Unorthodox Thieves (Chap. 10): Found what They Didn't Want to Find

Yo. Yo. Yo. Yo. Yo.

This is getting hard, since I’ve never actually been in a forest nor plain. Sooooo I’m trying my best off of internet pictures and descriptions. And my mental portrayals.

Jesus I’m bad at this kind of description. I swear I’ll practice more e_e

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“So where’d you say this pigeon was again?” Lucius scanned the surroundings with a flat expression, seeing nothing but too-scratchy grass and hills that were just the perfect height to provide an annoying climb and block his vision- but not too tall as to provide shade or a good view. Just beyond that lay the shadowed area of the forest, not more than a couple yards away. Lucius was starting to wonder if this landscape was generated with the travelers’ discomforts in mind. The voice was enough of a jerk for bringing them here, so it wouldn’t be too surprising. “We’re already pretty close to the forest. There isn’t that much more in this area to see.”

“Eh,” Mikhail said, although it was just a filler to give himself more time to look around, “It sh-should be around here. I, I think the bird set or something, because th-the skies are empty now.”

“Obviously,” Lucius snapped, his mood rotting like a tomato in the unyielding sun. Then, he ran his hand through his hair with no intentions to tame it, shaking his head. “Sorry. I lived in a place that was pretty cold the whole year around, so I’m not used to this.”

Mikhail lifted the corner of his mouth to let Lucius know that it was alright. “The temperature changes f-fast, doesn’t it? The beach was p-pretty cool, and the forest was even colder than th-that.”

“What a magical place,” Lucius droned with none of the magic in his poor attempt at humor. He didn’t even try, really.

“Who’s there?”

Lucius blinked. That wasn’t Claud’s nor Mikhail’s voices, and certainly not his own. It definitely belonged to a male, though. “Hm?” He looked a bit to the right, near the forest, where the new arrival (or were they the new arrivals in this situation?) was probably hiding behind a tree of sorts.

Claud flinched, clearly more used to unpleasant greetings than Lucius. The man motioned for Lucius and Mikhail to leave the communications to him. “We come in peace.”

“I asked who you are, not what you’re here for,” the unknown person snapped, a little bit of nervous irritation in his words.

The annoyed attitude clicked something in Lucius’ brain. “I recognize this tone,” Lucius called out, not pleased with his revelation, “Chris, am I right?”

There was a moment of silence, and just when Lucius was about to hope that it wasn’t the jerk he had met before, a figure stepped out from behind a tree. Sure enough, it was Christopher Ackerman. He remained the same from before, from his mostly-proper outfit to the little pigeon perched on his shoulder. “It’s you,” he simply said upon seeing Lucius, just as pleased as Lucius was to see him.

Mikahil’s eyes widened a fraction upon seeing the bird. “A-ah! It’s the pigeon from b-before.”

“Hm? You saw Esmeralda?” Chris stroked his pigeon’s head, giving it a small frown. “I told you to remain unseen, dear.”

The pigeon cooed, possibly in guilt, possibly because it just felt like it. It picked under its wing.

“So,” Claud said, trying to steer the conversation back onto a more serious course, “Chris, was it?”

“Mmmhmm.” Chris leaned against the tree he had been hiding behind, eyes scanning the three. His left arm was pressed against the trunk behind him. “Before you ask, no, I won’t attack you anytime soon. If I could, I would’ve, but I don’t have the firepower to do so.”

“Don’t you mean manpower?” Lucius frowned. He knew what firepower was, of course, but he doubted that there were any ammunition stores in such a place.

“Ah, right.” Chris raised an eyebrow. “Let’s not talk about that. Instead, how about you just-“

Lucius rushed forwards, pulling Chris off the tree by grabbing his left arm. Now that it was in full view, Lucius’ face darkened. All along Chris’ sleeve were patches of dull red and shinier threads of blood trickling over that. “What’re these red stains?” Without giving Chris a chance to reply, he turned to storm off into the forest.

Chris stopped Lucius. “What are you doing?”

Claud stepped forwards. “What are you doing?” he repeated, glaring at Chris. “That blood’s still glistening. So where’d it come from?”

Mikhail edged around them while Lucius and Claud kept Chris occupied. He looked around trees and through bushes, making sure not to trip over the plentiful roots. Much to his disappointment, there wasn’t more than green, green, red, and- wait, red?

An ear-splitting screech caused Lucius to stop interrogating Chris. “Mikhail?!” Hearing Chris give an exasperated sigh, he resisted clocking the man in the face and instead followed Mikhail’s tracks for as far as he could remember. “Where’re you?”

There was a rustle, and Mikhail’s pale face became visible through a bush, hand pushing the branches to the side. “H-here…”

Instead of looking to see what made Mikhail so scared, Lucius hurried over, pointedly keeping his eyes on the bush. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out what that metallic scent was, either. “Are you okay?”

