Fantasy New Oasis: Four Heavenly Kings — The B-Sides

[AriAriAbabwa]

ALICIA MOREL

CS Link

SCENE:

She Has Funny Cars

LOCATION:

Cafe De Lune, East District

PARTICIPANTS:

Passeri, Alice

She Has Funny Cars

Alice... wasn't crazy, was she? The way Passeri spoke; her careful diction as if hinting at something dreadful. Something that wasn't the mentioned Dragons. It made something in Alice to ponder. But perhaps she was overthinking? She's been doing plenty of that nowadays.

Then Passeri brought up the little meeting with Hashimoto.

There was definitely something more to this.

Alice pulled a plate to her but did not take the sandwich. She took a sip of tea though, enough to wet her tongue and throat. And to fill up the silence as she thought up her answer. "He's already spoken to me more than our current King," she began. "It sounds like he wants to help me. Give me more control of my life, I suppose. I doubt he can do any worse to me."

Alice took a sandwich then, not wanting to appear as though she's already run out of words. For despite wanting to support the man, she barely knew him to begin with.

The One Eyed Bandit

 

[thebigfella]

Shishido Takakazu

CS Link

SCENE:

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

LOCATION:

East District

DATE:

July 19th || Post-Outbreak

PARTICIPANTS:

Tak, Eisyu (NPC)

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

Who…?

Those words dragged through the air. Gnarled with glass and rusted nails through his ears. He always was tired of hearing that question. It never had a good answer, and the non-answer was just as bad.

He felt desperation; the feel of it pierced through his skin and quickly reached deeper than flesh, the heat burning his muscles, the flowing blood that rocked his heart, vibrant drumming that told him he was alive, that you still had more to lose. You would be forced to be aware of this as things changed.

His body wanted to retract from the feeling, but his mind kept him nailed. Denial to run, to escape from facing the truth of his oversight, closing his eyes to the problems had no longer left him with any choice but to open them.

“Tigers,” he knew. The talk of Dragons was far from the truth. He had known the men he battled did not act like those that bore the scales, shining to brandish the gleam of protection. They had predatory eyes of greed, ones that had looked at him as if he was a dollar sign rather than a person. They weren’t aware of their surroundings; they seemed out of their element, just like him. He had put his worries away to simple coincidence; the world was big enough to encompass all possibilities.

Every time, he refused to trust his instincts. He ended up regretting it.

He didn’t fully understand the story yet, but he knew enough.

“They want me,” He understood.

Hiachi, she was innocent. She had only become a Tiger recently. The taint of the horrors of the realm of crime had come to decorate her face.

Tak remembered the first time he saw her. His heart slowed, and a feeling of discomfort he hadn’t felt in a long time coursed through his clenched fists.

He had chosen this lifestyle; she didn’t. Yet, she was forced to suffer, something he thought, or at least he could cope with, that was out of his hands. He could only hope to make things a bit easier for her, and that was the only thing he could offer in return for breaking into her door all that long ago.

Until now, she had been pulled into the tides, dragged into the ocean's depths.

And it was his fault.

He had made enemies; he had struck at people without reason. The simple, carnal desires of money, praise, and attention had brought him to use his powers for assertion and messaging; he picked the life of a thug, hoping for more, but only found his life growing with more sins and more enemies. He had threatened single mothers, he had beaten men unconscious for looking at him wrong, and he had toppled people's livelihoods all for the hope of more.

He wasn’t blind to the consequences. But, he had always hoped they would face him by himself as his cross to bear.

For a moment, he was lost—no, longer than a moment. From the long past to the encompassing present, he was lost. He was directionless. His body yearned for rage but found nothing but depression. Worry hugged the back of his neck, tightly bound in nerves, more palpable than sweat across the goosebumps that lined his neck.

He needed to find Hiachi. But where could she be? What could he do?


He was powerless.







And then, his phone rang.

He usually never kept it charged; others always said contacting him was a gamble. But in some twisted luck, he had enough battery to receive this call this time. The dull ringing of its unchanged tone. Something told Tak it wasn’t a telemarketer or a call from Mom, even if some of him wished it was that simple.

His hands slowly reached his pocket, hesitation of the truth manifested with twitches in his fingers before accepting the circumstance brought them to dive into the stretch of fabric, where his phone arose and found its way to his ear.

The call was accepted with a small beep. A voice came through, loud enough for both men to hear.

As soon as Tak heard it, a reaction moved through his body. A feeling he had never felt before was through his natural systems in disarray; breathing went off-beat with the beating of the heart, his pupils squeezed tight, shadows defining his features, intense and bristling as if holding back something darker within, his eyes barely peeking through the shade as they glew with ominous frenzy.

“It’s been a while, Roach. Nice to talk to you again, huh?”

His fingers tightened close around his phone, his arm shook with a restrained force that threatened to crush the phone into the scrap between his fingers, and his breath ran cold in contrast to the overwhelming heat of his body.

“You…” Was the only word he could utter. The threat of letting loose all of his rage in a single moment right into the speakers kept him from saying more. He hesitated for a moment, just to give himself enough time to let another word come to his lips, leaving through his gritted teeth.

“Mallard…”

“I’ll be waiting at Uljama Works, an abandoned factory nearby. I’m sure you won’t have trouble crawling your way over, will you? I don’t mind waiting.”

“After all, a reunion like this can’t be rushed.”

And then, with another click. The call ended, and all that was left was silence. Tak let the phone drift away from his face.

The world distorted around him amalgams like an oil slick, an ocean, colors and shapes blended together to form swabs of featureless swirls and twisting discord, reality melting away in front of his eyes.

He was no longer seeing clearly, and a desire that overpowered the guilt that had restricted him this whole was replaced with something more primal.

Something he didn’t want to let take control of him, the last bit of clarity he had told him to think thoroughly, to avoid charging in blind like he always did; there was more on the line than his own health this time.

Only in this breath of focus did he allow his eyes to go upward and look toward the man who would take this information the hardest.

"Mallard"

CS Link

SCENE:

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

LOCATION:

East District

DATE:

July 19th || Post-Outbreak

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi miki , "Mallard" (NPC)

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

Mallard calmly placed Hiachi’s phone on top of the console for her to grab whenever she felt like it. He put both of his hands onto the wheel as he leaned back into his seat, letting out a small, impassive sigh as he looked upward, briefly taking his eyes away from the road.

“I hope he doesn’t take too long. I know I did say I’d wait, but I have something to do after this,” he remarked, a slight frown on his lips as he already expected disappointment in this department, turning his attention to the rearview to glance at his passenger.


“I bet you’d rather not be out all night either,” he said casually to the woman he was keeping “hostage.” At this point, it was in the title and nothing else, as they both seemed content to mind their own business in this whole affair. Silence came across the car for a pause, and neither spoke another word, just the flashes of moving lights across their faces.

“Any bands you listen to?” Mallard suddenly spoke up, again turning his attention to the rearview as they stopped at a light.

“If you want, I’ll put something on for you,” he offered, waving his phone in his gloved hand.

What a courteous host he was.

 

[The One Eyed Bandit]

Passeri Park

, Collab with simj26

SCENE:

Telephone Line

TIME:

July 20th, 2022

LOCATION:

North District

PARTICIPANTS:

Passeri, Elise

Telephone Line

"El-" Passeri blinked, almost blurting out something that she shouldn’t have. Her eyes, bewildered, flickered between her parents and Elise. Her father struggling in her grip. Elise on top of him, gun to his gut. Her mother back on her feet.

"No, D-" A shaky breath interrupted her. She was here. Already. Back at her side. She'd been the one to trick her. To send her away. To make her worry. Again, like back in the hospital. She'd never wanted to see her like that again. So why had she done that to her? She felt so relieved that she was with her again, even after so brief a parting. So why had she done that to her? She-

"D-Dagger. I'm sorry I-" Was this really the time? It was short. Time. Between her explosive entrance and the shot of her father's gun, they hadn't exactly been quiet. She could hear the apartment building start to stir. She needed to close the door. To shield them from prying eyes. But she couldn't. There wasn't a door. It was in splinters, all over the floor before her. Had she already forgotten about that?

“Alpha. Gunnolf. The halls. Could you…?” If they were deprived of a door, two sets of snapping, snarling teeth would have to do.

“And you two” Passeri eyed her mother, the whites of her eyes teeming with dark intent. “Get on your knees.”

“L-listen, Brandy, just…” A half-formed plea.

“NOW!” A scream, loud and tipped with spite. It shocked even Passeri herself. “A-and put your hands on the ground. Keep them there. Dagger… The gun. They’re not HPs… Just get rid of it and it’ll be fine.”

In front of Elise, the man’s eye flicked to his weapon. His teeth gritted, but the cold press of steel on his abdomen kept him quiet.

Elise couldn't hear much over the ringing in her ears, but Passeri’s indication towards the broken door was enough to get her to act. One of her wraiths was brought into existence, the big one. Gunnolf. Ignoring the scene within the apartment, it padded its way outside nonchalantly, eyeing its surroundings.

With a twist of her hand, Elise forced the shotgun out of her father's grip, and nodded her head at Passeri's dulled orders in her deafened state. She flipped the gun over in her hand, keeping her own on the shotgun's owner, pumped the rack of the shotgun multiple times, and sent its undischarged plastic canisters clattering onto the floor until there were none left. Elise glanced into the gun, slammed the pump home, flipped the shotgun over and caught it by the pistol grip. She directed it away from the room, out the door, and pulled the trigger. The click seemed to satisfy her, and she chucked the shotgun out the entranceway.

With the shotgun taken care of and Gunnolf on the prowl, the tension in Passeri’s eyes seemed to unfurl a coil. The situation, as dire as it was, finally felt like it was starting to fit within her hand.

Or at least it did until her father regained the gall to speak.

“...You can let me go now, yeah?” He wriggled inside of Elise’s grip, his voice strained and just on the brink of a shout. The same ringing that’d deafened Elise to Passeri’s request was in his ears too, though it had now started to subside. “Ye seem like a… Reasonable lady. Let’s be reasonable, yeah? Like I said to my girl over there, let’s just talk this out. With the door off like that, we ain’t want anyone screamin’ for help now, do we?”

Elise tilted her head quizzically, as if she was unsure as to what he had just said. She shifted her hold on him, rounding about him like a hound squaring up its prey. Without warning, she brought the heel of her boot into the back of his knee, forcing him to the ground, and, at once, replacing the gun that had been in her hand a second earlier, a flash of silver touched the skin of his throat.

Elise deliberately faced him towards the empty doorway: a taunt, a threat, a warning, all at once, and all without a single word uttered. Wordlessly, she dragged him away from the doorway and towards Passeri, forcing him to face her instead, where she finally broke her chilling silence.

“You want to talk. Talk to her,” she growled.

“Alright, alright… Fuckin’ hell, what kinda folks you hanging around these days, Bran’?” His words were cautious still, but edged with an unshaken confidence. “I’m ah… Assuming you got our little package?”

Passeri’s answer was silent, but it said enough. Though she’d only noticed it now, since she’d first stepped into the dingy apartment her hands had been trembling, and at her father’s questioning she balled them tight into tense, but still shaky fists.

“S’pretty simple ain’t it? You give us what we’re owed and we’ll be well outta your hair, yeah?”

“Y-yeah. What we’re owed.” Passeri’s mother parroted from the back. As opposed to her father, the older woman’s voice was shaky, and her eyes never far from Elise’s knife.“Ten years, you little bitch. Ten years we were wallowing over here and the North, and then we start seeing your face on billboards… A-and not a peep.”

“Broke our hearts, Bran’” The father said first.

“Broke our hearts.” The mother repeated. “After that bitch grandma of yours took you away, you never visit once, and-”

“Are you fucking serious?” Passeri spat, breaking her silence. What guilt she’d felt for deceiving Elise had been buried for the moment, smothered entirely by a deep, blistering rage. “You have to be kidding me. I- You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You- I-” The words to express her anger eluded her. Her mouth hovered open for a moment, and her eyes bored into her mother like drills. When she spoke, it was to neither of her parents, but it was no less tipped with fury.

“Dagger.” She held her hand out to the woman who she’d come to trust so deeply. “Give me your gun.”

Elise did not comply. At first, it seemed as if she was intent on sheltering Passeri from further bloodshed, but the look in her sole eye said differently. She straightened up, reared her right foot, and delivered a kick straight into the father’s abdomen. She stepped over the crumpled, gasping body, and took hold of the mother’s hair, wrenching her head upwards.

“Owe? Where I was from, kids didn’t owe their parents anything, ‘specially if they crawled away from their parents’ grip. Passeri Park made a name for herself on her own, and now some kid named Bran owes you? Broke your heart? This here’s Passeri Park, diamond in the sky, star of everyone’s hearts, and you’re sayin’ she owes you?” She tightened her grip and produced another forceful tug, never letting the woman in her grip find her footing. “Funny thing. I met her grandma once, and she didn’t pull a gun on her.”

Between the now and former Bakers, it wasn’t entirely clear which was the most shocked by Elise’s outburst. Passeri’s eyes went wide and hand, which still hung empty in the ear, twitched. She’d seen many shades of the woman in the last few weeks, fury among them, but it had not been so indignant and poised as this.

“Dagger, you don’t-”

“Get your hands off her…” On words spat out between breaths, Passeri’s father cut her off before she could intervene. “...You psycho bitch. ‘Ya ain’t listening are you…? We start screaming… And your bright star’s name goes up on every fuckin’ tabloid in this city… So how about you get damn whore hands off of my wife and we-”

The heel of another shoe robbed him of his breath. Smaller, lighter, but no less furious. Still dangling from Elise’s grip, the mother’s pained expression was muddled with shock, and even through it all she still managed to spit out a few indignant cries of protest.

“Y-you! Honey? Are you-?” The woman’s eyes darted between Passeri and her father. “Your own papa, Bran’! How could-!”

“Shut up.” Passeri’s voice was both silent and booming. She’d heard enough. About everything she owed, and all of these pleas to her so-called reason. All of the venom tipped words she’d thought she’d left behind rung in her ears anew, but they were not what had brought her to her tipping point.

There was only one person here who she owed anything, and she wouldn’t stomach her being spoken to like this.

“Let her go, Dagger. She isn’t worth your time.” For her part, though, Passeri’s foot remained firmly pressed against her father’s chest.

“I’m listening. And what I’m hearing is that I need to take your voices.” Hunched over as she was, the peeking light of the morning sun fell over her, casting a shadow over Elise’s features. The mottled, long white hair fell around her like a veil, like a wraith hovering above Passeri’s mother. “There are people who will protect and shield Passeri Park from evils like you. There will be people who will protect Bran from people like you. I will protect Passeri Park, Bran, whatever you call her.” The knife turned slowly in her hand. “There will be people who love her, no matter who she is, even if you didn’t.”

“Dagger.” Elise wasn’t listening. Not a word had reached her, none able to penetrate the furious veil that had fallen over her senses, but for Passeri the same couldn’t be said. All of Elise’s words. She’d heard every last one. So as another of Passeri’s fell flat, both she and the press of her heel left her father behind. Without a beat missed, a second shadow fell across Elise. Small and gentle. A cascade of silver hair, draped around her body like a white-cotton shroud.

“Dagger, please. Listen to me.” Her hands went to Elise’s, intertwining with her fingers from behind. Passeri lips, which spoke at bare more than a whisper, hovered only inches from her ears. “She isn’t worth this. She isn’t worth you. I can take care of her… Of both of them myself. I need to take care of them myself.” Her fingers squeezed tight, knitting through the weatherbeaten patchwork of scars to coax the larger woman’s grip loose. “...And so long as you’re here with me, I can take care of them myself.”

Slowly, tenderly, one of her hands pulled itself away from the other woman’s fingers and then felt the touch of leather as it turned to brush Elise’s eyes towards her own. To pry away the shadows. To peel back the wraith before it devoured her whole.

