#opm garo

        Sewage, decaying rats, and other putrid scents infiltrated your nose the second the blindfold was ripped away from your face. The sight that greeted you was even worse. 

        “So this is what drives him.” A monster. Pink, round, and multi-limbed, it had one eye that stared you down while it spoke in a complacent tone. “I suppose now all we have to do is wait. He’ll be along shortly.”

        You didn’t have a clue what it was talking about, nor the brainpower to consider it. Instead, you focused on the heart-stopping sights around you. With your hands and feet tied behind your back, you sat on your knees in two-inch thick sewer sludge that soaked through the fabric of your jeans. 

        Creatures of all kinds flooded the large opening of the brick underground of City Z. Their base looked like a colosseum, several floors stacked on one another with balconies holding types of monsters you couldn’t even imagine. Some appeared human, standing on two legs but containing a wicked look in their eyes, while the others didn’t even have eyes or limbs at all. Even in the dark lighting, you could see all their gazes were locked on you like the star of a show. 

        Heart racing, you struggled to breath. Your throat closed up in fear, leaving you heaving gasps of air that choked you every once in a while. Instinctively, you wanted to scream for help, cry, or sob at the complete helplessness that overcame you, but soon it was all too much for even that.

        How do I get out of this? You flinched away when the pink, lumpy monster slithered closer to inspect you, one of the many two-fingered “arms” on its head reaching down to brush a hair from your face. It left a trail of clear slime in its wake. Oh God, please help me. Someone please!

        Swallowing a gag, you purse your lips and let out a small whimper, loud enough to have the crowd before you laughing. A tear, just one, slipped from your eye, trailing down your cheek and dripping into the rancid puddle below you. 

        You wanted to hug yourself, shove the hood of your sweatshirt over your head and curl in on yourself until you disappeared from the Earth, but that wouldn’t happen. No; sadly, this was reality. Human-sized cockroaches, five-headed serpents, and gorillas loaded with the horns of wild boars and young bucks all chattered loudly enough around you to slap you in the face with the truth. 

        Hopeless, alone, and afraid. Were they going to kill you? Was this really how you were going to die? Surrounded by these beasts, drooling with what must have been an eagerness to swallow you whole? Your entire body trembled at the thought. 

        “Help,” you whispered, head dropping far enough that your chin met your chest. “Dear God, someone help me, please.” You sounded broken, so broken. The dark layout combined with the stench of human feces burned your eyes. You’d never been so willing to just pass out in your life. 

        “Gyoro Gyoro, did you find the girl?” The question sounded more like a command, but the baritone it was delivered in made your blood freeze. Stomps thunderous enough to tremor the concrete digging into your skin left you gasping for air, hyperventilating at the owner of it all. 

        Oh fuck, oh God, oh shit. Please! Why me?!

        Tears fell at a faster rate as you danced around the edges of a panic attack, seizing up at the giant that entered the room. The flickering lights of the sewer were immediately blocked out by the colossus that entered, instead leaving it black with shadows. Its skin appeared maroon and thick, rough like a crocodile with hands and feet that ended in sharp talons. You were barely half the size of the claw on its pinkie toe, like the monstrosity could snort you up a nostril and not even choke. 

        Fear clamped onto your stomach, seizing your heart and setting your entire body into a cold sweat. Liquid fell down your brow and soaked into the collar of your hoodie with ease, making your entire body slick and unbearably hot. What. The. Hell.

        How could such a creature have been made? 

        “I do, sir.” The pink slug still standing in front of you turned to the monster, which, judging by how the others instantly stood to attention, was the leader of some sorts. 

        You understood why. 

        “So where is he, then? That human you so desperately wanted?” 

        “He should be here soon, my lord. No doubt, he will notice her absence and understand we are serious.” 

        Head still reeling with the shock of seeing such a herculean-sized titan, you could barely understand their words. “Him”? Who were they talking about?

