⬣//A BRIEF REPRIEVE

[cccorp]

>>Look at me.

⬣//BREATHE. EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY.

This is your Official™ catch-all log for the month of November. While the boss battles rage on, those of you who are looking to disengage from combat and kick your feet up for a spell can do so here.

Post your open prompts in this post. Closed starters may also be posted here or on @Altimit, but all open posts belong here in this log. Lawbreakers will be bent over the modly knee and paddled into compliance. Thank you.

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11/08

[tablescraps]

( *STRAIGHTENING OUT THE TIMELINE WITH AN IRON* After replying to Hani's post, Mithrun sets about heading back to Fandom Foodies to go pick up Barrett and maybe ( m a y b e ) get admitted himself. However, Sinclair's message about Hien that comes just after gives him pause. He's indecisive for a time, and unhappy about giving his word to not try to execute Hien on the spot, but, ultimately, this is for the best: he's said he's not going to kill Hien, so a confrontation should be brief. He may as well do it now, before he gets trapped up in the infirmary for a few days.

He knows by now not to take the availability of those who are potentially Phases for granted by now.

When Mithrun gates in, he remains still and quiet for some moments, studying Hien from where he is. The eye that returns his gaze briefly does not startle him, but seems familiar in some general way, the way the eyes across all of them had been.

Eventually, he approaches. His gait is uneven and unstable, but he can keep upright for this brief period of time. Basque is with him, and barks happily at Rem!!!!! New bestie!!!!!!!! (Basque-decided.) She makes herself known before Mithrun does. )

... Did you set that there?

( The tree. )

[selfconcept]

[ Rem barks back at Basque and happily trots over to her. Dog friend!! Play! He's even giving the good old tippy taps.

The eye within the halo stares at Mithrun blankly before disappearing as Hien slowly turns his head to look at Mithrun. ]

I did.

Is there a problem?

[tablescraps]

Why did you do it?

[selfconcept]

Does the reason matter?

[ Hien looks back up at the trees. The petals go through his outstretched hand, because they're simply an image. They're not real. ]

[tablescraps]

Yes.

Both the reason why you did it, and the reason why you made it this way,

( Holographic, twice as fake, in a fake world. )

[selfconcept]

... They're pretty and I don't want them to be disturbed.

[ He lowers his hand. ]

It's where the meanings of "undying devotion", "endurance", and "living a long life" come together.

[tablescraps]

( ... )

Are those things that matter to you?

[selfconcept]

My existence already struggles by deteriorating, so meanings and such keep escaping my grasp and understanding. But for now, it matters, while I still remember why.

[ He looks over at Mithrun again. ]

Did you need something? My death, perhaps?

[tablescraps]

So you're admitting what you are?

( Hien can't think he's here for vengeance over him beating Macha on the beach... But regardless of what Hien actually thinks, it makes for a convenient segue. )

Would you rather die, while you're still partially yourself?

cw suicidal ideation

[selfconcept]

Cubia called me Skeith and that I will eventually turn into a monster.

[ So, yes. ]

It would be nice if I could die right now. It's been a very slow deterioration process... it's too bad my defensive survival instincts are ingrained within my existence.

cw uh, suicidebaiting???????

[tablescraps]

( He bristles, slightly, at the excess confirmation. He is Palpably Murderous.

But Sinclair and Barrett said no????????? relationships were a mistake he should've remained a feral sociopath actually )

... That's just an excuse.

End things yourself.

( Is this, functionally, what he came here to do? Kinda, yeah. )

[selfconcept]

[ Hien tilts his head further back while keeping an eye on Mithrun while his head is still thoroughly bandaged. A shaft tilt? Absolutely. ]

Make me.

[ binch ]

[tablescraps]

( He clicks his tongue Loudly. He looks very much like he'd very much like to. )

You're lucky Vogel's sentimental.

( And Barrett, but anyway. )

[selfconcept]

[ Hien laughs a little as if Mithrun said something funny. It sounds like genuine, lighthearted laughter too, and not the smarmy kind. ]

Don't you mean you're lucky?

[tablescraps]

... You think I'm afraid of fighting you? Or are you just that confident?

[selfconcept]

Mithrun, you were never afraid of me, much less fighting me. I've always respected that, in a way. It's not my time yet, but I can give you a good fight if you'd like. Come at me like you're trying to kill me.

[ Hien takes out his staff, a red wand. He always had a weapon skin over his primary weapon, but it doesn't seem to be a weapon skin this time. It's the real bona-fide thing. Trying to inspect it as a player would just fill the status board with "?????????".