“Okay?” She whispered and pleaded both, her voice shaky, yet resolute. For the first time that day, the shadow that had hung over her eyes seemed distant. “I can do this. Trust me. Like I trust you. Please.”

Elise’s eye focused on hers. The storm within seemed to subside, if only just a little. Then, for the first time since she barged into this room, she spoke to her. “I trust you, ‘Seri. But you don’t belong in the dark, ‘Seri. Blood shouldn’t be on your hands. If it’s the one thing I can do for you, let me be your knife. I don’t…want you to go further. It’s not…right.” Her muscles loosened, in Passeri’s hold. “You’re not the monster that I am, and I don’t want you to be.” The storm in her eye gave way to a mist of shrouded emotions coalescing together. Worry, sorrow, concern, mired glances into the future.

"Dagger… Do you think I keep you close to me because I need a monster? Because I think you're a monster? Do you think I trusted you to be here today because I needed a pair of gloves to keep my hands clean? Is that the sort of person you think I am? I-" Passeri's teeth gritted behind her lips, and she pressed her forehead past the curtain of hair that kept Elise’s solitary eye hidden away. Eye to eye, skin to skin, and so close that in that moment Elise’s visage eclipsed all else, Passeri pressed another inch forward. "A knife isn't the only thing you can be for me. You've already been so much more than that for me. You already mean so much more than that to me."

Passeri's breath turned heavy, and her eyes squeezed shut. She knew what she needed to say. What she wanted to say. Everything that Elise done for her, whether she realized it or not, all of it sat on the edge of her lips. How in her eyes, she was so much more than just a broken blade in the dark. And that, be she wraith, wolf or woman, there was now someone in this world who loved her, too.

"And don't you remember what I told you? There doesn't need to be any blood. Neither of us have to go any further than this. Not today." Her eyes reopened, lit with a gentle smile. She lingered, for a moment, on just how close their breaths now sat. How they mingled with one another, and just how it would've felt to press those last few inches forward and join them as one.

But just for that moment. Even if she so badly didn't want for it to end.

"So, please... Let me do this." If only so she didn't have to see her look so pained for any longer than she already had. "Please.”

In Passeri’s hold, Elise’s hand finally loosened from her mother's hair. She leaned forwards, resting her forehead on Passeri's, not quite close enough, not quite far away. A moment of silent closeness. “Fine,” she breathed quietly. “I trust you.” Her hand drew away from Passeri's, replaced by the steel and rubber of the customized grip of her gun. “I'm…” she started, held her breath, then refused to go any further. She pulled away, and exhaled sharply.

She marched back across the room, over the father's body, taking care to tread on his fingers as she passed, turned, and stared down at the father's face. The shadow fell over her features once more, as she leaned forwards. The threat was clear enough. One word out of his mouth, one thought of giving his throat up to shout, and her fangs would close in on his neck.

“Thank you…” Passeri sighed, relieved, still hunched over where Elise had been a moment ago. In her shadow, her mother now lay wide eyed and trembling, at her rear her father had scrambled to his knees, gasping for breath. She took a moment to take it all in. Two people who had never cared for her, and one who did. Two people who she loathed, and one who she loved. Two people who she hoped to never see again, and one who…

Passeri laughed, wry and incredulous. She was almost grateful.

“Okay.” She spoke bluntly, and drew herself back to her full height. “Both of you. Listen to me. This is how it’s going to go.” Her movements were simple, almost robotic, void of delicacy, care and even wrath as she reached into her pockets and pulled her wallet into the light. There was a dull click as she popped the wallet’s metallic latch open, and then, shining gleaming white in the morning sunlight, she slid one of countless credit cards loose.

And then tossed it to the floor.

“The pin is 3071.” She slid her wallet back into her jacket, and for a moment, it was quiet. Both her mother and father sat shocked, prostrate upon the carpet as they first oggled Passeri, and then the cheap piece of plastic which now lay upon the ground.

“H-honey…!” Her mother spoke first, and then her father scrambled forward in response. Without another glance spared in her direction, his battered body surged forward, scooping the card up and stuffing it swiftly into the depths of his trousers. That moment was all it took. Now huddled together, whatever perverse imitation of heartbreak and fear the couple had worn throughout the morning had vanished, replaced by a look a victory.

“Thank you, Bran’! We-”

“Did I say I was done? Shut your damn mouths and listen.” But their celebration was short-lived. Her back now to Elise, the sharp morning sun was now at Passeri's back, casting her shadow long and hard across the room to consume her parents whole.

“3071, and 24 hours. That’s how long I’m giving you.” She took a step forward. If her parents had dared it, either of them would have only had to get to their feet to escape the shadow of her diminutive figure, but neither did. Neither could.

“Twenty-four hours to do whatever you want. To go to every ATM you can find and drain my accounts as much as you want, but-” Another pace forward. She looked directly down upon them, now, and lit by her Potential, her eyes glowed with all of the fury that she’d bottled up over the years. All of it unspoken, but all of it heard.

“But the first thing you’re going to spend it on is the first flight out of this city you find. I don’t care where it takes you, and I don’t care where you go from there… So long as it isn’t here. You’re going to leave and never come back.” Her fists clenched, and Passeri drew herself as close to her sorry excuses for parents as she could stomach. “And if you do come back. I will know. If there’s ever even a chance that I see you in this city again, I will know. And, Mom and Dad, if I ever do see you again…”

She looked them dead in the eyes. One after another.

“You’re going to wish I let her kill you here.”

And then a smile. She always finished with a smile.

“Understood?”

 

[miki]

Eisyu Ito (NPC)

CS Link

SCENE:

WYTTTTLBYUFTIFOYIACP

LOCATION:

East District | Hibachi Bar

DATE:

June 19th, 2022 | Evening

PARTICIPANTS:

Eisyu (NPC), Tak

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

Eisyu’s throat burned as he tried to peer into the man he thought he knew. A betrayal of expectations, as it were. He thought, perhaps foolishly, that he protected Hiachi from stuff like this. Even within the dangers he knew she could be facing, at least she was shielded. And certainly not targeted. He had trusted him in many implicit ways, but when he thought about it, he didn’t even know his name.

For as nice as it would have been to be completely blinded by rage, Eisyu wasn’t. The intricacies flooded him before he could even start marching along with a one-track mind. They both failed her, in that moment and beyond—at least, Eisyu had. He could only exhale, wide eyes retreating into the shadows of his face.

It stabbed at him. His daughter, his daughter. The same small thing he tucked into bed, the same girl who followed him around the house, they were the same as the woman who had been cast beyond him and fallen into the depths of New Oasis’ worst sins.

They were at an impasse. He knew too little, and the man before him had little to tell. There was nowhere to go. Eisyu almost considered running into the night and blindly shouting her name, a phone started to ring.

Eisyu looked between the man’s dreadful expression and the ever-impartial glowing screen of the phone.

Uljama Works. Abandoned nearby.

Eisyu backed off of the young man, revelation setting in. He knew exactly where that was. Fresh off that boat from Sankai, it was the first job he ever took up. He couldn’t count the people who lost arms and hands in the machinery on just his own fingers. The ladder rungs were thin and wobbly, and the wire mesh platforms were thin and high up. It was the kind of place he worked in so he could swear none of his children would have to set foot near it.

“A reunion like this can’t be rushed.” Well, it most certainly could. It would once Eisyu bolted out the door, rain beating on his back, surged with energy he hadn’t seen in decades.

Spoiler

thebigfella

Hiachi Ito

CS Link

SCENE:

WYTTTTLBYUFTIFOYIACP

LOCATION:

East District

DATE:

June 19th, 2022 | Evening

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi, Tak

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

“Northern Stones. But not their later shit, only their first album and EP.”

How comically demanding of her.

 

[thebigfella]

Shishido Takakazu

CS Link

SCENE:

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

LOCATION:

East District

DATE:

July 19th || Post-Outbreak

PARTICIPANTS:

Tak, Eisyu (NPC)

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

It spoke to him immediately. The look in Eisyu’s eyes told more of the stories. It showed visions of the future, weaved tarots that dictated the future, as fate was already decided.

Despite all his speed and all of his power, Tak found himself powerless in the face of the older man’s own before he barely raised a hand to keep him from making a reckless decision, one he had been working so hard to keep himself from doing; it was already too late.

The door had slid open, wet footsteps splashing into puddles as they hit the concrete.

“Oi!” Tak shouted behind him, quickly bounding out the door right behind him, the sound of storming rain once again overtaking his senses as he sprinted out onto the street. The world spun around him, and he twisted his body to counter its rotation, his arms swinging around as his eyes darted across the scenery. An empty road, the lights of all buildings had long since shut off, and the streetlights lined the pathways in both directions, fading in the limited visibility from the rainfall as one looked further in the distance.

A single moth hung on the light above him; its wings fluttered slightly, trying to dry itself off underneath the vibrant light.

Skin creased like leather, rubbing against each other dry and coarse like sandpaper, fingers dug into his palms, the veins along the back of his hand pulsed and protruded.

His heart thumped, and each beat and pulse grew louder; from subtle beats, the cacophony grew into rumbling growls. The sounds of whirring gears, their teeth chained together to pull belts that connected to shafts. Pumps moved up and down, cylinders rocked side to side, and the valves took intakes of blood and oxygen and acted as fuel to the catalytic converter as it popped with life. Everything worked together in overdrive; the rumbling traveled through his chest as if numerous explosions were being set off in his core.

His head braced backward, snapping upward to the sky as his clenched fists reeled backward with the dropping of his shoulders, all of his body growing closer to his torso as he felt his blood pulsing through from toe to finger. He took a deep breath, sucking in his lungs to drag them into the depth before he let out a frenzied shout.

“DAMMMMMMMMMMMNIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!”

Steam bellowed from his mouth, flowing up in the air like a smokestack as he bellowed, his shout echoing through alleys and rattling against windows; his focus shifted downward with the slamming of his chin against his collarbone, and with a sharp step forward, he took off. Water flowed off his body, leaving a trail of rivers that floated in the air from his momentum before crashing into the ground as gravity regained its hold; the puddles underneath his feet splashed with each footfall, sending splatters through the air that only hit the precipice of their rise by the time he had already moved far ahead. His speed was a blur, and in response, the world around him seemed to be made up of smears and swabs of color.

His eyes looked around, shaking and quivering as they struggled to keep up, but with a demand, a desire to find what he was looking for.

He would run across all of the East if he had to.

"Mallard"

CS Link

SCENE:

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

LOCATION:

East District

DATE:

July 19th || Post-Outbreak

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi miki , "Mallard" (NPC)

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

“Good pick,” was the only response Mallard responded. And with a few taps of his phone, a song came onto the radio.

The light turned green, and with a pump back on the gas, they were back on the way to wherever they were going. Mallard was nodding his head along with the song, humming the lyrics.

The perspective slowly made its way out of the windshield, the music becoming muffled as the view shifted around the car, hanging onto its hood as it turned a corner. Within the distance, the scenery was muddled, hidden within overwhelming rainfall.

Then, with a flash of light as the sky tore open with a rumble, only the briefest blink of the road ahead was revealed. A large building sat behind a rusted fence, barbed hanging loosely around the tops of the fence joined signs that dismayed trespassers with warnings of fines or incineration. A yard filled with dying plants and forgotten machinery, piles of old stone and scrap metal, bundles of rebar. Forgotten pieces of construction stuck in limbo of ownership weaved down a concrete path that led to a large warehouse. Blue paint chipped and stained with rust, a white roof with broken windows that let the elements seep in.

The gate entrance sat toppled, allowing the car to wheel its way in easily.

Shadows sat perched on the surrounding rubble and junk, like vultures awaiting their prey.

 

[Coyote Hart]

PEYTON XIONG

CS Link

SCENE:

Meet and Grit

LOCATION:

The Third Eye, Central District

TIME:

Post-Arc 3 || Morning of July 8th

PARTICIPANTS:

Peyton, Keith

MEET AND GRIT

Peyton giggled a bit when he felt the playful noogie on his head. He was delighted to reciprocate the tighter hug, and he allowed himself to snuggle into Keith's torso. Keith gave good hugs. The embrace was like a window into what it would be like if Peyton and Keith weren't enemies. It was a shame that this would probably be the only time that he could experience it. But who was Peyton kidding, he much preferred an enemyship with Keith than a friendship. Enjoying Keith's hug, Peyton exclaimed, "Yup! I'm the naughtiest snake there is!"

As soon as the illusion was properly established though, Keith pushed Peyton away from the embrace. The Serpent returned Keith's glare with a flit of his tongue, almost as if he was imitating a snake.

And now that Peyton established himself as Keith's friend for all to see, it wouldn't be so weird for him to join himself by the hip with the crimson-handed Dragon. As Keith chatted with Nora, Peyton slipped underneath Keith's arm so that it was slung over Peyton's back, almost as if Peyton was being held like a duffel bag. It was a last ditch effort to make Keith lash out at Peyton, as Peyton was sure that if there was a moment that Keith was going to steel himself against Peyton, now was the time.

"Yeah, honestly, the platonic dynamic feels so much more genuine than a romance would've felt!" Peyton chimed in, "I mean, I love a good romance, but too many writers these days put in a romance for the sake of it!"

Nora was understandably taken aback by Peyton interjecting into the conversation, especially since he was the 'snake' that had been mistaken as a gang member. However, she recovered quickly, "Oh! I'm glad that you also liked it. I wasn't sure if I got the vibes correct with their dynamic, but with you and Keith's feedback, it seemed my fears were unfounded. What's your name?"

"Peyton!" the bite-sized Serpent exclaimed. He procured his copy of the Seventh Howl and lightly flung it onto the table. It was the paperback edition, as Peyton lacked the money to purchase the hardback version. "I also brought the Seventh Howl for you to sign! Pretty please, could you use the same cool gold Sharpie to sign it?"

Peyton didn't have the same level of ecstaticness as Keith, as Nora was but one of a few authors that Peyton read in a year's worth of books. But, he did make up for it with his natural exuberance.

"Sure," Nora agreed, picking up her pen to leave a graceful scrawl on the front of the glossy cover. She passed Keith and Peyton's books back to their respective owners and smiled at the two of them, "Thank you for stopping by, Keith and Peyton. I hope you'll keep supporting my works in the future!"

With their time with the author expired, Peyton detached himself from Keith as he sauntered his way out of the bookstore. Peyton was as happy as a bee that saw a flower. After all, the several hours of wait in the hot sun was worth it in the end-- he had gotten his book signed. He turned back to look at Keith, "That was really fun, wasn't it?"

Roda the Red

 

[WhiskeyMarten]

HECTOR MOSES

CS Link

SCENE:

Blank Canvas

TIME:

Pre-Arc 3: September 30th, 2021 - 11pm

LOCATION:

South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Hector, Milo Elenion Aura

BLANK CANVAS

Get ‘em, Milo.

Hector smirked, waiting for Milo to get to drawing, not sure what to expect. Nothing crazy, no kills, whatever, but he was a creative guy.

"Why don't we take a minute and think.”

Think? Think!? What was there to think about, Milo. I didn't bring you here to practise your diplomacy.

The men must've noticed the dumbfounded look on Hector’s face, speaking first.

”Okay, you can think long and hard while I go inside. Maybe your tiny brains will process the situation before dawn.”

Before he could take a step forward, a hand gripped his shoulder. The more timid fellow tried to pull him back.

”Hey, we could just come back tomorrow? And all just walk away now.”

”Are you kidding me?” The man looked back to his friend. ”Why the fuck would we do-”

Hector had started running as soon as the man was distracted, aiming to cut through the guy's neck as quickly as possible - Milo's wishes be damned. The timid man squeezed the other man's shoulder tighter, pulling him back and pushing himself to the front. With his other hand, he unsheathed a knife, parrying Hector’s blade.

Clink!

