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The wilds outside of Sanctuary.
[11/29 - Early Winter]

Sephiroth was beginning to suspect that he was not going to find anyone out here, after all.

Which is a bit of a shame. Not that he wanted to find anyone—or anything—out here beyond the protective bounds of the place called Sanctuary, but there was something bitter to the thought that this first search-and-rescue patrol would have him return with nothing to show for it. Nothing at all—to match the emptiness of his own head. Yes, a very bitter thought. Sephiroth smiled thinly to himself and ducked under a branch. His boots crunched on frost and leaflitter as he kept walking.

No matter. The people of Sanctuary had shown him kindness. When he meandered out of the wilderness and into the bounds of the protective stones, they gave him food, shelter, and equipment. Repayment was expected and easy. Thus, Sephiroth ignored the faint, needling voice in the back of his mind that kept murmuring premonitions—vague things about insects and hate and Mother—and picked this job from a request board. Because he did remember this: how to fight. How to survive. Or how to endure, at the very least. From the Adventurer's Guild, he requested a sword, and they lent him one that had surely seen better days. Still, better than no weapon at all.

The trees swallowed the sound of his footsteps. Branches loomed overhead; the intermittent chitters and calls of unseen wildlife kept him on edge. The warnings of the locals replayed in his mind, wolves and storms and Aberrations disguised as innocuous flora. Sephiroth grasped the hilt of his borrowed blade tight. His head and eyes stayed on a cautious swivel, scanning his surroundings constantly. His hair shimmered, ghostly, catching what little light there was. In the gloom, his pupils dilated, huge and feline.

Aha. There.

Sephiroth picked his way over splintered, fallen boughs and crouched by the shattered stump. His fingers traced where the tree had broken apart. Shoved by a massive weight, maybe—or clawed apart? His hand found a wetness, and Sephiroth pulled back his wrist to look. Blood? No. Saliva, or mucus, or some sort of alien secretion. Well, the lack of gore meant that no one had been killed or injured yet, so he'd take it as a positive sign. Sephiroth wiped his hand off on the grass and stood again.

I wonder who trained me, he thought, idly. I wonder whether I was a soldier, back wherever I came from.

He smiled, again, just a little.

I wonder if I really am being watched right now, or is it just my imagination?

A funny feeling suggested that it wasn't.
Hellboy had never been one for stealth unless he had to be— it just wasn't his style. In missions that had required a quieter approach, that had always been Abe's job. Abe was gone though, and in his place today was some silver haired pretty boy that didn't look like he belonged anywhere near the sword he was carrying, nevermind a dangerous job like this. It was clear that Hellboy hadn't quite fully warmed up to him yet. The half-demon's footsteps as he wandered up behind Sephiroth crunched with just a touch more belligerence than was strictly nessisary.

Still, Hellboy's tone was friendly enough as he reached the other mercenary.

"We gotta get you a better kit," he grunted. Those sulpur yellow eyes traveled over the other man's borrowed sword dissaprovingly, then tracked down to the splintered, goop-covered stump. "Whatever it is we're trackin', you ain't gunna do much to it with that little toothpick."

The 'we' in that sentence had been spoken as an inevitibility. Hellboy had picked up the same notice that Sephiroth had. He was fine with splitting the bounty, but he was coming along whether the new guy liked it or not. Their wayward monster had taken someone that the Hellboy had grown fairly fond of-- a pastry maker that liked to come all the way out to these woods to forage on his days off. He was polite, and never stared at Hellboy's horns, and he had the best damn meat pies in the whole damn market.

And most importantly, they were cheap.

If there was even a remote chance that his pastry making friend was still alive, then Hellboy planned on getting him back. He also planned on putting whatever it was that had put his after-work pie-binging sessions at risk in the ground personally.

"What do you think it is?" Hellboy grunted. He toed at what was left of the stump with the end of his boot and uttered a quiet 'yeck' as he pulled back and a string of slime came away with it. "Abberation?"
Sephiroth couldn’t help but glance down at the toothpick in question, even as he laughed out loud to hear it called so. He lowered his head at the mild reprimand (because that was what it was, he could tell as much) but the smile on his face stayed nonetheless—small and amused and only a tiny bit wry.

“Apologies. It really is not the best option,” he admitted readily, “but I’m afraid it was all that the Guild was willing to lend to me, especially since I haven’t quite proven myself yet. Not that surprising, so I hope that our performance today helps.”

His voice was low and calm; the word “our” felt strange between his teeth. He looked up at the approach of the other end of that “our,” and amidst the cyan of his irises, his pupils shrank to slits, then dilated again wider as he took in the sight once more.

This place, unknown even to his uncertain mind, was full of non-humans, some visibly so: here was one. Sephiroth wasn’t quite sure why his assigned partner—Hellboy, he’d introduced himself, which Sephiroth found delightfully apt—fascinated him this much, but he suspected that perhaps he came from a world where there were no species that looked like this. No angels or demons or aliens…

(A whisper in the back of his skull. It vanished the moment he began to turn his attention there.)

Even so, an amnesiac like him still knew it was rude to stare. Thus, Sephiroth let his gaze flick back to the shattered stump and the fluids sticking to it. His partner had the air of a man who was still unsure of his present company. Sephiroth figured that it would do him well not to offend Hellboy needlessly by making him feel like he was being ogled. (He understood that feeling very well. Hmm. No, he didn’t. He couldn’t recall.) He hummed softly in reply, rubbing his fingers together.

