We last read Chapter 16, in which the werewolf villainess Carla Rosenblood a.k.a. Nightclaw began her horrific massacre at the Stanford University dorm buildings, starting with a golf cart of three police officers just outside. She swiftly decapitates two of the three with a single leap and swipe, before fatally impaling the third in the heart with all five jet-black claws from her right paw and maneuvering the golf cart itself to slam into the double doors at the back of the dorm building, allowing her entry and causing a massive scene in the process. Now having gained entry, Nightclaw bolts inside.
Because of the loud and blaring music coming from the common room—due to a late-night party taking place inside—Nightclaw is able to locate the venue easily and start murdering every last student inside. Her initial entry already kills a student after she launches the main door directly off its hinges and inadvertently pins said student between it and a segment of the outer wall, breaking their ribs and squishing their lungs in the process. Then, she short-circuits the DJ's music setup with her claws—killing the DJ and five other students—before laying it on thick with the bloodshed.
Throats are slit, heads are bitten off, smoke is inhaled, and people are fatally trampled by their own kind in the ensuing panic. Of note, Nightclaw unintentionally starts a three-person game of "hot potato" with the disembodied head of one of her victims; a game which she puts a decisive end to when she intercepts, grabs the disembodied head mid-flight, and slams it onto the head of one of the "players", squishing their head into paste—as well as the disembodied one's—before also killing the second and fourth students with jet-black claw shots to the heart. She also successfully stops another student who attempts to call for help on his smartphone, destroying said smartphone in the process while also killing that student......and three others as well.
Soon, Nightclaw—either directly or indirectly—ends the life of every single student in the common room, whether it be through slicing their throat, biting their head off, squashing their head, unintentionally burning them with the spreading fire from the DJ's destroyed music setup—or having them inhale too much smoke—or having them be fatally trampled by their own kind.....crowd surging, in other words. Still, since she doesn't see her former best friend Brian Banks anywhere around, she opts to move on to the dorm rooms proper, bursting in and killing everyone inside each one until finding him. The chapter ended with Nightclaw leaving the burning common room in "triumph" before lowering herself on all fours and bounding in the direction of the dorm rooms.
This time, Nightclaw gives a whole new meaning to "door-to-door service"......
Wow.
Just.....wow.
These students over here must be really heavy sleepers if they were unable to be stirred by all the chaos I incited back there in the common room. I wonder if they're dreaming about something particularly enthralling. If so, I hope they enjoy it as best they can.....because soon, I'll come calling.
Case in point.....I'm coming up on the first dorm room of many.
Time to get to work.
I don't knock, like a polite person would do. I don't move on, like an ignorant person would do. And I don't try to disguise myself as a friendly person, like a liar would do.
No. I noisily kick open the door right off of its hinges, sending a very loud crashing sound reverberating through the entire room and jolting both of students inside it awake just as I barge into their bedroom. And both of them are panicking hard. Like.....hard. As in....."they're screaming their heads off" hard.
.....Okay, maybe they're not panicking that much. If they really were screaming their heads off, they'd already be dead before I could get any valuable information out of them.
I stare at both of the students with burning yellow eyes.....and then without warning, I lash out with my right arm and fire the five jet-black claws at the end of my digits directly into the heart of the student on the right bed, immediately killing them in full view of the other one. I seize the surviving one by the throat and brutally slam them into the wall, the impact leaving a noticeable crater due to my enhanced strength.
"What the.....?" he chokes out pathetically. "Nightclaw? Wh.....what are you doing? You're supposed to be a Paragon!"
"WHERE'S BRIAN?" I roar at the surviving student at the top of my lungs. "BRIAN BANKS! WHERE IS HE?"
"I.....I don't know anyone named that! Honest!" the student sputters, his voice overwhelmed with panic and fear. "He might be in a different area! Please, stop! LET ME GO!"
"You're not doing yourself any favors right now," I snarl. "I'd start talking real quickly if I were you."
"I swear I don't know anything! What else do you want? I got calzones sitting in the microwave! You want those?"
I narrow my eyes, growl at him, and then force him onto the bed before cutting his head off with my left paw's claws.
Clearly that didn't go very well.
But there's no need to worry.
I keep my chin up......because there's still two more floors and at least two other whole dorm buildings for me to cover.
This night is just beginning. I will find Brian.....even if I have to eliminate every last student in these buildings.