The knife went flying, past Milo, but then a faint beam appeared, linking the knife with its owner’s hand, with Milo’s torso in the way. The beam glowed, and the knife came flying back.

 

[simj26]

DAGGER

CS Link

SCENE:

Blood Within The Pavement Cracks

TIME:

July 9th, 2022 | | Post-Arc 3

LOCATION:

Central District Sewers

PARTICIPANTS:

Dagger, Markus

BLOOD WITHIN THE PAVEMENT CRACKS

“Mm.” The king was struggling with his words as they walked. He wanted to say something, but it caught on his throat. She wasn't in the habit of telling anyone to open up, not even the princess. To her, if it was truly something someone had to say, they would say it. Whatever it was that he had the intention to say, it mustn't be that important if he retracted it just as quickly. All she could do was nod dumbly with a grunt.

And, if he had wanted to say it, now wasn't the best time. Her wolves were spat back out from the belly of the beast, looking confused and troubled. They circled around the entranceway from where she could see the tunnels within twisting and winding like a snake. She gave a sharp whistle, and they returned to her side, appearing crestfallen. She gave each of them a passing pat on the head for their attempts, and dismissed them.

In stark contrast to the King's response, Dagger was icily calm. It was clear what their prey wanted- a personal one-to-one civil discussion, and she, for the most part, was a diplomat of the highest caliber. A creeping sense of euphoria seeped into her nerves.

Too long had she been kept from a proper hunt. Too long had she not experienced the chase.

Ready or not, here she came.

She drew the hood of her coat over her head, and stepped through the threshold. With the years of practice of stalking and hunting monsters exactly like this, she melted into the shadows and the dark, her footsteps fading into whispers drowned out by the rushing water.

“Keep up, Weiss.” Her voice crawled out from the dark, a sole indication that she was still with him.

Elenion Aura thebigfella
The One Eyed Bandit

 

[miki]

Hiachi Ito | collab w/ thebigfella

CS Link

SCENE:

WYTTTTLBYUFTIFOYIACP

LOCATION:

Uljama Works (Abandoned), East District

DATE:

June 19th, 2022 | Evening

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi & NPCS

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

There was darkness, and then a moment later, a bright flash. Dangling flood lights hung from above from rotting wires and snapping metal, shining spotlights onto the floor below. Faded marks left from what formerly was used space, stains of rust left streaks along with oil spills and acid corrosion. Smells wafted through the air, phantoms of long removed chemicals that had come to taint the atmosphere.

Crooked walkways positioned above, eroded holes and torn railings, their failing structures beginning to dangle down. Puddles formed in divots within the ground, coming in through the shattered windows.

Tarps went across stacks of boxes and toppled barrels, their disfigured shapes unified underneath a sheet of blue.

There were only two figures who stood in open view. A man stood tall, his hands in his pockets as he waited patiently in silence, waiting for the massive doors to slide open on their unoiled wheels.

And next to him was his hostage: kicking tiny dunes in the dusty debris piles, as unbothered as could be, Hiachi Ito. She had successfully swept a tiny area to stand in without any broken glass or peeling paint in the way.

She stood slumped and uninterested, but her mind was active. As she beat down any regrets, she counted the broken grid windows and entrances and exits. She took note of the amount of paces she had taken and the amount it would take to get to the other side: fifteen and twenty-three, give or take.

It wasn’t too different from the one in Central’s Factory Row, exempt from the machinery. This factory used to be for assembling something, evidenced by the rows of railroad that lined the floor. In the part where she stood, the old rusty rails had split off from itself and shattered into a few metal pieces. Something had happened from where she stood.

There were plenty of places to hide. Behind the large machinery or busted crates, for example. Her eyes darted to movement behind a large crane. Though she feigned ignorance by slowly directing her gaze back to the floor, she noted the distinct warm shade of blond hair that kept peeking out from behind the old contraption.

Two, maybe three people.

That she could count. A long shot from before, but maybe they didn’t need as many people for an operation like this.

With all her information gathered, she had to start considering—How will I get out of here? Because this obviously wasn’t about her. She checked her call history, and lo and behold, it was Tak that this guy was talking to with such taunting familiarity.

She tried to consider ditching when whatever inevitable action started running high. It would be easy to leave, and she didn’t take kindly to considering herself leverage for longer than she had to.

But that felt wrong. For as long as Tak got her into trouble, he never abandoned her during it. Well, not when it mattered, anyway.

She mentally backtracked to the industrial garage doors. They were held up by a single chain, and if she aimed right, would send the door crashing down. Trapping everything in there and buying extra time for an escape.

Phantoms of the possible future comforted her. It all seemed troublesome on the surface, but funnily enough, she lacked panic. She remained herself, silent, watching.

“If you're planning on running away, I'd advise against it.”

Mallard's eyes were hidden within the unknown of his shades. It hadn't even seemed he was watching Hiachi until he addressed her, even with her talking to her directly the lacking change of his head made it seem he was just talking to himself.

He kept his tone above a whisper, ensuring the conversation stayed between them.

“While I don't have any interest in getting aggressive with you. I can't guarantee the patience of my associates.” There was the faintest tinge of bitterness as he looked towards the ones currently in hiding.

“Sadists, you know? People who love inflicting pain and getting paid for it,” he remarked, adjusting his tie with a frown.

“He has a habit of picking troublesome employees.”

So, what did that make him?

“I feel bad for you though, having to be involved in all of this. Hanging around that roach brings you nothing but problems, huh?”

She was more annoyed he mentioned it than anything. Because she was still gonna plan on running away. But she wasn’t gonna make a break for it. What did he think, that she was an idiot?

Hiachi hummed a noncommittal response and shrugged. A veil over her true feelings on the matter. She had already come to terms with the fact that his presence brought her trouble. And so was gang life, and so was everything. And so he was feeling bad for her. Didn’t everyone? Didn’t everyone pass by, watching her writhing on the ground? Horrible tragedy, this was. She’d feel the same if it wasn’t her.

And so he stood without doing a damn thing. There was no way to read him. To figure if his threats were genuine or not, if his promises were his or not. Still, she couldn’t complain. The word sadist snaked up her spine and held her by the throat.

The silence stretched on.

Mallard didn't move, nor did he speak. Boredom didn't seem part of his repertoire, and patience was his virtue.

He almost seemed to enjoy wasting time, a moment spent doing nothing was more entertaining than doing something. Some amusement found within a situation of letting things sit still, stewing. The clock ticking onward as the uncertainty of the situation could bring upon the next spontaneous surprise.

Maybe he was making the most out of nothing, trying to milk some value of what would be the disposing of borrowed time. But, the veil over his eyes hid any deeper intentions.

Was he looking down on Hiachi, in all her futility? Her pitiable existence, given life just to suffer within the realm of criminality that held no home for her?

No. He had much less interesting things to ponder about.

Such as what time the grocery store closes. He promised he would cook tonight.

Like a cannonball, a projectile shot through the air, moving far too fast to even visualize anything other than a twisting cyclone, a baseball pitch that aimed for a home run, to slam into the skull of someone in the stands.

Nonchalantly Mallard raised his hand, and with a sharp impact that sent reverb out the back of his palm, he stopped it in an instant. Steam smoked from the impact as the clenching leather rubbed with the tightening of his fist, a jagged piece of broken cement, leftover pieces of rear still sticking out of it.

“Don't you get tired of this?” Mallard questioned with disinterest, letting the rubble fall from his fingers to slam against the ground.

Hiachi’s eyes shot to the source of the projectile. There sat a slouched man, legs swinging off the edge of a tall cylinder made of brown metal. That same blond hair she spotted earlier, now atop the structure. Scratches and bruises lined the crevices from his face, dull and red from a recent scuffle.

“Blah, blah…” He rolled his head back, swinging his body back and forth as if he was on a seesaw. “I am tired. I’m bored as hell. Come on Mother Goose, play catch with me.”

“Hmm. I'm a bigger fan of playing on console myself. Maybe you should have brought a portable game,” Mallard gave his answer, using one leg to scratch the itch of his other.

The answer clearly didn’t satisfy him. He spun himself around on the rim before stopping abruptly. He zeroed in on Hiachi with those pale yellow irises.

“Then what am I supposed to do!?” He slid down the rung of the ladder, making a sharp creaking noise as he quickly descended. He slinked over, digging his hands in his pockets as he leaned towards the pair. “‘Hands offa the girl…’ Why’d he bring me then, eh? When is it hands-on?”

There was no clear threat, and yet Hiachi’s body responded like there was one. The pressure on her skull made her feel like she was being sucked into a black hole, doomed to be peeled into strips and matter until she was reduced to nothing. Or like she was melting, liquidized down.

She stepped back so she could address Mallard and so she could put some distance between her and the blond time bomb. “The fuck is going on?”

“Ah, this is one of those troublesome employees I talked about.” A simplistic answer that he gave that didn't give any proper credence to Hiachi’s reaction. But he at least stepped forward, creating a wall between the man and her.

“Don't worry,” hollow words that didn't even constitute as a promise as he pushed up his sunglasses.

“If he tries to lay a hand on you. Our contract will be terminated,” All business as he spoke but his body language spoke differently his smile turned sideways as his gloved hand floated in the air front of his face, reaching in preparation to grasp something.

“And my personal motto is dispose of faulty equipment.”

“Ooouuuuu, I’m so scared…” He pretended to whine. Though, almost instantly, he straightened up his act. He backed up a safe distance and crossed his arms, and turned his back on the hovering hand—though, not before flipping him off.

Regardless, Mallard didn't hold his threat long, his hand retracing to seamlessly return to his pocket as he took a relaxed slouch to his stance.

“Ah, but that would just be giving you what you want. Guess it would be better just to report it to upper management. He probably already has a couple ideas of what to do with you if you ever violate the deal.”

Mallard used his other hand to give a dismissive wave looping away from Hiachi’s defense, “Just ignore him. He's just a stray mutt who loves mouthing off. Sadly they don't make muzzles his size.”

Fine. Fine. She could take it if he just… stayed over there. If he tried anything later, he was a safe enough distance for a good shot.

Hiachi scratched her neck. Her worry hadn’t eased—in fact, it was only sharpened. The hairs on her arms stood straight up, like static. The red splotches of scars burned under her skin. Dead ends on her nerves sparked at the frayed strands.

The air outside was rich with the earthy scent of rain. It waited, almost stagnant, as if for a lightning strike. Raindrops snuck through the broken crevices in the roof, coming down in slow drops. This was it: there was nothing left to do.

Hiachi hated the waiting game. She stood on guard, mentally shuffling her cards and preparing for every outcome. How to keep that freak away from her, and keep her brain safely secure in her own head. But none of it existed. All that existed was waiting, counting down and watching the sand slip through a mental hourglass, for Tak to show up. Because once he showed up, she would get her answers. And they would get out of there, somehow, like they always did.

Yet, Hiachi was never a preacher of hope. Some way, somehow, she knew deep in her gut that she was going to lose. Something. Someone. Such is the balance of life; the balance of her life.

All of them perked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. But there was something certain in that sound. It was slow, exhausted. Heavy. Nothing like the revving engine they knew to expect.

His square-ish head emerged from the side of the open garage frame. Without his little chef hat, the top of his graying head was visible. But nothing could have thrown her off—it didn’t know, and it hadn’t when she set foot in that restaurant.

He came back for me.

She bit down on her tongue, trying hard to draw blood, but to no avail.

You have got to be FUCKING kidding…

Hiachi was hit with a wave of everything all at once. Sadness, bitterness, anger, relief, confusion, it all mixed together until none of it was discernable at all. All she could feel was that simple, primal dread. Her hands started shaking involuntarily.

He kept his distance, but tried to peer through the darkness at the three figures. This time, she was certain. Her dad couldn’t see her, only her silhouette. But she could see him.

“Hiachi!?”

The shadows moved, and at their own ununified strides the darkness separated from their bodies, revealing their human forms. Looks of different countenance, annoyance contrasted by some amusement as their plans had unraveled.

A man with stitches across his neck leaned on a nearby column, his pierced brows raised, “This ain't our mark, is it? I didn’t sign up to beat up someone's grandpa,” he remarked, turning a gaze towards Mallard.

Yet the operator ignored the inquiry. The soft shift of his body language did its job to speak of the feeling he had right now. He was annoyed, not because his plan had been interrupted or something petty like that.

He had always been bound within contracts, pens and paper could find themselves more powerful when backed with influence and money, it stopped wars and started him, snuffed wills and dreams.

Mallard silently let a cigarette come to his mouth, his eyes turning away from the scene.

It was out of his hands. And so he stepped back.

“Who the hell is this old fart?”

That question came from the vultures as they began to encircle what appeared as a soon to be corpse.

More of them emerged. More than she thought, about as many as she should have thought. This is an ambush. Of course there would be those waiting in the wings. Ones far better at remaining unseen than the wild card.

His title sat on her tongue, and she refused to let it fall. She wouldn’t slip. The second she called out to him, he was in the same boat as her. She wouldn’t drag him down with her. She had to do something, to get him away.

“He… He looks like he’s lost, or something…” She stammered. Hiachi knew damn well she was a horrible liar, the very second the sentence tumbled out of her mouth. She had never been a good liar.

“HIACHI!?”

The best she could do was pretend that name meant nothing to her. She wanted to squint, as if trying to shield herself from his desperate cries.

Obedient dogs, all of them, as they sat and watched, looking at Eisyu with fangs bared but held on a leash, it kept them at a distance but was unable to tug them back, as they waited patiently for the signal to pounce.

All but one ravenous mutt, one that was never destined for a show dog, born a mixed breed, a horrific display of genetics.

His jagged teeth, they almost cracked like joints long unstretched, the scars and wounds engraved on his face shifted with the tight smile lines.

He brightened, letting out a stifled chuckle from his lips. He didn’t care about the feelings of anyone else, he could care less about the depth of the situation, the connection between their hostage and this sudden appearance, there was only one simple thing.

An intruder on the scene, an obstacle in the plan. He didn’t bother reading the contracts he signed, he had no care about fine print or any obligations, so long as he could pleasure and paper. But, it was moments like this where his joys aligned that the world truly bloomed with color.

A flash of lighting came through the broken windows, a moment of blindness gave the unchained mutt the only chance he needed.

He leaped forward, his knee drove forward, slamming right into spine. He felt the euphoria, the shifting shingles of nerves and ligaments that made up the structure falter and snap, the feeling of an old ruin finally being brought down, well-grown history falling apart.

Before the poor hibachi chef even had a moment to let his body crumble forward, his hand had already snapped around the back of his neck, pulling him backwards with the straining of his skin, nails rending marks across his leathery skin like how a mother cat would hold its kittens, keeping him pinned in place.

Eisyu choked half of his air out from the impact. The inhuman amount of strength it took to carry himself all the way to the abandoned factory faded. Soreness and fatigue set in at the most inopportune time. He flailed his arms at his assailant, but he was only mocked with his frenzied grin.

She froze.

…She froze?

Fucking hell, you stupid weak IDIOT! You need to move. You need to move NOW. Go help him! What the fuck are you doing!?

And as Hiachi yelled at herself, her joints locked up. Her lip quivered, but she could produce nothing from her throat.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

I don’t know, I don’t know…

“What the hell?” Shock of the sudden assault came from the others, they all found themselves stupified by the sudden attack, but before they could even bother pursuing their questions even further, the feral Tiger turned towards Mallard, his jaws dripping with temptations as he opened his mouth with satisfaction.

“I remember hearin’ that our job was to take care of anyone who got in our way. Ain’t that right, ugly duckling?!”

Mallard brought his fingers up to his mouth, pulling the cigarette away from his lips. He let the taste of tobacco hung for a long moment on his taste buds, only once he had expended all the toxic goodness from his lungs, did he respond.

“...That’s right.”

