Deviant

Chapter One: Tearaway

Finally, dawn pulled the heaving bulk of light from the fierce grip of sleep, edging soft, golden strands across the horizon which came gradually to rest against the pale, tear-stained cheeks of a terrified child, huddled beneath an ever-changing indigo sky, fathomless in the depths of an incredible complexity. Tango had been so bitterly convinced that the slow taunt of midnight's hubris was never coming to an end, fears that had plagued her throughout her childhood resurfacing once again to shape demons from the bland vistas of cloud draped across the sky. The night had been a long one, or at least it had felt that way, but she had barely slept at all, tied too closely to insomnia and the nightmares carrying her away to worlds locked within the corners of her mind.

It had become a constant free-fall, the darkness holding out a terror so deep it seemed to crawl straight into her veins, turning everything she saw into an enemy, but now the morning's light was here and whilst the respite it offered from the pain was slight, it was a lifeline that she clutched to nonetheless with the little mental strength she had left. At least she could breathe a little more easily now, free from the constant reign of shadows and a deep-seated fear of the unknown that she couldn't seem to shift.

She was still lost and alone, shivering beneath a combination of penetrating cold and sheer distress.

X-Ray was still dead.

And nothing, not even the sunlight, could take that reality away from her.

The dawn couldn't bring X-Ray back to life. Nothing could. Not her prayers, not her pleas, not her dreams or love or memories, and God knew she'd had enough of each, desperate in her yearning and the driving need to have her best friend back by her side. Not even the wilderness she stood in, carved seemingly from every breath it must have stolen from those who looked upon it, was enough to distract her from the dull gloom settling over her, caging her in depression.

Moodily, she kicked out at the floor, watching the dirt form hazy clouds within the air, each one defined, upon closer inspection, in delicately intricate swirls, unique in shape and colour and beauty. Bright, hopeful, drifting on the sigh of some long-forgotten dream, radiating life and light through the window of her tears. With a sigh, she drew her knees up closer to her chest and closed her eyes, shutting out all traces of the outside world.

Through the shadows of her mind, all she saw was X-Ray.

All she heard was the softness of his voice.

He consumed her.

He was everything she needed to be whole again. The only real friend she'd ever had. The only one who had ever bothered to get to know her, Tango, the face behind the masked charade she used to hide herself away, and because of that, the only one who'd ever been able to hurt her. This was what happened when you let people get close, when your walls shattered, what S.T.O.R.M had warned her against from the very beginning, as far back as she could remember. Don't trust anyone. Keep your heart as closely guarded as your life. Even those you considered your friends could betray you in the space of a second. Love brought nothing but pain, and pain struck a fatal blow.

A slow, steady ache was building up behind her forehead, and she instinctively wrinkled her brow into a frown that fought the fire, hiding her face within the sanctuary of her hands to muffle the sudden sob she gave. "Where are you, X-Ray? Why did you have to die?"

No answer. A bitter truth spoken soundlessly from far beneath the ground, the darkest depths of grief.

When she looked up again, both her palms and cheeks were damp, and all she had left were the jewels of pain that glittered in the corners of her eyes. Pushing herself upwards on trembling legs, she wiped her face angrily and took a first shaky step forwards.

One step became two steps.

Two steps became several.

Several became too many steps to count, and then she was lost again, every tree and overrun footpath merging together until each appeared identical, leaving her with no idea where she was, where she was going or even the way she had come in the first place. An endless circle of despair. Barely conscious to the world around her, she focused everything she had on the repetitive strain of walking, because without this distraction, something to channel her attention into, she had nothing to devote herself to but sorrow.

Somewhere along the line she had started to run, a fluid, graceful motion that lifted her out of the fog, past the nightmare hallucinations and sleepless dreams. Running from the monsters that grew inside of her, trailing in her wake with smirks ravaging their twisted faces. Monsters of regret, of memory, of loss, chasing her with arms outstretched, each one smiling wickedly and drawing new horrors from her soul.

Warwing smashing into X-Ray, claws driving deep into his chest. X-Ray lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to a seething sea of wires and machinery. The cold lifelessness of his hand. The steady monotone of the heart monitor as life failed him, his silent lungs, silent smile, endless, broken silence...and the week that followed, in which X-Ray's replacement had been introduced and everything had been expected to return to normal.

Normal was something Tango had all but forgotten.

Normal was a family, friendships, a real childhood, a life she had never experienced.

X-Ray was the closest thing to normal she had ever known.

Now he was gone.

And normal had pretty much been thrown out of the window.

The monsters were getting closer, arms held out wide, sucking her into a lethal embrace.

She wanted to scream, but frigid air chased the breath from her throat.

