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It was time to put their lives on the line.

Right when both boredom and dull, creeping discomfort met their fever pitch. When they escalated to the point of madness, as if they weren’t teetering on the brink of it with every waking moment. Silence interrupted by more tangible sounds: the ever-present complaints of unsatisfied stomachs, the grind of household detritus against restlessly shifting bodies, or the seemingly distant rhythm of footsteps, another breed of background noise, with a force that made their bones grind together in their skin.

So, out they ventured. It wasn’t too easy to see in the low light, but they’d made this journey enough times that muscle memory was a steady guide, if one no less taxing. But it would be worth it for their goal. A little midnight snack. Simple as anything.

Less so if said table legs loomed so tall and distant that they could be taken for unfelled redwoods.

Making their haphazard way under the half-comforting, half-discomfiting shadow of the four-limbed monolith, naked bodies marred with sweat and dirt and who-knew-or-cared-what-else, the two minuscule figures fought off feelings of constant, creeping exhaustion. They knew for a fact that there was no warding it off completely--only longing for enough of a reprieve to allow them focus on different problems. Should have felt better, having more space to stretch out in and cleaner air to breathe.

But Max found his throat juddering moreso here than inside of the dusty, cramped, weirdly liminal areas they spent so often trying to rest in.

Every time he left the relative safety of their current hideout, the thoughts came down. Foolish little delusions of fresher air and soothing temperatures. As if those optimistic fantasies of fooling around in the open air like spring lambs ever came to fruition...once they were outside--whatever measure of outside this counted for--they fell to the mindset of (mostly) non-verbal scouting and hunting. In all honesty, he was surprised that these kinds of thoughts still flitted through his head as often as they did, given how the resignation at them never gaining traction made him want them gone. Another mental annoyance. That’s all they were.

And annoyance he felt. It didn’t take long to meld as naturally into his every movement--conscious or otherwise--as those pained breaths he had to subsist on his whole ‘life’.

Dust scattered through Syvil’s unruly dark curls, dotting her wake with little beacons of light. Taking point to power ahead, she bounded along on clawed hands and feet, unruly knees and toes bending backward in that chiropteran manner. As comforting as the cover of darkness was, keeping them cloaked from human eyes, and as careful as Syvil was truly being beyond the worst-case scenarios that veiled both of their eyes for now and always, the muted yet distinct creak of membranous wings, the click of claws and the odd orienting chirp seemed almost cacophonous in Max’s ears. The thought immediately invaded his mind of her intentions of distracting him. To pilfer first pickings of their already paltry find, most likely.

Again with the jadedness. So often it seemed that any otherwise innocuous occurrence of the day was twisted by his exhausted mind into something insulting, disparaging toward the one person he’d shared so much of this eked-out existence with. Sometimes, when Syvil was asleep or otherwise absent, he despaired at what this ‘lifestyle’ had turned them into.

But right now, today’s search took priority. Like trying to ford a river with a twig--which may have held some relevance at this scale, despite still being as ridiculous. Max focused on putting one foot in front of the other, running a hand through his shorter brown hair as he trailed after her. His partner in crime, and doing time as they survived. The only two occupants of the household at this size (and at this level of disengagement from it all, most likely) felt it necessary to stick together. But they were together, through it all. Maybe that counted for something. Tenacity? Stubbornness? Resignation? Whatever it was, it was there.

And it kept them kicking under the ever-present cloud of starvation, as obvious as the result of their efforts was becoming evident. Even through throats as pinched as theirs, added to senses as part-dulled from monotony. Falling back on the brief escape of hope had long since left them as an option. It was a waste of energy...but then again, what exactly had they spent said energy looking for, in this moment? Nothing within reach, and that was becoming more clear to them by the second.

The big guys up top had so selfishly kept the kitchen floor tidy again.

Both of their stomachs seemed to twist up at this realisation, and the thoughts of yet another restless evening of dredging for commentary on things noticed or underwent a thousand times over...exaggerated but feeling just as painfully real to them...almost started the anger afresh. Anything to take their minds off the hunger for one. Damn. Moment. This wasn’t met with too much disbelief--just droll resignation. Neither Max nor Syvil could recall a time where they weren’t starving at the very least.

