(AN): Hello there reader, you can skip this if you like, it's just a few added notes; namely, while the main character is an OC, it is not a self-insert, because ew cringe. As you may have ascertained, this fic takes place in hell, specifically the bleach hell-verse, and depending on the trajectory of the story, I may finish it in hell without ever letting the story reach back into the main story-verse. Obviously this is a fan fiction, so I'll be changing a number of things, but first and most importantly is that the captains don't end up in hell when they die(one because that puts a damper on my plans, and two because I think that's stupid, almost as stupid as the bount arc). I'm not sure if it'll be relevant here, but when a captain dies, their body goes too.
I've thought about this a bit, and I'm probably going to try and keep this story a little more light hearted, in spite of its rating, because frankly, I don't have it in me to immerse myself in the kind of darkness necessary to write a true to hell horror show. That doesn't mean I won't acknowledge said horrors, just that I'll most probably refrain from any graphic descriptions, of rape specifically.
Anyways, I'm a semi-beginner writer and I love constructive criticism, so long as the criticism isn't, 'heck u yur stry saoks ass,' then please. On the subject, if you are going to hate, please at least take the time to spellcheck and grammar check, so that my eyes don't bleed. Other than that, happy critiquing/hating to ya!
When detailing the nature of Hell, one may choose to begin with a few generic descriptors befitting of the land down under, such as: fiery, scorched brimstone, the wails of the damned, the ever present smell of rotten eggs, and the even more persistent scent of defeat, yadda yadda yadda, so on and so forth in the name of the good old classics. And while these things were certainly true—Hell, as it just so happened, was by-enlarge, quite hot, quite fiery, and in fact by complete happenstance, there were a number of the damned suffering various tortures, hence, a lot of wailing. But, and wasn't there ever such a cliche but, it would be a disservice to hell and its many wonders to merely describe it as such. Because there was so much more!
…Horror.
If you were to ask Benjiro, a black spiky haired man with sickly palored skin, agave colored eyes, and dressed in little more than tattered brown rags. If you were to ask this man to describe hell, he would most probably… not. But if you were to force him to describe hell, he would certainly tell you that hell comprised five levels. The first, an array of floating cubes, largely barren, with little to speak of save for a few ruins where only the strongest and most unsavory of individuals were to reside. He would proceed to tell you, that if you valued your health, to stay well away from those gaunt ruins, assuming you wanted to remain unmolested of course. The second layer was mostly water, separated from the first by a number of ethereal white roots spanning from the base of a few select cubes every so often. He would speak of little marshy islands dotting the waters below in some sort of forsaken archipelago, populated by failed mangroves and other rotting detritus, safe, save for the stench of said rotting detritus. He would speak of crumbling stone lotus flowers, majestic and grand, a proper gateway befitting an entrance to the third hell, and that frankly, to descend further by choice would be the height of stupidity. Then he might ask(spit) if that was enough, and you might say no, but in this instant you're beginning to notice that Benjiro looks awfully twitchy. So you'd give him a shove(pushing yourself back more than him), walk backwards with your eyes trained firmly on his dead stare, to find yourself near to the edge of the cube island you'd been standing on. You'd probably wonder at this point why Benjiro was shaking his head as if in disappointment or… exasperation?
Then, you'd be summarily smushed against the ground by a giant, vaguely purple hand attached to an even more massive arm before being dragged across bits of rumble and rock towards the edge of the cube. You might try to scream as your skin grates away to blood and chunks in the world's worst case of road rash, might find yourself too petrified to do so, it wouldn't matter, because the air has been crushed from your lungs, so really there's nothing left to scream with. You'd be brought before a serrated, drooping mass of flesh, and you might recognize the two glassy offset orbs as eyes, but more likely you'd be preoccupied with the wash of sticky hot, humid air rushing over you, emanating from what must have been the nightmare's mouth. If you've ever smelled a dog's rotten breath, imagine that, just, y'know, worse. It's grip constricts what air you didn't know you had before keening, groaning a strange dissonant note. It's jaw unhinging to reveal blackened teeth with little maggot infested snags of what could only be flesh caught in between the gaps. Benjiro would be the only one to witness your death, hear the way your bones splintered like those of a Kentucky fried chicken wing, or the way your chest gives way with a hollow crunch, although honestly, he's probably averted his eyes before witnessing the way your flesh parts, ligaments stretching before snapping like a bowstring drawn too far.
