Scourge's Note: Um, Matt has foul language. A lot of it. We have been considering upping the rating to M, as the violence of the tale will be increasing... and because Matt's mouth is filthy. We don't want anybody traumatized into reporting us. xD But we'll see.
BEFORE MY DRIFT-WOOD FIRE
This was all my fault.
You brought me death, and it's everything I wanted
It's the wrong side of fear that kept me out
-Dear Death, Emery
They stood awkwardly, each of them staring at the other, wondering what could have brought them so far from their own homes. They faced each other with expressions of mistrust and curiosity—after all, it surprised them that there were even seven within the prestigious special operations unit. And not a single one of them felt they were talented enough to be standing there, that their training had been comprehensive enough or their commanders had been competent enough. (Perhaps the man who called himself Matsuda felt differently about his skills, but the rest would disagree heartily.)
As they stood in their semi-circle, they all thought the same thing, but only the man called Matsuda had the nerve to voice the thought. "Why are we all here early?"
None of them answered, but instead opted to shift nervously, cough in their hands, and mutter unintelligible sentences. Each one avoided the other's gaze before going back into their own tents, so as to avoid the awkward conversations that would ensue.
What could they say, after all? That they'd been fired, bored, that their daughters had died, or perhaps that they had actually wanted to be in the military? God forbid any of them had chosen to be there of their own free will. So each of them sat, and stewed on what they might have been forced to say. Each one let out a sigh of relief and said, "Thank God I avoided that conversation."
For a military special operations unit, they were without much finesse.
Light Yagami wore the expression of death the day he walked into camp. His eyes were without emotion as he marched toward his tent (because it was indeed a kind of march—the precision in the way he walked was self-evident). He ignored the other members of the special operations unit flocking about him attempting to say hello, then turning away abruptly at the coldness in his eyes. The mask he wore did not conceal his eyes or his mouth, making his expression perfectly visible.
He stopped before the flapping piece of paper, listing out each of their positions in dark English letters. He blinked before reaching out hesitantly for the piece of paper. He wasn't reading it, not really, but he saw the letters and eventually they formed themselves. They were practically jumping out at his inactive mind, begging, screaming to be heard. Just like the rest of the world, he thought grimly. Why should he give them the time of day?
"So you must be Light Yagami."
Light turned to find a slight red-haired man standing next to him, regarding the paper in amusement or distaste. Suddenly, Light found himself listening to the man ramble on to the point where his words were nearly incoherent.
"Aren't you a bit young to be captain of an A Team? Well, I suppose I'm a bit young myself. What are you, though—nineteen? Eighteen? God, I hated those years, I hated every year of my life…. You know what, I just hate my life. And it looks like you do, too; great to see we have so much in common. You can call me Hans, I work in Intelligence. And you don't actually care, do you? Good, I don't care either. What was I talking about… Goddamnit, I'm going to go get some coffee."
Suddenly, the man turned on his heel and headed off in the opposite direction; his back was straight and his gangly legs were stretched before him as he practically ran into one of the white tents. (Light was at first surprised by the haphazard organization of the tents—as if the people living in them had never set up a camp before.)
Light Yagami was not born an average person; his emotions were always a tad off kilter. And so depression for Light Yagami was not quite what it was supposed to be. Depression should have made him like Misa Amane, staring at a blank wall, thinking about nothing at all. Depression should have driven him mad. But somewhere in his mind, his subconscience refused to be dubbed as insane; whether it was pride or sheer stubbornness, he couldn't say. So instead of insanity, he decided to climb a bit higher on his pedestal, to perhaps get a better view of the sunrise. Or maybe he just wanted to be able to see whose face he spit on.
"Coffee…" he said slowly tasting the words on his tongue, before turning back to where the man had disappeared. He closed his eyes, feeling the cogs in his mind clinking along, creaking with the anger and repressed guilt.
