The Hunt

"Now… Runt, why don't you come with me? So that we can begin the ritual!" She grinned showing her sharp teeth, which seemed all the more scary to Sky as she looked down at him, her eyes glinting with a predatory light. Sky gulped slightly.

After some more dragging, Sky found himself in the middle of the forest he first woke up in. Suddenly, his bindings were cut loose. Thinking that it was an act of mercy, Sky turned around hesitantly, looking back at his former captor. 'Aww… She let me go! That's nice!' He thought to himself as he started to run away from her, lest she change her mind, glancing back at her a few times as the distance between them started to increase.

'The runt really thought I would let him go? How… amusing it would be to see that glimmer of hope in his eyes thinking that he's being let free only for it to be extinguished when he's finally tracked down and ripped apart…' She licked her lips in anticipation. 'I CAN'T WAIT!' Ino's eyes flared with killing intent, her muscles tensing…

Waiting for something. Then, there it was. The sound of a massive horn or conch shell resonated throughout the forest. She screamed loudly, before launching herself, disappearing from the place she had been a moment before, leaving behind a shockwave of wind that occurred only a few seconds after she had already left. The hunt had begun.

Sky turned around from afar, hearing the loud sound of the horn. 'That couldn't be good.' He thought to himself, deciding to run faster than he did before. Who knows? Maybe that oni changed her mind and decided to hunt him down after all… And his hunch was right. In the distance, he could hear the booming of something or someone getting closer to him, the rustling of stepped-on leaves and the sound of the falling of trees getting louder giving Sky a sense of how far they were away from him.

'Shit.' He cursed in his mind. Sky knew he wasn't getting away from whatever that was. Then, he could hear it. A manic laughter, growing louder. "HAHAHAHA! HUMAN!! YOU WILL DIE TODAY! I WILL RIP THE MEAT OFF YOUR BONES AND GORGE MYSELF ON YOUR BLOOD!" A red streak launched itself right at him, its glowing eyes the only thing noticeable amongst the otherwise unrecognizable red. Yet the will to survive makes humans do amazing things.

Sky somehow managed to roll away at the last second, causing the unstoppable onslaught known as Gushiken Ino to crash into a few nearby trees before finally slowing her momentum. "NOT BAD HUMAN! HAHAHA! BUT IT'S NO USE! YOU WILL DIE TODAY!" She paused for a second, observing the human, before once again tensing her toned leg muscles and shooting at him once more, becoming but a red streak once more. Sky could barely follow her movements with his eyes, before suddenly he felt something was off. Then it struck him.

A chunk of his shoulder was missing, the pain suddenly kicking in and red blood flowing out of the wound and towards the ground. Whipping his head around, he saw the oni, wiping her full lips with her hand. "Thanks for the meal~." She said blissfully as if she just had a mouthwatering steak at a 5-star hotel, her eyes glinting as if she was looking at a delicacy.

Clutching his shoulder, Sky stumbled about, crying out in pain. This desperate one-sided struggle for survival from Sky seemed to only be getting worse as time went on. Each time he failed to somehow stumble out of the way of the oni's onslaught, he would find a new wound on his body, the oni grinning playfully. 'Whatever happened to not playing with your food?' Sky scoffed sarcastically.

"So anxious to leave, huh?!" Sky's face was brutally smashed into the dirt, as he coughed some more blood, expelling up more dirt than blood at this point. It had been an hour or so at this point. The oni seemed to not be done yet however, as she continued her assault, her red skin dyed an even darker red by all the blood she pounded out of Sky to the point that she was essentially bathing in it.

At this point, Sky's senses had already dulled, his pain receptors in so much pain that it really didn't matter. What was one more hit? Two more hits? It was all the same. As he lay there, bleeding out in the dirt, his blood had unknowingly trickled deep into the soil, awakening something slumbering deep underground. A rumbling sound rang out in the otherwise quiet forest.

The oni looked around, her eyes darting around, scanning for any potential threats, yet she found none… That could only mean one thing. Below! The ground exploded, dirt and debris flying everywhere as something surfaced, seeing the sunlight for the first time in centuries. "Who awoke me from my slumber?!" It thundered… yet both the oni and Sky were struggling to not laugh. Why? Because the voice didn't match the towering creature at all! Imagine a behemoth of a centipede, covered in shiny black plates and thousands of legs… with the voice of a little girl.

Who wouldn't laugh at that?! The centipede roared indignantly. "I'll devour you! Even gods and dragons don't dare laugh at me!" The oni merely scoffed before waving the centipede off as nothing more than an overgrown insect. "You? Gods are scared of you? With that voice? Haha! You wish!" Gushiken Ino stated dismissively.

The centipede seemed to freeze in its place. Then, it shrieked. A sound so horrible and terrible yet primal that it invoked fear in even the fearless crimson oni. Spewing putrid greenish yellow venom out of its mouth, which would hiss slightly upon contact with anything before rapidly melting it into nothing but a puddle of goo, the centipede swayed back and forth in a manner that seemed to convey:

'Hmph! That's what you get for making fun of my voice!' After its display of might, the centipede, seemingly content, dragged Sky with it back into its burrow, leaving the confused oni alone, pondering what exactly she just saw, her cheeks unknowingly flushing slightly…