#imagine hitting your head on the concrete with brute force

[l3m-ntwo]

I have some thoughts about the thing on qBad's head actually might be being an injury

[the-slasher-files]

POSSESSION

INCLUDES MICHAEL X READER

Hello friends! So this smut is for one of the giveaway winners, yeah remember that like half a month ago, yeah whoops... I have honestly just been obsessing over my oc lately that I just didn’t want to write anything else but Michael smut is here to change up the pace! So there are some specifics since this is for a giveaway winner, a small female, biting, knife, blood and some classic possessive mikey! Hope you enjoy 🔪💕

MASTERLIST

Your footsteps fell on the concrete and up the front porch. Closing your eyes, deeply inhaling, clenching your jaw you reached for the door knob but stopped. You were already shaking. You knew he knew. He always knew. 

Unlocking the door, the house was silent and dark as you stepped in, looking for the shape in the shadows. Turning to close the door you heard him, the wet boots along the hardwood. A tear slowly rolled down your cheek as the door clicked into the frame. Maybe tonight was the night he would finally do it. You had prayed for it but wished those thoughts would never come. You loved him - you thought. 

“Michael” you whispered, pleaded with him, pleading for something you didn’t know. 

Large hands whipped you around and forced you against the door. He towered above you, mask and coveralls on, splattered his a deep crimson that looked black in the darkness. The copper smell assaulted your senses and wanted to make you gag. 

“He- he was just a frien-” Before you could even try to explain you yelped from the harsh bite of cold metal at your neck. He could kill you in a second if he cared to. You were so small under him, it was something he loved so much about you, making the shape just that more possessive of you. “Mi-Michael”

Teary eyes looked up at the dark eye holes of the lifeless mask, you could only imagine the face under it was just as cold, it made you swallow hard against the steel knife. Your hands instinctively found their way to his chest, but pulled away when you felt the excessive amounts of blood. It made you shudder, but Michael just pressed his body closer to yours. The heat and the smell smothering you. Then as he shifted you felt the bulge in his coveralls. A sick soul who got off on inflicting pain. You knew what had happened tonight. What he had done in the shadows.

There was one less soul left in the world tonight, one that was your friend, your co worker; laying in a pool of his own blood, choking and desperately clutching his throat, as the shape watched with a cruel curiosity. 

“You’re a fucking monster” You spat courageously, foolishly. The shape tilted his head burning holes through your head with his icy gaze. Once you realized what you said your hand flew to your mouth and you squeezed your eyes closed, just waiting for the end. Waiting for the brute force of the shape, or the harsh swipe of the blade. 

He just watched you with curiosity. Seeing what you would do to preserve your life, as he towered over you, taking sick pleasure in watching you cry, shake and beg against him. “Mi--Michael...p-please.. I- I am so sorry... Michael” It could almost make him chuckle, but it just made him want something else, something much more from you. 

Dragging the cold metal teasingly at your collar bones your breath hitched as his large bloodied hand took around your throat. Michael sliced you of your clothes, needing you now. Feeling your pulse under his fingers grow faster, it drew his excitement as well, stabbing the knife in the door frame just beside your head, you shrieked and flinched, more fuel to the shapes fire.

Removing the hand away from your throat Michael picked you up, instinctively letting your legs hook around his waist, grinding against his covered length. Tearing off the mask he threw it to the floor, his face mimicking the cold glare perfectly but at least you could see his eyes, not quite human but not quite beast. 

You didn’t need to say a word. You knew what he wanted. Just all you of. Without a word you pulled down the zipper of his soaked coveralls. Just beyond the zipper sounds you could hear a low growl from Michael’s chest, he leans in close to you, just hovering mere inches from your face in warning. Taking that warning you pulled down the zipper as much as you could, freeing his length in your small hand, doing as you have been taught you stroked it gently, but it wasn’t enough for Michael. 

He released you and almost let you fall but his one large arm grabbed you tightly, turning you around within his arms and having your face pressed against the door. Michael’s cock brushed the small of your back as he towered over you. Slamming his hand next to you his breath was hot on your neck as he moved as close as he could before bending slightly and rubbing your slight with the tip of his hard member before ramming into you. 

A gasp left your lungs from his harsh actions, but that was just his love. Harsh and rough. “Mi-Michael” you whimpered as he started to move within you, thrusting back and forth your muscles welcomed him as they did time and time again. 

Michael’s lips brushed against your neck as his breathing increased, steadily and rhythmically. The shapes starts to kiss and suck on your neck, biting as he goes. “Ah.. fuck.. Michael” you moan, trying to forget the fact that you are being covered in your coworkers own blood. 

You can start to her the skin on skin slapping together through the dark room, and you bite your lip trying to stifle your noises from your neighbors hearing. Why did he have to pick the front door to fuck at? Because he is Michael. 

The tip of his cock hits your cervix deliciously with each thrust and you can feel the hot coil inside your stomach start to burn. “God, please Michael... p-please baby” you moan. The shapes moves his large hand to your hip, grabbing like a vice, replacing your faded bruises with new ones as he pounds into you from behind. With his free hand it clamps around your mouth, the hot scarlet liquid coating your lips and chin, the smell is making it hard to concentrate on what Michael want, he wants you. Squeezing you eyes shut, tears fall down your cheeks and onto his bloody hand.

In his deep rare voice he speaks "Cum... now" your eyes snap open at his deadly voice, you have to obey him and focus on the burning coil thats ready to snap. With one last rigid powerful thrust Michael bits down on your neck hard, his tounge lapping up blood as your walls clamp down and release desperately what he to you. The shape grunts low and deep as he spills his hot load inside of you and pulls away, leaving you shaking against the door grasping as your knees wobble.

"You are mine" Michael speaks again, removing his hands and disappearing into the shadows that called. He had made his point.

[katsukikitten]

Part 10 of Irritated. Y'all thank Jo for this being updated lol.

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ This is an 18+ Pro Hero AU, mentions of violence and death. Enjoy

The pungent smell of wet Earth and nose burning chemicals did not pair well with the harsh scent of rotting fruit. Sickeningly sweet as it rouses you, mind hazed as your eyelids refuse to open or even flutter. Weighted by lead and an endless sleep that tries to pull you under again. For once you submit.

More time passes, although you aren’t even sure you understand the concept any longer as that same smell stirs you again, a bang from an adjacent room pushes your eyes to flutter. Flashes of light against the start darkness before your eyes adjust to the low light of the room that seeps in from a few small rectangular windows. The panes are caked with dust while bricks are pressed into the seedy Earth, giving the room a natural coolness, there is only one set of stairs that lead up towards a door outlined in light. The sound of running water makes your throat constrict and your mouth dry, as if you swallowed cotton whole. Making you wonder just how long you had been pulled undertow. It takes your throbbing head a moment to catch up with your senses as a chill settles over your bare skin in goose flesh.

And then it all comes flooding back, the awful taste of his salty skin in your mouth, the fear gripping at your muscles as you finally realize that you are not in the safety of your apartment but somewhere forgein. Thrashing to get to your feet only to hit hard onto the icy concrete, wrists and ankles bound by white cuffs, a small whine escapes your raw throat. Your heart hammers in your chest before you feel a sharp prick in both of your wrists. A warm substance floods your system as your eyelids become heavy, mind trudging through abduction procedures before settling on blissful numb. A blurry figure comes from the only other door in the room that isn’t atop the staircase. You don’t need to fully focus on his face to know exactly what color his eyes are as they burn into your retinas before sleep hushes your frayed nerves. You dream of all consuming green that slowly fades to black.

Bakugou finds himself standing in the kitchen of his apartment, your spare key stares up at him from your paperwork. A sweating glass with melting ice and the reminisce of an amber liquid is his only company. He leers down at the address, wondering why the hell you were on such a seedy side of town, then he thinks of you shaking on the couch back at the hotel during the convention. His stomach churns, your final words and blow cause him to suck his teeth.

“Not my fucking problem.” He huffs to himself, refilling the glass before killing the light in the kitchen to settle on the couch. His grip is too tight on the crystal glass in his explosive palm, the glass threatens to shatter while an infomercial plays in the background. His mind is anywhere but the TV while indestructible pans are advertised across the large screen. Aggressively swirling the amber liquid as his thoughts become more and more loud. He swallows the whisky whole and with it the thought of you. Letting it all burn as it runs down his throat and heats his chest, a warm feeling flooding his veins as he sinks lower into the couch. Flipping channels as he forgets you.

Your key taped to your personal records, that Bakugou stole, do not sit on his fine counter much longer, soon it is swiped and shoved into a pocket. He slams the crystal glass on the counter as he reaches for his own apartment keys and his cellphone. Bakgou slams his apartment door, locking the deadbolt before he rushes down the stairs to catch the last train to you hellish part of the city.

The hour train ride sobers Bakugou and only sets him into further agitation. Glaring at anyone who thinks to look at him more than once, even going as far as baring his teeth. Before glaring at his own reflection, who sneers right back. His black tee is tight and a bit damp despite the cool air, the brim of his backwards cap pulls the hair away from his forehead as his faded sides breathe in the chill of the train. The hat, an excuse to hold in his hair, his hero gloves heating his hands as his fingers twitch, he hopes your apartment is hardwood throughout since he didn't have plastic bags to put his feet in while he looked for something. Anything. He was doing the best with what he had.

But the more he looks at himself the more he realizes he never really was doing his best. At least not when it came to you.

The address to your apartment complex is a few blocks away from the train station, his jaw clenched as he reaches the low lit building. Screaming comes from somewhere far off, his ears perk out of habit, but he was supposed to be off duty right now. Plus that wasn’t his current focus, not to mention should he help it would be suspicious as fuck as to why he was so far way from home tonight. He bounds up the stairs in the dank stairwell two at a time, huffing through his nose as he reaches the top floor. The carpet is worn threadbare and reeks of vomit and water damage. Silence envelopes the top floor compared to the yelling and crashing items on his way up. Slowly it dawns on him that you’re most likely renting out the entire fucking floor. He sucks his teeth, leaning in close to the door of the first apartment on the floor. Nothing comes from the other side of the thin cheap door, musty air flows from between the cracks as if the room had been closed for quite some time. It confirms what he’s been thinking. He finds your apartment door with ease, several bolts and locks lined up perfectly straight. He looks down at the one key and thinks about what happened in the short few years you started at the agency that you would need five, no six additional deadbolts on your door. He half wishes you hadn't made it so obvious as to which door was yours, thoughts creep into the forefront of his mind as he imagines someone else standing in his spot now. He thinks he will need a locksmith, but that would call attention to himself, he could attempt to pick them but he never really had time to practice the shady skill. Just as he is about to turn to brute force as the answer he notices that your door doesn't seem fully shut. He thinks of all the times that you bitched while on patrol about your damn door and how you had to literally slam it shut for it to actually lock. Gritting his teeth he gently pushes the door open with his gloved hand letting it swing open with an eerie creak.

Already things are out of place. Your suitcase stands alone, untouched and obviously unpacked from the clothes peeking out from beneath the zipper, by the front door. Your lanyard for your keys is on the floor instead of the table that is in the foyer and the converse you were wearing the day that you quit are missing. Faintly something gleems in the grainy light from the hallway from beneath the table in the foyer. Bakugou reaches for it tentatively, teeth gritting as he realizes what the glass rectangle is.

Your phone.

Specifically, your dead phone.

His hand hover over the unresponsive screen before deciding to leave it, this would be evidence they would need later but for now he knew he had to do something. Kamisama takes pity on the poor bastard and throws him a bone in the shape of a scrunchie. Your black scrunchie that seems to have been ripped from your arm. As he reaches for it he notices the faint residue smeared on the hardwood. His mind dredges up weeks ago of the guy trying to hide his quirk. Of the carpet by the hotel door in the hall just a touch darker.

He should have fucking killed him, he should not have listened to you. He snatches the scrunchie, heading towards your kitchen to look for a bag, tupperware, anything to trap the smell of you and possibly your assailant. He finds a plastic sandwich bag, shoving the broken hair tie into the baggie before sealing it shut. He heads for your door thinking better of slamming it shut in case he needs to return without the calvary. Pulling his phone from his pocket he dials an old number from memory, the other line picks up.

"Oi, it's time I cashed in on that favor you owe me."

After the short conversation and the long hour and a half in the cold a four door sudan pulls up to the train station by your house. Bakugou eagerly yanks open passenger side door, slamming it shut as he cranks of the heat in the car, giving the driver no room for questions let alone a greeting.

"Oi, I need you to find the owner of this." He flashes the scrunchie as the driver gives him a look, "Inu, you're hound's son aren't you? It's not impossible."

"It might as well be dude. What is this?" Inu snatches the bag from hot fingers, "Do you even know when the last time the owner wore this. And what exactly are we doing? Is this even fucking official?"

Bakugou narrows his eyes, mouth set in a harsh snarl as he leans in close to the driver's seat while Inu leans back.

