Mai wondered if the girl was a curious bystander or a devil. Her fashion choice was quite odd, eyepatch and all, but then again Mai couldn’t say much considering she looked like she just walked off of a samurai movie set and Maria looked like a strung-up groupie. Regardless, Mai approached the woman anyways. If she was an innocent, the hunter would help her to a safe location away from the infected humans and their dominatrix leader. If she wasn’t, then Mai would treat her like she treated all devils. 

Unfortunately, the civilian fled before she could even come close. [color=DC143C][i]“Hey! Wait!”[/i][/color] the hunter cried out. However, when she tried chasing after the eyepatched woman, Mai found herself trapped by an invisible force. Any attempt she made to get out of the invisible grip was fruitless; if anything, it felt as though the grip on her increased the more she struggled. Mai looked around to see if a new youkai had appeared when she wasn’t looking. When she didn’t see anyone new, the panic in her began to build. As a hunter, Mai’s weapon of choice was a sword. However, it was no help when she did not have anything to attack and since she wasn’t expecting something like this, Mai hadn’t brought anything to negate the oppressive presence. Even if she did, the hunter couldn’t reach her bag at the moment. 

Doing her best to think critically whilst she was bound up, Mai surmised this wasn’t the work of the giant devil who seemed to be currently occupied with creating a wall of blood to stop Maria. And considering they haven’t shown any signs they had any unique powers, she doubted it was the infected humans either. [color=DC143C][i]So what else could it be?[/i][/color] Then the hunter remembered the shed snakeskin scattered around the shrine and cursed. Since it had not been an immediate problem, Mai had ignored them. Now she wondered if whatever had left its epidermis around the shrine was finally making its presence known.