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Armour: None

Weapon: None

Acc(0/12):

Health: (100/400)


The Steampunker absolutely loved flying.

Even though rocking on the wind had caused her to lose her lunch overboard three times, and despite she felt dizzy with fear whenever she peeked over the stern to the earth far, far beneath... she loved it. It was cold, and the air was thin, but she was so filled with wonder and with awe that she scarcely minded her fingers were numb, or her lips were blue, or that clouds were dank and wet and not at all as fluffy as she'd imagined.

'Break -er open! Yarr!'

'You see a pink-haired prisoner? Search all the houses'

Yet even so, the moment the great airborne ship loosed its anchor upon the grassy clearing below (truly it was quite an odd sight, to see such an enormous warship swaying upon its chain like a balloon swayed upon its string) The Steampunker was amongst the first of the crew to scramble down the ladder and plant her feet on solid ground. She loved flying... but perhaps she loved not puking her guts out just a little bit more.

"Hey, Punky!"

The Steampunker wiped her mouth against the back of her hand and raised her eyes towards the stern of the ship. A familiar face grinned down at her, cropped red hair framed against a clear blue sky. The Bandit - her squad leader; The Steampunker grimaced and rolled her eyes. When The Flying Dutchman rescue mission was originally announced, most of The Bandit's crew wanted nothing more than to eat, sleep and relax in The Florentino's hot baths... but The Steampunker wanted to fly. She had begged and begged that The Bandit convince The Pirate Captain to let her come along - and after much pestering and many promises, she finally got her way.

"Liking the sky, Punky? You were so excited to touch the fluffy clouds, I couldn't bear to tell you what a miserable experience flying through one of those things is. After all, you're not somebody that can be convinced of anything, hm?"

The Steampunker planted her fists on her hips and made an exaggerated pout. Of course she had to be strong willed. Of course she confirmed everything with her eyes and her ears. If she weren't as stubborn and intractable as she was, she'd be sitting, locked up in some drawing room, covered in powder and married to some Imperial brute. That was the life her parents had planned for her, and that was where her sister was currently wasting away. She couldn't live like that... she'd made that known to almost anyone who criticized her in this fashion.

"I loved the flight, thank you very much! I never said I didn't!"

"Imma start calling you 'pukey' instead of punky."

"And Imma kick you in the shins!"

The Steampunker huffed and stretched her cramped legs as she turned her back and watched The Pirate Crew get to work. The crew was about a hundred men strong (supposedly there was some risk of battle) and they were here to rescue a pink-haired woman from the clutches of some odd tribe of... faeries, or something. Somebody had paid The Captain an egregious amount of money to carry out this extraction, yet even so - all hundred men went scurrying about The Compound, weapons drawn, eyes wide, and eagerly snatching up anything of value. All of the houses had been ransacked, and The Steampunker was fairly sure she saw several dressers, silken curtains, bedsheets and golden chandeliers being carried out of the buildings. (Who used Gold Chandeliers in forest cabins?!). Another group of Pirates seemed to have discovered a keg of ale, from which they have yet to drain to its dregs despite twenty of the men drinking themselves into stupor. There seemed to be no threat here... the smashed buildings and the singed grass indicated this place had already been subject to an attack. Clearly, if there were any survivors capable of battle, they had already fled.

They're ransacking the place...

From one of the houses, several pirates were escorting a startled pink-haired woman wrapped up in one of the curtains. She had cropped, bubblegum pink hair - bright blue eyes, a delicate face, and smelled strongly of alchohol. The Steampunker found her very brave indeed, for despite being surrounded, weaponless, by five burly pirates, she didn't appear fearful at all. The Steampunker offered her a sunny smile, and shouted a few miscellaneous reassurances in her direction - but only received a haughty glare in response.

The Steampunker huffed again. Rude!

