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scattered-irises · 2 years

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Tale II: Little Red Fist

Illustration by @aerialartistic

They say that a hero’s armor is always stained red...

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 2481

Characters: Alito, Yuma, Leo, Vector

Relationships: Up to interpretation

Warnings: Lots of blood, decapitation

Summary: Alit's friend has fallen ill in the dead of winter. It's up to the red cloaked vigilante to make it through the woods alone!

Once upon a time, two young men by the name of Red Fist and Lion roamed the woods. Their names were feared even by the most seasoned of wolves, for the young men mercilessly hunted their kind. Throughout the villages, Red Fist was famed for his crimson cape and passion for combat. His friend, Lion, was known for his skills with the rifle. Together, the two walked the woods at night, finding lost travelers and delivering messages to and fro.

Beloved by the villagers and despised by the wolves, the two friends from opposite villages continued their nightly missions. On one winter’s day, where not even the most thickly furred beast dared to appear, Red Fist received an urgent message delivered by a young boy.

“Alit! Mr. Alit! Mr. Alit!” calls the young child, almost crashing into the pugilist.

“Slow down there!” calls the young man, stopping the child in an awkward embrace. He chuckles as he sees the child’s eyes light up in awe as he is pulled into Alit’s famed red cloak. “And you can call me Red Fist. Only my mother and Leo call me Alit…”

“M-Mr. Leo is sick!” gasps the child. “You have to do something, Mr. Alit!”

“Oh,” says Alit, pulling the child from his chest. “Is that so?”

He supposes that the child wasn’t one for nicknames. Still, he can’t help but laugh at the formality around his and his best friend’s names. Mr. Leo and Alit sounded so… old while Lion and Red Fist sounded more lively.

The child nods, wiping at his runny nose.

“You gotta! You gotta!” begs the child.

Alit chuckles, wincing as he touches a bit of the snot left on his coat.

“Alright, fine, fine…I’ll get the best wine and cake in the village and give it to him,” chuckles the young man.

“And bread too! Mr. Leo loves bread!” adds the child.

“Bread too,” decides Alit with a laugh as he walks towards the baker’s.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” exclaims the child as he hugs Alit, smearing his coat with yet another layer of mucous.

Alit forces a grin.

🐺

“Are you sure about this?” asks Alit’s friend, Yuma. “There’s so much snow that the paths have been covered…”

Hefting the bag onto his shoulder, Alit grins.

“I know the woods like the back of my hand. I’ll be home by nightfall,” he promises.

His friend knits his eyebrows together in worry.

“Only you could do that,” he murmurs.

“That’s why I’m called Red Fist!” boasts Alit as he strikes a pose.

Yuma sighs and rests a hand on Alit’s shoulder.

“Just be careful.”

Alit pats his friend’s hand in return, his grin never fading.

“You know it,” he said as he walked into the snow-covered woods.

He starts to whistle as he walks onto the path, the snow crunching beneath his feet. His prints are the first, leaving behind a trail for others to follow. Winter is secretly his favorite season, despite the scarcity in food and the difficulty of traversing the forest paths. The chill offsets his burning—always burning—body. And the snow is always such a lovely sight.

The bag is heavier than he had intended to be, packed with more than just cake, bread and a bottle of wine. At the bakery, he had gotten distracted by the colorful array of candies and gingerbread and decided to buy them all. If he arrives in time for lunch, he and Leo could have a snack together.

The deeper into the woods he goes, the less light reaches through the treetops. Oftentimes, the darkest parts of the woods were filled with the most dangers. Alit’s fists flex in response, ready to pummel any dangerous creature that gets in his way.

Wolf, bear or man, the nose is always where he aims first. Then he leaves the rest to experience. He didn’t survive the ambush of wolves for nothing, after all.

They had cornered him in the darkest part of the woods on the darkest night of the year, the snow falling down in drifts. Equipped with only a lantern, he had seen the six wolves, all gaunt with hunger. They had cornered him with the intent to devour a hasty meal.

In truth, he doesn’t remember how it started. Perhaps a wolf had leapt towards him and he had landed a lucky punch, rendering it unconscious. Perhaps he had started the fight himself. All he remembers is being surrounded in a haze of red. He had returned home to the village to horrified gasps, not understanding why at first.

The beasts had been vanquished. Their bony carcasses were slung over his shoulders like a scarf. Only when he had seen his reflection in a window had he understood why.