"I dunno was your shit I helped you with official? Was it ethical for us to take out a mob boss for your now ex wife?"

Inu looks away into the rear view mirror, eyes boring holes into the glass and the blankets in the back seat. Bakugou doesn't notice, he takes it as admission before leaning away into the passenger seat.

"Now get to sniffing." Inu grits his teeth at the hot head's comments before sighing out. Opening the bag just a little to take a whiff. The smell was faint, indicating a large gap from the time it was last worn to now. Not to mention there was an odd smell, so unbelievably faint in the fabric that had Inu not already known what you smelt like he would have missed it. Just barely he could make out past the notes of your shampoo a salty harsh smell, almost like a preservative. Had it been any stronger it would have burned his nostrils. Sweat and...was that formaldehyde?

His stomach churns, slowly closing the baggie before cracking his window, catching the wind just right. He follows his nose, head halfway out the window as the car carries the men late into the night, all the way to the fringes of a suburb that was partly in the country. Inu parks the car on the wide street of the little neighborhood built to mimic an American suburb in the nineties. Homes of various sizes spread out and yet not too far from one another.

"This is it." Inu announces, throwing the car in park as it sits nestled between a beat to hell pick up truck and a dented sudan.

"You're sure?" Bakugou asks as he takes in the old home, it's upkeep is minimal at best, landscaping border line over grown as he can barely make out the small rectangular windows at the base of the house beneath the old dim street lamp.

"This is where both smells get stronger."

"Both?" A tic wounds tighter in Bakugou's jaw while a tremor runs through his arms. Inu nods as Bakugou reaches for the knob.

"Woah, woah!" Inu's large hand clamps down onto a broad shoulder, "Hold up man, if she really is involved then this is nothing like the sting we did bro. We need to call someone."

"Like fucking who?"

"I dunno Director Yami?"

"Yea so he can dismiss this again? Fuck that and fuck you. I'm going." He shoves Inu away reaching for the door again before the blankets in the back seat come to life. A mop of emerald curls with concern plastered across the giant's face appears to Bakugou's horror.

"Kaachan...you can't. We need to do this right, for her." And with that Bakugou snaps, lunging for his old friend, enemy. Climbing past the center console with his hands outstretched before they wrap around a thick column squeezing with all of his might. Deku doesn't do much to stop him, somehow knowing deep down that it isn't really him that the red eyed man wants to kill. He wraps broad hands around thick forearms giving them a gentle squeeze, he could snap them with One for All if he wanted. Instead Inu barks out a breathy "What the fuck?" as he wraps his arms around Bakugou's torso pulling him back into the passenger's seat. In the tussle either Bakugou or Inu hit the horn, causing Inu to panic as a light comes to life in the once darkened house. He forcefully shoves Bakugou into the front seat as he peels into the street, thankfully without burning rubber.

"Are you trying to blow our fucking cover?!" Inu shouts, "Like fuck! And what's killing Izuku-kun going to do?"

Bakugou turns to glare at the behemoth of a man in the back seat, he rubs his throat as red eyes watch bruises form.

"I'm not sorry Deku, fuck you." But Izuku can read between the lines, Bakugou saying he is sorry but still fuck you for trying to stop me while our friend is most likely on borrowed time.

"'S kay. We can help her."

A honk, rouses you before footsteps can be heard overhead rushing through the house before blinding light floods down into the basement.

"Finally you're awake." He flicks on all the lights, scrambling to put your feet under you so you can at least sit. Eyes flickering over the room as you try to give your throbbing, unresponsive mind to collect something, anything you can store away for later to aid your escape. Meanwhile the green eyed fucker monologues.

"It took some time for me to adjust your dose, I need you to be just under enough that you won't fight back, your heart rate spikes easily you know…." His words are lost to you as you glance over your shoulder only to wish you never did as your stomach churns in horror. Lined up against the wall behind you are women, women you had posed with.

But what haunts you is how it starts with your missing friend. Her eyes hollowed out, pitch black holes stare back at you as her skin looks paper thin, like a botched mummification or that whoever was trying to preserve her got lucky. She is still in her last scene clothes that are bloodied and torn. Your eyes struggling to follow the line as they progressively become more and more preserved, until your eyes finally land on your last instagram picture, you and that young girl. With the peace signs beneath your eyes.

She looks to still be alive, until you realize she is unblinking with glass eyes and a permanent smile with the help of a stich or two.

He notices your rigidness and frowns.

"Are you not happy? It's hard to save the eyes." He forces your face to meet him with his fingers on your skin, "I made them for you. They're your friends right? I wouldn't want my doll to be lonely."

Your breath comes in ragged huffs as rage consumes you, you were going to kill him. With whatever little power you had left, you were going to end him and savor it.

All these lives, twenty, that you could see, lost, because of you and you negligence. Your eyes glow before a prick comes at your wrist, the power dying in your fingers.

"No." You rasp out as your vision begins to fade.

"Ah come on, I just want you to be a wake for just a bit doll. Just a while longer before I make you mine."

Your world plunges into the depths of darkness.

Your dream of the girls behind you, of their scream as their preserved bodies animate, their glass eyes fixated on you as they crawl across the concrete. Their mouths smelling of formatihide and rot as they lean close to you, voices beneath water or worn by gravel.

"You did this. You killed us."

[beigehearts]

The Price of Self Respect

Read part one here! PART II CW: mutilation, gore, puke

 1,729 words

____________________________________________

He’s observing you, every inch of your body. He stared as if you were an art piece, but you begin to wonder what was the true meaning behind it. His grin disappears as if he realizes he’s showing too much emotion. “I never thought the creator would look like this. Though it’s never good to assume.” 

Somehow his comment struck a chord in you, and you aren’t someone to stay quiet. “I never thought the Spider’s Leader was a pretty boy, though it’s never good to assume.” You scoff and shake your head. His eyes widen though you aren’t bothering to look at the man anymore. “Wire me my money- I have better things to do than stay where my mission is finished.” You turn on your heel and click your way out of the room, and Chrollo didn’t try to stop you. 

Laying in bed at 7 pm, watching an oldy cheesy and romantic movie, you bite into a sour gummy worm. You snuggle deeper into the large, soft bed, sinking into it’s warmth and achieving nirvana. Maybe you should go to a bar. You haven’t gone out for a drink in a while, you try not to be intoxicated for a week before a mission. It could slow you down. Seeing as you have no missions, and assuming you won’t for quite a while, you might as well indulge yourself.

After putting on minimum makeup, and a comfortable but cute outfit, you call a cab to pick you up at the front of the hotel. You used the hotel phone of course, not your own to call a cab. Before you head down to the lobby, you quickly draw a thread ring on your finger. If any nen is use within five feet of you, it will snap. This was you don’t have to constantly exhaust yourself by using gyo constantly. 

You are shielded from the rain by the awning in front of the hotel, you hold your arms to your chest as a chill runs through you. It’s quite cold today, you’re surprised that it’s not snowing or sleeting. A yellow car pulls up to the curb and you rush into the back seat. 

“Hi, I’m headed to the Lotus Bar.” You say in a sweet voice, as you do to anyone providing you a service. 

The man in front of you seems cramped in this somewhat small car. He’s wearing a cabbie uniform besides the hat. His hair is in a high pony tail and his head is only a few centimeters away from the roof of the car. He nods towards you and mumbles, “Okay.” 

You try not to think much of it but the hunter in you tells you to worry. You know there are weird people in York New city, and your thread ring hasn’t broken so you should be fine. 

Five minutes into the car ride and you reach the highway, at this time the cabbie starts to make conversation. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.” 

You put on a fake smile even though he can’t see it, “Yes, I’m just visiting for a few days. On business.” 

He nods while keeping his eyes on the road, “What kind of business? Are you an auctioneer?”

“No no, I’m just here meeting some coworkers. It’s more of a business vacation than it is a business trip I should say.” Rain hits the windows as if trying to break through the glass and hit you. Car lights are blurred because of the heavy rain and you wonder if the cabbie would be able to see clearly enough out of the front window. 

The cabbie pulls over to the side of the highway and sighs.  “Is it raining too hard to see?” You ask innocently.

He turns in his seat towards you, he has a crooked nose, and deep deep eyes. His frown doesn’t falter when he says, “We’ve reached our destination.” 

The ring on your finger snaps.

He lunges at you, grabbing you by the throat and punching you impossibly hard in the gut. Your body begs to cough violently but the hand around your throat prevents you to. You punch him in his crooked nose and he loosens his grip on you. You contort your leg to kick him in the neck, and he goes flying into the dashboard. 

Blood splatters all over the car’s shitty leather seats when you cough so hard that you become worried your organs will be coming out next. You scramble for the car door and leap out head and hands first. Right as your hands feel the cold and wet road, he grabs your ankle. You glance back at him and his lips quirk upwards, “Nice try. “ The cabbie grabs your thigh and calf, with brute force there’s a loud crack. It takes a moment to register in your mind- but not long. You scream out in agony, and slide out of the car and onto the road once he lets go of you. You flip onto your back and see it, your leg is bent in a way that no leg should be bent. The sight of it causes bile to rise in your throat, and you turn over, everything that was in your stomach forcing itself out of your body. Once everything has left your stomach, you flop back down on your back and grit your teeth in pain.

The man steps out of the car, and picks you up, throwing you over his shoulder. Your foot digs into his rib cage, simply because it’s been forced into an unnatural position. You feel a buzzing coming from the man’s pocket and he grabs his phone and answers it, as if in no rush at all. 

“Nobunaga. What’s taking you so long?” 

You conjure your pencil and begin sketching in the air.

“I’m on my way.” 

It’s starting to come together. A ferocious creature.

“Chrollo told you to be here ten minutes ago. Did you sit down and have a damn drink with the girl?!” 

The incredibly large dog begins to form into a physical creature.

The man, Nobunaga, groans and growls into the phone, “I’ll be there soon.” He hands up and puts his phone back in his pocket.

Nobunaga stops and turns when he hears an eardrum shattering bark. His eyes widen but he’s not quick enough to stop the feral dog you’ve created. It sinks it’s fangs into the back of Nobunaga’s leg, and takes a chunk out of him. He screams in pain, collapsing, unable to stand at this point. Things begin to go black, the pain becoming too much for consciousness. You reach out for the dog and as it stretches to grab you gently, to run away with you, it whimpers loudly. It begins to dissipate into dust. Someone had attacked your dog with nen. Above you, standing in the ashes of your large pooch, is Chrollo. 

“Come on, let’s go y/n.” 

Your mind is fuzzy, sounds are nothing but unintelligible nonsense, and your sight has already gone. At least the pain would be gone for a while, if you woke up. 

Who knows how much time has passed, certainly not you. It’s quiet, deafeningly quiet. You peel your eyes open. which requires a lot of effort. Your body is fighting you to stay down but you sit up with much pain. Your stomach feels as if a wrecking ball has slammed into you. You pull the shirt that is not yours up and see a black and blue bruise blooming on your stomach with sprouts of yellow. Speaking of, who’s clothes are these? You look down at your legs, wearing sweatpants much to big for your frame. You feel down to your knee and wince, it seems to be back in place, and wrapped carefully with some kind of nen. 

A sigh escapes your lips and you take in your surroundings. It’s dark but your eyes have adjusted to it already. You lay on a makeshift bed, with a light sheet covering your bare feet. The floor is concrete but so are the walls. The room is maybe, 10ft by 7ft wide. The only light in this small, claustrophobic room comes from the moonlight through a hole in the ceiling. 

Your eyes wander towards the entrance of the room, a man sits on a wooden chair that looks incredibly uncomfortable. His eyes don’t even look up from his book when he says, “How are you feeling y/n?” 

“Well, my leg is broken and I’ve been kidnapped. So not bad.”

He closes his book and chuckles, then gently places his book on the floor next to him. “You put up quite a fight. It was wonderful to see you create something so beautifully.” Chrollo sits on the floor at the end of your makeshift floor bed. “It truly was delightful.” 

You look down at your hands in your lap, “How is Nobunaga?” 

“He’s okay, he’s been through worse.” 

“Whose clothes are these?” Suddenly you have many questions that you want answered.

“They’re mine.” He states. Though the statement surprises you, you could never imagine Chrollo wearing sweatpants and a white t shirt. 

“So what am I here for. Information? You gonna torture me? Go ahead, you guys already broke my leg.” You say as if he’s the one who broke your leg.

Chrollo stares at you in wonderment. “You have quite a lot of questions. I can’t blame you.” He looks up to the single light source and nods to himself. “I’ve been observing you for quite a while. 

Once the words reach your ears, a red tint covers your cheeks. How could you not have known he was watching you? How long has he been watching you? How much does he even know about you?!

“I’m a specialist as well. I’ll let you know what my nen ability is.” For some reason this makes your heart pound, do you want to know what his ability is? 