On his pedestal, Light Yagami could almost make out the guilty horror he should have been feeling. It looked somewhat like a black hole—a fascinating, never-ending black hole. Inside, he imagined, there were piles of corpses. They had to put the bodies somewhere when the dumpsters over-flowed.
His throat felt dry, like he had been drinking sand for the last twenty-four hours. He hadn't found any water on his pedestal, yet; he couldn't even find any more sand. But still, the view was nice, even if it was somewhat morbid. Above the clouds, the fires almost looked like stars blooming into life, some mad constellation waving about in the night wind. But still, water would have been nice.
"So… you don't do much, do you?"
Suddenly, Light felt his eyes snap open again; he turned to face the new speaker. This one had a pair of green goggles on over his mask and appeared to be engrossed in his PSP, his thumbs flying between buttons. Light found himself amused by merely watching the young man play his video game.
"You just going to stand there all day? What are you, some zombie-statue? You ever played Resident Evil? Because you aren't nearly as frightening as those zombies, let me tell you," the young man muttered sullenly, shifting his head so that his red bangs moved from the goggle lenses.
Light simply stared, head tilted to the side, watching in complete mental stillness as the man continued to grumble.
"Right, well, are you deaf or something? Because I'm damn sure they don't let deaf guys in the military, or even mute guys. You've been standing here for two freaking hours. You have serious problems."
Light didn't blink, didn't move as he watched the boy with the goggles stand in front of him. Somewhere, the rational Light Yagami, trapped somewhere as he was between a rock and a hard place, decided it might be time to actually say something, or step down from the pedestal—if only to grab something to eat and drink. Light wasn't so sure he wanted to go back down there. It was dark on the ground; there were fires and rivers of blood. He wasn't so sure he wanted to drown down there anymore. Because he would drown if he swam in that river again.
Light Yagami preferred it if he didn't have to look too closely at the world below. It looked far more beautiful from a distance, where gaping, jagged holes almost looked as if they were meant to be, as if they were natural. God, Light felt, was watching from a distance. Why should Light not follow his example? One half of his mind mentioned the fact that Light wasn't God; the other half mentioned that he hated God, but Light ignored both of them and felt the breeze rush through his fingertips and the sun rise in the east.
"That's it, you're just retarded."
Suddenly, the pedestal collapsed and he was falling again—but he wasn't falling, he was jumping. And he was seething; he wanted to kill someone. His eyes opened. He felt his head whip down and his voice rise from his sand-covered throat.
Rational Light was rapidly firing insults, greasing the wheels in his mind while spitting out the occasional curse; the other half of Light was just plain insulted, and between sulking and moping, also decided it was time to get things moving again. The pedestal had collapsed and they were both drowning in the river of blood, but they were so focused on drowning the boy in goggles first that they couldn't taste the metallic liquid pouring down their own throats.
But the darker side of Light, the more violent side, was growing taller. Rational Light was weak, broken down by the world, broken down by everything taken away from him. Rational Light was fading, watching the world pass by him, the hopelessness in his eyes. Wrathful Light was a fighter; he was the one who would survive, he was the one who would press on and would come out ahead, with Kira's heart beating in his hand.
Wrathful Light wanted divine blood; wrathful Light wanted vengeance; wrathful Light wanted mercy to be discarded. There was no more time for mercy, no more time for empathy—wrathful Light knew that. He wanted blood.
Catherine applied meat to the boy's wounds the way she would put roast beef on a French Dip Sandwich—she slapped it on his face with furious gusto, causing him to wince and mutter a few vulgarities before quieting and cursing once more. She smiled as she watched him cover his purple eye with the slab of beef. He was still wincing, and his other eye was twitching, but he looked better without the goggles. Sadly, the meat would taste a little funny later due to the fact that it was stained by his mask, some blood, and a portion of his eye. Perhaps if she drowned it in garlic, nobody would be able to tell.
"He was standing there for two fucking hours and then he goes fucking nuts and beats the fucking shit out of me. Jesus, I'm fucking fourteen—what kind of an asshole does that to a kid? Isn't this what child-protection agencies are for? What do they do for a living? Eat shit?"