In the end, you might think that, well, at least you'll be dead, never having had the chance to see the way Benjiro would shake his head, knowing, this will only be the first of many. And later, much later, after you've reassembled what scattered pieces of yourself you can find, you'll lay sprawled haphazardly on the ground, reflecting without feeling that the noise coming from that beast had been positively organismic.
Good thing you don't live in hell.
•••
Today, Benjiro decides, is a good day. He not only remains entirely un-harassed by his fellow Tobigato, but he's even managed to barter a few of the various bits and bobs he'd recovered from a truly abandoned ruin in exchange for chunks of flint, not at all uncommon, even in this place, but is difficult and dangerous to harvest. Hells below, he hasn't even heard the rasp of any Kushanada lying in wait by the cliff's edge, hasn't even seen(seen!) one of the foul purple beasts lumbering in the distance. Yes, Benjiro muses as he knaps his newly acquired rocks of flint with a bit of ivory tusk, today, is a very good day.
Benjiro had raged a great deal when he'd first arrived in Hell, who wouldn't he'd like to say, and it had been a great number of… well, not days, after all there was no such thing in hell in spite of its denizens still present need for sleep, among other unfortunate bodily necessities. Not days, but certainly an… immeasurable period of time. It had taken him until he was sick with the blight and torn to shreds in his first encounter with a Kushanada before he'd managed to come back to himself. Not to say that made things much better for Benjiro, on the contrary he'd spent the next few… this is getting irritating. We'll call them months, wallowing in the stench of his own self pity and suffering a truly embarrassing number of deaths before he'd realized critically, he understood nothing of how to survive his new situation.
While Benjiro would maintain to his dying breath that he had not lived an easy life prior to his incarceration, he could never truly say he'd struggled for food, or water, or any of the basic necessities he struggled for now. So, he sought out his first group, weary, desperate, and surprisingly lonely, he'd been shocked to find a group of people who'd greeted him with kindness.
Understandably that only made him even more wary, but in the end, he'd been convinced when one of their number decided to show him how to craft sharp rocks by mashing other rocks together. Hokube, or whatever his real name had been, taught Benjiro a great number of things about the underworld that night, like where flint could even be found, how the various levels worked, so on and so forth. Even if later that night while unconscious he was bound to a stick and spit roasted like a pig, Benjiro would come to be grateful to whomever that man had truly been, because that information had set him on the road to survival.
Of course, succeeding that particular incident he hadn't been feeling all that grateful. Furious, vengeful, but for once determined not to suffer another stupid death, he stewed on how he might get his revenge and by pure happenstance, found his answer in the most unlikely of places.
By then, after what might have been years elapsed, he'd learned through trial by fire to stay well away from the ruins. Not because they were often populated by people, au contraire, because that was where the Blight liked to reside. In the cracks and crevices, in darkened corners and cabinets, the black goopy specter known as the Blights lay in wait for their next unsuspecting victim. Unwillingly, Benjiro had taken cover under a surprisingly intact roof of one such ruin, having been corralled by one of the Kushanada. There, he had lain eyes on one of the Blight as it clung to the top corner on the far side of a baron room. Benjiro held his breath, tensed his muscles, certain he'd have to make a break for it lest he want to spend the next few… months feeling the parasite consume him from the inside out, incapable of even taking his own life to hasten the process. That day, sucked. That day, after running, and hiding, and twitching, sweating, crying silently, he'd seen the Blight, and having run out of fear, felt only the inescapable horrible reality that this was his new forever. That moment he stood frozen in time observing the nightmare in the corner, caught in a liminal space between the yawning pit of eternity within his stomach and this moment of annihilation, he couldn't help the bark of laughter as it escaped him. Barely caught himself on the edge of that yawing pit and peered back miserly at the Blight, which had not moved.
Was—was it watching him? Haltingly, with nary more than a whisper, he spoke to the creature, half convinced he had gone insane, and certain of his impending doom, "Can— do you… understand me?"
The creature did not have any bodily anatomy, so it could not nod if it wanted to, and given the way it started creeping slowly closer to him, it was certainly planning to do him no good. Faster and faster it approached, Benjiro with a moment between him and a hell within hell, spluttered.
"Sh—shi, wait, WAIT!" He whisper yelled, forced to jump, kicking off the wall and over the creature as it lunged towards him, "W-We, we can make a deal! A deal!" He'd said with his hands raised, palms out placatingly. To his eternal shock, no more than a meter away the creature stopped.