“I take other people’s abilities, so they can no longer use it, and I can use as many as I take. That’s why I tracked you down. Your ability is quite unique.” He looks at you with a genuine smile, “But then I began to like you too much to just take your ability. So instead I took you.”

[sweetest-honeybee]

“Wow, Logic really threw you out the window, Roman!”

Fic inspired by @5am-the-foxing-hour ‘s post about Roman attempting to fight with each of the other Sides :)

TW: Fighting obvs and a bit of blood mention (Logan bouta kick Roman’s ass) and Remus and Deceit are in this so read at your own risk if you’re not one for kinda violent themes and brief mentions of bugs. This is kinda angsty but it ends with a logicality hug :)

Characters: All the sides are at least mentioned in some way (But Logan and Roman are mains)

Summary: After fighting with Patton, Roman decides to try to fight Logan. Logan takes up his offer and despite early failures and probably some broken ribs, the teacher gives the cocky prince what he deserves.....one hell of a violent tantrum and a broken nose.

Enjoy!

————————————

“Patton you can’t just hug people mid battle! It’s distracting!”

“Oh...but isn’t that kinda of the point? Don’t I win?”

With the fourth round ending, Roman simply sighed through his nose. Patton looked up at him with an oddly curious gaze but it was the puppy eyes nonetheless. Roman couldn’t tell him he had basically lost for the past four rounds by hugging Roman while his fists were visible.

He could admit that Patton’s little tactic would be a bit useful in some kind of hand-to-hand combat. He had a hug strong enough to pin your arms to your chest and keep you form moving despite his small size. Roman wondered for a second of the father figure kept a layer of muscle under the chubbiness of his cookie-filled body.

“Yes, Patton, you win,” Roman decided. Patton’s eyes lit up and a grin spread across his face. He clapped happily and cheered for himself.

“Yay!”

Roman ruffled his hair and brough them both back to the living room where Logan resided.

“Logan, I won!”

“You did? Oh- I mean of course you did. Roman isn’t one for tactics anyway, I’m not very surprised.” Roman eyed Logan with a glare.

“Well actually, Logan-“

“Yeesh, why were you fighting Patton?”

Everyone’s attention was brought to the grumbly voice on the stairs. Turning to it, Virgil sat slouched on last step. “I mean, it’s no surprise to me either that he won. Roman’s an idiot.”

“Hey!”

Virgil shrugged, Patton took off for a celebratory cookie, Logan simply continued drafting the schedule he was working on.

“Well if you’re so high and mighty, I propose that we fight as well. What could you possibly be good at?”

Virgil chuckled. “I’m fight or flight. Besides, don’t forget that I lived with your brother for years.”

Roman’s eyes widened. Either Virgil would be smart since Deceit also had his own ways with combat or Virgil could murder him in a heartbeat because of Remus. The Duke had no sign of any kind of thought process in a fight since he’d usually ran at Roman screaming at the top of his lungs and swinging his morning star frantically at the Prince’s face.

And besides, Roman already fought Deceit both for practice and other personal reasons. Virgil was practically Deceit’s spitting image from time to time. A fight with Virgil would only end in inevitable predictability much to what he couldn’t decide if it was his advantage or dismay.

Roman huffed. “Right, I’ll....pass thank you. Besides, you have your creepy magical spider legs, so you’d probably use it to your unfair advantage anyways.”

Virgil scoffed and smirked. “Sure.” The trait pulled out his phone and began scrolling.

Roman pouted at the new lack of attention and looked around the room briefly. His eyes landed on a Logan who sat, still scribbling in notes on each date. He didn’t need to even look up to know that Roman was staring right at him with a sudden grin on his face. An obvious idea came to the Teacher’s mind.

“I’m not going to fight you, Roman.”

Roman gasped in mock offense, groaned, and flailed his arms like a toddler. “Why not?! It’d not like it would be a slow fight, I’d kick your ass within the first ten seconds!”

Logan raised a single brow and glanced at the Prince. “Right,” he replied sarcastically. He continued to write in more and more dates onto the calendar.

The Prince then had another idea. “What, you don’t believe me?”

“No.”

“You wanna bet?”

“No.”

“Bet you can’t even hold a sword correctly.”

Virgil and Patton both chuckled at Roman’s attempts. But even they knew where this was going to go. And they knew that Logan couldn’t stand to be incorrect. He always had to go and prove himself.

Logan sighed through his nose. “I can hold one correctly, actually.”

“Right right, suuurree, but you’d still lose anyways. You’re a teacher! What kind of teacher knows how to fight! You’d be too weak for me to feel a punch.”

“Roman, I’m not fighting. Also there’s plenty of teachers who know how to fight.”

“I dunno Logan. If you don’t do it, Roman will ultimately be correct and you will not. Besides, how cool would it be to see you kick his ass,” added Virgil.

“Yeah what Virgil said minus the profanity!” also added Patton

Logan thought for a second and groaned loudly. “Fine,” he decided. “We will fight under one condition.”

Roman grinned and became giddy. “Anything.”

“I win and I get your entire sector of control for a week.”

“Psh, alright its a deal. Okay so, we’re gonna do hand to hand like I did with Patton. All fighting styles are permitted but I will go with my own tactics.”

“Hand to hand won’t include pulling a dagger out of your pocket.”

“I....will use my other tactics but considering your height, weight, and general lack of a drive to do more than read books, I might just go easy on you.”

“Sure.”

“But uh...you might want to change into something more comfortable.” Logan rolled his eyes and the two, along with Patton and Virgil as their audience, sunk down and reappeared in the Imagination. Around them was a large open warehouse with several mats covering the floor. Weapons of all kinds lined the walls.

“Watch out, DeeDee!”

......Conveniently, both Remus and Janus were there, too.

“Yeesh, when were you into being here, Jan? Thought sweat and blood wasn’t classy enough for your taste,” asked Virgil.

“Hardy har har,” Janus replied in a monotone voice. He ducked from another ninja star just a rely missing his hair. “Remus didn’t want some practice.”

“Mhm, sure. Logan is gonna kick Roman’s ass in a fight.” Remus and Janus stopped their activities to listen with a sudden curiosity.

“Oh?” Janus glanced at Roman and Logan with a raised brow. “Is that so.” He practically scanned the teacher up and down. “I totally couldn’t see that happening.”

Roman scoffed. “Wow, okay, and how would you know that?”

“I have my ways. But at least he reads up on it. Being ‘Light’ Creativity doesn’t take away the fact that you’re all brawn and no brain, sweetie.”

“Uh hellooooo, I don’t need a brain to fight. As long as I’m stronger than him, I’ll beat him.”

“Tell that to the girls taking defense classes to beat up rapists...” Remus muttered. “Anyways! I wanna see this. I always beat Roman in a fight too and I’m shorter than he is. My money is on Teach.”

Roman rolled his eyes. “Sure, anyone else wanna place their bets while we’re all here shitting on my fighting skills?”

“Logan.”

“Logan~”

“Logan!”

“Certainly Roman.”

“I’m certain I will probably win.”

Roman just stared at the teacher. “You can’t place a bet on yourself, also HEY! I want some support too!”

“Room for one more?” The group turned and stared at the familiar voice. There stood Thomas.

“What? Why are you here?” asked Roman. “I mean, feel free to stay but don’t you have things to do?”

“I just told them I wasn’t feeling good so I went and took a nap.”

Janus chuckled. “Wow, a lie? I’m surprised.”

Thomas glared at the liar but continued. “All I keep thinking about all day is fighting people so I wanted to see what was up with all of you.”

“Roman fought Patton and decided he was gonna try to deck Logan. But Logan is gonna kick his ass!” Remus explained enthusiastically.

“Awe, hush now, Remus, Roman is clearly confident in himself,” replied Janus sarcastically.

“And I will! You guys will see!”

Thomas snorted and shook his head. “Don’t worry, Roman, I’m rooting for you. No offense to Logan.”

“None taken.”

“Alright, is anyone else joining us before we start?” The group shook their heads in unison. “Good.”

With the snap of his fingers, the pair were clothed in T-shirts and basketball shorts along with Logan’s glasses now replaced with contacts. Behind them along the wall appear a small set of bleachers for their audience to watch from. Roman and Logan walked towards the center of the taped down circle in the mat’s center and the rest of them waited patiently.

After a bit, the fighting pair crouched slightly and prepared to fight with Thomas’s cue being their start. With the sound of the Host’s voice, Roman and Logan ran towards each other.

.....And within three seconds, Roman had the teacher pinned to the floor with the wind knocked out of him and a bunch of faces full of concern from their crowd. A classic tackle on the first round, but Roman proved his size advantage.

“Ow....”

“Point for me! Prepare for round two, Lo.”

Slowly, Logan pulled himself from the floor. The two crouched once more and waited for Thomas’s signal.

“I think I already taste blood.”

“All part of fighting!”

“Go!”

The fight was a bit longer this time. It took at least twenty seconds for Roman to, once more, get Logan to the floor. And once again, using his size. At first Logan tried to punch him in the throat, a common tactic. But inevitably, Roman blocked the hit, grabbed his arms, and in one spin threw the teacher with brute force out of the taped circle and off of the mat onto the concrete.

“Oh...that really looked like it hurt...” hissed Patton.

Logan only groaned in response and writhed on the floor. “Ngh....I need a break, Roman...”

“No breaks in a fight, Lo-“

“Oh please, let the kid get some water,“ Virgil interrupted. “You threw him onto concrete, and at this rate, he won’t be breathing by round four.”

Logan sat up. “There will be a round four....?”

Roman smirked devilishly, and nodded almost too happily at Logan’s question that Remus found himself a little surprised at Roman’s minimal sadism. Patton moved to get the teacher water and the rest of them started contemplating whether or not they really believed that Logan would win in a fight against Roman. The Prince strutted over to the group with the grin still on his face.

“Told you I’d win!”

“Can’t believe I of all people am saying this but go easy on him, Ro,” Remus said. “You’re going to kill him and that’s kinda my job, dude. You kill monsters, not teachers.”

“Yeah, I’m with Remus on this one I’ll admit. I didn’t think you’d go so hard on him...” added Thomas.

Roman huffed. “He should’ve expected it.”

“Yeah, but he’s not a paper plane, hun, we don’t throw people,” replied Janus. “We’re trying to avoid concussions and paperwork.”

“But you’re not....nevermind. What Janus said. At least let him live,” muttered Virgil.

“Sure sure, but I’m not giving him my sector for a week so he’ll have to try harder.” The three grimaced at Roman’s naivety and sudden arrogance but let it go on nonetheless; Logan was resilient after all. While Roman could certainly even stab him in the throat, the object impermanence would only land Logan with nothing more than the faintest scar.

“I’m ready.” The boys perked up at Logan’s admittedly spotless body. Where once bruises were forming on his cheeks and elbows were just minor red marks. “Shall we start?”

“Cocky, are we?”

“Hehe....cock-y...”

Roman rolled his eyes at his brother and lead Logan to the mat once more. This time, Logan seemed more concentrated, yet a bit irritated, for lack of a better word. For good reason, Roman was sure. They crouched and Thomas cued their fight again.

Round three ended with a strong kick to Logan’s ribs.

Round four ended with three of Logan’s lost teeth.

Round five called another break for Logan’s now broken finger. The prince only grinned at his violent accomplishment and this time, Janus smacked him over the head to tell him that he’s an idiot.

“Keep this up and I’ll fight you myself, you hear me? Break another bone on his body and so help me, I will strangle you to death and that is not an exaggeration.”

“Sure, Jan.” Janus glared intensely at Roman after his basic comeback. A reference, of course.

”Oh he’s not exaggerating, he did it to me once because I put a sacks worth of centipedes and maggots in his bed once.” Roman snorted at Remus’s addition but gulped thickly.

“Logan- Logan, wait, I haven’t wrapped your finger yet-!”

The three turned their attention to a very angry looking, quite possibly furious, Logan stalking towards them. Patton and Virgil trailed behind quickly with worried expressions. Thomas simply watched and made direct eye contact with Roman. He mouthed a few words and sunk out to the real world.

You’re done for.

Romans eyes widened as the teacher took his shirt by the collar and dragged him to the circle.

“Logan- Logan, wait, let’s talk about this-“

“Fight. Now.”

Ready for a cue, Logan crouched and this time...he may kill Roman. Even Remus recognized that murderous glare emitting from Logan’s eyes and he smiled. Grinned, even. He knew what was coming for Roman and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

“Logan, go easy on him, bud. I know you’re probably mad-“

“Just make the call, Patton. I know what I’m doing, now.” Patton gulped.

“Alright, if you say so,” the father figure flinched at the word that left his mouth. “Go!”

A few steps forward from Logan and Patton couldn’t bare to watch. He covered his eyes and turned away, hiding from the sudden screech escaping Roman’s lips and ducking into Janus’s back, startling the other.

