The bell rang and Cronus groaned. He had just gotten home from work and picked up Eri from Meenah's, and he was playing on the floor while Cronus was watching tv. He had no idea who it could be. He put on his boots and went to answer the door, still in his uniform when he opened it. The staggering, towering figure of his father stood over him. Cronus's jaw went slack and his father frowned. "Are you going to let your father in, Cronus?", he asked. Immediately, Cronus went into papa shark mode. "No", he answered immediately. At this, his father frowned. "And why would that be?", he asked, Cronus honestly scared of him but finding the balls to not let him go in. Because it wasn't just about him, anymore, it was about Eri too. He pushed his father, taking a lot of his strength, but he manages to do so, his muscles much more developed than they had been the last time his father saw him. His father laughed. "You cannot stop me from entering my own home, Cronus", he sneered, Cronus only getting more angry. "I SAID. NO.", he growled, anger enabling him to force his father to the ground, crawling on top of him. They wrestled, obscene phrases coming from the both of them. He managed to get on top, taking his fist and balling it up in his fathers shirt, punching him in the face. His father started to immediately retaliate, but this time, the pain didn't stop Cronus. 2 punches. 3 punches. 4, 5, 6. His fist became red with the blood of his own father, and Eridan peeked out of the door. He ran to the Peixes' next door, banging desperately for Meenah or the Condesce.

Unusually, Condy made out the furious banging from all the way up in her lush tower and descended to the level of commoners in time to answer the door first, completely towering over Eridan as she swung the door open to his perturbed little face and the ruckus from the scrap next door, eyes going round at the sight of blood dotting the pavement. "Christ Ma whos-" From behind her, Meenah's approaching grumbles cut off, a little questioning noise tumbling out as Eridan peered at her from between Condy's legs, before the fight came into her view and she gaped at her equally wide eyed mother urgently, practically shoving her off with a bark of "What the fuck, Mom?". She sprang to life with surprising dexterity in those monstrous shoes, elongated legs carrying her on top of Cronus with his throat in the crook of her elbow and her nails digging hard crescents into his blood-flecked wrist in a heartbeat. Yanking Eridan back inside before he had the chance to watch her mother wrench his brother off daddy, Meenah dislodged what felt like her heart from her throat with a swallow, raking back her hair with her free hand before depositing Eridan on the nearest couch with the other, grasping him by his shoulder for a moment to hold his attention. "/Don't move./" Offering only an urgent nod for further reassurance, she left him to join Condy in taming the boys next door.

Eridan clung to Meenah before she left, then watching from the door as his big brother, the one that had been taking care of him for so long, have to be pryed off his father with a crobar. Cronus was angry and kept out of her grasp for a while, still pummeling his dad into the pavement, long after his father was unconscious. When Meenah arrived and ran out the door to him, he was still punching his father in the face. His knuckles were bruised and bloodied with his own blood, being cut on his father's teeth, and the blood that came out of his father's face. He refused to be pulled off by her mother, not even realizing she was there almost, staying out of her grasp as he continued to violently, relentlessly, cruelly destroy his father. Eridan silently watched, not crying, just holding onto his seahorse as he stepped outside onto the front porch, watching the blood spatter and the complete unsympathetic, cold hatred that was in Cronus's eyes as he hit, punched and just destroyed his father, not even stopping when he heard the footsteps of Meenah. But perhaps that was just because he didn't register them.

"CRONUS, C)(ILL TH-E FUCK OUT" Meenah bellowed, gritting her teeth furiously as she tightened her grasp around the arm that delivered blow after blow of rage-fueled desecration, feeling like she was trying to throw off the path of a mechanical bull, her barks pitchy with frustration and intimidation. As her kid grappled with Cronus and she herself fought for a fruitless hold on his throat, Condesce caught the briefest sight of the youngest Ampora gaping at the gory spectacle unfold from her porch, warning him against it with a flash of her eyes, pulling back from Cronus's thrashing form, and winding herself backwards before crashing her elbow brutally into the younger's back. The crash of impact made Meenah gape, the incendiary look on the Baroness's face acridly warning her daughter not to voice the shocked judgement her expression passed.

He eventually became suddenly limp, forcing himself to stand up over his father's unconscious body, stumbling back a bit but catching himself. He kicked his father once more before realizing he was so out of breath, turning to the door of his own home to see the abscence of Eridan where he had last left him. He turned to the left, seeing him stand in the huge doorway of the Peixes mansion. It hit him then that Eridan had finally seen his father hit him, and watch Cronus retaliate in a way that was much, much worse than the way his father had physically attacked him in the first place. Once Cronus made eye contact, Eridan ran away, holding onto his little seahorse plushie, burying his face in it and crying. His glasses fell to the floor, since when he cried, they fogged up, and he slammed the door, going out of Cronus's sight. Cronus sighed, slipping down onto the ground and shakily lighting up a cigarette as he carelessly sat in the blood on the pavement. He couldn't make eye contact with Condy. She didn't know what went on between him and his father, and neither did Meenah. He said nothing to either woman that pulled him off his father, only focusing on the nicotine that calmed him down. He refused to cry, only staring at the ground instead.

