explain your game; I'll play it perfectly. [closed]
Who: purpletaint & lolwhatfuture
What: Ironically, it is the actual insane one who isn't affected by any of this. A certain winged, smart-mouthed, heroic type, however, is.
Where: Wandering around the fountain area.
When: Sometime during the event.
( can you touch it, press and hold it? )
What: Ironically, it is the actual insane one who isn't affected by any of this. A certain winged, smart-mouthed, heroic type, however, is.
Where: Wandering around the fountain area.
When: Sometime during the event.
( can you touch it, press and hold it? )
Catch the nonviables, they will destroy everything.
It was a mantra that had entered her head suddenly as something swept over her, taking her--everything that made her Max--with it, and leaving behind only a possibility. It was a road that had existed at birth, one that would make her everything They had ever wanted her to be, and perhaps more. The real her had refused, but wasn't present.
And in the heavy fog, splitting the air with flight of close to three hundred miles an hour as her raptor-like vision went ahead to detect prey: there, such a small one, blurred by the fog; she angled, righted, and sped straight for a boy perched on a fountain. A collision course. Break him, she thought hatefully, and it was a common line of thought since that wave passed over her. Monsters had bled by her hand, evidenced by the darkening stains that nearly covered her, but it wasn't enough. Tear him up.
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Found the anomaly and smiled perfectly.
Dodging was something foreign to one who could regenerate effortlessly in spades. It wasted a chance to gain the upper hand by fleeing and Albedo had no need of it. The girl slammed into him at chest level and he was knocked off his ledge into the pavement, a few ribs snapping from the force as his head cracked back into the ground. He coughed, laughing at the entirety of the situation. What had Dai said? "Be clever." Hardly. Albedo would relish this.
She would likely continue her endeavors and yet still he gazed up at her, eyes lidded as if keeping a secret. "'The Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, with hideous ruin and combustion, down to bottomless perdition....'" He smiled. "And where else but here, would I find such an exquisite fallen angel?"
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He was not dead. No, he was resilient, and wasn’t that common amongst the soldier types? So he survived and spoke and gazed, and how could she have known that no effort on her part would bring about an end to this poor, pathetic soul with the porcelain face and fair hair.
“Spare me your poetic bullshit, kid.”
The likening of an angel.
She sneered. How unfortunate for Heaven, if it were true.
There was a rustle and a click as she extracted the blade from her pocket. He hadn’t moved. She didn’t care if he opted to lie back and accept his fate. Maybe he did so out of defeat, faced with his own undesirable existence as a nonviable, or he could simply be crazy. It wasn’t uncommon in the cages.
Either way, Max stood over Albedo and dropped to her knees to straddle him, blade in hand: which, without another word-but with the thought, what a shame to waste a nice pair of violent eyes-she drew to the far side of his neck to slice across his throat.
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And yet, she spoke, and he would quote a man far known for his dramatics for the tone heard. His eyes widened in recognition, the grin on his face widening. Now this was... Such a perfect turn of events. This one's voice was far too familiar--she had taken his mind, in a sense, and how utterly fitting that her form was as this. That her actions followed just the same. Hmm, not a fallen angel... But a winged valkyrie then. A warrior, bright and shining, and able to tear him down just the same. Oh, please do--do try.~ He'd adore her efforts just the same.
She dropped and slid her blade across, and blood bubbled outward. To the side, the cabbit flared in fire, its form changing larger to a nine-tailed fox, as large as a horse in size. It made no move other than a low growl, for the soul it was bonded to was still very much intact. For all the apparent damage done--a widened grin across his neck leaking red and showing white further back--the boy's expression had never faltered. The grin remained, a perverse pleasure now seeping through his expression.
The wound given began to glow, and within small moments, the skin had sealed and healed to perfection, leaving nothing but unblemished skin and blood stains for her efforts. As if it hadn't been noticed at all, Albedo only quoted at her, near lovingly. "...'Oh, but speak again, bright angel'.~ As glorious as the night, over head as a winged messenger of the heavens."
He paused, the expression shading darker. "Or speak less and try your hand again." He blinked up at her fondly. "I knew you'd be such delightful fun."
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It was about then that things stopped making sense for her.
For, as if in response to his familiar’s growl, the wicked metal trinkets lying uselessly in her coat pockets grew hot and transferred from her person to the ground in a bright flash. A large hawk took place there, somewhere over four feet in height and primarily white in color. Its responsive screech was so shrill her ears ached.
Max looked back to Albedo with wonder and a shaky breath. Her fingertips brushed over the healed flesh at his throat almost tenderly, her hand unsteady as his blood came away from flawless skin, and she had to wonder, Where the hell did They send me? What is this? What is he?