It happened for about a minute, but everyone would swear that the sixteen punches and three kicks delivered to various areas of Roman’s body happened in a single second. By the end of it when Patton came out from behind the snake faced side, he could only gasp at the sight.

Admittedly, Remus chuckled both because of the pair’s current position but also that Roman was cupping his nose with scrunched eyes.

Logan straddled the prince’s waist and he held himself up with his arms on Roman’s chest. Blood seeped out of his lips and he hung his head low, panting with shallow breaths. Not a hit seemed to have been laid on him, besides his mouth. He lifted his head slightly and took a glance at Roman, still on the floor holding his nose. Quiet cries escaped the prince and Logan’s eyes widened.

“Oh dear god, I’m sorry Roman, I don’t- I don’t know what happened-“ the logical facet moved quickly off of Roman and the prince sucked in a well needed breath. He pulled Roman from the floor into a sitting position. “Are you alright?”

Roman took his hands away from his face. Logan, and the others who slowly walked closer to the pair, gasped. Blood practically poured in buckets from his nose and mouth. His eyes were puffy and red, his nose a bit crooked, and his face wet with painful tears.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?!” Doman winced at the shouting. “Roman, I broke your nose! I can heal from these things in seconds and you can’t, what on earth are you apologizing for?!”

“For being a dick, Logan! I don’t care how much you can heal from that kinda stuff, it’s kind of an asshole thing to to do beat the shit out of your friends for fun!” Roman huffed and pouted. “I was being rude to you and I hurt you.”

“Wow, and it took you a broken nose to realize that?” Remus scoffed. “Dumbass. Get up, I know a witch that can help.”

“No, I deserve it. I have to live with the injuries.” Remus rolled his eyes.

“Oh don’t be so fucking dramatic. That’s Janus’s job-“ Janus squinted at Remus “-Besides, not everyone is very comforted with you enduring weeks of nose repair and I’m not gonna listen to you whine every day so come on.” Remus took Roman by the sleeve and sunk out with him. Roman only spared a sympathetic frown at Logan before doing so.

“What even was that, Logan?” Logan winced at Virgil’s question.

“I don’t know, but I have to make up for it. Italian is romans favorite meals, I’m sure he’d like that.”

“Don’t avoid the question-“

“Look, Virgil, I don’t know what happened. I don’t hardly even recall half of it at the moment.”

“You were angry, weren’t you. Because he kept winning?” Logan looked up at a teary eyed Patton. “I know he was mean but he didn’t deserve that.”

“I know he didn’t. I don’t believe he did, not...ever, really. Just adrenaline I guess. And it wasn’t because he was winning. I couldn’t care less if he won, to be honest. But like I said, I need to make it up to him.” Logan stood from his crouched position. “It’ll be alright, I’m sure he’ll be fine, Patton.”

Patton sniffled and looked down to the floor. “Right...”

Logan cleared his throat. “Um, if it’s any consolation, his healing only takes two or three weeks.”

Patton still stared downwards. Virgil and Janus shared worried expressions.

Logan sighed. “I um- I may be the last person right now for you to want this from to feel free to say no but, while I’m not one for empathy and affection would....would you like a hug? I’ve read that hugs can increase dopamine levels.”

Patton snorted. Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around the logical side’s waist. Logan quite firmly hugged him back but at least it was some form of comfort.

Virgil and Janus both chuckled at the two but it was cute nonetheless. They both sunk out, leaving Logan and Patton alone.

“I promise, Patton, Roman will be perfectly fine. I’m not great with sympathy or empathy but I can ‘up his spirits’ by.....a Disney movie marathon I suppose.”

“And spaghetti.”

Logan chuckled. “And spaghetti, I’ll make a note of it.”

[lihikainanea]

No hate because I don't mean to offend it's just I've always been told otherwise and I'd like your input. Genuinely, how do you fight against a grown man that's twice your size when you're so small??? Like could you throw Bill around for example? I just don't understand how that works. I've always been told that no matter how strong a woman is, if a man twice her size takes her on she'll lose. And that martial arts won't win against a guy who street fights and you need to defend yourself.

No offence taken, bubs. I get this question a lot, and I’m always happy to explain these things to people who ask out of genuine curiosity. For people who ask out of arrogance (ie: usually dudes), I tend to prefer a more demonstrative approach.

There are a few things that make this whole “martial arts is useless against people bigger and stronger than you” thing a total misconception, so let’s outline some of them.

1) Martial arts is never about strength or force. Well, not your own anyway. The concept of martial arts was created with one very, very obvious thing in mind: That you will usually get attacked by someone bigger and stronger than you. I can’t speak for all martial arts, but as a kyokushinkai, I can tell you how we train and what we believe. Martial arts is not about your strength, or your force--but rather, it is about using your opponent’s strength and force against them. Have you ever thrown a punch at the air? I’m talking a real punch, one with your whole body weight--ever throw a haymaker like that at absolutely nothing? Let me tell you what happens: you go flying. More specifically, you pitch forward at the waist, you lean your upper body forward, you step into it as you try to regain your balance--and then your body’s natural inclination to counter that weight kicks in, and you lean back to try and regain your centre.

Now, imagine that as you throw that punch, the person in front of you just hooks a hand behind your shoulder and guides you even more into the direction you were already catapulting yourself in. Then imagine as your body is pitching forward from your own force, all of that forward momentum driving into one sole place--imagine the person in front of you just raises a knee, sinks it into your gut. All of this--every modicum of it--is your own force. Not theirs.

Additionally, there are also spots on the body where you can cause maximum damage with minimum efforts--these are called pressure points, most people don’t have more than a basic understanding of them, and they are a bitch. There are a lot of them in a lot of easy to reach places, and none of them require much more than a tap. Take your fingers--your index and your middle finger--and put them on the spot under your earlobe, right where your jaw connects to your skull. Push down there--that’s pretty sensitive, right? Now look at your hand, where your thumb connects to your wrist. Tuck your thumb into your palm.

If you tap someone on either side where their jaw connects, with that bony part of your hand--and you have a solid 5cm of space here, so you can miss and still be fine--you will knock them out. Every single time.

How this is applicable to the argument: People tend to think of fighting as a Rock’Em Sock’Em game. You stand in front and you punch each other. If that’s how fighting worked, then punch for punch--yeah, a dude who is 6′4 and 240lbs is stronger than me. But martial artists are craftier than that--and if I know that I won’t win the brute force game, then I don’t play the brute force game. After 12 years of training, I have 238975854569 other games that he doesn’t.

So yes, I could throw Bill around. But the whole point is--I would never have to. Strength would be his fight, because he’s a big dude. If I know my strength won’t win, then I won’t fight that way.

2) Speed and accuracy

Again, I can only speak as a kyokushinkai. But something that we emphasized was that there was a need, when you train, to constantly be uncomfortable. Are we throwing punches? Okay great, here put a weighted belt on only one side of your body and also these rubber bands on your wrist are connected to a guy behind you who will pull your hand back every time you try to throw it forward. Are we practicing defending against surprise attacks, or accuracy? Great, here kick this tiny ping pong ball using only this part of your foot, and wear a blindfold while you’re at it.

12 years of this.

I will reiterate that standing in front of a dude, square on, throwing timed punches--I will lose. He will be stronger than me. But thankfully, that’s...not ever how a fight works.

What allows me to win against a guy of that size is my speed, and my accuracy.  Let me tell you a little something about how people punch: people don’t know how to punch. Their features pinch in their face, and their neck tightens. An arm is drawn back--way back--and usually, the leading foot is raised just a tad, on the heel, so it’s just the ball of the foot on the ground. The fist comes through the air in a circular arc, reaching to connect to the side of your face as the person steps forward. The punch’s natural progression is from one of your shoulders to the other--if you can imagine that pathway. The entire thing is circular, it is energy-consuming, but more than that--it’s predictable.

I have spent 12 years getting punched by men stronger than me, who were trained to punch. Men who spent 20 years training to punch. I don’t see those coming, for a few reasons: they’re too fast, but mostly, we have been trained to not “give away” our strikes. Our faces don’t twitch anymore. We give no indication that a punch is coming, until we’ve actually punched you. There’s no wind up. There’s no arc. There’s no shift in weight--it is a direct line, and it is immediate. And devastating. We punch to break cinder blocks. Your face is not as strong as a cinderblock.

Fighting these dudes who give nothing away, I can say that in a street fight against someone--things are moving in slow motion for me. And I can confirm this, because I’ve been jumped twice in my life. Everything the opponent did, it looked like he was moving through molasses. I recognized the sudden tensing in his facial features (as competitors, do you know where we look when we fight? At the hollow of the neck on our opponent. Because of the involuntary way it clenches when they’re about to throw a strike.) I saw the arm wind back--way the fuck back. It gave me a half a second--but that’s a half a second head start, and that’s all the time I need. I can deflect. I can stop. I can strike back.

How this is applicable to the argument: Strength and force don’t even come to the party when an opponent is faster than you, because you can’t exude force against something that you can’t grab or strike. You also can’t exude force against something that strikes you right as you’re attempting to strike it.

And because we train so much on accuracy, it means that I can hit the spot that I mean to hit, with the force I mean to hit it with, under most circumstances. Including on a moving, erratic, unpredictable target. And if I miss, then I have the reflexes fast enough to strike something that was just made available to me in my miss. Example: I go to strike a groin, and he covers? Most men have an incredibly fast reflex to cover their groin. That’s fine, because it means that his hands just went down to block my strike. And when his hands go down, you know what he’s not protecting?

His head. Off with it.

(it’s also important to note that the first thing we are ever taught to protect, is our head. This is so deeply engrained in us. And the number one thing that people always punch for, is the head. When you spend 12 years protecting it against 5th degree black belts, believe me some drunk dude in a bar is not even going to get close to it without dying first.)

3) Tolerance for pain

I mentioned before that if you have never gotten punched before, it is an incredibly jarring experience. You panic. You freeze. Your knees give out. You maybe scream, you probably start to cry, you get really freaked out. There’s so many things that play on the brain in those situations--that you’re in danger, that you’re under attack, that you don’t know what to do, that the punch caused some serious damage, that you’re in pain, that somebody tried to hurt you. All of these things are terrifying, and they’re a very natural panic response to the situation.

Over the course of 12 years, I have gotten punched and kicked at full force--my face, my stomach, my chest, my head--millions of times. Millions. It doesn’t incite panic anymore, but it sure does incite rage.

Kyokushinkai go through various exercises to numb ourselves to pain. We punch telephone books covered in burlap, to kill the nerve endings in our knuckles. When we’re past that, we move onto concrete. We whack our shins with baseball bats to break down the microfibres in the bone, so they’ll not only grow back stronger--but they’ll grow back numb. We stand there, and we let the entire class punch us. Kick us. We don’t block--we absorb it. In kyokushin tournaments, if you show pain, you automatically lose. That means that if I take a kick to the head and I grimace, if I grunt or suck in a breath or otherwise show any emotion--I forfeit the fight. Immediately.

All of this takes the shock value out of experiencing pain, and more importantly, it re-programs your brain to replace it with something else. We have been, essentially, reprogrammed. That’s the only word I can think of for this. The normal brain is programmed that when you get punched, you feel pain. The kyokunshinkai brain is programmed that when you get punched, you feel fucking blind rage.

How this is applicable to the argument: He might be stronger, and he might land the hit. But I have been punched much harder by men who have been trained to use their bodies as weapons. I have submitted my body to that for 12 years. So he may land the hit. But it won’t hurt me, because for 12 years, I have been through worse. And if he lands the hit, refer to item 2 on how I can still win. Most people throw the punch thinking it will end the fight. It’s rather shocking when you throw the punch and a harder one lands on you 2 seconds later.

4) We understand body mechanics.

This is kind of all of the points rolled into one. Martial artists have an innate understanding of pressure points, how to manipulate them, but more than that--we understand how the body moves. We understand actions, and counter-actions. We understand involuntary muscle twitches. We understand the ebb and flow, the sway, the centre lines. Gravity.

Up top I mentioned that in competition, we stare at the other person’s throat when we fight. This is not only because it’s one of the places where your peripheral vision is most effective (you can see all movement in their arms and legs), but because the body basically gives involuntary muscle twitches there before any other movement is made. If something there twitches, then something is about to come flying at your head.

But we also understand that for anybody who hasn’t been trained, a contortion of the facial features precedes strike. It’s a running joke amongst martial artists, this idea that “a punch comes from your face.” It does. there is always a constriction of the facial features before a strike.

We understand the body mechanics of a poorly thrown punch. We understand that to get more force, people will swing back, shift their weight to their back leg before pitching forward, planting their front leg, swinging their arm way behind them as their gravity shifts to the front and they launch it. A martial artist would look at this situation, and manipulate it.

So when the dude shifts his weight onto his back leg and draws his arm back--you break his back leg. Chop it down like a fucking tree, which is easy to do when his weight is on it. Or you let him throw the punch, and you move--just a slight toss to the side, guide his arm where it was going anyway if you want to, and with a little downward momentum this guy is eating pavement. And again, it’s his own momentum. You’re just nudging him to where he was already going.

