To Dream, Perchance to Hunt

There is another like him out there. Another hunter, wolf-blooded and primal. He had not expected it, when he collapsed into billowing darkness and rushed the the girl, but his nose has never lied to him. There is a predator in those bones of hers. And wolves are not born to hunt alone.

The scent trails of his prey stretch out before him, both the fresh and the well-tread -- but he seeks a different target. The poor little rabbits, running scared, will have a bit of rest for tonight. How very unlike him, to allow them even a moment to catch their breath.

The fledgling wolf should be honored to receive his attention instead.

He settles into the dream like a drop of ink on a watercolor canvas, spreading blackness through her mind in rivulets and tendrils, until the night within mirrors the night outside. Only then do the shadows shift and sculpt themselves into the Dreamstalker, the hulking wolf Hokuto has seen twice. And for once, he is not attacking, or baring his teeth, or lunging forward in a chase.

No. For now, he is waiting to see what she'll do.

Hokuto tends to sleep deeply, and tonight is no exception. What dreams she normally have are surreal and strange, often having more to do with the oddities of her family and her work than the normal travails of a teen.

The night has never been something she's feared, before this. After the previous meetings with the wolf-spirit, however, seeing the sudden change of day into night does disturb her.

She'd been having a rather pleasant dream before this, putting her cousin Suzuka in her place, but the image of her rival vanishes as night falls. She spins about, looking for the girl, but doesn't see her.

Her fingers flex, curling as if claws were ready to sprout from her fingertips, and she calls out. "Suzu-chan...." Her voice is soft, sweely mocking. "Where aaaaaare youuuu...."

"Where aaaaare youuuuu..."

The words, spoken softly, echo across the blackened dreamscape, reverberating and repeating until it's an unseen chorus around her. Narrowing his eyes in contemplation, the wolf ripples and vanishes back into formless darkness. She is not yet lucid to her dream yet -- there are better ways to engage her than to approach directly.

All at once, the echoing tumult stops, cut through by a single voice that Hokuto will recognize as the Suzu-chan she faced only seconds ago.

"I'm right here, Hokuto-chan," it says from within the yawning mouth of a forest that wasn't there before. "I'm right here."

The silhouette of the girl materializes a second later, only barely visible against the shadow and the fog, her back turned to her cousin even as she addresses her.

The air vibrates with a low growl just beyond the edge of perception.

Hokuto and Suzuka were best of friends as children, but grew apart as they reached their teens - the two being groomed by rival branches of the family to become candidates for the head of the clan. These days, Suzuka is more skilled at the Onmyouji's work, but Hokuto is more powerful. So far, it balances.

When she hears the voice, she spins to face it, her eyes narrowing as she seeks out her prey.

"There you are," she purrs, stalking towards the forest. Is she aware of what she's doing, of where she truly is? Perhaps. She's studied at least the basics of lucid dreaming techniques, but never took them seriously.

She takes so few things seriously, these days. Even her own instincts.

The growl -- just a whisper of a sound a moment ago, nothing more -- swells in volume with each step Hokuto takes. First it's in only one ear, then the other, as though she's being circled by a pack of hunters that are steadily closing in on her, until it is all she can hear. Even her thoughts cannot penetrate it.

When Hokuto stands at the border of the forest, mere feet from Suzuka, the girl glances over her shoulder and smirks.

"Found you."

She throws her head back, and suddenly it is not Suzuka's face that catches the light, but the blood-stained snout of a wolf, with red eyes and black fur. An inhuman howl splits the air, and with impossible speed, the chimeric thing has turned and leapt towards Hokuto, jaws snapping and claws tearing even as the rest of her body stays intact.

"Hiraisen!"

The familiar voice calls out across the dream over a sudden drumming of hoofbeats as the wolf-Suzuka springs. In the next moment a flash of red carves an arc through the air toward the creature, the tessen flying out like a thrown disc.

Seishi follows it at speed - dressed in Akashimaru's red kimono, her sleeves and the long tail of her hair like banners, mounted astride a dark bay horse wearing the saddle and bridle of a Tokyo mounted policeman.

She hadn't been looking for Hokuto when she rode out in her dreams - she'd been searching for traces of the enemy, something she could use to draw him out.

Now it seems she's found both the thing she was looking for, and the thing she was not.

All she can hear is that snarling, inhuman growl. It fills her head, drives the pounding of her heart. She grits her teeth, as the sound pours through her head, and she doesn't even realize that she's matching it. Snarling through her teeth. Clenching her fists until her nails push through the skin, blood trickling over her hands.