The process that I've done in the first dorm gets repeated time and time again in the other dorms. If the dorm holds two students, I immediately kill one as an example before brutally questioning the other one about Brian's location. If they don't have anything useful to tell me, I kill them, too. But if the dorm only holds one student—because apparently that student could afford to get a more "private" room—I skip the "killing as an example" part and just get straight to the questioning.
More often than not, I enter a room that holds two students, and leave with a room that holds two beds drenched in blood. .....Or just one bed drenched in blood, if it's a private dorm.
I go from door to door to door, utterly eviscerating all the students in every dorm room I pass when none of them succeed in providing me critical information on Brian's location. I'm like that meme all around the Internet where the Grim Reaper knocks on doors and kills the characters, companies, or franchises inside, with visible blood in the doorframe every single time he does so. Except with me, there's no knocking. There's just....."breaking in".
No one ever gets a chance to call for help, because I'm already on them before they can even do anything.
And the process keeps repeating.
Barge in, kill, question, kill again.
Barge in, kill, question, kill again.
Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over again.
And I never get tired of it, no matter how monotonous and repetitive it probably is. Every single kill I get fills me with undeniable waves of pleasure, to the point where I have to restrain myself from just killing both students the moment I enter the dorm room. If I did that, I'd never find out Brian's location.
Eventually, though, I come to the last untouched dorm room on the first floor. A random police officer attempts to halt for me to stop as he rushes around the corner with his gun already drawn.....but without even looking at him, I lash out with my left arm in his direction and shoot all five jet-black claws from my paw's digits directly into his forehead, piercing his brain with every single one before he can even do anything of note. His lifeless body crumples to the ground, and I don't even look at him as I enter the last dorm on the first floor.
Maybe this time, I'll do something different.
My act of barging in without warning immediately jolts the students awake, as per usual.....but instead of immediately killing one, I seize both of them by their throats, pin them to the floor, and start gradually choking the air out of them.
I don't do it quickly, of course. I do it slowly. Very, very, very slowly. Like they're on a timer.
"I'm going to ask you two this question one time," I snarl menacingly. "Where.....is.....Brian.....Banks?"
The student on my left outright spits in my face out of pure spite and defiance, which I show visible frustration at.
"I'm not telling you anything, Nightclaw!" he cries. "I had a feeling you were behind the chaos we heard outside.....though I initially thought it was just some kind of wild party. I don't answer questions posed by traitors, so you might as well kill me right now!"
And then, after a few precious seconds pass, he soon realizes that he should have never said that last part.
I grin sinisterly. "Well, now.....it would be my pleasure."
Still keeping my right arm on the right student's neck, I tighten my grip on the left student's neck so hard that I literally just pop his head right off of his body with pure force and strength alone, like squeezing a loose cap off of a bottle by squeezing the bottle's body. The blood soaks the floor, giving it a rather new and admittedly vibrant paint job.
The one on my right then immediately confesses out of pure fear at having seen his roommate die gruesomely right in front of him.
"Okay! Okay! I'll tell you!" he exclaims. "Brian has some friends on the third floor! Maybe they can tell you where he is! Just don't hurt me!"
"Hurt you.....? Am I going to hurt you.....?" I ponder out loud, savoring the uncertainty and fear in his face as I decide his fate in my head. "Well.....you did give me a good lead on Brian. So I guess I should thank you for that."
The student on my right breathes a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you—"
And then I gouge his eyes out with my claws before brutally splitting his head in two like a coconut with my enhanced strength.
"There," I say. "You didn't need to see your demise."
Once both students are dead, I turn around and clamber out of the thoroughly destroyed dorm room, now intent on making my way to the third floor to find Brian's friends. Maybe I'll be able to get to him from there.
Then, I stop momentarily, coming to a realization.
Damn it. I should've pressured that student to give me the specific room number.
.....Nah. Who am I kidding? It's more fun to check them all.
To the third floor it is!
I've now made it to the third floor of the dorm building I'm currently in.....but can I confess to a little bit of a secret? Yeah? Okay! Come closer!
I killed every single student on the second floor, too, just for the heck of it. Yeah. It was glorious beyond measure, but as amazing and bloody as this massacre is, I wouldn't want it to drag on for too long, either.
Shhhh.....don't tell.
And now.....I'm extremely glad I didn't ask for the specific room number from that one student that pointed me in the direction of Brian's friends. It just means I get to conduct a more......thorough......search of the third floor, even more so than I would've gotten to do otherwise.
So, once again, I set out on my spree, going through the same song and dance that I did on the first floor.
Barge in, kill, question, kill again.
Barge in, kill, question, kill again.
