Rompiendo Aislamiento

[♫~Leap~♫]

It hurts.

It hurts. A quite vague statement to say the very least. "It hurts". Many a thing can be taken from this statement. What is it? Is it a part of your body? Is it one of your emotions? Is it someone else around you? Just what is the pronoun refering to in this kind of statement? What does hurt mean? Physcial pain? Pshycological pain? It's these awnsers that are very unclear to the human population. Just what exactly hurts? Can you pinpoint the pain? You feel it, but where is it coming from? It could be coming from one spot or multiple at the same time, but you can never tell the difference.

A scrape on your knee? Certainly it burns with a firey intensity of the skin being rubbed raw on the joint. But isn't your mind able to block out certain kinds of injuries in times of desperation? So why exactly does it still hurt, even when you try to ignore the pain? It's possible that there's a bit of guilt in one's mind that only adds to this kind of terribly awful feeling, fuiling the pain and making it so much worse. So where does the pain come from? Your knee? Or your mind, telling you that you have done something wrong and should be ashamed of it?

But were these true statements? Or were they just the overactive imagination of a girl who just grew up to fast? Could pshycological pain fuel the horrors of physical pain? Could those roles be reverse, possibly, a person's fragile state of mine ruined that much worse by any injury one might sustain? A person like she would never be able to fully comprehend such difficult subjects as these. It wasn't as though she were stupid - actually, she was quite intellengent, concidering her upbringing - but she wasn't one to be able to understand feelings and the like. The only ones she'd ever grown to care about were her own and, even then, she wasn't a master of her emotions.

The thoughts had been concieved, though, and made the woman start to think; well, she was and adult in the eyes of law, anyway. Her knee hurt oh so terribly bad. And it wasn't as though pressure was being applied to make it explode with such a horrible ache. Josh appeared to handle the leg attatched to said injury as carefully as he could - which wasn't particularly careful, but careful enough to prevent further injury - so it couldn't have been hurting from that. so what was it? Was it her impatience to get out of there and be done with the whole senario? That could be it. Or, maybe, she simply ruined it more than she'd initially thought.

Well, this wasn't good. As stated previously, she wasn't one for much emotional, warm and fuzzy kinds of thoughts, which left her as believing that her destroying her ankle as her only option. In that case, they were, essentially, doomed. She couldn't be carried forever. And, if her plan to get Josh out of there went all according to plan, crawling to the Pokemon Center would be her only possible option. That would only cause further pain to her and likely get her clothes more dirty than they were at that very moment. Well, as long as they truly could get anymore dirty, coated in a thing layer of half dried mud and possibly some vomit from the previous events.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

Goodness, why was it so painful? Honestly, the girl was praying that someone would run up and amputate the whole limb. At least that would hurt on a much smaller scale. Or, perhaps, she was simply overreacting. ... Yes, that would make much more sense. And that idea of emotion pain fuelling physical pain was seeming more and more likely as the minutes ticked by. As much as she tried to distract herself from it, there was nothing really else to think about. The brush they were traveling through looked generally the same throughout. There were only really a few things to possibly fathom at that point in time.

Slow. Ilixie had painfully realized that they were all moving at the speed of a Slowpoke, hardly making their way through all of the forest-like scenery. Those grunts must have been completely and utterly lost - or, at least, something of the sort - to have not made it back to that spot yet. She would have expected them to have already captured them when the two were "chatting" by the road if she didn't know them any better. Morons. Such awful morongs they were. Tarka wasn't helping to pick up the pace, either, If anything, the dog-like Pocket Monster was only getting in the way.

"What can it do to help?"

The words caught the grunt off guard for just a moment and her teal eyes tried to get a good look at him. However, even if protests wanted to flow from her mouth like a river, there was a good point in those words. There wasn't much the fire-type would be able to do to assisst in this kind of situation. He could probably take the Growlithe's place, but she'd likely fall down during the swap. Any order would be fine - help out here, do something there - but nothing came to mind. So, instead, she watched as the Houndour stumbled around with little to nothing to do that would actually help in any way. It was almost pathetic, really.

