WHEEEEEEE ALL ABOARD THE TRAUMA TRAINNNNN~
~Angel and Hel~
Chapter Fourteen: Smoke and Mirrors
-.-.-
Ash was struggling to keep herself together. Everything was on fire, everything was dead, everything was dying, Aphoth was starting to go batshit crazy, the only things still alive were kinda dying or already dead and -
She slapped herself a few times, blinking lots. "C'mon, you can do this!" she yelled at herself. It's not like anybody could hear her if she just blocked it a bit. "THE WORLD IS ENDING STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING BITCH ABOUT IT!" she shrieked. "Okay. I can do this. Just gotta - gotta keep fighting."
Talking to herself was the first sign of insanity, she'd read somewhere. Talking to herself and getting an answer was definitely a sign of insanity.
But hey, the city was fucking burning and her sisters were probably dead and her family gone but HEY THERE'S GRIMM TO SLAY RIGHT? THIS IS WHAT SHE'D ALWAYS WANTED, A CHANCE TO LET LOOSE and oh, who was she even trying to fool.
"Hey, Aphy, do you even know where we are?" she asked, feeling tired beyond belief. And probably hungover.
"ThEReaReasoSsOMaNYMarKETgarDENSQuaRESaNdHiLLs."
"Aphy you are a wonderful, amazing, and truly good friend who's pretty great in bed but will you please stop yelling gibberish at me?" Ash whined, pulling her stumbling friend/girlfriend/whatever into a tight hug.
Aphoth whined, closing her eyes. The darkness that had been leaking from them slowed. "T-trying. Hurts. So many hurtinG."
"Think about drumming." Ash rubbed her back. "The constant beats. Nice, soft, soothing, consistent drumming."
There were corpses shambling around everywhere. They were all whispering. Some were yelling. The streets around here were actually clear of Grimm. It was amazing what a shuffling crowd with no sense of self-preservation could achieve through violence. The streets were black with leaking darkness, the soldiers marching in time to the beat Aphoth was drumming on her leg.
She'd started with waltz time, which is what she normally used when things got too much. Now even that wasn't enough and she was doing some sort of time signature Ash didn't even recognise, a rippling shifting thing. Nine eight, maybe? No, she was switching every other bar. It was chaos.
Like the city.
Millions had lived here. They were near the shore, on the east side. The high-rises started turning into skyscrapers. A couple of Sky-Cruiser docks were still in functional condition. Or, that was what Ash could see when she looked up and actually tried to focus. The noises were starting to overwhelm her, too.
She gently lead Aphy into a store, probably an ice-cream shop by the looks of it, and sat her down on the couch before hopping over the bar and pouring a slushy drink thingy for her. She liked blackberry, right? Ash liked orange. Orange was good.
Aphoth slurped at the drink slowly. Her teeth staining black and purple. She was crying now. "There are so many. There are so many. Oh god. Oh god."
"Shhh, it's okay. Just focus on the drink and - and - let them fight."
Ash was worried. Aphy had never taken control of this many before. She'd also never had this kind of feedback from them before either. She was shivering like she was on a bad trip, her veins stark against her skin. Some of the blood vessels in her eyes had popped earlier and Ash had almost screamed.
"Macro. Not micro," she advised. "Yummmy smooothieee…" She even took a long slurp of her own and ow ow ow head hurty! "Hurty… icey… thingy."
Apthoth was rubbing her own head too. "CoLd."
"Hey… where do you think the others are? Went. Mrgh." Ash flopped her free hand about, before leaning in to wrap it around Aphy's shaking shoulders. "Any idea where?" She was being awfully nonchalant about this. Just taking the deaths of everyone she knew and loved in her stride and oh god they were all gone how was she supposed to -
Happy thoughts. Think of Aphy. Thing of what little she remembered of last night with Aphy.
She was fairly certain alcohol had gotten involved. She didn't usually have blank spots like that after a binge night. What little she could remember was embarrassing, but good. Very good, in some spots. Downright scandalous.
OH.
FUCK.
She'd muted the General.