And there wouldn’t be any less dredging here, albeit from dirty crumbs of food that may or may not have been dislodged from the feet of their ‘servers’. Yet the mechanical nature of it could classify it as an easier kind of dredging to deal with.

With one cautious first bite, clawed away from one of the larger chunks, Syvil’s expression said all it needed to about the quality of today’s fare for them. As easy on the tongue and teeth as sandpaper and tasting about as pleasant, she nonetheless ducked her head to start forcing more down her shuddering throat. There was no being picky here.

Neither was there any likelihood of staving off this starvation in any capacity.

Maybe pride alone kept their little hearts pumping. Or stubbornness.

The part-bat had her legs spread in an awkward crouch, hunched like a gargoyle as she ate. Leathery ears, ever-erect and twitching, stayed swiveled toward the area they’d come from. Half-aware that one of them should be keeping both an eye and an ear out for any cut through the eerie calm. Max shuffled to kneel across from her, both of them...not really confident in being able to snap to attention in the face of danger, but taking some solace in having prepared for the possibility.

He joined in. Chewing on crumbs of crumbs, taking it in turns with Syvil to start at things that weren’t there, right before it petered off into ennui once more. At this point it was as natural as breathing, this relentless gnaw at their stomachs. Attempts made to focus on the repetitive course of action, no joy even in the act of very brief relief. His companion’s already ratty clumps of fur blowing through the air, into his face--Max forced himself to take a deep breath. It was nothing serious. He squinted against the pounding in his temples and the grinding of his guts, swallowing down a rasping cough, right before everything went to pieces.

The soft jingling of a bell seemed at odds with the horror of what happened next--all that stuck out in the onslaught of earth-pounding, ear-splitting noise. So freakishly fast and yet feeling like such a natural sequence of events to the two tiny targets. Indeed, one of their first coherent, shared feelings was yet another breed of paradoxically crawling resignation. As close to complacency as two skeletal scavengers could get...it seemed inevitable that this would be the moment everything overturned in more than one sense.

Prickling pain from the debris grinding along Max’s back as he flew across the floor wasn’t what stirred his growing nerves the most. Nor was the pained grunt that left Syvil as she skidded to an awkward halt, bracing herself on her hands and toe-claws. Neither or these were unusual to the point of concerning, and therefore expending some effort to address or avoid. What stuck out the most ended up being her eyes darting behind him, then upward, then widening in a way that portended genuine trouble right before disappearing under some blurry, enormous mass. One clenching down on her body like some kind of spider.

Max only caught snatches of the alien sights as the quake sent him sprawling. All of it ratcheted up to an unsettling degree: the harsh taste of kicked-up dust, the smell of sweat, the sound of warm, rasping exhalations that he only found himself familiar with in moderation, when the chill of winter nights drove him and Syvil closer under threadbare covers--

And his sibling wrenched unceremoniously sky-high in a loose-looking grasp. Her wing pierced in several places by the giant’s claws, she writhed like a worm on a hook, mouth open with barely audible, desperate pants for breath that were trying so badly to blossom into screams.

Their assailant sat back on his haunches, bringing more of his massive figure into domineering view. The smaller sets of eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that the looming presence was coming together in eerie detail. Looking eerily like a magnified reflection of those below, except healthier and overall superior...until it became clear he was about as human as the figure before him was: irises swallowed up by dilating pupils, watching red start to coat his hand. Feline claws held her firm, almost gleaming before Max’s incredulous discretion, and he cowered away from the other set that rested almost on top of him, the muscles of lean fingers bunching subconsciously.

Even with his clear non-human ancestry, this being appeared to outstrip them in both physical and societal standing in his casual clothing. The waving of a black-and-white tail carried on that soft song over their heads. A dark, rakish ponytail swished slightly as he cocked his head, two mismatched, fluffy ears twitching with every cry he squeezed from his catch.