As martial artists we understand centrelines and counterbalance. We understand that sometimes you need to swing things up to have enough momentum to bring them down (a double collar grab), we understand that you need to oppose the force to gain enough momentum to go with the force (a double wrist grab on you that turns into a forearm lock on them).

How this is applicable to the argument: if I could hone in on something here, and it’s only because it’s something that took me a long time to learn: we understand how to force someone to fight our fight. For years and years I would adapt to someone else’s fight. If he was a garbage truck on the mats, standing there and pounding on me, I would morph into a garbage truck too and just stand there, take it, and punch back--instead of working my angles, getting off his centre, not giving him the access to get into a punching rhythm. And against a big tall dude, a big strong dude--no, I can’t reach his head.

But I can make his head come to me.

You learn that a groin kick will lower an opponent’s hands, and it will buckle their knees in protection. Cause them to crouch. You learn that a well positioned punch low on the abdomen--say, the bladder--will fold a person in half, which brings their head much closer to you. You learn to get what you want. You want the back leg? You put yours forward. Offer it up. You hand it to them on a silver platter and let them believe they have it. You want the ribs? You throw up high, so their hands come up. You want the groin? You give them your hands. Because essentially--they don’t have your hands. You have theirs, and then bullseye.

Which brings me to my fifth and final point....

5) Adaptability.

As martial artists, we have options. We have a lot of options. We like options. We don’t believe in one fight. We don’t believe you’re ever really stuck.  But we do believe in something else, that is very dear to us. A philosophy, of sorts, and it goes like this:

Every single part of me is a weapon and every single part of you is a target.

We know how to use what’s left, we know how to use what’s available. If you have one of my hands, I have 3 other weapons I can strike you with. If I kick for your groin and I miss or you block, I now know that your head is unprotected and you’re hunched over. It means I can knock you out, it means I can reach and literally rip your ears off (sorry kids, self-defence is nasty). If I throw a punch for your solar plexus and you move, I can hit you from any angle within a 5 foot radius because that’s how I’ve been trained. If you break my leg, then I’ll remember that time that I broke my leg in competition and I still finished the fight, because I know that my adrenaline is so far off the charts that I still have a good 20 minutes before I’ll feel the pain.

If I kick and you block, I know how to throw another 3 kicks before my foot lands--all at different areas of the body. If I punch and you block, I know how to punch another 6 times and kick another 3 and one of them is bound to land, and hurt you.

How this is applicable to the argument: Everybody’s got a plan ‘til they get punched in the face. Most people start a brawl with some semblance of a plan in mind--even if that plan is just “I’m gonna throw this punch that this fucker won’t ever see coming and knock him the fuck out.”

Martial artists don’t have a plan. Martial artists wait until you reveal your plan, and then we just make sure we don’t let you carry through with it. I hope this helps shed some light, bubs <3

[sportyheroesimagines]

Hey there! I was wondering if I could request a Kirishima x reader imagine where they're both heroes and he goes out of his way to protect her in battle and she has no idea why until he confesses? Sorry it was so long. I completely understand if you dont write it.

Honestly, I’m not sure what happened here. This is so long … it seems I lost control. Oh, and here is the return of my kinda OC Blacksmith. Requests featuring her if you guys are interested: Request 1, Request 2

Kirishima knows you can take care of yourself. Everyone knows that Blacksmith is more than capable of handling herself, especially in a fight. It’s where you thrive, where you felt most alive. You are a young goddess of war, a master of combat. Knowing you for three years now, Kirishima knows that fact about you. He knows that very well.

You are locked in a heated exchange of blades. The villain Necroma, a burly, blond man, a mass of muscle and impressive height with a blood-soaked grin, matches every blow with a shocking intensity. You knock him back, trying to create a bit of distance between you. The sword in your right hand transforms into a dagger with a golden flash of your eyes. You throw it at his head, and he dodges. But you are already on him with your gauntlet covered hand in a fist ready to strike. Necroma’s body goes limp before your fist connects. You look around. He reanimates one of the multiple bodies laying on the battlefield. His new form brings down his massive blade. Your eyes flash gold as the gauntlet in your hands extends into a spear. The ground buckles underneath you as you are forced into the earth by his brute strength. You let his sword slide down your staff, knocking him off balance. You bring your leg and connect your foot with his face; he is send stumbling to the side, crashing into the wall. You run up to him as your other wrist guard and spear transform into dual swords.

You are a goddess of battle. Anyone can see it, every villain you faced can feel it in your monstrous power, and Kirishima knows it. He does. But it doesn’t stop him from running to you in the midst of battle. Because your back is turned … and because you don’t realize Necroma has used his Quirk to put his soul into another corpse … and because he is so desperately in love with you.

Ever since the day when you stopped that massive slab of concrete from crushing him, he’s had feelings for you. That’s why he has to get to you in time. It’s the same reason why you can’t die.

He hasn’t told you yet.

“Blacksmith!”

You turn, eyes wide, but Kirishima is already in front of you, taking the blow in place of you. The blade shatters against his hardened skin. Necroma’s new body hums. 

“A Hardening Quirk, eh? I think I have the perfect body for that. But first,” he says, grabbing Kirishima’s face mask and sending him flying away from you.

“Red Riot!” you scream as the body behind you reanimates, wrapping his arm around your neck. He strips the metal from your body, leaving your bare and vulnerable.

“Red Riot, Beta Team is clear! They have the target. Leave with them now! Complete the mission!”

“No! I can’t!”

“Are you an idiot? Complete the mission! Leave while you can!”

“I can’t leave you!”

“Why not? I’m telling you to get out of here! You’d better follow my orders!”

There you go again. Always trying to save him. From the first time he met you, you were always coming to his recuse, saving him. It always seemed so natural to you. You always moved without hesitation. Even now, your voice does not waver when you tell him to run. Kirishima pushes to his hands and knees. 

He’s always felt bad for harboring these feelings. He felt even worst holding onto them for all these years. But he never felt worthy of sharing how he’s felt. How could he confess his feelings to someone he couldn’t even protect. What kind of man did that make him? Kirishima stumbles to his feet, coughing. He is going to be the one to save you this time. He is finally going to be able to tell you. 

Kirishima roars, bumping his fist together and charging at you. 

“Hmm, so he’s getting back up?” the body holding you purrs, “I didn’t think he has the strength. No matter. Soul Splitter.”

Another body animates on the field. This one is a tall blue-haired male with straight hair and black lifeless eyes like the rest of them. He rushes Kirishima, knocking his fist into his stomach. Kirishima’s eyes cross as the air is knocked out of his lungs. He looks down at the man’s fist. It shouldn’t have hurt. He should’ve been able to harden. Why didn’t he harden?

“I’ve told you that I had the perfect Quirk for you. This person could weaken the bonds between atoms. I assume your Quirk uses carbon to harden your skin.”

Necroma smirks, grabbing Kirishima’s hand and yanking him towards his waiting fist. A sickening crunch resonates in Kirishima’s ears as the thick taste of iron fills his mouth. He stumbles backwards, spitting out globs of blood. Kirishima takes a wild swing, disoriented, but still fueled by his hero spirit and the sound of you screaming his name. Necroma snorts, easily catching his hand. He brings his powerful fist down on Kirshima’s stomach as he breaks bonds and attacks the vulnerable skin. 

“Red Riot!” you scream when Necroma picks up a piece of metal, jamming it into his stomach, “Red Riot, no!”

Necroma snorts again, lifting Kirishima by his throat, “You should have run when she gave you the chance. You aren’t nearly as adept in battle as she is. Did you want to prove something to her? Your masculinity? Well now both of you are going to die.”

You flinch when you hear more grunts and whimpers from Kirishima. He looks over at your through his swollen eyelids. You are still struggling against the body holding yours. You look around desperately for any metal that you can get your hands on. 

“You can only break the bonds of what your hands touch,” Kirishima whispers hoarsely, “So what’ll happen if I do this?”

Kirishima hardens his hand and tries to jab Necroma in his elbow. The villain catches his fist with a raised eyebrow. 

“Did you think that would work?”

“No, but this will.”

Necroma hisses when the toe of Kirishima’s boot connects with his chin. He throws the boy away from him, holding his jaw. Necroma brushes his blue hair back before rushing towards Kirishima with his hand extended. Kirishima’s eyes widen and everything slows for a second. His eyes move over to you. 

(Name), you know this might not be the best time or place … but … I feel like I need to tell you this. Because I might die, and I just gotta let you know. 

You are screaming, hair flying and tears streaming down your face as you fight against the body holding you.

I’ve always thought you were really cool, (Name). You were always so strong, and even though you had your own dreams … you never hesitated in protecting me. 

You sink your teeth into the arm wrapped around your neck. He doesn’t flinch or move a centimeter. Your mouth is only filled with the rancid taste of blood. You don’t understand, dammit. You don’t understand why won’t he just run.

I always thought you were way too cool. Even though we’re just about the same age, you were so much stronger than me … and gosh you’re pretty too … 

Necroma’s hand is inches from Kirishima’s face. 

I’ve had a crush on you ever since we met, you know. I wanted to prove myself to you. I wanted to prove myself to me … I guess it didn’t work out though. Is it cheating if I tell you my feelings anyway? Because … I just might die here. 

“Red Riot! Please don’t die!”

Kirishima blinks. His body reacts faster than he is able to think, catching Necroma’s wrist and sending his fist into his elbow joint. He hisses as the bones in his arm fracture. Kirishima stands on his wobbling feet. He picks up two pieces of rebar and looks at you through hazy, half-lidded eyes. Kirishima smiles at you. Even though blood mats his hair and dyes his sclera red, he still smiles at you. Jamming one bar into the hands of Necroma, he traps him against the ground as he roars in pain, and his body falls limp.

“Blacksmith!”

He throws the second piece of metal just before he collapses onto the ground. Your eyes flash golden as your fingertips brush over the rebar, transforming it into a dagger. You lodge the knife into your captor’s side. Necroma’s first body, the blond beast, loosens his grip on you. Picking up your wrist guard, you immediately fly to Kirishima’s side.

“Red Riot, I thought I told you to run, you idiot.”

His eyes crack open, “I … I couldn’t. You know … how can I be a man if I leave the girl I love behind? I … I love you …”

A blush covers your face, but you don’t have time to bask in the glow of his words. You lift his heavy body into your arms as you scan the multiple scattered bodies lying in the dirt. Nothing is moving. Even the air is still as your sharp eyes search for any flicker of movement. Nothing. Necroma must’ve hit a time limit and returned to his original body.

Now is your time. You hoist up Kirishima’s limp body, cradling him in your arms, and sprint away from the battlefield. Kirishima groans in your arms. He is watching you as the corners of his vision go black. You are saying something to him, but he can’t hear a word your saying. Now that he thinks about it … he can’t feel much of anything either. You’re still so cool though. Even when he tried to save you, you are still the one protecting him. How pathetic and uncool. He still isn’t good enough. Kirishima’s head lolls back as his eyelids flutter closed. 

He still isn’t good enough for you.

[purkinje-effect]

The Purkinje Effect, 18

TW: Drug use and synth vore. Lol uh

Table of Contents

"Deacon...?”

Geek glanced the figure up and down, nearly uncertain of it. The pair had arrived under the Lexington-Concord Interchange, and found this one tatterdemalion pile of human being topped with dark glasses and a trilby.

“Ah, you brought a friend with you,” Deacon confirmed. “Sometimes three wheels make an operation run more evenly.”

“That getup is ridiculous,” Hancock muttered, unimpressed. Even without having met him before, he knew Deacon was in disguise. He’d broken out a pair of aviator shades and a red ampuole. “What kinda trouble are you intending to get into, dressed up like that? A garbage heap?”

“I call it the ‘Wasteland Scavver’ look,” Deacon replied impressively, striking a pose. Clearing his throat, he briefly changed to a husky, irate intonation. "This is my pile of trash. Just be glad I didn’t do one of my face-overs. Heh. Heheheh.”

“I imagine you’ve got a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, too,” Geek cracked, seconding Hancock on it being silly. “Why the getup, though?”

“I collect intel. Gotta go under the radar with folks, depending on the type of information I’m digging. As far as what trouble we’re going to be getting up to... our previous base was underneath the Slocum’s Joe here. The Institute discovered it and we didn’t have enough time to get everyone, or everything, out. We need to check with our information man before we head in preemptively, though. There’s no telling how much of a synth hotbed it still is.”

“And... where’s this information man?” Geek asked.

Deacon pointed up.

“Follow me.”

"Oh brother,” Hancock mumbled with a heavy eye-roll, following furthest behind to take a hit off the ampuole of jet.

"Who's Groucho Marx, anyway?"

