The city’s bones were still here—cracked pavement, bullet-pocked buildings, barbed wire clinging to half-collapsed fences like dead ivy. This forgotten corner had once screamed with fire and blood, a frontline in a war no one remembered and everyone pretended never happened. Now, it was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that didn't feel peaceful—it felt like the moment before a mine goes off under your boot.

Flippy stood in the middle of it all, boots grinding against the dirt-caked concrete, eyes scanning the husks of buildings like he was on patrol again. Only this time, he wasn’t looking for enemies.

Well, not exactly.

The air here still smelled like soot, metal, and a little bit of memory. Nostalgic, really — if your nostalgia included dismemberment and being screamed at by lieutenants who thought trauma was a personality.

And GODS, how familiar it all felt. His fingers twitched. His breath slowed. That little voice—the one that sounded like static and old radio commands—started whispering again, low and curling behind his teeth.

"This place... brings it all back, doesn’t it, soldier?"

His pupils shrank as the flashbacks flared in slow motion behind his eyes. Flames licking the horizon. Shrapnel cutting through the air like angry birds. And bodies—lots of them—scattered like forgotten toys.

Yeah.

He remembered. But this time, something inside him didn’t want to kill.

No, not today. Today, Flippy wasn’t hunting blood. He was hunting submission.

There was something about being surrounded by ghostly ruins of a warzone that flipped the switch in him—just a little differently. The violence was still there, coiled and twitching beneath the surface like a landmine waiting to be stepped on. But it had mutated. Evolved. Become something more... animal.

Less kill, more claim. Less scream, more moan.

He walked past the remnants of an old bunker, smirking at the crude graffiti that still clung to the walls. A heart, carved with a combat knife, half-burned and cockeyed. Romantic. He chuckled under his breath.

“Guess the battlefield always was the best place to fall in love,”

he muttered, sarcastically, dragging gloved fingers along the rusted edge of a shell casing the size of a wine bottle.

“Or at least... fall on your knees.”

He licked his lips absently, eyes scanning the shadows. He could feel it—the anticipation. Like the whole city was holding its breath, waiting for him to do something. And he would. Oh, he would. He wanted someone—anyone—to wander into this mess of cracked stone and twisted metal.

Someone stupid. Or brave. Or just lonely enough to follow the sound of boots crunching glass.

Not so he could rip them apart. No. That was too easy.

He wanted to dominate them. To make them flinch not from fear, but anticipation. To make them surrender—not their life, but their control. He wanted to press them against the walls where soldiers had died, breathe down their neck in a space once filled with gunfire, and see something real flicker in their eyes.

Respect? Maybe. Terror? Definitely. Lust? ...If he was lucky.

“Come on...” he growled under his breath, half to himself, half to the ghosts watching from broken windows. “Someone give me a reason.”

The war might’ve ended, but Flippy hadn’t. Not even close.

And tonight, in the ruins of someone else’s battlefield, he wasn’t looking to fight. He was looking to conquer... soon enough, a small little bottle accidentally fell and shattered on the floor, loud enough to sound like a bomb.

The trigger came fast—a sharp crack in the distance, like gunfire — and Flippy froze. His smile twitched, his breath caught, and his eyes darkened. In a blink, the calm slipped away, replaced by that low, creeping intensity that lived just beneath his skin. His hands flexed, not for a weapon, but for something else—something primal.

The world around him blurred, instincts sharpening as he caught sight of them: alone, unsuspecting, warm. Something in him shifted. The predator rose, not with bloodlust, but with a hunger deeper, darker. His steps were slow, controlled, but every muscle in his body burned with the need to dominate—not out of rage, but desire.

No kill. No scream. Just breath, heat, and a dangerous glint in his eye as he approached.

He didn’t want to hurt them. He wanted to own them.