Deep within the abandoned Old Tokorozawa Water Distribution Hub, time seemed to be frozen in rust and dampness.
Gloom was the only keynote here, with only the pale green light of emergency lamps barely outlining the distorted contours of giant pipes and valves. The air was heavy, mixed with the strong smell of rust, the fishy decay of old stagnant water, and a faint, deliberately diluted scent of blood.
The Beast Transformation Squad, led by the Bald Eagle Captain, moved like ghosts through the labyrinth of massive pipes.
They varied in form: wolf heads, bear bodies, lizard scales... retaining some human outlines, but roughly overlaid with bestial features, their eyes gleaming with a fierce, somewhat bewildered red light, characteristic of those 'friend-ified' and mixed with obedience commands.
Footsteps echoed in the empty metal passages, heavy and cautious.
"Sniff... sniff sniff..." The wolf-headed soldier at the front of the squad crouched low, his nostrils flaring.
He was the tracker, his sense of smell enhanced to the extreme after being 'friend-ified.' He greedily caught the faint scent of blood in the air, belonging to the intruders.
One scent was fresh, with an aftertaste of metal and gunpowder; the other was fainter, with the smell of a feline.
The wolf-headed soldier instinctively locked onto the intertwined trails, letting out a low growl, leading the squad deeper into the facility's more secluded and darker core.
The pipes became denser, and the space grew narrower and more oppressive. Water droplets condensed overhead, falling onto the cold metal with a monotonous "drip-drop."
Suddenly, the wolf-headed soldier's steps halted abruptly. He anxiously pawed at the ground, making a grating sound.
The scent... was gone.
Just before a severely rusted three-way pipe junction, the bloody scent that had guided them completely vanished. In its place, a much stronger, extremely pungent odor spread—like strong acid mixed with low-quality chemical agents, with a hint of sulfurous pungency, intensely stimulating their already sensitive sense of smell.
This smell not only covered the tracking clues but also acted like a viscous, foggy barrier, making them feel suffocated and disoriented.
Just as the squad fell into a momentary confusion—
A powerful tremor from the depths of their souls suddenly gripped them!
It wasn't a sound, nor an image, but a signal beyond the senses, an instinctive message like the death wail of a pack's alpha wolf.
It was the "Alpha Wolf" Fudou Hayabusa; he was in fatal danger at the repair shop!
The squad members were instantly distracted by this sudden distress signal. The instinct from their 'friend-ification' link made them let out anxious growls, their attention involuntarily shifting towards the distant repair shop.
The Bald Eagle Captain suddenly looked up, his sharp eagle eyes trying to penetrate the thick darkness and pipe barriers. The invisible mental link allowed him to sense his leader's peril.
Chaos bred in this moment.
And the hunter in the darkness, in this perfect moment of distraction, revealed its fangs.
Ting!
A crisp gunshot, jarringly out of place in the muffled environment, suddenly erupted from the shadows of a narrow pipe on the left.
The wolf-headed soldier's large head, still puzzled by the vanished scent, exploded without warning like a ripe watermelon.
Red and white matter, mixed with bone fragments and fur, splattered radially onto the rusty pipe wall. The headless wolf body stiffened for a moment before collapsing heavily to the ground.
Death came so abruptly.
"Enemy attack!!!" The Bald Eagle Captain's shriek was sharp and piercing, filled with shock and anger.
The squad instantly went into combat mode. Their remaining beast instincts made them quickly seek cover, their gun muzzles pointing into the darkness from which the gunshot came.
The bear-bodied soldier roared, raising his rifle, while the lizard-scaled soldier clung to the cold pipe wall like a gecko, trying to blend into the shadows.
However, there was only dead silence in the depths of the darkness. It was as if the fatal shot just now was merely a hallucination brought on by their fear.
But the pungent smell in the air suddenly intensified. Plumes of grayish-white, sulfur-smelling thick smoke gushed out from abandoned valves or broken pipes, rapidly filling the narrow space.
Their vision was completely deprived. The thick smoke was not only choking but also highly irritating, burning their eyes and nasal mucous membranes.
The thermal imager overhead was also interfered with; the screen was a chaotic mess of static, completely useless.
Fear, like cold vines, wrapped around the heart of every beast-transformed soldier.
"Where is he?!"
"Come out! Bastard!"
Bestial roars echoed in the smoke, trembling with feigned ferocity. Bullets blindly shot into the smoke, sparking dazzling flashes and deafening echoes on the metal pipes, but only hitting air and cold iron walls.
And the hunter was no longer in his original position.
Togawa Fuuki, or rather, Togawa Fuuki who was transforming into a "snake," glided like a true ghost under the cover of thick smoke and darkness.
His figure still maintained a human outline, but certain qualities had subtly changed.
His body temperature had dropped to almost match the environment, like a cold-blooded animal, perfectly evading any heat source detection. His movements were silent; the hem of his tattered black trench coat brushed the ground without a single superfluous sound.
Snakes possess sensory abilities far beyond humans. They can accurately perceive infrared radiation and locate prey by detecting subtle vibrations in the ground.
At this moment, Fuuki was immersed in this non-human sensory world.
The smoke was not an obstacle for him; instead, it became a perfect hunting ground. What he "saw" was not light, but the faint yet clear biological infrared outlines emitted by his prey; what he "heard" were their panicked heartbeats, heavy breathing, the scraping of claws on the ground, and even the subtle tremors of muscles tensed with fear.
Two specialized pistols—the long-barreled, cold silver-glowing [Pain] and [Ruin]—were extensions of his limbs, steady in his hands without a single tremor.
Elegant, deadly.
