"Three a day," she grunts, steadying herself before following Katters. "...well, I can get us to a place I'm more familiar with. Not safe, but at least with a level of danger I can help us navigate... aside from that... mnh. Maybe find a way to the real world through there?" She stands close enough that your shoulders touch as she examines the stain.
The heavy atmosphere is starting to lighten... and you hear voices, the crackle of a police radio... faint, but growing louder by the moment.
Katters tries to cover the stain, realises that’s only calling more attention to it, and drops her hand. “Hell,” she says, “Familiar’s good. Can’t be much worse than this place — let’s give it a shot.”
"-ome kind of-" "Jesus!" "-odies everywhere-" "Get me a full CSI team-" The words start coming out clearer, from the main room -
"....." Red grabs your hand, then presses her other hand to the doorway, which shudders under her touch. The air starts to shimmer, glow, and then a new world is revealed through it, a pathway decorated with bones and skulls set in what looks like a messy torrent of blood.
Katters flicks an ear — that’s a neat trick Red’s pulled, but she’s distracted by what sounds like another set of those static monsters. The décor on the other side looks a little macabre for Katters’ tastes, and she’s starting to have second thoughts. That static almost sounds like words. The house is still here, so maybe they can get out her way, through the front door and into Snowtown. Almost sounds like— “Shit! Cops!” Katters rushes through the door, pulling Red after her.
Red yips as she's pulled in, and her skin goes fuzzy under Katters' fingers, her appearance of humanity falling to the wayside as they enter the gateway. There's a loud shout, then the gate snaps shut, leaving them standing in front of a door made of metal inlaid with bones and covered with desperate smudged bloody handprints... There's a jaunty little "bakery and barber" post hammered into the ground next to it. Red looks distressed, blood soaking into her boots, stuck in the mire up past her ankles.
Shit. Shit. Cops. Bodies? The cops found the bodies. “Shit.” Katters lets go of Red and raises that hand to her forehead, palm pressing against her temple. “That’s it,” she says. “There’s no going back. It’s done — I’m done.” She takes a few steps forward, slogging through the blood, before stopping and turning around. “Shit.”
"....Katters?" Red hesitates, then grimaces, pulling her feet from the muck and stepping up onto a skull, which bobs gently under her weight but stays above the surface. "....uh. No going back?" She looks back at the door, then to Katters, then grimaces, baring sharp teeth. "...listen, whatever is going on, neither of us are done. Curtain call isn't here yet, right?"
“No,” Katters says. “You don’t — this isn’t ‘Oh, Katters is having another meltdown’,” she adds, waving her hands illustratively. “This isn’t paranoia, this isn’t delusions, this is I can never go back there. This is I can never go home again.” She kicks the door, adding another streak of blood to its collection. “This is, my home has been destroyed, this is, my home was taken from me.” She leans against the door, frowning, ears twitching. “Fuck,” she says. “This is, I need to warn Zebra before he tries to go back.”
"So what?" Red snaps, hands on her hips and lips curling back in a sharp snarl. "I haven't been able to go home in five years because some bitch with my face took my place and no one even knew she wasn't me." She thumps her chest. "I used to be human. Now I haven't even been able to get back to my own fucking colony because I got spat out in fucking Snowtown. That doesn't mean I'm giving up and you better not either because I'm going to flip my ever-loving shit of I'm stuck in the goddamn hedge with someone who's ready to give up." She stalks forwards from skull to skull, leaving blody bootprints on the pristine chalk-white of their craniums, cloak fluttering in her wake. "The fuckers who did this to you are just one more batch of misery on top of everything else. So! How about we focus on revenge instead of things that can be replaced?" One fuzzy ear cocks itself. "Who's Zebra, anyway?"
“Who said I’m giving up?” Katters snaps. “I’m sure as shit not staying here, this place reeks to high heaven. But excuse me for being a little fucking upset that my livelihood’s been destroyed and that I’m seriously in danger of being locked up again, and this time it won’t be in some cushy kiddie-bin like I was last time, if I go poking my nose anywhere around my god damn neighbourhood.” She stands up straight, squaring her shoulders against Red. “And never fuckin’ mind that I’ll never see my pets again, and who knows what even happened to them when the fucking tornado — or whatever it was — hit the shops. But you wouldn’t care about that little detail, would you,” she prods Red in the chest. “Since pets are just things to be stolen, murdered, and eaten, I suppose. “Still, though, I guess I don’t have anything to complain about since you used to be human and now you aren’t anymore! What a fucking pity, it’s so awful how you appear human when you want to so no one can even fucking tell you’re not one of them, must be hard blending in with human society like that. Gosh, I’m sorry I’ve been so preoccupied with the knowledge that even if I ever make it out of here, I’ll probably be running from the cops for the rest of my life. You’re right, that was selfish of me.” She starts walking, trudging past Red. “Zebra? Guess he’s just one more thing I might lose today.”
