a real live wire / terra.

When the explosions begin, you're bundled up in a plush blanket at Kingpin's house—you usually avoid rolling your eyes when you call him that out loud, but today you can't quite help it.

You live in his goddamned house, drink all the milk and don't bother to replace it, eat all of his food until he goes into the icebox to grab some leftovers only to find that it's long gone.

You'd say he might as well be your dad, but whenever you make that joke he doesn't seem to take particularly kindly to the idea so you've been trying to be better about biting your tongue on that particular front.

Emphasis on trying.

You're not much one for being told what to think.

One moment, you're staring down the television that Kingpin keeps in the den, curled up on the couch, and then next thing you know every single light has gone out and the world is shaking all around you.

You gasp into the dark, before one, two, three—seconds pass and then the true sound hits you in the face.

BOOM.

You've spent the last three years of your life killing anyone boss told you to, in all manner of ways, and more than once you've taken down a person's entire home by making it look like a gas main started leaking and whoops! the house goes boom.

Explosions like that?

They're not a sound you can mistake for anything else.

The wreckage is horrible.

Horrific in the highest degree, but you've never been a soul scared of a little bit of earthy violence, and the violence of earth on her citizens has always been the worst kind. Buildings collapse and the rubbles pins people left and right, and while you're wearing a mask, the dust and debris and ash and smoke and—all of it gets into everyone's lungs and if you were a betting woman, you'd probably bet that with the explosion of those chemical refineries is probably going to come with a lot of shit chemicals floating through the air and later rather than sooner the real terror's of this explosion are going to hit the people of District Six.

That's why, when you take your long fingers and gouge out the first guys' eyes, you think hey, maybe you're doing him a favor.

At least if the chemicals all over the places start to cause some really weird deformities, or if his whole family back home starts to get inexplicably ill and die, at least he won't have to see it.

Rivers of blood stream from where his eyes used to be, and on impulse, you kiss his cheek while he screams and screams and screams.

"That's for going looking places you weren't supposed to," you say, though you're not sure he hears you over the sound of his own noises.

That's not your problem though.

It's his. 

You only kill one guy that's not on the list.

You're dancing through the debris, through the ash and the smoke, adjusting the mask over your mouth and nose when a huge pair of hands grabs you and spins you towards them, jostling your mask out of place and down around your neck. The man's breath is hot on your cheeks, reeking of something acrid and terrible, like he hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks.

"Skinny thing like you shouldn't be out in this," he says, as though grabbing you is some twisted version of him protecting you, as if he isn't here, in the rubble and the ruin, to do the exact same thing: exploit the terrible to your own benefit.

"Wrong move," you say before digging your teeth into his carotid, clamping down as hard as you can before jerking your head back.

Blood rushes into your mouth and into your nose and you can feel it hot and dripping down your neck and finally, you feel whatever chunck you've clamped down on break free and—ah, yes. He's screaming. Good. 

He drops you quickly, both hands flying to his neck, and you stumble down into a pile on top of yourself for a moment before you heave yourself back up.

"Gotta go," you say, taking a step back and heading into the ashes.

You'll be fazed later. 

Right now, you have orders. 

As you're running from the man you're not supposed to have killed, you do what you can to wipe the blood off of your face and use your mask to cover the rest. You don't want to admit it, but there's a trembling in your bones, little mountains crawling across your skin as you jog away.

When the hospital explodes, for a second you think you're knocked back by the force of it.

Your head hits the ground, confusing you, and it takes you a minute to realize that it was actually the very last name on your list knocking you to the ground, not the force of the explosion. Somehow, fate had seen fit to make them happen all at once, like the world was destined to start coming out from under you all in a single day.

"Knew you'd come," Last Name spits at you, shoving you back and rolling away. "One of these days, he's going to kill you, too, you know." You're almost disoriented enough to miss the flash of his knife as he pulled it out of his pocket. Emphasis on almost.

He flicks out his knife, but you're faster, and faster than you've ever done before, you roll towards him until you have enough force to knock him over and onto his back, pin him down with either of your knees pressed into his ribs.

It's hard work, strangling a man.

Slowly, painfully, you push down on his windpipe as hard as you can and somewhere between one moment and another he's sunk his knife into your abdomen and you're almost 100% sure that he's missed everything important but fuck it still fucking hurts, but it's his mistake because now you're mad. Now he's not just on the Kingpin's list, he's on yours, and instead of moving your hands to staunch the bleeding in your side, you press down that much harder.

"Everyone dies," you say, chest heaving, using all your body weight to rip the life out of him with your palms. "It's the risk everyone takes just by being alive."

You roll off him, and walk home, a trail of blood behind you.