Meenah reeled at Cronus's sudden cessation, the menacing, impossibly tense stillness arising as abruptly and completely as a suddenly unplugged appliance dies down. Backing several steps away from the scene, there was a momentary flash of what almost looked like livid fear in her eyes, fists coiled tightly and brought a notch off her sides, as if in anticipation of a second spell of gory barbarity from the despicably quiet man now splayed on the concrete and shakily puffing away on his stupid vice while his clothing readily soaked up stagnant puddles of his father's blood. Meanwhile, wasting no time passing distasteful appraisals, Condesce was on her knees with an ear over Dualscar's chest in an instant, brows knit together over gaping eyes, one hand holding her hair out of the blood as the other hunted for a pulse at his gore-splattered throat. "Is he dead?…" Meenah piped up less than optimistically, not averting her piercing gaze from Cronus for a moment. "Not yet." Her mother snarled in callous reply, before resolving with a hard sigh and turning to Cronus, a hand anchoring his jaw tightly in place, forcing him to turn his face to her as her sharkish visage leaning in threateningly close. "You want this nasty piece a work a yers to go away, yer gonna be a good lil punk-ass and do what I tell you to. Capice?" Mama shark's face went stony as she released his jaw, before moving to coil her arms under the unconscious man's and testing his weight with a huff of effort. They didn't want to leave a gory mess for nosy neighbors to start shit about, after all. "You two'd better /move yer fuckin' tails before I-" Meenah sprang to life quickly, too perturbed to to much more than glower as she joined her mother at her side and coiled her fists into Dualscar's ruined clothes, the two of them only managing to drag his frame far enough to smear the bloody imprint on the concrete, the fruitless effort making Condy hiss. "CRONUS."

Cronus dropped his cigarette and started coughing. Not a regular smoker's cough, either. A horrible, sickly cough that normally would have made him cringe. He kept coughing until he spilled his insides on the pavement, next to the blood, getting it on his boots, too. He groaned in pain from Meenah's mother's strikes and from his own coughing fit. Once it hit him that his dad wasn't dead, he started shaking violently, sitting down on the sidewalk. He suddenly started crying. He cried hysterically. It was a kind of cry that was the cry from immense, horrible physical pain, not because you didn't get the toy you wanted. He had attached himself to the idea that his dad was dead, but Cronus just sat there on the pavement, next to the blood and bile and wept. He wept until his eyes were raw and his nose was runny and he felt like he was going to puke again. He wiped his face on his shirt, taking it off and dropping it carelessly, trying to light up another cigarette. He took such a deep drag that an inch of ash was hanging off it before he tapped it away onto the sidewalk, like the nicotine was the string he was using to hold onto his life. Nothing registered to him, none of the feelings. He was numb. He was so goddamned numb, and he wished he wasnt. His breaths were deep and shaky, and he wanted to cling to Meenah for her to tell him it was going to be okay. Stop crying. But all he heard now was stop crying, you're a man. Don't be a pussy, Cronus. When I get up, you're dead. DEAD.

Both the women's jaws dropped by slight degrees as the faltering of his composure reached a sickly crescendo, Condy even releasing Dualscar's frame to clamp a hand over her face before turning it vexed up to the sky, letting the man's gruesomely limp weight take Meenah to the ground with him, bloodying her knees on the concrete and making her cry out. Was that a groan he just let out? Somehow the thought turned her stomach turn to stone, prying her hand out from under him and scrambling back to her feet, she turned her sunken gaze back on Cronus instead. It was a spectacularly rare thing for Meenah to feel pity, not towards the assorted thugs she herself made occasional child's play of grappling with and beating livid, let alone towards Cronus. But if her insides felt like marble a second ago, the hysterical scene he made of himself turned them to sheer ice. Slowly wiping her palms off on the front of her pants, she swallowed hard, his back turned to her as she approached, letting her watch the curve of his spine sharpen with each labored breath he forced out. Rounding his form as though he were an agonized creature she'd been unwittingly charged with putting to sleep, she eventually came to kneel in front of him, the acrid aroma of bile and smoke making her expression contort subtly. "Cronus, cut it out." Her voice was hushed and devoid of venom, hands finding the sides of his anguished face, maybe just a notch too stiffly, though it was better than letting them tremble. "We got shit to clean up, Cro…c'mon, Mom's waitin' for you…"