The Bandit rested her cheek against her chin as she observed the clamor. She spoke with a glimmer in her bright green eyes. Clearly being injured didn't dampen her spirits much, if at all. Sometimes The Steampunker wished she were a bit more like her senior.

"So? We're in the far east now. As far south and as far east as the continent still has good land. You've seen the four corners of The Continent. How does it feel?"

The Steampunker pursed her lips and shrugged. She still felt a bit too ill to put any enthusiasm into her voice.

"I guess I can check it off my bucket list."

"Oh! but your bucket list doesn't get any shorter, does it? I've seen you making eyes at the cabin boy. Is he is your next project? At least for the trip back to The Capitol until you fall in love with that one actor again... who was he... hmmm?"

The Bandit chortled as The Steampunker blushed red and made a face. She was a romantic... what could she do? It was in her blood! She loved to fantasize about princes and knights with their white horses and their shining armour. Stories of men with mean beginnings, who rose with conviction and duty - who fought for the heroine and despite being themselves so strong, took refuge in her arms. Or maybe a handsome swashbuckling pirate who falls in love with a captured maid, and they-

"But honestly, Punky, I've seen a fair share of your absolute disaster of a love life... but trying to date that Imperial CC agent tops the list. What was his name, Faze, was it? Clearly a fake name - and none of us believed it at all, but he was hot, so you stood in his corner. Let me tell you, that guy did one hell of a job pretending to be a bumbling idiot - but hell if he wasn't strong. You didn't see him tear Plantera apart. Scary bastard... he could have easily slaughtered our entire raiding party and walked off without a scratch."

The Bandit shivered as she reminisced then snickered at The Steampunker's mortified expression. For what it was worth, The Steampunker really did like him - and for all the wrong reasons. He was very strange; as pompous as a king, yet as innocent as a child. He knew so much, yet he seemed to have lived very little. Was he so enraptured by the flowers because he had grown up in a lab? Maybe he'd never seen green grass before...

The Bandit waggled her fingers at her and cackled.

"Anyways, I saw the two of you quite literally hand in hand - frolicking in the jungle. You were drooling over him! He was pretty cute, wasn't he? White hair and dragon eyes? Tall and big muscles. Ah, let me show you something..."

The Bandit turned to rummage for something in her bag. The Steampunker huffed and rolled her eyes, this was the typical teasing that went on between them. They'd been friends for so very long, that hardly anything was off the table. The Bandit picked on all of The Steampunker's crushes - nobody was good enough. The Steampunker vetted all of The Bandit's partners and found them all lacking. But The Steampunker really was embarrassed about her taste in men during the Jungle Expedition. She hated The Empire, she hated she'd been so enraptured by an enforcer from that oppressive regime. Why did he need to have such a pretty face? It was probably entire fabricated within one of Draedon's wicked machines...

"Aha! Here we go!"

The Bandit grinned and reached down to hand her a folded up sheet of cardstock. Since The Bandit was unable to stand (the doctor had tied her cast to a wheelchair, correctly insisting she'd begin running around otherwise), and The Steampunker needed to stand on her toes to receive it. She unfurled the poster and- to her great shock, saw the face she'd been trying to bleach from her memories. White hair, dragon-eyes, skin so pale, it'd blend into snow... The Clandestine Corps Operative, 'Faze'...

Before The Steampunker could crumble up the poster, The Bandit chirped over her moment of self-loathing.

"Hey, hey! Don't destroy that! Read, woman. Look! He's not an Imperial Spy after all! Do you see that?" The Bandit pointed vaguely at a line of text beneath the eye-wateringly large bounty. The Steampunker begrudgingly followed her gaze.

"It says, Dangerous Resistance Fugitive: Leader of Resistance Troops. He's not Braelor, and he sure as hell isn't Statis... so who else could be considered a leader of The Resistance Troops, hm?"

The Steampunker stared down at the image. There was a long moment, then she felt her jaw drop open as the realization hit her.

