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I was sprinting through the woods at night. An unbearable pain in my chest. I slid to a stop and ripped my clothes off to see something massive worming its way around in my stomach. I took the edge of Crocea Mors to my body and screamed as I tried to cut it out of me.
A massive rolling Grimm masked worm flopped out of my chest from the gaping wound I'd cut in my side. It looked up at me with a pleased look.
It was killing me.
It was killing me.
I was going to die and that would be preferable to this. This agony was too much for anyone to bear.
I woke up still on top of the building I passed out on top of. I felt like shit. My chest was crusty with blood and Neo… I felt like crying. My mistake had fucked her up. I'd need to find her and apologize.
I grimaced and pulled myself to my feet. I covered myself as best as I could then started a long painful march to Seventh Heaven. I tried not to draw much attention but I was a tall bleeding figure. I got looks. There was nothing I could do about that.
At least the mission had been a success. The White Whale was gone when I woke up. At the bottom of the harbor. And it hadn't exploded and destroyed the docks which was a nice plus.
The plan had technically been a success. But only in a technical sense.
I dragged myself into Seventh Heaven with a chiming of bells.
Jasper was there wiping down the counter.
"Cloud!"
"Jasper." I returned easily. "How was Neo?"
"She was fine within a few hours. She left. Not sure where to. But what about you? You're hurt!"
"He got a good shot off on me. It won't happen again. I need to find Neo. I need to tell her I'm sorry."
"I think she knows," Jasper countered. She pulled a medical kit from behind the bar.
"Doesn't matter. She's been all I've had. And I almost got her killed."
"I told you she was fine. She walked it off. Where have you been?"
"Sleeping it off. Taurus put a hole in me."
She started trying to pull my clothes and armor off. I jerked back away from her. I didn't even really mean to.
"Let me help you," she pleaded.
"After I find out where Neo is. She might have gone back to our hotel."
I pulled my scroll out and sent her a message.
Where are you? I'm at Seventh Heaven.
I waited a few moments and got a message back from her address.
!omw
I sighed. Neo was not a talker, even through text where she could have been. It was a touch annoying but I was glad she was alright.
"We told her you were fighting Taurus. I think she went looking for you," Jasper said. "We thought you died."
"Almost. I'm still kicking around though," I shot back. I kicked a barstool to prove my point. It aggravated my chest wounds. Ah, that was the stuff.
"Still think you can beat him?" She fired.
"Give me a few days to recover and definitely. I won't make the same mistakes again. I gave him an edge over me. I handed him the power he needed to win. His semblance surprised me. It won't work twice," I promised.
And it wouldn't. It had been an odd interaction of our powers but it had only happened because I'd gone for the blade beam. Any other Limit Break would have caused things to play out in my favor. Or closer to it. He wouldn't have had that devastating slice.
Jasper was unrelenting. She pulled and tugged at my clothes, she was determined to get a look at where I was cut.
"Come on. Let me take a look at you. Let's get you cleaned up."
"You got a shower here?" I asked.
She nodded and took my hand and started to guide me. I stripped out of my clothes and armor before she'd even left the room, leaving her blushing but I was too tired to care.
I hopped in the shower and the water burned against my chest wound. It wasn't a particularly deep laceration, it hadn't opened my abdomen like some other wounds I'd had before, and it was located just above the bottom of my rib cage to the right side.
I hissed under the hot water as it started to undo the blood clot and clean the wound. I bled a lot into that small shower. The water ran red for a long long time.
I popped back out and put my trousers back on. I came down to where Jasper had the medical kit.
"Think you have stuff to sew me back together in there?" I asked her. I stood shirtless in her bar. She stared for a moment before she opened it and rifled through it. She withdrew her medical line, tweezers, scissors, and a needle.
I propped myself up and wiped my chest down with alcohol wipes and then I started to sew myself back up.
That was when Neo came rushing in. She took me in for a moment.