The trio found a downed slope of overpass pavement and scaled it, following along the Route 2 overpass as the crumbling concrete path would permit. Peppered among the mixture of eighteen-wheelers and automobiles, as well as an abandoned tent, several ghouls tried to ambush them along the way; but, the three made quick work of them, between two guns and a knife. As they walked, Deacon indicated the various graffiti trail markers the Railroad used, as a way of teaching Geek the ropes before he’d even gotten his foot in the door. He got well-acquainted with the ring of light rays with an ‘x’ in its center, suggesting ghouls frequented the overpass.

“You take the lead here,” Deacon told him, holding Hancock back and nudging Geek to approach the figure at the cooking pot at the abrupt end of the interstate. "And whatever he says, reply mine is in the shop. Trust me.”

“Why me?” Geek started, looking back over his shoulder after a moment.

“You’re gonna have t’learn this stuff sometime,” Hancock retorted with a smirk.

The two hung back behind a few yards to chew the fat over something. The trio’s presence became noticed by the lone man in plaid who tended the fire. The long-haired older man stood, both urgent and irate, his peppered whiskers nearly bristling as he spoke.

“Do you have a Geiger counter? Do you have a goddamn Geiger counter?”

“Mine... is in the shop?” Geek steeled himself not to reply that he’d eaten it.

"It's about damn time. Name's Ricky. ...I thought there was just gonna be two of ya. Who's HE?" Ironically, the man pointed at Deacon and not Hancock. "The whole lot of ya looks like a bunch of clowns, honestly. I was on the brink of a heart attack."

"I, I'm new," Deacon replied apologetically, before anyone else could. "These guys are just showing me how it's done. Pink guy here's the lead."

"Besides the getup, you all look serious in the face, so I've gotta tell you. This ain't a place to be dragging your training wheels, boy," Ricky chastised, visibly stressed. "It's crawlin' with Synths, and God knows what else."

"What can you-- tell us about the location?" Geek stuttered out, glancing startled back to Deacon, who'd put him on the spot to look the seasoned one. Why the fuck had Deacon taken the role of a greenhorn?

"They're all over the front end. Turrets and mines, too. It'd be suicide to go in headlong."

"I, thank you, Ricky," Geek said, offering a handshake to make it feel official. "Your efforts and information are invaluable."

Ricky's demeanor softened in the handshake, and he smiled through his haggard fatigue.

"I hope it helps. Really, I do. It's a thankless job for the long of it, so it means a lot to hear."

As they walked away to retrace the interstate back to how they'd merged into it, Hancock was taking in the other half of the ampuole from earlier, sighing pleasantly. Geek himself lit up a cigarette, and snarled briefly.

"Deacon, why the fuck--"

"He's not an agent," Deacon interjected, watching the drugged ghoul cautiously rather than looking to Geek. "I have to cover my steps to separate the confidentiality of cases from the individuals working it, on a need to know basis. If he knew I was in the inner circle of agents of the Railroad, he'd know the value of what we were diving for."

"--What exactly is it we're doing here?" The incredulity in Geek's voice crackled through, and he just stopped walking for a moment to focus on his cigarette. He stared out off the overpass at the forested skyline below them.

"You think I'm not telling the truth? What about our man Ricky?"

"I don't know that I have reason t'distrust him," Geek replied, exhaling sharply at the end. "On the other hand, you're making me wonder whether you're t'be trusted. Seriously. You coulda at least given me some forewarnin' before throwin' me in the fire like that."

"I suppose it's a good lesson, to take every statement with a grain of salt," Deacon suggested, glossing over the elephant among them. "Most people won’t lie without a reason to. If you can figure out why somebody would lie, it becomes so much easier to tell whether they are. I mean, he's probably telling the truth, but I'll follow your judgment call here, Boss. This is your crash course, so I'm your backup."

"Why am I startin' t'suspect you just wrangled me into doin' your dirty work, and that you got no idea what we're up against?"

"Grain of salt," Hancock echoed, unamused. The aviators concealed just how glassy his gaze was then.

"Well, going with your theory Ricky's honest, the front entry would require us going in guns blazing. But if that's not your style, there's also the back way." The postulation held in it the implicit irony that he felt like brute force seemed exactly to the pink fellow’s preference.

"Which way's easier? In your expert opinion?" The ghoul offered the ampuole to Geek, who took it and swallowed it. "Heh, rubbish bin on legs. Convenient."

"Takin’ advantage of the fact I snack under stress. Clever."

"Did you just. I had no idea jet was edible," Deacon deadpanned. "...Sake of ease is subjective. The front door is a matter of thick skin and brute force. If you trust my finesse with a keyboard, the terminals will make sneaking in the back way doable--not easy, but still doable. So what'll it be, Boss?"

"First order of business, y’stop callin' me that."

"...Right. Geek."

"Secondly: Which way has a chance encounterin' fewer Synths? Seeing as this is my first time fighting one, I'd like to even out my chances best I can."

"Back way, in my opinion, but that's no promise."

"Back way it is, then." Geek stormed off ahead of them.

"I think I trust the front way better," Hancock jabbed, taking aim at an airborne enemy only he could see. "Least we'd get inside faster, away from these things."

"You're a keeper, Mayor," Deacon remarked, astounded.

The back entrance was through the water drainage pipe, and Deacon hacked the terminal of the weed-overgrown entry to let them inside.

"It shouldn't be too rough," Deacon narrated as they walked to the first checkpoint. "It's likely mostly just Gen Ones and Twos." Geek looked to him for elaboration. "The Institute went through a few different prototype models before they got to the ones that look exactly like a human. Had to work up to that level of hubris. Depending on who you talk to in the Railroad, opinions differ as to where to draw the line between the true AI and simply being a smart robot. Some of us even get into semantics as to whether Assaultrons and even turrets have rights. There's a lot of grey area to mince in the downtime between action."

"...Be straight with me for once. What are we here for?"

"Like I said, Geek, when the Institute hit us, they hit fast and hard. You met most of the survivors already. We couldn't even pack up resources and still make it out in one piece. ...You can understand why we're so short-handed on training availability at the moment. We're here for something the Doc was cooking up. According to Dez, it’s a pivotal piece of prototype tech."

"A grocery store run, seems more like it." Deacon took Hancock's tone as a jab at the value of the recon, rather than it being fun at Geek's expense. After a moment, an easier-to-read joke slipped out of his tremulous mouth: "Shopping when you're hungry means ya pick up more than was on your list." In it, an implicit I know you're teetering on stress-eating anything that isn't nailed down.

Geek muttered a forced laugh, rolling his eyes at him.

"There's probably not food supplies left, but you're welcome to all the ice cream and pickles you find," Deacon offered, hacking the next terminal. "It's not like we're leaving anybody standing when we walk out of here."

The security gate opened, and they descended the split cobblestone steps into the sewer. Deacon and Hancock still favored their guns, but in the face of an unfamiliar enemy, Geek fell back on the comfort reliability of his knuckledusters.

"Is anyone there?" they heard an artificial voice inquire.

Silently, they all armed themselves, and squared up against the single Synth. Geek's eyes went wide to see the thing was an amalgamation of wire and plastic on an exposed metal skeleton. Horror overtook him and he froze up, leaving the Synth to come across him first. The way the ocular lenses intimated lidless sockets, the fake metallic teeth... It was like a skinned human face devoid of gore. The pit of his stomach dropped even heavier.

"Shit." Hancock’s intuition snapped, and he cocked his shotgun and unloaded a pair of shells into the Synth from a short distance. When the dust settled, he walked up to Geek. "You look like you saw a ghost."

"My reflexes are just fine." Seconds later he flinched at the aftershock memory of Hancock's gunfire. "Fine."

"Mmm. A little... something to liven up the day?" Hancock surreptitiously slipped a syringe into Geek's gloved palm and looked at him slyly. Psycho. He had some in his pocket too, from the gym, but he hadn't even considered using it. The gift wasn't so much the item itself, but rather the observation that Geek might make use of it. "Help you steel your nerves a bit."

"Do you peddle candy, too, or just drugs?" Deacon joked naively. "I want a lollipop, Mister."

"Knock it off," Hancock muttered.

"Ah! a turret terminal," Deacon sidestepped, ignoring Hancock's displeasure. "Let's fire it up and give our freeloaders a nasty surprise." The two gave Deacon some time to tinker with the computer.

The next chamber of the sewer had in it multiple Synths, as Deacon predicted. Deacon held up his hand to pause their forward motion, and he held it up to an ear eager with anticipation. Sure enough, the turrets powered up and unloaded hundreds of bullets before several laser shots and a short explosion rang out. The two had been around Deacon enough to read the childish prank-like pride in his otherwise expressionless features. Hancock genuinely cracked a smirk for once at something Deacon had done, though the same couldn’t be said of Geek.

The smell of charred metal, oil smoke, and gunfire wafted down the moldy, damp corridor. The hard and angled, inorganic face of the first Synth overlaid Geek’s conscious thoughts. He glanced down to the yellow tri-component syringe in his clenched fist. In his history of chem use, such substances intended to becalm his tumultuous, anxiety-depression addled mind--but would dialing all that up to eleven instead serve him in this situation? He knew that the military had given soldiers the chem to override cowardice and increase pain tolerance, but he had no idea what to expect as to how it went about achieving that. Hancock briefly looked back to check on him, and when he was observed not having moved, the pink wreck impulsively followed through with plunging it into the underside of his jaw, shutting his eyes in the moment and not giving it a another thought.

Within seconds, the stringent injection lit his veins afire. His lip curled, and he began to drool a bit as his breathing became off-kilter. Everything was uncomfortable, and he had to find the source of it and dismantle it. Hancock noticed his companion had administered the hit and poorly hid an admiring smile, nearly proud of him for letting chems help him through this rough patch.

Grease. Gunpowder residue. Titanium alloy. Nuclear components. Geek’s senses heightened, intensifying the discomfort like a bad migraine. The spotlight in the room threw a nasty halo on the whole place, and he growled through frothing, clenched teeth. Before, the Synths’ footsteps had been nearly silent, but now he could likely pinpoint their location in this room with his eyes shut. He squinted in frustration and, trembling with distress, grunted hard.

His stomach hurt so badly. He had to fix that.

The face of the nearest Synth found itself between his hands. It cracked on the cobbled steps, over, and over. The chest plate cracked open with only a few flung punches, exposing the soft innards. Analogous to ribs, the chest of the now mangled Synth easily accommodated Geek’s ravenous mouth, and he burrowed face-first in to chew apart wire and fluid line alike, pulling them out by the teeth.

Coolant, oil, and other substances saturated his face and front as he could tell a second Synth was beneath him. There was no slaking the thirst that overtook him as he guzzled the construct dry. If he’d been outside himself in that moment, he’d have noticed himself rip out and swallow this one’s ocular lenses.

But he didn’t notice anything.

[violettelebeau]

FOREVER

“What do you think it is?”

One man whispers to another, voice pitched low. They are both standing in a dark, dank basement, the bare lightbulb flickering above them. The pipes creak and groan around them, in tune to the noisy settling of the old building above it. A chair sits in the middle of the room, a figure slumped in it. Chains bind the wrists and ankles, a dirty bag over their head.

“I don’t know,” the other man whispers. “But it’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“Oh, very,” the first man responds. “I do look forward to our experiments.”

“Oh yes.” They both chuckle at this, hoarse and wheezing, eyes sharp on the person in the chair. “Do you think it will wake up soon?”

“Who knows? It doesn’t matter much.”

“Oh, but I do love it when they scream.”

“Oh, yes, yes, a very good point. The screams are the best part.”

Still, the figure remains silent and still. The first man sighs.

“Well, the lab will not be ready until tomorrow evening anyways. Shall we go for now?”

“Yes, I think so. One of the brutes may come down for a bit of fun.”

A noise of disgust is shared between them, and they both head for the rickety stairs tucked away in the corner. More pleasantries are exchanged between them, fading as they head up the stairs, before finally disappearing all together as the door closes.

The body in the chair moves, a wet, ragged sigh escaping them. A shadow shifts in the corner, taking the vague shape of a person. The body in the chair tests the chains around their wrists, then tips their head back with a groan.

“You really need to stop making a habit of letting yourself get captured,” the shadow says. “It’s getting ridiculous.”

“It’s all about the dramatic flair,” the body says, voice muffled by the bag. “Much more interesting to let them think they’ve got the best of me and then rip them apart when they least expect it.”

The shadowed heaves a long suffering sigh, and the chains around the body’s wrists loosen. They make a pleased noise and flex their fingers before slipping their arms free. The body reaches up and removes the bag.

“You’re welcome,” the shadow says to the girl.

She makes a face at the dirty burlap sack, tossing it aside and wiping at blood crusted at the corner of her mouth.

“Gross,” she says. “That thing smells like ass.”

The shadow remains motionless in the corner, unmoving and waiting to be acknowledged. Finally, she sighs and turns to face the shadow.

