DTT: Round One, Chad vs Pillar

Always told you not to love me
Now look what you made me do
I got poison in my pocket,
told you I was bad news

To have form again is to have rage again.

For the longest time, for a moment as brief as drawing in a single breath, Pillar Fray is stranded on a shoreline of red sand. There is nothing on the horizon but that shade of scarlet, crimson and heartbreak and anger stretching on for miles and miles. Without end. "I am deathless," a pitying voice that sounds so much like her own echoes in the silence. She sits in those terrible emotions for many years, for seconds, teetering on the edge of life and what comes after. Crossing over is not an easy task.

She sank her nails into her mortality when she was alive; whatever the cost, she would have paid it to go home to the existence that had never been kind to her. A fighter, a renegade, a girl made of brutality and iron will. Perhaps it's only fitting that the thereafter would be cruel to her, too. But when she is finally spirited away from that awful place, phasing in like a flickering light in the darkness, the chanting ghouls and witches do not frighten her.

Her body returns to her slowly, veins and marrow and flesh, spectral hues giving way to scarred skin. Pillar's skin. In a way, she feels like exactly who she had been when she last finished this story. The commanding voice does not shake her, the lavender blade forming in her palm does not make her flinch, and it's all she can do to smile when her legs carry her forward into the cavernous bowl. Facing off against a boy who looks so out of his element.

"How quickly did you die the first time?" Her voice is as sickly sweet as it has ever been. In life, in death, in-between. "Let's see if I can beat that record."

My demeanor made you wait,
but the consequences stayed
I killed everything we were
Baby, murder was a case

song: 27 hours

Always told you not to love me
Now look what you made me do
I got poison in my pocket,
told you I was bad news

Here's what happens when a soft thing is placed in Pillar's way: it is ravaged.

She laughs, half in amusement and half in offense, looking over this lumbering oaf of a zombie boy. Right then, right there, she decides this one would have been better off staying dead. What's the point of having a corporeal form again if you're just going to stand there like a blubbering idiot? Smiling and waving and pretending like there's nothing to be afraid of? She tilts her head to one side, gazing curiously, blonde hair falling over her shoulder.

"Did you die to a crushed skull?" she asks innocently, grip still tight around her blade. "Or did the brain trauma happen pre-Games?"

Chad Whatever-man must have died in the years before her own Games, or maybe he just hadn't been paying close enough attention. If he wants to give her the advantage, she'll gladly take it. Right as she's preparing to lunge again, to cleanly slice his jugular, he seems to notice something more interesting in the background. Again, this rubs her the wrong way. Her final moments had been spent locked in a death match, losing a death match.

She doesn't know how to let go of that violence. If the fates want to drag her to Hell and make her experience that same torture all over again, she will fight as hard as she did the first time. "Excuse me? Don't you think there are more pressing— hey! Let go!" She wriggles and thrashes as his meaty arms close around her, hefting her off the ground with ease. This whole exchange is confusing her more than being pulled into the void.

"If you don't put me down and face me," she rasps cruelly, scratching her way out of his grasp, "I'm going to go introduce myself to your boyfriend on my own. And I'll slit his throat as you watch."

As soon as she sees the opening, she thrusts out with her knife.

My demeanor made you wait,
but the consequences stayed
I killed everything we were
Baby, murder was a case

song: 27 hours

Always told you not to love me
Now look what you made me do
I got poison in my pocket,
told you I was bad news

Ah.

It would seem Chad's brain isn't entirely damaged. Everyone has their own little nerve that's sensitive to the touch, that line that can't be crossed, the button that should go without being pushed. She mentions harming the boyfriend, Gavin, and instantly the oaf's demeaner shifts. He's not just a big fool, he's a strong one, too.

Even if she has the advantage on him as far as intelligence goes, she will not underestimate his height and brawn. He's clearly an athlete — was clearly an athlete. And at one point in her fleeting life, Pillar was a career. She steps back into that skin again, holds onto her knife and refuses to let it go. His own flickers into life in his palm again, lavender light reflecting in his burning gaze.

"Do. Not. Fuck. With Gavin."

She makes a mocking laugh, only if to throw salt in his wound.

"Ever. In any lifetime."

He charges into her like a train, sends her tumbling backwards with a spray of blood. It burns, and yet — she finds herself grateful. Smiling down at her torn skin, the line of crimson blossoming from beneath ripped fabric. She hasn't felt pain like this in many years, since her heart stopped its beating.

And now it races with anticipation. She points her blade right at Chad, looks up at him in his two beady eyes as if he's the smallest thing that has ever existed. "That's fine," she says earnestly, not at all bothered by his outburst. In life, she never learned not to play with her food. "He can watch me kill you instead."

My demeanor made you wait,
but the consequences stayed
I killed everything we were
Baby, murder was a case

song: 27 hours