Second, loud. If her yelling at the boy earlier wasn't loud, their stomping through the route certainly was. Snapping twigs as they walked, dragging some body part through all the mud and leaves, banging into trees and every other possible obstacle that they possibly could have... They sounded like a heard of buffalo tearing across the prairie. Of course, they weren't tearing across any landscape. More like slowly making their way through all while attempting to make the most amount of noise that they possibly could. Honestly, anyone nearby would either be annoyed, intriqued, or some magical combination of the two. If only one of those passerbyers was a possible ally who could help them get to where they needed to go. If only...

Third - a noise. A tiny one. The rustling of bushes nearby. It could have easily been brushed off as them bumping into a tree and causing the leaves to flutter as though touched directly. Of course, Ilixie did not do such things as brush things off, especially if it were during a situation in which their lives were at stake. So, when she heard the noise again in a different bush, noticably more loud and followed directly by a repitition of the sound, she decided now was the time to make a change of plans.

"Sorry if you were talking," she heard and the long-haired female's - oh, goodness, she'd have so much trouble washing the mudd out of her ridiculously long hair that night if she actually made it out alright - head shot up at the sound. "but I really can't understand anything you're saying right now." But his words hardly registered in her mind. Because, instead of another noise, her eyes caught sight of movement in the bushes. And the movement in another. Well, that certainly explained where the grunts all were. "Drop me," she commanded. "Drop me and run." Remembering that he couldn't distinguish her words, she did the first thing that she thought of to do.

Flailing as wildly as she could, biting back yowls of pain as she hit her injured ankle against numerous things. He was weak enough that he was sure he wouldn't be able to carry her for any longer and would end up dropping her just as she'd commanded. Shoving the boy in the direction of town, she hissed one simple order and prayed he'd be able to hear her. It was the one thing that could possibly save his life. "Get out of here."

[ninjaastronaut]

Josh was confused, confused and irritated. He'd been confused for a while, with all of the nonsense that his ears picked up but his brain didn't recognize, not knowing where to go, and all of that drama with Ilixie falling, so confusion wasn't very new to him. But the irritation was. Why would Ilixie push him? She'd been rude to him before, but he usually deserved it. But now, he was helping her. Carrying her, while risking his own already fading life, so that she could get to safety.

Looking back, he saw a blob moving about with quite a bit of ferocity. Ilixie said something, seeming concerned. Did she? No. She couldn't. This couldn't be. There was no way that she would sacrifice herself for him, when he'd probably die before he could make it to any town, and there was absolutely no chance of him finding his way to it anyway. He was practically blind, after all.

Josh decided that all of these thoughts were stupid anyway, so he went ahead and booted them from his mind. He couldn't help but snicker, "What are you doing down there, dancing? You really are as crazy as people say." He was joking, but why didn't she stop dancing? Maybe she really was crazy, maybe people avoided her for a reason.

But it didn't matter. Right now Josh needed Ilixie just as much as she needed him, if not more. It didn't matter if Ilixie knew that. Without her, he had no eyes. Without her, he had no sense of direction. Without her, he might as well be dead already.

He walked back to Ilixie the best he could, wavering here and there, like someone who was drunk and tired. He was going to go pick her up, but it was going to be hard while she was dancing.

Maybe it'd be easier if I tied her up... Josh shook his head violently, causing him to veer more off track. Those were the kind of hazy thoughts he was having earlier, he didn't want to go back there.

He started to pick her up again, but she wouldn't stop moving. Now that Josh was closer, he could tell it wasn't a dance, but she was acting really strange. She wasn't going to make it easy to pick her up, and that was apparent.

[♫~Leap~♫]

She found that she can no longer handle the situation.

The mud that caked the earth below was cold, wet, and viscous, painted a variety of shades of the color known as brown. It was vile, she noted, clinging to her frame and holding her as a mother would a child. However, more than anything, it made her feel trapped. Lodged there in a possition that she wouldn't be able to make her great escape from. Her arms and legs would not budge, as much as she willed them too, still save for the occational twitch. She had stopped her flailing at last.

A sense of futile relief had surged over her as she watched his frame be forced away by the impact of her blow. The dark haired child seems confused for a moment, face twisting into an emotion that, despite her efforts, she could not bring herself to read. He doesn't understand, she realizes with a pang, gritting her teeth in frustration as she watches him sit there at her with that strange look of his. There was also a sense of irritation wafting off of him that she could feel from where she was sprawled in the mud below, eyes wise and waiting for him to come to his senses and understand what she excepts him to do.