The wind teased at her hair, bony fingers separating each individual strand, ruffling it into a tangle of silk and clear-cut teardrops stolen from the sky. The feel of its touch was so achingly familiar; the breeze could just as easily have been X-Ray instead, grinning as he messed her hair affectionately and then pulled her into a hug, something he'd done many times before when she was in a bad mood and he wanted to see her smile.

One, two, three, four. She counted her footfalls, the only regularity she had left in this world of corrosion and trivial insanity. One, two, three, four. Solid. Steady. Soothing. Like the sound of a heartbeat. Like X-Ray's heartbeat when he brought her close to him and held her as she cried, reassuring her that it was okay to be afraid, even of something as petty and childish as the dark. A heart that would never beat again.

Now that she thought about it, she was scared of quite a lot of things, really. More than she would ever admit to.

Like love.

Like friendship.

Like a future without X-Ray, without a focal point, without rhyme or reason or meaning.

Not that anyone else would ever know that. She was Specialist Tango, cruel and disdainful, thoroughly deserving of the respect she commanded, and she hadn't earned that position through compassion. Cold. Indifferent. It was all she knew how to be, all Charlemagne had ever let her be, the only way S.T.O.R.M had taught her.

But for how much longer?

Everything else had changed, so why not that?

Charlemagne no longer had any control over her. X-Ray was dead and Kilo, as Warwing's controller, was living with the ferocious guilt of manslaughter. She was alone and shattered, a rebel, a runaway, lost in the middle of this bleakly beautiful forest, leaving behind something she'd never understood to walk straight into a dragon's lair, a world of bloodied, breathless miracles.

It had started to rain, droplets soaking hungrily into her uniform, forming what felt like a layer of frost pressed up against her skin. She held back the shiver that immediately followed, even now refusing to let her insufferable weakness shine through. It had been instilled in her since birth, during every training session, every meeting, every mission; to be anything less than perfect could be fatal. Emotion was nothing but a death sentence.

Tango had become an expert at locking herself away, and she wasn't ready to let the ashes of her masquerade go just yet, clutching their warmth as close to her body as she dared. Not now, when she needed those ashes so desperately, perhaps more than she ever had before.

"Tango, duck!"

It was like being stung.

X-Ray.

How could it be anyone else?

His voice.

Undeniably his voice.

His soul.

Innately, inherently X-Ray.

She was on fire. Life had sparked something within those ashes, introduced flames to her heart; they spurred on a reaction to those words that came barely seconds too late. A low-hanging branch smashed against her skull, knocking her backwards, and as the initial blast of pain faded she was left with no more than a fragmented dizziness and a sensation of warm wetness.

She forced them both down, into the depths of her being. Didn't flinch. Didn't react in any way other than to shake it off and carry on running, now a little more alert to her surroundings, with one eye keeping a close watch on the branches forming a gnarled roof above her head.

She was slowly going insane. That voice hadn't been X-Ray; how could it be? He was dead. Gone. Not coming back. No, it was just her fatigued imagination playing callous tricks on her, reminding her that getting hung up on the past like this would ultimately be her downfall. She was still Specialist Tango, in soul if no longer in name. She didn't grieve. She didn't feel pain. Emotionless, unfeeling, blood that ran cold through her veins and separated her burning heart from every other facet of her masked persona. A necessary evil, some might call it, in her line of work. Survival of the fittest, and she was nothing if not a survivor.

Specialist Tango was done with showing weakness.

Beyal found himself frowning, pulling his cloak a little tighter around himself and moving closer to the dying embers of the fire in the hope that he could salvage a little of their feeble warmth. The night was nearing its end, but despite the weak light hovering just above the horizon, timidly heralding the approach of tomorrow, the air remained as cold - glacial, even - as it had been four hours ago in the incomprehensible folds of midnight. Even the cloak he wore, built to withstand sub-zero temperatures and exposure at high altitudes, wasn't enough to block out the bloodless whispers of dew, ice crawling into his body; the bite of the morning air was an entirely different kind of freezing to the numbing mountain velvet he was used to.

Trust him, of all people, to end up with what was quite possibly the worst time to keep watch.

He had been awake since midnight, fighting to stay alert against the seductive lure of sleep, and the urge to slip into meditation's beatitude was as strong as ever, becoming more powerful with each minute that passed. Personally, he couldn't even see the point of staying up, but according to Chase the absence of S.T.O.R.M over the past few weeks was reason enough for alarm, which didn't quite make sense in Beyal's mind. Didn't they have enough to worry about whilst actually face-to-face with their enemies, let alone when they weren't around? Keeping watch in this way felt almost like tempting fate.

Sometimes he wished he had some of the confrontational aptitude his friends seemed to possess so readily - at least then he might have gotten a little more sleep across these last couple of nights. It frustrated him, really, constantly being the underdog, but what could he do about it? There were far worse trials to be suffered in life, and to complain seemed...petty, even selfish, especially when he was certain he could handle the cold nights better than the others after years spent living in torrential wind and snow.