An overjoyed laugh came from the psycho, as he turned to the rest of his fellow “coworkers” giving Eisyu a shake like he was some type of toy, “You heard him right?! This is part of our job!” He shouted, and with a toss Eisyu’s weight fell loose from his fingertips. “We basically got our own free pinata delivery!”

Eisyu, grasping on to the last reserves of his strength to push his upper body off the ground. He could see her clearly now. Instead of a question, he called out and trailed off at the end. Out of relief, and out of dejection.

“Hiachi…”

This time, she answered. No amount of logic or reasoning could hold her back.

“Dad…”

“Hey.”

A foot raised upward, and then slammed itself down like a hammer, ending its descent with a guttural crunch.

“Piñata’s aren’t supposed to move, you know? You've never been to a party before, old man?”

With twisted pleasure, he continued to grind his heel into Eisyu’s now broken ankle, leaning himself down to grab the back of his hair, grinding his face into the cement with a slam.

“A sweet sixteen? A quinceañera?” He continued to taunt, scraping the man’s face across the stone, smothering him in the scent of his own blood and filth of dirt.

“Don’t you know, piñatas aren't supposed to scream. They’re not supposed to walk either. They’re just supposed to…”

He stood back up tall, letting go of Eisyu’s head for a moment, he only was afforded a second to breathe, to gasp for life.

Before a shoe slammed against the side of his temple like kicking a ball, sending his whole body rolling across the floor.

“Break apart when you hit them.”

He stood there, wrought with his own depraved pleasure as he watched the man writhe on the ground. He turned to his comrades, looking at their expression. None of them had moved, but a mix of different reactions came from them. Some found the reunion humorous, while others turned their eyes away from the horror.

“What, are you guys going to leave all the fun to me?” He quipped, a feigned look of disappointment as he placed his hands on his chest in feigned astonishment, “What a shame.”

The world around her felt slow, to the point of being frozen. Even the rain outside seemed to fall in slow-motion. The image of her poor father, crumpled on the floor, burned into her memory. It dug deep, into former images of him as her protector. Back when she felt he could protect her from anything, even if it didn’t really make sense.

That vision finally died that day.

She aimed the gun at the space between his eyes. “Stop that.” Her voice was firmer. Even as her throat burned, her tone didn’t wobble and she matched his gaze as he looked up with surprise.

She was met with silence. From everyone behind her, from her dad, and from the man she was threatening. Shame ate at her insides. Aiming a gun at someone was not how she wanted to spend her time reuniting with her dad.

But it was necessary. She shoved the gun closer to him and narrowed her eyes.

“...GAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!” He nearly keeled over, supporting his stance by propping himself up by the knees. His laugh dwindled into an open-mouthed wheeze. When he looked up again, tears rimmed his eyes.

Taken aback by his overzealous reaction, Hiachi faltered. Her grip on her gun loosened as she peered past it to get a better look at him.

“HAHA… HAHA… OH, FUCK!” He grabbed the barrel of the gun and turned it sideways, throwing caution to the wind as he inspected the weapon. “This is that little cartoon cat, right!? It’s all white with the bow? And this thing is all pink and white and… GAHA! This is a fuckin’ toy!”

Hiachi was at a loss as he waved around her wrist, high on the comedy of his own making. She squinted at him. His entertainment with her gun caught her off guard.

It gave him the opening to smack the gun out of her hands and kick it across the floor, far out of her reach. He jabbed at her knee with his sneakers. She fell back onto the part of the floor littered with debris and glass. She sharply pulled her hands into herself before she looked up.

Pale. Lifeless. Demonic. The two dots shone, even in the cast of his shadow.

“You make this hard on me,” He sighed as he cracked his knuckles. “With the whole ‘refrain from violence’ bullshit I’m signed onto.”

He looked over his shoulder at Eisyu with a wicked grin. “So let’s pretend Mr. Piñata is you, yeah?”

The horror that flooded her face was enough to send him into another laughing fit. “Gahaha… haha…”

She was getting a real sick sense of déjà vu. One the ground, watching as someone helpless took the blows that were meant for her. Where she once felt the desire to be nothing at all, she felt static pounding in her head. Growing, louder, darker.

It hollowed out that fear. Where she would have cried, she stared with a flat mouth and swirling eyes.

She wouldn’t let it happen again.

Hiachi grabbed his ankle.

“Haha… Fuck, are you tryin’ to—”

With her other hand, she snatched a jagged piece of a rusted rail and drove it right into the back of his calf. Its sharp ends drove into his flesh with ease. The impact sprayed blood, which got on Hiachi’s face and began pooling into the dirt on the concrete.

His blood curdling scream echoed through the warehouse. He staggered as he tried to catch his balance, watching as the piece stuck out of his leg. He pressed his lips together and tore his eyes away, trying to angle his leg so less blood would pool out. He seethed as he watched Hiachi lift herself from the ground unscathed. He inched towards her while she stood perfectly still. “Ohohohoho, ahahaha, you BITCH—!”

Before he could swing, Hiachi stomped on the rail piece still stuck in his leg. It moved from its crooked place in his tendon and tore open the wound. His blood started eroding the rust off of the metal, giving the spilling blood a bright and rich hue.

The sound of his body being torn apart struck her. It gave her a sickening sense of ease. The rip and tear echoed in her ears.

She picked up the gun that had been kicked out of her reach before dusting it off, peering at the details. In some ways, she loathed it. It was like a joke that Lorette had made that she would never understand. A reflection of how infantile she was to the Tigers. In other ways…

He fell to his good knee as his damaged one sunk into the shattered glass. He bared his teeth like an animal, still trying to inch his way towards her. “Oh, you fucker. You’re gonna show me, huh? What’re you gonna prove? That I can’t hurt you? That… that… Oh, I’ll show you…”

With full, foolish intent to break his contract, he lunged at her legs. A weak attempt. She could see it now—his incredibly human weakness. His broken, battered body that would never recover.

…Shut up.

She fired the gun right through his eye.

The flash came first, and then the piercing sound of the shot. Within the second he was there, he was gone. A bullet hole through his skull, splattered with his own brain. He crumpled to the floor with his limbs locked in the position they had been as he tried to grasp at her.

Finally, quiet.

…

So she fired again.

And again.

Flash after flash, round after round until the sight of his head blown apart made her so sick she physically lurched.

 

[miki]

Hiachi Ito

CS Link

SCENE:

Lyrical Misery

LOCATION:

The Serenity, South District

DATE:

Pre-Arc 3 | Nov 11, 2021

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi, Hitoshi

LYRICAL MISERY

Hiachi didn’t know this man. Even over the span of her evening at the bar, she hadn’t been talking to him for the longest time. But Hiachi felt as though she should trust him with her life.

“It’s not MY thing,” she clarified as she pointed at herself with both hands. She felt as if the motion got across her point perfectly, so she downed another glass of gin & tonic.

But the second she sat down, the thoughts came back. Memories without words that conveyed something to her. Screaming into the shitty plastic mics that came with the console karaoke her brothers played. Backed into the corner of the bathroom stall, scared to see her friends when she came back out, only to be greeted with nobody when she came back.

Hiachi went wide-eyed at his suggestion. In the moments she was singing, she wasn’t trapped in her memories—she was trapped in liminal space, safe from the outside world.

She held a thumbs up. “That’s a smart idea… What song should we sing?”

Spoiler

joshuadim

 

[miki]

Hiachi Ito

CS Link

SCENE:

The Hard Way

LOCATION:

NOPD, West District

DATE:

Post-Arc 3 | June 4, 2022 | Daytime

PARTICIPANTS:

Hiachi, Mugen

THE HARD WAY

Before, she was frozen because of the fear. Now, she was frozen because of the confusion.


Hiachi watched his silhouette as he walked away. His steps crushed the bodies that littered the street. The car alarms droned on, despite the fact there was no one to be alerted. She stared without moving forwards or backwards.


He was strange. More monster than man. And yet, this was the most peaceful job she had ever completed. He thought nothing of her, other than the inescapable notion of her weakness. His strange act of… fondness… took her off guard.


It was visceral. The roads cracked beneath her feet. If she wanted to leave, she would have to maneuver through the unconscious bodies strewn about the floor. Standing amongst the destruction, fully intact. And yet, Hiachi couldn’t shake the feeling that she lost something, too.


When she looked at her papers, she decided it. Hiachi would leave him to his devices. She would give the files to Camila, and report her other findings.


She followed several paces behind.

fin.​

Spoiler

Elenion Aura

 

[thebigfella]

The Sewers

SCENE:

Blood Within The Pavement Cracks

TIME:

July 9th, 2022 | | Post-Arc 3

LOCATION:

Central District Sewers

PARTICIPANTS:

Dagger, Markus

Blood Within The Pavement Cracks

What makes a hunter?

Steps echoed, the groans of metal from the shifting stone around them forcing their way through the infrastructure, making it bend to its will.

Is it the prize of the game? Defined by its trophies and successes? Is it for amusement?

The lights above flickered, fizzling out and dimming the surroundings as wires were torn into threads, control systems embedded in the walls fizzled and flashed, and plumbing smoke as they were forcefully torn off the grid.

Does it come from bravery to put yourself in harm's way of the untamed wilds? To ascertain one's position on the peak of the food chain?

The way behind them shifted; a series of cement-forged dividers came from the ceilings and walls, shutting close like a flower coming out of bloom on a cold day, swallowing all the light and pollen with it, leaving only inescapable dusk.

Or the simple concept of hunting, which is part of the revolving circle. The hunter is the equalizer. To reinstate the balance when one forgets, they are not the alpha predator.

The term changes with time; it alternates with the situation. It will continue to shift as civilizations collapse and rebuild.

But right now, it meant something entirely different than anyone could comprehend.

The walls bulged like bubbles forming underneath the surface. They rippled until they burst open, layers pulling back, layers pulling back like the eyes of a frog, members of eyelids that all retracted into the sockets to allow mimics of eyes to swell forth. They spun around as if they were on rails, dancing past each other and merging to split apart as they crossed each other's paths; like cells in the skin, they lacked any rhyme or reason as they examined the intruders from every angle.

Some faux pupils burst open, lips extended across the fissured surface, tiles and mortar forming dry, chapped lips. They dropped open; the lack of teeth left only open pockets that contained darkness, but no sound came out. A moment was given, and within the depths, imitations of vocal cords formed, folds and glottis imitated to close and open to replicate vocalization, squeezing and compressing air from drafts of steam.

"Who? Who? Who?"

The question replayed and rescinded, traveling down the depths of the sewer halls to fade into nothingness. The improperly formed structure paused for a minute, fixing the kinks as if shifting the dials on a tuner. Instead of changing static, it changed tone, became more defined, and handled emotion.

"You are not. You are not what I want."

Anger.

“Passeri Park. Bring me Passeri Park.”

Frustration.

"I'll kill you. I'll kill you both if you don't bring her."

Desperation.

It was nothing but hollow, primal thoughts. Distant, malignant internal voices given lip service to spout feelings from a faint link. They lacked depth but carried all the bitterness on the surface.

Once against the cement, it began to shift; it curved in on itself, spiraling like the shells of a nautilus, before from the center, hands rose, fingers burst and grasped, they gripped into the air for anything they could get their hands on, like the rivers of Styx they sought to pull whatever they could into suffocation, a maiden of stone, the surface of the walls rippling like water as they swallowed and concave, waiting for something to get stuck, to get digested.

"Tell her…! Tell her to come! Tell her! TELL HER!"

Shouts turned to screams; the slamming of the vocal cords shattered their intricate structures into nothing but sounds of popping and bashing, unable to form words, left to shout hollow fury.

Amongst the madness, there was one witness to all of this.


A tiny beaver stood at the end of the corridor, his buck teeth hanging as he watched the scenario with his mouth open. A hard hat sat on his head, with the green emblem of some construction company labeled around it.

He only let out a slight chirp in response before he turned around on his two legs, bolting away from the madness.

Just what the hell was that thing?

 

[The One Eyed Bandit]

Deirest

SCENE:

Cold Water, Hot Blood, Warm Bile

TIME:

June 21st, 2022

LOCATION:

West District, Splash Space Park

PARTICIPANTS:

Pei, Deirest

Cold Water, Hot Blood, Warm Bile

Where had it all gone wrong? Maybe, Maine considered, it had been when he'd let his younger brother goad him into bringing him to this hell of sunwashed plastic and chlorine piss-water to begin with. He'd been having fun, despite his initial reluctance. The he didn't hate the kid, after all, it was just that the age gap of twelve years that came as a product of his father trusting a prostitute with needles for fingers made things a touch awkward.

But, still, it had been fun. They'd laughed, frolicked, slid, and had an all around good and wholesome day at a respectable amusement park. So, then, that begged the question. Why exactly was he, a 23 year old man of moderate respect in his community currently sat wet and sweating beneath a plastic slide?

He wasn't quite sure. It was a shitty hiding spot, but it was just about the only one he'd been able to think of in his panic. Whenever the cops got here they were going to find him in seconds.

Or maybe that was the point. He'd always tried to respect authority like that. They already had enough work on their hands with all of the gangs in this city.

He'd really only wanted to help. With his spirits so unexpectedly high, the good samaritan in him just wouldn't shut up about it. Help her, show her the ropes, and then give her a friendly push into a new horizon of water themed fun and excitement. That had been the idea when she'd seen the poor, oh-so-clearly high and delirious woman fretting about the park. He'd thought it would've been like splashing cold water onto his face after a particularly bad bender, just with more water for more... Whatever it was that had gotten the woman into such a state of confusion.

And now there was a dead body. And a crowd. Oh, god, there was a crowd. That was it, then. He was a man doomed, but not one that wouldn't face his fate with dignity. His head held low, he slid out of his plastic shelter, and marched a slow, dreary march across the wet poolside tiles. He'd turn himself in. That was the right thing to do here. To pay his respects and then turn himself in.

Glumly, he approached the scene. With the nurse, bless her heart, working in vain. The cackling boy, surely at his lifelong, paternally generational incompetence. The crowd of horrified onlookers. His hands, wet, clapped together noisily over the deranged woman's corpse.

"I hope you're in a better place, now." A spoken prayer. Sincere and heartfelt. "We hardly knew one another, Miss, but..."

And then the thump-thump of a heartbeat. Not one that Maine heard, mind you, as unfortunate as that was.

"Mnngh..." Deirest, her lungs still bloated with piss water, groaned.

"Mi-!?" Maine started, then stopped. Or was stopped was the better description, as Deirest's foot instinctively collided with orange-yellow swim trunks hard enough to both end his part to play in the generational curse of incompetence, and also send his body slipping and tumbling into the corpse water she'd just been fished out of.

"What'm...? Where'm...?" She blinked, slithering to her feet, just as the crowd around her moved onto gawking at the next drowner of the day.

"Somebody help him!"

"...You're filming this, right?"

"Bro, were his trunks red before?"

They prattled on, still within earshot, but Deirest wasn't listening. Towered over by Pei, and fussed over by Lala, she surveyed her surroundings with a deep frown, and then seized the nurse doll by the throat.

"You touch you-" She said. Tried to say. And they another gusset of water poured out of her throat, drenching the poor, fun-sized nurse in the West's finest cocktail of public pool piss water and bile.

"-What was...? Where'm this? You. Boy. Speak." She burbled another bit of water in Pei's direction. "You were before... Water park. And then the slides, and then my chest hurt. That was your fault."

At this point, she usually would have been mauling him already, but drowning was evidently one of the more exhausting ways to die.

And she was bored of him. What was 'him', again? Main, he said his name was. The main course.

She was hungry, suddenly, probably because of how she'd just emptied her guts, and also totally convinced the the boy in front of her and the boy who had shown her to slide were one in the same. What was the difference between one man in swimming trunks and the next, after all? Nothing.

"Food..." She slurred, and drew Lala close to her mouth. "Can this one be eaten...?" Her nose twitched. "No. Smells." She tossed the tiny nurse aside. "Starving..."