He never does.

The sound of feet - multiple ones if she had to come to a conjecture - plunging into the wet ground below was discernible... and terrifying. The grunts were upon them and would burst through the foliage at any moment, she was fully aware. The only question was... why hadn't they done so yet? Were they waiting for some reason? The see if she was more loyal to the boy than them? Though would have seemed likely had the brain process of many of those people not been so utterly pathetic in comparison to the average person. To image that actual thoughts flew through their minds would be a frivolous concept and she discarded it with much eagerness. But that left the question open for more answers. Why weren't the two teens being attack at that point in time?

Ilixie found that she could no longer grasp the answer to any of this boy's reasonings. Came to a conclusion that he truly was mad - in a different sense than her kind of mad, of course - and had not sane mental processes going on underneath the flesh atop his head and the messy black form that he called his hair. That was truly something coming from a girl like herself. The prospect of his extreme dehydration causing him to make poor decisions and preventing words - not muffled noises but true words - from entering his mind entered her own and she realized that this idea, frankly, made much more sense than her other option.

The boy came running toward her once again.

Her body screamed at her to throw a fist in the direction of his face. Maybe then he'd finally understand that she didn't want him here. As long as she stayed around her, flailing helplessly in the mud in a futile attempt to keep him away, he would end up dead in the enemies' arms unless fate decided to send a meteor crashing into the grunts' skulls or she thought up some brilliant escape plan for him. Grievously, the first idea would be much more likely to occur by some miracle than the second. She'd never been good at thinking things up in a pinch. She typically went billistic on others before they had the chance to do away with her.

But things were different this time. The teal-haired adolescent was in front of a boy who she was trying to convince that she was truly sane. She couldn't snap in front of him. The results of her outburst would be disasterous, certainly, and she would not let her fragile outter shell crumble was as much ease as it typically did. Not when there was so much at stake if she did.

She felt his arms attempt to wrap around her as an endevour to hoist her up once more. In responce, she thrashed about with a conciderable more amount of violence and fear. This only made their situation worse, however. The noise would draw the attention of the grunts and cause them to believe that the two were truly in cohoots. So what if they were? She could not have her fellow Team Imum members knowing of such a thing, that she was more loyal to the betrayer than the betrayed, even if she was one of them. She'd be seen as disloyal as well and have her head hacked off in addition to his own.

"Put me down!" she demanded, weary of the approaching threat and hoping, praying that he's get the picture and make a mad dash for it. However, her screaming at him to leave her be, flailing so wildly, the presence of both Pokemon, and her injured ankle must have painted a very different picture for the bystanders who watched every movement with greedy eyes. A very different picture than the portrait being displayed before their very eyes, indeed. The moment that she'd been anticipating for the past ten minutes finally arrive in a flurry of leaves and mud, coating her in yet another layer of grime and obscuring her vision with stray green shapes.

"He's trying to kidnap Ilixie!" The startled cry rang through the air, tearing through the lower layers of the atmosphere and sturring the morning animals so greatly some awoke from their deep slumber. "Stop him!" It a matter of seconds, a small patrol of figures tore across the ground in an attempt to knock the raven-haired teen away from her. However, shock seemingly kept her rooted to the spot and all she found herself doing was watching as the events unfolded with eyes widened so wide it was almost comical. This wasn't supposed to happen! They were supposed to take her down, too, weren't they? It wasn't fair that he had to take the blows because she hadn't been able to protect him!

"Ily, are you alright?"

The words were like a faint echo in her head. However, unlike a normal echo, instead of fading out, they grew louder and louder as the time ticked by her untill they were blaring in her ear like they'd been using her megaphone. There were many thoughts that came to mind, but one stood out from the rest for just a moment. No one called her Ily. Only the people she was somewhat fond of or "close" to earned this privilage. She hated her name as is. She didn't need people cutting it down to something shorter and more pathetic. It only made it all the more hateable. The female resisted the urge to throttle him, lacing her fingers around his neck and watching slowly as she choked him to death. She had a clear shot at his throat. But she couldn't move and the plan was discarded in an instant.