"The Hero? He's The Resistance Hero?! Are you serious? How-" Now she was beginning to get angry. She glared up at The Bandit's- who was giggling at her distress. "Bandit! How long have you known? You let me go on and on being embarrassed about it for-"

The Bandit waved away her accusations.

"Ah, calm down. I found out only recently. You know, we've been running for our lives for the past week, so I forgot to tell you right away. Anyways, aren't you happy? You got to go on a date with The Resistance Hero! And yeah - sure, maybe you fudged up your chances with him after accusing him of being a spy... but don't worry!"

The Bandit reached back into her pack, she spoke whilst rustling through it.

"He has a brother! Looks pretty similar. A bit uglier, if I gotta be honest, but honestly he'd not bad at all. Here- take a look."

The Bandit dangled a photograph over the edge of the ship. The Steampunker sighed and reached up to pluck it from her fingertips. She glanced at it briefly before suddenly being bumped from behind by a gaggle of Pirate crewmates. The whole lot of them were 'ooh'-ing and 'ahh'-ing at some bloody mangle of a man they were dragging across the burnt grass.

'What the hell is that? Some kind of messed up science experiment? Bitch is ugly as sin.'

'He ate half of the dead guy in house three, Smells really bad - wrap your nose before you go in.'

It looked like a corpse, pale and wan, with one bedraggled wing burst from it's left shoulderblade and clothed in nothing but an apron of dried blood. It's face was a mess, humanoid in structure, but marred so terribly The Steampunker wondered if it's nose had been attached upside-down. One of it's pale eyes bulged from its head, the other was sunken in and malformed. Had it's breathing not wracked it's unexpectedly bulky torso so violently, she would have thought it were already dead.

... wait, is that-

But... but didn't this man look quite familiar? She blinked and glanced down at the photograph in her hand - which depicted a well built corpse-coloured man laying curled up, asleep, in a cage. He didn't have wings, but his face did bear a striking resemblance to his brother's. His musculature was impressive in a dangerous kind of way, all sharp angles and tendons like cords (she felt her eyes lingering too long on his backside and quickly put the photo away). The Steampunker looked a the photo. She watched as the marred creature was dragged up the gangplank and out of sight. She looked at the photo again, then turned to glare at The Bandit, a pout turning her lips.

"Bandit, I know my love life is a disaster, but him?! That's just insulting!"


The mocking and the hissing; the laughing and the spitting and feeling of boots against his skull. They were all staring at him, his form exposed before the prying eyes of strangers - strung up to be disgraced and ridiculed. Somebody had seized him by the arm and was dragging him across his burnt and overgrown lawn. Oh, how carefully had had once tended to this yard... but now, he was bleeding all over it - the blades of grass leaving small lacerations on his back and upon his ribs, and his blood running freely from his wounds. There were men chortling and yelling at him, gauntleted fingers and the muzzles of rifles poking and prodding as if he were a piece of merchandise to be auctioned - carelessly leaving bruises against his fresh skin. He hated it, but even even his hatred was muted. In some ways, he felt outside of himself as the derision was poured thickly upon him. Gasps of interest and disgust, the gaze of morbid curiosity, he was a freak at a freak-show, and the shame of it blanketed him like bitter lead.

He felt terrible.

He felt humiliated...

But at the same time, he didn't feel anything at all.

Not while they scraped him bloody whilst he was dragged up the gangplank. Not when they threw him in a heap at the feet of their leader. Not when somebody grabbed his face and plucked a tooth from his gums. Not when he felt the sting of a blade over his thumb, separating tendon from bone.

He was cold, and he was numb, and he knew he should care... but there was a voice in the back of his head.

A voice that sighed in resignation.

...

A quiet song of despair, sung within and without. It was a song about him. Of how vile and pathetic he was; how a creature of such vicious nature was best consigned to the flames. Why did he live? Why bother? Nothing was going to get better, and whenever he thought he'd hit the bottom - there was always a further depth to fall to... because for him... I can't even die!