"Yeah! Yeah. I-I," it inched closer, "There's a group!" It stopped again, "A group of people I can lead you too. Hell, I, I'll even let you–let you, uh…" Wracking his brain desperately on how he might transport the creature with him he shoved his hands around his body in the most handsy pat down he'd endured in both his lives, searching desperately for pockets he knew he didn't have. Despairingly he'd come to the conclusion that if he wanted a chance he was going to have to let the creature… hitch a ride. What a horrible amount of trust for a parasite. Still, while it could pilot his body, it could not access his memories, it wouldn't know where to go if it took the reins from him. So girding his loins he proposed the unthinkable.
"I-I… I can take you to them, but," drawing breath had never been so difficult, considering his lungs had been crushed in the jaws of a Kushanada, Benjiro thought that was saying something, "But, I'll need con-control over my body to get us there. An-and when I've taken you to them, you have to leave me be. D-deal?"
The creature did not have any bodily anatomy, so it couldn't nod if it wanted to, but if the weird squishing motion it made with its body was any indication, the creature was in agreement. So, with his pulse thundering in his ears, and hand shaking dreadfully he reached out to the creature. It reciprocated with a shockingly gentle motion, in great contrast to its typical violent speed.
With a suitable blend of horror, trepidation, and morbid fascination, Benjiro watched, felt, as the creature dissolved into the pores of his hands, creeped under his fingernails, and traveled up his nerves to the base of his shoulder in a shower of sparkling nerves. If he had to liken the feeling to anything, he would say it was akin to hitting your funny bone, except that was every nerve in his arm constantly. It had all been so strange at the time to literally feel the presence of the creature resting, practically purring given the weird vibrations, emanating from his shoulder down to his finger tips. It was horrible, a violation even still, but at least, it was without the agonizing pain that usually came with the creature infecting your body. At least, this was in some sense, on his terms.
Ironically, by the time he'd found the group that had betrayed him and set him on his quest of revenge, he felt nothing but relief. The most bizarre blend of gratitude and the tiniest odd pinch of guilt which he couldn't quite crush, given the fate he was about to bestow upon them. Of course, he didn't greet the cannibals with this relief, but rather, a cleverly devised mask of lowered heads and scrunched nose and borrowed eyes. He came to the cannibals with a deal; teach him what they knew, so that he would have a better chance next go around, and he'd let them eat him.
Three 'nights' later having learned everything he was able, on the eve before he was set to die, he released the creature upon the unsuspecting watchman while the others lay sleeping. Observed mutely as the man writhed upon the ground in choked agony. Three or so minutes passed when the watchman rose again with a grin twisted all wrong, eyes alight with malice.
"You'll find the best ointment for cuts and abrasions can be made from the pulverized petals of a golden flower that grows beside the molten lava terraces of the third level."
That incident had taught Benjiro a number of things, but perhaps the most important lessons of the bunch were: observation, and nothing was as it seemed.
When he next died, he woke up on a small marsh island on the second level, got crunched by some weird ass crocodile thing which was oozing green goo from the cracks between its scales and had way, way too many teeth. He reformed a few metaphorical days later back on the first layer, figured he should probably try to avoid accruing any more bad karma by dealing with horrible demons, and promptly found his current hole in the ground. Given that same hole is now his home after a few improvements, he took his third lesson from the whole ordeal to be doing bad things begets bad karma, so don't do bad things.
•••
As may be apparent, Benjiro has lived in Hell for… a long time, certainly more than a couple 'years' given the time of reformation after death. Regardless, discussions of the passage of time aside, Benjiro has been around the block a couple of times, all that to say, he knows what he's doing. So when he chose his current place of residence after his rebirth, it had not been at the drop of a dime. In fact, when he first found the hole he'd nearly dismissed it outright because dark holes and crevices were generally a good place to catch a nasty case of the Blight.
Nevertheless, having learned a lesson in patience and observation, he knew not to dismiss anything at first glance. So he scouted around the cube, and then its surrounding cubes, before just barely spotting the cliff side entrance to the cave. It took clinging precariously to the protruding roots of an opposing cube while trying to throw a lit torch into what amounted to a relatively small hole to ensure that it might be safe…. At least he got lots of practice throwing things accurately from odd and uncomfortable positions, wherever that skill might be useful. Then he'd had to climb back up, jump across, and climb down for the final time to clear what little he couldn't see of the hole from the opposing cliff, up close and personal.
