thearena | Holes in the bellows and blood on the keys.... (Closed)

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Holes in the bellows and blood on the keys.... (Closed)

Who| Kevin, with Carlos and Initiate!
What| A certain scientist gets some payback, a certain smiling man loses his grip on reality completely, and a certain troll is witness to the carnage.
Where| The amusement park.
When| During Hell time.
Warnings/Notes| Some serious acid-and-eye-related gore, Kevin being absolutely terrifying, and anything else that comes up later watch this space.

Actually, Kevin was pretty comfy.

He had spent some time wandering around town, but ultimately the amusement park was his favorite place to hang out. It was just so much fun, with all the rusty metal rides, the abandoned stands, the decrepit ticket booths - festive! Then when the sirens had sounded and the world shifted, he had watched, wide-eyed, from his favorite perch in one of the precarious cars atop the ferris wheel.

It. Was. BEAUTIFUL.

Sure, his heart felt a little fluttery, but that must have been excitement, right? He took another bite out of the peach he was eating, thinking about how refreshing it was in the sudden heat. He felt like he was going to sweat out of his own skin, like the heat was boiling him like one of those French cooking bags you see in fancy chef competitions. And just like those, his bag was full of organs and meat and biomechanical implants. Boy, was it hot.

Just like home!

By now he had gotten a rhythm going - coming down from his roost, patrolling for friends, grabbing some fruit, and climbing back up to his car. He loved it.

For now, he's climbing down from his roost to begin one of these patrols - humming a cheerful tune and visibly trembling with excess energy. He's got his trusty lead pipe with him, but he's not poised to attack.

Just poised to make new friends!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Carlos was free of his monstrous pursuers for now; he had killed most of them with an improvised chlorine-gas bomb, and had taken the opportunity to refill his bug-spray canister with spider venom. It was better than the nozzle-and-hose contraption he'd been using up until now -- much more efficient. It wouldn't last long, since the spider venom would eventually eat through the spraying mechanism, but considering how dangerous the Arena was right now, Carlos felt the sacrifice was worth it.

He was sticking close to one of the roller coasters, stripped down to pants and a lab coat due to the heat, with his windbreaker and sweater tied practically around his waist. Cracks in the ground appeared less frequently around large landmarks, so statistically, he was safest here.

Not completely safe. But as safe as he could be.

He didn't see Kevin approach, but he heard. Carlos knows that voice. He can't figure out where it's coming from, though, so he steps out from the shadow of the roller-coaster support strut and out into the open, spray can held out in front of him like a gun.

"I know you're there," he said, and his hands on the canister shook. "I can hear you humming."

Oh! Kevin knows that voice, too!

He strains his ears, moving towards the source of the sound. As he comes into view, Kevin is looking...stranger than normal. Jittering, sweating...his speech faster than it should be.

Decidedly...manic.

"HEY CARLOS! HI! What brings you to my little neck-of-the-woods? Coming to visit me? I was hoping I would see you again, I've missed your wonderful smiling face! Your smile is really nice, you know."

Oh, no. Oh, no.

"Don't come any closer," Carlos warned, taking a couple of shaky steps back, away from Kevin. "I'm armed. There's acid in this, and I will use it." Carlos's heart, already pounding, beat harder. Carlos's skin, already perspiring in the heat, pushed even more precious fluid out onto the surface of his body.

Kevin was clearly insane -- even more so than usual. No matter how afraid Carlos was, Carlos didn't want to attack him -- under normal circumstances, attacking a lunatic would be extremely unethical. However, Carlos had no intention of allowing himself to die, and this particular lunatic had a crowbar and also a psychological advantage when it came to killing.

Fighting down rising panic, fighting against fear, fighting to hear his own voice over the memory of standing guard at the edge of the solar system, Carlos spoke again, his tone warning. "You have one chance," he said. "Let me walk away. Please."

"Oh, Carlos - what a wonderful joke! You're so funny!"

Kevin made it clear he wasn't going to stop - he sidled forward, giggling high-pitched and moving with the air of a nervous bird. He fairly looked at Carlos like a bird would - turning his head this way and that. His breathing was off...unnaturally fast and hard. There were shreds of fruit in his teeth. His lips looked chapped, too dry and pulled too tight over his teeth.

Yes, he stepped forward. He let his pipe drop, dragging it against the ground and relishing the horrific grinding sound it made. Such a pretty sound.

He heaved a wistful sigh.

