the ascent | cool kids vs three of wolves vs crawlers
Mar 15, 2024 13:24:44 GMT -5
Post by gunner, d9 ₊⊹ 👹 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Mar 15, 2024 13:24:44 GMT -5
The world pulsed like a flesh bruise.
And every part of him followed. That same beat of pain, rhythm of agony, thrummed through his veins in a steady thud thud, thud thud, threatening to shatter. But his heart defied each one. It kept on beating like a drunkard reaching for another drink, an opioid for another needle, an asshole for another chance. Ever since he was young, this stubborn heartbeat was all he had. And even though he had little left now, it kept on beating doggedly.
What had he fucking survived? What had he lived through? Squalor, poverty, days of clawing for scrapes on the street to fill a stomach, of scavenging in backalleys and gutters. And then worse odds. Firefights, cheap bullets, shiv wounds, gang violence, peacekeeper crackdowns, the list goes on. The odds were impossible.
And yet, and yet.
The world dealt him a bad hand, sent him off to the wild with no childhood, devoid of love, and yet he lived through its cruelty. He learnt how to be cruel in return, how to fight back, how to rebel. All for what? Death at the hands of some lower districts eager for the grave?
“None of you fucking deserve life,” he snarled, the anger very much well and flaring. “You want to live? To be spared? Then, come on!” His foot stomped on the ice once, twice, spiderwebbing dark lattices of cracks outwards. “Fucking. Fight!”
In the winter of it all, he fumed as a hot summer in Nine would; he burned. But the way an orange fire turned azure when intensified, his anger began coalescing at a point of blazing blue until it was singular, linear, focused. Until it could be channeled. He smelt the fury, or imagined he did: a tinge of sulfur and gunpowder. He tasted the blood pooling in between his gnashed teeth, hot and invigorating.
“Run,” Lucky deplored from somewhere far. He laughed a sharp note, winked through the red clouding his sight. “In your wildest dreams, lucky blue. Where you’re probably dreaming of kissing me, again.”
The ground beneath felt unsteady. The only force keeping him upright now was, in truth, his stubborn beast of a heart. Again its beat hammered at his chest, again its beat thrashed against his ribcage, like a trapped bird homeward bound for the sky. Dove feathers fell behind his half-lidded eyes. He heard wingbeats. It sounded to him a herald of all his past sins, come to drag him to the spirit realm.
But they wouldn’t have him quiet and they wouldn’t have him docile. They’d have to drag his shrieking spirit all the way along.
Xov’s axe flashed.
He turned at the last second before it made purchase, the weapon instead slashing off his ski helmet to expose his bloodied face as he spat a globule of blood at hers. The weapon had torn off something else, too.
A red thread, now severed, carried by the wind.
His soul, unbound, took control of the shotgun.
Guns. What a beautiful and terrible creation. Why was a gun crafted, if not to be shot? Why was a bullet created, if not to be fired? He felt similarly, more part gunmetal than flesh, because why was he born, if not to live to the fullest?
The barrel turned, not to the boy martyring himself but to the other who lashed out at him. He grinned, shrapnel smile, a loaded smirk. The odds were abysmal, impossible by a long shot. And yet that was indeed his trade.
A shot in the dark.
His last one.
- attacks juno
dart gun, (2/4darts)
narratively, fires his shotgun!
2Lm|bAF|a7throwing knife
9152 -- Deep Gash on Bicep -- 8.0 damage (Thrown Knife) + 1.0
light step on xov’s last attack
1-10
“Ah, fucking hell.”
dart gun, (2/4darts)
narratively, fires his shotgun!
2Lm|bAF|a7throwing knife
9152 -- Deep Gash on Bicep -- 8.0 damage (Thrown Knife) + 1.0
light step on xov’s last attack
1-10
“Ah, fucking hell.”
throwing knife·1-10