Besides, it wasn't all that bad. The almost-silence made it peaceful, his only real companion the fluted tones of birdsong, and the danger element wasn't any particular concern; he had enough faith in his Monsuno sight and intuitive nature to believe he would be alerted long before any action became necessary, leaving him ample time to prepare. The feeling of absolute solitude aroused nostalgia from deep inside him, memories of simpler days when all he knew was the mountains, the prophecy nothing but a distant dream that lay within a far-off shroud of mirrored legend.

The thoughts made him feel strange, but he couldn't bring himself to fend them off. He immersed himself in them, for they were all he had left of Master Ey.

Well, he tried.

But something disturbed him. Maybe the light. It was...odd, for want of a better word, too pale, the colours all wrong, hiding a definite hint of unease, as though everything he saw was out of sync. The chill creeping through his veins stemmed from more than just the bitterly low temperatures and the feeling of being alone. It was unsettling, to say the least, his fight or flight instinct balanced on a wavering edge of fear.

Even more so when he heard the noise, faint and seemingly quite a way off, but nonetheless signifying the presence of an unseen threat large enough to be dangerous. It was short, sharp, ominously similar to a crack of brittle bone, leaving him suddenly tense and acutely aware of every little movement around him, however many times he told himself he was just being paranoid. Part of him felt a need to investigate, to be certain that everything was as it should be, but the rest of him, somehow still fairly calm, knew that wasting energy on something so pointless was silly. If it really was danger of any sort, he would surely be better off here, closer to his friends, his backup, but in all likelihood it was nothing more than a harmless animal, or even just his imagination.

With another sigh, as quiet as he could make it so as not to disturb the others, he sat back and scuffed a ridge in the dirt with his foot. Slowly, the tension was beginning to drain from his body, and already he was mentally berating himself for being so-

He stopped dead.

There it was again. That sound.

Only this time it was closer, much closer, louder and continuous. A patter of heavy footsteps in quick succession.

Unmistakably human.

He let the burst of adrenaline push him to his feet, whirling around to face the intruder as the ends of his cloak flew out behind him, automatically reaching for Arachnablade's core. His other arm was held close to his chest, an defensive reaction that seemed to have become more and more instinctive as of late, far more finely tuned than he was entirely comfortable with - a process of adjustment that had been taking place, slowly but surely, ever since meeting Chase and the rest of Core-Tech, now that he thought about it.

Then darkness exploded from light, shadows rendering the bushes to splinters, the instantly familiar colours taking shape in his mind before he could register anything other than fear. White, black and yellow; S.T.O.R.M colours - before he'd even put a name to the figure who now stood before him, his brain had already identified the danger, one hand firmly secure around the core in readiness of what he was sure must be to come.

The girl in front of him, who had originally been doubled over with her hands splayed across her knees, locked in a desperate battle with her own lungs, straightened up and looked him dead in the eyes, pushing a lock of dark, sweaty hair out of her face.

Vulnerability.

That was the first thing he saw there.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't that.

A combination of pain and sheer terror, raw and wild, untamed. The eyes of a wounded tigress, crying out for the touch of salvation.

Endlessly enticing, a realm of bittersweet fantasy.

For a moment he hesitated, suddenly uncertain, unsure where these thoughts were coming from or what he should do about them. What they meant. Whether they even meant anything in the first place.

And that moment was all she needed to react.

Tango's eyes hardened, the consternation that had once paraded dominance there now vanished, concealed behind a wall of sightless stone. Despite her flushed cheeks, tousled hair, the marks of tears that still lingered on her face, she seemed...proud. Tough. Like a warrior.

"Hello, monk boy," she glanced at him, his battle-readiness, his tension, then brought her hand to her waist to pull out her own core, a strangely wistful air overcoming her for the barest fraction of a second as her fingers brushed against it. She hid it well, almost as soon as it had appeared, but there was a hint of desperation to the voice that rang, cold and clear and sensual, across the space between them. "Ironjaw! Launch!"

Something here was wrong, something that he couldn't quite place.

But it didn't matter now.

Now was the time for fighting, not running.

"Arachnablade! Launch!"

Hey, guys! Well, I'm back again, darker than ever with some more angst for y'all to cry over - this one is going to be about 12 chapters long, and will get very gory later on. Because of this, the rating will go up to an M part-way through. If you're not happy with reading this sort of thing, that's fine, and I may end up posting a separate, censored version of those chapters if too many people would be put off. Just so clarify, there won't be any smut, but graphic violence, some fairly gruesome murders, bad language and implied suicide.

Thanks to Glowblade998, my amazing beta for this fic, fellow RPer and close friend - you're amazing, and I really appreciate your help!