"I just can't get over your smile! It's so nice!"

"Your teeth are just...perfect."

There were very few things, at this point, that could flood Carlos with horror. There were a lot of things he was afraid of, true, and mild terror had been his base state for nearly a year, but this -- the grin, the mania, the scrape of the crowbar against the ground, the memory of cracked ribs and suffocation, the eyes and mouth and voice that were so wrong in that face -- the fear didn't settle in like an old friend, it pulsed through him, echoing the mad beating of his terrified heart.

"I'm serious!" he cried, louder than he meant to, stumbling back even further, a few more steps, too terrified to turn his back, aware that he could not outrun Kevin --

-- only for his back to hit a rusty shack that must have once held a carnival game. A fresh wave of terror crashed through Carlos: he was trapped.

"Don't," he pleaded. "Don't make me use this."

Even here, even trapped by one of the things that had haunted his nightmares for the past few months, Carlos would wait until the last possible second, until he had absolutely no other choice, to strike.

For a moment, Kevin stopped. Just a moment. He blinked at Carlos, grin fixed, trying to evaluate what he was saying. Obviously it was a joke! Or...what if it wasn't? What if he was really scared?

"Oh, you poor thing," he crooned, tilting his head so far to one side he looked as if he might tip over. "You're just so SCARED, aren't you? I'm not going to hurt you, friend! I'm just so glad to see you...."

He threw down the pipe with a loud clatter, flinging his arms open wide.

"How about a BIG HUG to make you feel better?"

With that, he moved towards Carlos, a high-pitched, mad laugh bursting from him....

"No. No. Don't do that. Please, don't--"

It was not a good thing, what Carlos did. It was not something he was proud of. It did not have the vitriolic satisfaction revenge should have. It was merely a desperate attempt to survive a desperate situation.

Carlos was aiming for the eyes. Barring that, the face. Anywhere sensitive, anywhere with orifices, anywhere this acid could seep through skin and tissue and cause enough pain to deter him from his victim. He did not know if Kevin's strange, obsidian eyes and gaping mouth would be affected, or even register pain, but survival instinct said face, so face it was.

The sound that filled the air was impossible.

It wasn't the first time those watching the Games had heard the sound. A version of it had happened in the last arena, when the grinning man had taken a blade through half of his vision. Now it was both eyes, and the sound that he made reflected that. It was a furious roar, inhuman and monstrous, a burst that sounded like someone (or something) shrieking through a poorly-tuned radio with the volume knob turned up and broken off.

Kevin stumbled back and fell to his knees, desperately trying to wipe at his face and eyes with his sleeves. In between, what could be seen was grotesque - slowly burning, twisting flesh, the hollows in his face emitting some kind of steam or vapor. The smile has become an awkward grimace, a maw full of gnashing pointed teeth and horrible noises.

When he realized that scrubbing at his face was doing more harm than good - rubbing the acid into his cheeks and failing to remove it from his eyes - he stopped, chest heaving in between his snarls. The acid seemed to eat just enough into those voids a moment later; something in them burst, a oily black substance gushing from the sockets and dribbling down his cheeks. A fresh screech erupts from him, hands pounding the ground in a desperate attempt to displace the agony.

The chip at the back of his neck was sparking, all-too-visibly trying to control him, control his pain and anger. Rein it back. Rein everything back. The memories were threatening to surge up, devour him. The chip had to stop that, stop him. Defeat the human limits of pain and make him perfect.

It was not working.

"...That wasn't...very nice, Carlos...."

He turned his head to where he knew Carlos had been standing, that forced grin looking more like the jaws of a predator than a smile now. His teeth were sticky with the fluid from his own eyes, tinting parts of them pitch black.

Congratulations, Carlos, you've just created a monster.

And he is just so gosh darned happy to be here with you.

Edited 2014-06-06 21:27 (UTC)

Carlos took a cautious, sideways step away. Then another, moving along the wall of the shack, skirting Kevin's screaming, writhing form. He was horrified to have just witnessed this, to know that there was acid in Kevin's eyes that Carlos put there, to see those eyes close and whatever it was in the back of his neck, sparking --

But Carlos did not run. He was afraid to run. Running was too loud. He backed away, step by cautious step, breathing through his nose as quietly as he can, minimizing the soft schhht of his boots on the hard, hot ground.

