“Athropophagist.” Pt. 1
(This is gonna be in chapters, so strap in.)
Warnings: death, gore, cannibalism, decapitation, dismemberment, dark content overall, ✨murder✨, a dash of psychological torment 😚, also this is featuring yours truly this is my story I do what I want, Zenitsu goes a lil coo coo for Cocoa Puffs, actually more like a lot crazy, graphic themes, swearing, mentions of *a lot* of blood, don’t read this if you’re sensitive to that, uhhhh like a thriller horror movie type thing but like it’s Zenitsu, yes I know he’s weaker than the Hashira but let me live okay, this is literally just based off of a dream I had, also these are warnings for the entirety of the series not just this chapter
Dead Dove Do Not Eat: I know. I killed it myself and now it haunts me in my sleep.
You have been warned. This series will be very dark, and is certainly not for the faint of heart.
Reblogs and feedback are welcome!
*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* [click]
“Ughhhh…what time is it? …Great, it’s already noon…” Charlotte said, slowly rising out of her bed. Her alarm clock read 12:05. She had slept in. Well, at least she didn’t have to go to work, since it was a weekend.
She could hear everyone downstairs, most likely making lunch or doing whatever. She slid on her slippers and was pulling on her sweatshirt, when she heard her door open.
“Hey! You’re up, finally. I had half a mind to wake you up myself.” said Tengen’s voice from her doorway. Charlotte rolled her eyes, slipping one of her arms through a sleeve and flipping him off.
Tengen scoffed. “Rude. Anyways, turn on some damn lights, you’re gonna turn into a vampire if you always sulk around in the dark. C’mon, it’s lunch time already.” he said, turning on a light switch.
Charlotte groaned and rubbed her face as the light hit her eyes, trying to adjust to the brightness. Even though it was pretty much noon, she was still tired as hell. But lunch did sound pretty good.
“Okay, fine. I’ll be down in like two seconds.” she said, shuffling over to her vanity. She heard Tengen close the door and his footsteps retreat into the hallway.
After freshening up a bit and prodding a bit at her face, she decided she looked decent enough to head downstairs. She grabbed her phone off of her nightstand and headed out her bedroom door.
She slowly made her way down the stairs, looking at any potential messages her friends or family had left her. Hmmm. That’s a bit odd. No one had texted her since yesterday. Her friends were pretty much always online, and her mother always bombarded her with texts asking about things.
But she hadn’t received a single one…
“I’m probably overthinking it…” she thought to herself. “they’re probably all busy or on vacation, or something.”
She put her phone in her pocket and descended the rest of the stairs. She saw Shinobu, Kanao, and Tomioka in the kitchen, most likely making lunch. She caught a glimpse of the butterfly triplets and Aoi playing outside, with Mitsuri watching them from the porch.
Everyone else was either in the living room or somewhere else around the house.
“Ah! You’re awake. Come, come, Lottie. Make yourself some food.” Tengen said, ruffling her hair. Charlotte rolled her eyes and headed towards the kitchen and to the refrigerator. She didn’t feel like making anything, so she grabbed some fruit and sat down on the couch.
Tengen sat down next to her not even a moment later, provoking a groan from her.
“Can’t I ever get rid of you for more than five minutes?” she grumbled. Tengen laughed beside her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Nope! The wonderful perks of having me as your best friend! Say, have you seen Zenitsu or Nezuko? I haven’t seen either of ‘em since they left.” he said.
Charlotte looked around the room before back at Tengen again.
“No, I haven’t, actually…do you know where they went?” she asked him. Tengen just shook his head. So apparently he didn’t know their whereabouts either.
“Come to think of it, Zenitsu was acting a bit strange when they left. All cold and stuff. Seemed frustrated, no, rushed. Like there was a reason he wanted the two of them to le—” he was interrupted by an alert coming from his phone.
Charlotte got one as well, as it was vibrating fervently in her pocket. Apparently the whole area had gotten the alert.
“‘Serial killer/cannibal on the loose?’ Sounds like bullshit to me.” Tengen said, putting his phone away. Charlotte began to feel uneasy by the alert. Everyone else’s phones had gotten the alert, as well, and began to move towards the living room.