She was driving her own claws at the air, perhaps in some malformed threat display, or maybe in the misguided belief that she could land a genuine hit on the giant--daunting enough of a struggle cut down through eyes that battered the batgirl back under the force of intent alone. Eyes that flickered in swift saccades, unconcerned, searching...searching with calm certainty for the lull in her flailing that would--

Time seemed to slow down for Max at that moment, lavishly immortalising before him the sight of the giant’s fangs plunging into Syvil’s chest.

In his heart, he’d known that she was beyond saving the second this beast got his hands on her. The moist, meaty crunch of her body under glistening canines only solidified it, emphasised in the organic orchestration of a skinny torso caving in. The nekojin exhaled, a short puff across the half-bat’s exposed innards making her body seize, a puppet on uncovered strings. His head tilted again, eyes locked onto the opening he’d made.

...Then he bit down again, deeper this time, the new angle puncturing some organs and displacing others. Tiny ribs bent and broke apart under remorseless fangs. An entire chunk of the part-bat’s torso had been ripped clean off. The giant followed his deeper dental delve with a hearty drive of his tongue: a frothy rush of muscle through oozing meat, its bladed surface rasping lazily yet hungrily across the jagged wound to gather flesh, bone and sinew in its slobbery hold. Whatever the remnants of the body attested to, being able to remain connected despite all that had been torn away in seconds, seemed far from reassuring. Syvil’s struggles had fallen almost immediately into haphazard convulsions, her once listless eyes now blown wide with overwhelmed and absolute shock.

Max so desperately hoped that said shock was shielding her from the pain.

That overwhelming agony that ripped just as savagely through Syvil’s twitching body as the part-cat’s claws had done, alongside those sharp and stained papillae that now drew back into his mouth, carrying a tidy helping of joined tissue and bone fragments with them. Headily over the retracting tongue came a sigh, the shot of air shudderingly strong over the part-limp prey’s wounds as if even that were part of his natural weaponry.

Staining the already thin-seeming air with a blast of metallic, warm breath, the giant straightened up, the ripped body in his hold lolling back as if all function had fled it in seconds. His tongue flicked at his lip, collecting more blood that had stained it there. For a moment, he paused, the taste of his victim having had a chance to sink in.

...Then huffed in distaste, narrowing slit-pupiled eyes as its lips pulled back around those bloodied fangs. The catboy’s face screwed up with almost overblown dislike and he growled, other hand slamming down right on the savaged batgirl. He worked in jerky movements at odds with his previous hunter’s grace, prying torn membrane and flesh free of his claws before disdainfully drawing that same hand back, then suddenly forward with a thunderclap of a smack.

The sound of Syvil's nearly bisected body hitting the floor seemed so quiet compared to the smack of the giant's palm that almost outclassed it completely. Flecks of red painted her fall alongside a more pungent, yellowed streak from between her legs. Off-white fragments glistened in the batgirl’s stomach cavity, forced through meat and skin. Her neck made vicious impact, the skin folding around a sickening crunch with her head jerking out to one side. Her wings fanned almost gracefully outward, veiny and reddened as dead leaves in an autumn wind.

A symphony of brittle little khh-racks rose from her twitching wing-arms, the fragile finger bones snapping with the remorseless contact. Her head met the ground with just as muted yet sickening a smack as the rest of her figure; displaced viscera were further unwound, fluids drawing patterns in the air and twisted legs thrown up with a new round of spasmodic shudders as her body marinated in its own essence. Topped with a healthy bevy of feline tongue froth, permeating her torn form to further ensure no air would reach those tortured lungs. The bat demi’s face remained fixed in that rictus, eyes long gone of any awareness.

No acknowledgement whatsoever of the bloodied chunk of her own body that was retched unceremoniously back over her.

Max was only now aware of the pounding that pervaded his head, it returning to the forefront with a painful clatter. His own chest heaved under a mixture of nausea and terror; sweat turning his palms clammy and his tongue a dead weight in his mouth. After the rush of events that seemed oddly unconnected in his mind, the camera-flash medley of dimmed light and sounds of varying intensity, everything seemed to narrow down to the slow spurt of blood from the punctured body before him.

