Despite the boom of their own screams being enough to make Yellow feel like their brain is rattling around in their skull, the Valkhound is somehow able to push through it and close the distance shockingly quickly. Suddenly it's looming over them and the lurid blood and neon quills and massive twisted jaws and teeth dwarf the sifaka, making them feel like an ant about to be crushed. Dinner about to be tossed up and caught in those teeth and ripped apart.

NO. THEY CAN'T. They won't just let this happen. They can fight now. If magic won't save them then the gun will. The jaw hovering over them is also a target hovering over them. Would it still be able to crush them in those jaws if they were broken and bleeding? BANG. Another gunshot, aimed right at the vulnerable underside of its head and throat.

@V-Chaos-Fourteen

ROUND 5/?

ATTEMPT: what big jaws you have! would be a shame if something happened to them
DEFENSE: none
INJURIES: none

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

violence

(temporary)

death

Fourteen knows, as Yellow raises up the gun to fire point-blank, that its being incredibly stupid. Its about to get itself killed. It's about to die to a stupid, tiny prey-thing and it's stupidly powerful, strange weapon.

The very least it can do is take them down with it.

It's good arm slams down on Yellow, pinning her to the stone floor and crushing her if she can't get away in time. Claws might pierce her- it's a clumsy strike, but doesn't NEED good aim when its hand is nearly the size of her entire body. It savors the brief moment it gets of a victory that should've been easy and painless. Any cries of pain, any satisfying crunch of bone.

And then it smells smoke and feels heat. And then the bullet pierces the underside of its jaw, straight through its brain, and it stops feeling anything at all. Neon blood and viscera will splatter down on Yellow like grotesque celebration of her victory. Its body crumples to the ground with a titanic, graceless thud. Oilstone has already pierced its chest and is rapidly consuming the rest of its body. And maybe, maybe it truly will hunt her down. That's for it to decide when it wakes up a cycle from now.

ROUND 5/5

ATTEMPT: Claw Smash
DEFENSE: Quills.
INJURIES: head blown off lmao

@Yellow
[going into chrysalis lol]

Character: Yellow Age: +25 (95th Cycle) Magic Level: +3 (Pupil) ROUND 1 Attempt: +17 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +20 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +15 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +16 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +19 Penalties: - Total: 115

Character: V-Chaos-Fourteen Age: +14 (14th Cycle) Magic Level: +1 (Fledgling) ROUND 1 Attempt: +4 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +18 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +8 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +6 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +14 Penalties: - Total: 65

WINNER: Yellow

V-Chaos-Fourteen will suffer the following chrysalis consequence:

Oculi - New eyes form on the character. V-Chaos-Fourteen will grow an additional, usable eye on its tongue. This affliction cannot be healed in future chrysalises.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

At the same time as they raise their gun, the Valkhound's giant claws are coming down on it. Desperately, Yellow pushes with their magic. At their best, this spell could lift a deer off its feet. Here, now, it's barely enough to shift the incoming strike off-course. Vicious claws slam down on the ground, just missing them, but it's too late for the Valkhound. The ground reverberates with the impact and the air reverberates with the gunshot and neon gore explodes out and splatters all over.

Then the Valkhound is gone, consumed within its dark chrysalis, and Yellow is alone on the ground, shivering and covered in blood and bits of flesh. They're safe. They've won. This has never happened before.

They're so dirty. Gradually horror overtakes their mind. They drop their gun and desperately start trying to groom the blood off of themself. River. There was a river nearby, wasn't there? They needed to get there. They couldn't be this messy, this disordered. They needed to clean themself.

MOTHER

What?

The THRILL of the hive crashed through Yellow. The triumph of its members had been held at bay as Yellow took shot after shot--a distraction could have proven fatal, in the moment--but now that the battle was won? It was as though the roar of a crowd filled their mind.

"Well done, child. Well done." Mother's praise was a sweet croon, the firework blossoms of joy and victory bursting along the nerves of Yellow's body, hormone-driven and glorious.

There was faint regret that she could not follow through; Polaris was unsafe for the Hive. Its magic and its creations could not live here. Usurping or destroying the chrysalis would have been an even better victory--but that was a bare breath of a thought, not intended to dampen Yellow's win.

She directed them to depart, though, to leave for safer pastures, although a single question--tentative, awed--lingered.

"Yellow. What was that..?" with a nudge of thought toward the... gun?

@Yellow

It was a trippy feeling to have their mind torn in two directions at once: the horror of the neon gore soaking into their fur on one hand and the blazing triumph streaming in from the entire Hive on the other. For a moment they gave into the luminous joy beaming through their mind and bloodstream. Then they obeyed Mother's instruction to depart, picking up their gun and heading north toward the Crystal River. Once there, they could clean themselves off (although letting the blood stay on them for this long was agony, they did not want it touching their teeth and tongue if they tried grooming it away normally) and disappear to the safety of Ursa or Gemini, as they had originally intended.

It was the Collector's reward, they thought to Mother. For giving him a piece of my stone. A powerful weapon, he said, with a small chance of exploding in my hands if it backfired. A risk they had been willing to take--exploding in their hand wasn't that bad, all things considered--and that had paid off tremendously.

MOTHER

Whoa.

Her mind was retreating already--no, that wasn't the right word. Ever-present, but no longer actively conversing. Simply lingering, reassuring but unintrusive. Still, a last word threaded through the link, filled with rich potential.

"Interesting..."

@Yellow

Mother faded into the background. Now at the Crystal River, Yellow carefully clambered down the steep banks—leaving the gun where it was safe and dry once they confirmed no one was nearby—and waded into the swift-moving water. It was bitterly cold, but not as cold as Ursa, and they could endure it for a short time for the sake of being clean. Neon gore diffused from their fur and was quickly washed away in the river's flux. Once clean, they climbed out, picked up their gun, and made for warmer places in leaping bounds.

exit