Janet made her way to the end of the table. D and Nakoia took the seats closest to them. When everyone was seated, Janet began to explain.
“Now... as most of you know, I’ve been planning this expedition for some time...” She began.
D looked around the room. Never in his life, outside of Castle Velours, or any other land his father owned, had he been in the same room with so many dunpeals. The hybrids were rare to see normally, let alone finding three in the same human settlement. He figured she was probably looking around for a long time to find them all.
“Two days from now, we’ll be getting on a ship and heading west, to the untamed lands of Cyrus--“
“I don’t know about that.” D interrupted her suddenly.
“Excuse me?” She said with a frown.
“You, above all, should know how dangerous it is there. To just invite yourself into vampire land is suicide.”
“Well, what do you think we hired you for, Mr. D?”
D gave her an annoyed look and Brock turned to him. “Are you saying you won’t do it?” He asked concernedly.
“No.” D answered. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. Now if you would stop with your squabbling, we could get down to business. Brock, the map.”
“Gee... she almost seemed nice at first.” D heard the symbiote mutter from his left hand. He frowned and squeezed the arm of his chair so that the parasite could say no more. Luckily for the dunpeal, the creature was speaking to softly for anyone who didn’t have hearing like D to notice, which ruled out everyone but Slade. When he looked up, the other dunpeal was staring at him oddly.
Brock reached into his bag and pulled out a large, neatly rolled piece of paper. He slipped the rubber band off and unrolled a map of the lands of Cyrus flat on the table. Janet immediately stood up and looked over it, then pointed a small, slender finger at a red dot drawn on a coast of the map. “This is where we’ll anchor the ship. According to the information our helicopters brought back, if we head southwest from there we can reach the ruins by the next day...”
D was trying to listen, but was being distracted. Slade was sitting next to him and seemed to be slowly leaning towards him, staring right at the hunter. The hunter was glaring back, but didn’t move. After a moment, the dunpeal parted his lips and began to speak.
“....Duma une semue, fula umen.” Slade said just above a whisper. “Soue uma kura luem soue muna deom noeh.”
Stunned, D’s eyes grew wide. “...What?” He asked.
“Slade!” Brock said suddenly turning to them. “Leave him alone, for Christ’s sake!”
“No. It’s alright...” D murmured.
Janet put a hand on her hip and glared in their direction. “We’ll all be staying in the same hotel. Perhaps you should use this time to get to know each other before we head out.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two days later, D was standing at the dock early that morning watching the sun rise. The dark waters on the horizon glittered with red and orange as the sun peeked over the ocean. The gentle, soothing sounds of the waves splashing against the sand, calls of coastal birds, and faint, morning noises from the town to his back filled the air around him as he stared off into the distance, wondering what exactly they’d find when they reached the shores of the wretched western continents.
“Morning.” A woman’s voice came from behind him. The sound of the weathered dock wood under her boots and the faint rattle of some trinkets and ornaments hanging from her belt got louder as she sternly walked up to him and stood next to the hunter. D didn’t need to turn his head to see who it was; the intertwining threads of tobacco smoke that drifted past his face already signified the woman’s identity. “Hey... D?”
The dunpeal turned his head to look at the young woman. Nakoia had her hood down and had tossed her cape behind her shoulders, now D could see her without obstruction. Her brown hair, which was so dark it almost looked black, had been pulled back into a messy ponytail. She was rather short, and her skin was an auburn color, dark for the usually pale dunpeal. Her features looked as if most of her human part was that of an Indian race.
“Cigar?” She asked, looking up at him.
D shook his head and turned his attention back to the sunrise.
“So... what do you know about the Cyrus?” The dunpealess said, fumbling with one of her trinkets.
The hybrid took a deep breath, then let it out. “Enough.” He looked down at the object in her hands and realized he recognized the small symbol.
She put it away as soon as she noticed him looking at it. “Mmm hmm...” She tapped her cigar and let some ash fall to the ground. “Well, I sure hope so. ‘Cause these people don’t seem to have the slightest clue... Speaking of which...” Nakoia smirked and turned her head.
D huffed, then turned to see what she was looking at and saw Janet, Erin, and Tabitha standing next to a bulky caravan they had just parked. With its rear to the ocean, they opened it up and began to load supplies and equipment from off the van and onto the boat they were going to take.
Janet was quick to scamper over to the hunters. “Is Brock and Slade here yet?” She asked.
Nakoia shook her head.
“Damnit, if they’re not here on time... Well, you guys better be ready. We’re leaving as soon as we’re done loading up. So, why don’t you two get off your butts and give us a hand?” She spun back around and started back towards the caravan.
“...I guess she’s not much of a morning person.” Nakoia snickered.
D turned and headed towards his cyborg, which he had secured on a nearby post. As he prepared to walk it to the stalls inside the ship with the rest of the horses, he saw a small vehicle drive up to the docks and stop abruptly. There were three people in it, the two bothers, from days before, and their driver. Brock got out of the passenger side, then pushed the back of the seat forward to get access to the area behind the seats, a narrow, cramped area, which wasn’t really a place meant for people to be sitting. He poked his head in, then his arm, but was met with some resistance. Their navigator banged his free fist against the side of the vehicle; D could tell he was angry. The young man turned and stomped over to the other side of the car. The driver jumped out of the vehicle and let Brock reach in again, struggling more violently now. After a moment, Slade jumped out of the opposite side of the car and took off running. His brother chased after him and caught up with him in no time. After a short wrestle, he pinned the dunpeal on the ground and began to angrily shout at him. It was an odd thing to see, since Slade was a dunpeal, you would expect him to overpower Brock, not vice versa. The navigator finally got up and dragged his dunpeal brother onto the ship.
The commotion had gotten the attention of everyone near by, but as the two disappeared into the boat and the driver that had brought them left the scene, everyone turned back to their business. However, D’s curiosity got the best of him and, after he was done putting his horse away, we went to find the two brothers.