“You-”
The amazement vanished. Her eyes were wild with fury at it all.
“You little brat,” she snarled. “You want an angel so damn bad, I’ll drag you straight to Hell.”
The palm of her free hand rested against the side of his face. Fingers curled into the soft white hair. He spoke as though he had expected her to come for him, which in her current state of mind made sense. He knew he had to die, an abomination despite the angelic face, and here she was to deliver his wish. Still, something in her was scrambled.
It was him. Always him; no matter what Max was or wasn’t, Albedo would always perplex her.
“I’ll eat your rotten little heart.”
The hand against his cheek tensed-a hold, as she drew the bladed hand back and then forward again, a desperate plunge for his temple.
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Max touched him near lovingly, and Albedo adored her. Adored her wonder, her amazement, her face as it contorted in rage. Glorious. Yes. This way was much better. Let her show her sweet affection through violence and blood. There was no greater thing, no more glorious effort. She drove the blade through the softer bone at his temple and his vision cut out, a period of five seconds when he was dead momentarily. It came back quickly, and he bared his teeth in a grin of dark delight. His hand came up to grasp hers, and slowly he forced the blade in further, consciousness blinking out every inch.
"Let me tell you, love: You'll have to work a little further for that outcome. I know hell quite well, and this is only a vacation from it." His other hand reached out, fingers gracing the feathers of a wing. How soft. He smiled, somehow gentler. "And my heart, dearest, is not yours to hold."
No, not this girl, even if he learned to adore her as herself and not as just a person of intrigue. Only one held it, could keep it and tear it from his chest in abandon, extinguish it, crush it, destroy it utterly--allow Albedo (salvation) death, resolution, and a quick end to betrayal and abandonment, and that individual, the one Albedo loved most and hated beyond all reason, was not here.
So, instead. Albedo would play. Just a bit more.
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That he had not yet screamed, cried, or even regarded her with hatred was disturbing. Mind-blowing.
Her wing twitched at the contact, and their predatory stretch softened, coming down around Albedo like a blanket. She could feel the blood seeping from his temple and staining her hand. He had so astounded her that for an instant Max could not react.
But it was only that: an instant, and she wrenched her hand backwards sloppily with the knife to grasp his shirt and shake him.
“What the hell’s your problem?" It was nearly a scream, then, her outrage so peaked. "Why won’t you die?”
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There existed something between awe and wonder on his mien when feathers shifted beneath his fingertips, wings settling around him. There was something close to religion in this, nothing like what he would quote in tandem, but something sacred all the same. His eyes widened--for a moment, Albedo looked like nothing more than the child that he was.
Perhaps because of this, her arm's wrenching came as unexpected, and for yet another set of seconds, consciousness blinked out. His vision slid into focus as her hands wrapped around the cloth of his shirt, literally lifting him to shake. On reaction, his hands fell on hers, tightening against further movement.
"My problem is many things," he said, more seriously than he had spoken before. "I myself am one to many others, but that is neither here or there. And I won't die because my death is not for you. You aren't the one who can end me." The smile he gave her was almost kind. "Despite if I wished that you could." She had blood on her, only his, and he enjoyed it. Wished she could be covered in it, staining those wings darker, until they were dripping with it--like a true angel of death.
Then, maybe. Then he would fall before her and beg for her to end him.
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"You'd let me keep going anyway, wouldn't you?" she asked. "Until it bored you-you'd just let me hurt you."
It felt like something out of a fairytale: the tragic boy longing for death, the girl desperate to deliver, and that one that could fulfill his wish…absent. And what was the lesson? She could destroy herself trying to finish Albedo. That endless, insatiable greed that rotted a person, a greed for superiority, for the satisfying victory when his gaze could no longer chill her and his lungs could not draw breath to goad her.
She wondered what it was like, the quiet, those beats between life where he didn’t have to deal or worry, where he could rest a minute and come back to laugh at her all over again.
“Is it funny?” Max allowed herself a laugh, but it was something bitter and tired and crazed. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
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Did it matter? Suddenly a part of him wasn't sure. His eyes held hesitation, but he still continued. "Boredom is death, after all. And you've been such fun."
Truth was told in that. Give him an angel created, and didn't it make sense now? He had wondered, had he not? What additions could be given to one with hawk DNA, and who would have thought that wings would be the answer? Speak frankly, though: One would likely be hard-pressed to believe the existence of a child whose main component was rDNA. It had been called chimeric in the past, hadn't it? How ironic--they were the anti-existence of a god in form, and still when pressed against it, they could only fall short. Albedo had survived the process, but at what cost? For the first time in a long while, these thoughts were allowed.