"OhgodwhyamIsuchanidiot…." she moaned, burying her face in Aphy's neck. It was fluffy. Raiding the clothing store had been so worth it.
Aphoth turned weakly to wrap an arm around her. "Not an idiot. YoU dIDn'T feEL The cLaWs." She was crying again. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she'd never seen her get this bad, ever. It was terrifying.
"Aphy?" She choked back a sob. "Please stay with me Aphy you know I can't - can't - fuck please don't go…"
"Hurts," Aphy whimpered. "Hurts so much. Can feel all their hurtings. Didn't know I could hurt this much."
"'S not s'posed to hurt." Ash frowned, blinking heavily. Maybe she wasn't hung over. Maybe she was just still dunk. Drunk. Funky. "Think - think 'bout me. Think 'bout you. Don' think 'bout them."
Orrrrrr she'd accidentally put the wrong stuff in her smoothie?
"FeEls wRong." Aphy was shaking her head. "Webs and wEbS. Details like spidery little chatter things."
"Think 'bout the forest. Not the trees." Ash blurted, closing her eyes and leaning on Aphy just a little bit more… her head felt so heavy…
A crash and a thud shook her awake and she screamed. There was a fuckhuge sword embedded in the floor and a shield smashed into a wall and a giant suit of armour impaled in the… things. Like the shelves and stuff. And she was still screaming. Okay, time to stop screaming.
The armour growled and picked itself up, rolling its shoulders before grabbing the shield, the hilt of the fuckhuge sword, and simply charging out the way it came in with heavy, thundering steps.
It was all over in a matter of seconds.
Aphoth was still sitting and rocking back and forth at the counter. She was muttering to herself. "AshwakeupAshwakeupAshwakeupAshwakeup -"
"I… am awake?" Ash blinked, adrenaline rushing through her system. "I mean that… happened." She gestured at the hole the armour had left. And the giant streak gauged out of the floor. And the chunk of the wall that was missing. "Aphy are you okay?"
"More ok? Maybe? I fell asleep too, barely even noticed it, and my semblance stopped working. Which is why there's any fighting going on out there at all. No-one left to attract the Grimm though." Aphoth shook her head. "Still hurts a bit though. Can still feel them. Sort of."
"Heyyy, you're back!" Ash grinned widely, throwing out her arms and wrapping Aphy up in a really big cuddly hug and trying to smooch her. "An', I don't really understand anything you just said but it's nice to have you back."
They were, at best, only passingly aware of the fight going on outside the store between the giant armour and the Grimm thing.
Her little necromancer buddy wriggled a bit in her grasp and accepted smoochings only on the cheek. "Ash, we need to get out there. Try and save people. We've wasted enough time asleep."
"But I'm wide awake!" Ash pouted, pointedly ignoring the things shaking themselves off the shelves with each jarring impact.
"We need to be more awake, we need - we need coffee." Aphoth clutched her head. "We need lotsa coffee."
Ash looked outside. "There's… coffee of doom across the -"
It was promptly crushed by the armour wrestling a Manticore to the ground. Punch, punch, punch.
She looked the other way. "Uhh… I know a place across the road from a cute little Dust shop?"
-.-.-
"Thanks… for looking after me…" Vivian mumbled, almost sleepily. Titian couldn't tell if she was talking to her or the sword. Swords? Modern weapons were so irritatingly over the top.
"You're a teammate."
"Even after seeing… that... thing?"
Titian frowned. "Semblances are odd. I would - question how it works, though."
"We all have our demons inside." Vivian gave her a dazed half-smirk. "Sometimes I let mine out to playyyy."
Titian snorted, and looked round at the ruined streets, up and beyond to the smoking wreckage of the mountain. "Did it have fun?"
The girl in red shuddered, barely holding herself up and clutching her sword tightly in her hand as she leaned on Titian. "That's the scary part. It did."
The smouldering ruins of a cafe belched smoke reeking of bitter wood ash and - meat. There'd been people inside. And over the top of it was draped the thick smell of molten metal, with a sharper tang to it, like cloves. Like how the red girl had smelled when she was… not herself.
