![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lightning-skies.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Reirse, Hiena!
Fandom: BtVS/Bleach
Prompt: 460 - Jurassic
Words: 874
Warnings: None
Xander felt a little fuzzy around the edges. His skin was uncomfortable, it didn’t fit quite right, like it was the wrong shape and the feeling was just made worse by his disorientation; everything seemed suddenly bigger than it should be. Things he should have towered over were just his size and the ground was too close. Whenever he looked down he would jerk back, thinking he was falling on his face. He had vague flashes of memory. Nothing definite, he remembered that there was a big bad, an evil priest- or something, doing big bad things. People were dying. He remembered a sharp gnawing pain in his chest while a short blonde woman said his name desperately and saw a redhead who made his heart hurt with love and loyalty looking at him with tears in her eyes, but then everything went dark.
He floated in a cloying blackness for a long time and wasn’t aware of anything outside himself but flashes of sand and tall lumbering monsters in a forest of dead trees. He remembered a bottomless hunger that made him turn on and devour those monsters. With a jolt he realized that he had become a thing, something to be destroyed for the good of the world. He was a… hollow. The word came to him slowly, dredged out of the sticky, syrupy sludge that was the residue left by his mostly missing memories.
His first thought when he fully awoke was that he had no idea where he was. Vast stretches of bone white sand stretched in all directions with pathetic little crystallized trees being the only thing to break the monotony. His second thought involved a quick glance down and a realization that he now had paws and a hole straight through his chest. Although, after all he’d been through the paws really didn’t bother him all that much, it seemed appropriate that he now had a monstrous form to suit his adjusted temperament. The hole was kinda freaky, but wasn’t bleeding and didn’t seem to be hurting him any. Twisting and contorting his newly serpentine spine, he came to the conclusion that he was probably a hyena. The most obvious way to tell would be the shape of his head, but no amount of eye crossing was going to get him a better perspective on that, not that he could really cross his eyes with a muzzle anyways. Xander couldn’t tell if he was a striped or a spotted hyena because he didn’t have the telltale colored fur, instead his body was covered by a hard, but flexible white armor. His weird new exoskeleton had the texture of bone. It was too bad that he was in a desert. He would have liked to locate some water to see his reflection.
He knew he was dead, and that he’d undergone some strange transformation into a demonic creature, the funny thing was that he didn’t care. He felt as if something vital to his being was missing, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. It nudged at him constantly, a veritable hole in his psyche, but he ignored it. He felt free and unfettered for the first time in his life- it was pathetic that it could only come after his death. Xander decided right then and there that it didn’t matter who he had been; he was different now and wasn’t at all concerned with ever getting his memories back.
In a burst of speed, Xander exploded into action, racing for all he was worth, testing his new physical boundaries. He brayed loudly, loving the sound of his cackling laughter echoing over the sands. His stride ate away at the horizon as he traveled at a speed that would have been impossible for any living creature to match. It all came so naturally now.
There wasn’t much to do in that world of sand, so he found himself wandering, picking a direction at random and running until something made him stop. There was no sun to measure his days, so he allowed his internal clock to guide him and slept when he was tired, waking when he felt rested. Time passed in a haze with nothing to quantify his time. There were other creatures here, among the sands, and they would often attack him, lulled into confidence by his relatively small size. He was both amused and irritated that he proved to be so much smaller than all of the other monsters. Irritated that he was so small, and amused that the others thought that meant he was weak.
He took down all comers indiscriminately and devoured those that refused to surrender peacefully after being defeated. Seeing as he was fighting hollows, none of his opponents ever considered surrender to be an option, so he often found himself gorging on the flesh of the fallen with relish and not a trace of remorse. With each meal, Xander felt himself becoming more powerful and while he craved that feeling of deepening strength, he wondered to what end he was collecting it. He had no one and nothing to fight for, outside of survival, and didn’t have much of a long-term purpose.