He was red. Covered in the wolves’ and his own blood. It stuck to his hair in clumps and dyed his clothes black.

Red Fist, they had called him, once he told the tale.

And so it was.

He wasn’t sure if he was more of a monster than a hero.

As he approaches the darkest parts of the wood, he sees a shadow. Immediately, he raises his fists.

“Who’s there?” he calls, his breath billowing out in a cloud.

The figure lumbered towards him, gray fur brushing the snow from the highest branches.

“I,” calls the figure as they step into a weak beam of sunlight.

Alit stills as he comes face-to-face with the creature.

A long snout, rimmed with sharp teeth. An eye scarred over by battle. Two perky ears. A tail dragging through the snow. A wolf walking on two legs, as if it were a man.

“Who are you?” whispers Alit as the wolf towered over him.

“The Mother Wolf of the forest. I come to you, who have relentlessly slaughtered my children, to make a bargain,” calls the matriarch.

To Alit’s surprise, the wolf lowers herself to the ground and bows to the hunter.

“Spare my children,” she pleads. “The prey is scarce, the winter is harsh. I cannot lose another child to your friend’s rifles and your fists.”

Alit stirs.

“They eat our livestock and our children,” he counters.

The Mother Wolf sighs, closing her eyes.

“It is the same as when humans must resort to eating the leather off of their shoes. We wish not to interfere in human affairs, yet we must also feed ourselves,” she murmurs.

“No," refuses Alit. “There must be another way.”

“What way is there? Year by year, men cut down our trees and take our prey. We resort to traveling into your villages because there are no choices left,” snarls the Mother Wolf. “Do not talk to me of starvation and death if you have not witnessed entire packs vanish because of famine.”

Alit holds the she-wolf’s gaze for an interminable amount of time. She glares at him, her eyes filled with anger.

“The one thing we wolves have above humans is that we are never desperate enough to eat our brothers and sisters,” she growls. “We would rather die.”

In the silence, a lone snowflake falls on Alit’s hood. He gazes into the wolf’s yellow eyes. Her bones jut out from her gray pelt and her breath comes out in small puffs.

“What do you want from me?” asks Alit.

“A wager,” proposes the Mother Wolf.

Wagers. Nothing good ever comes of them.

Ever since he had heard the fairytale of the black prince and the shepherd, he has never wanted to wager anything again.

“If I can find my way to your friend’s home before you can, then I will devour him. If you beat me to the chase, then I will spare both of your lives and allow you free reign over my woods,” proposes the Mother Wolf.

“And if I refuse?” growls Alit.

The Mother Wolf snaps her jaws, the sound of her teeth snapping together sending a shiver down Alit’s spine. It echoes throughout the woods in an eerie series of whispers.

“Then I will make sure that you will never return,” threatens the Mother Wolf.

Alit raises his fists, bends his knees and prepares to fight.

The she-wolf lets out a snort akin to that of a laugh.

“Your fists will do nothing to me, frail human,” she snorts. “Chase me while you can.”

Without another word, she leaps into the bushes.

“Wait!” calls Alit.

Immediately, he breaks into a run. He tears through the woods, ignoring all of the well-trodden paths and crossing over the lesser-used shortcuts. When he reaches the frozen creek, he takes a tentative step onto the ice. Almost there.

If he were to go around the creek, it would take a quarter of an hour. Crossing the recently frozen creek was the only choice. The cracking noise underneath his feet makes him grit his teeth. Immediately, he lands onto his stomach and crawls across.

Pinpricks of frozen water lap at his clothes, beckoning him to fall into the depths of the creek.

Alit swallows hard as he hears the cracking sounds continue, as if shards of glass were being thrown.

Don’t look back.

He bites his lip and reaches out, crawling inch by inch across the ice. The water continues to lap at his stomach. Beneath the ice, he can hear the water rushing by. In the winter, the currents were especially strong. If he were to fall through, it would either mean a swift death or his journey towards his friend’s house severely delayed.

He doesn’t fear the cold as much as he should, even with the ice cracking beneath his body and the water beckoning him towards its depths.

His fingers are numb from the cold, every grasp sending sharp pinpricks up his skin. Alit grits his teeth as he imagines the Mother Wolf arriving at Leo’s house before he can grab his trusty rifle. He couldn’t let that happen.