I'm also not rolling for these and will just keep it to the narrative instead. ]

[tablescraps]

( Mithrun had seemed calmer in that moment, but calmer doesn't mean disengaged. He isn't prideful; he isn't taken by offense, or irritation. Hien isn't in himself Cubia; he doesn't provoke rage from Mithrun for simply existing, though it does provide incontrovertible argument for his death.

Mithrun had at some point in the last few moments accepted that Hien would just need to die here. It was a confrontation he had intended to avoid, but circumstances shift.

He reaches back to unsheathe his blade from his back, and his blue-rose blade materializes in his hand as his arm follows through with the arc. )

"Try"? I will.

( The question marks flood his screen, and he slices through them as he lunges forward.

What precedes him is Macha's song. Unrequited Love winds around Hien like a dead man's hands pulling him beneath the icy deep, its chill seeking to inflict him with Despair, Blind, and halved movement speed. And as that executes, Mithrun has closed the distance quick to combo directly into his next skill: Vak Maxima, the fire enveloping his blade as it comes forward with a powerful arm. It deals painful damage, but the trick is the knock back: it's clear Mithrun is aiming to get enough force in his swing to knock Hien right off the edge of their little cliff formation, and end things clean.

He knows from past testing that falling off these formations and into the endless skies below kills you, after all. )

[selfconcept]

[ Now that they're finally facing each other face to face as fellow level 100 players, that Vax Maxima hurts. Hien takes quite a bit of damage with some flames singing the hems of his cloak, but he doesn't seem to care. He can't see anymore and feels his movements are sluggish, but despair?

He doesn't feel anything. Perhaps he was just in a constant state of despair that he doesn't seem any different from the usual. Is Hien good? No, he's never good.

But he stands near the ledge and casts P░a ░ep░h, healing his HP to full. The smoky black halo from behind him tries to jut out into longer smoothed spikes now that combat has been initiated. The realistic eye remains this time within the halo with the sclera permanently black.

Rem the pomchi quietly whines in the background, cowering behind Basque. ]

Yes, show me what it's like to want to kill someone so much, regardless of your objective and intentions. The forum messages when Fidchell tried to bait people wasn't enough. Show me more, Mithrun. Show me just how murderous you can get.

[ A massive conspiracy of ravens swoop down and try to peck at Mithrun as if he has bird feed glued all over him. The pecking should just be a normal bird's pecking, but it definitely hurts when caught in the swarm. They zoom at Mithrun from all directions, trying to peck at him everywhere, every inch of his body-- ]

[tablescraps]

Shut up about your data.

( He can't see that colored text, but he knows what it's like. Swarmed as he is, neither the birds nor the pain trouble his composure, though it's clear he does feel it - he registers pain, especially upon first impact, and every peck is fresh stimulation.

Basque barks wildly, like she's trying to warn Mithrun to stop, but she keeps to protecting (?) Rem. If this were the Shoreline, there'd be blood in the water.

What comes next is Raika - the lightning crackling about his blade as, ceaselessly, he pursues Hien to the ledge as he's pecked. Still, he doesn't ignore the birds entirely, it's more that he refuses to ignore Hien to deal with them: his lightning-quick strikes aim for Hien, but the birds as well, in an even split of damage. He can't get rid of all these summons - if that's what they are - this way, but he can't lessen the damage income.

His HP, however, is less stout than he is with this tactic. The pecks are building up. )

[selfconcept]

[ The pecks build up and the ravens continue to stay. In fact, they don't feel like summons nor skills. They just feel... real. There had been incidents where people had been pecked to death by birds, because they pecked away at a single spot for too long.

However, when Mithrun uses Raika, he'll suddenly see Barrett appear right in front of him, getting in between the two fighters. This is no illusion. Mithrun will be able to see and feel him. Hien shoves Barrett's back to topple over to Mithrun. Will Raika hit Barrett? He has a pretty big physique. Hard to hit around with that greatsword of Mithrun's.

Perhaps it was never seen with how Hien preferred to be outside the main focus of anything, but he's still Head Administrator. Conjuring a clone of a player is easy as long as it's within the game's coding. After all, there was a dungeon effect like that, wasn't there? He can tell when Mithrun gets close, by how loud the ravens make noise. They keep sticking to him. Something tells him that even without sight, he must have adapted to survive. To live. Perhaps in another world, where fighting was the only thing he could do well, fighting without sight was one of the bare necessities.