Her stomach burbled audibly, and this time not because of the water.

thebigfella​

 

[thebigfella]

Zentsupa Pei

CS Link

SCENE:

Cold Water, Hot Blood, Warm Bile

LOCATION:

West District, Splash Space Park

TIME:

Post-Arc 3 || June 21st, 2022

PARTICIPANTS:

Deirest ( The One Eyed Bandit ), Pei

Cold Water, Hot Blood, Warm Bile

Lala never could bring people back to life. A wish, a dream, a hope that never had been fulfilled. The life of a nurse left her to see many a life fade, hearing the last breath. Unlike Playmates, humans couldn't get a second chance like that. She had come to believe that.

The heartbeat she heard must have been her own, she thought, but then the corpse moved; more accurately, it kicked a poor bystander. Her hands came to cover her mouth in shock, her wings fluttering up to loom onto the pool, wondering if he was okay. She didn't have long to worry about someone else's safety before abruptly her airflow was cut off, a meek squeak coming out of her lips; she squirmed futility as her tiny hands gripped around slick fingers, the squeak of wet skin as her legs kicked and swung. She was unable to even retch as a mix of stomach acid, and water poured over her, soaking her hair and clothes.

"H-Help!" She breathed out, her eyes looking towards her creator, hoping he would do something to stop it.

Instead, she saw Q-Bot stomping up and down in distress as his head twisted and antennas spun, "Ahhhh! Lala! Lala! What should I do!? What should I do!?" He looked around for answers.

Meanwhile, Pei was looking to the side, whistling innocently with a 3 on his lips, music notes dancing out from his puckered lips.

Lala's expression drooped as she felt the breath draining from her nonexistent lungs, starting to go limp, lifeless in Deirest hands before, like an old toy, she was tossed a splash into the pool, her lightweight body not even going far under the surface before floating back up.


"Kekekekek," Pei chuckled slightly at the situation. Watching the woman come back to life was a surprise, but how she acted was more entertaining. He imagined her brain filled with maggots, wriggling around like they were in a jar.

A grin curiously came across his face toward the undying woman. If she could return from anything, she wouldn't be much different from one of his Playmates.

In that case, her "information" was tied to something.

He let out breathy snickers underneath his breath as he stared at her before the sounds of joyous laughing behind him made him swivel his head and step aside.

A group of girls in their teens, each with their own ice cream cone, walked past. The father of the three of them trailed around, wearing sunglasses and a six-pack, clearly on guard from keeping his daughters from getting any passes.

"Ain't that fuckin' shitty?" Pei pointed towards the group behind him, grinning, "No wonder you're hungry; they took the last of those cones you wanted," he lied, not much attempting to even act as if there was a word of truth. He pointed towards the top of the slide, "I told you to go up there to find them, but then," he leaned downward to point both fingers towards different angles of Q-Bot's square head, "Then this guy pushed you off! Kekekekek!

"Huh!?" Q-Bot's eyes widened as he looked over at Pei. His jaw dropped in disbelief, "I-I did!? Why did I do that!?" He questioned, the brainless robot believing him immediately. Pei only cackled in response, straightening himself back up.

How good was this undying idol and her memory? Pei was a bit interested in what came with you as you crossed that threshold of existence and the unknown.

Or, more likely. He just wanted to fuck with her.

 

[Elenion Aura]

JAVI ONEIRO SILVA

SCENE:

Losers!

TIME:

Post-Arc 3 || June 11th, 2022

LOCATION:

East District, Skate Park

PARTICIPANTS:

Pei, Javi

LOSERS!

With a flourish, and the agility of a dancer, the whiskered swordsman deftly flitted out of the path of the living shockwave's latest assault. Rocco watched its flipper fist as it followed its initial trajectory before slamming down into the pavement, sending deep, spider-webbing cracks through the concrete, down to the very earth itself, and showering the surrounding area in a spray of tiny dust particles and flecks of disintegrating debris. Waves of cacophonous energy undulated up and down the length of it, a self-contained maelstrom of fury.

"Skreeeee!!"

As if in direct contradiction of the feline samurai's words of—perhaps somewhat backhanded—praise, and as an inverted reflection of its apparent civility despite its anthropomorphic appearance, Rocco unleashed a berserker's cry, the metallic shrieking scream more akin to the whine of heavy machinery than any living creature's. Animalistic fury drove it forward in dogged pursuit of its rival, at times bounding ahead on all fours like a pint-sized gorilla, all the while packing the wallop of the whole troop inside of its compact form.

The pair of warriors collided, unleashing a fresh wave of force, radiating around and out from them like the whipping winds of a hurricane, sending refuse and wayward playmates spiraling erratically. They parted, only to crash once more into each other. Again and again.

Each meeting of blade to blow was a clap of rolling thunder. Woe be to any poor fool who got between those two tiny titans...

Elsewhere, in a more peaceful corner of the skate park-turned-battleground, Luvi puttered over the various scenes of destruction and aftermath. She spied little fires and smoking refuse here and there along her meandering path, putting each out with an efficient globule of her internal body fluid. Amidst a particularly torn up runway of molten pavement leading to a pileup of wreckage, she spied a metallic caboose poking out of an impact crater in the fissured concrete.

The airborne aquatic tooted down to ground level. Cooing softly over the flailing robot legs, she lowered her soft beak to take a conveniently exposed gear gently in her mouth and used it to pluck him from the earth. She deposited him beside his landing zone, trilling good-naturedly. "Trilloo, trill-illoo ♪" Whatever beef their masters had was not theirs.

Returning to the melee. The scene had devolved into hyper-speed action, each combatant becoming solitary motes of light as they ping-ponged back and forth against one another, colliding and separating with lightning speed. This frantic duel was punctuated by moments captured as if in slow motion.

A scene of Rocco breaking the rocks beneath Bushineko's footing, ripping up slabs of earth which scattered in slow motion.

A scene of Rocco diving, four limbs splayed like a starfish, as charged slashes of pressurized wind zoomed past its widening eye sockets as the blades of air barely grazed his chitinous crests.

A paradoxically peaceful scene of Rocco and Bushineko sitting on tatami mats in their individual aesthetics, both enjoying their own saucers of steaming hot tea.

This was followed up by a scene of the pair locked in an intense... Board game? The wooden low table sat between them, which held the checkered square in the shape of a familiar pattern, as both peered closely at their individual pieces on the board. Rocco, after careful consideration, moved one of its pieces in a confident fashion, capturing one of Bushineko's valuable, exposed pieces. It peered over at its partner, its expression approximating a cheeky smirk, only for its gaze to fall as Bushineko quickly countered with a move that utterly trounced the minor victory Rocco had previously been celebrating. In a flight of fury and frustration, Rocco warbled a roar and flipped the board as time caught up with them, continuing their battle with deboubled vigor.

Meanwhile, Javi, who had already winced after seeing, and hearing, his board smack against the side of Pei's head—he didn't want to hurt anyone, not really—winced again, this time scrunching up his shoulders and preparing to shield himself from whatever crazy stuff was about to go down. He'd already come to expect nothing less than absolute chaos, even from his altogether brief experience with the spiky haired nut before him. So, even when nothing immediately blew up in his face, he still didn't lower his guard.

That being said, he still didn't see coming what came next.

"Y-yo?!" His eyes were dragged downwards, away from Pei, towards the board in his hand. His grip tightened unintentionally, or else he'd have lost his hold on it completely, even as the board seemed hellbent on getting him to do just that.

"Chill, chill!" He talked to his board, even as he felt a swell of guilt for apparently violating it somehow. His attempts to placate it proved fruitless, though. Taking one last look at his once-faithful companion—recalling all the good times they had shared together over the years—he whirled around and launched the board like an olympic hammer thrower, sending it hurtling through the air as its voice faded into the distance.

Turning back to Pei, he cast a furtive glance at the flowering purple that bloomed over the man's temple, accompanied by the thin rivulet of crimson that trickled from his nose, feeling a little pang of remorse for the hurt he'd cause. He raised his hands, palms splayed, in a gesture of good faith.

"Look man, I don’t wanna hurt you." He meant it. "Just take your stuff n' go, yeah? How 'bout—" Before he could finish his thought, the recently animated skateboard, having boomeranged back to its place of origin, whacked him in the back of the head.

Stunned, Javi stumbled forward onto his hands and knees as his sling slipped off his shoulder and fell to the ground with a clatter. Its mirrored surface turned a deep crimson. Red energy seeped from it, flowing into cracks in the earth beneath their feet. Javi, shaking his head like a dog to try and clear the ringing from his ears, staggered to his feet. Watching as the last tendrils of bloody amber disappeared underground, Javi let out a deep sigh as realization dawned in his somewhat fuzzy mind.

"... No mames..."

From below, there came a distant rumbling.

 

[Elenion Aura]

MILO NAGISA

CS Link

SCENE:

New Phoenix Golden Age

TIME:

July 20th, 2022 | | Post-Outbreak

LOCATION:

Phoenix HQ, South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Bolt, Hector, Helva, Hitoshi, Milo, Musai, Pei, YY

NEW PHOENIX GOLDEN AGE

The words felt like knives on a chalkboard. Though at least they didn't come as a surprise. The applause was worse. That wasn't a surprise, either. The Phoenixes, while inherently diverse and mostly strung together by their shared bonds of what they called family, they were all, at least mostly, of the same mind on one thing: retaking Central and reclaiming their former glory.

No. It wasn't a surprise to hear. Just another reminder. One which Boltius would no doubt reinforce, reinforcing in Milo's own mind the fact that his friend had become enamored of this. The fact that his friend was this.

Then, the real surprise came in the form of cackling laughter.

Turning toward the source of the outburst, Milo's eyes found a spike trap of platinum hair. Knife-edge ears. Small, shifty eyes. This man was a villain if he'd ever seen one. But villains were the heroes of their own stories, after all. And to spit in the face of this moment so brazenly and turn one's back? That was... For lack of a better word, interesting. Milo half-expected the crowd to stop him from leaving. He could only imagine that some sense of decorum, or out of respect of their leaderships—perhaps even reverence for the ground on which they stood—had stayed their hand and left the blonde banshee free to waltz out unscathed. He wondered how long that would last, now that he'd marked himself as an agitator, in front of no less than the man who would be King.

"Hm?" He said as if he hadn't heard Hitoshi's words, even though he'd heard them perfectly. His mind had been far away. "Oh, I'm alright," he answered, seemingly a different question than the one Hitoshi had asked. He glanced furtively, meaningfully, over at the stage. Part of him wanted to hear what Boltius had to say. Part of him wanted to be respectful and give the two men above them his rapt attention. Part of him didn't want to run the risk of being perceived as rude by chit-chatting in the middle of the proceedings.

Part of him spoke. "How are you... Feeling?" He asked the elder Phoenix, giving him a knowing look.

 

[Kameron Esters-]

Musai

CS Link

SCENE:

Young Blood

LOCATION:

South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Charlie, Hitoshi

Young Blood

Musai, leaning against a shelf stocked with assorted snacks, flashed his characteristic cheeky grin at the cashier, his eyes glinting with a mix of mischief and assurance. "Ah, don't sweat it, ma'am," he said, his voice smooth and reassuring, yet tinged with his usual playful undertone. "We ain't here to shake you down or anything shady like that. Just think of us as your friendly neighborhood trouble-shooters, eh? Anything weird you've noticed around, any dodgy characters making a mess? We’re just trying to clean up the streets, make sure businesses like yours don’t have to worry about these small-time crooks. So, any tips you might have would be hotter than my last barbecue! Which was like what? 5 months ago? It was a good barbeque too, I ya' h'wat! I was got greens, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, lamb, ram, hog, maw, chicken, turkeys, rabbits, you name it!" His laughter filled the small space, easy and infectious, aiming to lighten the mood and bridge the gap his gang's reputation might have built.

Roda the Red joshuadim

 

[Elenion Aura]

CADE BLAISE

SCENE:

The Shadow Over Stein Street

TIME:

June 26th, 2022

LOCATION:

Suspiciously Located Manor, West District

PARTICIPANTS:

Deirest, Mugen

THE SHADOW OVER STEIN STREET

He had to get out. He had to get out of here. He wasn't going to die in here..!

All the mantras and more wouldn't save him from the thing that hunted him in the dark. He could hear her, like she could hear him. Coming closer. Gaining on him. But from where? It didn't matter. He just had to move forward, find an exit, get back to daylight—

The thing leapt out at him from the dark. Pain lanced up the side of him, as through the dark he watched his blood bubble out of fresh wounds. "ACK!" He screamed in fear as adrenaline coursed through his veins.

"FUCK YOU!" He shouted hoarsely in reply, his fingertips crackling as he threw up both hands toward the leaping boogeyman in the dark, filling the hallway with a blast of sparks.


The dull roar of the explosion was heard from the alley.

Daiki and Ryuji exchanged a look. They were thinking the same thing. Is he worth the trouble? They both asked, and were both answered without having to say a word. As the man who'd taken up the rear of their quartet until now, brushed past them on his way toward the yawning maw in the side of the dilapidated manor.

It didn't take them long to find him.

Cade Blaise was hobbling through the shadowed halls of the abandoned building, blood flowing freely from a large gash across his neck. It bubbled out from underneath the hand he'd clasped over it, spilling through his fingers as it ran down his forearm. When he saw them, his face seemed to alight with something that might've been hope had his eyes not been so glassy. "Thank... god... Fuck, you guys... I thought I was done f—"

His expression froze. His eyes, suddenly bulging inside of his head, fell down, staring at the blade that was impaled through the meat and bones that attached his head to the rest of his body. He tried to cry out, tried to scream, tried to ask Why?!, but only a single, gurgling cough came out as he vomited blood onto the flat of the katana before his body went limp, sliding down the rotting wood paneled hallway wall as blood bubbled and popped in the corners of his mouth, his eyes staring into nothing.

Daiki sighed and looked at the trigger happy swordsman beside him. "Man... Why'd you do that?" He asked, his intonation slightly miffed, as though he'd just caught a child making a mess for no reason. Ryuji was too busy flicking the blood and gore from his blade to pay the blonde any mind. "He was dead already, anyway."

He said, shrugging his shoulders, though not before casting a furtive glance around. He had gone off somewhere in another direction, leaving the two of them to their own devices. Ryuji was sure he would approve of this... Survival of the fittest, right?

 

[joshuadim]

HITOSHI YAMAKAWA

CS Link

SCENE:

Young Blood

TIME:

Post Outbreak || July 21, 2022

LOCATION:

South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Hitoshi, Charlie, Musai

Young Blood

The cashier woman looked at Charlie with an unamused look as he gave her his best face, though it was one that she had seen plenty of times behind the counter. Putting a toothpick in between her teeth to slowly chew on she narrowed her eyes at him: "Trust me kid, I've dealt with too many pleading faces wanting free candy or a discount on their soda. Don't work on me." she said flatly, becoming rather apprehensive all of a sudden as her eyes moved between the three Phoenixes in here store. "And it's just thief, singular." she then said to Musai, responding to both him and Charlie at the same time.

"But beyond that... I ain't comfortable talking."

"Wha- why?" Hitoshi sputtered out in confusion. "...didn't you want the problem dealt with?"

"Yeah, but not with gangsters."

She was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of violence being used here, which made Hitoshi sigh. "Look, lady, we aren't here to hurt anyone... heck, I'd prefer if we didn't at all."

"Really?" she then said with a cocked eyebrow, "I know your types. You all punch first, ask questions later."

"Alright..." Hitoshi then said, taking a deep breath. "Didn't want to have to do this but you leave me no choice..." It sounded almost dramatic how he was saying this as he turned aside slowly. He closed his eyes, his aura dripping with anticipation as he let the moment linger in the air to everyone's anticipation. Ever the cashier was enthralled as she watched, though her anticipation was measured with hesitation as her gaze narrowed. Then, with the flick of his hips and arm, Hitoshi presented a pinkie to her.

