Nightshift 56: Bill's Hardware
[from here]After dashing over to the hardware store, it was Yomi’s turn to shatter the lock, allowing them access inside. Here, she took out her flashlight and used it to light the aisles, aimed in such a way as to minimize how much showed through the windows. If the noise didn’t draw something, the light probably would. Nightshifts were no place
( Read more... )
And judging from her actions, she planned on doing so. He watched her, with a clinical bored expression, until she was some distance away. Then left his bag next to hers and strode forward towards the entrance, sword in one hand, knife in the other. "Ahh, you all again. Far be it that you're the same ones, more than likely. Still, maybe you're a collective consciousness, hmm?~ Maybe you'll enjoy pieces of me as much as the others."
Was there a point? Not as much. Only gaining their attention in full so she could act as she would. Unlike last night, where being bait had been secondary, here it existed as primary. Let them come. Of pain, of wounds, of regeneration and what was left--this was all clearer than anything else he could think of. Give Yomi her silence and Albedo his distractions, and let them both forget the things forced into the front of their minds.
Reply
Their voices died in unison the instant Albedo spoke.
All nine pairs of eyes narrowed in on the boy, thought processes clicking together in comprehension. Flesh, blood. Intruder. Their detour had taken them to a worthy prize, and without wasting another moment, two of the three-necrit clusters leaped toward Albedo, their claws poised to strike. The rest lingered in anticipation, waiting for their turn, unaware of the second figure in transition.
Reply
Attempting to flee didn’t seem to be on his agenda, though; as she slunk down the aisle on silent feet, she could hear him boasting over top of the commotion. By the sounds of them, the spectres had been drawn to area of the paint can’s impact--foragers looking for prey, not running from it--but had immediately locked on to Albedo at the sound of his voice. For them, a desirable target, and for her, an unequivocal diversion.
Was her acquaintance always so conspicuous, or was he luring them to complement her movements? Yomi didn’t care. She only had mind for how many she could get behind, and when she peered around the end of the aisle, she saw less than half still paused by the entrance.
Well then.
Keeping low to the floor, Yomi came at them, aiming the machete at the side of a necrit’s head to catch its eye during the stroke and at the same time twisting the lower half of her body to kick the next nearest.
Reply
Here again, here again. He stopped when the majority tore towards him, watching their movements with a careless expression that belied the intent in which he watched their feet, noting the weight behind each step, the exact moment when they would leap at him. And he was not wrong. How many to allow and how many to attack? He knew from experience how well they could tear into things, how perfectly they could ravage to get on down onto the ground to consume.
Two were faster than the others, and he swung out with the sword, hoping to catch them both. As he did so, three others moved, latching on to thigh, beneath a knee, and the arm in which he swung with for a particularly able creature. He grimaced, half in memory, half in pain, and wasted no time in stabbing at the skull of the one on his arm with the newly picked up blade.
As for the last, it moved late, and therefore gained no antagonism. It joined the other at Albedo's knee, causing the boy to stumble as the tendon and muscles began to fail. Already, hmm? Would he be downed so quickly this time?
Reply
For a moment, it seemed Yomi had successfully gained the upper hand on a single cluster on her own. The one remaining necrit, however, had caught her movements early on, and as she moved against the others, it leaped onto a nearby shelf before launching itself at her neck, teeth and claw aiming for her throat. Furthermore, the surviving necrit finally managed to steady itself, and despite the pain shooting through its front and spine, it, too, attacked, teeth clasping onto a knee.
Albedo, on the other hand, was gaining some ground, despite the force against him and the closeness of losing his own footing. The sword caught hold of the necrits as hoped, but it was the force that affected as opposed to the sharpness of the blade. They slammed into each other and the nearest wall, before scrambling unsuccessfully to untangle. It would be some time before they would recover. The two at his legs continued their work, tearing through skin and muscle.
The attempt to drive the knife into the fifth necrit's skull, however, barely registered in both skin and reaction. The creature continued to latch onto the boy's good arm, hoping to tear it apart in the next several minutes.