“I don’t know, Ten…but what about Zenitsu and Nezuko? They’re still out there!” Charlotte said.
“You don’t think they’re hurt or anything, are they?” Aoi asked, coming in from outside with the butterfly triplets on her trail.
“Well…we can’t be positive unless we go look for them.”
“I’ll look for them! I’ll take Inosuke and Genya with me, as well!” Tanjiro piped up. Charlotte thought for a moment, before answering.
“Alright, Tanjiro. As long as you’ll be safe?” Charlotte asked.
Tanjiro nodded eagerly. “Yes! You have my word, Ms. Charlotte.”
And with that, the three of them headed out the front door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Do you think they’re alright? It’s been hours, now…” Kanao asked nervously, sitting next to Charlotte in the living room. Charlotte bit her lip.
“I don’t know, Kanao. Wherever they are, I’m sure they’re perfectly—” she was interrupted by her cellphone ringing loudly beside her.
Huh…Tanjiro’s calling her. Is something wrong?
“Hey guys? You might wanna come here.” she said, picking up the phone and putting it on speaker.
“Tanjiro? Hello? Is everything alright?”
“Charlotte! Thank goodness you picked up! I was worried we wouldn’t be able to get a hold of you all..” his voice sounded…panicked. Scared. And the connection was all off, too. His voice was glitching in and out, and the screen was lagging.
“Tanjiro? What happened? Where’s Inosuke and Genya?” Charlotte asked, a little panicked too.
“We’re here! I wish this was under better circumstances, though…” she heard Genya’s voice from the background.
“He’s gone crazy! Blood and guts everywhere…it was like he was eating her!” came Inosuke’s voice.
“Who? Who’s gone crazy?” Tengen asked.
“Zenitsu! He’s…he’s…” Tanjiro started, his voice breaking. Where those…tears?
“He’s what? What did he do?” Charlotte asked.
“He’s killed and eaten her! He killed Nezuko!” Genya said. Tanjiro shushed both of them as he frantically looked around. Charlotte noticed there were trees surrounding them.
“…Tanjiro…?”
Charlotte didn’t even get an answer before all hell broke loose. Tanjiro’s phone had fallen to the ground face down, but not before crimson blood flashed the screen.
They all heard screams coming from the phone, but the call disconnected after only a few seconds. Everyone sat in silence, not knowing what to do.
Charlotte felt something in her gut, deep, deep down. It wasn’t a good feeling, not at all. Something was wrong. So very, very, very wrong…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And that is the end of part/chapter one! Stay tuned for more, if you dare.
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The boy stops in his tracks. “I know you,” he says, tilting his head curiously. He’s not tall, but he’s regal nonetheless, dressed all in white. Something about him makes Leia’s hair stand on end, and although she hides it she feels a stirring in her own chest. I know you like I know my own soul, she thinks wildly, and wonders where it came from. Has she gone insane?
“That’s nice,” she says, and shoots him anyway.
He deflects it in a flash of light, a glowing blue laser sword appearing in his hand like magic. She’s only seen one of those before, and it’s Vader’s. If this boy is anything like Vader, she realizes, she’s in deep shit.
She’s smart enough to know when she’s outmatched. Leia makes the tactical decision to run for her life.
Later, as she’s getting the hell out of there, she wonders why he didn’t try to stop her.
She remembers being young and tugging on her mothers skirts, demanding to know why their guest was so sad. “Does he not like it here?” She’d asked, and then, trembling, because Kenobi always seemed saddest around her. “Is it…because of me?”
“Oh, Leia,” her mother sighed, lifting her into her arms. “It’s not that, I promise.”
“Then what is it?”
“Master Kenobi lost a child under his care, years ago.” Breha’s eyes grew deeper, darker. “It was not his fault, but he blames himself. You remind him of that child, that’s all.”
Leia had quieted at that, contemplative.
The next time she’d seen Master Kenobi, she had given him a hug. He didn’t seem to know what to do with that, so she resolved to give him more of them. “He’s lonely,” she’d told her mother. “No one should be lonely.”
Looking at Obi-Wan Kenobi now, the memory seemed so far away. He’d aged thirty years in the ten it had been.