The one saving grace in this situation was that it had been confirmed that Kevin was not Cecil Palmer. It was still jarring to see that face, that hair, that nose and throat, a face Carlos knew to be not Cecil Palmer's but that still bore just enough similarity to give the situation an added dimension of sick guilt.

He did not apologize.

He did not speak.

He only stepped away, and away, and away.

Kevin remained on his hands and knees, teeth bared in that snarl that his grin had turned into. He was struggling to keep his composure as -

'STOP, PLEASE! PLEASE, IT HURTS!' Chains around his wrists and ankles. Belts across his shoulders. Needles in his wrists, pumping something thick and viscous in. Cold. It was so cold.

'Ooop, sounds like someone's not a team player yet!'

'No - NONONO-' White hot pain through his dark world-

- memories came rushing back to him. His head hurt. His body was trying to remember how to be blind, and his senses were strengthening, one by one. He turned his head, this way and that, straining his ears for any sign of his friend.

He started to crawl, slowly, in the direction Carlos was shifting. Black sludge ran off his face and onto the ground. Something was still horribly wrong with his voice when he spoke, a low rumble in his chest.

"...Carlos...you should really not stunt productivity like that...."

Kevin could hear him. Oh, god, Kevin could hear him. Carlos's footsteps sped up, though he didn't dare run yet. He was still afraid of running from Kevin, still afraid to turn his back. Carlos had cleared the building he had been pushed up against and so began to back away down the broad path, the avenue that wound its way between old carnival buildings. He did not run, but he increased the distance between him and Kevin, step by nervous step. His whole body was tensed, ready to flee or duck or defend himself at any sudden movement.

But still, he said nothing. The only sounds from him were from his boots on the ground and the breath in his lungs.

"Carlos...ooooh, Carlooooosssssss...."

Kevin COULD hear him. With increasing clarity, actually, between the ragged sounds of his own breathing. He rasped a few times, the sound like interference cutting the sounds of a human being in pain...but then, he stopped crawling.

'...and while you're here, we expect you to conduct yourself with professionalism. Do you understand? No negative Nancies here at Strexcorp!'

He couldn't respond. He didn't have the strength to speak, and his throat burned. They had done something to it. They were doing something else to his abdomen right now. He didn't know what.

'Kevin, you are VERY IMPORTANT to us. That's why we're making you better. And in return, we expect you to uphold the Strexcorp mission statement at all times...and at all costs.'

Were they pulling something out of him? An organ?

He couldn't tell anymore....

For a moment, there was a pause in the struggles of the chip in his neck - the sparking fizzled out with a resurgence of memory, and Kevin's brows furrowed in a desperate attempt to reconcile what was happening. He twined his fingers into a nearby grate in the filthy ground, holding himself in place, shaking...just a little.

He spoke again. There was no distortion, but no merriment either.

"...Get...away from...me." A tear tried to escape his burnt tear duct, but it got backed up and didn't quite fall properly. It burned. A sob was the only hint that the tear was even there.

"Carlos.

You should go.

Now."

Carlos could not describe his feelings at the best of times, and right now was so far from best that the light from the best of times would not reach this moment for several billion years. His mouth was open, his eyebrows knotted together in concern over wide eyes.

He hesitated for a moment. For one thing, Carlos wanted to know what was going on with the sparking in the back of Kevin's head. For another, although Carlos felt his actions had been completely justified, it was a horrible thing that he had done, and while he wasn't exactly feeling the urge to help, he was feeling that sort of hand-wringing dithering you felt when you'd spilled something and had no way to clean it up.

But no. Staying here was a terrible idea, even for science and acute personal guilt. He took another step back, distraught and desperate, and whispered only one thing:

"I'm sorry."

Then, he ran.

The moment of lucidity lasted as long as Kevin could bear it - until he heard the footfalls of the Scientist retreat beyond his grasp, beyond where he could conceivably follow in his current state -

And then he was overcome. By pain, by memories of machinery and needles and knives...by what he had become. The chip sparked hard enough that he let out one more anguished wail.

He let himself crumple to the ground for a few minutes, letting the blackness wash over his mind the same as his sight. He could get up after. He could regroup, find his pipe.

At least Carlos was sorry.

Maybe he'd be able to remember that later.

He's made claim of the amusement park, the carnival, but he's far from the only one. People have crawled all the fuck over his domain. All over they have made to crawl. He's drank up there fears, eaten their curses. He's listened to their screams...