“Maybe,” he said, then made an amused little sound when Hellboy got a bit of those exact fluids on his boot. Well. Perhaps don’t do that. He added, “It is unfortunately big, whatever the nature of it is—and heading further into the trees. This mucus is barely warm, but it does mean the creature was here just a little while ago. We can still catch up.”

He stood and cast Hellboy a faint smile before he began to walk ahead, noting the tracks along the way. Claw marks, broken brush, prints in the dirt… He spoke as he did, saying, “But I suppose that means you’re equally at a loss as to what this thing is, if you’re asking? And therefore how to best take it down?”
Hellboy grunted. He could appreciate someone who could take someone busting his chops without turning into a shag carpet. Did Hellboy feel bad for the dig he had taken at Sephiroth? Not likely. But there had been some respect won between them there in that moment.

"I'll see what's going on," Hellboy said. It was about as close to an appology as Sephiroth would get. The half-demon's tone was markedly warmer though. "No good bringing in new recruits just to get them killed out in the snow. They oughta' know that." The last part was a grumble, spoken half under Hellboy's breath, and likely meant more for himself than Sephiroth.

"They're probably just hazin' ya. You know how it is."

He followed Sephiroth down the trail, his eyes tracing the path of destruction the monster had left. Whatever it was, it wasn't any sort of creature that he was familiar with, but that was nothing new, both here and back home. It was a wild and wooly multiverse out there.

"Mm. Warm mucus. Just what I love to hear," Hellboy grumbled. "Well, let's put this thing out of its misery, whatever it is. I want my pastry chef back. If there's even anything left of him. I didn't see any blood or, you know—left-overs, but I guess it's possible it just swallowed him whole. He didn't walk away, wherever he went."

The tracks that Hellboy had followed the day before had been human, and undeniably his missing pastry peddler. They had taken the exact route that Hellboy knew he liked to take to forage for ingredients. But then they had stopped, and the monster's footprints had begun. Hellboy figured it had ambushed him in the woods, and there hadn't been time to run before--

"Dammit. It went up into the hills, look--" He lifted his stone hand, pointing with a craggy red finger. Sure enough the path wound into the next copse of trees, but then it headed up, into the rocks and scree at the foot of Sanctuary's surrounding mountain range. "I'll bet its in the caves. Lucky us."
"Oh." Sephiroth was taken aback by Hellboy's reassurance. Then, he felt strangely touched. He couldn't help tucking the short sword against his chest, unsure what to make of the sudden shyness flipping around inside himself. "Is...that what it is? I'd simply assumed that it was, mm, first-come, first-serve, I think is the phrase. It's not as if it's unusable, either. The blade has been well-kept."

He was talking too much. Wasn't he? Sephiroth wasn't sure where the thought came from, but it came nonetheless and so he shut his mouth to put on a polite, neutral smile. "You know how it is." —Ah. Well. He wasn't certain whether it'd really be appropriate to say, No, actually, I don't think I do, so he simply nodded a bit awkwardly and then refocused on the task at hand.

At Hellboy's grumbling, Sephiroth laughed out loud, quietly. "Hm... Being swallowed in your entirety would likely help the chance of survival, much more than being bitten in half," he agreed readily. "Assuming, of course, that whatever creature's done this doesn't first constrict your pastry chef, or snap his neck, or melt him with its stomach acid. So, very good chances, indeed." Perhaps the worst part was that he sounded really entirely sincere. He pushed aside a long branch covered in frost, stepped around, and smiled faintly back at Hellboy as he held the branch out of the way for them to progress.

Ah. Sephiroth followed Hellboy's pointing hand (his pointing stone hand; truly, what a fascinating man) to the rocky mouths of the cave systems indicated. Oh, wonderful. Sephiroth let his smile grow into a wry, lopsided smirk. "Well. Perhaps it would've been too easy for us to just encounter the creature out in the open, where we could take it down without worrying about your chef... Let's stay on our toes, then." He squinted in the direction of the caves, then made a thoughtful noise. He murmured, "Hellboy. You're a little more familiar than I am with this place. Do you believe we might expect anything else in there—on top of this mysterious creature?"
Hmm. Maybe the guy reminded him a little bit of Abe after all. Less sass, though. It was always the backtalk with Blue.

Hellboy rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, feeling a little sorry for Sephiroth. He clearly hadn't realized that the other guys had been messing with him, giving him the short stick like that—literally.

"Eh, don't take it personally," Hellboy advised gruffly. He glanced over at the silver-haired merc, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed on behalf of the rest of the group. "I don't think they meant for you to get hurt. Just... y'know, they wanted to-- It's just something people do sometimes when you're new. I'm sure they would have tried it with me too if there'd been more than just three of us when I joined up."

Hellboy shifted awkwardly and was relieved when Sephiroth changed subjects—at least initially.

Those were all unpleasantly realistic scenarios, and things weren't really looking good for their missing chef, or Hellboy's daily breakfast for that matter.

"My hopes aren't high," Hellboy admitted. He peered into the dark well of the cave mouth and found that he suddenly needed a smoke.

"There's bugs." There was a fresh cigar clenched between his teeth as Hellboy answered Sephiroth's question, plucked from one of the pockets of his ratty trench coat. "Lots of bugs. Sabers too. The odd mammoth... I dunno, really. Could be anything this far out. The storms make monsters, and monsters like the dark," he added, gesturing to the tunnel their quarry seemed to have gone down.

Hellboy patted his pockets, and was distracted for a moment as he looked for the little silver flip lighter he usually kept there, but he came up empty.

"Crap. You got a light?"

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