That! However, had not been the end of things. No, Benjiro, was well and truly sick of dying, sick of being duped, and sick of being eaten! So this time, he wouldn't just make sure the cave itself was safe, no, no no, he was going to clear the entire surrounding area of everything. He was going to make sure that no Kushanada, no Blight, and no god forsaken Tobigato, called this place, or any place near it, home. Moreover, he'd needed to do this discreetly, so as not to attract unwanted attention.
Needless to say, by the time he was done, he could well and truly say the cave turned hovel was safe.
Now, as perhaps has been mentioned, flint in this realm is difficult to recover, however, as perhaps has not been mentioned, flint forms the basis of damn near everything worth something. Without flint, Benjiro has no arrows, without flint, Benjiro has no bow, without flint Benjiro has no knife, no axe, no tools in general, and no fire. The shit currently mucking about in his house, trying to make it so Benjiro comes back home without flint is about to be without a fucking head.
When he first sees the Tobigato shuffling around in his safe space he damn near sends an arrow into the darkened cave without a second thought. It's exactly that line of impulse which has landed him in so much trouble. So he thinks, realizes that if he misses he's gonna be leaving the Tobigato alert, in an easily defensible position, till hell freezes over… or something comes to eat him. Still, the fact his home's natural defenses now work against him leaves him fuming. The fact his traps have clearly been disarmed almost sends his rage addled mind back to the raving lunatic he'd been upon his arrival in hell, but no.
No, Benjiro needs to be slow, he can't afford to be hasty with anything if he wants to survive, so he grabs at the flailing limbs of rage and wrestles them into a vibrating ball of molten hatred that just barely comes to rest in his sternum. It burns so hot he nearly cries, but he forces his damnable eyes to cooperate. He's ready to explode but this time, it won't be every which way, this time, it will bleed into the swing of his blade and the iron of his skin. Hell will qua–he's getting away.
Dammit Benjiro you idiot! Pay attention!
So much for letting his anger sharpen his blade or whatever other insert edgy saying. Tossing the self recriminations to the side for the moment, Benjiro focuses on the thief. Brown nondescript cloak, lithe form, and black pants. Not very creative this one, but then, that's probably the point. He shakes his head, frowning in confusion; it seems the figure is edging down the cube face. Mr. Thief tilts their head, and it takes Benjiron a moment to guess as to what they're looking at before his frown twists sourly. This has just become infinitely harder. While there's no core root reaching down into the second level anywhere near to his home base, the thief can still dip under the cube and then Benjrio will lose him for certain.
He Grimaces, draws his bowstring in tandem with a deep breath. No. If he shoots the thief now, they'll just fall to their death on the second layer. It would be marginally better than leaving them trapped in his cave, but he'd still end up losing whatever the thief has hidden away in his bag.
He lets the drawstring relax, a bead of sweat trailing down the side of his face, heart thundering in his throat. Think Benjiro, think! He can't climb after them, he'll lose them wherever they decide to climb up and run before he has a chance to follow. The figure draws closer to the bottom edge, think! He can't shoot them, he'll lose his shit. Fuc–wait! Maybe he can. It's a gamble, if he misses, say goodbye possessions, whether because the thief falls in surprise, in death or injury, or because he alerts them to his presence and they bail before he has a chance to track them. He'll need to get lucky, just barely score a hit. Afterall, blood he can track, and pain will make them stupid.
Best decision or not, he's out of time. Resolutely, he hardens his heart and stands. Somehow, Benjiro still doesn't believe in a higher power, still believes no one can deserve this and yet, he prays to whatever might be listening. For the third time he notches an arrow and pulls, letting his eyes rove over the cloaked thief before settling on their hip. His shit still needs some way to climb out, it'll have to do. The arrow flies.
Benjiro watches as Mr. Thief lets out a high pitched yelp and loses their grip, falls, and somehow manages to snag his heart from its resting place in his throat along the way, damn near tearing it through his feet. Despair has him in a vice stronger than a Kushanada's grip, and Euphoria can't begin to describe the elation that fills him when the Thief manages to grab hold of a few roots, halting their descent just before the point of no return. He feels as though his heart has been slingshotted right back through his feet, and out the top of his head, wringing out the cold sparks buzzing through his finger tips like a horde of angry bees. He feels delirious, he feels like he's gonna throw up.