The second was that she wasn't alright. Not only was her best friend probably getting beaten to a pulp while her body refused to let her help, but her ankle was hurting even more than before. She wanted to beg them to spare him, tell them to stop... but she couldn't. The words were held in her throat, forming a lump that would not release them for the world to hear. Could she speak at all? Had she gone mute from shock? "M-My... My ankle..." she muttered shakily, just to test this theory. Her voice worked well enough, that was certain. Their was just a net in front of her mouth that caught all the things she wanted to say and let everything she didn't out of her mouth.

I... I have to save Josh... Somehow...

[Gonna take my old approach on fanfic writing to pump out better written posts with longer word counts. I can't seem to reach over 1300 and it's bothering. Reading Kuruk's "kettering" and "monsters" usually helps me write better. Oh, and running a good ten, twenty words through the thesaurus helps, too. But I might do the dreaded tense switch a lot - that always happens in fanfics because I write in past tense while Kuruk writes in present, so I get all confused. DX - so please bare with me.]

[ninjaastronaut]

Finally she'd stopped flailing around. Josh was finally able to get a good grip on Ilixie, and with a good amount of effort, raise her to her feet.

Then, he was tackled to the ground in a sudden violent motion. The small smile that had sprouted on his face from finally getting Ilixie up was wiped off within a second. The breath was squeezed out of his lungs, like a toothpaste tube that had a brick dropped on it. Josh was certain that at least two of his ribs were broken, maybe three. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt at first. But as the air filled his lungs, an aching pain came with it. Eventually it built up into an unimaginable pain that was something Josh could only imagine taking place in the deepest pits of Hell.

He might as well have been in Hell. He was in an amount of pain that resembled that of Hell. He was as confused as he probably would be in Hell. And with his vision the way it was, he could be in hell and not be able to see the difference.

He wasn't in Hell though. He knew that when he heard the voices. Josh's vision slapped back into what focus it had, and his mind returned to the situation he was in. Unfortunately, the situation he was in involved getting kicked until his internal organs bled and having shards of his ribcage shot into said organs. That's what it felt like, at least.

Josh screamed. A Primal howl that can only be made when someone is in the deepest kind of pain that the body can put up with without giving up entirely. loud enough that it echoed back to him several times, giving him a good chance to hear himself. He sounded like an animal. For some reason unknown even to Josh, this made him extremely angry. He wanted to kill everyone who was near him. This wasn't the kind of "kill" friends said they would do to each other for stealing possessions either. This was stabbing someone in the throat just to watch the blood pour out, beating someone to death with your bare hands.

"Oh, God, I really am an animal, aren't I?

Of course, even if he decided to follow through with these actions, he couldn't carry them out. That would require the strength to stand up. That would require the grunts to stop kicking. That would require a lot more luck than Josh had been given up to this point.

Then he noticed that he might actually die one of those dramatic deaths. Something you would see in a movie. He could just imagine it. "Two friends, one on the side of good, one on the side of evil. They decide to make one final break for it, ending in a tragedy the whole family will remember."

He wouldn't go out to see it, but at least he would get his dramatic death. "How would that be appropriate for the whole family? he asked himself. He started to shake his head, to clear out these stupid thoughts, but a boot to the face did that plenty well for him.

With what little vision he had, he looked towards where he figured Ilixie would be. The dark blue- ish blob was still where he'd left it, standing straight up.

"Good. She finally came to her senses. I was going to die anyway, so why not save her own life, right?"

"Jeez, my life sure was depressing."

[♫~Leap~♫]

There was a sudden feeling of helplessness that flooded over her, crashing into her seemingly fragile frame like the waves of a stormy sea and threatening to knock her down. There wasn't anything she could do. If she sided with the boy who was being brutally beaten to death in the mud, she could possibly save his life. However, chances were more likely that the other members of Team Imum would see her as just another traitor and send her to the same fate as him - death. Now, she wasn't a very happy person over all and her life hadn't been all the great, but she still wanted to live past the age of nineteen. That was far to short for her liking. However, if she sided with the true enemy here, she could save herself... at the cost of his life. Either they bother die together, or one is spared. If one put it that way, the answer was obvious. But, could she really stand to live knowing that she'd betrayed her only friend in life and left him to die?