He said nothing, wallowing in his own guilt and self pity. He said nothing more to his beloved Peixes,or her mother who loved him and honestly was the best parental figure he had. He just brutally assaulted his own father, and he wanted Meenah snuggles. He wanted someone to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay. It didn't even occur to him that it was also what Eridan needed, coming to tug on the Condesce's sleeve, crying still. "M-m-! Miss Peixes!", he pouted, climbing up into her arms and nuzzling close, still holding tight to his plushie as Cronus held himself, smoking quietly and not even daring to look at Meenah. He averted his eyes from her and tried not to sob once more, laying out on the grass, away from the mess and looking up at the sky. It was clear it would take a lot for him to even consider moving. "Go, Meenah", he ordered, voice stern and demanding, considerably less shaky than it was before.

Having taken an exasperated stint to sit with her cranium in her palms and fuckin think for a sec, Condy recoiled slightly at Eridan's gentle though unannounced touch, before sighing and deflating with recognition, ushering the kid into her arms and pushing his little face into her collar to keep his eyes from the scene, even rocking her upper half softly as she mumbled disbelieving curses in what could've sorta been considered a soothing tone. Meenah watched the display from over Cronus's shoulder gingerly, before hardening her expression slightly at his words. "Don't even fuckin try. Don't ya /dare/ try to talk like the big fuckin man now." She grumbled from behind nervously clenched teeth. "Fuckin cod, Cronus, /why/?" She demanded herself, sitting dejectedly beside him in the relatively welcoming softness of the grass, legs pulled slightly into herself, never pulling her eyes off the blood goring his knuckles. "... Eridan needs ya, don't scare 'im, Cro, c'mon..."

Eridan sobbed into her chest, scared as hell, clinging to her expensive dress. "'m- 'm sorry", he sobbed. "I didn't- I ww-ww-", he cried, unable to form complete sentences. Meanwhile, Cronus refused to look at Meenah, hair askew and blood running from his nose. "I'm not. But you don't fuckin' knowv anything about me n pops, okay?", he replied quietly, taking another drag on his cigarette. He lifted up his shirt, showing her scars as his cigarette hung from his lips. "This is from the time he shovwed me into the coffee table. This vwas the time vwhen he came home drunk vwhen I vwas 10. This is the time vwhere-", he went on and on, telling her about each of his scars, skipping over the ones from brawls and the like. Fights with people his own age. "He vwoulda taken it out on Eri if I didn't take em. And today he fuckin' showved up. I don't knowv if you'vwe noticed. but he hasn't been around for a fewv months."

Her face was sunk and grim by the time he finished recounting the abuse, regarding each scar with quiet, stony mortification, waiting for Cronus to finish before averting her eyes to stare at the utter wreck he'd made of his tyrant with a shaky exhale. "Your nose is bleeding…" She mumbled, her unusually reserved tone acknowledging the fact that she couldn't say shit. Wouldn't you have done the same? /You wouldn't have to/ She thought, shifting her stare onto Condy, two pairs of equally vehement pink eyes burning into each other, one gaze ever demanding, the other adamantly defiant. War between the two eldest Piexes was a wild dance that cranked on in perpetually unchallenged comfort. Inconsolable desecration was rare, not out of mercy or affection, but mere mutual convenience. No, she didn't know shit. But her not knowing shit didn't wash the blood off the pavement or quiet the kid's raucous sobbing or make Cronus any less of a fucking maniac for pulling a stunt like this at all. She seemed to have lost some of the edge she had being near Cronus nonetheless, sighing and hunching over where she sat, rubbing her knuckles into her eye sockets. "… I'm sorry, Cro. But beatin the old asshole to death on the front fuckin' lawn ain't the way to help Eri…" A moment of silence, and she had a hand clamped on his, blood and sweat producing a sickly sensation in the gesture that she was too shaken to make a face at. "Much as he had it comin'."

"He came back, Meenah. He wanted to come inside. Eri was inside. He's not gettin' Eri", he stated matter of factly. "Don't fuckin' tell me how to help Eri, okay? You don't have to raise Fef. You have no fuckin' idea what it's like." He kept dragging on his cigarette, not even registering Eri's cries. He had calmed down, snuggling to his plush and Condy, sniffling and getting tired. "I-I dropped my glasses, Miss Condy", he sniffled, holding tight onto her. "I-I'm sorry." Cronus though, was completely fucking done. He looked down at the blood and a storm brewed inside him. He took his pain out out on himself, not anyone else, and that had always been his logic for how he was different than his father. But now, that logic was completely fucking done for. He ran a hand through his hair, coughing sickly again before regaining his composure and sighing quietly. "It's the best thing I coulda done for Eri. What was I gonna do? Call the fucking cops? They'd take Eri away from me, do you fucking understand that?"
[11/23/2013 2:56:10 PM] Tit Slit 2569: "He ain't going into the system. I ain't lettin' that happen", he told her angrily. "I didn't know what he was gonna do. He mighta been drunk. I can't even tell anymore."