"Oh hey, that's mine!" Vivian grinned excitedly, waving her arm and swinging her sword in gesture at it. It being the huge smoking wing that Titian now noticed was draped over the cafe. She'd initially mistaken it for part of the roof, but now she could see the molten blood dripping from it, fuelling the flames.
"How'd it get cut off?"
"Bloody Wyrm bit it." Vivian grumbled. "The bugger took my arm, too!" she exclaimed, waving her stump. Or more accurately, rubbing Titian with it. Perhaps she was capable of standing on her own now. Titian carefully began to disengage herself - and Vivian started collapsing. No, closer watch was required for now.
"Your emotions seem very stable." Titian paused. "That was not criticism. It's vital in this scenario."
"They are?" Vivian seemed rather surprised by this revelation, looking down at herself. "I thought the world was ending."
"I meant - " Titian considered how to put it. "While you may think that, you are not allowing it to influence you to draw the Grimm to you unnecessarily." She closed her eyes, spoke quieter. "And the world will not end. No extinction is ever complete. There's always something that survives."
"Heyy…" Vivian stumbled, the dazed look returning to her features. "Are you in the White Fang? You seem like the kinda gal who'd be in the White Fang."
Titian shot her a look. "They know nothing of what's necessary for Faunus. Prattling on about peaceful change and slow progress while thousands die, only taking necessary action against one goddamn company!" She did her best to quash her anger.
"Soo… yes?" Vivian asked cluelessly. Either she was every bit the ditz she acted, or her mental faculties had yet to catch up with her train of thought.
"Once, yes. Their… toothlessness drove me away though. A 'White Fang' indeed." She looked at the streets around them, and a memory flew back to her. "Come. There's a safe place near here."
"A White Fang is a fang unstained by blood." Vivian said innocently, as though it were meaningful. "A Red Fang is one stained by blood. A Pink Fang is from someone who doesn't brush."
"And that makes far more sense than the reason for our name. No fang remains unstained. It's not in its nature. Not in ours. The Faunus need a place to grow, to discover themselves separately from humanity, which will never happen while we cling to their society. Your society." She'd forgotten who she was talking to for a second.
"Then what happened with Menagerie?" Vivian seemed rather confused. Her state seemed quite drunken, though lacking any whiff of alcohol. Blood loss. Damnit.
"It was a state imposed on us by humanity, not true separation. Not a society crafted by our own hands. Like wolves in captivity."
"Still… could have been a chance. A whole island to yourselves." Vivian smiled dreamily. "Like a tropical resort, only… fluffy." She obviously had no idea what she was talking about.
"You have no idea what you're talking about." Down - this alley, yes. There was the graffiti. Encoded, of course. Well, relatively encoded. Washing still flapping in the breeze overhead. No blood here. Either no-one had tried to get to the safehouse, or everyone had made it in safely. Or something had broken in with them. Titian was not optimistic.
Vivian started humming a tune. It sounded familiar. Like -
Campfires, and the dark licking at the edges of the light there's something out there, laughter, someone's watching you -
"Stop that."
"Huh?" she looked up in surprise. Distracted. "I'm not a nutter…" she slurred. "Jus' needa nap…"
"We can have a nap inside." Titian ran her fingers over the door. It was just a door to the building ahead of them, but on it was a second lock, and disengaging that would open the real door. They changed the tumblers regularly though, almost certainly had since she'd left. She pressed her ear to the metal, trying to hear the clicks as she slipped a claw into the lock.
Click. Rattle rattle. She crooked her finger a little, trying to get at the pins. Just one more -
A satisfying final click, and the door swung open.
That wasn't meant to happen.
The lock disengaging was meant to send a signal via a small transmitter built into the door. Meant to open the storm cellar under the flat metal plates to her left. Not simply open the door. The lock didn't even have a bolt, normally, but she could see one in place.
Had they - had they changed the system entirely since she'd left? What could have happened to provoke that?
"I may need some help." Carefully dragging Vivian with her, she moved to the metal plate in the ground, knelt next to it. It looked the same. The same patches of rust, bolts and screws in the same place. "How strong is the metal of your sword?"