"I pinkie promise, we shan't use force lest I be split in twain!" Hitoshi announced dramatically, his digit wriggling so as to indicate his desire for truth.
An excellent strategy, my liege.

The woman looked baffled as she witnessed the drama unfold over something so minor, which left her to choke on her words momentarily before recuperating: "Alright alright, jeez! I believe you... fuck." she said, crossing her arms. She averted her gaze from the Phoenixes from a moment as she wrestled with the guilt of speaking up before swallowing it once and for all. "It's a kid... a little kid. That's why I don't want any violence in this."

Roda the Red Kameron Esters-

 

[Kameron Esters-]

Musai

CS Link

SCENE:

New Phoenix Golden Age

LOCATION:

Phoenix HQ, South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Musai, Yong-Yut, Hitoshi, Helva, Bolt, Hector, Milo, Pei

New Phoenix Golden Age

Musai stood near the back, his arms crossed, eyes scanning the crowd as Hector made his announcements. He was always skeptical about these grand declarations—years of survival on the streets had taught him to judge actions, not words. Musai’s expression was a mix of bemusement and calculation, wondering how Hector’s words could translate into actual gains for the gang, and more selfishly, for himself.

As Hector’s voice carried across the room, rallying for a resurgence to the Phoenixes' former glory, Musai couldn’t help but let his mind wander. He understood the necessity of a strong leader to steer the ship, especially in tumultuous times, but promises of a golden age felt both optimistic and distant. He was more interested in immediate, tangible benefits.

Leaning slightly toward Yong-Yut, he kept his voice low, blending with the ambient sounds of the room. "Seems like Hector’s planning to stir the pot. Promises a golden age, huh? What’s your take? Think he’s got something solid up his sleeve, or is this just more pep talk?" His tone was lightly skeptical, but open, genuinely curious about her perspective, especially given her close work with the leadership on their attire for this event.

Musai's eyes didn't stray far from Hector and Boltius, analyzing their body language, trying to glean any signs of unspoken plans or uncertainties. If there was a strategic move to be made, he wanted to be ahead of the curve, ready to adapt and leverage it for maximum advantage. His survival instinct mingled with newfound loyalty to the Phoenixes, a complex balance of self-interest and a genuine connection to this makeshift family he had grown to respect.

"Whatever’s coming, it better be worth the hype. We need a real edge, not just fancy suits and big talk. These suits are still fly as hell though," he added with a half-smirk, glancing down at his own outfit, a subtle nod to Yong-Yut’s craftsmanship mixed with his perennial readiness for action.

joshuadim gxxberkit Peckinou Doctor Llamabean WhiskeyMarten Elenion Aura thebigfella

 

[Roda the Red]

ERIC EVENSEN

CS Link

SCENE:

Bitter Aftertaste

LOCATION:

The Cerulean Orchid, South District

TIME:

Nighttime, Post Arc 3 June 7th, 2022

PARTICIPANTS:

Callista, Eric

Bitter Aftertaste

To be expected, Eric's face remained stoic and unchanging as Rose elaborated on her line of work, or rather the relative lack of it, she did, however, earn a light head tilt from the detective. "Hooo, honestly, I didn't take you for the entrepeneurial type, I respect that." His hand brushed at his gold-singed hair, bringing his hanging bang behind his ear.

He gave the woman's question a thorough thought. Her remark reminding him that he was, in fact, being hit on. He wondered if he'd ever get used to it, his detective intuition may be extremely sharp on almost any other aspect, but he never saw people's advances coming, like the sentiment was something so alien to the man that it simply flew under the radar.

"That's a good question." Probably because he's never really thought about it before, always fun to dig at a new uncharted part of one's mind. "Hmmm, someone with confidence, who's not afraid to try something new." He paused for a moment, pickaxe strikes tearing away at the metaphorical rocky layers of his cortex. "A woman who knows what she wants, I guess, with a pretty smile, too." He stared down at his drink, a faint glimpse of longing gleaming in his golden eyes. "Never really thought about it, so that's the best I've got really" He raised his glass as to acommodate his elbow on the counter, gently swirling the contents within. In reality, another particular trait crossed his mind, but it was probably for the best to refrain from mentioning big boobs.

"Guess it's my turn, then." He eventually added. "So, what made you choose me to hang out with you for this lovely night? I hope it's not just because I got that very friendly fellow off your back." He smirked faintly, awaiting for the woman's response with genuine curiosity.

@W I N T E R

 

[thebigfella]

TAK & HIACHI

Collab Post

SCENE:

WYTTTTLBYUFTIFOYIACP

LOCATION:

Uljama Works (Abandoned), East District

DATE:

June 19th, 2022 || Post-Arc 3

PARTICIPANTS:

Tak, Hiachi ( miki ), Eisyu (NPC), "Mallard" (NPC)

When You Take The Time to Look Back, You’ll Usually Forget That In Front of You Is a Cheese Platter

Each flash of the muzzle, the slam of the hammer reeling back. It reflected off Mallard’s shades, his fingers held still around the butt of his cigarette as he watched from the corner of his eye. His silence was shared by the others, who were left frozen by the sudden change. No one expected it, saw it coming, or believed it.

Except for Mallard, the only one who seemed unphased by the whole affair, another blow of smoke before he tossed his cigarette to the side. “Idiot,” he breathed under his breath as he adjusted the collar of his shirt with a frown. "What type of person lets themselves get offed by their hostage? This is gonna be a pain to explain to the boss.” He was only interested in himself.

He had seen this turn of events before. It was only nature, so incredibly simplistic that they wrote it in children’s books. What happens when you kick a hornet nest or decide to poke the sleeping lion? You get stung, you get bitten, and then you die.

He had shared little words with the woman over this whole trip here, but he didn’t need to commit himself to psychoanalysis to know what she was. Stained, white-- albino, the black stripes would fit her soon. Reality, or the detachment of such, for whatever reason it came about, it was such things that changed people.

The corpse on the ground, he had gone off long ago. A blown fuse that thought the gunpowder was anything more than burnt ash, he had no clue what a real ticking time bomb looked like until it exploded in his face.

It was almost comical, but he didn’t feel like laughing.

He thought to himself how to handle the situation. A small glance at his employees told him that the situation wasn’t as clear-cut as he’d like. Some of the Tigers looked ready to avenge one of their own, while others didn’t want to test the girl any further. At this rate, things were going to get even more out of hand.

And the old man, he needed help.

…

He couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Don’t forget the mission.” That was the simple order he gave. The fact of the matter was that no one was allowed to leave this room until the major player made his appearance.

This whole situation happened because he always had to be late, never in time to change anything—just like back then.

He was the only one he felt pity for.

Everyone kept their positions still, patiently watching Hiachi’s next move. She wouldn’t get a chance to do what she did again, and if she needed to be subdued, they wouldn’t hesitate.

Mallard kept his hands free; the related demeanor he had maintained until now was replaced by something else, a realm in between that leaked some of his true colors, but maybe for the first time ever since she joined the Tigers:

No one was looking down at her; they had no choice but to look right at her.


And as such, there wasn’t a single person who noticed when he walked in.

A shiver ran down all their backs in unison, a cold sweat that made them all turn their heads around. Their bodies followed after, instinctually readying themselves in defense.

Each step echoed across the empty warehouse, reverberating off the walls and blocking out rain sounds. The air twisted around him, refusing to come close to him. Messy black hair covered his eyes, hiding his expression under layers of soaked and tangled locks. His body was wet with sweat, rain, salt, and vinegar that burned up within him. Streaks of black and red rose from his feet in pillars, encapsulating his form, curing around his body to rise into the air like an inferno.

Mallard’s head rose, and despite the slight tinge of perspiration forming on his brow, he wore a smirk, looking at the approaching malice with nostalgia, “Looks like you’ve grown up a bit while I’ve been gone.”


“Roach.”

Her hands twitched. Streams of blood ran down her palm and dripped off of her fingers. One at a time, the droplets ringing louder than the aftermath of the gunshots. Her choppy hair masked her face as her upper spine hunched over the body before her. She hardly breathed. The scent of death made her sicker than she already was.

The twitching didn’t stop. Like she was reaching for something without moving forward to claim it. Heavy exhales and sharp, little inhales. She saw him out of the corner of her eyes. The presence that hooked everyone’s attention. The final piece.

Her head winded to the side, revealing the splatters of blood that covered her face almost entirely. Her irises had been reduced to nothing but unstable dots.

Took you long enough.

The Tigers ran at him as though his name was the codeword. They swallowed the danger signals going off inside them to charge him with numbers.

Tak didn't hesitate; he didn't stop his one-minded approach. The world could freeze around him, and he still would be moving.

Potentials went into action in front of him. Spikes sprouted from a man's arms while sparks formed between a woman's fingers. They came at him from all sides, their bodies taking the shape of streaks of color before reforming with after images above and beside him. The distance between him and them closed, and the space slowed with time as hands, legs, and inhuman appendages were ready to puncture, slice, and gut him.

He didn't move as the gaps closed; every nanosecond ticked, and the reflection of him from above came from one of his assailants’ eyes.

They watched as his head snapped upward to look right at them, hollow, dull gray eyes surrounded by uneven stencil-drawn shading across his features.

Fear draped across her face, but it was already too late; rugged fingers dragged themselves through slowed time to grasp themselves across her face, swinging her around, leaving the rest of her body to dangle behind randomly, flinging her into the man in front of him and sending them both across the ground, sprawling then across.

He leaned back just in time for a jagged knife to slice past his face, stray strands of hair sliced loose. His hand gripped the man's wrist before slamming his elbow into his face, blood gushing from his nose and bursting from his mouth as his eyes rolled backward.

“Damn!” A curse came from the few left. A breath of pause was the only mistake they had a chance to make before the screen split into three; each angled perspective showed a fist slamming into each of their faces, an uppercut to the jaw, knuckles to the temple, and one right square in the face.

They all were sent reeling through the air in a trio, skidding across the floor right at Mallard's feet as Tak stood there paused at the end of his momentum for the swing,

Unconscious Tigers surrounded them, and with a breath of steam funneling out of his mouth, Tak straightened up to face Mallard directly.

They stood there silently as if waiting for each other's next move.

Until Tak suddenly broke the contact, turning his direction to walk over to Eisyu, crouching next to him.

“You stupid old fart,” he choked out, his firm fist slammed on the ground, “I should beat your ass…”

His answer was indecipherable beyond mumbles of pain. He had something important to say, which would only be communicated by his weak hands trying to point in the direction of his daughter.

Tak silently rose back to his feet, his posture slouched as he turned his head to the corpse on the ground; its mutilated skull burst open from numerous calibers, the puddle of crimson it laid in, soaking into the pavement, overpowering the smell of rust with copper.

Tak stared at it. His eyes didn't rise to look at the culprit; he already knew. He had known when he heard the bullets calling him here.

His stance straightened, and he bore his eyes into the corpse as if it could tell him something. The only movement was his breathing.

Mallard stood a few feet behind, his casual pose over Tak's shoulder as he talked to the man's back.

“You're late again. I was hoping you'd be better after last time,” Mallard taunted, putting his hands into his pockets as he began to pace around with his monologue. As he crossed a pillar in his path, the moment he broke sight with Tak, it was as if he had stepped into a portal in the past.

A messy-haired runt stood above a man with white hair. His clothes were coated in blood, and red poured out of his empty eye socket. The image only persisted for a moment before stepping behind another column returned the view to the present.

“Guess you didn't learn, so here's another lesson.”

A coy smirk across his features as he gave a carefree shrug.

“Consider it a lesson from your older brother, then. Nothing good happens to--”

A smear appeared in front of him, distorting the space around it; Mallard’s body was already moving before he could feel the force before his brain could even register the pain. His flesh was rippling from the force of a punch to the face, his sunglasses shattered as his body slammed through a series of pillars, launching rubble and dust around as each slam swung his limbs around in different ways before he finally slammed into the metal wall.

His form slouched against the dent he left, his wrist coming to wipe the small trail of blood that had come out the corner of his mouth, his black eyes finally seeing the light of night as he looked upward.

“Heh, I doubt that one was for Arkar,” he mumbled from his busted lip, grunting as he pulled himself up.

There was no response from Tak, as his fists cracked; there were evident bruises on his fingers from the punch as if he had slammed it against a brick wall; they throbbed in pain, but he didn’t let it show in his grimace.

“Hiachi,” Tak spoke clearly, looking over to give a glare right into her eyes, a look of sincerity that he had never shown her before.

“Get your dad out of here.”

She perked up. His voice gave her a little shock that grabbed her from her swirling psyche.

Hiachi. That was her name, wasn’t it? It sunk through her like quicksand. She needed to process it with more time and space than she was granted.

That was the obvious thing. Getting her dad out of there was the most important thing to her, no matter what.

So her legs locked up as she tried to move them. She really tried, but the concerning lack of oxygen in her bloodstream kept distracting her. Her whirlpool of thoughts pulled her back down under.

Why the FUCK did you do that!?

He deserved it, right? I was only defending myself.

His head is GONE. Are you crazy!?

Maybe I AM crazy.

No, the FUCK you’re not.

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

Her mind rose to the surface, not on earth but closer to herself. She was still loathing, shaking, and breathing quicker and quicker.

Why can’t I move? What the hell is my problem?

She raised her bloodied hands to comb the hair out of her face. Her arms locked in place like she was trying to crush her own skull.

“My Dad…” Her words came out in a raspy whisper like she was trying to remind herself of something.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?”

Tak's fury at Hiachi’s lack of movement came with the shouting he always did, quick to anger and swift to lash out, but he could cool down just as quickly. For a moment, it would seem like she would be her next target, a smack on the head that would put her out of her misery.

But instead of rage, despair took its place. His eyes pierced through her to look beyond the distressed girl's mental anguish, the dryness in his mouth overpowered by the power of his vocal cords, “I thought you were going to protect what's important to you! You can kill a guy but can't even do this!? Don't fuck with me!” Spit flew out from his mouth from his yelling.

You killed a guy.

The other words got to her but couldn’t cut as deep. The noise threatened to send her spiraling. She averted her eyes. It was impossible to handle. Her teeth clenched, and her shoulders hunched from the pressure that came in notches.

It made as little sense to him as it did to her. She knew it was stupid and couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Her body and mind ganged up on her at the most inopportune time. Crushing, relentless waves of the darkest depths of herself.

Hoarse noises came from the back of her throat. As if she was trying to scream while stuck in a nightmare.

Tak clicked his teeth. Her state was far too bad right now; she was too far gone for any sense to reach her. Adrenaline had disappeared, and reality set in, a feeling he had known well. Yet, to go as far as to take someone’s life…His thoughts swirled with what could possibly be going through her mind.

And it made his stomach churn.

Tak's focus tore away from the battle, and he paid the price. The sound of snapping metal made him twist his head sideways to the source. A walkway torn at its bend swung downwards. He was barely able to bring his arms up to defend himself. His shoes skid across the floor as momentum carried his body along.

Hiachi remained precisely where she was. The only movement she made was a jump of pure shock as she watched the creaky old structure fall down. Her head snapped in the direction of the impact, dread pooling in her stomach as she watched Tak struggle.

It was like a sledgehammer came down on her system. But a reset is a reset. And just as her original instincts had been screaming the whole time, she put one foot behind the other before she sprinted and slid to her father’s side.

“Dad?”

She crouched next to him and rolled him over onto his back. Her hands gripped his shoulders, and she shook him like a rattle as her eyes scanned him. Even as he remained still, she kept trying to wake him as if she could change fate with her pure will.

“Dad. Dad.”

Amidst her frantic shaking, he stirred slightly. Nothing close to being conscious, but alive. A burst of relief overcame Hiachi. That was enough for her. She stopped shaking him and moving his irises under his eyelids. She clutched his shoulders in her arms and propped his head using her hand. She pressed her cheek into his forehead as she hugged him. As if she could shield him from everything else that endangered him.

