revivalproject | Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

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Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

WHO: Kaz (who will eventually be an avatar of The Eye) and various people
WHERE: Temba
WHAT: October event
WHEN: 10/16 - End of October
WARNINGS: Probably this entire log will be riddled with CW but specific threads will have specific warnings so read at your own risk

For Tony
Between the giant eye floating above the entire city then a voice and something both speaking and a truly bizarre feeling which rocked through Kaz at the same time, and it was no surprise that Kaz lost consciousness. When he next woke it was to the sound of gunfire. Kaz knew that sound, though, and knew that he needed to find cover quickly. He recognized the sound of gunfire but it was coming from several sides. This wasn't one or two people firing. This was a warzone.

The sound of gunfire and deeper explosions that Kaz knew were mortars was barely muffled when Kaz found a way inside. The building he was in was barely more than the skeleton of a building and the roof had caved in on one side so that the floating eye was still visible beyond it's edge.

For Kyle
It felt like Kaz must be a mile underground by now. The way before him was getting narrower as he walked but the way back was either blocked off after a few steps or had become too narrow to walk through inexplicably. Just the tunnels themselves gave Kaz an unnerving feeling of being buried alive.

Now he came to what appeared to be some sort of chamber. It wasn't much of one and the walls weren't stone. They were the same as the things as the tunnels, just raw earth. If anything the chamber reinforced that feeling of being buried alive worse than the tunnels did.

For Kavinsky
The fire had come on slowly with blackening walls and smoldering plaster. But whatever had caused the ignition, Kaz watched as parts of the building he was in burned. It was smoke at first. Smoke that made Kaz's eyes water and his throat hurt from coughing. He wasn't able to find a window to get air so he was forced to lean against a wall and be lost in a coughing fit. But the wall was becoming hot to the touch so he had to blunder away blindly.

When he did find a window, the heat from the fire had broken out the glass, so Kaz gasped at the air it was letting in. It was still hot though, so it felt like trying to breathe in the hotter air from a furnace.

For Felwinter
It would have been a forest at night had their been folage on the trees, any sound beyond Kaz's footsteps or things like a moon or stars. Kaz couldn't use his cane on the soft forest floor so his limp was much more obvious as he tried to pick his way forward, being careful where he placed his feet.

Then something, maybe a sound or maybe a twig snapping that Kaz's feet didn't snap, made him pause midstep. Now the feeling the sound elicited made him look behind him. He wasn't sure what caused that feeling but he knew with absolute certainty that something was stalking him. The gloved hand around his cane tightened and Kaz was now being less cautious about where he put his feet as he picked up his pace. Soon he went from a slow walk to jogging, fast jogging and finally outright running. When he started running his limp was very obvious and now slowing him down considerably.

Open
Kaz could not see three feet in front of him for how thick the fog was. The ground was firm enough he could at least use his cane here but everything had the echoing open quality of being outside. Others might have the urge to raise their voice, but Kaz kept his voices volume as though he were talking to someone nearby. After all, he reasoned, being loud wouldn't do anything about how thick this fog was.

"Hello? Is there someone out there?"

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It should have been impossible, and yet Felwinter could not deny that those strangely glowing eyes were looking directly at him. He remained rooted to the spot, more out of shock than any real thought that he could possibly stay hidden. Even in this darkness he was somehow exposed, known.

This was wrong. Everything was wrong. But in that sickly sight, that creeping paranoia only swelled.

He knows who I am. Fear seemed to frost his metal spine, an even chillier sensation than the icy peak of his mountain fortress. Part of him, some small bit in the back of his mind (Felspring?), insisted that it couldn't be, but the thought was quickly lost.

"I planned no such thing," he said, putting as much steel into his tone as he could summon, frigid as the winds that dusted his mountain with snow. More lies, but he at least felt he sounded convincing. His life was a lie. He was a lie. An anomaly of an existence.

Kavinsky's kneejerk reaction was a quiet snarl. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He wasn't scared, he wasn't even cautious, but he was disgruntled. It was easier than he would have liked to immediately think about things he'd done--though fuck, even he couldn't remember all of them.

Clearly, he remembered shooting his father in self-defense after the man had tried to kill him while he'd been visiting in New Jersey, on break from Aglionby. Also clear, but too painful, was the twisted wreck of Prokopenko's car the previous summer, next to which he'd dreamed his best friend back to life because the idea of existing without Proko had nearly torn him apart. This summer, standing on the hood of his car, letting his dreamed dragon kill him, surrendering his life to it. The fact he was a dreamer, human but not, a freak like his father had called him.

Every time he'd gotten high, every fistfight he'd ever got into--they all blurred together. His parties stood out amongst them, bright pinpoints of happiness rivaled only by street racing with Ronan Lynch, losing almost every time to keep him interested. For the last year, it'd all come back to Ronan, some way or another. Kavinsky was desperate for him, had him now, but that wasn't the point. The point right now was that he was feeling angry.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" He lifted his chin, defiant, challenging. "You don't know shit."

"Try not to be so heavy," Tony suggested in return, already dutifully crouching to offer a foothold to Kaz. The stairs were, honestly, only part of the dubious equation--if they held up, there was a good chance the pair would still fall through the floor above if they weren't watching their step. Ideally, that worked in their favour, and they would find easy exits to the neighbouring buildings to pick their way out of this desolate city.

Kaz slowly canted his head to the side, an apathetic expression on his face. In fact, he was giving Kavinsky an incurious look as though nothing about him was unknown and whatever had made a home inside Kaz found Kavinsky wanting.