He looks, Leia thinks with a small twinge of regret, very lonely.
“Leia,” he greets. “It’s been a long time.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Leia sees a glint of white.
Kenobi freezes in his tracks. “Luke?” He whispers, and through the distance Leia can hear it as if he’d been speaking directly into her ear.
Master Kenobi lost a child under his care, her mother whispers in her head. He blames himself.
In an instant, Leia understands everything.
Kenobi is still staring at the boy he’d lost so long ago when Vader cuts him down.
Later, as she’s pacing around on the Falcon to Han muttering darkly about Princesses and supernatural abilities, she rememberers the way the boy collapsed, as if all his strings had been cut. Vader was too occupied with him to even look at her as she shot at him desperately.
Luke. She hates him more than she hates herself.
“They know where you are,” he hisses frantically. “They’re coming for you. You have to run.”
“Wait!” Leia quickly pulls up their sonar. Nothing yet, but it would explain the distant queasiness she’d felt since they’d landed. She tended to trust her gut. “How do you know? How much time do we have?”
“Not important, and not enough,” he says. “I have to go, and so do you. You need to leave yesterday.”
“How do I know I can trust you? I don’t even know who you are.”
He pauses. “Call me Skywalker.”
“That’s not an answer, Skywalker.”
“Yes it is.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but there are faint voices on the other end, drawing nearer.
“Shit,” Skywalker mutters. “I have to go. I’ll be in contact, okay? Don’t ever tell me where you are, or where you’re heading. Vader and Palpatine aren’t shy about reading minds. Just leave as soon as you can, and figure out the rest.”
“But—“
It’s too late. The comm has disconnected.
She stares down at it, disbelieving. How would the Empire know they’re here? Why should she trust a stranger who somehow got her personal comm code?
Gut feeling or not, on paper this was a perfect location. Supplied, armored, and most importantly, extremely well hidden. There was no real reason to think it would possibly be found out.
It’s probably a trap. Almost definitely a trap.
Han sticks his head in the door, a sour look on his face. “Hey Princess, can you tell these idiots—“
She makes a decision then and there.
“We’re leaving.”
“What?”
“We’re evacuating, effective immediately.” She pushes past him, and he follows so close he’s nearly stepping on her heel.
“Why? I think it’s pretty cozy here. Actual sunlight doesn’t hurt, either.”
“Apparently too cozy.” She grabs the first person she sees, a pilot who stares at her with wide eyes. “Emergency evacuation. Spread the word to pack everything you can and leave, I’ll let you know where we’re headed when we’re in orbit.”
He salutes and scurries off.
“Woah, hey now.” Han snatches at her elbow until she turns around to face him. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a new informant. He told me the Empire knows we’re here. They’re coming for us.”
“And you trust this person because…”
“I don’t have a choice,” she snaps. Someone runs past them, holding three packs filled to the brim with rations. “It’s either he’s lying and we’re not in danger, or he’s telling the truth and we’re going to die if we don’t listen. It’s not exactly hard math.”
It could be a trap of course, but he hadn’t suggested any sort of direction or destination to follow, and Leia wasn’t inclined to share. Especially not after his tidbit about Vader and Palpatine reading minds.
He squints at her. “That’s not it.”
“What?”
“I don’t believe you,” he insists. He’s so infuriating. Leia doesn’t know why she hasn’t kicked him out yet.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do, and you’re either gonna tell me why, or find a different transport when we head out of here.”
“Who said I was riding on your hunk of junk?” She demands. She actually was planning on going with them, since the Falcon has more than enough room for all the supplies that can’t fit in the other ships and none of the trustworthiness of the other pilots, but Han doesn’t need to know that.
“Well?”
Damn him. Damn him for knowing how to read her. She doesn’t know when she let that happen.
“I feel it,” she admits, defeated. “Something tells me he’s trustworthy. We’ll wait and see if it’s right.”
He studies her. She holds her head high, but inside she’s jittery at the scrutiny. They don’t have time for this.
“Yeah, all right,” Han finally says.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He rolls his eyes, like she’s not acting absolutely insane by putting all her trust in a random man she’s never even met. “Now come on, Princess, weren’t you the one who said we had to hurry?”