The joy in his eyes died wholly, yet still he grinned. Was the joke on him, then? Was he mocking himself at this point? "It's very funny, or it should be. And I enjoy you, darling. I've told you this." He allowed himself to reach again, trail fingers along the top of a wing. "You're very much my type."
Oh, those of ill-humor and dry wit with tempers that flare like suns and die like comets across the sky. Those who know too much of life and yet still afford to love it regardless. Oh, Albedo would not be those ones. But he was drawn to them. Still a pattern had not set itself--he would watch them, affect them, and perhaps cause them to fall. Meet him in fourteen years and it'd be his life's efforts as a hobby. In everything currently, it was only an enticement. A desire. Give him beings yet alive, and he would love them before they died.
Let him watch those inside mortality's coil, let him see them alive and bright. As he would never be. For it was said as well--if one could not know death, they would never truly know life.
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Again her wing shifted under his touch. It felt nice, the muscles there were so sore, so sensitive, even though a part of her could not stand being petted by the victim. She wanted to cause him pain as he did to her in denying his death, to at least say something cruel. What makes you think you’re worth remembering? But it would be a lie. Albedo was unforgettable, and she would always see his face and would always remember his hands, because they didn’t have the clumsy clutch of a twelve-year-old. He was something…more, even if she wanted to diminish him to nothing.
He kept talking as though they’d met before and perhaps even been friends. But she could not remember, and in that lack of memory realized she had nothing. Nothing but an order, something internal that screamed and demanded terrible, wonderful things of her. How old was she? With all that she held in recollection it felt only like hours. His pet names attested to much longer, and she couldn’t help the faint pink stain that colored her cheeks when he spoke to her so. Embarrassment. The adoration of the kill. What sort of predator was she?
Her hand lifted, poised in something between a fist and a claw. Still that internal thing said strike him, yet she paused there. Hurt him.
How?
“You’re type,” Max echoed. “You’ve got a weird taste for thrills, kid.” She smiled back at him, teasing despite everything. “Besides, I think I’m a little old for you.”
And, just because simply lowering it would have felt like defeat, she swiped her clawed hand down to smack him.
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As if that solitary thought was enough to halt all motion, his mentality again shifted, flickered away and back, and it was if he had never fell again. Or if he fell countless times, and wasn't that better, a circular motion, and he would break it, burn it; torch it to nothing until it fell away from what was, and disallowed anything else.
This was but a game, after all. No need to become so involved. Not as such.
His expression slid into light mocking, his grin becoming smug. "So I've been told. However--" He was cut off by her action, and he reacted, hand darting out to meet hers in midair. He was not so utterly helpless--he had been trained as a soldier for twelve years for one. And there existed a kind of discrepancy in the act she used. Her body moving while her eyes spoke differently.
"My age is a bit complicated," he went on, as if he had never been interrupted. "It all depends if you judge on the physical body or the experience of the mind." He lightly pulled on her hand to bring it towards him, small enough that she could pull away if she so desired. His eyes darkened, as if holding a secret that she would never know. "And what's wrong, my darling?~ You don't seem to be enjoying this as much as you were."
Despite being on the ground, and not having moved an inch since she had pinned him there, he tilted his head comfortably, as if it was a choice, and something quite fine indeed. "Do you still want to tear me into pieces? Bleed me out until your wonderful feathers are as red as flames--until I exist more in pieces, around you, on you, instead of before you to speak what you do not want to hear?"
He knew all of this well, and he continued to smile, still idly moved a hand against her wing in adoration despite the subject. "Come now. Tell me what you really want."
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“I want the same damn thing, dearest.”
The Change didn’t so much allow room for different priority. But Max was not so overcome as to lose her train of thought, even if said train was endless in its path for devastation, and she was aware of the senselessness in attacking without considering. Where would she go from there? There had to be some sort of secret loophole in his immortality, but she couldn’t figure.
It had occurred to her moments before that this wasn’t the most usual of positions to hold a conversation in. It was the-albeit false-sense of dominance that kept her there, as well as that wonder that had flared up the first time he’d regenerated, and when he had first denied her the terror and agony she so wanted to see in his expression.
“I’d rip away your skin and peel every muscle, tendon, and vein out if I thought it’d accomplish a single thing. Even just to make you scream…” She paused and shook her head, eyes narrowed in venomous frustration. “I know you wouldn’t.”