With a shout, he grabs the frozen rushes of the bank, ignoring the cutting pain of the reeds burying themselves into his skin. The ice beneath him gives way and he lets out a gasp as the water beneath him rushes by, trying to carry him off. The cold seeps into his bones, blooming like a thousand icy flowers.

No. He couldn’t fall here.

He grabs the reeds and yanks himself up, his hands bleeding from the reeds. Looking up at the sun, he hisses in pain.

He had already lost too much time. Ignoring the chill in his legs, he forces himself to run. His legs reluctantly give out beneath him after a few paces. Gritting his teeth, he crawls up the hill that led to his friend’s house.

The she-wolf couldn’t win.

🐺

Vector swipes his nose and peels off the child’s jacket. He puts on his monochrome scarf and slings his rifle over his shoulder. Pulling off the thick woolen hat and ruffling out his hair, he lets out a disgusted grunt.

“God, that was annoying,” he mutters.

“Annoying! Annoying!” chirps his hat.

Vector opens up the small pocketbook in his jacket, flipping through the pages. Little Red Cap.

The illustration of Yuma standing over the cut-open body of the Mother Wolf, with Alit and Leo at his side, makes Vector curl his lip in disgust.

“Selfish, the lot of these heroes…,” mutters Vector.

He snaps the book closed and walks out of the hunter’s hut, following Yuma’s footsteps beside Alit’s.

🐺

When he collapses in Leo’s hallway, Alit is dismayed to find it dark and silent.

“Hello?” calls Alit weakly. “Leo?”

“In here!” calls a gruff voice.

Hope fills Alit as he crawls towards the bedroom.

“Lion…?” he calls as he leans against the doorframe, forcing himself to stand. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get here! And the treats I got you got all wet, but I think the wine’s fine…”

In the dim light, he sees his friend bundled underneath the sheets, eyes glimmering in the darkness.

“Why, Leo! What bright eyes you have!” exclaims Alit as he stumbles towards his friend.

“To hunt at night better…,” says his friend, stifling a cough.

Alit turns to the rifle rack beside his bedside, where the rifle is mysteriously missing.

“Why, Leo! What an impressive mustache you’re sporting!”

His friend lets out a dry laugh.

“To keep the chill away better,” he chuckles.

Alit draws closer to his friend. A lump forms in his throat.

“Why, Leo…,” he breathes. “What big teeth you have.”

“All the better to eat you with, my dear!” exclaims the Mother Wolf as she leaps out of bed and encircles her mouth around Alit’s head.

Ignoring the hunter’s muffled cries, the Mother Wolf bites down and separates his head from his neck, his blood dying her muzzle a dark red. She crunches his skull beneath her teeth, savoring the sharp tang of his blood.

As Alit and his companion did to her children, she will do unto them. She drags Leo’s headless body from beneath the bed and then takes Alit’s body. When she arrives at her den, she will have her children tear the flesh from their bodies and use their bones as decoration.

Such is the way of nature.

🐺

Vector stands outside the cottage, watching as the Mother Wolf drags away the hunters’ bodies. Facedown in the snow lies Yuma, a gaping hole in his chest. He puts his foot on the young man’s body and then takes his list out.

“Stamp! Stamp!” trills his hat.

It spits out a red stamp and Vector deftly catches it. Resting the list on his knee, he stamps a large ELIMINATED over Little Red Cap.

Feeding the stamp back to his hat, his eyes run down the list.

There was still so much work to be done.

He lets out a frustrated sigh. If he knew he was going to be spending his un(?)-afterlife like this, he would have opted for being a hungry ghost. Then, he would have caused as much chaos as he liked without anyone watching over him. The fights at the altars, the scaring, the screaming…. That is, until an exorcist came and trapped his spirit in a bottle or something. Spending eternity in a bottle isn’t something he’s really keen on doing. Nor is killing so-called “heroes,” but…

In disgust, he kicks Yuma’s body aside.

“Let’s get out of here. It reeks of idiots,” mutters Vector.

There was a steamed layer cake waiting for him back at the office. It was one of the few things he liked about this job. He licks his lips, imagining the sticky layers scrunching through his teeth, releasing the sweet taste of pandanus. As a hungry ghost, it would be rare to find such an offering.

“Idiots! Idiots! Happy☆Heroine☆Sniper!” sings his hat, its mouth filled with teeth.

#zexal #alito zexal #alit zexal #writing from iris #H☆H☆S

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