“And thanks. I guess.”

“Always a pillar of gratitude,” the shadow grumbles. “Better put that bag back on. Someone’s coming.”

“God,” she mumbles, bending to pick the sack back up and pulling it on with a disgusted grunt. “They can’t even give me five fucking minutes to breathe air that isn’t filtered through a filthy bag.”

The shadow fades back into the dark as she slips her hands back through the chains. They didn’t tighten back up, but she doubts anyone is really going to notice. People like the men who took her never notice the little things, too high on their own pride. The door opens shortly after she settles back into a slumped position in the chair, heavy footfalls echoing down the stairs. The man coming down sings The Bargain Store under his breath, and the girl resolves to make sure he really hurts for humming a Dolly song so out of tune.

“Wakey wakey,” he says once he’s standing in front of her. The sack is ripped off of her head and she blinks rapidly, as if suddenly exposed to the light. She recognizes the shitty cowboy standing in front of her as one of the men who had been tracking her. “You awake, sunshine?”

“Fuck you,” she rasps. The man laughs, and she knows that she can play him like a fiddle.

“Words hurt,” he says. He braces his hands on the arms of the chair, leaning forward. His breath reeks, and she can’t help the way her nose scrunches in disgust. “Might wanna watch your mouth.”

The girl bites the inside of her cheek to draw a bit of blood, and then spits directly in his face. He reels back, cursing at her as he wipes bloody spittle from his mouth and cheeks. When he glares at her, she offers him a wide, feral grin.

Shitty Cowboy hits her across the face with the back of his hand, so hard her ears ring for a second. She takes a deep breath to recover, jaw stinging from the impact. He looks much more satisfied after the hit lands, flexes his hand and shakes it out. The girl allows herself a small moment of satisfaction knowing that the impact hurt him as well. His smile bares his teeth, two of them gold capped and the rest of them in varying states of decay.

Like all the others she’s seen, there’s a distance in his eyes even as he watches her.

“If you’d been a good girl I might’ve played nice,” he says. His smile only grows as he cracks his knuckles. “But I’m thinking a little bit of roughing up won’t ruin you too much for the good doctors.”

“It’s cute that you think you can scare me,” she says. Slumping back in the chair, she tries to look as bored as she feels. He’s not the first to threaten harm, and he certainly won’t be the last.

“I’m thinking maybe a little time with the power drill would do you good.” His lip twitches even as he tries to keep up a smug demeanor. “We can get out the hammer too if you keep giving me lip.”

“Oh please,” she says, “don’t limit yourself on my behalf, you half-baked Kenny Rogers wannabe. You know, chase your bliss and all that. Even if your bliss does happen to be taking power tools to a young woman tied up in your basement.”

The words earn her a strong right hook to the mouth, and she doesn’t bother to stem the flood of curses that spill past her bloodied lips. She spits out another mouthful of blood at his feet, and is pretty certain she bit off the tip of her tongue. The pain keeps her focused, though, and she makes herself take deep, even breaths as he opens up a toolbox in a moldy corner and takes out a cordless drill. The girl has been through worse, she tells herself repeatedly, and keeps the little kernel of fear in her chest from spreading any further. Her fingers curl into fists as he comes back, fits in a bit, and taps a spot just above her wrist.

“Why don’t we just put a nice little hole here, bolt you properly to the chair?” He chuckles, pressing the cold metal tip to her skin. “Make sure to scream as much as you want, sweet thing.”

The girl bites her lip to keep from screaming when he turns the drill on and the bit slowly works its way through her skin and muscle and down into bone. Tipping her head back, she stares directly into the flickering bulb above her head, blinking back tears. The drill finally goes all the way through into the arm of the chair, and Shitty Cowboy turns it off, pulling the bit out and wiping it on the hem of his shirt. Blood drips to the cracked concrete floor, and she tries to keep her breathing from getting too labored.

Just a little longer. A little longer, and she can turn the tables.

The drill is taken to her other wrist, and her nails bite hard enough into her palms to draw little crescents of blood. She breathes heavily through her nose, a trickle of blood running down her chin from where her teeth break the skin of her lip. Shitty Cowboy is openly cackling now, and the glaze to his eyes has only gotten worse.

He sets aside the drill, grabs her chin hard enough to bruise. She refuses to cry, and she can see the anger rising in him. He wants her to break, but she’s been broken for a long time already. His nails dig into her skin, and he leans close, breath fanning over her face and making her want to gag.

“Maybe it isn’t pain that makes you scream, then,” he says.

The girl’s blood goes cold. It’s her worst nightmare all over again, the day these people first found her repeating again. But now, she reminds herself, she is different. Now she isn’t a girl for this man to use and break, to be taken to the limits and then tossed aside to die.

Now, she is a monster.

The darkness in her explodes, overwhelms her. She is Other now, the thing that lurked under her skin for so long and was freed with her own blood. With her own death. The man reels back as the shadows wash over her, as she frees herself from the loosened chains and shifts and grows into something out of the darkest depths of the human imagination. The ink in her arm itches, her own private army of nightmares begging to be set free. But she does not let them. This one is going to be her prey, and her prey only.

“Did you get your kicks?” she says, her many voices overlapping and echoing around the space. The lightbulb flickers and goes out, but her eyes glow in the darkness. “Is this what gets you off? Stalking girls who aren’t quite human but who can’t fight back and hurting them? Forcing yourself on them?”

A whimper is her only answer. She grows further, the legion inside of her reaching out, many limbed and screaming for blood. Her many eyes watch as he tries to find the stairs, tries to escape from the hell suddenly loosed in the tiny basement of an old abandoned house out in the middle of nowhere.

He does not know it, but everyone in the house above them is dead. Her nightmares are soaked in their blood, sinking into her skin like purring, contented cats. The fear feeds her, and she speaks with many tongues.

“The seed planted in your mind is one part of many,” she says. “And you may think it vast. You may think those that control you, that bind your sick thoughts and twist you into killing and harvesting are infallible. But I will let you in on a secret.”

Her talons sink into his skin, and she closes her eyes as he begins to scream. This one, she thinks, she will savor. She will make it last. Draw out the pain, delay death until the last second. Let him teeter on the abyss. Her own blood still drips to the floor, slick and dark as oil.

“Those who seek immortality are only a blink in the universe. However old, however ancient, they will crumble and fall and become dust. But me? I am eternal. There will always be death, there will always be something dark in the shadows screaming for blood.”

She opens her many eyes and shows him. Allows him to see what she is, screams echoing and echoing and echoing as she peels the skin from his flesh and sinks her teeth into his bones.

“I am forever.”

[letsplayscrabble-blog]

the fear of losing you. [linstead oneshot.]

- Based on the prompt I received from @wr-trash about Erin being in a hostage situation. This was a new area of writing for me and I hope I did your idea justice! (: [tw: violence, abuse]

She felt the cold metal dig into the small of her back and she winced, dropping her own weapon onto the carpet because they now had a loaded shotgun trained on her abdomen and there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to be able to squirm or punch or kick a single one of them with enough force to get away without someone pulling the trigger and blasting her straight in the head. Hank was cursing and screaming in her earpiece to ‘get the hell out of there’ and to ‘hold on they were coming but damn it you shouldn’t have gone in alone’ and her phone kept vibrating over and over again in the back pocket of her jeans and she figured it was Halstead or maybe even Upton because the brand new detective was her partner after all.

“Pretty girl isn’t as smart as she thought,” one man snarled and he took a step closer to her and she fought against another’s hold but the sock across the mouth came as a surprise and she had to stop her writhing to catch her balance and spit out a mouthful of blood which landed satisfyingly on her captor’s shoe and she had to bite back a few choice words because their pushing of her buttons and getting under her skin wasn’t going to work.

“Where’s the boy?” Erin growled and she fought again but received a blow to the stomach and she should have kept her mouth shut and at least tried for a concrete confession but he had a little boy. He had a little boy and the clock was ticking and she hadn’t the slightest clue what was being done to the child- only that he was somewhere in this house. Their prime suspect was standing right in front of her and she’d caught him trying to sneak in through the neighbor’s yard and they had finally matched a set of fingerprints on the boy’s discarded sweatshirt and this son of a bitch who kept smacking her around was the one who had snatched him without a shadow of a doubt and oh, she couldn’t wait to get the creep alone for five minutes because he would be begging her to stop because she would show no mercy.

“Sir, Riley’s hungry.”

A tiny little girl appeared from behind a door that must have lead to the basement, barely skin and bones with raven colored curls stuck to her face with all of the dirt and grime she’d most likely been sleeping in for God knows how long - and there, behind her, clutching to her skinny fingers of her left hand was the four-year old Intelligence had been searching for for days now, his big green eyes wide in fright as his eyes scanned across the living room full of big, scary men and a bloody detective whose eyes landed on the children almost instantly in complete and utter horror. There was more. “You’re selling them. You’re selling them for money, aren’t you? It’s an entire business,” Erin spat, her teeth clenching in fury because this was far worse than any of them had anticipated and Gregory Lawrence, the ringleader behind it all, had just snatched her earpiece and her phone and shattered them both to smithereens with the heel of his shoe. She could only hope they’d traced her cell to get an exact location because she was well aware that time was running out and there wasn’t a chance in hell these kids weren’t getting out of here. Not if she had anything to do with it.

But she heard the sirens then and a small tiny hint of relief flooded her veins because they’d found her and they were here and they’d be bursting down the door in seconds but suddenly it all went wrong. The two men holding her let go of her wrists and her arms and dashed for the two children, ignoring their screams of panic and shoving a gun to their throats and Erin froze, watching them squeeze even tighter and certain the brutes were cracking ribs as the seconds ticked by. They’d planned for this. They knew exactly what they were doing. They weren’t stupid and weren’t about to get caught. She dove for her weapon which had slid under the coffee table and in an instant she had it trained on Gregory’s face though he had the nerve to stand there with a smirk on his lips and his hands up in the air in a feigned surrender.

“Oh, Erin. Did you really think it’d work out this easily? Shoot me and a kid is dead. There’s three more downstairs. Let your team in and two die. I have plenty more safe houses to choose from, full of children. Give me the gun.”

She hesitated because her gun was the last shot she had at defending herself and any of the children but Riley screamed and she knew one of the men had just broken one of his bones. She’d heard it snap and so she dropped her weapon and slid it on the ground towards the son of a bitch and he picked it up with a sly grin and a flick of his wrist and then he was yanking her towards the front door and she didn’t put up an ounce of a fight because he had those kids and all of their lives were in her hands.

“Lawrence. Fancy finding you here.” Hank’s gruff voice hit her eardrums first as the oak door flung open and it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden sunlight but she saw her sergeant halfway up the sidewalk in a bulletproof vest and she saw Jay right on his heels because she was certain he’d absolutely refused to take sniper on this one when she was in danger and her heart lurched because if she didn’t make it out of this at least she’d know he had her back until the very end.

“Voight. I could say the same to you. Got a reason you’re on my property?” He dug the gun into Erin’s back again and she winced and fought every instinct to squirm and kick and fight back but the second she did the second those kids were shot dead and there was no way in hell she was going to let that happen.

“You have a gun to my detective. Seems like probable cause to me,” Hank shot back and he held out a strong arm to stop Jay from doing something stupid because he was fidgeting and clenching his fists and it was taking a hell of a lot of effort to stop himself from shooting the guy point blank in the face and Hank knew that but it wasn’t going to fly. Not here. He was well aware there was a reason Erin was in the position she was in because she may be stubborn and impulsive and didn’t think things entirely through when it came to a case with a child but she knew how to handle herself and wouldn’t have ended up in the hands of Gregory Lawrence without good reason.

Jay on the other hand was trying to ignore the fact that her nose was bleeding and an eye was already black and blue and she was cradling her abdomen like she’d broken a few ribs and he realized Upton should be the one standing here as Erin’s new partner but Hank had relented after his incessant pleas and he needed to prove to his boss that he could do this and he needed to stay here to be as close to Erin as possible because there wasn’t a chance in hell he could focus on aiming a sniper given the current circumstances.

“Let her go and we can work out a deal,” he finally managed to get out and Gregory had the nerve to laugh and Erin winced again as her jerked her back into the house and out of his line of sight. Damn it.

“Not a chance, detective. You let us all walk out of here and I’ll keep her as insurance. Probably alive.”

Hank had seen it. Jay had done his job and given Erin that two second window to mouth ‘there’s kids’ while Gregory was distracted and that was all he’d needed. It was all starting to make sense though it didn’t make their current situation any better.

“He’s got more inside than we thought. We can’t get to Erin and she can’t move without him hurting the kids,” Hank muttered and Jay’s jaw clenched because he knew all too well what she would do to save all those children and none of the scenarios he could come up with ended with her coming out of it alive.

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?!” Jay snapped and his blue eyes blazed and his heart rate sped up and Hank glared daggers at him because if he couldn’t get a handle on it he was going to get sent back to the bullpen to pace around in hopeless circles and that managed to shut him up real quick because he didn’t plan on going anywhere.

