Untitled Monster Project Ch. 3 (Original Sci-Fi) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Kal turns the tables rather quickly.

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“No seriously, what kind of tracks are these even supposed to be? Isn’t the prey supposed to have like, hooves or something?”

“I don’t know man, ask Graham. He’s the one hosting this stupid hunting trip.”

“Yeah, he’s also about five miles in the opposite direction. Sorry for thinking you might actually be smart enough to give me an answer.”

“Hey! You don’t know any more than I do, fucker!”

Its funny… even when they’re in the middle of a hunt, human beings apparently struggle with the very basic concept of looking up. Though to be fair, Kal is pretty far up in the tree right now and largely sheltered by the leaves and branches all around him.

Meanwhile, his enhanced eyesight lets him keep easy track of the two bluebloods walking along below him. Each one is armed with a rifle and wearing tailored leather armor that is clearly designed to come across as ‘rugged’ and ‘worn’.

Kal can see better though. With his new eyes he can see beneath the aesthetic and recognize the sheer wealth in every stitch of their garments. It might even be enough to protect them from most dangers… though he doubted their armor could protect them from his claws.

With all the time he’d had left in the night, knowing that he didn’t want to just bum rush their camp and risk getting shot full of holes, Kal had retraced his steps and made it back to where he’d first transformed. From there, he’d gone ahead and made half a dozen trails, obscuring his first by adding numerous other paths he might have taken.

Then, he’d lain in wait and watched for when his would-be hunters finally showed up. And waited. And waited.

For some reason, he’d honestly thought they would get a move on pretty early. He should have known better. Shit, he’d been able to smell them cooking breakfast in their camp all the way from his hiding spot… three fucking hours after the sun had risen.

It was another hour and a half after that when they finally got a move on, and within about thirty minutes they reached the place where he’d transformed.

Their ringleader, who Kal now knew was named ‘Graham’, had been just as startled as all of his ‘guests’ when they’d arrived at the site of Kal’s transformation and discovered what he’d left for them. There’d been confusion and poorly concealed fear among the bluebloods as they’d tried to explain away the numerous paths and the fact that Kal’s tracks largely looked like claw marks.

For a second, the idea of canceling the entire trip had even been brought up, since a couple of the young men had a bad feeling. That, of course, hadn’t sat well with Graham. From the sound of things, this was a big deal for him. His ‘big moment’ if you will. And he wasn’t going to let anything stop him.

In the end, Graham had told everyone that the weird amount of tracks were just from Kal circling back on himself a half dozen times in his confused, mindless state. He’d stressed that it didn’t mean anything and that the hunt was still on.

When someone had asked which way they were supposed to go, that was when the idea of splitting up into groups to cover more ground had been presented. And of course, Graham had quickly taken charge and made the groups himself as the ‘leader’ of this excursion.

The two bluebloods that Kal was stalking now were the two who had raised the prospect of calling off the hunt entirely and shown the most nervousness. And would you look at that, they were also the smallest group Graham had made, with his group of four being the largest and two other groups of three rounding things out.

It was clear they were out of favor with their ringleader… but the real reason Kal had chosen them to follow was because he could practically taste their fear on the wind. He liked it. They hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet and they were already afraid of him. That spoke to something deep inside of Kal. Something primal.

“Look, let’s take a break for a moment. I need to piss.”

“Ugh, fine. Not like there’s anyone out here to catch us slacking off anyways. Maybe we’ll call up the other groups and see what they’ve found by now. Would be just our luck if they’ve already bagged the quarry and just aren’t telling us.”

“Graham wouldn’t fucking do that. His father and my father are business partners. He’s not about to ruin our family’s relationship in some kind of hazing ritual.”

“… All of our fathers are business partners, you idiot. We’re all out here because our families move in the same circles. Your family’s relationship with Graham’s isn’t anything special.”

“Whatever.”

The first blueblood leaves to do his business. The second sits down on a rock and rests his rifle across his lap as he sighs. Kal watches for a moment… before shrugging and moving.

