how could she constantly be bleeding, and...? This lead her off on a train of thought that circled around its customary track, leading her to stare blankly off into space with blood dripping from her maw as she thought. Finally she returned to herself, and took a few more bites of meat.

Ju-Ju's comment caught her attention, and she preened a bit, licking up the blood about her maw before turning to face him. "Thanks! I practice, you know. It's really fun, leaping from roofs like that and OH MY GOD WHERE IS YOUR MASK?!" All thoughts of compliments and return compliments flew from her head as if powered by one of her previously-mentioned leaps, and she jumped up into the air, spinning around to land several feet away, eyes wide in shock. "You, no mask, and then, but I thought, mask, couldn't take, would flip, and what?" Masquerades were supposed to have some sort of weird problem about taking their masks off at all, let alone as nonchalantly as this one had done!

It had never occurred to Biyuse that one could simply wear a mask for the heck of it, not necessarily because someone was a Masquerade. Or a what, the ones that wore full-face masks, the Terrors? But still, she was flipping out thoroughly. It was one of the things that she was really good at, you know.

[Jenn]

Atreju watched his companion set about contentedly rending her prey's flesh from his form, her face covered in their mingled blood. It was a fascinating sight, he had to admit, and it occupied him quite well until she finally looked up from her chatter and saw him maskless. Her reaction went beyond anything he had expected or previously encountered. A shout, a spin, a leap, and then one of the most intense stares he had ever received in his life. He stared back for a moment, wondering if there was in fact any Emotion hidden under all of that blood and matted fur. It would make sense with how she'd been acting ever since he met her, but he just couldn't see it. She was Agony through and through. She just...didn't act like the depressed, pained creatures he'd encountered in the past.

"You...are a spaz, Deffa," he marveled, voice thoroughly bemused. "I'm many things: Afterlife, Emotion, and even a little bit Cannibal. I am not, however, a Masquerade. This mask," he patted his cloak pocket with a blood-soaked hand, "is purely for decoration and camoflage. It fooled you, didn't it?"

He smiled and inclined his head before reaching down to rip at his own human a bit more, waiting for whatever exaggerated reaction she would throw his way. If she stayed true to form, it would certainly be something to see.

[Shinigami]

Biyuse stared at Ju-Ju silently for several long moments, blood dripping from her jaws with a repetative splat-splat, before being so still got too much for her and she had to move before the pain got too bad. So she bounced back onto her heels, contemplated him, and then said, "Oh."

His thoughts on her own mixed blood could be true, as far as she knew. Maybe somewhere, far far back in her ancestry, there was just the tiniest hint of Emotion that had come out in her, or at least it had personality-wise. She certainly didn't look like an Emotion-type.

"Well, why didn't you tell me earlier? I asked, and you said I could call you that, but you're not, so why did you say that?" Pausing to spit blood, she realized one of the little bits of bloodline that he'd mentioned. "Cannibal, eh? Yer not gonna...eat me, are ya? 'Cause I really don't want to be eaten, 'cause it sounds like it'd hurt, y'know." Despite that, she crept over to her own corpse to finish eating, and then squealed as her attention was, once again, diverted.

"Oooh, it's one of those wiggly bits! I love those! Don't you? They're awesome!" And she promptly chowed down on said "wiggly bit," whatever it was.