“Sorry to break up your reality TV,” Mallard’s voice came from behind. Tak slammed his heels onto the ground, dragging the momentum around as his leg swung around to crash through the man built like a house, only to have it stopped with a leather-clad hand grasping into his shin; the impact rocked his chest, rippling out of his back and ruffling through his clothes as he was slammed through the loosely hanging walkway, sending it slamming into the ground as Tak landed into a pile of forgotten debris.

He couched and hacked, his empty stomach trying to force out food. He didn’t have to make more space for his body to hastily pull in oxygen. Steam exited out of his pores like an overheated engine. The sounds of sputtering came before the dull roar of it running out of fuel.

His breath was labored and heavy, a grunt as he tried to push himself back up to his feet, but gravity brought him crashing back down as he pulled himself up.

A silhouette dawned over him. His eyes looked up in defiance. Even if his body was drained, his eyes were still full of energy.

Mallard loomed; he looked down at the pitiful sight with a cigarette back on his lips, a sigh as smoke wafted from the corner of his mouth.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see this site again, Roach. I told you back then, didn’t I?” He closed the bright green pack of sticks, crumbling it between his fingers as he tossed the empty container on the ground, crushing it under his foot.

“There’s no place in this “life” for you.”

Tak couldn’t reply. Every part of his respiratory system was working to keep him breathing. He glared long at Mallard before he lost the strength to keep his head up, his head falling limp as it flopped backward.

His eyes closed, the world around him grew dark, and then slowly grew silent. The sounds of rain began to clear, the weather changed, and so did the soundscape. Birds began to chirp in the new morning. The faint sounds of cars driving by, the chiming of bicycle bells, the muffled ramblings of people around.

He felt the heat of summer on his skin. The sun’s rays upon his face.

And then everything blurred into white.

Trees filled in the blank spots, and pathways of cement wrapped around spots of soil transformed into gardens of flowers. The sound of gushing water came with the appearance of a fountain. People began to fade into reality, parents walking with their children, elderly couples with their walkers. They moved along as the world slowly came back in color.

A beautiful park, the high rises surrounding it, and massive office buildings that bore their stain into the skyline and hid the evening sun. A park bench painted green sat next to the fountain, and on it was one man, his head leaned over the backrest, an empty freezie pop wrapper in his lips blowing air into it.

Black hair tied in dreads hung in a ponytail. His bored eyes looked at the clouds, and one leg crossed over the knee, waiting for something to change.

Hurried footfalls approached him, and expectantly, his head rose before his body followed suit, leaning forward. He watched as a white tuft of hair grew from steps, sweat running down his brow as he stopped in front of the bench, using his arms to brace against his knees and keep himself from keeling over as he tried to catch his breath, swallowing the saliva that had welled up in his mouth.

“What’s up, Arkrar?” The man on the bench asked, giving him a raised brow as he spoke through a film of plastic, “You running from a bee or something?”

“S-Shut the hell up, man…” Arkar responded, running a hand through his messy hair as he pulled himself back up, “That fuckin’ brat was trying to follow me again. No matter what I do, he won’t listen!”

“What do you expect from Roach, man? You know how he works!” The dreaded man responded with a chuckle, pushing himself off the bench as he put a hand in his pocket, walking over to stand in front of Arkar, “You might as well let him come; we’re basically his big brothers at this point. It’ll be like taking him to a football game or somethin’.” he said carefreely with a shrug, Arkar sneered in response, giving the man a jab in the chest with his finger, “What kinda “big brothers” bring their little brother on a dangerous job like this?!” He shot the idea down with a huff.

He crossed his arms, letting his discontent be replaced by genuine worry, his eyes turning to the ground, “I don’t want him to do this. To be a Tiger. He thinks it’s cool because he doesn’t know any better.”

“That’s because it is cool, man,” his friend quickly replied, giving him a pat on the shoulder, “Let the kid live a little? Y’know, back when you were little, how you imagined yourself being the bad guy sometimes, it’s just like that.” His partner assured with a dismissive wave. Arkar only grunted in response, clearly not satisfied with his mindset.

“Anyway, onto business matters,” Arkar began, but stopped immediately when he heard the sounds of bubbles in the fountain, loud pops like blowing a through a straw into a glass of milk; both men looked over towards the fountain, Arkar frowning while the other one grinned, both knowing the cause before they even looked.

Arkar stomped over and reached his hand down into the fountain, promptly pulling someone out. A boy who couldn’t be older than 13 had messy black hair covering his face, bandages and bruises on his exposed arms and legs, and his whole attire soaked through as he dripped and smelled like a wet dog.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Arkar spoke dryly. Meanwhile, his colleague covered his mouth with a hand to keep his laughs from being heard, tears forming in the corner of his eyes. Arkar glared at him before returning to the teen hanging from his hand.

“I’m taking you home.”

There was a change in the scenery immediately. A sleek black car, a foreign model, drove down the road, standing out amongst the other vehicles.

The man in the driver's seat had put on his sunglasses. The windows rolled down, leaving his dreads to flutter in the wind. Arkar sat in the passenger seat, keeping himself occupied by staring out the window.

The messy, unkempt boy sat in the back, his arms crossed, leaning into the red-colored cushions without speaking a word.

“Yo Roach,” the driver spoke, glancing into the backseat with the rearview, “If you want to join the Tigers, just wait a few years, man. What do you get? 5? 6? Years until you're 18? Ain't that hard to build up some debt by then.”

“Mallory, stop telling him that shit,” Arkar spat from the sidelines of the conversation, his furrowed brow knitting as he scowled, giving Mallory a jab in the shoulder, which the carefree man quickly responded with a cutesy “Ow!~” as he rubbed his shoulder.

“I’m just saying, if he did it, he’d be perfect. The kid just doesn't give up. It’s hard to have a will like that, especially when you’re young,” he explained, turning over his shoulder to look at Roach as they stopped at a red light, “You know what I was doing at your age? Nothing! I just fucked around every day with my friends, doing dumb stuff. Now look at me; I’m basically a slave. But you, man, you’re different.”

A smile came across Mallory’s features; he was always one to smile, but this one felt like it came from a genuine place as he reached over to tousle the Roach’s hair.

“I’m sure you’ll do great; you’re special.”

The Roach’s mouth hung open, and his eyes glanced to the side to see Arkar. Despite not liking the message, the more lenient frown on his face showed there was at least some truth to what he was saying. He looked into Arkar’s eyes to see something he hadn’t seen before a bit of respect and the smallest warmth of familiarity.

It was a moment he wouldn’t forget.

Because it was the last time they were all together.

The sounds of sirens went off in the distance. A dark alley, where the faintest light of dusk seeped through, it nipped at his heels as he stood there.

The Roach, his body frozen, his head positioned forward. His whole body visibly quaked.

A body sprawled out on the ground, his white hair muddied with dirt and mud. He was unconscious, unmoving. One eye closed.


The other is gone. Replaced with an empty socket that spurted blood, exposed muscle twitching and pulsating.

The Roach breathed, taking steps backward, nearly falling over himself as he grasped at the corner of the wall; his body bolted into action, and he ran out of the alley and into the street. He dashed down the sidewalk as fast as he could to find help. He knew it was nearby; he just had to see them.


He just had to…

He rounded a corner. His weak body stumbled and screamed for a moment to recover, yet he continued to walk forward. He saw it—the familiar broad back of one of his older brothers. He could help; he could save Arkar. They were all together and would reach the top together; that’s what he believed.

His hand reached out, hoping to grasp at his back.

A sharp kick stopped him, finely polished slacks slammed into his chest, and flung him onto the ground as if he was nothing.

“Fuckin’ brat scuffed my shoes,” A voice came from above; the Roach’s eyes struggled to open as he crawled onto his knees, looking up. A man stood above him, his face hidden in shadow cast by the fading sun. A suite of white and gray, a bright red tie, and the lapel of a purple lily.

“Mallard, some dumb urchin was trying to pickpocket you,” the man turned away with a sneer, looking towards Mallory, who only just now had stopped walking; he didn’t bother to turn around.

“Oh, is that so?” He responded hollowly; his hands didn’t move from his pockets, behavior which earned a disapproving shake of the head from the older fellow with him. “C’mon kid. If you’re gonna make it in this industry, you must be more vigilant.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” he responded, and then they were walking like nothing had happened.

The Roach stared as they walked like they had just kicked away a piece of trash. Something he had experienced so many times. A feeling he had grown accustomed to.

His eyes bore into the back of the black goose, and his legs rose as he was brought back to his feet.

His fists clenched.

….

Pump. Pump. Pump.

The sound of the beating engine.

And then, the crunch of bone.


Darkness and silence came once again. It stretched long, and it would seem it would never end.

Until eyelids opened, and blurred vision recaptured the surroundings. The world around is shaded in orange. A shadow over his body kept him from the sun, a cold chill going across his skin.

Above him stood a man, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, a cigarette on his lips, dreads hanging loosely and freely.

He slid close his empty cigarette box, a color of dull red, tossing it on the ground.

“You know, Roach, I lied when I said you were cut out for this. Just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. The truth is,” he spoke disturbingly carefree.

The Roach was fading in and out of consciousness, kept his words from being clear; the stinging pain through his body was distracting his thoughts. He only heard the crunch of the cigarette package underneath a shoe and the following words as his eyes closed.


“Someone like you, who can’t keep their emotions separate from business, doesn’t stand a chance.”


Tak’s eyes blinked open, and there was a fuzz in his vision as if he had just woken from a deep sleep. Only seconds had passed, but it felt like years. He didn’t feel any less tired. As his head rose, waiting to greet him was the same man who was with him when he fell asleep.

Mallory looked at him with a grin. He kept his hands on his hips, fingers tied into his belt straps, as he watched Tak expectantly. “So, what will it be this time, Roach? Nobody helped you last time, and nobody will help you this time, though circumstances are a bit different.”

Mallory reached up to take off his sunglasses, neatly folding them up and hanging them in his collar. He looked at Tak with a dour look.

“Unfortunately, I’ll take more than an eye this time.”









“Heh…hahahahaha….”

Laughing broke the silence; Mallory’s eyes widened slightly, his mouth hanging open as the breathy chuckles turned into full-blown laughter.

Tak’s mouth opened wide as he let it all out, his whole body moving with the guffaws from his gut.

“Is that it!?” Tak shouted, moving his arms off the pile of debris to support them on his legs. His body quivered as he shifted his position, leaning forward to brace a palm on the floor.

“Sure…go ahead then. Take whatever you want….”

His body shifted, and his palm shifted into a fist as muscles began to work to push him upwards.

“Take my hands. I’ll just kick your shit in….”

His upper body heaved, his back straightened, and one leg returned to the ground.

“Take my legs, and I’ll bite you’re fuckin’ face-off…”

Both feet finally found their place back on the ground. His body rose, slumped, his back bent, and his arms hung loosely.

“Take my eyes! Take my teeth! Take my fuckin’ ears, why don’t you! You know what I’ll do!?”

His head rose sharply, and his eyes peered through the mess of his bangs. They had dilated to the point of dots, quivering within the expanse of his whites as he let a grin come across his features.

“I’ll headbutt you until my damn skull bursts open!”

Tak pulled himself back up straight, his stance wide, “I ain’t no kid anymore. I’m not gonna let you get away with it this time,” he raised only a single finger in front of him, pointing at Mallory with intensity.

“Until I break every damn bone in your body. I won’t stop. You’ll pay for everything.”

Tak’s finger retracted, and his hands fell to his side, his eyes closed only for a moment to take a deep breath.

Before his eyes shot back open.

“Ante-up.”

Instantaneously, Tak’s body was encased in steam, swirling around like a cloud; a burst of red poured out from openings in the mist before a gale of wind burst through the surroundings. Mallory braced himself as his dreads fluttered, the force enough to push him back slightly, his eyes covered by a wrist to keep pebbles and dust from blowing in his face,

When the winds finally calmed down, a red glow reflected off his eyes. A drop of sweat went down the side of his face as he slowly lowered his pose, his brows linking together as he clicked his teeth.

“Looks like you got a bit better at using your potential!” Mallory attempted to keep control of the situation, but there was an apparent strain in his voice as he looked at his opponent's site.

Inky black surrounded his feet, and like geysers from undersea volcanoes, streaks of red drawn by an uncleaned brush surrounded him, moving and shifting in spirals of unrestrained energy. His clothes fluttered and ruffled as the untapped aura twisted and spun, and the atmosphere completely changed within his vicinity.

The ground broke, and the tiles snapped underneath his feet as he bent his knees. A breath billowed out steam from his mouth and nose as his body surged forward. The ground split into pieces, leaving waves of cement like peeled-up carpet behind him as he shot through the air.

Mallary’s fist reeled back, his hair stuck on one end, as a sphere of black mass formed at the end of his fist. The surroundings were visually distorted around it, and small scraps nearby were pulled off the ground and into the swirling sphere of pressure, being crushed into atoms.

It came close to Tak’s chest; with a twist and a slam of his hand against a nearby pillar, he shifted his trajectory to the side, the atmosphere whizzing right by him; Mallory’s eyes widened only a moment before a heel raised and slammed into his back, bending it in half as his eyes nearly bulged out of his skull, jaw-dropping as his entire nervous system was shocked.

The ground shattered underneath the impact, webs of separation, dust busting free from the lower layers in spouts of gray.

Mallory’s eyes rolled back for a moment before, with a grit of his teeth, he regained himself, reaching his hand around Tak’s leg and spinning around; Tak’s back bumped into a pillar, and Mallory bounded back to his feet, and a typhoon of black forming within his palm as he thrust it forward. Tak’s heart pulsed and roared as he cocked his fist back before it shot forward like a piston.

The fist landed square in Mallory’s face, skin rippling across to the other side of his face as blood spurt from his gums, but all it did was make his eyes narrow in a frenzy, a demonic grin on his face as he grasped onto Tak’s shoulder.

Overwhelming pressure ground the bones to dust, and the muscle was torn at the fibers as everything was forcefully pulled closer to the singularity; Tak’s scream of pain from the feeling of having his body turned inside out was overpowered by adrenaline, raising his leg to deliver a sharp kick to the chest, a grunt sent the other man backward, his shoes skidding across the ground.

Blood leaked from the open wound in Tak’s shoulder; torn muscles twitched and splurted with blood as it soaked into the black of his jacket, leaking down trails from the sleeves of his t-shirt. His breathing was visible in front of his face as sweat poured off him, his face visibly scrunching from the intense pain as his legs gave out, and he fell onto the column for support. His arm hung limply, teeth-gritting in a failed attempt to move it.

“That’s the first time you’ve ever felt my potential yourself, huh?” Mallory’s mocking came with the approach of footsteps. Tak’s head turned to face him, but it was already too late, and another black palm slammed against his other shoulder.

Cries of agony came from his gritted teeth, and as Mallory retracted his arm, Tak fell to the ground, landing on his knees, both of his arms hanging uselessly at his sides.


“...Second time,” Mallory quipped as he reached up to take one of his gloves off, extending the open palm to Tak’s head, splaying his fingers wide.

“Really wish It didn’t have to end this way. I liked you, Roach. You kept Arkar distracted for me, so he stopped breathing down my neck, so thanks for that. So I’ll give you some final advice as a big brother.”

Black voids compounded onto each other in a singularity; dark matter glowed and radiated upon his expression, letting a scornful smirk across his face as purple electricity flashed and branched.

“Keep your head down in hell.”

Tak’s head dropped. As the pressure came closer, his hair began to pull at his scalp, and his head became misshapen as the space around him contorted.

It all seemed over. The fate that had waited for Tak this whole time was finally here. He would end his life without being able to prove anything or change anything, a meaningless existence.

The swirling irises that darted between them moved so quickly that they were almost unblinking.

