let the little tragedies begin . kareem / bowie
Mar 23, 2022 21:36:56 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Mar 23, 2022 21:36:56 GMT -5
B O W I E
"Fuck it, fuck all of y'all."
It's the last thing I say into the helmet of my suit, hearing my voice slip into nothing but radio static as I back away from the mutts in front of me, dagger slipping out from the gauntlet laced on the suits left arm as I stare down the mutts in front of me, catching bloody drool slip from their fangs and stain the ground below. My voice has escaped me, slipping into the yellow afternoon sun and staining it crimson with my own sins and mistrust. I hear my last words slip into the radio wrapped amongst the inside of the mech helmet, the voices of my allies roaring back with urgent requests before I flip the switch on the chest of my suit, hearing the voice chat breathe a single static laced breath before it slips into the dead air around me.
The mutts and myself are all that's left once I cut the communications, my gaze darting between the three different packs of creatures that surround me, inching their way closer with every passing second. Dagger upgrade activated, the sound of bullets loading automatically into the gatling gun on my forearm, I bite my lip inside the suit until I feel iron and ore seep into my tastebuds, little red reminders of the coffin i'm stuck in.
Blink, breathe, try and swallow down a nervous gulp and taste only dust and dirt. One final heartbeat and a myriad of mutts all lunge at once, countless little nails in a coffin already slammed shut.
I dodge the first mutt, hearing the sounds of sharpened claws collide against steel, my mech suit screeching as it recoils backwards. It's luck, pure and dumb and the same kind that has carried me away from the brink of the edge so many times before, beaten and bruised but still alive, breathing, carving my own story into flesh and sinew just for no one to bother to read it. But the pages are turning and the words are running red, bleeding out against the dust and the dirt as I stumble backwards from the nearest mutt and feel a weight collide with the back of my suit, hear an alarm blare somewhere in the helmet and watch the words
[ S Y S T E M C R I T I C A L ] blare across the HUD. I cough out something deadly, swiping the dagger left and right until it stops cutting through air and into leathery, sandpaper skin. A howl, a whine and the luck seeps out all red and black and mutt blood green, my mech suit screeching in protest as I try and keep up. It's hopeless, and within the span of a heartbeat and a half I feel fangs dig into the soft flesh of my thigh, a mutts jaw targeting the holes in the worn down steel. I scream, bloodcurdling and rotten and sitting in the wake of dumb luck run dry, expletives clinging to my lips like venom as I flip the rocket booster switch on my forearm, desperation and fear carved into my fingertips. What's left of the gas blares to life out of the jets sticking out of my suits back, the mutts howling in pain before jumping backwards. I seize a hopeless moment in my grasp, jumping over the nearest group of mutts and doing my best to keep ahead of them. It's over before it starts, the way I can hardly manage a stumbling limp away from the beasts that trail me, the way their fangs and claws tear into my body as I gasp what I can only assume are my final breaths, the way my movements slow and my heartbeat follows suit.
My life bleeding out from torn through skin and muscle, mutts biting at my heels, when I suddenly fall into nothingness it's almost a relief.
At least, for a moment, because I watch the world turn upside down and the arena fade into nothingness above me, wind ripping through the tattered holes in my mech suit and carving against exposed flesh and blood. Fight or flight gives way to the latter as I feel myself free fall downwards, hurtling towards an array of luscious green as the alarm of my suit blares in my ears. It's hopeless, for a moment at least, teetering on the edge of death and destruction and feeling the void slowly win out. Then fight kicks in, gnarly and raw and full of half-broken spirit as I slam my palm into my gauntlet, feel the grappling hook activate and shoot out from the cannon underneath. Instincts root themselves in my next few actions, swing the line out towards the cliff side as I fall. It's graceless and clunky, the way the hook catches and I feel my shoulder pop from its socket as my fall is suddenly disrupted, my mech suit slammed directly into the cliff side with a sudden lurch. I scream again, all of my blood and guts laced into the howl as I hang there, feeling my heartbeat crack against hollow chest and my own sweat drip from forehead to cheek to chin, pain dragging a knife through every vein in my body.
But I'm alive.
I choke out something akin to a laugh, or at least I try to, but it lodges itself in the back of my throat and all that slips from my lips is a bloody cough into the face of fate, and fuck if it doesn't love a joke. Because the grappling hook suddenly snaps free of the cliffside, recoiling back into the cannon on my forearm and I'm falling again, this time alternating between the air and sliding against rocks, jagged and cruel and peeling away at the already disheveled state of my suit. By the time I hit the river I feel like i'm half dead and fully out of whatever luck I had left, crashing into the water and feeling a sudden chill slam against my spine as I gasp, all in pain and empty adrenaline, my mech suit cutting into the current as I finally come to a rest.
It feels like an eternity, for how long I sit there. Until what's left of the adrenaline in my veins runs dry and my breaths turn from ragged to steady, soft against the inside of my suit and fogging up the glass until the only thing I can see is my own shattered reflection in the glass, staring back at me with distrust turned deadly.
I eventually pull myself out, torn flesh and gashes on my skin clinging to the rusted steel of my mech, not enough sobs of pain to make up for the way fire and ice rips through my veins. My form collapses against the river bed, cough and another gasp of pain the only mementos left in the wake of my own destruction, the soft current of the river tracing a fading heartbeat against my flesh.
Dumb luck lost and dumb luck found, I collapse into the riverside with shaking limb and screaming heart, feeling my life laced into my fingertips and refusing to let it go.