(Yarr, he sure do be an ugly sonovagun.)

(Uncle! Be careful! Isn't this the 'Dead-Eyes' Guy you told us about? Look at the photo!)

(Eh?)

A rough hand seized him by the chin and yanked at his face, he felt his neck creak and his windpipe strain beneath the abuse. To his left, he felt the muscles of his single wing straining - blood running down his back as he was plucked of his precious white feathers. To his right, a woman with bright blue eyes was staring at him with some mixture of pity and disgust. Ahead, another woman - strapped to a chair with wheels, and wearing some sort of block upon her leg... and finally-

"Ehe! Ye are Dead-Eyes!"

The voice blasted over him, loud and brash and unclouth. Rank breath, smoke, scarred and rough and malicious. The Pirate Captain cackled and dragged him close to stare carefully at his face. He was a large man with a bushy black beard that was filthy and arranged into dreadlocks. He wore a grimy leather tricorn and gnawed a pungent cigar between gold and yellowed teeth. There was a wicked grin turning the corners of his wide, wicked mouth.

"I almost didn't recognize ya! Look what happened to you... yer messed up real good, eh? Serves you right fer kiling my men!"

*slam*

His vision shook and went white as the hand gripping his skull slammed it down against the hardwood deck. There was the noise of something cracking, and The Terrarian foggily wondered if his own skull had shattered right then. The world was swimming. There was blood trailing from his ears and he couldn't tell up from down, nor left from right. He couldn't feel any pain - and he'd learned that was usually a bad thing...

Am I dying again?

He was dragged back up; when he opened his eye - The Pirate Captain's face was only inches from his. It was wroth, and full of unabashed fury. He blinked his eye shut as The Captain spit in his face.

"Killing my men?! Make a fool out of me?! I'll make you wish you'd died before I arrived! Men! make him regret ever messing with The Thieves' Guide!"

*Raaaahhh!*

The crowd of pirates whooped and cheered as he was once more thrown to the ground. Knives were drawn, the air grew heavy with the tint of violence. Was he to be slaughtered? Slaughtered again? Hadn't this been the man The Guide was speaking to in The Capitol City? The one who had kidnapped them from the 'Kebab' shop, and threw him in a cage? Is this another one of his plans? Was The Guide not content to kill him once, but despised him so greatly, he sought to kill him again?

...

Anger.

A flame.

The familiar cursed burning that lit in his chest and stirred him to action. Perhaps his form was weak; perhaps his bones were shattered - but he need not guard his life! The Terrarian opened his eye wide and pushed himself to his elbows, then - laboriously to his feet. All around him, a sea of cackling faces, mocking and deriding him - whooping and eager to cut him to pieces. Why had they yet to kill him? Did they think he was merely entertainment? Had he fallen so far, than mere men would dare toy with him? Ah - what did it matter? Be it for mockery or for honor, he would not kneel. He would stand, and he would make his hatred known to The Guide's cohorts, even if his life was forfeit.

He bared his teeth.

"Y-you... mourn your men?"

His voice was breathy. Merely a gasp. Did anyone hear him? Perhaps. Perhaps not. His muscles could scarcely support him - they shrieked and burned as they fought to keep him upright. His bones were still soft, and they ground together with a terrible noise - yet even so, he stood. He fixed his gaze upon The Pirate Captain and gathered strength in his weakened flesh, even as the crowd closed in upon him.

Hahaha!- Pathetic Dog- Killed our Division One, huh- We'll string you up!- Kill em!*

(Uncle! Be careful! Watch out!)

The wind was in his ears as his stance dropped low.

And his blade appeared - comfortingly familiar in his hands.

He fixed his eyes upon the Pirate's mocking face...

And The Terrarian lunged for his throat.


MK: *is dying*

Punky: Omg, like ew. (nice butt tho)

MK: bruh.