A Note From the Author:

It has been many years since I touched this fanfic, let alone the website to which I first started uploading it to. While the above is me dipping my toes back into the world of fanfiction after having immersed myself within original fic for so long, it is also a way for me to break back into the habit of writing. Unfortunately I have been doing a poor job of actually doing my job with a form of writers block built from an ever increasing anxiety made worse by discovering I was diagnosed as being on the spectrum.

Thus what is above may not be the best I can write. It may not be enjoyable either. Yet even if it is those two things, I will admit I am just happy to finally be back in the saddle and writing a story for a world and characters I love deeply, who have had an immense impact on me since it first aired when I was a little over six years old, and for whom changed my entire life from those few months of rapt attention.

The scent of burnt hair and charred meat assaulted my olfactory sensors as I stepped from the breach, the smell rising on oily waves of heat and permeating the torrid air. While this in particular was something I had become accustomed to whether it wafted off the bodies of fiends or my corpse, I recoiled out of reflex and turned my visor away from the source; little good that it did. Once it had hooked its prey, there was little I could do to escape it beyond soldiering on or finding an ample distraction.

Choosing the latter, I returned my gaze to the scene that spread out before me. Dilapidated buildings riddled with bullet holes and shutters torn from their hinges, pieces that had not disintegrated from whatever had destroyed them littering the dusty earth. However these ruins revealed that whoever lived in those homes had been the lucky ones, other houses showing far more extensive damage with half of their roof and the sidewalls shorn away.

My heart ached for the lives I assumed to have been lost. As I turned in a slow circle, taking in the sight and less than pleasant smell of everything around me, there was little doubt the monster that tore through here left anyone whole.

Casting my gaze to the hard packed sand, intending to offer a silent prayer to gods I did not believe in, it was in that moment I noticed a thin trail of crimson. Against the golds of the sand it took on an insidious purple hue, looking all for the world like it had been freshly spilled and that the terror who had come through was still close by, leaving one victim after the other in its rampage. Yet if it was as newly spilled as I believed... whoever it had come from may well still be alive and intact, maybe even within the realm of surviving their ordeal.

Digging my heels into the ground, I set a swift pace, one that would prove meaningless as the source of the blood proved to be just around the corner of one of the buildings I observed.

Set in what looked to be the center of commerce, a single man lay bleeding from multiple points of contact, golden shards scattered several feet from his prone form. In his right hand he held an instrument, or at the very least the remnants of one, multiple pieces matching the hue of those on the ground and embedded in his body.

Carefully maneuvering closer to him, I avoided the shards on the ground and reached down to gently press my fingers to the inside of his wrist. Part of me hoped for a pulse, whether weak or strong, although the other wished him well in oblivion and hoped he had escaped any unnecessary suffering.

"You're not alone," I murmured.

Whether he could hear me was a matter of its own. For now I did what I felt I could, gently turning him from lying on his stomach to on his back; an action I slowly began to regret as I watched the shallow rise and falls of his stomach, and the numerous lacerations that decorated his body in a macabre display of what some may have considered art. A portion of his purple suit and inner pink shirt had been torn away, the edges blackened from a concussive blast that occurred nearly point blank; the source seeming to be the saxophone he had been holding on to.

If I had lips I would have been biting them in that moment. "Unconscious, but breathing. Pulse... thready. Bleeding appears to have stopped for the time being, but those shards of metal..."

Casting my gaze away, I sought out the names of the various businesses that lined this sector, hoping to find a doctors office or some form of medical supply, allowing me to properly remove, clean, disinfect, and bandage the multitude of lacerations that decorated his body. Instead I was met with what looked to have been a bar that saw a great deal of patrons, if the size of the building was anything to judge by, as well as a donut cart, a shoe store, and some sort of inn. Alone each of these were completely useless, but together?

Busying myself with gathering the materials I would need for a makeshift gurney as well as several bottles of drink I hoped were as universal in their high alcohol content as they were in my reality, it only took a few precious minutes to gather everything I required. Lashing the gurney together, I gently slid the man onto it and secured him with makeshift straps formed from a disconcerting variety of belts I had found in the tavern.

Dragging him to the inn and placing the gurney on the bed, I slid it out from beneath him and began to cut through his clothing with my claws. Not nearly as efficient as scissors, but they certainly worked in a pinch.

"Get you right as rain," I said.

Setting the ruined articles aside, I began the careful process of extracting the shards and sanitizing the wounds as I worked. While I had not been a field medic or anything truly related to the field of healing in my reality, I knew the basics that everyone had to learn from a young age.

Wrapping him in strips of cloth that had come from a variety of sheets, I checked to be certain they were not restraining his ability to breathe nor were too loose so as to make everything I had done completely futile. Satisfied he would not be suffocating anytime soon, I pulled an intact sheet over his lower body and left it resting around his midriff. If-no, when-he regained consciousness, I sincerely doubted he wanted his body left open to a world that seemed to have no care for its inhabitants, even if the only eyes on him would have been my own. Then again, six may have only made him even more uncomfortable...

Slowly allowing the tension to ease from my muscles, I reached out to his face and gently moved the slick strands of black hair that had matted to his forehead, being careful to avoid grazing his tender flesh with my claws. I would have cleaned away the dust, sweat, blood and gunpowder that speckled his flesh with the cloth I had drenched in alcohol if both it and the alcohol had not run dry. There also had not been a working tap of water and even if I could create saliva, it would have been inappropriate to treat him with such measures.

Rising from my stooping posture, I stretched arms and wings overhead, releasing any kinks that may have formed within the limbs before pulling them back against my body. Staring down at him, wondering if-again, when-he would regain consciousness, I concluded it would be best if I were seated for when it happened rather than looming over him like the reaper come for his soul.

Exiting the room and closing it as quiet as I could manage, I sought out a chair and dragged it back into the room, cleanly tearing off the backrest so I could recline in it without worry for my extra limbs.

Crossing my legs at the knee, my eyes slowly eased closed as I allowed myself to drift off into the realm of unconsciousness, to dream about maggots spewing forth from open mouths and great hulks of what were once human beings, their limbs torn away to only leave stalks of sharpened bones upon which they walked.