But this one is different. This one is animal and not. This one is something what rings deep. And in the sick wash of the Messiah's fear waters, a desert dry for so long and turned to flood, he is called to it.

He follows the sound and the fear trail-- Carlos had been here, he notes, and his fear had been done up something beautiful. Hate the blasphemy he might, but the scientist had a nice fear to him. It pulls him along, and guides him. He's less interested in finding Carlos though and much more so in finding the source of the fear. He's led and so climbs up atop a shack nearby. He moves on all fours of it's caving roof, silent, and ready to peer over the edge to see for what he's been searching. He just about forgets to shut down the fear and the flash of his eyes-- only to decide it hardly matters, when all he can be using it to advantage.

Curiously, he finds just a man.

He does find a man - one who has propped himself up against one of the old carnival stands, clutching his trusty lead pipe and breathing ragged through a wide mouth full of pointed teeth. His eyes are black and lightless hollows on a good day - but on this day, what in them helped him to see was destroyed, ruined.

Kevin was trying to figure himself out, for the moment - shifting between terrifying and traumatic memories and the forced bliss Strexcorp had programmed him with. Occasionally he let out that unnatural static sound, a weird hiss that rumbled in a chest too small for it - but it always stopped again, and he turned his head this way and that.

Listening.

Following what his body remembered of being blind.

And his body told him he was being watched.

"...Hello, friend," he called out, voice strained and tired and agonized and much too sweet in tone all at once.

The Initiate blinks down at the man. His head tilts to the side, like a confused beast. Then, he adjusts the pack on his shoulder and his grip on his pickaxe, and prepares to leap down. There's the swoosh of parting air and the thump of landing feet.

He straightens up and eyes the man over, with fresh eyes in the new view. Those are some teeth. He's never seen a human with teeth like that before. They might be better than his.

It's the void that pulls him though, the void that calls. He finds it in a pair, stuck in sockets where ganderbulbs should be. It's quite a damn sight. Not hypnotic but even still.

None of this is what unnerves him most however.

"EVENING, BROTHER," He says back, regardless of whether it is evening at all. "Is it a motherfucker's purpose what to make bait of himself or is he looking truly for death." If it is the latter, he has heard the call and through him death shall guide his digits.

When the stranger lands, Kevin tilts his head to regard him - but it's evident from the slight misdirection of his face that he can't actually SEE him. He doesn't get up, sitting there, broad grin and peeling, burnt flesh strangely static and incongruous with his tone of voice.

"Good evening," he replies first, blinking his useless eyes, making those voids disappear for an instant. He thinks about the question, thinks about what his answer should be, thinks about ANYTHING BUT THE MEMORIES POISED TO CRASH UPON HIM AGAIN -

"Neither," he settles upon, giggling a weird little giggle. A tear rolls down his face. He doesn't know what he's feeling anymore. "I'm just taking a moment to reevaluate my skill-set, actually...given the circumstances."

A pause. The chip in the back of his neck gives him another jolt - one which runs down the length of his spine, making his body stiffen in an awkward jerk. He carries on as if he doesn't notice. There is something very strange about this man, very strange indeed.

Perhaps more curiously, what fear clings to him is not the fear of death - it's something else, something even he can't get a handle on. Something deep and dark and powerful with him, bridled and just barely contained under the surface.

"Where are my manners? I don't believe we've met, friend. My name is Kevin."

Edited 2014-06-14 04:42 (UTC)

He frowns at the burns on his face, the way the gaze doesn't quite follow right. There's the giggle and then there are tears. There's jerking like a corpse still not realising its death and there's talk still.

Given the circumstances...

And the fear feels... off. He reaches, pauses, and then lets it burrow, just enough to taste what lay there. Fighting off memory...

"Initiate Fraysong," he replies. Then he states simply, "YOU'RE BLIND, BROTHER." There's a curious surprise there.

"Very pleased to meet you, Mister Fraysong."

The response is calm, so calm - and then the statement happens, and something in Kevin's head clicks open, and -

"You are blind, Kevin."

"I...I know. Are you going to fix me?" He shivered against the table, the vice closing around his cranium, holding it in place.

"Of course we are! We're going to make you perfect!"

"...Could I...could I please be asleep for this?"

A painfully long pause. Something metallic sliding under the eyelids of his right eye and pushing them painfully wide open. He screamed as loud as he could, jerking against the restraints holding his ankles.

"Oh, Kevin. Of course not!"

