Chapter 4

The men in front of him stared at him, waiting for an answer. Kitty wiped his eyes, trying to erase any hint of tears. How embarrassing, caught crying his eyes out by some random strangers.

"Yeah, I'm-" Kitty cleared his throat to get rid of the choke in his voice. "I'm fine, thanks."

"You don't look fine." One of the two said. "What's wrong? Have you lost your owner?"

Kitty fought back the urge to frown. Just because he was a hybrid didn't mean that he was a slave. What was with humans thinking of his species as some kind of pet? He was sick of it.

"It's OK, I'll find him. Don't worry." Kitty excused himself and turned to leave, but the men had other ideas.

"Why don't you come with us?" The other said with a grin, as if trying to reassure him. Kitty knew he couldn't trust them. "We'll take you back to him. It's not safe around here, so it'll be better if we escort you back."

What these men were planning, Kitty didn't want to know. He declined their offer as politely as he could and broke into a fast walk. Before he could get very far, one of them grabbed his arm and yanked him back. He restrained Kitty, held him against his chest. He turned to his friend.

"Hey, how much do you think we could get for him?"

A horrified chill ran down Kitty's spine. These bastards wanted to sell him, as if he was some kind of toy. His fear was fast replaced by rage. How dare these humans treat his kind like this? They were exactly the same as them. They had intelligence, emotions and dreams, like humans did. They even had the same DNA, just with a little animal mixed in.

The anger that bubbled up inside him was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He had to get away immediately. He jerked himself forward, releasing himself from the man's arms through strength alone. He swerved around and delivered a hard punch to his potential kidnapper's crotch. The man collapsed to the ground, clutching where he hit and screaming in pain.

Kitty only intended to hurt him so he could run away, only knock the breath out of him. But the man was howling in agony. He pulled his hands away from his crotch, and Kitty saw the extent of the damage he did.

The area, the man's genitals, had completely caved in. It looked like drywall hit with a hammer. The area shattered from the force of the hit.

A horrified gasp escaped Kitty's throat. He apologised and backed away. How could he fix this? Would the men be mad at him and try to hurt him? He played with his hands, stroking them together. He did this when he was nervous, a sort of ritual to calm himself down. But it never worked, no matter how much he did it.

The other man appeared alarmed by what had happened to his friend. He gritted his teeth in rage and glared at Kitty like he wanted to kill him. Kitty's heart was racing. He felt another panic coming on. He would end up having a heart-attack with all this stress he was being put through. This thought made him even more frightened. What if he died? What if his family were alive? He couldn't die until he knew whether they were still in this world.

Kitty willed himself to run away, but his legs wouldn't move. The injured man's friend raised his fist to punch him. He closed his eyes tight and winced, waiting for the blow. But it never came. He opened his eyes to see the man frozen in terror. He was staring at something behind Kitty like a deer in headlights. Why did he look so afraid?

Before Kitty could turn his head to see what was scaring him, something small and black whizzed past his ear. The object pierced the man's head like a bullet, and he dropped backwards. The small object clattered to the floor after going all the way through his skull. Kitty's minor suspicion was correct. It was a bullet, a black bullet. After it fell, it disappeared into thin air like a shadow in the sun. This time, Kitty turned around to see who shot the shadow bullet, but a larger black cloud raced past him faster than his eyes could comprehend.

The injured man, who could somehow sit up despite being sucker-punched in the dick, also saw the mass of shadow. It was coming towards him. His face contorted in fear. Before he could fight back, a long stick swung out from the darkness and sliced his head clean off.

Once again, Kitty found himself unable to move. The shadow cloud turned into a humanoid figure, a slender male. He appeared to be around Kitty's age, an inch shorter, but he was wearing boots with large soles that raised him off the ground to mirror Kitty's height. He was wearing a black fabric costume, like the one Richard wore when he saved him but with a slightly different mask that had an upside down cross on the forehead, and blond spiky hair. The cross made it clear who this man was – Nyuujaku, the antichrist assassin. He stood over the bodies of the two humans, then turned to Kitty and stared at him. Kitty noticed the black sword in his hands, now covered with blood. That must have been what cut the man's head off.

Kitty shrank back a little, trembling. Was he going to kill him next? His heart was thumping so much he thought he really would die. It all became too much for him to bear. A horrific dizziness and nausea washed over him, and he fainted.

Before he blacked out and hit the ground, he felt arms catch him and hold him tight.