Not now.
Get a grip, he tells himself swallowing back bile as the figure disappears underneath his cube. Immediately anxiety begins to crawl in before he shakes his head, this is the plan. He knew they'd be going under the cube regardless of his desires. The best he can do now is get on top of his home cube and listen.
He does just this, by backing up, sprinting and clearing what may as well be a 15 foot gap, doesn't even notice he's crossed a distance when he finds himself at the center of his cube, and sits. Well, crouches; laying in wait, tense, doing nothing more than listening. He hasn't even had the chance to start questioning if he's missed something when he hears a muted scream of pain from his left. He races to the edge but finds nothing, worries for half a second, and then remembers this will be a game of cat and mouse. A deep breath in, a clench of the fist, and he's centered again. He clears the gap between his block and the next.
This time, while listening atop the block he'd heard the scream from, he waits for a minute longer. This time he has confidence it will work, a confidence which is rewarded when he hears a quiet but distinct grunt this time on the corner to his right, farthest from his home. Apparently the thief has gotten tired clinging to the bottoms of the cubes, because by the time he's nearing the corner, it's only to witness the shithead sprinting away from him on the lower, diagonally adjacent block. He doesn't think, just jumps, lands, rolls, and springs up with a furious stride and a vicious grin. His blood sings, heart pounds, and the ground disintegrates beneath him, the world narrowing till it's just him and his foe.
For a brief moment, time ceases to have meaning. They sprint, jump, clamber across who knows how many blocks, through ruins and copses of dead trees, up roots and rock face. Benjiro's feels the embers of a burgeoning if begrudged respect that his foe has the tenacity to move so quickly in spite of the wound on their hip. Still not gonna change his course.
He's seriously feeling the burn by the time the figure begins to slow, when the gap edges ever shorter, when finally there's little more than twenty feet between them. It spurns him on into a sprint, which shithead must hear because in one fell swoop they stop, pivot and from their uninjured hip pulls a flint knife–his knife. It's too late to do anything about it now, he's moving much too quickly to stop. So he lunges, catches his foes wrist on the downswing and puts the back of his forearm against his foes chest so when they hit the ground, he simply rolls right over them right back onto his feet. Instinct has his foot arching around on the pivot sending his shin careening towards Thief's head in a brutal low roundhouse. They bring their forearm to block the blow but it's too little too late, the kick lands, muted blow or not.
He tries to capitalize as the Thief goes down hard but once again to Benjiro's surprise Thief is quite nimble, simply turning the weird backwards lunge inspired by his missed curb stomp into a backwards roll from their position on the floor, coming up with nary a blink. Thief may be on the backfoot, but up all the same with a knife. Thief swings wildly, only missing his eyes when he throws his head backwards at the last second, and now he's the one needing for space,
which he makes by planting his foot firmly in Thief's sternum and pushing. Finally, breathing hard, hands shaking, he stands still across from his opponent, seeing for the first time since this chase has begun the man he's been chasing. Who is evidently not a man.
"You–woman–what?" Benjiro says elegantly.
The woman just sneers from a rounded face and glares with dark brown eyes and a scrunch on a small pointy nose he might find cute in another circumstance. Benjiro doesn't miss the odd glimmer of fear in her eyes upon hearing the word Woman. Doesn't have enough time to wonder why that makes him feel oddly sick, because in the next moment she's speaking, "You like your fingers where they are?" Her voice is deeper than he expects and she brandishes the it in tandem with the knife, "Then you better let me fucking go cocksucker!"
Whatever pity he's been feeling dies but it's no longer subsumed by wrath. Still he's not feeling stupid so he backs up a couple paces with his hands placating, notes the victorious glint in her eyes, stops and savors the despair that overcomes her when in a blink he draws his bow.
"Drop it." He says, voice cold.
If the way her eyes have blown wide and are now darting around are any indication her mind is racing for a solution. "I-I," he draws the bowstring back further. "What guarantee do I have–
"Considering I haven't already shot you, I'd think that's a pretty fucking good gaurentee." He growls. "But if you'd prefer death to just walking away I'm more than willing to oblige so Drop. My. Shit."
She drops the knife.
"All of it!"
