uncanny valley — vrm vs. lk | day 5, d8 suite

Antigone's so close that he can't fully look at her. Roe pushes further, pressing down on her arm to keep that fucking bat away from him - but she's got a different idea.

Not that he should really be surprised.

She tries to crack through the front of his skull just like she tried to crack through the back of it and Roe is grunting, jolting back and trying to blink away fireworks because for fucking fuck's sake he's going to end up with so many concussions, layered over each other like the world's worst kindergarten collage, he's going to get permanent brain damage from this girl.

Too much thinking. He's on his back suddenly, Antigone backlit by the workshop lights. The dynamite slips and lands at an angle, the gentle rocking of it makes Roe's ears ring as he tries to kick her off of him. He loses count of the seconds as the bat angles down towards his head and he squirms wildly, hissing and scratching and bucking into the bracket of Antigone's anger, calling her every time terrible name he knows.

The explosion must be what rocks her. He hears it happen, feels the heat of it, and nearly dislodges her before the weapon comes down, it cracks across the armour of his knee - his bad knee, and even though there's hardly a connection, the reverb of it still makes him howl.

It calls Mateo to him, Arcadia too, judging by the way the air suddenly turns a thousand times more judgemental.

Antigone's weight is off of him then. Because of the explosion or because of one of them, he doesn't know. He's focused on something else now. Wild-eyed and staring at nothing. Shit, what- Listening

There’s a sizzling sound. A muted ticking.

Roe's face drops as he suddenly remembers.

Maybe, and just maybe, lighting off a stick of dynamite and letting it blow at such a close proximity when you have an actual literal bomb in your bag isn't such a great idea.

Roe drops said bag and the thing rolls out rather innocuously, ticking all the while.

In the grand scheme of everything, it's only a tiny little item, barely bigger than a fist.

It doesn't matter. Roe barrels past it, past Arcadia and past Antigone. He yanks at Vin's wrist and gets an arm around Mateo's middle and pulls them both away with him so fast, so frantically, that he can feel the strain between his shoulders. He doesn't even look behind him, powering through a nasty limp, "Get away-"

The entire suite seems to shake as it goes off. All the sewing tables in the vicinity splinter and go flying. The machines tumble to the ground, heavy, a terrible cacophony of noise. The bolts of fabric hanging from the ceiling all catch alight and wave in dangerous patterns, the flames licking up and across and catching on every bit of cloth it can.

He doesn't know what any of this shit is. He just dimly knows that almost all of it is flammable - they're in a fucking sewing factory, and the whole damn place is on fire now. The surviving mannequins are black with soot and smoke, their fabric coverings slowly peeling off to show the polysynthene bones underneath.

"Fuck, fuck fuck," Roe's chanting, but he's laughing through it, ducking out of the way as some tall bit of machinery tilts and then topples over.

Back to his roots, very own local fucking fire demon, he should be getting paid extra for it - look Varan, this showy enough for you yet?