He drops in complete silence, sliding through the branches and leaves without touching a single one on the way down. There’s not even a whisper, nary a sound really before he makes contact. As such, it’s a complete surprise when his claws sink into the sitting blueblood’s back, driving right into his lungs and shredding them so rapidly and so violently that the man doesn’t even get out more than a raspy wheeze before expiring.

Meanwhile, his clawed feet land on the lower back and punch through that as well as his pelvis, claws slicing through armor and flesh and muscle and organs… and bone too for good measure.

Basically, he folds the blueblood in a single instant, pushing him down into his own lap as he draws his last breath and dies near-silently. His rifle ends up trapped between his torso and his legs, while his arms dangle helplessly, all strength that might have moved to them leaving his body in mere moments.

There’s a choked spasm as blood splatters out of his mouth and onto the ground in front of him… and that’s it. Nothing else. Kal has made his first kill.

Well, he’s made his first kill in this new body. Technically, the blueblood is the second man he’s ever killed. But, Kal reflects, he’s highly unlikely to be the last. Ripping his clawed limbs free, he drags the body up and away from the boulder, tossing it behind him into the underbrush.

Kal picks up the rifle as he does so, looking it over consideringly for a moment… but it’s too small in all the wrong places for him to wield it with his monster claws. He’d probably just end up cutting through it trying to pull the trigger, really.

Meanwhile, his enhanced hearing picks up on the other blueblood returning. That was one of the main reasons he hadn’t gone after the one taking a piss, because he knew he’d be able to hear his approach the entire while.

Hopping up onto a low tree branch, he watches and waits as the first man steps back into the clearing, juggling his rifle under one arm as he finishes fixing up his pants.

“Look, Steven, I’m sorry I snapped at you, it’s just been a long day and I’m not looking forward to four more- holy shit!”

The blueblood finally looks up and sees the coughed up blood that ‘Steven’ had left on the ground in front of his boulder seat. Its pretty much the largest trace of the other man left at this point, as the way Kal had killed him had kept most of the blood that would have exploded out of his chest contained between his torso and his legs.

The remaining ‘hunter’ quickly begins fumbling with his rifle, trying to get it lifted up and aimed even if he doesn’t have anything to actually aim it at. Kal doesn’t let him get to that point though. While part of him is curious to see how he might fare against a bullet from one of the bluebloods’ guns, he’s not willing to let himself be shot just to find out.

Instead, he leaps down and grabs the rifle in his claws before the blueblood can fully bring it to bear, ripping it out of the man’s grasp and squeezing as hard as he can at the same time. The screeching sound of metal against metal fills the clearing as he leaves the rifle unusable in mere moments.

“What the fuck?!”

Kal can’t help but grin toothily as the blueblood falls on his ass, looking up at him with wide, horrified eyes. The grin diminishes somewhat when a certain smell fills his enhanced nostrils, however. Ugh, this was why he’d let the idiot piss before doing this… but obviously, he hadn’t accounted for the bowels.

Whatever. Ignoring the smell, Kal crouches down in front of the blueblood, looking him eye to eye while flexing his claws still covered in the blood of the young man’s friends. He tilts his head to the side and bares his fangs menacingly.

… And then he pauses. Because, uh… he clearly hadn’t thought this all the way through. See, his plan had been simple. He’d wanted more information. And to be fair, he’d gotten some of it just from stalking these two and listening to them talk. He knew the ringleader was Graham, he knew they were all complicit and he knew not a single one of them hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

But obviously Kal had wanted to know more than that. He’d wanted to know things like what other munitions they might have in their camp, or how they’d gotten on the island and how they were getting off of it. Put simply… he’d planned to capture one of them alive and interrogate them.

There was just one major problem with that… he couldn’t fucking speak. His vocal cords no longer seemed capable of pronouncing human words. He could growl, he could warble, he could gurgle, he could howl. But talk? Ask questions? Demand answers? Nope, none of that.