        Your palms began to clam behind your back, and your fingers and toes began to go numb with little blood. You were used to the horrid odors by now, but every time your mouth opened a bit too wide with a panicked gasp, you gagged on the thick smoke wafting in the room. 

        You were shivering, not only from your sweat drying but also from how truly alone you felt. This was not how you wanted to die. You wanted to be surrounded by family and friends, maybe with the aroma of farewell flowers at your bedside. Instead, you were almost positive this was how it would all end, human feces soaked into your clothing while surrounded by Earth’s living mistakes. 

        Please, you clench your eyes shut and shudder out a sob, I don’t want to die.

        A flexible surface, slick with ooze and mushy like old jello, forces your chin up to meet the eye of “Gyoro Gyoro.”

        “Humans like you are so weak. They cry so easily, even at the slightest touch.”

        “Please don’t hurt me.” You’d never heard your voice crack like that, like it had crawled its own way out of your throat.

        The monster lets out a humored chuckle, releasing your chin and instead dragging its appendages down your face once more. 

        “Hurt you?” it mocks teasingly, “No, no, no. We wouldn’t do that. If anything, I could call you ‘insurance.’ You see, little human, we only brought you here to lure in a friend of ours. No doubt he’s dying to see you.” 

        A scream echoes from within one of the many forking paths of the sewer system, pained and tortured. It cuts off with a loud crack. 

        “Ooh, sounds like he’s here. Sit tight, my dear weakling!”

        As if you could go anywhere else. The scream was not even the slightest bit reassuring, and neither was being called “insurance.” Obviously, the person (or thing) just down that tunnel was the reason you were brought here in the first place, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were your savior. Please, please want to save me. I don’t want to be here anymore. 

        That first scream led to a second, then a third, then a fourth, all the way until you gave up counting, which was right around when the new arrival to the party shouted. “WHERE IS SHE?!”

        Gyoro Gyoro glanced to the side lazily, slumping his way towards where the voice was coming. But just before he could speak, you piped up without warning. 

        “HELP ME!” 

        A slime-coated limb slapped you across the face hard enough to stun you into silence. Pain lit up your right cheek and made your eyes water. Evidently, calling out to the person, audibly a man, coming to save you was not permitted. 

        But the damage had already been done. 

        It’s silent for a breath. You can hear the sharp inhale of the man searching for you from deep within the faraway tunnel as he listens to your call. Then the real horror begins. 

        From where you knelt, you could only see shadows that must have been a hundred or so feet away battling it out. The monsters versus whomever your new hope was. You were perched just that far away from the entryway of the tunnel, like a trophy on display, but that made you just that much more vulnerable to the brutal sounds of a massacre. 

        The sounds were less than pleasant, leaving you wishing you could cover your ears. Blood splattered, mixing together with sewage water as bones cracked and dead monsters squealed their last breaths. If your eyes were open, you were sure to see nothing all too pretty. 

        Howls of pain combined with animalistic growls of “how dare you touch her” and “nobody takes what’s mine.” And finally, your champion surfaced from the hall. 

        Where you thought monsters in their original form were bad, their guts hanging off the human before you was worse. 

        The man who had come for you had broad, muscular shoulders, the right torn open with a bloody gash while the left had an enemy’s dripping intestines draped over it. He might’ve been a ginger originally, or maybe he had blond hair, or white. Right now, you sure as hell couldn’t tell. Hot blood seeped down from the orange-tinted strands into his own eye, coloring the sclera a bright red. Veins ran and popped over every muscle of his bare upper body, while the simple, white sweatpants he wore were also soaked maroon. 

        His eyes locked on you the instant he emerged. He took in how you shivered, the tear stains on your face, the red mark on your cheek, the utter terror in your eyes. The sight of it all you were sure wasn’t a treat. But for the man before you? Well… 

        He went berserk. 

