(ooc: Not sure if the character images are from a series! Just liked the look! :X3: Also, you're not too bad yourself!)<br/><br/><br/>The honest truth was that Pepper had been losing his grit at his age. His senses were not as keen, nor his strength. But none of the hunters dare oppose him. Kid’s glossy eyes flashed to Bean’s large body beside her as they set up a makeshift camp, something that could be brushed away when they were rested without a trace. His large beard had a twig in it, which made Kid smirk slightly. He should have become their leader years ago.<br/>Pepper made a hand signal, and Kid wondered if they were screwed now. Hand signals meant they were close. His signs meant simply: No Fire.<br/>No fire also meant they were close. Kid pulled her cloak closer to her feminine frame as the guild of hunters sat for their last supper.<br/>Cold canned stew, thick like sludge with a glue-like consistency, and browned apples that had dried out like logs of wood in the hot sun. Kid ate slowly as the guild’s Alchemist circled the camp. The older, copper skinned woman mouthed words that were sacred to the hunters, and had been used to bind elements together. Holy water, wolfsbane, all of the cliché legends that movies joke about…that’s what they used. Along with traps, anything the great beast might trip off with his massive form for yards outside their camp. It only allowed the hunters to have an illusion of safety, so Kid thought to herself as she climbed up the trunk of a tree once more, her preferred vantage.<br/><br/>There was an alert silence to the campsite, a hushed adrenaline coated the surface of the air that Kid looked down upon as she gazed at her brothers and sisters. Each of them had dedicated their lives to the cause, as it had been passed down for generations in hunting families. Kid’s mother and father had died for it years ago, and she knew she would die for it too. She just hoped that wouldn’t be tonight.<br/>Her eyes drank in the large saucer of a moon, reflected a twinkling white in her gaze as she sighed. None of them would sleep, oh no, but they would rest their taught bodies until Pepper gave the command, or the Wolf was upon them.<br/><br/>Kid let her mind wander, her nimble fingertips coming up to braid pieces of her wheat-blonde hair behind her ear. She went over battle tactics, her most skilled moves, touched her belt, arms, chest and thighs where her precious knives were kept. Silver, of course. She closed her eyes at the memory of her last kill, feeling the wolf’s skin bubble and scream at the contact of her silver blades. It made an icy chill spike through her veins, her eyes flickering open. The hunters and the wolves were not so different. Both had ancient blood and specialties that were above human, although the skills of the hunter were closer to their human roots than the latter. It took many of them to take down a wolf, and the scars she had gathered were only a whisper of the marks the others held from old wolf hunts. But they could do it, she felt it in her core.<br/>As the moon drifted slowly through the sky, dusty cloud-cover turned the world black. Kid stiffened at her perch, feeling the change in the air like the zap of an electric current. Her group felt it too, as people slowly began to rise and look each other in the eyes. No more resting now. Something big was moving through the woods, as rabbits, mice, squirrels and other small creatures fled through the campsite down below. Kid rose, standing on her lithe feet on the slim branch, balanced gracefully as if she were a diver about to take a nose-dive. Soundlessly, her soft lips moved to chant the vow of their ancestors, the vow of the Hunter to slay the Beast.