She hurls herself at the Suzuka-wolf, lashing out with her balled fists, uncaring of its claws.

Just before she can reach it, however, Seishi's fan separates them, and she twists to fall aside and roll to her feet. Her eyes lock on the new arrival, and she growls softly before speaking.

"She's mine!"

He could reveal himself now. That flying leap to answer the wolf-girl's is all he'd needed to see -- but then a bolt of something foreign, *lucid* enters the dream, and he knows they are no longer alone in Hokuto's mind.

No matter. This will only make the night more interesting. And if it ends with the so-called Nightmare Breaker's blood on their teeth, so much the better.

Suzuka cannot dodge the hurled tessen anymore than Hokuto can. The edges of iron catch her under the jaw and send her reeling back several feet, upending her in the air so that she lands on her back. A brief whimper escapes her as she struggles to right herself; but even in the darkness, one can see more of the changes overtaking her. Her knees snap forward and narrow to the sound of bone crunching. Black fur bristles beneath her school uniform.

The wolf still holds the form of her cousin, but for how long, who can say?

With a mighty heave, Suzuka leaps to her feet and shoots for Hokuto's throat with outstretched claws.

The tessen arcs back to Seishi's hand as her mount bears her forward between the two, and only now does she get a good look at the other girl. When she does, her eyes widen in the shock of recognition. "Hokuto?" The name slips out unintentionally in answer to Hokuto's growled words.

Surprise makes Seishi slower to react than she should have been. The sound of bone violently reshaping itself brings her attention back to the transformed Suzuka just in time to see her leap. Her reaction is instinctive, unthinking; the big dark gelding wheels around in a burst of motion, iron-shod hooves drumming the ground as horse and rider surge forward to intercept Suzuka's leap by the simple rough expedient of charging straight into her.

"Minase-san!" This is a side of Hokuto that Seishi has not yet seen, and she doesn't know the other girl well enough yet to have any idea if it's the work of the enemy or something else that lay beneath the surface. But first things first - get her lucid. If she can do that, the rest will follow. "You are dreaming!"

With a laugh, Hokuto twists about to meet 'Suzuka's charge. Her own form is starting to shift towards the wolfish, the claws she suppressed in the waking world given life in the dream. She lashes out at the form of her rival, aiming to rip out the girl's gut.

Her eyes burn a vivid, incandescent gold, her shorts and t-shirt replaced with rough-tanned leather, as the youkai blood shows its influence on her dream-self.

She's interrupted by a cavalry charge, of all things. That's new.

"S - sempai?" she asks, the shock of it catching enough of her attention to listen to what Seishi says. There's something about the samurai-girl, something she wants... but what is it she wants? She's not quite sure, right now.

You're dreaming. ... Is that what this is? A dream? She looks down at her hands, at the claws that tip each finger... If this is a dream, what is she dreaming?

"Yes," comes the voice of the Dreamstalker, still without form in the bizarre landscape of Hokuto's mind, "but why should that matter?"

Suzuka is stopped by the sheer bulk of the horse alone, her yellowed claws catching it's side and raking down as she falls back to Earth -- whatever passes for Earth in dreams, anyway. This time, she is more prepared for the interception, and she does not waste several moments flailing about on the ground. Instead, she doubles back from the rider and her rival, until there is enough distance between them for a proper charge.

Somewhere between then and now, she has lost all trace of humanity.

"This is what you want, isn't it?" the invisible wolf growls. "Why should you dream of these things if they aren't what you want?"

An equine scream fills the air as claws rake the dark horse's side, drawing blood that wets his glossy coat, but though the gelding tosses his head wildly, eyes white-rimmed, he doesn't shy or bolt. He's not truly a horse, after all.

Reins in one hand, tessen in the other, Seishi turns her mount again to keep the wolf in plain sight and herself a wall between it and Hokuto. "We don't always dream what we want," she declares in a tone of absolute cetainty. "Sometimes we dream what we fear."

She keeps her weapon pointed toward the wolf, but for a moment she glances back over her shoulder toward Hokuto. "Know that you're dreaming, and you can take control of the dream," she says. "It doesn't have to control you."

She wants to be strong. To control her own destiny. To choose her own path.

Hokuto looks up, taking in the wolf/Suzuka, and the samurai/Seishi. What she wants... what she needs...

