I wake up in darkness, not knowing where I am, who I am. I hear so many sounds: the insects in the forest, the howling of the wind, the rustle of the leaves in the trees. Every one of my senses seems hyper-magnified. I feel like an animal that has been captured and released into an unknown area.
My ear twitches, and I reach up to feel not human ears, but cat ears. Slightly disturbed, I feel my face, relieved to find it human. Gracefully, I rise to a low crouch, looking around carefully for any predators.
Finding none, I focus on figuring out who I am. I think for a minute, and then a name comes to me: Rexikat. I nod, affirming to myself that this was who I am. Looking at my hands, I see chains wrapped around my hands and thighs. They somehow feel familiar, and their presence comforts me.
Finally, I need to figure out where I am. Sniffing the air, I catch two scents stronger than the rest, one of darkness, and one of a man that also smelled familiar.
I follow the scents to a large, dilapidated mansion. I lithely climb up a tree, leap onto the roof, and watch the battle going on inside through a hole in the ceiling. A being of darkness...a Heartless...I knew that much. The other...a human male...I don't know who he is.
With a great burst of light I am forced to look away from, the human male destroys the Heartless, and stands gasping for breath. I climb into the building, staying carefully hidden among the support beams of the ceiling, to try and get a closer look at his face.
He turns his face up and stares directly at me, and I hiss in pain. A torrent of images flash through my mind...of a girl who looks like me walking with the man...kissing the man, hugging him...a lifetime of laughter together...another woman...Dorian, her name is...of countless night spent killing together for money...the man, again, this time in an intimate embrace...nights spent memorizing each other's bodies...touching, caressing...loving...
I fall from the beam with a shriek as all of these...I don't know whether to call them memories of mine or of his. I remember him, but not as my lover...as someone else's...
"Kateri," I hear him say, his face looming over mine, and I know. I know enough, at any rate.
"Gio--Giovanni," I say, my voice rough. "Giovanni."
"Kat," he breathes. He reaches out for my face, but I hold his hand in a strong grip.
"I'm not Kateri," I say firmly. "I'm not Kateri...I'm Rexikat. I'm...nobody. A Nobody," I realize.
"What?" he says, and then breaks down coughing. He coughs up blood...too much. "Where's Kat? Do you remember her at all? Is she in you? KATERI!" He chokes on his blood and begins coughing again.
"She's...gone," I tell him. "But she loves you. I love you," I say, even though I can't really feel it.
"Do you really?" he says, as though he knows. Tears fall down his face, and he collapses to the floor. I turn him over, and check for a pulse automatically. Nothing. No heartbeat, empty, like my own hollow chest.
Something deep inside of me threatens to overwhelm me, some distant memory of an emotion called sorrow, but I don't have the capacity for it. Not anymore. I may have been Kateri, but now...now I am Rexikat. A Nobody, with nothing to live for, and no one to die for.
I move to take his body somewhere else, for a proper burial, and hear a motion at the front door. Quickly, I jump up to the beams and hide in the ceiling again. I see a woman walk in with long, straight hair, and a Japanese tilt to her eyes, and know immediately that it is Dorian, Kateri's best friend.
She gasps in shock, runs over to Giovanni's body, and burst into tears. She slumps over his body, saying the words, "If only I made it in time, I could have saved you...You needed me, and I wasn't here...Kateri...Giovanni... Gomen nasai."
She takes out a dagger, and without any hesitation, slits her own throat. I recoil in shock myself, feeling a twinge of sympathetic pain, and something more...closer to agonizing sadness. My stomach clenches at the sight of the two dead bodies, once the closest people to me...Kateri...now dead.
Later that night, after I have carried Dorian and Giovanni to the graveyard and buried them as best I could, I stand beneath the moonlight, and think. I think about many things, about Giovanni, and Dorian, about Kateri and the life she had. But most of all, I think about what I am to do with the life I, Rexikat, have.
I know most Nobodies want a heart, but what would I do with one? Why would I want a heart...when everyone I would love is already dead? I have been avenged, I have no one to avenge...life as a Nobody is all that is left for me. A life...lived for the hunt.
I roar to a cold, distant moon, and disappear into the night.
