Nightshift 56: Bill's Hardware

[she_is_ruin]

[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

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[damned_monsters]

The machete hit home, the blade embedding into the soft tissue of the creature's eye. The movement was quick enough for the necrit to fall without a scream. In contrast, its companion cried from the impact on its stomach and the subsequent crash into a nearby shelf. It shook itself, stumbling painfully on its knees. Hurt but moving.

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.

[she_is_ruin]

The third one was already on the move, scaling a shelf to get height on her, and as she felled one and scattered the other, she used the momentum of her kick to keeping rolling, sheltering her head and neck. While Yomi yanked the machete free, she brought her other hand up, the one still holding the flashlight, and shone it in the face of the falling creature so that it might be blind to where it was landing and give her time to get out of the way.

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.

[purpletaint]

All right. Well, then. Blades could not cut, but the creatures' mass seemed inconsequential by how far they were flung. 'Bashing damage,' then, hmm? His mind chose an action and followed it through. The knife flipped over in his palm, and with no hesitation, he drove the hilt into the skull of the one on his arm. Whether or not that succeeded was truly irrelevant at the moment--the ones on his legs were the higher threat.

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.

[damned_monsters]

The female's continued movements and light saved her from sharpness hooking into her vital points. A pained shriek escaped from the necrit's mouth, and with its arms raised, it smashed into her side before toppling to the floor, writhing. One clawed feet had succeeded in tearing through fabric but ultimately failed to draw blood. The opposite was true for its companion, who took enough blood and flesh to be partially filled. Whose jaws locked the instant the blade passed through the eye to reach the brain. It twitched as it died but did not detach.

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.

[she_is_ruin]

Bastard. The creature that had already gotten a taste of her was persistent, even in death, and it made the sesshouseki thunder in her blood. If the stone had desires, its current one was to inflict pain for pain received--which was not far off from Yomi’s own wishes. Perhaps in the end it was only responding to her intuitive dislike of being threatened by her captors and their monsters.

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.

[purpletaint]

[again, modding permitted]

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.

[damned_monsters]

[Last edit, I swear to god.]

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.

[she_is_ruin]

No kills. Yomi couldn’t rest until there were confirmed kills, not lastly because her opponents were the kind to attack until put down once and for all.

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.

[purpletaint]

Yes, he'd repeat: he hated this, hated the time passing where there had been none. Point out it was exceedingly quicker than likely any other in this place, and he'd wave it off. The point was that it was too slow for him, and even as the tendon connected correctly, knee clicking into place from the band of flesh pulling downward, eyes fluttering shut momentarily as black edged his vision, he still hated it.

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.

[damned_monsters]

The hope to overwhelm quickly overturned. The necrits found themselves colliding with a force that literally took them off their track. The shovel's head caught one on its side, snapping ribs with an almost sickening sound, and the small frame flew into a nearby shelf and dropped onto the floor. The impact was enough to cause the heavy items to fall, burying the necrit in a pile of heavy duty stepladders and hammers.

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.]

[she_is_ruin]

Yomi blocked out the deafening crash of falling products, bracing her good leg to hold her stance. Were they...? She eased up her hold on the shovel. Yes, they were almost all dead. At least the ones who had started this particular encounter. The noise alone would probably draw others, but if there were Category Ds shambling closer on the hunt, they weren't close enough to trip Yomi's sixth senses.

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.

[purpletaint]

Again, a body threatened under pressure, and then gave. He almost expected it to burst like rotten fruit. Instead it just caved in, and Albedo watched it with a dull expression. Around him the sounds of movement ceased, the chittering tells of life gone as if they had never been. He was almost annoyed by this, the quickness in which life fled the strewn-together bodies. It spoke too much of a created frailty, of a delicate mortality that vanished without pretense otherwise.

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?"

[she_is_ruin]

Once again, Yomi pulled her blade free and shook the worst of the gore from it. Silence reigned in the place of obnoxious chattering--by her count, all of the spectres in the storefront were dead, or at least no longer a problem. A minor victory as far as victories went.

The shovel, she no longer needed; she set it aside and put her flashlight down with it. Then she started in on her injury. Cutting her pant leg just above the knee, she stripped it away, sending red-hot jolts of pain up and down her nerves as cloth pulled free of ripped flesh. It was hard to tell when the darkness was turning her blood an opaque black edged in silver, but the exposed bite looked worse than it was. She tossed the ruined fabric aside with the rest of the corpses. It was a little piece of vanity in her that made her cut her other pant leg off at the same height--and also the fact that it would make a suitable bandage while her skin knit itself back together.

Yomi's fingers kept on with their work while Albedo spoke. "Did I have fun? I suppose so. It's good to have an opportunity to keep your skills sharp," she said, knotting a strip of material. "Better if you can save yourself some time by avoiding harm yourself, but..." But she had taken harm, and it wasn't the kind to disappear as fast as a little cut on the palm was liable to do. She just sighed as if to say 'what can you do?'. "I guess we were outnumbered." Albedo was welcome to correct her if he wanted--'we' encompassed a very loose confederacy. Yomi had wanted company in the first place precisely because having some one else around made it easier to protect herself.

She picked up her machete and flashlight again, and came back up the aisle to where he was, pausing at his feet. Her bag was just where she'd left it, just at the top of the aisle. "Wounded?" she asked.

[purpletaint]

Her words only admitted to her own harm, and Albedo considered. Her ability was certainly less potent than his, but of this place or had it been like that before. She had said that complete regeneration wasn't something heard of--for that, he could assume his ability was the one complete, and hers more a prototype. A more human allowance than his would entail without perimeters set upon it. It changed nothing, in the end. She was a devil, a monster like himself who understood, and now she held something more closely to him than any other.

Better to avoid harm? He knew nothing of it. And yet it was exactly what Nigredo wished him to do.

Albedo's gaze flicked to her as she came by him, looking up quietly through his bangs. That question was not something he could answer yes to. Not while he was still anywhere close to himself. Not while he still remained in memory of images flickering past his retinas, of mortality and the limits offered on it.

For a moment, he looked twelve, only and nothing else, and then Albedo closed his eyes. He blinked, and his expression normalized. "Not for long," he answered, then changed to complain. "Though longer than it should be." He frowned petulantly at his leg then glanced back up. "We were. Hopefully it helped a bit that you had some freedom of movement." He grinned, only lightly. "My apologies for not being more enticing to gather them all."

[she_is_ruin]

He was small. That was what she thought while Albedo looked up at her. He was small, like a boy his age generally might be. He wasn't as hard and invincible as he thought he was, either.

If they'd been alone, they might've lost a lot more time waiting to heal. Especially Albedo, if letting hungry spectres latch onto him was a common tactic.

"Was that what you were trying to do? Use yourself as bait?"

[purpletaint]

Despite him near admitting it, for some reason the questions seemed personal. The amusement dropped from his mien, head tipping lightly. It seemed the most intelligent route, after all. And how many times had he done so here? With the zombies and his siblings, with the brainwashed patient and Ritsuka, with the creature and his brother, and now here.

And to what avail? His regeneration had slowed enough that it was an issue and hardly helpful. He could gain attention, allow a clear shot or something else, but it more than not took him out of the fight, as it was. It was true he could hardly be injured, but as things were, he was certainly being slowed down to a point of near idiocy. It was annoying beyond all regard, and something else he wouldn't speak of.

He sighed, then, closing his eyes. The answer she wanted was obvious. He'd ask something else instead. "What would you have me do?"