Living these little snatches of life, almost in acceptance of the end being sudden...the two shrunken siblings had found that one inevitability to overshadow their every action, waking and sleeping. It lurked in many an idle conversation, an immutable stone in a gently flowing river.

It rested around every turn, really, in every shadow in the corner of their eyes. At this scale, it followed behind them like the harshest of teachers--even a mistake without bloodshed or an instance of bruising could be enough for retribution to come down full force. The certainty that it was coming did not detract from the back-and-forth tides of dread, knowing that it was going to happen. And with enough lead-up to ensnare them in horrid anticipation of it.

Like a catalyst for everything to start unraveling. Because boiling up with unnerving inevitability was the torrent of terrified vitriol, setting Max’s chattering jaw and clenching his restless hands. Frustration over how the exact same course of action every evening had turned out as a death sentence, and yet sure as shit directed at other parties than himself. The fact that Syvil had left him to die like this. How she could have been so clumsy, not keeping her senses sharpened for any and all possible dangers in the chaotic, sprawling tangle of branching paths ahead. What they’d been turned into by this half-life, indeed.

Words that weren’t exactly enough to ward off the demon overhead. The name emblazoned on his collar-- Kwa --was another image burned into Max’s frenzied mind, the tag swinging with his practiced, precise posturing. Quiet tinkling from that decorative bell laced his movements. Every shift of his bare, clawed feet resounded so resonantly through the tiny’s ears. He followed it up to a pair of piercing eyes.

That were trained directly on him.

Oh, god. Oh, god, no.

Glued to the floor, held in horrible rapture by the display above--what did he expect would come of that?

It was like something he couldn’t mentally grasp. The kind of overblown, surreal scenario conjured up from delirious minds; one they’d quietly comfort each other through in actions over words, then laugh bitterly over afterward. Mocking that dreamland disaster of the miasma of putrid gore, shrouding the glowing eyes of a demon that bore down upon them with unmistakable intent. Max found himself wondering whether his nightmares had wound up as omens.

It was playing out so disconcertingly quickly.

Those slitted pupils followed his every shuddering movement, given an ethereal glow by the dimness of the room. They were expanding as the giant's excitement reignited, two paradoxically abyssal lights swelling with captivating intensity. Saliva rolled over upturned lips, the towering gates parting to send rumbling gusts of warm air over the quivering, naked, minuscule body below. No trace of tasted meat remained, either spat or swallowed: only a raw, gristly, sweet -tinged moulding of scents carried on cyclical, bodily gales. Thick, wet, and with a promise of death.

The catboy’s nostrils flared and contracted. This supposedly fastidious creature seemed to ignore the gore that still coated part of its lip, an emblem almost of his capability to those ignorant. Kwa looked far from starved, his monstrous figure still all imposing, predatory promise.

His teeth showed again in a fiendish grin.

A fiendishly cutesy grin on a face streaked with scarlet.

Please, no. God, please...

The trembling tiny had no idea whether meeting this creature’s gaze or breaking it would keep him alive a second longer. Taking one shaking step backward, and then another, he swallowed down a cry as he set his foot down on uneven flooring. His titanic tormentor’s limbs tensed, before relaxing as Max came to a stumbling halt again. It was like something battering at the gates, waiting for the one moment of weakness to break loose upon him. He’d sensed that buried strength in the bunched legs that dwarfed him with one relaxed muscle--even before it had been demonstrated. On his only companion.

Max’s heart was clattering so frantically at this point that he figured his chest would soon join Syvil’s in shattered, reddened ruin...or ‘merely’ sweep him under the veil of unconsciousness from overexertion and hypoxia. And whether this would grant him a quick death or a far more drawn out, painful one after being ruthlessly forced awake...or allowed to slowly claw his way back out of that oppressive shadow of slumber, and soon struggling just as much against the building horror that awaited him with unsheathing claws and drooling jaws...

Why did he still have these predatory designs towards him? There was a body right there, stinking and savaged. She must have tasted repulsive to him, enough not to further stir his tongue despite her innards on sickly display, but if that were the case why did he still have that gleam in his eye?