"Neo…" I paused. She just stared at me. "Neo, I'm so sorry my explosive got you hurt. I've been running it through in my head and I have no idea when I made the mistake but it must have been somewhe-"
She walked up and tried to put her arms around me. Her arms weren't long enough to get all the way around me. I sighed into her touch. I felt the feeling of our bare skin against one another's. It was warm despite her chilling aura.
I relaxed into the touch and shuddered once against the cold of her aura. Goosebumps ran down my arms and back at her touch. Her exposed stomach and cleavage ran against my waist.
"Sorry," I breathed. "Sorry."
I had paused mid sewing myself back up. I continued once she backed away. I dabbed at the still bleeding wound with a cloth as I worked to keep my eyes free and my hands mostly clean of blood.
There was a growing pile of bloodied bandages and cloths next to me on one of the bar stools near where I leaned.
Neo and Jasper both watched me work until I put the last knot in the wire and pulled the wound tightly closed. I gasped a little in pain.
"Hopefully this reaches you that you're not invincible," Jasper said.
"I didn't need another reminder of that."
"But you're still going to fight Taurus?"
"Got to now. It's fucking on now. The gloves are off."
"You should have had them off to begin with."
"I made a mistake."
Neo took a Cosmo Canyon she ordered by pulling on my arm and splashed it against my chest. The alcohol burned and I hissed.
I glared at her. But she just leaned on one palm and smiled at me. I figured she was allowed a little of that considering what I put her through. Maybe I deserved it more than a little. I had to clean myself off of the sticky liquid again. I threw all the bandages and cloths and alcoholic wipes I'd accumulated away.
I put my huntsman clothes and armor back on. I strapped my harness and sword back to my back. In a week or so I'd be right as rain. But for now I needed to act like I was as hurt as I was.
"They confiscated and probably impounded my bike Neo. My bike, my precious, precious bike," I bemoaned.
She only laughed at me in silence. A shuffling of her shoulders and a wide open smile. She was grinning the entire time. She was happy that I was alive. She'd been worried. She tried to cover it by tormenting me but I saw through it a little. Only a little though. The rest was on to how she was a sadist.
"Thank you Jasper." I slid her back her medical kit across the counter after putting everything away in it.
I'd need to repair my huntsman clothes. They'd been torn in the fight. We could find a place that could fix or repair it, though. It would just take time. "And let me know if you see Taurus again. I've got a blood score to settle with him now."
Might as well add him to my list of names I was constantly looking out for.
"You're really serious about fighting him again after what he did to you?"
"He got lucky," I countered.
"You got lucky," she countered back
"I did, but he got lucky first. That's how he won. In the luck race he got to the finish line first. I'll get him the next time we fight, just wait and see."
"If you say so. I think you should avoid him."
"Enough about that. What's been going down since I was out?" I asked.
"Well the unions are in action. Schnee will have to make concessions now. He's got no reserves of dust. Well, not as many and he knows that they are not safe and they're dwindling," Jasper said. She wiped some of my blood off the counter with a disinfectant wipe.
At least I knew this place was that hygienic.
"He'll need his workers back to work to keep up with local demand. He can't afford not to. He doesn't have any other customers what with the embargo and all. He's losing money fast as it is. And he has competitors. He'll have to give us something."
"Is that where Bisque and Wenge are?" I wondered.
"They're leading the charge with the strikes. Avalanche needs to be seen at the forefront of things if we want to be major players."
"Politics," I grumbled. "I'd rather be stabbed in the chest."
"You know what? You're lucky you're cute because that shit wouldn't fly with anybody else."
"Who says anything about being cute?" I asked.
"Don't be bratty," she said, leaning on the counter.
"I'm serious," I said.
"At least take it easy for the next few days," she said. "Promise me that."
"I make no promises. Anything could happen. But yeah, I probably will. Keep an eye out for Taurus for me."
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To be honest I was in quite a bit of pain. I'd taken some ibuprofen but it only seemed to bed the beast down and not so much actually able to put it to sleep. It was still rearing to clip at me. Nipping at my heels as I made my way around.
