CH48:RED TRAIL.

RED TRAIL.

[Meanwhile…]

Somewhere far far away from Ace and Sky, his precious little sister was walking in a plain, green grassy fields while being surrounded by a herd of large, gentle horse-bison hybrids that were grazing on the luscious green blades of the soft grass.

The night sky and the calm, peaceful flow of the environment made her fell relaxed, something she did not experience ever since she escaped. However, Cherry wasn't feeling too good about this sudden peaceful change in the environment.

As much as she'd love to enjoy every moment of it, she couldn't help but feel something off was about happen very soon. The effects of the soon to be blood moon took effect and slowly by slowly, a red trail of red dust, the ones similar to cartoon stink lines, appeared and it stretched out through the grass, past the fields, into the open fields ahead of her.

She starred at the trail and wondered what exactly it was and where it led her, but then, she started feeling the extensive effects of the moon kicking into her system. Her legs became numb and soon lost feeling, making her fall to the ground.

She desperately tried to scream, but she felt like there were strings and tentacles moving inside her throat. Her eyes couldn't stop rolling inside her head in every possible direction as her body convulsed uncontrollably.

The animals around her gazed sheepishly as they chewed their cud and snuffed at her, not giving a single care in the world about this weird, two-legged creature. Meanwhile, this two-legged creature couldn't help but feel immense power coursing through her veins. The veins, arteries, and capillaries in her body erupted while blood filled her internal structure, making her swell as her skin struggled to keep all of it in.

However, her skin begun to peel and tear apart as the blood sprayed out like a violent fountain. The grass where her body lay convulsing was now stained with her blood as it moved out like it were alive. The innocent, unsuspecting creatures payed no attention, and before they knew it, the blood latched itself onto the creatures and drained the life out of their bodies.

Suddenly, Cherry's body was thrust high into the air with nothing but a bag of skin hanging onto her bones and her internal organs barely staying inside. The blood that once left her swirled around her body like a violent tornado, covering her in a swinging void of unforeseen energy.

"WHA-A-A-A-T-S HA-A-PENING TO ME!!" She screamed, but not your typical freaked out scream. She smiled with the little muscles left on her face while looking around in the void of blood. Suddenly, a large, red face showed up in front of her with white eyes, a mouthful of teeth and a freaking long tongue.

At first, the face did nothing but stare at her, that was until she started moving her head sideways. The face did the same and once she realized what it was, they both grinned at each other while her body transformed into its Blood Mutant Form.

Now fully transformed, but still with her full consciousness and part of her sanity, Cherry stood fully erect on the ground with her eyes closed. She took in multiple deep breathes and felt the cold wind blow against her blood red skin. Her body tingled and pulsed with energy as she felt her energy levels double. However, one thing hadn't changed yet.

The red trail was still in front of her sight and it looked like it was calling her to follow it to whatever place it would lead her in the end. Left with nothing else to do, Cherry held her hands behind her back, took in a deep breath and started to run with her upper body slightly bent towards her knees.

Her feet increasingly moved faster with each step and before she knew it, Cherry found herself taking long leaps into the air. It started with a few leaps that were about twenty feet in the air but then, they slowly increased to forty, then fifty, sixty, eighty, then eventually to one hundred feet in the air.

"OH YEAH!!" She screamed with a mighty roar and a loud bellow coming from the depths of her now muscled up stomach. "THIS FEELS AMAZING!!" Cherry kept jumping through the fields and eventually made it into a deep forest with a bioluminescent glow to it. The leaves, trees, tree bark, and even animal life in the forest had a distinct glow to it, making it twice more beautiful during the night than day.

However, out of the corner of her eye, Cherry noticed something. "What's this?" She came crushing next to a couple of rotting corpses of a plant and moose-ear-like beast next to each other. The plant beast had green spikes sticking out of its body and the moose-bear didn't have a single drop of blood left in it.

"Could these things have been killed earlier?" She wondered as she deformed back into her human form. With her hands on the green spikes that mounted the plant beast's carcass on the wall, she felt the hard, almost crystal-like texture they were composed of. She then looked again at the moose and noticed how its eyes still looked almost…alive.

"These things were killed recently." Once she got closer to the moose-bear beast, she noticed signs of struggle all around the environment she was and better yet, footprints. "Someone was hear. There's no blood in this moose, not even a drop or stains. The plant…thingy's drained of whatever keeps it alive too and…it was used to kill it."

A sly grin crawled across her face as she put two and two together to figure out who was there. To make things even better, she saw something that would not only back her theory up but also prove it one hundred percent.

Upon seeing this "something", Cherry quickly run towards it and slowly picked it up. The orange strands of soft hair radiated a faint red trail, similar to the ones she saw earlier. Cherry instinctively sniffed the hair and almost immediately saw the red trail once again, but this time, it was much larger than before.

"He's close. I can feel him close by."

"Glad you can sense it too." A deep, masculine voice sounded from the bush but it didn't speak in the human language.

"Yeah," A feminine one echoed as well. "It makes the job much easier for both of us."