“P-Please don’t kill me. Oh god, please!”

And so now he had this fucking idiot who shit himself cowering in front of him begging for his life and he couldn’t ask him anything. Oh sure, Kal could try and do charades or something. He could even try and draw in the dirt and make the blueblood understand that way.

… But part of him rebelled at the thought of using the claws he just used to eviscerate this guy’s friend to draw out a diagram of what he wanted from him. It was just… humiliating. He’d lose the intimidation factor completely if he started drawing and grunting and pointing like some fucking caveman.

Of course, he’s also paused long enough now that the blueblood is slowly coming down from his spike of terror and has actually opened his eyes enough to take Kal in. Horror and fear are etched across his face as he regards the killing machine that Kal has transformed into.

“What… what even are you? You’re definitely not the quarry. Oh my fucking god… did Graham send you to mess with us? No… with me? Steven, are you in on this bullshit?!”

Kal blinks as the blueblood scrambles to his feet despite the fact that Kal is looming over him ready to kill him in a single instant. He’s so caught off guard by the sheer audacity of the play that he doesn’t even stop it from happening. Not that the blueblood could have run away from him anyways, he’d catch him in under a second if he tried.

But that’s the thing… the man doesn’t try. He stands up and ducks out from under Kal to move past him into the middle of the clearing.

“This shit isn’t funny you guys! I need a fucking change of pants now! I swear to god Graham, sending a weapons-grade experiment after me?! Just because I didn’t like the look of the tracks! Seriously?!”

… Was this guy for real? Kal knew that bluebloods lived completely different from regular people like him. Or well, like he was anyways. He knew that they tended to be prideful by default, raised to believe they were simply better than every other human being in existence.

He even knew they could be extremely self-absorbed and egotistic to the point of ridiculousness. Hell, he remembered a story from his childhood about a group of rich young women cutting through one of the poorest districts in the city because it shaved fifteen minutes off of their time to get to some nightclub. Not a single one of those young women had survived their little ‘short cut’, but the fact that they’d thought it was a good idea in the first place was telling enough.

Of course, afterwards that entire district had been cleansed. Every single person living in it had been arrested, with many shot in the streets for resisting arrest. The place had been deserted by the time Kal was born, a cautionary tale in both directions.

“This isn’t funny you guys! Joke’s over, I know this was just a fucking prank! You can come out, Steven. This isn’t even real blood! See, I’ll show you I’m not fooled!”

Slowly, Kal turns around and watches as the blueblood crouches in front of Steven’s last gasp of life and dips a finger into the blood splatter. He then watches as the idiot brings it to his lips and licks the finger for some reason.

He immediately retches, of course.

“Oh gross! Jesus fuck you guys; you really got animal blood or something for this bullshit?! This is ridiculous!”

The man straightens up, still facing away from Kal and ranting at the woods. He seems to have completely dismissed Kal as a threat, so convinced of the world he’s constructed in his head that says Kal is just the ‘prop’ for some big practical joke he’s the butt of.

“My father won’t be happy to hear I’m being treated like this! You’re all risking multi-trillion dollar contracts for a sick fucking joke you mo-!”

SSHHCK!

At long last, Kal ends it. He steps forward and swipes the blueblood’s head off of his shoulders, killing him instantly and from behind. Better than the idiot probably deserved if he’s being honest, but at this point he just wanted this entire encounter to be over.

Besides, even if he didn’t get precisely what he wanted out of this first engagement, he’d still gotten a lot. And most importantly of all, he’d killed two of his hunters.

Two down. Ten to go.

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A/N: What do you guys think?

Also make sure to vote for your favorite title. I won’t say I’m fully locked into these three so if you think you have a better idea, feel free to shoot it out in the comments and I might take it into consideration. But otherwise, one of these will be the title!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NNnO3cOD1246y6duveVnx9ygEv997Mv-38hJq4tDv_s/edit?tab=t.0