#you fuckers got death of a party I’m screaming you ungrateful bastards

[lefreck]

Scared to watch Coachella

[tactileconsensus]

happy accidents.

She treads the worn out city streets as any other troll would. She wears tedious black clothes, and her reddish complexion brands her as insignificant to the majority of the high-blooded locals. Her long, long hair - a feature that has often been the only thing people remember about her - has been braided and pinned up, making it’s length unremarkable. Her blank expression looks unfriendly and keeps others from wanting to look at her for too long. Nothing about her is special. The group of indigos that pass by don’t even seem to notice she’s there. It’s perfect.

The blue lights adorning the sidewalk are the only company she keeps. She’s enjoying the way they pulse and illuminate the ostentatious gardens along the way, giving every strange and beautiful flower she encounters an alien glow. These high-bloods sure know how to impress a dumb girl from the woods. She’s never even seen most of these species... She snaps a few pictures so she may search for their names later.

She has had many names but only one truly belongs to her: Morras. That is the only name her friends know. Now that she thinks about it, it’s probably a good thing that she has so few of those. It’s not that she worries about what would happen if her real name got leaked out to the world but, in Morras’ line of work, one learns to treasure anonymity.

With each step she takes she feels the comforting weight and swing of the weapons she’s almost always carrying around with her: daggers and small throwing knives, things as sharp and dangerous as a bear’s claws. They remind her of home; the road’s never lonely this way.

Morras walks calmly for a while longer until a number of beautifully lit, highblood-owned mansions begin to rise above the horizon. She starts to hear music and the laughter of dozens of trolls who have decided to enjoy the cool breeze. They are all wearing fancy clothes and sipping on something dark with delight. 

The bright lights of the lively neighborhood cast dark shadows that she inches towards slowly until she vanishes from sight. Morras sneaks from building to building with feline grace, keeping her eyes and ears peeled for anything that might try to creep up on her. 

Deftly she continues until she finally arrives at the party. She struggles with a very stubborn window she’s forced to break and kill two guards for. If only she’d found the courage to do all of this in heels and a suit, she thinks, then she might’ve simply swaggered through the main entrance like everyone else and avoided this unnecessary death. She spares some time to close their eyes, to move their bodies somewhere quieter and mourn their passing in case nobody else cared. ‘Rest easy, ya’ poor bastards’. Their fear led them to loyalty and servitude they weren’t ready for. They deserved closure, and certainly not the one granted by death.

Morras leaves the corpses behind. If she’s not careful, she’ll be forced to take another life or risk compromising the mission, so she tries her damned hardest to navigate the space undetected. She succeeds. 

She climbs an embellished stairwell and hugs the wall as she hunts down a specific room. When she arrives at her destination, two guards stand between her and her kill.

Two knives disappear from her belt with only a flash of cold steel as warning. Each blade finds and pierces through the thigh of each guard and, before they have time to process what happened, before they can even scream from the pain, the substance coating her blades makes them go limp. Morras lunges forward and catches them easily before they fall. She watches their chest rise and fall for a moment as they enjoy a much deserved nap and knows she can move on to more important things.

Morras straightens her back and takes a deep breath before walking through the large door. She’s not nervous, she just wants to make sure she’s ready for anything.

She hears screaming from the other side and she’s immediately on edge. Carefully, Morras rests an ear against the door and tries to make sense of the muffled voices and only stops when she hears glass shattering.  

The first thing she sees the moment she bursts into the room is a table neatly set up for two where dinner seems to have been forgotten. Behind the table stands a young troll, holding a blunt knife between her and Morras’ target. For a moment she wants to protest and ask why this child has come to steal her kill, but that chain of thought is broken when the dim candle light in the room bounces off the streams of blue running down her rounded face. “I WANNA GO HOME!” She cries out, a pathetic attempt to threatened her captor into submission. It doesn’t work, of course.  

“You are home, Nakomi! Please, my child, you must stay. I can help-” Morras’ arrival cuts their sentence in half. She watches their fake smile fall apart, anger poisoning their expression. “Who are you? How did you get here?!” They bark. The girl doesn’t seem to know where to point her knife anymore.

“I’m good.” Morras’ eyes linger on her. She wishes she would take this opportunity to run away, but she seems to be paralyzed in fear. 

They scoff. “The only good assassin, is a dead one, my dear,” The world ‘assassin’ seems to send the girl through ten different emotions at once, all of them negative. Morras would never do anything to her... Not that she’d be able to guess it from just looking at her perpetually hard expression. “What have I ever done to you anyway?”

“To me? Nothin’, I don’t think. But you definitely wronged someone enough that they paid me to see you dead, so” She flashed them one of her favorite daggers - a large jet black beauty with small roses carved along the handle and blade alike.

“If what drives you is money, I assure you I can double whatever you were offered. Hell, I’ll even let you take her!” They grab the girl’s wrist suddenly. She’s so weak and frightened that it’s enough to make the kitchen knife fall from her trembling hands. She looks between the two adults in the room, terrified at the prospect of being sold to a scary assassin, or staying here with a mad slaver. Morras’ heart breaks a little. “She will control the minds of your enemies, if only you can tame the bitch,” Morras’ fist clenches around her weapon. Research told her this troll could match her in speed, and that was really the only thing keeping them alive. They were holding a kid hostage. 