The memory was almost too much - he let out a strange screeching sound, legs kicking out in pain as electricity shoots down his spine, burns his neck, pierces through his brain.

Then he calms.

And he answers, as if nothing had just happened.

"I know. A very good friend made that happen for me."

When he was young, the fear scared him. Funny that. He'd feel the fears of others and it would knock him back with panic until he learned to put a barrier between the fear, feeling it, and his own self. Until it became automatic, not even thought. This hits sharp. He doesn't need to brace for it, he's far past being the wiggler he was. But he can tell. It feels like the way the inquisitions do, when afterways he'd walk away voodoo spun and gris-gris heavy, like a concussion or a really good kiss.

And then it stops. Right in time with the jerking of Kevin's body, with the scream. This isn't right. Not natural. Something is very motherfucking wrong.

And it ain't got nothing to do with blindness. He pulls the voodoo back, staring. In turn he too is pulled from his own mania.

"Can't be that motherfucking good of one." He wonders about Terezi. He wonders about what got her sight snatched. He never asked. "YOU GOT INTENT TO BE STAYING HERE?"

Edited 2014-06-15 07:03 (UTC)

A sedated sort of blink. The effects of the strange fruit and the heat are creeping slowly back into his system, but it's taking time to get past the agony, the wind knocked out of him by everything, everything in his world.

"...You know what? I don't really know what friendship means to him," he muses, something strange in his voice warping in the middle of his words. He reaches up to run shaky fingers over the burns around his eye sockets, peeling skin away from flesh by degrees.

He doesn't feel it. Motherfucking wrong indeed. He's like a man with his mind detached from his body.

"I'm catching my breath...but no, I'm not going to stay here. Goodness, no. I have a job to do, eyes or no eyes."

"Should up and got on re-evaluting that over motherfucking skill sets. SHOULD BE ON SUCH IS WHAT HE UP AND THINKS," He says with a dubious look. This sorry ass fucker is a mess. Is this normal of humans? Fuck, he's been here half a sweep and he ain't even know.

Motherfuckers weren't joking on saying there were like to be surprises among their kind.

"Stick out your hand. SHOW DIGITS," He commands. "Should feel his pickaxe. LET IT PULL. If you try for motherfucking anything he will tear off your arms."

"Oh, I am. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's PRODUCTIVITY!" The word turns into a strange, warped shriek as it escapes his lips - too shrill, too mechanical. He doesn't seem to notice. Surprise surprise.

The strange speech doesn't really bother him, either...he's dealt with all kinds back home by now, and he's pretty good at unraveling curious word choices. That's basically all legal documents and notary language are, anyway.

Obediently, he reaches his hand out. Trusting. Unafraid.

Bloody.

If he feared for blood he wouldn't be a very good troll. He wouldn't up and be his own damn self. But it's noted, it is; not harmless, keep watch. Not that it wasn't real damn obvious. The noise of the motherfucker takes him by surprise if couldn't tell and didn't know better, he'd think Kevin on the beginnings of a voodoo break, like how his own voice snapped up into fluctuations permanent way back then.

He pulls Kevin up. Then, with him up on his feet, the Initiate gives Kevin's form another slow once over. If he's blind like Terezi he should be fine but... he doesn't think anyone to be blind like her. Sweeps and sweeps of Alternian schoolfeeding tell him he should just cull the motherfucker on the spot for his blindness. But Terezi. He can't. He can't just do so simply like that. And if the brother's got for a job to do he ain't looking at no death mercies. Then again, it's pretty clear he's fucked up over something

"IF AT FOR REST HE UP AND NEEDS ON, SOMEWHERE ELSE IT OUGHT MOTHERFUCKING BE. It ain't no kind of safe on the ground, brother, the beasts and daywalkers will eat you alive," He says.

If you ask Kevin what a voodoo break is, he will have no idea what you're talking about.

But he definitely IS on the verge of something, whether he knows it or not. He knows it one moment, and then he doesn't the next. His head hurts. His neck burns. Electricity keeps running through his spine, and it both hurts and he can't feel it anymore.

He rubs at his marred face again, sloughing off bits of skin.

"Not if I eat them first." The words are flatter than the rest, a bit more hollow. He continues and they're full of light again. Too bright, compensating. Overkill.

"You're probably right, friend - I should go rest in my little perch! I've been sitting up in one of the cars in the ferris wheel. Allll the way at the top, and a little towards the front! The yellow car."

A twitch, a jolt. What is color to a blind man?