This time he doesn't revel at the despair in her eyes when she speaks, pleads, "Wa–I p-please I just–" but he's not interested in listening. Everyone's got a sob story down here, everyone's got it rough, they live in hell. Most of them serve as lunch for the Kushanada or as slaves in their own body. Everything sucks all the time for everyone, because the air is hard to breathe and the food is either humans, rotten plant mush, or game that's usually too difficult to hunt anyways. Even water is a trick to get. So he's not interested, he just wants his shit.
She's still babbling, she must think she's getting through to him or something. A reasonable conclusion given he probably looks like he was just contemplating. Of course, he was, just not contemplating letting her go with his shit. He almost feels bad he's about to crush that little glimmer of hope growing in her eyes.
Lady," he cuts in, "I gotta be real. I didn't hear a single word of what just came out of your mouth." The glimmer dies, "when I first shot that arrow it was probably from about twenty, maybe twenty-two meters. And you might think I missed, but consider that I didn't want to lose my stuff." Her face grows ever more gaunt, most likely in despair Benjiro thinks. Good, she realizes, he says as much, "Exactly, I'm standing maybe seven meters from you now. I won't miss, and I don't care whatever sob story you're trying to shovel me, I just want my shit. Can you not be grateful we're having this discussion in the first place?"
She's back to glaring at him, opens her mouth as if to speak but merely snaps it shut with a, "tch." Finally, she reaches down to her undamaged hip and slings about a well made leather satchel which Benjiro notes with some irritation is quite literally bulging. She unlatches the bag, turns it upside down and dumps the contents carelessly on the ground. Unsurprisingly, for the first time this day, there on the ground now lay a small pile of flint stones and tools of various make. There's also a clay bottle of tar, arguably more valuable than all of the flint combined, and another clay bottle of his poultice, also about as valuable as the pile of flint. It's about everything worth something that he owns, and in the face of such greed, whatever iota of empathy he'd been feeling dies.
"Back up." She complies, and after a moment he begins to walk in step with her, crossing the distance to his sweet, sweet beloved things. Of course, unsurprisingly for the second time that day, it's when he's about halfway to his stuff that everything goes FUBAR.
It starts with the ground shaking, bits of rock rubble shifting and a horribly familiar keening moan. He finds such happenstance doesn't send a jolt of fear down his spine but rather a piercing irritation which lances through his spirit leaving pure indignation in its wake, because seriously? He spares half a moment to look backwards in time to question, why in the name of everything unholy did he say that today was a good day. First of all, he lives in hell; there are no days! Second of all, he lives in hell; if ever there was a day, it sure as hell wouldn't be a good one!
Half a second later a gnarled purple hand eclipses the edge of the far side of the cube in the direction their chase came from. In the next half a second after that he's racing towards his stuff throwing caution to the wind, shoving what he can in his bag in order of most valuable. The thief becomes little more than a distant thought in the face of the purple monstrosity and he's racing, racing as quickly as he can but his satchel is already encumbered with various herbs he'd collected earlier in the day. It's a mess, and he doesn't even really have any of the flint pile in his bag but he's got to keep an eye on the periphery of his vision to make sure he's not out of ti–he's out of time.
When did that happen!?
In a blink he springs to his feet, lunging backwards in the same move, narrowly dodging the swipe of the purple nasty. In the next he's racing towards the opposite cube which is… disconcertingly bare of roots and disconcertingly distant. Still, he's out of time, theme of the day, so he picks up speed forcing his aching legs to move faster and jumps. For half a second suspended in the air, he thinks he might just make it, but then to his growing horror the edge creeps higher and higher in his vision. When Benjiro's hips slam into the cliff side he's not quite expecting it, not having foreseen making it at all, and the rebound from his body nearly sends rest of him skidding backwards over the edge. His arms scrabble for purchase but find none on the smooth surface and for fucks sake! Of all the cursed luck, this? This was the block that Satan or whatever cruel entity rules this place decided to refurbish? He's damn near fallen off the edge when his descent is abruptly halted. And who should his savior be but none other than the thief, whose got his wrist in an iron grip.
"Give me the bag and I'll pull you up!" She yells over the groan of the Kushanada.
"That's a bold faced lie!"
"For sucks–are we seriously doing this–" she's interrupted by a giant vibration. "Fine! Sling me the bag and I'll pull you up with it, deal!?"
