Her eyes lit up at the thought of a good fight and she felt her blood quicken. She stared into the barrier. "Good old Oblivion." Her sharp eyes took in the battlefield.

Her employer looked at her. "Does this happen a lot?" Catastrophe didn't much care for dogs.

She nodded, her eyes taking in and scoping out what was going to happen. "It happens when someone has a ridiculous idea, like someone talking in another language is made for the purpose of pissing them off." She licked the tip of her beak. "I love a good fight." She broke eye contact with bth of the captive fighters and pushed her way through the crowd.

She paused at the betting stand. "What are the odds, Illicit?" She motioned at the announcer, who pointed his glowing amplifier away from them both.

"Five to One for the zebra. One and a half to One on the griffon. But you know how these fights work." He smiled.

She did. She usually watched.

She clicked her beak once, narrowly avoiding her own tongue. She pulled a few bits from a small bag clamped under her wing and placed them on the table. "Two hundred on the Zebra."

The atmosphere grew tenser and she shivered in the anticipation. Oblivion. Nothing quite like watching two fighters tear each other apart.

And the first blow was struck and she practically shivered with bliss at the animalistic display.

Fighter on fighter.

She licked her lips as the zebra's face exploded into blood from a lucky swing of the sword.

And then the zebra did the unexpected and turned the fight around.

She almost imagined that he had turned to look at her when he knocked the griffon out and stole his sword. His vivid blue eyes blurred with the haze of combat and fury...

Covered in fresh blood... the zebra looked... good... Her beak lightly nicked her tongue and she sipped on her on blood for a long second while trying not to shiver at the exquisite delight.

An electric tingle forced itself down her spine as she pictured having a part in spilling his blood. It aroused her interest in him and she once against licked the tip of her beak, a spot of blood smearing itself on it.

She felt... predatory, as if the chains of society collapsed off of her and she as at one with the beast inside of her.

She collected her bits from the announcer and made her way back to her new employer without counting them.

Catastrophe scoffed at Boss's eye roll at her movements. She tried not to think of just how good Boss would taste and shut her eyes to stop pondering it. She opened them again after a moment.

Boss blinked. "Are you... high?"

She gave her a devilish smirk, the world crisp with her instincts acting. "No. I just made me quite a few bits."

Boss nodded at her in a friendly way. "Right." She looked about to say more, but Ivan walked over to them with blood still seeping from his nose.

The faintest whiff of blood drifted through the air and settled into her nose almost forcing her to arch her back. As it was, she softly purred. Ivan smelled delicious. "Hello Ivan." She struggled to keep her voice from sounding forced.

Ivan stopped and turned a glare designed to kill on all three of them.

Canary, the wimp, looked at him and surprisingly enough, spoke up. "What's with the look?"

Ivan positively snarled at them. <"I almost died."> A few drops of blood spiraled off and hit the pavement, painting it with organic fluids.

It as an art show that she approved of. If she had it her way he was going to be bleeding even more.

He spat out the sword he was carrying on the ground and let it bounce and clatter off of the pavement.

It sparkled with fine craftsmanship and Boss nodded at it and picked it up with her remaining hand. "I'll be taking this."

She felt like laughing at the dog when she recoiled after touching the blade.

She shook her head. "I'll take this." She repeated.

Ivan literally seemed to swallow back a response. <"Ok. I..."> He shook his head.

Ignoring that he seemed to be abruptly switching personalities, he seemed to be mostly ok other than his bleeding nose.

Which was the only part of him she care about. Personality could wait, looks were first.

<"I need a little rest."> He muttered. <"Where is the hotel room?">

"We haven't gotten the room yet." Boss said simply, watching his mood deflate.

Canary nodded at Ivan. <"We'll have one for you."> Ivan slumped visibly.

Catastrophe smirked. "Shouldn't we take care of his wound first?" She licked her beak. "I could bandage it."

Boss stared at her and Catastrophe shrugged.

Canary nodded at the collapsed zebra and nudged him up. "Come on. I know a healing spell or two." Ivan collapsed further on the ground.

Canary nudged him with a hoof. "Uh... Ivan?" He got a muffled growl in response.

<"Don't use a spell..."> She could just barely hear. <"Let her bandage me."> Not that she could really understand what he was saying.

Canary nodded. <"Use bandages.">

Boss looked at her. "He says you should bandage him."

She snickered lightly and stepped forward. Bandaging him would also put him in a position where he couldn't cry out. She lifted him up lightly onto her back and started out for the hotel.

She could faintly hear his companions behind her vocalizing their complaints.

----------------

I think the hotel room was 20 bits a night. I don't remember. We two rooms, one for Canary and Boss, and one for my nurse and me. My mouth was wrapped in bandages, which was probably for the best.

I had the oddest dream that night. About Catastrophe cleaning my bandages... and my wound. With her tongue.

I really think there might be something wrong with me.

I swear I could feel her tongue.

-------------

She smirked at her unwitting prey and made a quick check to make sure she had cleaned herself adequately. Wouldn't want to freak him out or something. Her breath still smelt of what she had done.

She nudged him awake after making sure the bandages were still tight around his muzzle. "Wake up! We have some bastards to absolutely destroy in a race.