Olinsky’s voice came over their earpieces with even more grim news that he couldn’t get a clear shot on any of them and further explained that each of the men in there Gregory had as a backup was holding a child and he had his own gun on Erin and at the sound of her name Jay’s fists tightened up again but his mind also seized onto the mention of those kids because he understood completely and entirely why she was doing what she was doing. There may be blurred lines on what was right and what was wrong in Intelligence but when it came to saving children your sole purpose became getting them out of there alive and he only hoped Erin would hold off on doing anything drastic because he couldn’t lose her, and Hank couldn’t lose her, and this team couldn’t lose her and he absolutely couldn’t imagine a world without her in it and suddenly all he could think about was wrapping her up in his arms and bringing back his duffel bag into her apartment and tossing it onto the bed he hoped to once again share with her because he never should have left her and he never should have turned away from her because damn it, she could’ve handled it.

Hank pulled him back to reality with a quick nudge of the shoulder and soon they were back on the outskirts of the property and surrounded by the hostage team and multiple other police officers because things were getting bad and time was running out before someone did something stupid and Jay could only hope and pray it wouldn’t be Erin who acted.

An hour went by before he caught a glimpse of Upton rushing towards them out of the corner of his eyes, her eyes blazing with determination and finally, finally- here was his ounce of hope.

“Sarge, I can get in. There’s a window they didn’t seal shut all the way that leads to the basement. There’s three more kids. I- I can’t see if they’re breathing,” she finished, and again his heart lurched because if Erin was already fighting a losing battle she had no chance in hell of getting out.

Hank shifted his weight as he considered because Ruzek and Atwater were out back trying to find another way to breach or at least get a shot off without one of them seeing them and ending it for Erin or one of the kids but things weren’t looking good and they needed something. Anything.

“Do it.”

Hailey nodded and dashed back in the direction she had come from and Jay followed because he felt useless just standing around and he wanted- no, needed- to make sure those kids were okay. His mind kept flashing back to dark, dirty huts nestled in the mountains near Korengal Valley where he found far too many children shot dead by rebels and far too many children starved and shivering and desperate but they were far too afraid to come anywhere near a soldier and so he’d forced himself to forget about them and to keep moving.

He gave Upton one last nod of approval before watching as she wiggled down through the narrow gap, landing softly with a thud in the basement of the place and he dropped to his stomach to get a better view and to help lift out the kids as she brought them over one by one because every last one of them was weak with malnourishment and whatever drugs he’d pumped into their systems to keep them quiet and subdued and he could only imagine what other horrendous things had been in store.

Voight waited for Halstead to return and Upton to load the rescued kids safely in the back of a squad car before approaching the front door again, lifting his first for a firm knock and then Gregory was back with Erin right next to him and Jay fought even harder than before not to lunge at the man. Erin’s other eye was bruising and she was obviously in more pain than earlier because she was fiercely chewing on her bottom lip and that was her tell when she was trying to hold back tears. He knew. He knew her like the back of his hand.

“Alright, I’m here to make that deal. But in a show of good faith, you let the two kids go behind you,” Hank instructed, straight to the point, his head nodding in their direction. The terrified children were in view now from where Hank and Jay were standing, Riley and the trembling older girl whom Erin had learned was named Lena. She’d gone missing three weeks ago. Kidnapped from her own backyard.

She felt Gregory fidget beside her and the gun edge maybe an inch away from her back as he considered but Jay could see that in Hank coming to the front door Atwater and Kevin had snuck in the back and both had their guns trained on the other men holding Riley and Lena and that these good for nothing bastards had made a terrible error in judgement and all he had to give his old partner was a clearing of his throat and she was out of Lawrence’s grasp and ducking behind Hank and then shots were firing from inside the house and children were screaming and Jay dashed inside because he knew all too well that Erin was going to be just fine but she wouldn’t be able to stand it if those kids didn’t make it and at this point neither would he.

Another shot, this time from near the front door and Jay whirled in absolute horror but Hank strolled into the living room with ease and a satisfied grin upon his lips, stepping over the body of Lawrence and his two men on the way and scooping up Lena in his arms and melting into a sweet mess of whispers and smiles and hugs for the comfort of the young girl while Riley latched onto Jay and after a nod in Atwater and Ruzek’s direction they all stepped back outside, the kids safely wrapped up in their arms.

“Jay!” Her hazel eyes found him instantly  and she wiggled out of the back of the ambulance and away from the paramedics because honestly her broken ribs didn’t hurt that bad and her eyes may be throbbing but that could be taken care of later and right now all that mattered was the little boy in his arms and the feeling of his perfect blue eyes as they fell over her because this was a win for everybody, an absolute win and as she clutched Riley to her for a brief moment before handing him off to the medics and his eager and sobbing parents she realized just how terrified she had been as it all finally sunk in.

“You should’ve waited for backup,” he murmured and she winced because he was right and she winced because then he was hugging her and pulling her to him despite the broken ribs and she breathed in his familiar scent and the feel of his scratchy bulletproof vest and then she was on her tiptoes and kissing him and she was smiling and he was smiling and then chuckling, the vibrations making her dimples appear on her cheeks and damn, he had never been more relieved.

“Erin, I- I want to come back home. I can’t… I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.” And she grinned again and his hand found her jaw and gently he brought her lips back to hers and she thought she heard Ruzek whistling and hooting and hollering in encouragement but all that mattered was that Jay was coming back home.

[cwkrp]

have a little imagination, will you?

INTRODUCING   jung haneul, she/her, 07/10/99 COURSING   ba in sound engineering, second year AFFILIATION   apus ANNOTATIONS   n/a

a note from the past.

TOKEN.

She coughs and vermillion is splattered across the pavement. A grunt clicks his tongue, lifting his foot to peer at his newly stained sneakers. With a roll of his eyes, he delivers a swift kick to her abdomen before she doubles over to roll to her side. For a moment, she struggles to breathe, black splotches fading in and out of her vision, as she sputters and lets out a wet inhalation. Isn’t this kind of sadistic?

If she wants in, she’s got to go through initiation like everyone else.

Its not that she couldnt take them all on, per say. More so that she didn’t see a point. They all knew how perfectly capable she was, in and off the ring. A mild guess is that she combats her emotional pain with the physical in these situations she gets herself into.

Such a shame to bruise a pretty face.

Such a shame to bruise a pretty heart.

The night is especially dark tonight. She rolls to her back as her breathing regulates. The streetlights above her burn yellow and shadow the faces looking down at her, muting the stars in their own glory. Tonight is a night of twisted redemption, malformed from its original intent, turned into something unrecognizable. Another well kept secret to be stowed in her closet of bones.

She exhales. The world is blown away with her soft tempered breath. Nothing exists but the cold concrete and her fluttering lungs. With every intake of air, another part of her comes to life: long tangled hair matted by her neck. Slender fingers with chipped nail polish variant in colors. Sharp teeth behind a mouth hungry for justice. At this moment, she felt the most alive. All her years was spent trying to fit into the shadow of a man who knew no mercy, who, in all his grandeur, left behind rubble and ruin. Today she had died and left the carcass of a girl who once thought the world revolved around obedience and scripture. Now, she is reborn in the body of a fighter, whose blood howls in parallel to her biggest fears, teaching that she was never beneath them but an equal.

Are you dead?

Her head lolls in their direction. She doesn’t answer with words, but a smile that meant something beyond their comprehension.

Okay, okay. You’re in. Now get up. The boss wants to see you.

STEREOTYPE.

The Lady of War

Nails press into their necks, calls of mercy falling from trembling lips. Behind her is fire, unruly, all consuming. It eats the bodies of the fallen, no screams pierce the atmosphere, the absence of a soul sends their consciousness to hell, and the fire has come to clean them all of their sins.

Forgiveness is beneath you, my love.

Her hands are bare but the power they wield is enough to break bones and mend them. The wolves bark at her ankles, awaiting the signal to dart forward. Their neck snaps through her own force, and she moves onto the next. Their yellow eyes watch the body drop to the floor, and they follow their master in trained obedience.

Born from a kingdom whose king ruled with a black heart, she sits in her tower and watches as its people turn sour from the tyranny. She, too, seeks the injustice and calls war with her own lips. There is civil unrest, the castle caving in on itself, and the princess with power at her fingertips turns away from its temptation and chose to burn with the oppressed. Elegance is trained in every movement, even in her killing blow.

By her own hand she watched their perfect world collapse, and by her own hand she will erect what has been done wrong.

a color for the present.

BLUE.

The lights above them are too-bright, almost headache inducing. The urge to turn them off makes her fingers restless, so to satait herself she opens the blinds. The hazy sunset tinge the room orange. Her mother smiles in her bed, small, as fragile as she’d ever seen her. They’re pumping her with the medicine he so boasts about, but it seems to be sucking her life force more than soothe her.

Some days she is energetic enough to lift her thin wrist at an attempt at a wave.

“Hello, Haneul,” her mother would breathe, but the notion was nearly lost in the constant beeping of the machinery plugged into her. In her own excitement, she’d close the space between them, placing the new bouquet of flowers on the bedside table before planting a kiss on her forehead.

“Hi, mom.”

Some days she was so bad the nurses wouldn’t have time to help her out of bed before the blood and puke sprayed the hospital floor. In those instances, she’d sit in the sole chair at the corner of the room, sit for a few hours until the nurse would tell her that visiting hours were over. Sometimes her father would poke in, eyes skimming her chart before his pager would go off once again.

Today an unnamable fear keeps her locked in place by the window, eyes averted, watching as the normal people continue their lives without a care in the world.

“Haneul,” she calls from her bed. Her voice is small and scratchy.  

She does nothing to acknowledge that she heard her mother.

“I have been here since the leaves turned red and now the branches bud with the promise of new life. I think, before they bloom, I will not be here to see them with you. So I have a request.”

The stretch of silence is a nonverbal plead. She turns, heartbroken at the stranger on the bed. Her mother motions for her to come. Tepid steps close the distance. She’s too afraid to touch her, lest she crumble beneath her hands.

“I need you to watch your brother and your father for me. Take good care of them. Make sure they don’t get into trouble. You know how they are.”

Her heart breaks a little bit. Even in the end, her mother remains selfless for her family.

“Do you promise me, Haneul?”

“Yes, mom. I promise.”

“And promise me that you’ll stay out of harms way, too. You’re my little girl, my piece of heaven, and the world wouldn’t know what to do without you in it.”

“Yeah, mom. Promise.”

Those were the last words she shared with her mother, unable to last through the night. Hours after her death, Haneul breaks her promise, letting her father succumb to madness and her brother to debauchery.

Love should have filled those empty spaces, not hollow words that meant something else.

RED.

The night is at its peak. Midnight ascends into madness, and the observers howl in anticipation. The bets favor her opponent but she is unfazed. They jeer at the newcomer, scorn her for being a woman and thinking she had a right to leave the ring unscarred. They yell, they jeer, they sexualize and devour any weakness their hungry eyes could devour. Among the chaos she stands, stance wide, hands in front of her face, fists poised for battle.

Her opponent is across the ring, scratching the back of his head. He calls over the ref, asks if he seriously has to hit a girl in front of everyone like this. He laughs, they all do, but she does not waver under their gaze. In stature he’s twice her size, with muscles that showcase years of pure bruteness exercised daily.

Ready? Fight!

She circles him the way predator does prey, and he has to laugh at the fact that she thinks she had a chance against him. He sloppily swings, hoping to end things quickly as to get home with his winnings, but he underestimates her agility. Light on her feet she dodges, uses his shock to her advance and plant a well placed punch on an organ that has him stumbling back a few steps.

Her intention was never to win all her fights

But to be seen as an equal.

Damage.

The thug shoves the hefty package to her hand, wary eyes scanning the vicinity in search of any possible witnesses to their exchange.

Boss says to inflate the prices. We know how you rich kids are, how bored you guys get with your money. Sell it and give every penny back to us before you go home tonight. Got it?

Tonight her father prepared a soiree for the bourgeois, with the intention of securing numerous sponsorships for his prized hospital. Its standing within society was on shaky grounds due to his scandal involving the death of numerous patients from his failed medication. His own wife being one of them. Somehow, her gang caught wind and they took this to their advantage.

She slips the package into her backpack, face void of any emotion as she gave a nod.

The party is in full swing by the time she arrives, fashionably late, in an ensemble that had people looking at her twice. She does her dance electric, mingles with the crowd, finds the bored kids she grew up with who always had a taste for the luxurious.

She flashes a bag between her fingers, coy smile on her lips, and they understood immediately what she insinuated.

Bundles of cash were slipped to her person in exchange for powder, the night comes into full swing, and before she moves onto the next group, they’re already begging for more.

She returns to the base with a bag full of money, leaving before they had the chance to give her share.