Kwa let out a low chattering noise, tongue having darted across his lips beforehand. The blood was still there.

Please...

Was it fear alone that lured this monster in? Would he have been hunted down at all if he’d taken that chance and fled?

Something clicked in his head. Something damning, to add to the rest of it all. There were different kinds of hunger blazing behind that macabre gaze above. He wasn’t going to die so easily...if, indeed, his half-bat sibling were dead. And that was gut-wrenching to realise--the fact that such a swift, brutal death would have been better than what this monster was going to put him through.

Or put through him.

Examples of which, still marred with reddish-brown, were lightly clacking on the floor as the catboy shifted on the spot, weight on the balls of his feet. The sickly smell of gore was becoming suffocating.

Max’s choked swallow sounded deafening in his ears. The urge to give into the darkness for a few seconds of unconscious, unworried relief was growing. As was a sense of hysteria. If he wished hard enough he’d break through the cruelly palpable barrier of the wooden flooring and descend to parts cramped yet nearly comforting. A jolt into the dusty air of whatever burrow they’d dug out for themselves that day. Syvil’s eyes on his, her lip quirked, silently asking what had gotten into his head this time.

Kwa dropped into a crouch.

The prickle of tears streaking his cheeks was like a slap in the face to Max, and only amplified the shaking of every muscle in his body. He was giving this predator precisely the reaction it wanted, and there was no other option to take. Every backwards step on weakened legs threatened to drop him down to his knees again, in an emphasis of (as opposed to the beginning of) his supplication--all the while, his heart pounded, wild and painful, a beckoning song to the looming hunter above.

A bicoloured tail began to twitch. The bell gave its gentle, damning toll.

Every breath was grinding through him like sandpaper. He was going to set it off again, that landslide of melding, dreamlike visions which had started the spiral to what was happening now. The first he’d so wanted to play out quickly, and yet the result still blazed in his head and wound through his nostrils. The sound of a collarbone snapping. Flesh sliding between teeth. There would be a lasting impact. Always.

It all built into a silent yet suffocating crescendo, the smell of sweat and blood and the stale taste in his mouth and the arresting sight of Kwa flexing his glistening claws and matted fur and why was he getting an erection what the fuck--

Nothing would stay in focus. If he hadn’t already snapped before, it was going to happen any second now. In all honesty it would be something to see, whether it turned out any different for him, this entire situation. Would it help him with the pain? Would it worsen it?

He ran.

Legs unsteady. Already breathless. Far, far too late for even a ghost of a chance.

Above and behind him, breath hitched in a fluttering throat.

Were his muscles traitorous in their slowing efforts? Or were they ushering him toward the inevitable climax by blinking out, one by one, and speeding up the endgame?

He tried to ward off the coming wave of overwhelming terror. His instincts fought with that other looming shadow that had hounded him for so long, while his mind embraced it like an old friend. It’s over now. Either my life, or my ‘freedom’, and THEN my life. It’s beyond my control now. I did all I could to survive. He wanted it to help.

It didn’t.

One drive of displaced air was the guillotine’s plunge, inaudible to all but the flagging figure in Kwa’s speedily darkening shadow--that was swept to the ground by it, exposed, pained and prone.

Max’s scream was cut off before it even began.

It turned into a kind of certainty, sometimes, that something had happened behind his back. One of those moments where sideways glances and deliberate indirectness pointed to an occurrence over a mere decrease in interest in current conversations, goings-on or just companionable silence.

They were commonplace when your husband was part-cat. Otherwise unconnected sounds linking together into Kwa’s latest ‘fun’ at his expense. A minute of relaxation undercut by increasingly suspicious noises, always from the room over; the feeling of him getting up to some sort of mischief, frequent enough that it was unusual NOT to have that background buzz, that the furry instigator himself would feign complete composure at afterwards. While not too subtly brushing the ruffle from said fur.