She focuses, and there's a ripple of reality in the dream. And now she's dressed in a gorgeous kimono, all crimson and gold silk, with dragons roaming around the trim. She still sports claws, and her eyes still gleam golden, but there's a nobility to it. To the beast. Not a savage beast, but a predator, a warrior.

"Maybe they are what I want," she says. "But I want more."

There's a pair of swords thrust through the obi she wears, a gorgeously-ornamented traditional daisho, and she holds a fan in one hand that's a match for Seishi's.

"I am stronger than you. I always have been, I always will be."

Suzuka, bristling and pawing at the ground but moments ago, now stands silent, regarding Hokuto's transformation with...passive curiosity? No -- she is far too still for mere passivity, and her opaque ruby eyes are far too empty. There is no force of will behind this wolf anymore, no spark of life that brings her beyond Hokuto's control. With the help of Seishi, she has truly become lucid, and this specter of her cousin poses no more threat to her.

But there is still something that does.

Dead trees spear their way out of the ground around the three of them, expanding the forest that had sprung up when Suzuka first disappeared. The miko may have seized control over her dream, but he is a creature of Nightmares -- this is his world and his element, he can assert his influence where others cannot. And he will not be denied his victory at the hands of this meddling samurai.

"You are not," the Dreamstalker says at Hokuto's words, and then his massive form has burst through Suzuka, dispelling her like smoke as he slashes for the throat of Seishi's steed. "I'll show you what you really are, little wolf girl."

If the horse were really a horse, the Dreamstalker's claws would without a doubt have ripped his throat out and brought him crashing to the ground, and Seishi with him. But the gelding is not really a horse, not a living creature of flesh and blood - he is an extension of Seishi's will, and as the Dreamstalker lunges through the illusion of Suzuka, Seishi clamps her legs to her mount's side and the gelding once again tosses his head, dark mane flying, the powerful body bunching up to crowhop and wheel away in a quick dance of hooves. In that same whirl of motion, Seishi lashes out with her tessen, raising her voice to call to Hokuto in all her transformed glory.

"This dream is yours! Drive him out of it!"

That's right. It is her dream. And - she finally realizes, remembers: The wolf has never marked her. Not like it did the others it pursued.

Clawed hands take up the hilts of katana and wakizashi as she whirls into battle, lashing out at the wolf. Five times, the katana cuts across, and four times, the wakizashi cuts down. Each cut leaves a glowing claw-mark in the air.

Kuji-kiri. Not her best tool, nor her favorite. But easy enough to work in as she battles the creature.

Her will is strong, but her skill at controlling the dream is insufficient: she requires a focus. The kuji-kiri cuts provide it, focusing chi and youki as they mix and roil within her.

"This is my dream, wolfling. Not yours." There's a soundless explosion, and the night is banished, the sun shining down on a warm spring day. "Begone."

The steed pulls back, his target is moved, and suddenly the Dreamstalker's power is cut away from him. Powerful as he is, this is Hokuto's dream -- and he is an intruder. If she has the will to cast him out, without his mark upon her, he can do nothing to truly resist.

And she is not just casting him out. She is *banishing* him, with the magic held within her weapons.

The wolf falls forward, collapsed in on himself to shelter the glowing cuts from the rising sun. He snarls, frothing at the mouth as his forest disintegrates before his eyes, his power draining from him completely now that control of the dream has passed wholly back to her.

Now is not the time to stay and fight. He has always hunted on his own. He has no need of a companion; only the scent of his prey and the winding path ahead.

In a vortex of black, the Dreamstalker rips his way out of Hokuto's mind, and the oppressive air his darkness brought there vanishes along with him.

The Dreamstalker is gone; the dream remains, bright with the sunlight of Hokuto's will. A breath of relief goes out of Seishi and she slumps a little in the saddle, relaxing her grip on the reins. The horse settles, too, agitation smoothing into calm as Seishi lowers her tessen and looks toward Hokuto.

"Well done," she says, and there's admiration in her smile. This dream, at least, she can be sure won't turn sour again.

Seishi slips the Shinken into its place in her belt, gathers up the reins with both hands. "We should talk," she says, "when we're awake... but it looks like things will be fine for now."

Hokuto flicks the blades, as a samurai would to remove smeared blood, before sliding them back into the saya. She watches the Dreamstalker's departure with a slightly self-satisfied smile, proud of her efforts.

It might come back. But it will find its supposed prey is stronger and more aware. Ready for it.

A hand is offered to Seishi, and a pleasant smile. "Thank you, Sempai. I.. if you hand't come along..."

Incredible luck... or was it mere coincidence?