Chapter Text
Cale woke up.
This is not unusual in and of itself, as a matter of course. He woke up every morning. Or afternoon, sometimes, which had a tendency to upset the people around him. He figured he would get the sleep anyway, so he might as well get it done with in the morning, but this opinion of his tends to offend people. What was the point of waking up if he was just going to take a nap later? But he digressed, he was getting off topic.
When he wakes up this time, it is unusual. Not necessarily in the way he wakes up, but where. Because Cale knew damn well he did not fall asleep in a tree in the middle of winter.
He was laid on a branch, making him wonder how the hell he didn't fall off. It’s probably just a really vivid lucid dream, was his first thought. But when he pinched his cheeks, he felt a pain that shouldn't be there if it were actually a dream. Okay, this is a really fucked up prank.
Cale sat up, taking in his surroundings. There was a blanket of white and trees for as far as his eye could see, which actually wasn't all too far because there were just that many god damn trees. Tall and somewhat thin, but with leaves that stretched far enough they just about covered the sky, save for small gaps that came about as light along the forest floor. A look up showed that the sky was cloudy, too, light barely beaming through. He couldn't tell what time of day it was, but he could say for certain it wasn't night.
I’m never going to fall asleep again if this keeps happening, he thought wryly. Have them perform a Roan Sleep Experiment. I’m a willing subject. At least I won't be disappearing anywhere in that case.
Oh, but brain damage didn't sound all that appealing either. Really, neither option was all too great.
Where he was sitting on the tree was high enough such that it looked like it would hurt going down. Despite that, he knew well that he could get down without injury, though the height still made him feel the slightest bit achy deep in his bones. Directly above him, it was covered in enough leaves to where the only way the spot he was sleeping in would get any sunlight would be if the sun came within a mile radius of the Earth. And by that point it wouldn’t really matter, since everything would have been dead long before it finished its approach.
Something about this placement feels suspicious, he thought to himself, but I can’t place my finger on it.
He took a good look at himself next. He was still wearing the clothes that he’d been wearing before he’d fallen asleep. Admittedly, he had fallen asleep in the middle of the day– He was watching Raon, On, and Hong run around, and the warm sun had made him feel really sleepy, so he’d simply laid in the grass and took a nap, thinking someone would wake him up if there was an emergency.
There was an emergency.
No one woke him up.
Mostly because there was no one there to wake him up, but he felt like he was well within his right to be affronted by that. Cale was the emergency, really. Ah, this really sucks. But he was getting off topic once more. He was wearing some day clothes, some that really did not provide enough coverage considering the season, yet for some odd reason he wasn’t feeling all that cold.
His hair had grown out quite a bit, extending past his shoulders and going down to about his mid-back, and it seemed to have fallen out of the half-up hairdo he’d had earlier. He took a look at his hands, too. His skin had taken on an odd pallor that hadn’t been there before, and when he looked at his nails… He had some weird instinct that told him to flex his hands, and when he did, he felt them slide along his nail bed in a way that just really freaked him out, though he kept watching out of sheer morbid fascination as they extended, sharpened to a point that could probably cut steel if he tried hard enough. Not that he necessarily intended to.
If things weren’t wrong enough, the whole claw thing was definitely the final nail in the coffin. Or, rather, the second to last, because it had taken him far too long to realize it was quiet. Not externally– Distantly, he could hear the rustling of leaves, the sound of small feet padding along the floor. Rather, it was quiet in his head, which was alarming. Because the previous owners of his powers just loved to blabber on in his head. It had been something of an annoyance then, but he was really mourning it now. Out of an ever so slight panic, he held a hand out in front of him, willing the shield into existence. To its credit, it did appear. The silver shield glowed before him, a shimmering barrier covering the space before him in a two-foot radius. He let out a sigh of relief. That’s one thing I have going for me.
It suddenly dawned on him then– This is real. And because it was very real, that meant he really had to get a move on. He was going in blind, without any information. He needed to figure out the where and when as soon as he could, and he needed to secure shelter, food, and a way of living.
But first, he took a moment to mourn. To wallow, if you will. As Kim Rok Soo, he hadn’t had much going for him, so when he woke up anew as Cale Henituse, he hadn’t felt much too awful about the situation. It was simply something he had to adapt to, that was all. A new situation. And, well, he was much too preoccupied with figuring out a way to survive to really think too much. There, he’d had his fate defined for him, ahead of him, and a goal to change that fate. Here, well… He’d had stuff going for him before, in the Roan Kingdom. But now he was dealing with a blank slate, no real goal in mind, no endpoint.
And then he picked himself back up again. Because he had to, mostly. There was no sense in sulking for too long. Adapt and keep going.
He hopped down from the branch, using Sound of the Wind to soften his landing. Landing in the snow with a light crunch, he took another look at his surroundings from the ground. It seemed to look the same every which way he turned, so he let loose a light sigh and picked a direction to go in, beginning his trek. He marked the trees he passed with his newfound claws, just in case he needed to backtrack or just in case he was somehow walking around in a circle despite walking in what he believed to be a straight line– Or as straight as the trees would let him. For all he knew, the turns he took to get around a group of trees could somehow be leading him in a circle.
