[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5022268][img]https://i.imgur.com/yW2VDaL.png[/img][/url]
[h3]Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, at the top of the elevator[/h3]
It was with a sense of immense relief and a deep sigh that Victor retrieved his sword from the ground, feeling as though he regained some of his strength and stability just from holding the weapon in his hand. He straightened back up, already feeling much more like himself again, as he listened to the others speaking, realizing with wonder that he was quite relieved to realize that their attention was no longer on him, though he also realized that he did not feel as fearful as he once had... not a moment ago, and not before the Mad One had attacked, either. Since his back injury against the scourge beast that had been the reason for his becoming a Hunter, Victor had been [I]afraid[/I] constantly; afraid of leaving his back uncovered, afraid of others near him turning into beasts... but most of all he had been afraid of losing his mind and himself, of becoming either like a beast or an actual beast. In a way his panic attack from before had been the peak of this fear, the culmination of years' worth of intense dread, yet now he found that he was no longer afraid.
For a moment he was concerned, subtly running his tongue over his teeth to check if any of them – especially the canines – had changed, but he quickly dismissed his worry as merely the latest fit of the paranoia he knew had haunted him in his days as a Hunter. His teeth were fine; if he had changed it was a purely psychological change, much more likely to be a result of the trauma he had just endured than the manifestation of beasthood.
Yet still he could not bring himself to look at his companions, unsure what he was afraid of. What would he see in their eyes? And what would they see in his?

The others seemed to be getting past the sudden fear that had seized Adelicia, mostly seeming content to ignore Victor – something that would have ordinarily angered him, but that he found himself feeling much more willing to accept now – while seemingly quickly agreeing that they should get moving. Adelicia seemed apologetic, fearful and weak as ever, which to Victor was almost as much a matter of course as the fact that the sun would rise in the east and set in the west. Adelicia was no Hunter; Raine and Victor were. People were scared of Hunters. It was merely the way of things; Hunters were powerful, almost demihuman beings that lived for fighting and killing, so it was only natural for a relatively “normal” human to feel inferior and threatened in their presence. [I]Especially[/I] when one had just witnessed said Hunters exercise their brutal craft.
[I]I feel... surprisingly calm,[/I] he thought, idly using the thumb of his left hand to scoop a quicksilver bullet out of the pouch reserved for them at his waist. [I]Somehow... I don't feel as bloodthirsty as before. How odd. I even know that I'm not at my full regenerative potential right now, since I was still wounded when I gave myself blood treatment [/I]and[I] I just broke my hand, yet I feel no compulsion to drink one of my two remaining blood vials.[/I] He swiftly loaded the bullet into his blunderbuss, preparing it for another shot. [I]And even with Adelicia right there, I don't want to hurt her. This peace... is strange.[/I]

Raine also urged them to hurry, citing that beasts might be attracted to the gunshots, though Victor did not completely agree with his fellow Hunter's assumption. Even if beasts were near enough to hear the gunshots, were not engaged in anything else and managed to follow the sound all the way to them without something else in the crowded city attracting their attention, most beasts would still be unable to reach them. The plateau was raised exactly to isolate it from the area below, and was only reachable by elevator to make it improbable for beasts to figure out how to get up here. True, a fully corrupted scourge beast or – gods forbid – a cleric beast might be able to scale the wall, but how likely was it that one of those was close enough to be attracted by the gunshots?
[I]Didn't we hear a cleric beast howl earlier? Ah, but that's it; it [/I]howled[I], in the middle of Yharnam. There's no way that it wasn't immediately swarmed by Hunters after calling attention to itself like that. It's definitely dead or being killed at this very moment. Definitely.[/I]
If anything, Victor figured that the gunshots were likely to have woken up the giant at the bottom of the elevator, which would mean that any beast unfortunate to try to get through would have to go through that, first... and Victor struggled to imagine a beast powerful enough to challenge a church giant. Logically they were safer than ever right now.
Even so he did agree that they had to hurry, just for a different reason. The Mad One was a construct, a bloodwraith called by the will of another; he had never heard of a Mad One appearing on its own. Someone – almost certainly the same person who had left the elevator at the top of the plateau – had clearly summoned this Mad One, and had left it at the elevator to ambush anyone trying to enter the area. The plateau was almost entirely vacant, with barely anyone living up here yet, so there was only really one reason that someone would come here: the clinic.
They had to go, yes, but not for the sake of their own safety; the new Hunters at the clinic were probably in mortal danger, if they were not already dead.

“We should hurry,” Victor agreed with a nod, idly brushing some imagined dirt off the chest of his blood-soaked garb. “The new Hunters might be in danger. The clinic should only be a several minutes' walk from here, to the north. We should run.” He looked in Adelicia's general direction, his focus ending up somewhere to the left of her rather than on her, still unwilling to look at her directly. “Can you manage that, or do you want us to carry you? We could move much faster, then.”