Reply
Puncturing its large, luminous eyes before it crowded her too much was one option. She hadn’t been wrong about them--like on most creatures, the eyes were a point of vulnerability and allowed easy access to brain matter, assuming the brain was located in the skull cavity. But the flesh on these ones… Shallow strikes weren’t going to be enough to debilitate the spectres. She could tell by the way the machete had dragged on the corpse’s tough hide as she’d removed it.
And now that Yomi had used up the element of surprise and exposed herself to the pack…
The one she had kicked away hadn‘t been eliminated from the fight. It moved in with jaws open and attached itself to her leg before she could take up a new stance. It was the pressure she felt first, like a vice being locked about her knee--then came the pain of its teeth sinking down toward her bone. Yomi came down on her free leg, quickly reversed her grip on the machete, stabbed at its eyes to kill it before it did more damage than it already had.
Reply
And as that was briefly thought, his right leg gave out. Tch. If anything, he needed to become more resilient. He broke far too easily--amusing, at length; annoying at times. His teeth bared in a sharp intake of air. At the least he could stop them as he fell--he angled, so his tibia would at least crush the two lower unless they released him.
As he did so, he brought the sword back, aiming for the remaining one attached at his thigh. Detaching the beasts, he considered idly, watching this all from a separate perspective, was truly half of the concern.
Reply
The male, too, was beginning to get a better idea on how to handle the creatures. The necrit at his arm dropped instantly at the force against its skull. For a moment, it stilled, disoriented. The actions taken against the two lower were executed correctly, and suddenly, the pair found themselves under eighty pounds of mass. The one at the boy's thigh released. Both flailed wildly in an attempt to escape as they slowly felt their ribs bend to the point of breaking.
Reply
If she was going to exist, she was going to exist all the way through this imprisonment of hers. Becoming food for a spectre wasn’t an outcome in that plan.
With clinical detachment, Yomi used the widest part of the blade to wedge the corpse’s jaws open and pull it off her, sacrificing delicacy for quickness. Her leg wasn’t beyond use but it was shredded enough that straining it would make it unusable in due time. The pain alone would have made walking impossible for a normal person, but Yomi cared only for whether or not she still had motor function and her kneecap had provided some protection to the delicate tendons around it… even if removing the necrit was causing further damage. The situation didn’t allow for her to take her time sliding its teeth out of her. After all, there was one still--
Before the last necrit had a chance to get up, Yomi brought her other foot down on it with an audible crunch of bone and tissue.
Now they were all dead.
At least on her end of the store. Albedo was…
Yomi looked for him amongst the gore and the commotion--commotion not caused by the necrits on her side of the room, which had been dealt with, but by the two groups surrounding the boy as he knelt in the middle of them, covered in his own blood. In that moment, he didn’t look like a being with inhumanly advanced regeneration to his name. He looked like a baby who had six spectres breathing down his neck.
Her injured knee screamed in complaint at being forced into a run, but Yomi did so anyway, and as she moved back up the aisle toward Albedo she sent her machete spinning into the face of one of the dazed creatures. At the very least, it would serve as a distraction until she could dispatch it--and the most effective way to do that was through blunt force, not through the close-range cuts provided by a machete. Hence the shovel she snatched from a shelf and promptly swung down at the other disorientated necrit staggering around the boy.
Reply
The first acknowledgement was of bodies crushes beneath his leg, and as their bodies caved inwards, Albedo leaned forward, hands touching tile, and pressed his leg down further, soft ribs crushing, giving with sharp snaps. The movement beneath him slowed, then halted, limbs falling to earth. There existed no time to contemplate mortality for from the count, he had four more, let alone if Yomi had dealt with her.
That question was one answered from movement at his side, and his eyes angled, watching a blade spin toward one, and watching her dance to attack another. She was beautiful, wasn't she? Covered in blood and others' gore like a goddess of death and vengeance, and he watched her, watched as she moved in destruction. The muscles under his knee were knitting together and his eyes trailed over to the first two he had struck, wondering if he could regenerate and stand before they gained their own footing.
