In the Rift, he hunted.

It was a black, purple, roiling thing. Captain Wolfeite had not thought of the Rift as a place so much as it was a being; a living, breathing, hungry beast that was just as alive as himself, just as greedy for more, for everything as any of the others that dwelt within its depths. He had spent more time here, pacing and prowling along the grounds of it, than anywhere else in his entire life, and he still had not uncovered the entirety of its many secrets. The good - the best, he decided, one day - thing about the Rift was the fact that it was seemingly endless. He could devour everything about it and then take two steps to the left and do it all over again.

He was doing it now, haunting its shadowy areas as best he could. There were youma, of course; dozens of them, hundreds of them, thousands of them skulking through, and Wolfeite had fought at least two so far just this day, and fully intended to find more on which to expend his excess energy, always so close to the boiling point these days.

His hands twitched with the desire of it all; with the pleasure of the knowledge that this and that wretched, horrible Destiny City and the entire rest of the world were his to take as he pleased. A hunting ground that expanded far beyond the limited minds of the Order brats and the senshi who could not possibly understand or even try to, or even the Negaverse agents who were unwilling to step out of their cozy little boxes to do anything worthwhile. This entire place, all of it - it was his, and he wanted it so very badly to stay his. Here, in the Rift, and in Destiny City - he could get exactly what he wanted.

He wanted more.

He always wanted more.

He had fought a centipede sort of youma in the past hour, along with one that had reminded him of a swan - or, at the very least, some sort of distorted version of a swan. It had tried to peck out his eyes for the better part of their fight, after which Wolfeite had dug fingers into its face and ripped the beak right off of its body. It had shrieked, but the result was that he'd managed to dust it soundly and securely and with the greatest of pleasure. He'd tried to prolong it, to make it last longer than a few minutes at best, but there was only so long he could go before sinking his teeth into the damned thing.

He wanted to now, or really, find something to sink his teeth into. The exhilaration of fighting - of real fighting - came along a heady rush of endorphins and adrenaline that left Wolfeite practically shivering with the need for more. It was not exactly an unpleasant feeling, but it left him extraordinarily restless; and the longer he went without burning off that energy, the more aggravated and angry he started to become. There had to be something in the world of his that he had created - that he taken for himself - that he could expend this energy onto, burn it until it bled, until the joy of fighting and ferocity was thrumming through his veins.

There was a movement, to his left. Wolfeite came to a stop, his golden eyes narrowed, his body as tense as a strap pulled too tight, ready to snap at any moment. Ears flat against his head, he made his way carefully forward, half bent in a posture that suggested he was ready to leap at whatever was there, his lips drawn back into a snarl.

A rustle behind a formation of clustered rocks; and then a figure stepped out, tall and lithe. The body of a faun, perhaps, but the legs and torso of something else, monstrous, not quite describable in any human terms that Wolfeite could think of. He let his gaze trace along its warped, inhuman body and felt a savage pleasure at its mere existence, because something like that could not and should not have existed - and yet it did. Everything in the Rift - including himself - should not have been allowed to exist, and the mere fact that they did made him brindle with satisfaction.

The creature - the youma - spoke. Its voice was a muddled mess of tones and syllables that slid together in a way that grated on every nerve in Wolfeite's body. He felt it, as well as he heard it, because it was like fingernails on a chalkboard, like something scraping across the sandy formations on the bottom of an ocean. A rattling, hissing, something that pulled at his insides, Wolfeite's gaze narrowing.

"You are not one of us."

Wolfeite's snort was derisive, dismissive, bordering on the edge of a growl of amusement. He lifted his chin, his ears swiveling forward, standing up straight now, as though the caution in him had gone. "I am better than all of you," he hissed back, and the truth of those words sank into him, filling him with a ferocious sort of pride and contempt. "I am always going to be better than all of you."

The youma stepped carefully around the rocky formation, hooved feet delicately moving. It seemed ludicrously fragile and intensely vicious all at the same time. A hand - or a claw - or something - touched the edge of an outcropping, sliding and scratching until the sound echoed in Wolfeite's ears and around him, like a wave of vibrations.

'You only think that," the creature said, head tilting at an absurd angle, broken for anyone who was not a youma. It was regarding him carefully, hungrily, an edge of anger in its voice. "You only believe that you are better than us, but you are not. This is our world, and you have invaded it. You have polluted it with the human blood that you have carried within your veins and one day we will tear you apart from limb to limb."

Wolfeite breathed out a sound, ragged, eager, and disgusted all the same.

"You won't," he breathed. "You won't. None of them can, none of them will. ALl of you will bend to me and then you will break and this world - this Rift, this entire place and every ******** thing inside of it will be mine and nothing else, no one else's."

"You will die," said the youma, in contemptuous tones, and Wolfeite lunged.

Later, as he sat on the edge of the rocks, one leg drawn up against his chest, a hand brushing youma dust from his uniform, he thought perhaps he'd gone a little too easy on it.

They would all die, in the end.

[ WORD COUNT: 1116 ]