Mikhail bit his lip, releasing the branches and letting them cover up Lucius’ vision on him. When he spoke again, he stuttered even more than usual. “I, I am… b-but th-this person i-isn’t.”

Lucius felt his heart sink, already knowing what was next. Standing up, he got a full view of the scene before him and immediately wished he hadn’t.

The first thing that he had seen was red. Bleeding into the ground, splattered on the trees- the crimson color overwhelmed the natural greens and browns of the forest, even. Without even properly registering the scene, Lucius knew that such volume could not be a mere accident.

In the center of all that was a corpse, although upon first glance, it was more like a pile of flesh. The hair was ripped out, bloody shreds of scalp still attached to the edges, and in a mockingly neat pile a foot away. Lucius couldn’t even tell which gender the person was, especially with the gaping hole in their torso. Where breasts (or the lack thereof) might have been was raw, lumpy flesh, the skin torn away. The only movement was the slow trickle of blood, where small rivers combined to form a puddle- no, more of a lake- around the body.

The limbs were bent in impossible angles, and were unfortunately likely broken before death. Compared to the torso, the legs were much better off, with only deep gashes near ankle and lighter scratches littering the exposed front of the lower body.

Falling to his knees besides Mikhail, Lucius promptly emptied the contents of his stomach into a nearby bunch of tall grass, covering the reds with a murky light brown. The bitter aftertaste did not mix well with the already cringe-worthy metallic scent of blood. Trembling, Lucius, against all rational parts of his mind, allowed his eyes to travel up to the face.

The gaping mouth, dotted with missing -removed- teeth and empty sockets were posed in an expression of pure anguish. Any dried tears that might’ve shown were painted over with more trails of blood, appropriately making it as if the face was still crying.

Lucius barely registered the footsteps of Claud and Chris as they caught up. Such a grisly scene was the sort one’d see in nightmares, but never really expect to encounter- yet here he was, the soggy feel of the bloodied ground assuring that it was very much real.

Claud gasped, but otherwise did not react as harshly as Lucius did. Instead, he clenched his hands and smacked a nearby tree, ignoring the pain it brought him. “Damn it… Did it even work…?”

His words were strange, but Lucius wasn’t thinking about that right now. He twisted his head to see Chris, staring at the scene with nothing more than a bored gaze and condescendence and no sign of guilt-

Lucius sprang up, grabbing Chris by his shirt, scaring Esmeralda into the air in the process. “What the fuck did you do?!”

“I didn’t do anythi-“ Chris began, raising his hands in surrender, but was once more cut off by a furious Lucius.

“Like hell!” Keeping a firm grip on Chris with his left hand, Lucius waved to the bloody murder scene. “You have blood on you, and you were here before!”

“Think about it.” Chris was remaining very calm for a man in his situation, which only served to anger Lucius further. “This is such a messy scene; how could I have only gotten one arm dirty if I did this? I came here after it was performed, and just prodded around a bit. That’s all.”

Fury still coursing through his veins, some part of Lucius acknowledged his reasoning, but he didn’t let go of the brown-haired man just yet. “Why were you trying to hide it?”

“Because I knew you’d react like this!” Chris placed a hand on Lucius’ arm, eyebrows furrowed. “Will you let go of me, now? I won’t run.”

A brief hesitation and Lucius released Chris from his grasp. Arms falling to his side, he pressed a hand to his forehead. “Then who would…?”

“I don’t know,” Claud cut in, his expression stony and tinged with… sorrow? Guilt? Lucius didn’t know. “But let us at least bury this person. He… she… they deserve at least that much.”

Lucius winced, not looking forwards to touching such a mess. Claud was right though; the person deserved some of the treatment that they didn’t get in life. He took a large step towards the pile of ripped hairs, bent down, and instead of picking it up, his hand passed right through it. “What?”

Shocked, Lucius lifted his head to see that the rest of the body was fading as well, much like how the forest had faded into view when he first came to this place. It wasn’t obvious, but was green gradually regaining its control over the colors of the forest and tinging the body a strange shade.

The others were stunned as well. Even Claud and Mikhail, who had been in the arena longer, seemed at a loss of what to say.

His gaze frozen on the fading corpse, Claud was the first to form some words. “So that’s why… That’s why there aren’t bodies everywhere or when we returned to the same place… I mean, we suspected, but…” He trailed off, since anything he could’ve said was easily shown through the corpse disappearing right before their eyes.

The blood vanished along with the corpse, like some sort of slow time reversal that was cleaning the scene up. Once there was nothing but a faded corpse, the lines that made up the dead person seemed to scramble and mix like a paintbrush blending colors. Then, as a final stroke, the imaginary paintbrush dunked into water and the remaining bits of the body disappeared into nothingness. All that was left behind was a peaceful, innocent clearing.

In his numbing surprise, Chris lost most of his usual sarcasm. “Who the hell got a Z-Drive?”