And so time passed, uncounted among the sands.
Fandom: BtVS/Bleach
Prompt: 460 - Jurassic
Words: 874
Warnings: None
Xander felt a little fuzzy around the edges. His skin was uncomfortable, it didn’t fit quite right, like it was the wrong shape and the feeling was just made worse by his disorientation; everything seemed suddenly bigger than it should be. Things he should have towered over were just his size and the ground was too close. Whenever he looked down he would jerk back, thinking he was falling on his face. He had vague flashes of memory. Nothing definite, he remembered that there was a big bad, an evil priest- or something, doing big bad things. People were dying. He remembered a sharp gnawing pain in his chest while a short blonde woman said his name desperately and saw a redhead who made his heart hurt with love and loyalty looking at him with tears in her eyes, but then everything went dark.
He floated in a cloying blackness for a long time and wasn’t aware of anything outside himself but flashes of sand and tall lumbering monsters in a forest of dead trees. He remembered a bottomless hunger that made him turn on and devour those monsters. With a jolt he realized that he had become a thing, something to be destroyed for the good of the world. He was a… hollow. The word came to him slowly, dredged out of the sticky, syrupy sludge that was the residue left by his mostly missing memories.
His first thought when he fully awoke was that he had no idea where he was. Vast stretches of bone white sand stretched in all directions with pathetic little crystallized trees being the only thing to break the monotony. His second thought involved a quick glance down and a realization that he now had paws and a hole straight through his chest. Although, after all he’d been through the paws really didn’t bother him all that much, it seemed appropriate that he now had a monstrous form to suit his adjusted temperament. The hole was kinda freaky, but wasn’t bleeding and didn’t seem to be hurting him any. Twisting and contorting his newly serpentine spine, he came to the conclusion that he was probably a hyena. The most obvious way to tell would be the shape of his head, but no amount of eye crossing was going to get him a better perspective on that, not that he could really cross his eyes with a muzzle anyways. Xander couldn’t tell if he was a striped or a spotted hyena because he didn’t have the telltale colored fur, instead his body was covered by a hard, but flexible white armor. His weird new exoskeleton had the texture of bone. It was too bad that he was in a desert. He would have liked to locate some water to see his reflection.
He knew he was dead, and that he’d undergone some strange transformation into a demonic creature, the funny thing was that he didn’t care. He felt as if something vital to his being was missing, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. It nudged at him constantly, a veritable hole in his psyche, but he ignored it. He felt free and unfettered for the first time in his life- it was pathetic that it could only come after his death. Xander decided right then and there that it didn’t matter who he had been; he was different now and wasn’t at all concerned with ever getting his memories back.
In a burst of speed, Xander exploded into action, racing for all he was worth, testing his new physical boundaries. He brayed loudly, loving the sound of his cackling laughter echoing over the sands. His stride ate away at the horizon as he traveled at a speed that would have been impossible for any living creature to match. It all came so naturally now.
There wasn’t much to do in that world of sand, so he found himself wandering, picking a direction at random and running until something made him stop. There was no sun to measure his days, so he allowed his internal clock to guide him and slept when he was tired, waking when he felt rested. Time passed in a haze with nothing to quantify his time. There were other creatures here, among the sands, and they would often attack him, lulled into confidence by his relatively small size. He was both amused and irritated that he proved to be so much smaller than all of the other monsters. Irritated that he was so small, and amused that the others thought that meant he was weak.
He took down all comers indiscriminately and devoured those that refused to surrender peacefully after being defeated. Seeing as he was fighting hollows, none of his opponents ever considered surrender to be an option, so he often found himself gorging on the flesh of the fallen with relish and not a trace of remorse. With each meal, Xander felt himself becoming more powerful and while he craved that feeling of deepening strength, he wondered to what end he was collecting it. He had no one and nothing to fight for, outside of survival, and didn’t have much of a long-term purpose.
And so time passed, uncounted among the sands.