Ilixie was not passive. She did not stand by and watch while others used their fists. She was one of the people using her fists. Mere words were not uttered from her mouth in a foolish attempt to calm the raging storm of another's anger. You could tell someone to stop, but they'll only truly understand if you beat it into them. If she had the choice, she would be punching and kicking people where no person should ever be kicked - maybe pound their heads with a rock a few times so that they wouldn't be able to remember it was her - and would be fleeing once more with no worries of being pursued... if there wasn't a second, unknown wave that Ciello had sent after them to make certain that the mission was completed and the girl remained loyal to him and him only. But there were some major flaws with this plan she'd unknowingly concuacted in the depths of her subconcious that would make it virtually impossible to carry it out.

To begin with, she was injured. Perhaps not as much as her commrade - correction, no where near as much pain as Josh was suffering through at that moment - but, with an ankle that could have been shattered completely and not have hurt any worse, her mobility was limited and a frontal attack would leave her more hurt than them. After all, standing was becoming difficult at that point in time. For a heartbeat, she contemplated taking the pocket knife she'd made sure to retrieve earlier to saw through her flesh, muscle, and bone to essentially amputate it to save herself a bit of grief. Death by blood loss, of course, would come hand and hand with the frivolous idea and the thought was shoved out of where it came from. There was more than just that; an injured, throbbing joint was not the only thing holding her back from attacking the attackers violently. The blue-haired female was terribly outnumbered. She would not stand a bit of a chance against such a force and would be having a foot shoved into her body repeatedly much like the dark-haired boy not far away from her.

One possible solution was presented before her, causing her to tense immediately. "You can save his puny life, you know," a tiny voice in the back of the tall grunt's mind murmered, dark and most definately not female, "if you let me take this for a spin..." Swallowing, only to find a lump in the back of her throat making that almost impossible itself, she looked around to make sure that it truly wasn't one of the Team Imum members talking to her. The one beside her had gone to assist in the beating of the "traitor" and was not even paying attention to her, similar to the rest. That left her with only one option left. Not like she'd ever actually accept that it was him, though. "My dear child, there's no point in telling yourself otherwise. You know I'm here, don't you? Let me aid you in your struggle. I won't bite - hard, anyway." Letting out a small growl, she hissed to the owner of the voice, "Don't talk to me! I don't need your help! I've never needed your help!"

"Than why did you summon me in the past?"

To this, the female had no answer. Instead, her fingers curled into fists and her teeth began to grind on one another. Never! She just could never catch a break, could she? And the moment something good - something wonderful came into her life, the universe decided to shatter it in such a mocking way and force her to stare at the shards in its wake. Was this why her inner demon, Sayryn, had not bothered to scare the boy away through intimidation like so many others? Because he knew that their friendship would be ruined without his interferance? It wasn't fair! Every time something remotely good happened to her, something had to go and ruin it all for her! Did someone want her to end up worse than she already was? Because, if she hadn't snapped for good, she was fairly close to! And then... a noise. A tiny voice coming from the direction of the teen who had, momentarily been blocked from her mind. And it was him. It was him uttering what could have very been his last words.

"Good," he said. "She finally came to her senses. I was going to die, anyway, so why not save her own life, right?" Josh was talking about... her, wasn't he? Yes. Yes, he most certianly was. He'd lost faith in her, to, believing that she was just going to sit by and watch as he slowly died at the hands of her own team mates. And, there was something about this that made the whole scenario even more sickening than it was before. So sickening, she actually doubled over and, in a few simple seconds, was vomitting her insides out onto the dirty ground. One must have caught sight of this - the one who'd rushed to her side earlier, she mused - and came running. "Ilixie? Ilixie, are you alright?" She didn't answer. No, rather, she couldn't answer. Because there was a mental tug-of-war starting within the deepest corners of her mind.

"Let me in."

No! Not again! You ruined my life! Why should I trust you?

"So you're going to leave him to die? This, my dear child, is why I do not allow you to get close to others. Because you and I aren't so different, if you truly think about it. Now, this boy is going to die knowing that you, his only hope, aren't going to help him. It really is your fault, is it not?"

It's not! It's not!

"Than why won't you let me help you?"

Already, her vision was beginning to cloud up and fear climbed up her spine. Chilly fingers clawed at her frame, crawling up her skin and freezing her to the bone. Black was lacing the corners of her eye sight and she was fully aware of what would would follow these events."Because... I'm never going to open... my soul... to... you..."

And then everything fell into a world of darkness.

