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The air was sinister, just as wicked as the ground, clawing and waiting to devour whatever it could.
This was nothing new to him, something he’d seen and lived for as long as he can remember. This world was not kind, it eats, eats and eats. Anything that can and cannot be eaten, will be consumed. It was a simple fact of life.
One cannot afford to be weak. Lest they get eaten. Shinra knew that it's a man-eating world since he’d been young. He saw as it kept eating everything in its path, and he knew that he’d soon experience the same fate.
He knew it would be the same path that the weak little bat would take. He knew, yet he found himself the bat back in good shape.
And it has stayed with him since.
He knew to himself that he had not taken care of it out of the kindness of his own heart, for kindness was a luxury one cannot afford.
Perhaps it had been pity, looking at the small thing all bruised and bloody, weak from fighting a battle it could not handle. Maybe it was from a sick sense of companionship, relating to the feeling that the bat might’ve been feeling then.
But the thing stayed, even when it had been healed, and he let it.
He let it stay near him and sought his warmth. He let it share his meals, as scarse as that could come.
He let it stay, and he had a friend in return. He found the bat’s presence to be comforting, finding himself to smile, even just for a little bit, with her at his side.
And he had forgotten that the world was a man-eating monster. He had let it slip his mind that the air was poisonous venom, that the ground will swallow everything.
That everything is just food.
He let himself forget, now he finds himself staring at her cold and mangled body. He finds himself frozen with an emotion that feels foreign to him. A new and terrible feeling of fear. He could feel it choking him. Tightly gripping his neck as it kept dragging him down.
This was a man-eating world. He knew, he saw, as broken corpses plague the lands long since he’d been young, watched as men ate, and ate, and ate.
He saw and he’d done it himself. He had seen the horrors of what starved men can do, and will do.
He knew the fate that she would soon face. The food desired by others.
It was a simple fact of life.
Everyone is and will be food. All would eventually return to the ground, back to where they rightfully belonged.
I don’t want my best friend to be eaten.
It was the general rule. Yet, he stood frozen, and terrified. Anger soon fighting inside him, and fueled with that single thought, he lashed out. Fighting and clawing his path. Anger at the world, at this cruel, sick world for being selfish and greedy. For being unsatisfied. For having an unreasonable appetite.
He was angry, and feral and terrified. He felt so out of control over his body. Fury guiding it until it couldn’t anymore.
Until it burned him, till he was snuffed out. When he couldn’t let himself feel anymore.
He hadn’t once blinked when he was declared feral after that. He didn’t care when men cowered at the mere sight of him.
He just couldn’t bring himself to care.