-------------

By some odd twist of fate, the balloon of death was floating into port at that very moment. Driven on by it's infernal and immoral desires for flesh, it dwelled over the cracked streets.

For a long moment nobody noticed it.

And then it's tongue shot out and stabbed through a body, eating it.

And then the screams started.

----------------

There was cold and hot and everything in between echoing numbly through my skull, like someone had cruelly decapitated me and deep fried what remained in hot sauce and stuffed me in a washing machine made of ice. And then there were eyes in the ice staring deep into what little fragments remained of me and staring and I couldn't esca-

The mind is a funny thing.

Sometimes, when something traumatic happens, like say, a friend or a person you know well dies in front of you, you'll... blank out.

Like how witnesses to violent crimes and can lie through detectors and fool the unfoolable? That's because their mind itself has decided to lie to them to try and protect them from what happened.

Some people in the world are tough. Tough to the point that they can spit in the face of death and play russian roulette with Lady Luck. Some people can go into a crowd of demons with only a wing (Or two) and the barest whisperings of a plan and come out unscathed in mind body and spirit.

But... some people aren't made for that. Some people crumple under pressure, like cheap tin cans. And like tin cans, they only resist after they have tasted defeat, slowly resisting the crushing force. But... even when they succeed in not getting crushed any further, when their mind is prickly and full of sharp cutting edges, they can never go back. Like a pane of glass, the cracks will remain forever.

I... was the latter.

I don't remember what happened after I woke up besides a few vague blurs of eyes and souls all staring into me and the screams of the devoured.

I remember trying to fight it off and running for my life as the beast pursued me... and only me through the streets.

There was cannon fire and the sounds of cannons breaking and the sounds of ships breaking.

And a few bodies breaking.

In my case, my mind broke.

There are things in the world that are so terrifying that just describing them will make you paranoid, will make some distant part of you, the one that governs the primal parts, will strike you cold with the feeling of something greater than it watching it and pulling the threads of fate and the webs of the world.

The knowledge of what red smelled like, what thirty seven tasted like what it felt to see love in the air and hear hatred echoing about and wrecking the weave. The taste of electricity and the smell of pain.

Minds... aren't made to handle these things unless they are made wrong.

For a long time I could taste words. Love had a calming taste to it, like warm honey. I liked to think that someone loved me and that the universe wasn't out to get me.

I remember being shaken and something painting my side dark red.

The broken skyline of the port and the crystalline non euclidean forms haunting me and burrowing through my thoughts to implant into my eyes and my body.

I could feel it all in my form.

And it was the norm.

A horrible sensation.

A reciprocation...

My mind winked in and out of zebrican and I could taste and feel the souls of those around me.

The souls were flies and I was the web and I had just caught an eagle.

And the web tore. And the spider went to work on it.

-----

"How is he?" Boss barked, pacing back and forth across the room. She had a slight desperate note in her voice, like she was chasing after the last good thing in the world.

The doctor, his coat a shade of red that was just barely masculine, spoke up. "The good news is he isn't brain dead. That, and we removed most of the metal from his body."

Canary poked his head up from an easy translation book. "Bad news now?" He spoke brokenly.

"We don't know why he isn't waking up. He, for all intents and purposes is awake. But he doesn't respond." He frowned and shook his head. "Just... stares." He looked like he had more to say, she thought.

"And if he ever snaps out of it, does he have long to live?" She finally spoke up.

The doctor shrugged awkwardly. "That... thing... It ate things... completely. As far as we can tell... It shot him full of whatever it was eating. Souls... Blood... bones... He's the only one that isn't brain dead that was involved in the explosion. If he, as you said, snaps out of it, he may live a day and he may live a century. By all accounts he appears to be healthy."

She clicked her beak tighter together and looked down. He had saved her... "He'll live." She muttered.

Boss looked at her sharply. "He will?"

She nodded, and she felt her inner strength flame up. "If he is safe for transport, we'll take him." She pointed at the doctor.

"Miss?" He muttered. "Oh god... why do they always have to be dramatic."

The hybrid growled at him and cleared her throat. "Did I fucking stutter? Is there anything keeping him here?"

"Well... not really, he eats and he drinks, he just seems empty inside." The doctor slowly backed away.

She turned to Boss. "Ready to leave?" She motioned at the bitch's new prosthetic. "Is that taken care of?"

"I placed a down payment on it, bu-"

Canary stepped up from his position, levitating the book behind him by use of a feather. "Leave we now." He spoke up.

She licked her beak. "You heard him. We place Ivan in the ship and we leave and go finish what he was planning on."

Boss looked at her blankly. "We can't pay you yet..."

She nodded. "Then when he wakes up and gets more money, we can discuss payment options." Shoving the doctor aside, she plucked the zebra off of the bed and placed him on her back.

Boss looked at her, her mouth opening and closing. "What the hell, Cata? I thought you hated his guts?"

She shook her head at the dog, a few whisps of confusion lancing through her body. "Not now. Later." She clicked her beak, searching for a way to make it clear.

Canary nodded. "They not fix him here." He said.

Catastrophe appreciated his effort, she really did. She smiled at him and nodded. "Right, Boss. Ready to leave?"

The dog nodded, hesitantly at first, but bolstered by a hint of approval.

They slowly walked out of the hospital carrying their less than awake leader.

The path to the airship was not blocked for once.