Ting! Another crisp gunshot.
In the smoke, a lizard-scaled soldier, who was cautiously moving along a pipe, suddenly stiffened. A bowl-sized blood hole burst open in his forehead, the dissolving bullet instantly liquefying his brain tissue. The dissolving property of [Pain] was displayed to its fullest in the confined space.
"Left! He's on the left..." A bear-bodied soldier had just roared, trying to warn.
"Bang!"
The bullet from [Ruin], with terrifying high temperature and penetrating power, like a red-hot steel nail, instantly pierced his thick chest, precisely melting his heart.
The massive body crashed down, crushing a section of rusty railing.
A sense of oppression, like tangible ice water, submerged the remaining survivors.
They couldn't see the enemy, only hearing the muffled groans of their dying companions and the heavy thuds of bodies falling, only smelling the increasingly strong scent of blood mixed in the thick smoke.
Fear choked their throats, and the beast's ferocity was completely suppressed in the face of absolute unknown and death.
The Bald Eagle Captain, using the advantage of being a flying species, managed to hover in mid-air after breaking free from the passage, his eagle eyes struggling to search through the smoke.
He saw it! Below, at a relatively open pipe junction, a blurry, tall, thin black figure, almost blending with the environment, flashed past!
"There! Concentrate fire!" He shrieked, simultaneously raising his assault rifle and firing wildly. The other surviving soldiers, as if grasping at a lifeline, poured firepower in the direction indicated by their captain.
A rain of bullets, like a metal storm, completely enveloped that area. Pipes were riddled with holes, and sparks flew everywhere!
However, when the gunshots ceased, and the smoke was slightly dispersed by the airflow... there was nothing there.
Cold sweat instantly soaked the Bald Eagle Captain's feathers.
A cold, death-laden breath, like a venomous snake's tongue, lightly brushed his nape.
He suddenly turned his head!
He saw Fuuki, who had silently climbed onto the massive main water pipe above him at some unknown point.
The eyes that slowly opened in the shadows were no longer human pupils, but two cold, vertical, dark golden slits—snake eyes!
There was no human emotion in them, only the pure, cold calculation of a predator.
Ting! Bang!
Two bullets, fired almost simultaneously!
The dissolving bullet from [Pain] tore through the Bald Eagle Captain's left lung, and the high-temperature armor-piercing bullet from [Ruin] penetrated his right lung.
Excruciating pain and suffocation instantly overwhelmed him. He fell from the sky like a kite with a broken string, screaming, crashing heavily onto the cold ground, blood mixed with foam gushing from his beak.
He struggled, his eagle eyes filled with unbelievable fear and despair. He desperately mobilized the last strength of his 'friend-ification' link, trying to transmit a final warning to Fudou Hayabusa at the repair shop.
However, a flying disc, like an invitation from hell, embedded itself in his violently heaving chest.
Togawa Fuuki landed silently before him, his shadow covering the dying captain. He leaned slightly, a few strands of his now silver-white hair falling across part of his face, but his dark golden snake eyes glowed like two undying ghost fires in the gloom.
"Hiss—" Fuuki's voice was low and hoarse, with an inhuman, snake-like sibilant quality.
The pale, bandaged phantom of the Stand White Snake slowly emerged from behind Fuuki. Its cold fingers plunged unimpeded into the Bald Eagle Captain's head!
There was no physical wound, but the light in the captain's eyes instantly dissipated. His body twitched violently once, then completely went limp.
A Mental DISC shimmering with chaotic light was slowly drawn out by White Snake, as if drawing out the last embers of his soul. On the disc, fragments of the captain's confused and terrified thoughts, which he wanted to transmit before death, remained.
White Snake handed the DISC to Fuuki. After a quick glance, Fuuki tossed it into the nearby corpse of a beast-transformed soldier, where it disintegrated with the passing of life.
The thick smoke gradually dispersed, revealing a scene like a carnage.
The remains of the Beast Transformation Squad were scattered among the cold pipes, silently recounting the brief but efficient slaughter that had just occurred.
Fuuki straightened up, his dark golden snake eyes slowly sweeping across this deathly place in the gloom.
At this moment, his beast-transformed features were finally clear in the weak light: a tattered yet still crisp black long trench coat, a tall and slender figure almost gaunt, exuding an inhuman elegance and coldness.
Most of his face was still covered by shadows, his exposed lips forming an emotionless straight line. His dark golden vertical pupils, like fissures of the abyss, emanated a cold sense of oppression.
He lowered his head slightly, gently opening his trench coat. In his arms, a pale green cat was curled up.
Her eyes were tightly closed, her breathing faint, and her white fur on her belly was stained with a striking dark red—a gunshot wound from when she had shielded Fuuki from a stray bullet earlier.
Life after beast transformation would automatically consume vitality to heal injuries, but Mutsumi's condition was very bad at this time. Although the wound had been treated with a Stand, there was still no sign of her regaining consciousness.
Fuuki's cold snake eyes fell on Mutsumi's wound, and the dark golden light seemed even colder and more piercing.
He extended a finger, very gently stroking Mutsumi's soft fur, avoiding the wound, his movements carrying an almost eerie tenderness. But beneath this tenderness was a solidified, thick killing intent.
He raised his head, his dark golden snake eyes penetrating layers of pipes and darkness, precisely "looking" in the direction of the repair shop.
An instinctive sense from the 'friend-ified' beast pack link clearly outlined the enemy leader's location in his cold consciousness.
Like a venomous snake locking onto its prey, Fuuki's figure silently merged back into the darkness, cradling the injured kitten, and stealthily moved towards the sensed coordinates.
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