“Only problem is she’s an unpredictable little creature - oh, and she’s incredibly ungrateful; here I was, keeping her safe and trying to make sure she didn’t kill herself with her own stupidity and that is how she thanks me.” They look down at the knife on the floor. They’re practically mocking a defenseless girl; it’s disgusting. “Look what your idiocy caused you already.” They pull back her silvery bangs, revealing the scaring on her forehead. She yelps in protest.

Morras looks at Nakomi with what she hopes to be a sympathetic look. She knows what nearly frying your own brains feels like, knows what a terrifying thing it is to go through it alone.

“I’m not convinced.” Morras replies after a brief moment of silent contemplation. “How do I know you’re not lyin’? That could just be a normal girl with pretty hair and some bruises, no?” Morras looks at the girl as she speaks her next words, begging the gods to make her understand. “I’m gonna’ need a quick demonstration.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I just told you she has no control over her own damned powers.” 

“Oh, please.” Morras continues to look directly at Nakomi’s soul. “Have some faith.”

A moment passes before it finally dawns on her. 

Morras speaks again but she’s not really sure what she’s saying. All she means to do is distract them while the small girl frowns through her cerulean tears and struggles to seize control of her captor’s body.

It takes her long enough to make Morras a bit nervous, but Nakomi does eventually force them to open their hands. She runs away as soon as she’s free, and the time it takes them to regain control is more than enough to ensure Morras scores a clean kill - not that they deserved one.

The girl throws both arms around the scary assassin. She’s shaking and Morras is as awkward as ever. After a few seconds of not knowing what to do, Morras bends down and hugs her back until her crying dies out.

“Did he hurt you?” Morras asks.

The girl means to say ‘no’, since that’s technically the truth, but she clearly feels like they hurt her a lot. She doesn’t say a word.

“He’s dead.” Morras doesn’t understand what she’s supposed to be saying in moments like this, but she’s trying to be comforting. 

Nakomi sniffles. “Is she going to kill me next?”

“What?” 

The girl’s eyes go wide. “W-what what?”  

“You think I’m gonna’ kill you?”

“How did you-!” She looks at her with wide, trembling eyes and takes a step back. “You’re scary.”

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.” Morras tries to reason. Naturally, it doesn’t help much. Oh, no, is she going to start crying again? “Fuckin’... O-okay, listen,” She sighs. “I kill bad people. Like that fucker over there, right?” Nakomi nods slowly. “You’re not a bad person, so I’m not gonna’ kill ya’. It’s that easy.”  

Silence takes over and a moment passes.

“How did you know what I-”

“I got cool powers. Like you.” She’s surprised. Does she not know others like her exist? “I can read thoughts.”

“O-oh...” Nakomi still looks a bit frightened, but Morras spots a flash of something that puts her at ease.

Silence takes over once more. Morras coughs. 

“We have to leave this place.” 

“How are we going to do that?”

“Dunno. Same way I came in? We’ll figure it out.” Morras looked down at her with intensity. “Stay close to me unless there’s a fight goin’. If we’re attacked, you just hide and wait for me, okay?”

“O-Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

The journey back down would’ve been much easier if she’d been heartless enough to slaughter every guard on duty earlier.

Walking around with company during work - a child, of all people - is new and a lot to handle. She keeps worrying about her whereabouts and over planning their next movements. At some point, a moment of doubt is enough to alert a group of guards that immediately swarm them. Morras counts 5 in total; they all wear the same uniform but some have spears while others have swords. She knows she can take them on, but she needs Nakomi to hide first.

“Go!” Morras yells at her small companion, pushing her away from a mean spear swing that would’ve cut her in half. She runs off, panicked. Two tranquilizing blades find two different targets and the threat’s reduced significantly. Those were her last; she would carry more tranquilizers around if the sedative wasn’t so damn expensive. 

Two of the remaining guards run towards her, one swinging high, the other going low. Morras jumps over the spear and extends an arm upwards to hold the guard’s wrist, seizing control of his sword hand. Morras spins and throws her back side roughly against the guard’s chest. She bends his arm in a painful angle that forces him to drop his weapon. The guard sees their closeness as an opportunity to yank her by the hair with his good hand, but all that does is release her gigantic braid from a maze of hairpins. Morras twists her body and grabs her long, long hair at the base to avoid any pain. She kicks him in a certain spot that has him falling on his knees. Unfortunately for him, he refuses to release her braid even as he squirms, so Morras chokes him with it. He’ll live.

The guard who’d swung her spear at her before turns around and tries the same move again. It actually grazes her cheek once but, when she tries another attack Morras just grabs her spear, ripping it from her firm grasp like it was nothing. She hits her with the blunt end of the weapon, stunning her, and sticks the pointy end through the guard she feels sneaking up behind her. 'I really didn’t want to kill another person today...’ Morras thinks with a tinge of sadness.