Catherine spent her time humming so as to block out the profanities boiling over in her kitchen. Catherine wasn't fond of swearing; her father had sworn too much…. She reached for her steak knife, then placed it aside on the table and reached for a batch of dough instead. Rolling it, scrunching it, meshing it, molding it—the nicotine had fouled up his language more than enough, but the words were just as rotten as his yellowing teeth.
"Your I.D. says you're eighteen years old, Matt," mentioned Catherine while molding the dough into a deformed face and crushing it against the palm of her hand yet again. She enjoyed seeing the shapes in the dough—like a sculptor, she assumed, she could make her bread-creations come to life.
"Do I look like a fucking eighteen-year old to you, bitch? Does this fucking meat even do anything? I still feel like shit." He turned his one open green eye towards her as if she were the stupidest person he had ever laid his eyes upon.
Catherine's eyes drifted towards the steak knife longingly—what was one less army-brat in the world? No, excessive use of steak knives was what got her fired in the first place. She must remain calm and breath slowly.
Catherine decided, when she found Matt ignoring the world for his Game Boy and other electronics, that she didn't particularly like him. His breath was rancid, he was almost always smoking some cheap cigarette, drinking from some dirty bottle, and saying something vulgar and disgusting. Catherine didn't like his red hair, she didn't like his clothes—she didn't like the arrogant expression hiding behind his goggles and mask. Catherine didn't remember being so arrogant when she was fourteen; she remembered lots of pies (that was her pie year) and lots of customers in her parents' restaurant. She frowned, rolling the amiable dough in concentration as she searched her memory for some hint of Matt's self-confidence.
No, nothing but pies and knives.
"I don't look eighteen, either…" mused Catherine while staring at the sulking preteen, watching as he attempted to play one of his video games one-handed and one-eyed. Another curse left his mouth as his character was sliced into bits… by knives, no doubt.
"Yeah, well you're fucking ancient, bitch. How long do I have to sit here for? Don't I have better things to do? This is a special operations team, right? Shouldn't we be killing some Kira-bastards?" Matt rapidly pressed the buttons next to the portable device's screen. Catherine could almost smell dead cigarettes infesting his lungs; she could almost see their bent corpses littering her old home, could almost hear her parent's wheezing and see the smoke painting the walls.
Shouldn't we be killing some Kira-bastards?
Catherine saw the glint of the knife, but her hands were too filled with dough to act. She sculpted away, a smile curling across her lips as she took in the meaning of his words. Catherine liked irony, and she wasn't sure that the red-headed boy could catch the scent. It almost smelled like cigarettes.
Catherine would like to kill some Kira-bastards—she'd like it very much.
She ripped the dough-monster in half and shoved her left hand into his stinking, rotting mouth, gritting her teeth and reminding herself to wash her hands later. She could never quite get rid of the black filth—she could see it just below the surface of her translucent skin. She released the dough and ripped out her hand, leaving him mumbling and gagging on half of her dough-creation—gagging on half of her edible heart.
"The Pillsbury Doughboy likes you too, Matt." Catherine grinned and reached for her knife, raising it under the tent's single dangling light-bulb so that it caught the yellowing light. She stroked the dull end pensively and watched the boy's eye widen as he stood and ran out of the tent, steak still clutched to his face.
She'd have to go get the meat later; she hoped it wouldn't taste smoked.
Scourge's Note: Title change. Yeah. Well, we've hated the title since... two and a half years ago, but hadn't wanted to change it 'cause we were at the "...let's leave the stupid mistakes we made three years ago THE HECK ALONE," 'cause the effort to fix all of them would be enormous. Someone reviewed on the matter recently, and we were kinda like, "Yeah, why the heck not." If said reviewer is reading this, well, I'm afraid you'll find that the title isn't any less obscure. At least it's in English, this time. (And it is, essentially, a reference to brain rot. So yeah.)