Hybrids: An Indoraptor Story ✓

Last Night In Chico

"Nrrr... don't say it. I know you didn't have control."

Ripper's tail curved upward, the blunt end of his snout lowering an inch into the shadow of the building. "That doesn't change anything," he admitted through a click, "I still made you bleed. I could've killed you."

"Trust me, it takes much more than that... to kill me."

"So you say?" Ripper scoffed at my slight pride, finally easing out his muscles and dropping to all fours to investigate my injury. I allowed him leeway, hissing slightly when his pink tongue started to lick over the gash. It stung, but I held my own -- at least it wasn't as terrible as the first time.

"I'm still sorry," he said between licks. I sighed, relaxing my body under his touch and grumbled wordlessly back in acceptance. Once he finished, he licked his chops to relieve himself of the warm flavor, and returned back to the shaded region of the building to watch the people again. My eyes followed after him, investigating the massive black hybrid's peculiar build just to myself.

Excluding the sprinkles of yellow streaking from the edges of his eyes to the tip of his tail, and the curved cut of his creased arms, one of the things that surprised me was the missing wounds on his body. Two years ago he died, impaled through the flank on a bone and left to rot. I knew Blue killed him, so I suspected him to be a clone, like the Lockwood girl. Perhaps someone different, if anything. But his scent was no different than the deceased indoraptor I knew; meaning he was one and the same.

Which made me curious. To see a hybrid without any markings, any sign of a struggle no less, was odd. And with these past few days added on, I couldn't help asking the gnawing question buzzing in my mind.

"What happened to you?" I grunted from the sunlit side. "You're... no longer hellbent on INGEN, you're more avoiding if anything. And whatever you did earlier today... it wasn't normal."

Ripper's eyes dropped to the ground. He pushed another slow breath through his nares, quills flattening and claws coiled into himself.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Like you... you don't know?"

"I know," he reassured me, wavering his tail from left to right. "I just... can't."

"Won't," I corrected. Ripper's eyes flashed, both eyes starting to burn with annoyance.

"You've never died before, Seven," he growled. "You don't know what it feels like, you've only ever touched the surface. I've fallen beyond that threshold -- the cold, the blood, the darkness..." He shook his head. "It isn't worth spilling my words over."

"Because it scares you?"

Ripper's lips wrinkled upward. Both beady yellow eyes sunk deep into my soul, watching the little slither of fear crawl over my snout, just enough to make himself comfortable. And, once his predator turned prey, Ripper snorted off my prior comment and returned to people-watching. My eyes dropped, a shallow grunt leaving my lips to equal the silence unfolding hereafter. I guess I was being a bit too arrogant. And... got carried away. It wasn't the right time, of course. The past was unforgiving... for him...

For me. Just as I thought of myself, my mind started to delve in between thoughts, levying emotions with history, nightmares with daydreams. Times beyond Click's existence. Moments when I felt just as broken as my prior alibi. Memories... bad ones. I tensed up, inhaling a sharp whiff of the human air, and exhaled.

"It... scares me, too," I admitted quietly, slowly folding my claws into themselves. "Dying."

Ripper said nothing. So I went on.