"Yellow is Strexcorp's color. It reminds me of home."

Edited 2014-06-21 05:29 (UTC)

He blinks in surprise, doing a double take of Kevin. "WELL FUCK," He says. "Gotta admit brother that's some kind of hardcore what all you got on that." Eating daywalkers? That's some ironic shit and a whole lot of really not motherfucking wanting. He both appreciates the karmic value of that and has a whole lot of revile thinking about eating rotted corpse meat. He's gotten flesh and blood (and gill, he will never forget that one) in his teeth from time to time, because teeth were valuable, indispensable weapons but none of that got tasting good for real.

"AIGHT. Yellow motherfucking car it up and is then. REMINDS HIM OF GOOD SHIT TOO." Mirth. It takes a lot to get surprising him about any kind of carnage.

If Kevin is hanging on still to his pickaxe, it should all work fine as fine. Except for that twitching. At this rate, he's gonna start twitching too.

"You got nothing wrong with you more all than blindness inflicted, yeah?" He tests.

"It's efficiency!" Kevin shrugs, his tone casual. "If I'm hungry, and they come after me anyway...well, gosh, waste not, want not."

It all tastes pretty good to the smiling man, honestly. Blood, flesh. The monsters around here aren't the best he has ever tried, but he isn't going to waste them, anyway. They don't disgust him. Maybe they should? Jolt. Twitch. A strange, vague groan and a sway on his feet.

He clutches at the pickaxe tightly with his grimy fingers, hoping it helps him retain his equilibrium.

"Oh, I'm fi-" the words die in his throat, confusion crossing his face. Not fine not fine get it out of me please please get it out I know its there I can feel it there please get it out please I want to be me I just want to be me- Panic rises in him and then dies again.

A bright spark, the sizzle of flesh.

He relaxes and goes back from the strained, forced smile to a calm, forced smile. A tear rolls down his cheek and the salt burns the damaged skin.

"-just fine, friend! I'm just...a little tired."

Well, he supposes that's true. These ones technically weren't rotting, not like the daywalkers of Alternia but... no, the thought still churns his guts. He chose 'not wasting' by using bodies for bait. And truthfully, he'd rather his corpse didn't rise up again, he hadn't any idea what caused that in some trolls and not others but he'd rather his stay down when he's finally finished and he figures the more distance between himself and that, the better.

But the wicked shit don't end there. He gets all asking and Kevin responds like a dying thing. Like he's being tortured, slow and deliberate. He speaks, flaters terribly, and then there's that flash of light, and he's going again. And there's no mistaking it. He hadn't been sure at first but it seems true, human tears ain't got no color. He stares.

Motherfucking mirth damn, what in fuck has he stumbled on?

Real slow, in case Kevin twitches, and so the pick axe ain't moved from place, where Kevin hangs on like it's a last lifeline, he walks around to peer at where the spark came from.

"WHAT'S THAT? On your neck, there's a light..."

He thought it sounded like a voodoo break, but now he's all of wondering if Kevin ain't the one what got voodoo'd. Except he hasn't the Initiate could feel it if that were so. He reaches out through fear, just the tiniest bit to be sure.

The blind man has no idea that he's being stared at - and even if he did, he wouldn't much care. He doesn't know he's crying, doesn't feel the tears leaking out...everything is dark and cold and numb, even in the heat burning through the Arena. His brain is struggling to revive senses long deadened by whole senses, trying to piece together old instincts to use sound, scent, touch; the chip in the back of his neck, on the other hand, is trying to keep it all at bay. Bury it. Bury him.

He visibly bristles at the question about his neck, and the sense of panic rises, falls, rises again. He doesn't know what he's feeling, and when he talks, it comes out strained, distorted, buzzing with something impossible. "My neck? There's...a light? I...what are you talking about?" Then there's another jolt, a flash, something quieter and hoarser tumbles out of his mouth - "...The chip, that's right, it's in there, it's-" Another. A pop and the hiss of static. Too sweet, too bright. "It doesn't matter, if it keeps me smiling, right?"

No voodoo, no. Something more clinical, something colder has a grip on Kevin, and Kevin's grip on the pickaxe falters as he sways dangerously where he stands.

help me

please help me

Edited 2014-07-23 00:40 (UTC)

It's not the words that get him. Not the spoken ones anyway.