Now is not the time for hesitation and yet Benjiro hesitates. The last time he trusted someone it wasn't the fact he got eaten by those people that hurt the most. In the end though, he's not in a position to negotiate, it's do or die here and what will it matter if he takes a chance? He gets proven right, the thief lives down to his expectations? So with one hand he slings the bag off his right shoulder and up into the waiting hands of the woman. He doesn't really expect the lady to pull him up and yet she does. In the next moment he's up and sprinting, once again narrowly dodging the Kushanada's grasp as it reaches across the gap.
He's not gone ten steps however when he feels a sharp tug on his bag. Evidently the woman hadn't let go of his possessions.
"Let go!" He yells.
"Are you serious!?" The look in her eyes is positively incredulous, "I just saved your life!"
And that's just it, the cherry on the top of this shit cake of a day. He's tired, he's frustrated, he'd rather not have done this whole stupid fucking chase through hell, but he did, and at the end of it all he isn't going to let it all be so that some random lady can make off with his life in a satchel. He says as much, "You don't get it! This is my life! Everything that I've built up, everything I've worked so fucking hard for! You just packaged it up and threw it in your bag, like a bunch of worthless fucking trinketss and left nothing. You saved my life and yet here you are trying to steal it away all over again!"
Benjiro is heaving for breath by the time he's finished, their worlds are quite literally shaking and yet, the woman opposite him merely stares at him with a strangely mute expression. The Kushanada is pulling itself across the gap now and yet she refuses to tear her eyes off his, and somehow, it feels quiet. In spite of all the noise, Benjiro feels somehow as if he's traveled back to the quiet abode where he'd first discover the Blight was intelligent, caught in a liminal space between the precipice of death and understanding. For a brief moment in time he stares back at the woman and wonders whether he's the Blight or the human in this situation. Given the oddly mute look of understanding on her face, he's not too confident. Then, almost too quietly to hear over the struggling of the macabre titan, she says, "You think I don't get it. What it feels like to walk around with nothing but yourself for your own mad circus show. Alone with only your trinkets to keep you company? They become your friends, the only company you can trust to have your back."
Definitely not the human in this situation. What a strange place to be understood. "… Then wh–
Any words he had planned to say are washed away by a triumphant roar. Benjiro's head snaps to the noise in frustration, "Can you shut the fuck up!" The Kushanada simply roars back. Of course, it seems it was too much to ask for intelligence in more than one of hell's cruel denizens. Benjiro tsks, annoyed, but there's little more to do than run now. He gives a halfhearted tug on his bag strap, double takes when she merely lets go this time allowing her hand to fall limp to her side. He's so caught in disbelief he damn near checks that the contents of this bag are still where they should be, but foregoes that conclusion by instead getting the fuck outta dodge.
He's making good on that plan when he makes the mistake of looking back at.
Benjiro finds that he's been in a perpetual state of disbelief since the moment he thought today was a good day, and it seems he's gonna be stuck that way because the thief is just standing there. He's wracking his brain for what could possibly rob such a spunky woman of the will to live, but whatever it is, it seems to have done so thoroughly. She's not looking at him, not looking at the Kushanada, and that really has him wondering what's so eye-catching to have grabbed her attention from the jaws of death as they close around her.
Disbelief is the name of the day, or was before it became little more than a setting moon by the time he realizes he's running towards her. Bewilderment can't even begin to encompass what he's feeling because it seems the sun decided to rise from the north today, and he's decided to run towards the gaping, stinky maw of death today. Compelled by a force that's apparently robbed him of reason and what the hell is he doing, he doesn't know. Doesn't know, just knows that he has to do this.
The Kushanada is reaching down when he's at the halfway point, he spurs on his aching legs and the gap between them stretches out to infinity and. He's not gonna make it. He's not gonna make it, he's not gonna make it, he's not gonna make—
And that's a wrap. Man that was fun to write. I've been writing this on and off for the past month, month and a half, mostly as stress relief so it's been a little difficult to keep track of everything but hey. I think I did okay. In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading, if you did, I'd love some constructive criticism. I'm a little concerned with the level of detail I've got going on, that is to say, not enough worldly descriptions, but I wanted to not go crazy. Usually I write way too much detail, and it becomes overly flowery, which is ironically something I hate to read personally, and something I'm trying to avoid doing. Anyways, that's all me thinks. Have a wonderful day y'all, or night… have a wonderful whatever time of day you're experiencing.
Also I'm not apologizing for the cliffhanger.