"Gyaaaaaa!" An ear splitting shriek tore through the atmosphere, shattering the sky and, with it, the sanity of a fragile girl. Eyes flew wide, pupils seeming to tremor as they struggled to focus on something, anything that they could snap in to with the simple flexing of the hand. The longing to help the half dead boy gave way to the desire to hurt, hurt, hurt and kill, kill, kill. And, mouth twisting into that of a sickened grin, blue eyes fell upon just the thing to fufill this awful lust. The grunt froze, letting out a small wimper of the word, "I-Ilixie...?" But this was all they could manage to say before mud was throw in the air and two hands were wrapping themselves around their throat, pressing so tightly there was little room for oxygen to pass through tracea.

"S-stop it!" they cried, voice cracking and weak as she squeezed harder, harder, Demented laughter erupted from the back of her throat while Ilixie shoved the weakened frame to the ground, pressing even tighter all the while. "Y-You're... hurting me...!" By that point in time, the others had taken notice of their fallen comrade and stopped their relentless assult on the already battered boy. For a moment, time seemed to stop and a picture was painted. A picture of a dieing teen, a group of shocked trainers who didn't know whether to fight or take flight, and a crazed murderer who was claiming her first victim in quite some time. And, then, they came to their senses, two of them streaking off into the cover of the trees and bushes and the remaining one pulling out a knife to kill the monster threatening them all. He didn't have time to stab the blade through her heart before she'd grasped her own in her hand and, launching herself off the face of the limp body she'd successfully put out of commission with a sickening crack, was aiming an equally sharp blade into his flesh. The man was forced to the ground, managing to stab her in the process, but the pain was shut out by her own impossible desires to inflict so much more of the feeling.

"Where, oh where do I cut you first?" the pig-tailed female practically sang, a haunting tune escaping her lips. "Oh, I know! Let me leave you a present! Something to remember me by in heaven!" Grabbing his arm in one gloved hand and the pocket knife in the other, she placed the sharp end against his pale flesh and began to write. The letter "I" was engraved into his upper arm after a multitude of screams from the hopeless grunt, and an "L" following suit. "I" again. "X". "I". However, before she could carve out the letter "E" in large letters, she recalled the runaways who believed they could make it to the headquarters and tell of her betrayal and stopped. Insteed, in a bitterly sweet voice, she said to the half concious body beneath her, "You know what? Let's play a game! How about Hide and Seek? Or, better yet, how about Hide and Kill? Does that sound right to you?" A moan was given in response. "Oh, that's right! What do I do about you? You'd only get in the way, wouldn't you? How about I make this quick and easy for you!"

Raising the knife above her head and training her eyes on his vanurable neck, the female's grin widened to a point it was almost impossible. There were four. Two were making a mad dash for safely. One was dead on the ground. And, within a matter of moments this one would soon follow.

"Don't you lay a finger on him!"

[*dies of a heart attack* My gosh, Cheddar, words cannot describe how happy I am right now! Two thousand twenty-seven words right here! Two thousand. Twenty-seven. I've finally hit what I thought was the impossible goal that I set for myself months ago on Clan Cats of the Forest! It's a reality! We must celebrate this wonderful occurance! But... How? DX]

[ninjaastronaut]

[atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style,padding:0; margin: 0; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/2ma5ap.jpg);background-repeat:repeat-y;width: 500px;height:675px;] "Wir waren namenlos" Und ohne lieder "Recht wortlos" Waren wir nie wieder The pain was cutting deep into Josh. With every kick that made contact with his body, the pain worsened. He couldn't even muster up the strength to scream anymore. Then, Ilixie did it for him. Her scream peirced his ears, causing him even more pain, just in a different sence. Something was happening to her, but he couldn't do anything, at least not while these grunts were beating him senseless. Speaking of which, almost all of his pain had died down, he'd been numbed to feeling almost nothing. Or wait, had they stopped kicking him? Did they figure that he was as good as dead anyway? He opened his eyes, hoping that the blurrs and hughs that he would see would give him some information as to what was going on. Immediately he noticed that his left eye (the one closest to the ground) was completely covered in mud, removing any of the little sight it would've had. The other eye worked enough for him to get a slight grip of his surroundings though. A grunt was really close to Ilixie, he could tell that much. There was some sort of struggle going on. "He's attacking her." He would've said out loud. His lips moved, but no noise, no air came out. That beating had damaged him even more than the lack of water and food had. For a momment he contemplated just drinking the mud up from the ground, to take some of the dryness out of his mouth. [i"Why didn't I do something while it was raining harder?"]