It was impossible to tear her eyes from the scene. Hiachi’s heart stopped in her chest. For one beat, her body nearly gave up on her.

Because it knew.

Everything had gone wrong.

And that fear. The memory of lying there, surrounded by corpses, her own death imminent. With nothing but the reality that it was her, all alone, sinking in her racing blood. Its ghost held her firmly by the neck.

The curse of inaction was what she longed to break, given two or three more seconds. Whatever lurked beneath let its presence be known as her breaths slowed to heaving. Heavier.

Hiachi sharply inhaled.

Tak’s body abruptly surged. The muscles in his legs were revealed to be bulging with muscles so fierce that they came out of the fabric of his clothes. Finally released like a spring-full taunt, Tak rose intensely and suddenly. His face tore right past the void in Mallory’s hand, and his skin pulled off from the side of his face, leaving a large gash across his temple, but it didn’t matter.

Tak’s skull slammed into Mallory’s chin, his head snapped back forcefully, his neck snapped in response, his arms left flailing as the propulsion launched him up in the air, Teeth shattered, filling shot out of cavities, and blood splattered out of his gums.

“What…the…hell…?” Mallory’s addled thoughts could barely come out coherent, the force of his brain slamming into the back of his skull making all of his senses go haywire, the feeling of throwing up compounded with the feeling of his whole body draining of energy, the void in his palms fizzling out into nothing but sparkles of purple as the final whispers came from his bloodied lips. “Was….that…?”

His eyes turned into bloodshot whites as his pupils rolled back into his skull, and with no fanfare, he landed against the ground, a slight bounce to his unconscious body, as the sounds of the final impact reverberated across the warehouse,

Tak stood there, grimacing, looking over his defeated opponent. His body was caked in sweat, and large breaths of steam left it as he began to cool down. The loud beating of his heart slowly went mute as he swallowed.

He had no words of victory; he wasn’t filled with joy or satisfaction.

The look of the man he had wanted to see like this for so long, on the ground, his face destroyed and battered, gave him no reprieve,

His body turned to Hiachi and her father. He stepped forward as his limp arms swung around at his sides.

Hiachi's hands were stained.

Old man Eisyu was pummeled.

He hadn’t done anything.

He had failed.

His head dropped, his hair covered his eyes, and his lips quivered at the corners.

“....I’m sorry.”

 

[Haze-]

Dante Aguilar

CS Link

SCENE:

R B S Y D O I B C

TIME:

April 3rd, 2022 || Pre-Arc 3

LOCATION:

Blast Off DVDs, West District

PARTICIPANTS:

Tak, Minato, Dante

Returning Back Something You Don't Own Is Basically Childbirth

A couple of empty shells clinking against the broken flooring later, Dante sat there wondering if he was hearing Tak funny because of the lack of life juice— the one currently pooling away from the torn slits in his half-stitched arm— or because he just didn’t want to hear him at all.

Replying, for the sake of replying to whatever the hell Tak had just yapped at him, Dante stammered on groggily at him like he were his mom waking him up for school.

“Oh, yeah,” — His failing eyes searched for Tak in the blur, head dropping on one shoulder as the breath started whistling out of him through his front row teeth. Like a dying man, hoping those weren’t his last huffs of air— “Life’s a movie right now, don’t worry.” — He raised up a thumb in Tak’s direction, feeling his slump arm jumping like a fish gasping for ocean as he tried raising the other.

A horror movie, maybe.

He wondered too, if he was seeing everything funny because of the blood loss, or because he forgot to bring his reading glasses. Much later, a couple of empty shells rolling against his convulsing hand later, Dante flinched at that pressuring spackle of streetlight breaking in through the few bullet cracks on the large windows. Groaning at it— frowning at that familiar feeling, warmth touching and splaying across his body like greedy hands.

The shadows wouldn’t let a man die easy; they never did. Specially not in a fucking DVD rental store. Hell no.

“Like you’d go to my damn funeral...” — He spat out at Tak, finally hearing him clear. He flashed his only functional middle finger at Minato the moment he saw him, not even bothering to ask how long he’d been there watching. He was too fed-up with things to be thinking logically anymore.

He got up to his feet, managing to push up on one hand. Sweaty, bloody, wet long strands of black hair tumbled down and stuck to his face. Dante wobbled for balance, the sudden blood pools running anew through his veins flooding onto his brain, making the life come back onto his pained gaze— a pained gaze that he turned to shoot at the Minaclone as the recoil of the DVD case against his forehead was just starting to set in.

As if a startled dog lashing out to bite from the sound of a balloon popping at a quinceañera’s, something Dante was quite knowing about, Whiny dashed over to Minato in a blur of motion, growling, and scratch marks on his wake. Without a warning, Minato was yanked up by the shirt, like a yellow-headed plushie abducted by a claw-machine. Without any palpable reason, Minato was violently flung across the room, like, well,

a yellow-headed plushie thrashing in a dog’s jaws — “SHUT THE FUCK UP.” — The hound whined, huffing and growling. Wisps of shadow waved, tensed into pulsating spikes, claws locked and bared close to his chest, trembling with rabid anger. Dante only gave Whiny a deadpan through the blood still clinging to his face.

“This place is pretty fucked up huh?” — He parroted, grumbled, pulling at his face in vain attempts to keep himself awake, leaving a pale hand print across his red mask. He stepped up to Tak without so much as giving Minato a check-up, a quick glance as he passed, just to make sure he was still alive.

Whiny didn’t have a pitcher’s arm, it seemed.

He took a couple more steps, freezing in place when the sound of gears and shuffling mechanisms led into a show of smoke and bright lights. Tak tensed up to a fighting stance, Dante just gave up, letting Whiny get in front of him to take the brunt of whatever the hell happened next.

He waited, one, two beats, then Tak spoke. Dante looked over the tall shadow hound’s shoulder, his complete deadpan still carrying as his eyes went over the armory on display. He glanced at Tak, a lonely cricket bowing out a sonata as he took a pause, his blank expression completely unreadable. His eyes flicked to Minato, then at Whiny’s round, hollow eye-cavities— getting a ticcing head followed by a quick shrug from the hound.

Dante sighed, waved the white flag — “Looks returned to me…” — He could gloss over the entire arsenal in front of him if only that meant he could get jump back to bed and block out the memories of tonight.

“Can we please just g—” — As he was about to plead for them to get back to Tak’s scooter, a maniacal bout of laughter hackled loud through the night’s air, probably waking up a couple of neighboring establishments.

Dante stumbled his way onto the tall glass panels with a puzzled look on his face, slowly turning into complete and absolute horror at the sight — “N-No fucking way…”

“NOT ON MY WATCH, GREENBEAN!!!!”

As Muggato’s and (Street Clothes) Minato’s feeble attempts at anchoring the woman down were beginning to look grim, a figure Akira slid into the clerk’s way, a trail of dust and kicked up rubble waving off to the side as claws and feet dug and skidded across the sidewalk. A vantablack jacket flapped sideways in the wind like a fearless flag. A black visor flashed with a sheen of streetlight gliding across its surface, gloss and sparkles thrown out as the man in front of the green-head straightened up, cocked his head at her.

It was the biker from before, standing bold and proud between her and the entrance. This time around, however, there was something different…not just the demeanor…

Something about the outfit had changed.

“What the fuck is she doing?”

“KYE—HAHAHAHAHA~!!!” — What once was a highwayman’s gruff growling at their throat, was now replaced with a girly, sassy undertone. Cerberus placed her claws on her hips, threw her head back and kept cackling — “No one’s ever hurt me bare-handed like this before, Greenie…”

The wolf raised a shadowy hand, still droopy and leaky like black tar from the squeeze the clerk had given her. Waving it around before reforming it back to shape, renewed fingers tensing to a balled fist.

“That means…” — She threw her arms out, breathing loudly, harshly. Completely ecstatic — “Y’ must be strong, hm~? Hhmhmhm~” — A manic giggle came through clenched fangs. The shadow hugged herself, her entire body twisting and bending in uncomfortable angles. It was pure, raw, unbridled excitement.

“I pinkie-promised Dante that I’d keep ya’ in place while they went at it in the store.”

“If you won’t back down,” — Her tone became serious, hands slowly dropping down at her sides. Coming down at her core to grip at the handles of what seemed to be a pitch-black toy belt wrapped around her waist, seemingly appearing out of the blue. It had a visor on it, a forward-facing mask that lit up yellow and red, shimmering with intent as her hand coiled around one of the handles.

“Is that a fucking…?”

“I guess I’ll just have to use it then…my full power.”

As if revving up the belt itself, her hand twisted the grip forward and back, making the little face on the belt light up with a glint of red light.

“Driver?”

A mechanic rumble resounded within the belt, an engine purring and lowly turning into a loud roar as the air around them began to feel heavier by the second. After a bit, the red light on the belt thinned out to a sharp string of fading light. A robotic voice exclaimed loudly in everyone’s mind, a deep Sankainese accent carrying over the words — “CERBERUS.”

“Amazon…”

AMAZON "CERBERUS."

SCENE:

R B S Y D O I B C

TIME:

Pre-arc 3 || May 6th, 2022

LOCATION:

West District; Blastoff DVDs

PARTICIPANTS:

Masked Rider "C.", Store Clerk

RETURNING BACK SOMETHING YOU DON'T OWN IS BASICALLY CHILDBIRTH

“BLOOD AND GO WILD! W-W-W-WILD!!!”​

Like a bomb had gone off where she stood, chunks of road and sidewalk flew up and away from her, kicking up a tall cloud of dust and debris. A gust of sharp wind rippled, a shockwave, howled so strong it even had Dante flinching once it hit the window and sent cracks snaking through the surface.

The air grew still, and once the dust settled, what emerged from it was a sleek suit of black plated armor standing atop large claw marks bored into the pavement.

A sharp, angled, goofy looking helmet with crimson beady eyes. Chitinous pads and blood-red marring slashed across its body, gashes and scars pulsing with an ominous, glowing red. Fangs like a bear trap, fingers seemingly perpetually locked into claw position.

Cerberus stood there, striking a pose. Easy to tell how proud of herself she was just by looking at her limbs already trembling with joy

This was one of those transformation sequences that would have a basement dweller leaning into their chair. Something rehearsed, probably.

Had she actually transformed? Technically, yes. Had she gotten any stronger? Absolutely not, she was still just the same. She just wanted to do it for the fanfare after watching so many Masked Rider marathons with Dante late at night.

“Gureenbean…” — Cerberus cocked her head, scoffing as she pointed a clawed finger at the clerk — “俺が,お前を殺しに来たんだ。。。” — She spat out in perfect Sankainese, as if she’d been waiting her whole life to drop that line.

Without any more theatrics, Cerberus threw her arm back, shuffled her feet, lowered the knees— her other hand going down to rev up the belt. The robotic voice echoed loudly again.

“VIOLENT…SLASH!!!”​

The shadow coiled up like a spring, an ominous smog gathering around her.

It wasn’t right to use a finisher move on the clerk without knowing if she could take a good claw to the face fist, but Cerberus was too over herself to test the woman’s limits— she just wanted to squabble.

It was a telegraphed attack either way. If the clerk died from this, it was on her for being slow on the uptake.

 

[Elenion Aura]

RAPHAEL SHAW

CS Link

SCENE:

Dissonant Ichors

TIME:

Pre-Arc 1: December 21, 2020 -- Dusk

LOCATION:

Alleyway, East District

PARTICIPANTS:

Darius, Raph

DISSONANT ICHORS

The insane, mutated Chimeric's eyes burned red. Unthinkingly, it crawled across the fallen snow, dragging itself forward with single-minded determination. Saliva fell from its loose hanging lips in thick, viscous globs, landing in splashing puddles beneath it. Its hot breath blasted Darius in his face, the frozen Serpent appearing to it as just another meal. A puppet of flesh and blood and bone. Popping and squelching and breaking beneath its rotting teeth.

With one long, diseased arm it reached out for him. Snatch him. Grab him. Snap him like kindling. Crush him like a bug.

Just then, with the backdrop of the fully moonlit sky painting his figure in silhouette, Raph leapt high into the air. He descended like an avenging angel, falling upon his quarry and landing squarely on the giant's back, straddling its broad, muscled shoulders.

The creature, dumbly aware of the new weight bearing down upon it, reared its head in confusion. It was met with a bloody spear, drove straight down through the top of its skull and emerging like a scarlet flower out the roof of its mouth. Blood and gore flowed freely from its freshly aerated head. The giant moaned, dying before its head hit the pavement.

Raph dismounted its shoulders as the dust settled, swinging one leg over the other. The killing weapon in his hands melted into ichorous mist. He took a look at the dead creature and kicked it for good measure, placing his hands upon his hips and sighing contentedly before his gaze once more found Darius.

“Well, that was fun. ~"

 

[simj26]

Kisara McDowell

CS Link

SCENE:

Futility Smells of Rot, Feebleness Tastes of Bile

LOCATION:

Underground Arena, South District

PARTICIPANTS:

Kisara, Mugen, Pei

Futility Smells of Rot, Feebleness Tastes of Bile

The doors were sealed shut. She had taken a scenic route to the location. Even after all these years of wandering, she still had problems navigating through the streets of New Oasis. She stumbled into the same takoyaki stand at least three times, and enjoyed a box of mixed takoyaki each time, and had to resist the urge to hit every ramen shop she spotted on the way here, only to find the doors shut tight. No amount of regular force she put into them budged them. Was she late? Was there even a cut-off time for these kinds of events?


No way. She couldn’t be. She stepped back and examined the building. No, there was something definitely off about it. She was sure she was at the right location. But why didn’t it feel right? She could hear noise inside. Indistinct voices. Shouting. Screaming. Definitely didn’t sound like the kind of screaming that she liked. In an environment like this, the party was usually jumping, the electricity leaking through the walls and the doors with remarkable ease that no one could mistake it for anything else but the most wondrous of bloodletting events. This was different. The air smelled different, the vibes were all off.

It could mean there was a better fight inside waiting for her than she expected.

She shook the handle again. No dice.

Well, if they weren’t going to let her in, she might as well do the entrance herself. She always liked the entrance. Her foot shifted back, her arm drawn backwards like an arrow on its drawstring. Violet energies coalesced around her fist, violently ripping into the air around it, tearing through the raindrops that fell over it, vaporising them in puffs of smoke. Not a very fancy attack, but it certainly opened up new avenues. She launched her fist forwards, slamming it into the doors. The first impact dented enough of the steel to already shatter the tumblers and locks that held it tight.

Then came the second one. The stored energy exploded and speared through the doors with enough force to shatter the hinges, sending them soaring into the air. Even from behind the cloud of dust she had summoned from the blow, she could already imagine the awed and surprised looks on the onlookers face.

Lightning flashed behind her figure as she stepped through the threshold, in time with the crash of the doors as they landed noisily on the floor beneath. With a sweep of her hand, she cast aside the cloud that shrouded her, and, as if to herald her arrival, the thunder followed suit, rumbling through the stadium. She flicked a piece of debris off her shoulder.

Silence fell across the stadium, as all eyes were on her. More specifically, they were on the opened doors behind her, but she didn’t need to know that. Even after all her trials and tribulations, Kisara McDowell, King of the Monsters, still reveled in attention. All eyes on her, everyone was speechless- this would be a good time for a speech. That was what the old Kisara would have done. Not the Kisara of today.

Besides, she wouldn’t have gotten a chance to do so.

“THE DOORS ARE OPEN!” Someone shouted from the gathered crowd, and that broke the ice. The crowd began to surge towards the doors, barging past hooded figures as they began to flee towards her direction.

“Excuse me,” she muttered as she stepped to one side, pushing past one of the hooded figures, who didn’t seem interested in escaping the arena. She observed the retreating army, and nudged the man in the arm. “Tough crowd, huh? Was it something I said?”

Elenion Aura thebigfella