That short moment of vulnerability is all the last guard needs. Weaponless, she rips one of Morras’ knives from her friend’s body and sprints towards her, aiming to sink it right between her ribs, where her heart might beat. She probably thinks Morras killed her friends, and she’s not entirely wrong.

Morras knows she could’ve defended herself in time from her surprise attack, but she’s still thankful for Nakomi who repeats her neat little trick on the guard, making her drop Morras’ knife. Morras’ fighting instincts kick in. They trade blows until the guard falls on the ground in pain, rust pouring from her nose and lips. Morras sits her up and locks her in a chokehold until she stops moving. The guard joins her friends in the realm of dreams.

At the end of the fight, Nakomi pokes her head out from her hiding spot. “Is... Is it over?” 

“Yeah. You can come.”

Nakomi walks the distance to join her new ally. She’s avoiding Morras’ gaze like she thinks she’s about to get in trouble. “I know I promised to just hide, but...”

“You did good.” Morras wants to smile. Instead, she gives her a lame thumbs up and a nod. 

“You did everything...” She shrugs and picks at her fingernails. Her cheeks are tinted blue and she seems to be smiling.

“Oh! Did you ever tell me your name, miss?”

Morras stops to think about it. Her loaf of bread is lamely forgotten between her lips as she does it. “Did I not?”

“No!” Nakomi replies before swallowing a large bite of chocolate cake. “If you did, I forgot. Sorry.”

“Morras.” It sounds silly when said with your mouth full. It earns her a giggle.

“Morras, huh.” She repeats, looking off into the distance. 

The night had gotten colder, so Morras let her borrow her sweater. The damned thing was already over-sized on her, so Nakomi was currently wearing what looked to be a full body woolen dress, with sleeves she had to roll up to the armpit. 

They had distanced themselves from her captor’s corpse and the fancy party their matesprit threw. The dinner Nakomi left back at their mansion explained the embarrassing noises her stomach was making. Morras offered to buy her something cheap and sweet to remedy that, and that’s how they came to be where they are, sitting on the sidewalk outside a convenience store, eating something light. 

“Thank you for saving me, Morras.”

“It was no problem.” She nods. Saving her was basically a happy accident, really. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

The girl stays quiet, making a face. Morras doesn’t need to read her mind to know she wants to agree.

“It’s okay to want someone dead, sometimes.” Morras tells her calmly. “Some folks just need killin’. It’s why I exist.”

“I never thought of assassins as the good guys. But you’ve been so nice to me...” She takes another bite of cake. “Do you have other good assassin friends? Oh! Oh, are you part of a super duper secret society or something? Who pays you to kill the bad guys, anyway?” 

“I don’t really have assassin friends, no.” Most assassins she does know are batshit crazy. It’s why she works alone. “As for who pays me, well, I suppose it can be anyone? And really any sum will do.”

“Who hired you to kill them?”

“A guard.”

“A guard?” She blinks, confused. “Why were they all trying to kill us, then?” 

“They’re too scared not to. During my research I found out that practically everyone working for them was hiding from something big. So, really, either they did as they were told, or they were sent back to their old lives without any protection. Can you blame them?” Nakomi looks away and doesn’t seem to know how to reply. What Morras said has clearly hit close to home. “They were doing the same to you, huh.”

Nakomi sat in silence, fighting back tears. “My lusus...” She sniffed. “She d-died yesterday. I searched for help and I found them. They said I’d never have to worry about the empire coming after me if I accepted their help... They weren’t that scary at first.” Morras places her hand on her shoulder. “But then they said I could never go home again. They said I would have to do everything they said and that I’d be punished if I didn’t,” She’s sobbing again. Morras wants to do more than stare and touch her arm.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”  

The girl hugs her. They sit there in silence until the tension dissipates and her tears dry up for the second time in only a few hours. This poor girl deserves better.

“You really are cool... A little scary, though.”

“I know.” Morras sighs. She’s definitely pouting. “This is just... how my face works, though...” It’s obvious this undeniable truth about her is something she’s insecure about.

 “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” Nakomi jumps in her seat, now worried that she hurt her feelings. “You’re really pretty! And- and your hair is nice! You just... You should smile more.”

“You’re right.” She nods. “I’ll... work on it.” As if she hasn’t been doing just that for sweeps now. 

Morras blinks. “Now that you mention things to work on - you should definitely train your power. They were right when they said that it can kill you.”

“How do you know?”

“Nearly died once.” She shrugs. “Don’t worry, though. You might not know how to control yourself just yet, but you have talent. I’ve seen it twice today already.”

Nakomi peers up at her shyly after a moment of no reaction. “... Will you teach me?”

“Huh?” 

“Um-” She looks away, embarrassed. “I don’t know anyone else with cool powers like us, and you seem to know a thing or two about my current level already, so... Why not?” She chuckles. She’s nervous.

Morras pauses to think. Morras isn’t good at many things, and she’s certainly never been a teacher to anyone. Could she really teach a girl she barely knew about powers she did not have? ‘At the very least, I can keep her safe’.

“Why not.” She repeats with a nod.

Nakomi smiles brighter than the sun and, for once, Morras’ cold expression doesn’t stand a chance.