It took him a while to figure out, given how flat the terrain appeared, but he was on a mountain, or perhaps a tall hill, but he felt more inclined to believe the former given the sheer amount of snow. He’d been walking up at the slightest incline, and while normally he’d really be wanting to go down, he had smelled something that made him bristle, so against reasonable human instincts, he walked towards it.
On the way there, he’d been markedly avoiding the light subconsciously, though it wasn’t until he sidestepped a major spot of the sun that he started to wonder why? It seemed to be something instinctual that kept him out of it. Against his better judgment, he stuck a hand into it to find out… Only to borderline hiss and reel his hand back, cradling it to his chest as the pain shot through his nerves, like he’d been burnt by hot oil. A peek at his injured appendage revealed that, yes, he had most certainly been burned, though the injury was already healing steadily. A few pieces of ash that had split from his body fell to the floor, making Cale wince. I’d better avoid the sun, I guess. What am I, a vampire?
He licked his teeth, finding his canines to be rather pointed and extended, unlike how they’d been before, and found that to be very possible. What’s next? Don’t suppose I’ve got cat’s eyes, do I? (Cale later found out that yes, his pupils were in fact slitted, not unlike a cat’s. (This news was not surprising in the least at that point, but it still managed to upset him, as many things did with this new body of his.))
The smell grew stronger as he drew closer, and the metallic twang that he’d begun to notice told him what it was– blood. At this point, any sane person would have turned around and begun to walk away, but apparently Cale’s sanity was long lost to him, because he kept going in spite of every warning bell he had remaining in his head that screamed “Hey! Maybe you shouldn’t walk in the direction of the ominous blood smell! Maybe that’s a good idea!”
But rather than blood, what Cale smelled was some type of information. That was what he really needed, and maybe the source of the blood would somehow help point him in the right direction. And, yes, maybe he was a little bit delusional, perhaps a little bit desperate, but could you blame a guy? (Well, he also smelled the blood, but more important was the possibility of information.)
A small, wooden house came into view. It appeared to be Asian in nature, so he knew, at least, that he was likely in an Asian country (or some continent with a similar culture). Though the type of building hadn’t been commonly used in what seemed to him like a century, so it likely wasn’t modern times. See, he thought victoriously, information. He couldn’t quite see inside, yet– The door was open, but the inside was dark, just enough to where he couldn’t see anything. It didn’t seem like anyone was inside, either, which may have brought his spirits down just a tad. He pushed through, though, continuing to ascend until the house fully came into view.
The first thing he noticed were the large lumps of snow placed in front of the house. 5 piles, some different in size, though one was obviously smaller than the rest. They looked as though they had been neat, but snow had piled up over them over enough time so they were beginning to look a little disheveled, though they were still pronounced enough to where it was obvious what they were. Graves, he thought. Just what happened in this house? The smell was starting to sting his nose and disorient him. Cale knew damn well his sense of smell hadn’t been this strong before– another new change, it seemed. A pool of drool began to build up in his mouth, but he swallowed it down. Why would I be drooling?
Finally, he got close enough to the house to peer inside. Maybe it was the sight that did him in, but he almost fell over from the sudden wave of hunger that came over him. His vision was leaving him, swirling in all sorts of directions of black and color, leaving him slightly bewildered. His fangs had extended more, as though readying to bite something, and the drool was now falling out of his mouth.
Keep it together, Cale, this isn’t you.
He had to take a few moments to pull himself together, gripping the doorframe of the house hard enough to break the wood, a strength that he didn’t have before. The pain from the splinters was just about enough to bring him back, and he let out a sigh, his knees nearly buckling underneath him from the strain. What the fuck? He took that moment to observe inside the house. It looked like a massacre had occurred inside, years-old blood splattered along the walls and floor. He guessed that the graves right in front of the house held the bodies of those killed, likely by a family member and/or survivor, otherwise they likely wouldn’t be there
Feeling bad for the intrusion, he looked further into the house for any more information that he could use. The rest of the house was free of blood, it was just the first room that had been tainted, and it looked very lived in. There were signs of children having lived in it, though it seemed to have been long enough that everything was now dusty, which made the whole thing just that much worse. On a table inside, there was a small pouch with some coins in it. He pulled one out, revealing a coin that was something like copper or bronze in color, with Japanese scrawled on it. See, he thought less victoriously than he had before, information.
So it was likely that he was in Japan. Based on the building, it seemed like it could be around the 1900s, though he couldn’t be too sure until he descended the mountain. Feeling ever so slightly guilty for it, he stuffed the coinbag into his pocket. Sorry, I need to be able to live. He stepped out of the house, closing the door as well as the broken doorframe would let him, feeling sorry about that too, and began to descend the mountain.