"Yes!" Vivian proudly announced, brandishing her sword above her head for a moment before her grip failed and it stabbed into the ground right next to her foot. "Oopsies."
"I don't think yes is a strength, but I may need your help in removing this - "
"HIYA!" the madwoman picked up her sword and stabbed it into the plate at an angle before slipping and falling to the ground with flailing arms. "I'm okay!"
Titian sighed. She clearly was not in the best of positions to be helping. "You are injured. I simply need you to place your blade under the edge of the plate."
Vivian blinked several times before flopping to the ground limply.
Shit. Titian scrambled to her, checking her pulse. Weak. Thready. Her back was soaked in blood, a second injury, separate from the missing forearm - her shoulder-blade was ripped open. How had she not noticed?
Distracted. Weak. She snarled, trying to bandage the area. It needed cleaning, the girl needed a transfusion or at least aura boosting drugs -
A screech from above.
And now there was a Nevermore.
-.-.-
The air was filled with dust. With ash. With the embers glowing and dying as they fell, like the souls of the city. The morning light had turned dark. Cloud cover. But the Wyrms were having a field day, choking the air with their putrid activities.
A high-rise less than half a block away started to crumble and fall as a hive's worth of young Wyrms started tearing through it.
Like maggots festering in a rotting carcass.
That was what her city was now. Dead. Rotting. Being eaten away.
She should be too. She'd left - she'd left -
Winter clutched the sniper rifle tighter in her arms. She had to make that choice mean something. Had to save more people. Had to make it right. Make it feel right.
It would never feel right again.
She'd been stumbling through the streets in the wake of the Grimm, following that light. A signal flare of some kind - some of the other trainees, or authorities, or someone. She could help them at least. Could try to.
They'd probably only die in front of her. As she failed again. As she -
She couldn't think like that. One failure was not the end of everything.
But at the end of everything, one failure was maybe a little bit too much.
Everything hurt. If only Father could see her now, wandering, broken, through the streets of a shattered society. Rank, status, heritage, they meant nothing here. They meant nothing to the Grimm. The pen? The Grimm didn't care about words. About ink, about treaties or negotiations or trade deals.
He'd be in his bunker under the manor. With Weiss. Unless -
Could a Wyrm break in? Could they already be specks of gore on the front of one of those great monstrosities?
Weiss, ripped apart in seconds by its grinding progress through the earth. Maybe a single hand would survive, stuck on one bone-white spike. Father would have lasted longer, his aura was unlocked. Maybe he'd have killed one, or tried to.
Winter wanted to vomit. A heaving sensation in her stomach and throat like a restless beast. She tried to keep it down - it wasn't polite… polite? Who gave a damn about politeness in the apocalypse?
Maybe it would ease her guilt.
She fell to her knees, pushing away Blue's rifle as she stopped fighting and started gagging. Voices. It wouldn't come up. Her world seemed to spin for a moment, bright lights dancing behind her eyes and everything shifted and nothing made sense and -
She puked. The voices became louder. Her eyes drifted and it was hard to keep them open and she fell and she couldn't understand anything -
She felt cold. She felt -
She was kneeling, panting above a pool of her own vomit. She stood, slowly, wiping at her mouth where she could still taste bile, trying to pool it up in her own saliva and spit it away. She needed to get moving.
Picking up the gun again, she staggered forward.
It was… almost cathartic. She felt better. No, better wasn't right. Less worse. The hallucinations were a sign - dehydration. Exhaustion.
Winter leaned against a bus stop, silently groaning in pain as her ribs protested. Water… maybe food. She tried to check her scroll to get an exact figure on her aura levels - but it was dead. Cracked. The fall down the mountain probably. She sighed, rested her head on one hand.
She looked up at the building beside her.
And she laughed.
Schnee Dust Company - buy your Dust here Today!
"Well. At least I know my father stocks every store with a water cooler."
Good idea, Winter! Talk to yourself.
"At least I'm not replying to - fuck."
Water. Now.
Before I drive myself even more insane.
~R&R?~