Death By Alice

It was weeks before that Alice had entered Kei's city, on the hunt for whatever reason that the Hunter Society brought her there. Face to face in an abandoned apartment building, weapons in hand, there was only one real outcome to expect.

He should have been territorial.

She should have taken him out.

They should've killed each other.

But that just didn't happen, did it?

-/-

 Fast forwarding to a few weeks after,

It was a routine call for Alice. Kei watched her pick up her phone that had buzzed, read whatever was on the screen before she'd be looking at him with a wicked grin. There was always one thing Kei was certain of. He knew he was fairly mentally stable. He did everything for his own reasons, it wasn't a matter of illness.

Her?

There wasn't a doubt in his mind something was askew in that blue-haired head of hers. Something that was twisted enough to unsettle even him.

She heard two small rings from her phone and she brought it up. Glancing down at the dimmed screen and scrolled over a small message. The HSHQ was quick for another hunt run. A curve pulling at the corner of her mouth and she looks at him.

"Wanna go on a hunt?"

They both knew that was hardly a question.

Kei nodded his skulled head anyways in response. "...Let's see what we can find."

-/-

The hunt took them to a place vaguely familiar to Kei.

The abandoned building was once an old high school. When he was young, however, it served as an elementary within the city- one that he had spent part of his human life attending, long ago, up until about the6th grade or so. Not that he went that often, that final year.

Slipping through one of the broken windows on the first floor, they were soon inside one of the classrooms at the end of the hall.

"Ya know teens to like to explore dank places and such. That is what this was known for. But when they didn't come home and police were alerted then it became a problem. HSHQ saw the signs, suspected to bein' a ghoul. So careful; ya may just be runnin' into a kid er something. Possibly some druggies. Try not to pop em, yeah?"

"Ain't a huge loss if I do pop 'em." Kei replied with a snort. Careful, Kei. You were one of 'em once.

He followed her out of the room, taking the opposite hallway. He held up a pistol in the meanwhile. After all, he knew little of ghouls- his job was to kill the living and not join the deceased, rarely mixing those two things. In the dark, his skulled eye sockets were oddly more keen than that of a human's eyes. His ears flicked subtly as he headed down the hall, from one room to another.

Alice was sure-footed. Looking along the dark halls of the distant school. Taking the last moment to pull her flashlight from her backpack before plopping it near the window. Holding the light and her dagger up in an attack status. Beginning her prowling in the halls. If this wasn't the place the ghoul was at then she had no clue where else it would be. This was a hot spot. If it wasn't' just a ghoul than there had to be something else lurking. The rotting smell of wood and possibly bodies wasn't missed. So surely there must be something.

The place smelled of blood and something rotting... there was no mistaking that they were in the right place.

-/-

Alice kept eyes peeled. Searching for any sign or bone crunch of a ghoul. Or anything that might lurk the halls, to be honest. There was a lot that could be hiding in here. That and the HSHQ thought that it was a ghoul. Pray to fucking god it was. Anything else and she might not have the things to kill it.

Crack.

Alice froze; then snapped her flashlight towards the noise sharply. Eyebrows knit together shapely and her eyes became daggers. Inching her way forward to a classroom door that was open. She held her breath, shining the flashlight into the room then went slack-jawed. That wasn't a fucking ghoul.

Nope.

Alice turned off the flashlight just in time for a blood curtailing roar to hit the air and for her to book it out the fucking room like a bat out of hell. It wasn't a ghoul, it was a Broodmother. And her little flesh-eating babies nursing off of her very dead, very rotted body.

Kei would hear thundering footsteps down the hall, and it wasn't just Alice's, though she was in front of the flood of four dozen or so of imp-like creatures. They looked bubbly on their skin and were milky-eyed and sharp-clawed. They chased her, and in turn of her, they would be chasing him pretty soon. Basically, they needed to get the hell out, or else the trick Alice had up her sleeve would have the building come down on them.

Meanwhile, Kei's own search had lead to be rather anticlimactic. He turned back around to go down another floor, although the scream of a creature made him pause... something wasn't right. The vibrations of her running made his ears twitch... she wasn't alone. Ghouls didn't sound like that, did they?

He turned down the hallway they were coming from, gun raised to chest level. When she turned the corner with the whelps following behind at high speed his ears flattened to his skull abruptly. Ah, shit... they were undoubtedly outnumbered, and he wasn't in the mood to wake up in some old schoolhouse after they had torn him apart.

"O'Malley, I hope you have a fucking plan!"

Kei hissed, following suit with her current plan of taking off running towards the exit as quickly as he could. Several paces ahead of her, his ears listened to see if she still followed as he bolted towards the open window, breaking out the shattered glass with his elbow when they got there.

"Got one!"

She yells over the writhing screaming of the darkspawn behind them. But he was headed for the window, and when he bursts through it she took the moment to grab her backpack that was sitting there then swung out. Tumbling for a moment then she stopped on her knee, rummaging through her bag and grabbed handcuffs and a grenade. What the hell were those for?

She looked at Kei, then the building, then back at him. Doing this several times then she groans. Turning to Kei then gripping the cuff of his shirt and pulling it back sharply to knock him on his ass. Grabbing his wrist next she cuffed that side then his opposite ankle together. She gave him an apologetic look. APOLOGETIC MY ASS, O'MALLEY. Placing a hand on his head with a smile. "You like burgers? I'll get you a burger." 

She then took the loop of the grenade in her teeth and pulled it. Shoving it into his hollow eye socket forcefully so it would stick.

Shit.

She was using him as bait. 

 She then snatched her bag and ran for it. Away from him and the obvious amount of monsters that were now swarming out the building. The Broodmother flopping out the window with her babies and going for Kei.

That itself would be torture. Those lil shits had razor sharp teeth, and their bites burned and malfested the flesh.

"I'LL GET YOU EXTRA CHEESE!" Alice calls at least ten yards or more away. She was a fast bitch. 

Kei flinched as his ass hit the concrete when she jerked it back, spewing a few choice words as he tried to get up quickly. Before he could, he was already cuffed. "What the fuc- DAMMIT O'Malley, are you fuckin' kidding me!?" He hissed.

Frantically trying to undo the cuffs he hardly had the time to worry about it before the spawn-like creatures were upon him. His body was engulfed by the creatures soon enough, the screams of the mercenary heard as he was torn at- chunk by chunk.

Suddenly...

BOOM.

When the grenade went off, pieces of flesh flew in all directions from the explosion. There was a shriek from the Broodmother that only lasted a moment- nothing came from Kei, of course...

When the smoke cleared, the front yard of the school was a mess. Within the mess were pieces of Kei, scattered here and there. His skull had all but shattered into a million pieces from the impact, soaked in blood and brain matter.