Blood Oath (Ozaki)

As if he was just worried about that. Ozaki was going to have to take her through Eldritch Academy. Currently he was glad he still had that dart stashed up one of his sleeves. But she seemed intelligent enough not to go off just eating anyone. Despite his hesitance, when he heard her struggling to walk, he of course turned right around to help.

There was of course no way Ozaki would just keep walking in hearing her struggle so much with standing, never mind walking. He turned around and offered her a hand. “I can help if you want.” If she accepted he’d even go so far as being a makeshift crutch to walk on, if she permitted anyways.

When she made the joke about eating all those types of things he laughed along with her, a little less nervous than before. At least that was he was trying to give the impression of. Vampires were known to drink the blood of humans, if he acted too strange about it it might make him look weird. He was trying to keep an open mind here. She had not lived as part of their society before, undoubtedly her only experience of it had been hunters like him trying to kill her. Maybe her opinion of their world would change if she got to experience it first hand…

However long that lasted. “Then again… Maybe your new stomach will have different dietary needs.” Her body was kind of mostly human right now. When she started being consumed by The Blight however…

He was really debating right now what to do with her. The fact that she had eaten people in the past was clear. He was worried she may try and continue the pattern. If she had to that was perhaps something he couldn’t judge… But it was also something he couldn’t particularly accept if she went after innocent people or Eldritch Academy students. Plus, he was half certain she was joking about needing to eat people in particular. He’d test it out first if he didn’t just dart her entirely.

He felt kind of terrible stereotyping her like this… but she had basically admitted to killing already. He’d also feel bad for actually doing anything to her now. She was alone and in a strange new body with no idea how it even worked. It was a situation too similar to his own for him to turn his back now.

When Ozaki saw the skeletons he had to pause a moment. Lets see. Burnt down building. Charred to the bone skeletons. A newly made draconian. The pieces weren’t hard to put together. Killing these guys had likely been one of her last acts as a dragon.

“It does. We can swing by the lunch room if you can wait that long… Though if… Aaahh… Well I have some elemental newts on me. But don’t think you’d want those… Or to eat them. I don’t mean offense. Its just… Literally the only thing I have right now. I mean I have a blood pack but… I doubt that’d be enough.” He was rambling now, he really had to stop before he started sounding like an idiot. 

He was feeling a bit squeamish being around the human remains. It was a bonus that they weren’t bloody. But still… He felt like he couldn’t just leave them here… Charred bones were too valuable of an occult resource to just leave lying in the middle of a forest. Ozaki would have to return later for them. There were too many to collect now anyways and Cyn took priority. If he didn’t get them at some point his boss would turn him into a rabbit and chase him around the warehouse. Again.

She was less the type to ask why and more why not. Which was great considering the methods he used to ensure the school had enough blood for their hemophages were a bit shady. But bad in that if his boss heard he’d left a whole house full of unclaimed charred skeletons just sit there, or if he just buried them… She wouldn’t be happy.

Ozaki started walking again, realizing he had stopped in his thinking about the dead bodies. Cyn had likely been here for awhile, but that didn’t mean they could just linger for too long without getting her treatment.

The half a liter pack he had on him would likely not be enough if she could actually drink from it. It would only have a measly calorie count of four hundred fifty. Each draconian was different with its origins. Meaning research on any individual one might not apply to the next. Ozaki did not know Cyn’s caloric needs, but he did know that she was likely starving right now.

Then again. With as many times as Nyx had fed on him, he had a good handle on how to make blood devil venom at this point. He’d been feeding a blood devil about twice a day for awhile now. That half a liter might as well be five liters. The bag itself was not large enough to carry that much, but so long as she gave it back to him before she drained it, he could keep filling it. Ozaki probably wouldn’t get as much as five liters out of it considering the blood that the venom forced to divide to extreme rates could not keep dividing after a certain point. Ozaki hadn’t exactly thought to bring a water bottle or any other kind of drinking container with him.