That's why he jams the wand behind Barrett's back and the end protrudes into a giant scythe, the blade cutting through Barrett's body and hopefully into Mithrun's as well. ]

[tablescraps]

( The birds don't trouble Mithrun's composure, no, but Barrett does. But the thing about these greatswords is, well, they're heavy. You move with the momentum once you've started the motion, you take this lump of killing metal and you follow it where it goes, no matter how acute your technique. Barrett is that much larger, Hien is that much leaner, and Mithrun, by virtue of his lack of depth perception, fights very, very close.

So of course his strikes slice into Barrett. Even with his split-second effort to redirect, there's only so much he can do.

He's digging into his heel to pivot under Barrett's weight, but the crows harrying him are taking physical toll, worsening the weight of the pale-skinned chill run through him like a jolt, in a way he'd only really felt once in his life, those two years ago. He sees Barrett's HP hit zero.

And in that moment of stunned fear, the scythe, in itself like a curved greatsword, runs him through. )

[selfconcept]

[ It isn't that difficult to cure his status ailments, so ░░░░░ does that. The perks of being a Harvest Cleric allows ░░░░░ to be self-sufficient and incredibly efficient when soloing. Even though Harvest Clerics do not normally wield scythes, who knows? Maybe it's an intentional bug in the game that ░░░░░ made. Perhaps it would have been a different story if it was a weapon skin, but no. It's a real scythe.

The blade retracts and ░░░░░ pulls the wand back to his side. What a nice sight to come back to. It's nice that he avoided the vitals.

The doppelganger smiles at Mithrun, apologizing that he got in the way with such a weak and frail voice. Then the body runs cold. The light leaves his eyes. The doppelganger collapses onto Mithrun for real as the ravens finally disperse, scattering into the skies, darkening the scene for a short while. ]

Not only have you failed to kill me, but you killed Barrett Blake instead. Will there ever be an end to your blunders, Mithrun? If you plan on solving things through violence, be a little smart about it instead of wildly swinging your blade with the most basic strategies that even children can even implement without much thought.

[tablescraps]

( His breath is loud in his ears, almost louder than Hien's voice. Almost. The familiar song that drifts in the periphery around him crackles and stutters, a low feedback grinding against his ears. Blood splatters the ground and stains the corpse something worse, the shadow that rolls over them deep.

He does not fall to his knees so much as he slips down onto them, and he takes up Barrett's cheeks in his hands, his fingers caressing down along the jaw, the neck, as is his habit with Barrett, and he feels the lack of pulse there. The sharp winds that blow through the fluttering petals, through his hair, like a familiar touch.

The blood on his hands, dripping from his battered body, just leaves Barrett's face messy. His index finger lingers there, at the edge of Barrett's lips, and gently he drags the tip across them, leaving them red, too. Like cream, or a promise, or a kiss.

People don't come back anymore when they die. He understands that very well. )

[tablescraps]

( So there isn't really anything that can save Hien now.

Spiked vines, Revenger, like those that encase the bouquet of his blade shoot up from Hien to keep him still and inflict chip damage while his sword, abandoned, twirls in his quick grip as he jams it into the earth, Gan Smash splitting wide the cliff beneath the three of them, the faultline splitting toward Hien to knock him down and do residual damage - his sword dug into the earth as it rips, he's up on his feet in time to combo into Kamikusabi for a heavy blow encased in water, which disperses humid with the inferno behind a Vak Maxima meant to knock Hien back while he may be prone, the fire catching wild on the struggling grass plain. Should this fail, and Hien may suspect Mithrun knows it would, he begins already to combo into Death Bringer for a heavy blow and a critical hit.

Generate more of his friends. He'll cut through them too, and this time without hesitation. The purpose here is not to save anyone, but to ensure that Hien is succinctly dead. In no language is there the proper words for grief, but in all languages there is the word for blood. For what gets across feeling better than blood, what can tell any story quicker than blood?

And coursing through Mithrun's is his fury, ice-hot. )

[selfconcept]

[ "Will there ever be an end to your blunders?" He'll take that as a no. ░░░░░ smiles behind the bandages even as he's caught in the spiked vines. He doesn't bother to move away, but he still needs his body intact, so he'll raise a transparent wall from the ground--it's very similar to the ones he rose during Mithrun's murder mystery to keep the corpse and evidence from being contaminated too much. It blocks most of Mithrun's attacks. It's the same one that he used to defend himself from green-shielded monsters, because he didn't have the ability to data drain. But those monsters broke the wall in a few swipes.

Mithrun, however, will take a while until he finally sees the wall disappear, but it's of ░░░░░'s volition. As soon as the wall is down, ░░░░░ tosses a potion of penitence at him, bursting open when it's right in front of his face.

Will he be sorry about killing Barrett? Will he be sorry about going back on his word to Sinclair and Barrett, which caused this tragedy? What else would he be sorry for? ]