"And getting your ass tossed in the joint over the asshole's life is the way to keep him safe?" Meenah muttered bitterly back, knowing she was being driven into a impasse, the fuming anger in his voice making her recoil slightly. "Do you even know how fuckin lucky you are he's still breathing, Cronus?" Bringing her knees to her chest and hiding her face there, she cracked a frustrated scowl. "Eridan watched, for christ's sake…"
"Shhh…" Elegant fingers raked soothingly through the youngest Ampora's tufts of dark hair, a voice with little practice being tender making an effort to quietly hushing him, head shaking softly at his perturbed little mumbles. "It's all good, baby…" Condy purred, in a grim tone that betrayed her words, as she hoisted herself to full stature with a sigh to go retrieve the child's glasses. As her mother stalked past, Meenah glanced up just in time to share another glance with the woman, the vicious expression she flashed registering roughly as "Try not to fuck up more in my absence." Dread smoldered in her gut at the prospect of being left alone on the scene, but there wasn't much she could do but swallow it and do her best to appeal to Cronus. Hoisting herself to her feet with a pained huff of effort, she shot a look to imply he should do the same. "Look, I ain't here to shit talk yer brotherly intuition. But ain't no one bleeding to death on my property. So you can chin the fuck up, or we can take Eri and leave ya here to bond with the old man."

He stared at her blankly. "I could have taken care of it. My old man taught me how to deal with shit like that", he frowned. He finished his cigarette, carelessly flicking it back into his own yard and not Meenah's, standing up and looking at her. "Don't tell me how fuckin' 'lucky' I am, doll." He replied flatly, going past her inside to look for Eridan.
Eri clung to Condy and when he saw Cronus, he buried his face in her chest, silently begging for her to not let him get hit. He approached Eridan, speaking softly. "Eri? C'mere." His voice was low and comforting, a voice he only ever used with Eridan. Eridan nodded his head no, still clinging to Condy. "I don't wwanna!", he whined, holding to his seahorse as well. "You hurt daddy." Cronus sighed. "We need to talk, Eri. I'm not gonna hurt ya." Eridan shook in Condy's arms. "I did that to protect you, Eridan. C'mere. Come talk to Bo." He only said 'bo' because that's often how Eridan pronouced 'bro' and it had become Cronus's informal nickname. Eridan looked up at Condy, then to Cronus. Cronus's face was soft, changing his demeanor quickly to one that was of someone who was in control, just as Eridan had always expected him to be. Even when he wasn't, he pretended he was, making sure Eridan felt safe. He slowly nodded, turning to open his arms to be carried by Cronus. Cronus picked him up, bringing him to his arms tight and kissing his cheek before sitting down on the couch. "Eri... Listen." He knew already that Eridan heard the violence between Cronus and his father before, though Cronus would tell ihm to blast music when it happened so he wouldn't hear. "Papa isn't a good guy. And I know that seems weird, because he hasn't done anything to you. But Bo takes care of you, remember? Bo loves you. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you. So even if Bo does bad things sometimes, it's because he's protecting you, okay?", he reassured him, running a hand through Eridan's hair. Eri looked at him, confused, but nodding. "Is he dead?", Eridan asked, looking away as Cronus bent over to pick up Eridan's glasses. He wiped them off with Eridan's scarf and put them to the side. "No, he's not. But Bo is going to protect you, no matter what. Do you trust me?", Cronus asked, leaning back on the couch, Eridan snuggling to his broad chest with a nod. "Bo loves you." Eridan was quiet for a few moments. He hesitated. He hesitated far longer than what made Cronus comfortable. "I lovve you too." Cronus frowned a bit. "Don't be scared of me, Eri. Okay?", he practically begged, Eridan still shaking but nuzzling to his brother's arms without another word. Cronus held him until he calmed down, and Eridan was done crying. "Are they gonna take me away, Bo?", he asked, playing with Cronus's dogtags. Cronus sighed quietly. "No, Eri, I'm not gonna let that happen, do you understand me?", he asked. "Don't you ever say that. Ever." He held Eridan close, like if he were to let go the foster care system would walk in right then and rip him away out of his life.