Maybe he should start carrying one? He already carried so much on him usually though…

This time when she called him little vampire he just resigned himself to it. He guessed that was a thing now. His bats still called him Little Bat, even after all his insisting, and at times ordering, to the contrary. Such an order only lasted so long apparently when they really thought the name was appropriate.

He caught what she tossed out of him, only out of impulse though. Ozaki quickly dropped it before his squeamishness could get the best of him. They were human remains. Ozaki dealt with all sorts of corpses with this job. Human ones just felt different though. His boss was a kitsune though… She would not particularly care of the awkwardness this would present later once she heard about the skeletons. She’d send him right back out to fetch them. He’d do it now given that. But Cyn took higher priority than six charred skeletons that were obviously not going anywhere.

Given her inevitable fate Ozaki fully supported their current fully roasted status. As Cyn curled around him he felt himself tense up slightly at the proximity of the woman. He could even feel her breath breeze past his ear. Nope. Nope nope nope. This was not the time or place to be thinking anything like that. She was heavily injured, cloths a mangled mess, and covered with ash and rubble of the building that had fallen on her. The fact she was well endowed with fine features should be the last thing on his mind right now.

Damn it all sometimes he hated this teenage body.

“Ahh… I guess I’m the second. But I wouldn’t really say there’s only two people though. I mean people say that a lot about a lot of different things.” There were two types of people in the world. Victims and survivors. There were two kinds of people in the world. Those that rose up and those that were the stepping stones for those people. Predator and prey. Strong and weak.

All the ones he could think of now were on that theme. She probably wouldn’t take him on his word that he had said that… Indeed that’d probably been a rhetorical statement. He pulled out a blood pack from one of the internal pockets of his trench coat, one that he kept chilled in order to maintain the freshness of the blood within.

It didn’t taste as good when it was cold of course. Microwaving it was the worst idea in the world. And boiling it didn’t really get it to the right temperature either. Really any attempt to heat it up was a cheap attempt at the real rush of drinking it actually fresh from someone’s neck… By Ambrogio’s blood damn it. He had to stop thinking that. It was just harder after his most recent slip up. The memory was fresh on his mind, and as much as he might try to ignore it it took little provocation to bring it back.

He started walking again himself, handing Cyn the plastic blood pack. There was a label on it marking it as coming from Eldritch academy, and it listened information such as Blood type and other various things. Naturally there was a barcode on it as well. He unscrewed the cap on top before handing it over to make it easy to drink from. “I guess you could try it and see if it works… If it does just hand it back to me when you get it to half way. I can fill it back up a few times if you don’t think that will be enough.” He was certainly thinking it wouldn’t be, if this were possible for her to drink.

Upon realizing she had no intention on handing the blood bag back he of course realized that he did not even need her to do that at all for his talent to work. He simply turned a portion of the blood into blood devil venom and let her devour it. There was no time to allow the blood to expand with the venom, so instead it would expand while it was in her stomach to about 4.25 liters.

“You’ll probably start to feel a bit fuller in a couple of minutes.” Ozaki replied to her statement of hunger.

He could not be certain of her dietary requirements, since every draconian was different based on what kind of species they had been before and at what point they were in their degration. But there was a way to figure out rather quickly what kind of food she’d be able to eat… And potentially an estimate of how much she could eat in a meal.

Don’t do it. That’s a stupid idea. Ozaki thought to himself. This was clearly someone a little shady. Someone who had eaten people before… But could he really judge? He’d done that himself. Really don’t do it Ozaki. Don’t. This is probably a terrible idea.

“After we get your wing treated I know a good buffet we could try. That could help us figure out a bit more of what you can and can’t eat in this new body of yours. I don’t have any more blood on me… But that is an idea.” Aaaah man. He did it. Oh dear.

Thievery and murder. Yah… Ozaki himself could not say he did not have experience with those kinds of things. His earlier time as a vampire had been filled with more than a few shredded corpses. And after a certain point… He had figured what point was there in leaving their cash with them? He needed it more than they did.