He can feel fear, especially with reaching out. He can feel the rise and fall like ocean waters. And though the words are inaudible, it translates clear; fear of being left, fear of falling back to this, of remaining trapped and unhelped. No escape. It runs up his spine as Kevin smiles and cries all the same.

He's trapped, like Mituna was. Stuck in himself with no way out. Like a fever dream in injury, but unending.

His hand reaches reaches out for the chip he can see now, sparking away. His claws curl and he moves slow. He could tear it out. He could do it...

His hand stops. His fingers curl in and his hand pulls away.

He'd tear it out, grant him that freedom, and then what? Motherfucker was blind, he could help now, but Kevin would die inevitable, surely. And then he'd be revived and the chip would be back. A gasp of air just to be crushed again. He can't give false hope like that.

He can't stay and see Kevin to the end. He thinks he might go mad if he had to... feel that begging and pleading going and going on without any of the rage needed to carry him through it. Which is why he doesn't reach out with fear again or try to speak through it, with reassurance, or even apology, lest that pleading get so much worse.

"SURE. Whatever all a motherfucker gets his believing for," He says, without looking at his face. He pretends he can't feel that fear. He reaches for Kevin's hand, past worrying if the motherfucker might jump at him, exchanging the pickaxe for that just to be more sure he ain't going to fall. "TO YOUR LITTLE YELLOW CAR, THEN, THAT RIGHT?"

If on any level Kevin could know that Initiate was so close to freeing him, his heart would have leapt and then sunk again - but the fact of the matter is, he can't tell. He can't know. He's not even supposed to know what the chip is doing to him, and the knowing...the being half-in-half-out is driving him mad. It's agony. Half of him just wants to fall back into that blissful ignorance...the other half is desperately crying out, trying to come up for air.

The struggle represents itself outwardly in tears and twitches, in the smoke of his flesh and the twitch of his grin.

He feels the hand and takes it, clinging to it like he did the pickaxe. Contact. A person. Help.

Kindness.

He doesn't speak - there is only a low hiss as he nods his assent. He just wants to rest. Maybe if he sleeps, he'll wake and all of this will be better again.

He wishes, oh how he wishes, he could just turn it on and off. Be the Highblood. Be the troll everyone up and wants. Be strong, be soft. Cold unfeeling violence, to mercy. Back and forth like light to dark.

But it doesn't work that way. It's hard and all the sides bleed together and neither is all being exactly right as how he wants it to be. He keeps trying to tune out the plea he feels worming under his skin, wrapping around his bones as like to carve itself in, becoming part as all fears do. He doesn't shudder though.

He pulls and guides Kevin along, quiet. Onward to those little yellow cars where he'll leave Kevin to himself. Help him up and in.

"You're sure as you ain't want a quick cull? BEING LIKE TO SOME DISMAL ASS SHIT THIS UP AND IS."

Kevin's steps are unsure and feeble - he stumbles, he leans on Initiate, he can feel the blackness trying to seep into his mind now, too. So tired. The pain is so much.

"...No, I...." Another jolt, and he very nearly falls into Initiate's arms before he catches himself again. Skin actually flakes off of the back of his neck, charred and black.

"...I have more work to do. I don't...I can't quit."

It's not spoken with resolve so much as it's spoken with resignation.

I can't quit.

He's tense as Kevin leans on him, but he doesn't lash out. Nor does he shove him off. By the time Kevin is there and sat down he's already feeling like he's soaked up all the fear what's there, like a plant drinking poison from the earth, caught in the water-- though he knows fear, no matter how much he takes, is never actually taken away.

"...Aight," He says, a little more resigned than he wants to sound. Or should sound. It shouldn't even be close like slightly understands.

He starts to step back, pulling his hand from Kevin's. Though not to abrupt that the man might reach again for it. Slow, so Kevin knows he's going now.

"TO A MOTHERFUCKER'S WORK THEN."

He starts to turn away. He forces himself not to turn back.

As soon as he's safely in his little yellow ferris wheel car, he crumples into the seat - he can hardly even sit up anymore, and everything, everything seems to be fading away along with his strength.

He just needs to rest, he thinks to himself as he feels his new friend pull away from him. He curls up a little bit, looking somewhat like a sick child.

"Thank you," he finally manages to breathe out, summoning the strength to raise one hand in a little wave. "Thank you, friend-" The dark takes him, and he blacks out, hand falling with a metallic THUNK against the bench of the car.

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Holes in the bellows and blood on the keys.... (Closed)

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