        After every movement he made trailed a shimmering line of cyan, but that’s all you could follow. Like a bullet, he moved too fast for the naked eye, pouncing back and forth around the open colosseum of monsters. In his wake, he left a gory mass of carnage. Limbs from every animal and bug you could think of still twitched with life, freshly detached from their owners, who didn’t even get a chance to scream. Roars of anger from the man flooded the room as he latched onto one mutated beast after another, tearing them entrails from raw entrails. 

        You wouldn’t be able to get those cries out of your head for months, and for once in your life, you pitied monsters. After all, who would want to be ripped to shreds like a rat in a cat’s paws? For once in your life, you finally saw monsters as prey. 

        Gyoro Gyoro and his lord had obviously gone barking up the wrong tree.

        “You touched her.” Tear. “You laid your disgusting hands on her.” Rip. “You made her cry.” Splat.

        Liquid spattered onto your face, oozing it’s way down your temples and along your jaw. You didn’t need a mirror to know it was red. 

        “Is this what you wanted?” Finally, all of the butchery was silenced, not even a groan slicing through the air. “When you stole her. Is this what you expected?” 

        “Garou-” Gyoro Gyoro’s voice broke off in a sputtered cough. “-look how strong you’ve become. We thought-” cough “-we knew you had the potential. And look how much you’ve grown, just by having her.”

        A bitter snicker, obviously from the true beast. The true monster. “You were right. You were right about one thing only. She does make me stronger.” Crack. “But you didn’t need to steal her from me to figure that out.” Slump.

        A quiet that somehow felt more suffocating than the previous screams filled the hot room. Through it, you could hear monsters still gurgling on their own guts. Wheezes of last breaths. Death surrounded you, and it’s cause? 

        He wrapped you up in a hug. 

        Little chunks of innards stuck from his body onto your sweatshirt, clinging to the fabric like glue had placed them there. His face was warm and slick against the crook of your neck while his hands wound around your waist, forcing your chest flush against his. 

        “Are you okay?” Even after all that bloodshed, his voice now sounded… loving. Adoring, cherishing, caring, kind. Right now, he sounded like a worried boyfriend after his girlfriend tripped. This situation wasn’t even close, and had no reason for him to sound so calm. 

        “Who…” you raised your chin from his shoulder, but with your arms still trapped behind your back, you couldn’t push him away. “Who are you?”

        His face buried deeper into your shoulder, and his grip on your body grew firmer. “YN, I’ve… I’ve liked you for a long time. It’s not creepy, I swear! I just- I just liked watching you and making sure you were okay. Somewhere along the way, I think I fell in love.”

        The man before you, hugging you with all the strength in his body, kissing your skin like he’d done it before, confessing his love like it’s been long enough, you didn’t know him. Not even the face, nor the body, nor the hungry eyes seemed even the slightest bit familiar. 

        Minutes passed, feeling like hours. When Garou finally got enough of holding you close, he untied your restraints and lifted your sore body into his arms. Your muscles whined with every movement, and yet you still tried to shove him off you. 

        “Please, please just let me go,” you pleaded, hands pressing against his chest while you stared into his eyes. 

        Nothing. No nod, no “okay,” nothing. 

        Instead, he shook his head and shifted your entire weight to be cradled in one powerful arm. Then his free hand shifted up to your face, where he brushed a long thumb over your cheek. “YN, I know you barely know me. I know that. But Angel, you will come to love me just as much as I love you. It’ll just take some time.”

        The tone, so confident yet hopeful. You knew he wouldn’t budge.

        So maybe that’s why you cried. 

        “Please, just take me home.” 

        “I am, Angel.” He pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, then to your cheeks. A couple on your jaw, one on your nose, then finally he planted his lips on yours. 

        No. You didn’t want this. Whoever this guy was, capable of massacring a giant the size of a skyscraper and more, you didn’t want him. You didn’t ask for him, or his love, or his unyielding loyalty. You didn’t want his murderous possessiveness, or even his passionate kiss. 

        You didn’t ask for this. A man obsessed with you, and almost just as obsessed with making you love him. 

        “I’m taking you to our home now. There, you will grow to love me just as much as I love you.”