And Shin loved it. It was how Kwa was, and it was how he loved him. Part and parcel of the whole purr-son, these moments of Kwa’s alone time involving whatever everyday household object or situation had earned his sudden interest where none existed before. Fun to imagine what was going through his head, disengaged from the reality of things getting batted around, clawed at or knocked over. In all their years together Shin was familiar with when Kwa wanted his own company, and it made their longer time in close contact feel that much more comforting.

Added to the moments where the catboy’s affection was proven, being headbutted or nuzzled or curled up on out of seemingly nowhere: they weren’t isolated incidents, but affirmations of how he felt behind all of the prickly, well, cattiness. And they always felt lovely.

He couldn’t help thinking about how nice it would be to just relax after today. Work had been tiring, but in the sense of having toughed it out and done well. The rest of the evening had went by in a kind of pleasant haze. Showering late, he’d felt a lot of the stress wash off him under the just-right temperature of pumping water. And the expected shenanigans had been in motion as he’d mulled things over in bed, the rustles and thumps resounding from the kitchen below obvious despite the feline chimaera being far from hungry at that moment.

Kwa had been somewhat curt earlier. Shin knew better than to pry too deeply by now: cats needed their space sometimes, cat-people just as much, and this whole shebang had played out often enough to not involve any misunderstanding. A shared look between them had said all it needed to, and the taller man’s thoughts had soon turned to making it up to him later. He hadn’t objected at all to a quick scratch under the chin though, eyes closing contentedly before he’d trotted off with a chirp.

It was a little much at first when Kwa took the floor over the bed every now and then, but so often he’d wake up to being kneaded and purred over by an artist’s hands, which never failed to brighten his morning. He made sure to give back so much.

Right now, after Kwa had brushed past him leaving the bedroom with an intense look in his piercing eyes, Shin himself only had the urge to head down for something to eat. Not exactly due to hunger, but more along the lines of getting it because he could. He hadn’t crushed today exactly, but he had trodden it down with practice and precision. He needed a snack. He just felt like he needed it.

A brief memory of a black-and-white tail, and a bell sounding out his husband’s own trip to the kitchen earlier flashed through his mind. Even outside of when Kwa himself was working, and just going through his usual patrolling motions. It was amazing how that lax appearance both co-existed with and turned so swiftly and wholly into intense concentration.

But even before the room was lit, something was so clearly up. Even before the sight of what, indeed, was up. Even before the smell of it.

A shadow fell over the scene, framing a mangled tangle of exposed bone and flesh, organs and drying drool and crumbs of foodstuff appearing to meld together in the putrid swill. The odd scrap of fur, both in feline and in smaller chiropteran flavour, made the culprit evident, even without the look of a tiny body ripped open as opposed to stomped on unknowingly.

“Ugh. Even when I keep him indoors…”

All the tomfoolery online really did sugarcoat this lifestyle...only the niceties of living with nekojin, on there. Not much on the subject of them hunting mostly for sport, or marking their territory in defiance of nonexistent interlopers, or the not-so-fun variety of out-of-nowhere freakouts that ended up with someone getting clawed. In all honesty, the guidelines of cat behaviour in general should have been enough of a warning, given how cats were...well, in general...

On that note, Kwa’s behaviour earlier. By now the difference between those varied kinds of looks should have said all they needed to. Wasn’t there a slight set to his fur, or a tang to his breath? He could turn a blind eye to the catboy reaffirming himself as the apex predator of the household down here, scourge of all hapless scavengers eking out a sad underfoot existence, but doing it in their bedroom was crossing a line.

Shin rolled his eyes. It was going to be another fun little jaunt cleaning up his partner’s mess.

Sighing, he bent down to open the cupboard under the sink. A mixture of amusement and annoyance wound through his head. Always should have exercised some caution, in these times of thinking something too easy. He didn’t feel too peeved, though. This was far from the worst that had happened, and even said ‘worst’ was nothing major.

Midnight snacks were still on the table after this. Shin had went through too much of this silliness by now for it to discourage him. Snacks for one, of course, given that Kwa seemed satiated enough right now.

He likely wouldn’t appreciate that joke at all. Shin foresaw a deliberate coating of cat hair on the bedsheets.