Plus they'd taken my bike so I had no wheels which meant Neo and I were walking to the seamstress where they could repair my shirt. Walking and in pain. And I had no one to complain to besides Neo who would probably just get a kick out of it my distress. Especially considering what I put her through. I deserved that.
I needed to get my hands on some real painkillers. That meant talking to Aurum and getting up to Atlas.
I took a gondola up to the floating island and got my shirt fixed up before I made my way to The Den and through its usual din. It only took an hour or two of waiting to get my shirt fixed up.
I wasn't sure how Aurum basically lived in all that noise twenty-four seven like he seemed to. I wasn't sure how he wasn't deaf.
He greeted me with a shallow wave to come over. I plopped down on the couch and let out a groan of pain as I rattled my ribcage in the process.
"I need painkillers," I told Aurum. "I'm willing to pay extra for them if you can get them to me fast."
He reached into a pocket and dumped a few pills out on his hand from a little bottle. He handed them to me.
"What's this?" I asked. I handled the round pills for a moment in my palm.
"Vicodin," he said. "I'll get you some more. This was just from my personal stash and what I had on me."
I took the pills with no water. I groaned as I did. That was that good shit. Real dosages of painkillers was what I needed.
"What happened to you?" He asked.
"I lost a fight," I confessed. "Ass end of an ass kicking and all that."
"To who?" He wondered.
"Adam fucking Taurus."
"Ah that makes sense."
"It does?" I asked.
"He's one of the few people in town that could give you a figurative bloody nose," he spoke over the noise of his music.
"Yeah well he got fucking lucky. I'll kill him next time," I said.
"Next time, hmm?" He made a questioning noise.
"Add him to my list. I want to catch him and kill him." He nodded at that and I could see him mentally do so. It was good for his business anyways.
"I heard Schnee's ship went down full of cargo. Was that you?" He asked.
"It was." I said. I sighed. Those were strong painkillers and someone brought me a whole pill bottle of them. I forked over a few hundred Lien in exchange. I could already feel them working. That was that good stuff. They were relaxing me.
Just because I'd been hurt worse on no painkillers didn't mean I relished the experience. Maybe I wanted to be able to relax and not feel like I was dying.
He laughed at me and I managed a weak glare.
I groaned and waned in and out of consciousness in the lair of a drug lord who I would argue was kind of a friend. How things change. If you'd told me I would be in this position back at Beacon I would have laughed in your face.
Well maybe not. I'd had no confidence back then.
But then a lot of shit had happened to me since freshman year. I found out I was a failed experiment who only got passed around on the off chance that they succeeded.
I had the relic of knowledge still on my belt. It was secured to my person at all times. I considered asking it when the pain would fucking stop for good. It was still there. It was just muted by the Vicodin.
"Can I get you a drink?" Aurum asked.
"Should I mix alcohol and these kinds of painkillers?" I shot back.
"I always do," he said. "It's a fucking trip."
"Fuck it," I said. "Something straight and hard, if you please."
He ordered himself a screwdriver and me a few shots of vodka.
I took two of them and the room began to slouch. I was starting to feel a lot less shitty.
I sighed into the comfortable couch. Even with the music at such a high level I might just pass out. I waned in and out of consciousness in a way that was completely different to the way I'd done that on Hyper. On Hyper it had been all rush, making things a blur and making me wax and wane. On this it was all drowsiness so that I was just on the edge of falling asleep constantly.
"Fucking Taurus."
"What's that?"
"Taurus. He fucking cheated. I handed him the power to win and he nearly cut me in half. Luckily I had armor. I can't believe shit went down like that. I should have killed him. He just absorbed my attack. Must have been his semblance. Semblances are bullshit."
"I'm told you have quite the doozy of a semblance. That's just what I heard at least. You ripped into the prisoner transport like it was a tin can."
"Maybe. It's just bullshit when somebody else does, too. It's unfair. I'm going to pass out here for a bit." I leaned my head down onto the couch cushions.
I was straight off to dreamland despite the wump-wump-wump of the music in the place.
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-WG