[/i] He went ahead and forced some of the mud down, tasting fowl as it went. His throat felt slightly better at least.

He tried to get up, to help Ilixie, and suprisingly enough he actually got some movement from his muscles. He couldn't manage an iota of strength or coordination though, and ended up doing little more than just flailing around in the mud.

Giving up, he decided to turn his attention back towards Ilixie. She was gone, but the grunt remained, lying on the ground. Ilixies voice was still heard by him here and there, so Josh knew she hadn't run away. She would've been smarter about that, quieter. What was she doing? What was going on?

Cirlces of darkness started to enclose Josh's vision. Slowly advancing towards his center of focus, Josh knew exactly what was happening, he was about to black out, or pass out, or worse.

He shook his head, something that had become a common habit for him, hoping to... He didn't know what he was hoping to do. He thought it would help though, so he put some effort into it. Eventually he realized that the effort was only bringing on the blackness faster. He didn't want that to happen.

Laying himself down slowly and gently, he looked back at the grunt. "Maybe he was just like me..." No. This grunt was nothing like Josh, Josh never would've done that much direct harm to a person. Of course, Josh couldn't put thoughts together that fluently right now. "What is he doing lying down like that...?" The answer to this was obvious, but with Josh's scattered brain, he honestly couldn't tell.

Then, from the direction of the grunt, the brown of the mud shifted shades. The darkness was advancing, more quickly. Brown slowly shifting to red. Getting darker. Nothing left but red and black now. Pain refilled Josh's stomach, stronger that before, more excrutiating than before, filling every atom of his being with anguish. All that came from his mouth was a dry gasp, the wind knocked out of him by some unseen force. "What... What's going... on?"

Nothing was left but blackness.

(table post. AWWWWWW YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH!)
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[♫~Leap~♫]

"Come out, come out, wherever you are~!"

The voice, so sickeningly sweet it could make a person vomit echoed throughout the trees, a haunting melody that easily induced fear in the prey being hunted by their mad, crazed, lunatic of a preditor. There'd always been rumors that a certain grunt had been mentally unstable; more so than the rest, at least. It wasn't like it mattered much to the people around the headquarters, of course. You had to be a little messed up in the head to stay with an organization bent on killing off the human race. Save for themselves, anyway. However, what many didn't understand was what Ciello meant by "a little weird in the head" equalled "give her the chance and she'll literally eat you alive". The poor fools her got caught in the tide. Beaten, stabbed, or bitten to death. Funny, that last one - wasn't she just tearing off the flesh of grunt number three when she remembered that there was one more person to be disposed of out in the cover of those trees?

Ilixie was very careful when it came to making sure no one escaped when she got mad. She was easily distracted, having to much fun punching the life out of the people she hated most in the world, but the animal inside of her always made note to kill off the others before they got away. At least, then, she could kick around their lifeless bodies without worrying about a tattle tale who could likely get her killed, as well. The first had gone down easily. A bit too easily for her taste, in fact. Deprived of oxygen with their face slapped into the ground by her foot. Weakling. Couldn't live to see how bloody his broken nose was becoming. The second was a bit more fun, but still went down with ease. Cutting into her toys repeatedly was always fun. Of course, what she did to the third easily took the cake as best kill of the night. Launched herself at him, she did, stunning him by shashing his head into a wall and cutting off his flesh bit by bit with her knife. Cannibalism never scared her; heck, she'd have made a snack out of his remains had there not been one more little kitten to be drowned in a river.

"You can't hide forever!" A desperate sound climbed into her tone of voice, as well as her irritation peaking. A challenge didn't appeal to her as much as someone standing in the middle of the open screaming, "please hit me, Ilixie! Kill me, please!". Now, that, that was hilarious. Of course, the practically dead character would have none of that, prefering to hide and delay their inevitable doom just long enough to let her calm down and him slip away unscathed. "I'll cut down every tree in this blasted forest, swine," she hissed, stabbing the sharp blade of her weapon into the rough bark of yet another tree as she continued stalking through the landscape, "unless you come out and face me!"

-WIP-