Skin pulled together against the cool tile, and the tug of muscle and tendon regrowing made him set his mouth in a line. Slowly, like this, it grated on him, the process of death being reversed to something closer and further from actual life.
Reply
The machete came down on its target at an angle, which was enough to cause unwanted vibrations in its head. The necrit stilled entirely as it momentarily lost consciousness. Meanwhile, the shovel slammed into the other squarely in the face, the force knocking the necrit against the wall. There, it stayed flailing wildly.
The first pair of necrits that had ended in a pathetic pile by the side wall finally managed to untangle, and they rose with a fury normally unseen. They chattered away excitedly, seeing the one who had brought them down on the floor as well. Unfortunately, another was in the way. Before anything else, this one had to be taken out.
Then, they could feast.
The two moved as one as they leaped at the young woman who had interfered, claws aiming for her shoulder blade and the small of her back respectively. If they could just overwhelm her before she could overwhelm them, they would have gained the upper hand, and not all would be lost.
Reply
Albedo wasn’t dead but he was still down for the time being, and though she had temporarily interrupted two of the little beasts, another two were zeroing in on her. If they were determined to end her, then Yomi was just as dead set on destruction. She whirled, wanting, demanding the sesshouseki make her even better than before. Stronger. Faster. The same killer who had cut the heart out of the exorcist organization and fed it to them. She wanted that ease of killing, and the stone was obliged to make wishes come true.
Aligning the flashlight‘s handle with the shovel‘s, she swung with brutal force at the necrits, angling her swing to catch one on the shovel’s head and one on the wood, much like Albedo had done before. Had she been facing an easier substance to cut through with Shishiou in her hands, Yomi knew for a fact she would’ve sliced their heads from their bodies.
Wishes.
Reply
Before the skin had closed over muscle, Albedo was standing, hands pressing off the floor to straighten. She had stunned two and was being attacked by another pair, but unlike her, Albedo would leave her her prey. His line of sight narrowed on the two nearby, and without hesitation, he stepped towards the one flailing, raising a leg up to stomp on it, then adding pressure as he leaned into the small body.
Reply
Meanwhile, the wood slammed into the neck of the other creature, and the bones tilted a step too far to the side. Like its companion, there was a sharp snap at the impact, and the necrit crashed into the wall. Life fled instantly, leaving the body to tumble unceremoniously to the ground.
The unconscious necrit stayed as such while its flailing partner suddenly found itself supporting eighty pounds of weight and force. The ribs crushed easily, the bones tearing into the lungs, and the creature died gurgling.
[Feel free to just finish off the last living ones in your posts.]
Reply
The sesshouseki sang like a piece of crystal that had been struck. They fed on me. It's been a while since I've been hurt.
No, they'd fed on... the both of them.
Yomi blinked down at the necrit who still had her machete lodged in its head like a pin stuck in a pin cushion. She walked over to it, her gaze followed Albedo. The dark could conceal a lot, but on a human scale of injury he'd been seriously wounded, only he was healing with every second. He hadn't been spreading false rumors about his abilities. Did someone like that need help? Except she hadn't helped him. No more than she'd helped herself. She stopped in front of the unconscious creature, and felt trickles of blood running down along the curve of her calf. But they weren't untouchable, were they. She and Albedo, they bled. Were they still above being helped, knowing that?
Would it matter, when the sun rose and wounds disappeared?
She pulled the machete out, then plunged it back in to kill the thing.
Reply
His good humor on the situation vanished, and Albedo didn't even notice. He half-limped back to where their things laid, and dropped down to the floor beside his bag, stretching out his leg to poke at the exposed muscle under his knee. Obnoxious. And now he only wanted to sleep. Sitting itself became a temptation. He didn't know if he wanted to get up again.
The boy didn't look at her when he spoke, something too intimate in the moments that passed before. "Did you have fun?"
Reply
Leave a comment