What is it about this man that makes it impossible to tell whether she wants to punch him or drag him into the nearest supply closet? They don’t have time to find out.
“So there’s good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first,” she demands.
“They know there’s a mole.”
“Shit.” Of course they know, how could they not? She should have been more careful, less obvious about the correlation of their movements with the Empire’s plans. “The good news?”
“They’ve tasked me with hunting down this ‘pathetic rebel spy,’” Skywalker says, humor in his voice. “That should buy me some time.”
Leia can’t quite stop the snort she lets out. “Seriously?”
“Yep. You’re speaking to a professional mole-hunter, here.”
“Well congratulations on the promotion, Skywalker.”
“Thank you,” he says grandly. Then, quieter, “It won’t last, Princess. They’ll find out eventually.”
“I know. Just hang in there, it will be over soon.”
“Will it?” He asks, suddenly sounding very young. She realizes that she has no idea how old he is. She doesn’t know anything about the man who has saved them more times than she cared to admit, and the idea rattles her until they sign off.
Later, she looks up the name Skywalker in their archives. There are a few results, but only one sticks out.
Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight and hero of the Clone Wars. Killed at the hands of Darth Vader. There are gossip articles too, speculations on his relationship with the pregnant Senator Padmé Amidala, who died around the same time Skywalker did. The baby, it seems, died with her.
Unless he didn’t.
It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. The idea is so ludicrous that Leia almost rejects it entirely.
But it makes sense. By the Maker, it makes sense.
The child of Anakin Skywalker, it seems, would be a powerful Force user indeed. Powerful enough for Kenobi to take the baby and run. Powerful enough for the Emperor to want him for his own gain. Powerful enough to send Vader after Kenobi and take the boy himself.
Maybe even powerful enough to shield his mind from Vader and Palpatine’s intrusions.
Powerful enough to hide the fact that he’s a spy.
Leia sinks into her chair, covering her face as she laughs.
Maybe Luke isn’t so bad after all.
“No, no, no,” she mutters, digging through the smoking wreckage of the TIE fighter. “Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.”
“Princess…” Han lays a hand on her shoulder that she immediately shrugs off.
“No, he’s not dead. He’s not. Luke!”
A faint cough answers her, and she’s so relieved to hear it she could cry. Behind her, Han starts bellowing for a medic and, “Some damn help here, do you expect us to move all this ourselves?”
“Luke, it’s me,” she sobs. “It’s Leia. You’re at the Rebel Base. You’re safe.”
More coughing, and there’s a worrying rasp to his voice when he says, “You know…my name?”
“I figured it out.”
“Smart.” This time, the coughing is so bad Leia and Han both wince.
“Shit, kid,” Han says, moving another piece of rubble. “Don’t talk. We’re gonna get you out of here, all right?”
“Stand back,” Luke chokes out.
“What?”
“Stand back. Please.”
Han protests, but something in Leia knows they should listen to him. She drags him back, and motions everyone else to fall back with them. They do, albeit reluctantly.
“Clear,” she calls, hoping Luke can hear her.
The TIE explodes.
“Fuck!” Han goes back in, Leia on his heels with the terrifying feeling that she’d just allowed Luke to die, before they both stop in their tracks. Around them, the broken pieces of the TIE are floating.
And curled up in the middle is a man dressed all in white.
“Luke!” She pushes past Han to start dragging him out, and after another moment of staring around them, he helps her.
As soon as they get clear, the pieces fall to the ground with a clatter. Luke falls limp with them.
Han is still looking at the TIE. “Can you do that?” He asks quietly.
Leia pauses her examination of the unconscious man in front of her to glare at him. “Is that what you’re most concerned with right now? Really?”
“Excuse me for asking, Princess!”
“It’s white,” Luke grumbles, pulling at his hospital gown bitterly. “I hate wearing white.”
“Should I be offended?”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t even. You look great and you know it. I just feel like I never left.”
“Well,” she says gingerly. “I guess it’s a good thing you got sick of it. If we went around in matching outfits all the time, people might think we’re twins.”
He snorts. “Yeah, right.”
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