Ozaki wasn’t proud of those things though. Unlike Cyn seemed to be saying. She practically seemed to be bragging about it. Then again. She could be talking about people who had tried to steal from her hoard in the past or people who had tried to kill her. She’d view those as murderers. But no. She’d already brought up eating people and enjoying it. He was going to have to try and draw a line here, though he tried to do it mildly as he could in an attempt not to upset her in some way. “Look… I get as a dragon that kind of stuff may not have been a big deal… I mean for you anyways. But unless you’re going to go out living in the woods again after your wing gets fixed… Not that there’s a problem with that… But… I mean even if that, you probably shouldn’t go spouting that kind of stuff.”

Dragons needed a lot of space, so they weren’t typically city dwellers unless they were the smaller breeds or the ones capable of changing their size and appearance.

What did he put into it? Something his boss had recommended to keep on the down low given the implications of having a substance that could multiply blood by tenfold. Blood was on average worth about 145 bucks per pint at wholesale value. The ability to increase it to such extreme levels through the blood devil venom was a little crazy if you looked at the financial implications. This little fact about the species hadn’t even hit the text books yet, seeing as Ozaki himself had been on the research trip about it, and it just hadn't gotten published officially yet. 

It was potentially something he shouldn’t just be using to fill up a draconian’s stomach a bit more but… Hey. What use was his talent if he couldn’t use it to help people anyhow? “Trade secret?” He offered with a weak smile. Oh dear. That might make her more curious. Oh well… He’d have to deal with that later.

He grimaced at being called little vampire again, but the next words out of her mouth were more abrasive than the off handed comment. That level of vitrol came as an unpleasant surprise coming from someone who had already brought up eating people multiple times. Then again perhaps she had taken personal offense to him, a vampire of all people bringing it up. He grimaced as he tried to formulate a response. Fact of the matter was vampires did not have to kill their prey to eat it… Indeed it was within their benefit to not go killing people, lest it bring down the wrath of vampire hunters down on their heads.

Plus, they couldn’t drink dead man’s blood.

But him stating the fact that vampires didn’t have to kill to get their fill was… A bit hypocritical coming from him… Considering almost every time thus far he had drank from a person he slipped right into a lethal blood frenzy for his target. He’d stuck to exclusively blood packets for years specifically to avoid this troublesome habit of his… Of which he’d gotten an unfortunate refresher course of how very alive it still was.

Years without biting a single person, yet get a bite in and those cravings to taste those last dying breaths came right back to the forefront of his mind. It was all he could do to repress such cravings from popping up in incidents such as finding a bloodied and beaten draconian… Though the black blood was a clear warning to stay away. He wasn’t going to risk messing with that.

“Just saying you might want to keep a lid on that kind of talk when we get into the academy and the city. Most people don’t take well to hearing talk about eating people.” The only reason he could theoretically let it pass was he literally had no room to talk. Just as he said that an alabaster white circle on the ground with ruins carved into it could be spotted in the clearing ahead. It was a wide circle with a radius of around five feet. Funny how now she was backing off on the idea of having to eat live people... But odds were that had just been pulling his leg earlier now he thought of it. That may have just been a preference... Ozaki drew his hand through his hair as his mind drifted for a moment back to Annabelle. Eaten whole and alive by a dragon... No. Couldn't be. Even if she did have the same colored wings. That could easily be a coincidence. Annabelle... His heart ached at her memory. 

Given the fact that in her prior life she sounded like a people eating dragon it was probably for the best she had never seen a city nor knew what it was like. But it did present a problem for sure, he’d have to make sure to keep a close watch on her while they were together. Even if she was being rather offensive. As much as Ozaki didn’t want to admit it… She probably was the type to eat people. And that wasn’t a joke. Again he couldn’t judge. But… “You should know most people are going to take offense to that kind of talk. Also… I’ll do what I can. And its night, so the streets should be less crowded… But there are a looooot of people in a city.”

When they reached the teleportation pad he muttered the incantation that took them back to the school. Suddenly they were in a vast room with multiple teleport pads with names of various places on placards next to them. He gave her a moment to adjust to her new surroundings before continuing on.