A Promising Career

Dr. Mizuki Watanabe had never been in this much pain in her entire life. She stumbled along a jungle-path growing dizzy with the profusion of purplish life getting denser around her. What the hell had happened back there? What kind of nightmare is this planet?

Her bag, her equipment - all those valuable drugs! They were gone now. She left them behind in that ass-hole of a village while those eyeless freaks swarmed over everything. She ran, holding her hand over the bloody stump of her left arm, ripped off at the shoulder by unnatural strength. Her coat was soaked and clinging to her all along the left side, and she was so... dizzy.

Fuck you Ryuunosuke you revenge obsessed maniac! Fuck you for dragging me out here into this demonic wilderness! Fuck you for making it seem sexy - for being sexy, for misleading me! I had a promising career ahead of me. Okay, so I was a criminal working for criminals, but it was better than this...Where the hell am I?

She looked around.

The looming vegetation, the wild hair of Karia, pressed in around her. There were too many sounds to distinguish anything useful. All she knew is that downhill, whence she had come, was a stone village full of demons. Up hill, toward the mountaintop is where Eris had been stationed, that lunatic sniper. That was a slim kind of hope, but since Ryuunosuke and Matthew and Tricks had all been lost in the onslaught it was all she had to cling to.

Up she went.

The dizziness ebbed and flowed, and she wondered how she found the strength to keep moving, after the moon was up in the sky, but terror will give a girl a surprising amount of go-juice. Heh, go-juice had been a pet name Tricks-the-Wind gave one of her custom cocktails. She never tried any of that shit herself - though right now, she would definitely break her own ethics on the matter. Fuck me up with something really strong, Doc. I don't want to remember this month, when I look back at it on a calendar.

Suddenly, the foliage cleared. There was a fire, crackling. Smoke, rising. Hanging from a branch directly in front of her was the bloody body of a Jevumm, without it's skin.

"Hello, Doc. Watch out for the kitty. I killed it, cause I got hungry. Want some?" Eris was holding out a rib, with a hearty, greasy, hunk of meat on it. Eris was wearing the skin like a cape.

Dr. Watanabe keeled over. So dizzy!

What are you going to do doc? I'm bleeding too much. I need Eris to help me. The crazy cannibal Eris who shot the sedated Jevumm Matthew captured a few days ago. I wanted to do some more tests on that Jevumm... dammit.

"Eris," she managed to gurgle the word past the blood in her throat. "Eris have you got any medical expertise?"

The sniper shrugged, "I took a few courses back at the academy. I can do stitches and stuff."

"Eris, I need you too look at my arm. Tell me how bad it is."

Eris got up and walked over to the fallen doctor. She pulled the doctor's coat off the left shoulder and examined the wound for a second. She poked a finger into the mangled tissue and then casually licked the blood off.

"Doc, I don't think you're gonna make it," she said matter of factly.

For Dr. Watanabe the world was spinning, "What? Why do you say that?"

"Because," Eris said drawing her pistol.

Bang.