Max tapped her temple with her free hand. “There’s something inside there, huh? Something old and way fucked up. I could cut you open and snap off your ribs one by one, but you still wouldn’t even be all that bothered by it, would you? How am I supposed to enjoy myself when the desired effect just isn’t going to happen?”
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Be it that she spoke in terms Albedo would shiver in pleasure at. She was a flirt, a tease, and she didn't even know it. And he was supposed to withhold from the knowledge that she wasn't quite herself? Hardly. His lips pulled from his teeth, eyes rolling back. "You could try, though. If you want. You can pull me apart to find what I'm made of."
But he could understand, in a way. Imagine trying something endlessly without gaining the result desired. Albedo knew that well, in ways that he would not speak. He'd touch on something else instead. "Not in there," he clarified, bringing the hand he was holding of hers to his throat while he spoke, touching her fingers to veins, nails to skin. "More that I was touched by something. Taken by something. Violated and expelled and heightened and connected and left less and more. Can you understand? Max?"
That couldn't be her name, could it? Any more than Albedo or 667 was his own. What was it short for? He wondered. "Do as you will, if you wish. Or do nothing and shake from your need going unfulfilled."
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Her hand touched his neck again, and as he spoke she felt her fingers shifting and wrapping gently about his throat to rest there rather than squeeze. No, not just yet.
“My need,” Max mimicked acidly. “I can always rip someone else apart. What about you?”
It wasn’t hard to guess that the death inside him was a result of a greater goal. If a person couldn’t die, what was there in life worth enjoying, worth living for, when it all became an endless, unwanted stretch with all the time in the world to hate it? She could pity this sorry creature. It would have been less of a waste if he were another deformed thing lying on the bottom of a cage and waiting impatiently for the end. But he was perfectly put together-cute, even, for a target-and capable of seeking out something he might never attain.
Max gripped his chin gently and lowered so to speak in a whisper and be heard, that wild and animalistic glint betraying the still-present flurry of hatred within.
“I already know what you’re made of,” she murmured. “All you are is another sad story. There might be blood and muscle and bones inside, but that’s not what you’re made of, that all just takes up space. You’re time.”
The corner of her mouth lifted in an unkind smile.
“Time spent, time wasted, time eternal. How bleak. For your sake, I hope you find that person who can kill you.”
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He blinked up at her languidly. "But you would know there exists one who you couldn't kill. That because you weren't better, stronger, more, you couldn't destroy." He raised a brow as if in question. "One would would forget you in a moment if it's determined your will is that lacking."
It was half-bluff and half-bribe, and he wasn't completely sure on the motives behind it. Let her go and nothing would change--ah, but. There it was, wasn't it? He had said in details, that boredom could kill.
And even that still was a lie in terms of motivation. Why, then, would he press to keep her, by regarding her as if worthless? A conundrum in part, in process, and there was time to flip through it later. No need to break it apart in clear view.
She spoke more perfectly than any would ever say, and she understood more than his brothers ever would. Oh, yes, speak of time, and he would surrender to how he hated it. Speak of time eternal, and he would know breaking--this place would never be seen as hell, hell was where Albedo lived; hell the knowledge that he would continue endlessly while all others faded away. Hell was being a sensitive child and digging graves to mourn your siblings' losses before their deaths, so you wouldn't break when they did. Hell was but eternity, spanning out and forever, a million possibilities, endless and everything, and Albedo alone. Forever cut off from all those that truly lived.
This was truth, but give him credit. He was no longer that child. For that child had died. Died coming too close to universal truth, his wings burning up as he came too close to the sun. For Albedo had fallen. For he knew ascension well.
His eyes hollowed at her words, then with no words of his own to prelude, his eyes lit with phosphor, glowing violet. Oh, yes, he knew ascension quite well--had come to terms with solitude, really (as a lie or the truth, it mattered naught)--for Albedo had touched eternity, begged forgiveness and gained none but what was, and here this girl, created angelic, claimed bias? Mm, how positively faulty. His mouth opened, tongue touching teeth in a serpentine gesture, the glow from his eyes expanding to a haze that surrounded his form. If one had the eye for it, magenta could be seen mingling with purple, a seductive dance of color and power.
Power that shot out from Albedo at Max, flinging her away from him. He sighed up at the sky, then sat, pulling a knee to his chest to lean an arm on. The oversized fox trotted to sit behind him and Albedo only stared at Max, eyes resembling little of what claimed itself as humanity.
Monsters and demons were only what they were, in the end. Evolved beings could not touch backwards on what they had been. 'Those who hide in sheep's clothing may blend with the flock...'
"'But their actions,'" he murmured to himself, mouth barely moving. "'Will deem who is sheep and who is not.'"
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