I've covered about half of the third floor here now, and everyone who's dared to stop me in the hallway—or even come within my line of sight—finds themselves bleeding profusely before they even realize that I've hit them.
I barge into the next dorm to find a group of four students sitting at separate edges of a square-shaped folding table in the center of the area, with the one furthest from me starting to roll some dice to start his turn on some kind of board game that involves spaces with horizontal colored stripes at their tops, weird shiny playing pieces, and fake money that comes in several colors.
I don't have the time to determine what board game it is. As for why it's four students.....my guess is that two of them are residents and the other two are simply visitors.
I immediately lunge towards them, taking in their horrified expressions as I soar towards the quartet. I pivot my body slightly to the right as I come in, instantly slicing the throats of the student at the south end and the student at the east end of the square-shaped table, only leaving the ones at the west and north ends alive. The board game props get carelessly flung all over the place.....but it's not like these students are going to need them where they're going.
I seize both surviving students by the throats and leave the right student idle while repeatedly slamming the left student's head into the floor over and over and over again until his head is a bloody mess and he's officially been beaten within an inch of his life.
"I was told to come to you guys about one 'Brian Banks'," I growl threateningly. "Either you tell me where he is right now, or I promise you that I will make your pain beyond comprehension."
"You.....you're Nightclaw!" the student on the left—the one with the bloodied head—realizes. "What the hell are you doing? We haven't done anything!"
"WRONG!" I roar, making him flinch. "You're guilty! So is he! You ALL are! You and the others took Brian away from me when we had such an amazing friendship together!"
The student to my right scoffs. "Dang, dude. I can smell the 'Yandere' from here."
"You're not going to be able to smell anything by the time I'm done with you, buddy," I warn severely. "Now, spill Brian's location now, or we're going to do things the hard way."
The one on my right blows me off. "Forget it. We're not telling you anything."
And soon, so does the one on my left, even though I've inflicted quite a bit of blunt trauma on him already. "Yeah! We're not entitled to tell you shit without probable cause!"
I narrow my eyes, snarl cruelly, and then pick both students up off the ground before purposely walking to the outside balcony.
Then, I hold both of them over the edge of the railing, threatening to drop both of them to their deaths unless they speak.
"Do you feel like telling me now?" I tease. "Because if not, I'd be happy to give you a more 'immersive' version of this view."
The one on the right still keeps his mouth shut, remarkably enough. Dude's got guts. It's a shame I'll have to rip them out of him later.
However, the one on the left—the one whose head I reduced to a barely functioning mess—has officially cracked, and now he's frantically waving his hands out in front of him, trying to get me to stop.
"WHAT?" I snap. "Finally ready to start speaking?"
"Brian's in Crothers Memorial!" he reveals to me. "Floor 2! Room 205! He's nowhere in this building!"
"Dude!" the one on the right admonishes. "You've just doomed him!"
"Now, now, hold on a moment," I state. "I admire the concession of your friend here. You could stand to learn a lot from him. .....If you two were going to survive this ordeal, that is."
The one on the right sighs, but the one on the left is visibly panicking now, which makes me all the more pleasured.
"Wait, what? NO! Please! You can't kill me! I gave you exactly what you wanted!" he begs hysterically, before pointing to the uninjured student. "Take him instead! He tastes better!"
"Who ever said anything about me eating you two?" I inquire. "And let me just say.....throwing your friend under the bus really isn't very 'friend'-like of you. Perhaps I might just kill you first."
I hold both of them by their necks for a few more seconds, with both of them still dangling precariously over the edge of the balcony.
And then, I drop the uninjured student to his death before using my now-free right hand to squeeze the injured student's head into paste and causing his decapitated body to plummet as well, technically killing him first since he dies before the uninjured one hits the pavement.
I now know where Brian is, thanks to one of his rather submissive friends.
Now, it's time for me to head to Room 205 in Crothers Memorial.
But before that......I have some "cleanup work" to do on the third floor of this building. There can be absolutely no witnesses to what's happened here.....and I shall make sure of that.
Turning my back to the balcony railing, I return back inside the dorm and leave the room entirely, exiting into the outer hallway and finishing up my business here by killing every student in the other dorms, too.....even though I already have Brian's location.
With this building completely cleared out, I leap off of the balcony of the last dorm I visit, sharply land on the grass in a three-point position, and transition to an all-fours position before bounding off at a high speed to the Crothers Memorial building.
Brian Banks.....I'm coming for you.
And you will not be leaving me this time.