"Last time I sat through someone bemoaning shit it ended with them curling up in the middle of the path, and refusing to move." Red clenches her fists, following Katters. "I tried to make her move for hours, and then I got to watch a fucking hedgebeast rip her to shreds because she'd given up because she thought that not being able to go home meant there was nothing worth living for, so excuse me for not wanting to watch you die." She glowers, then yips, jumping to another skull as she stomps a bit too hard and leaves her last one cracking. "I'd rather be a Ket than what I am," she continues. "At least you have the face you were born with. Also? Apparently if you're so fucking worried about the cops, I don't think you get to lecture me on eating what I can hunt." "...though I think neither of us gets to claim the high ground, here." She trails off. "....do you think the same people who took him... wait. Uhm. Is he... Male, black hair?" She hazards carefully. "...Katters, what does your friend look like?"
“You don’t gotta do me any fucking favours, Red. If you’re so concerned I’m gonna lay down and die, maybe you should just fuck off.” She stomps through the mire, leaving ripples in her wake. “And I suppose all crimes are made equal, are they? Tell me — does hunting Fido take a lot of skill, there? Gotta track him through the backyard all night before you get lucky?” She stops to glare at Red before continuing. “You’re not hunting, you’re stealing, because you’re weak and you don’t care.” She snorts. “Zebra looks like an asshole,” she says. “But yeah — long, black hair, pale skin, yadda yadda. Pointy ears but he’s got nothing on me.”
"If I leave you alone here, you're more fucked than you were back there with the cops," Red snaps. "Where do you think the vine came from? I know my way through this place." She shoves her hand through into the wall of bones and vines that frames the path and wrenches a bloody fruit from inside it. "And, hah hah fucking hah. Sorry I'd rather eat animals than whatever you do. And fuck you, I spend plenty of time in the actual woods, hunting actual fucking animals that aren't all fat and fuzz," she snaps. "You don't know me, and you don't know even half of what I've lived through." She pushes past Katters, biting into the bloody fruit, which lets out a loud, piercing scream until she spits the pit out into the bloody mire. "And congratulations, that means we have one more reason to stick together. I think I saw your buddy when I got shot."
“Sure is funny how you know everything about my life, apparently,” Katters says, rolling her eyes. “Or is it just that you’re the only person allowed to have a hard one? Sorry I tried to steal your show, I guess.” She sticks her tongue out at Red as she passes by, but pulls it back in to look confused. “Wait, what? That would be a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? White guys with black hair are a dime a dozen, you know.”
"Oooh my fucking god, I was trying to sympathize, okay?!" Red snaps, stomping along, bones cracking under her boots. "You were upset. I SUCK at pep talks and I suck even more about keeping my temper!" She waves her arms in the air. "And if you are here and the people who kidnapped me are involved then there is a non-zero chance that mr. Black-Haired White Boy McKidnapped was your black-haired white boy! It is a conjecture but I'm actually trying to, like. Help?"
“‘You don’t know me,’” Katters mocks. “‘You don’t know what I’ve lived through.’ Some fucking sympathy — I was really feeling the warm fuzzies there, especially when you decided that whatever I’ve done couldn’t possibly have been by necessity and is definitely worse than the things you’ve done. Are you a counsellor or something? Because you should take this show on the road, tell more people they deserve to be hunted down by the police.”
"You're the one who said you could never go back because of cops, not me! I never said anyone deserved to be hunted by the cops!" She throws her hands in the air. "I was trying to say not to give up! I was trying to say you're not the only one who apparently can't go home!" She pulls at her hair. "I don't have any idea what you've done, but if you're saying you can't go back because of the cops I'm gong to assume it's worse than eating some spoiled rich kid's poodle." She glances back. "It doesn't matter, anyway, I'm sticking around. You could be a terrorist or have killed my mom and I wouldn't leave you alone here. Okay?"
“It’s never occurred to you that maybe the cops sometimes arrest people who don’t deserve it?” Not that that actually applies in Katters’ case. Well, Red doesn’t need to know that — but if she keeps doubling down like this, Katters is going to back herself into a corner, maybe say something she’ll actually regret. “Whatever,” she snarls. And, shit. It’s entirely possible she did kill Red’s mom. If Red’s a Riptonite and her mom’s been killed, there’s a decent chance Katters did it — and if it wasn’t her, there’s an equal chance it was Zebra, and now Red may very well be helping Katters reunite with her mom’s murderer. That’s got potential to be a hell of a mess, if it’s true. But it’s probably not. “Was your mom murdered?”