"I'm talking about your secret. The secret you killed your father for. The secret that allowed you to dream a copy of your friend to life. The secret that is so secret you do not have a name for it. But it still rules your life, and your death, despite the fact it has no name."

Kaz had an apathetic expression now but still moved uncannily fast despite having a bad leg. First, he tossed his cane into the air in front of him and grabbed the bar then used it to shove against one of Kyle's shoulders. The physics of that move meant that Kyle would now be side-on. While Kaz was pushing with his cane, he folded his bad leg up enough to draw the large bowie knife in his boot. With the mark (Kyle) having his attention on Kaz's cane, Kaz was almost negligent about slicing through the tendon and bone to sever the hand closest to him.

"If you try again to put your hands on him, we'll sever your Achilles tendon and let you crawl."

It's not an idle threat, and Kaz doesn't seem to particularly care what Kyle decides to do either way.

"It is not surprising you chose The Corruption. There was already something rotten inside you before you got to Temba. There are plenty of killers here, but not many that can say they destroyed a city."

However confident Felwinter felt about his tone, Kaz's gaze still bored into him. The taste of terror was there and just made Kaz seem to perk up a bit, like a hound smelling prey. Not in a way that was visible just yet but the glow from his eyes intensified.

"Yes, I know what you are. Or at least what you were not. While it may matter less in Temba, I doubt you being neither robot nor human would be looked at favorably."

Kaz was certain that the grey area of lying by omission was part of this story.

Kaz backed up a bit, then tucked his cane under one arm and took two running steps before using the boost Tony made to half-jump. His arm made it up enough to grab onto the end of the staircase. Then he jammed his cane between two of the stair rails slats and used both hands and the impromptu handle his cane was supplying to pull himself the rest of the way up.
After he was up he laid flat on the remains of the staircase with one boot shoved between the banister slats to anchor him, and he held one end of his cane with the other being lowered for Tony to grab onto.

"Grab onto it, it's a lot sturdier than you'd think. I'll swing you as close to the broken banister as I can. You should be able to use that to climb the rest of the way up."

That looked to Tony like he was more likely to pull Kaz back down, swinging back a few steps to watch Kaz's ascent and shake out his arms, and frowning dubiously at this offer. There was at least one benefit, though; "You let go," Tony commanded, with one determined finger pointed and holding Kaz's gaze to make sure he understood the unspoken half. Tony's fall would be much shorter than Kaz's.

The end of the cane was easy enough to reach, and Tony gave it a final, readying test of Kaz's strength with a tug before lifting himself off of the ground in a quick hand over hand, trying not to kick too much and make Kaz's job any harder. In his rush to relieve Kaz, he grabbed blindly for the banister and released the cane the moment he thought he had a grip, the momentum making the whole staircase groan and crack ominously.

Kaz was surprisingly strong (though maybe it wasn't a surprise?) and resisted Tony's weight as he swung the cane toward the banister. The groan of the remains of staircase under their combined weight made Kaz shake his head. Once Tony got a better hold on the banister, Kaz reached out one hand to grab the banister slats, and when he had a good grip on it let go the anchor of his foot and let gravity straighten him out. From there he tucked his cane back under his arm and pulled himself up until he was standing at the end of the demolished steps.

"Well. Now we're up here. What do you plan to do next, Stark?"

Tony swung up easily after him, but the groaning stairs were not going to wait patiently for Tony to find his footing and sent him tripping quickly up onto the landing next to Kaz as they have a final, deep crack and crashed off of the wall. Hands out to steady himself and caution Kaz back from the break, Tony waited and listened, staring first at the debris settling below, then the far wall where he had looked out at the moving shadows across the street, trying to determine if anyone could have heard that over the sound of the battle. They probably shouldn't stick around to find out.

"Out, go," he prompted, flicking a hand toward the caved in roof, hoping there was enough of it left to climb out and across to their neighbour.

It was like a spotlight singling him out in the shadows. There was no retreat. Something in him knew that it would not be easy to avoid this. This...was something more.

I know what you are. Those words were like ice spidering through his circuits. "It doesn't matter," he insisted. "Not here." And yet his thoughts flew instantly to that moment in the mines, the indifference that Cobb Vanth held towards his Ghost and Reeve's Mini, 'droids', he called them, willingly sent forth ahead to brave any potential dangers beyond the narrow hole before he would try to send anyone of flesh and blood.

"So you know, not everyone is just so irrational over non-humans," Reeve had assured him. It was enough. Felwinter had thought it should be. This was not Earth. Rasputin would not find him here. Having such knowledge from the Warmind would not benefit anyone here. It didn't matter, he repeated in his mind, and yet...

Well, there went the stairs, and the clatter was enough to wake the dead. Kaz also doubted it wouldn't attract attention but he still felt a wave of apprehension at the thought of going outside where that giant eyeball was. The spate of gunfire ripping up the floor they had just been on made the decision for him and Kaz used his cane to break open the skeletal roof slats where the roof itself had caved in. Knocking enough wood aside, Kaz took a step out onto the ruined roof.

And there it was. The Eye. Kaz felt that disquiet bloom into real anxiety and for the moment he could just stare up at it.

He wasn't sure if his blood was boiling or running cold in his veins. He hadn't told anyone here these things. He hadn't told anyone about his father or Prokopenko or- He'd been keeping his secrets close to protect Ronan more than himself because they shared a secret. He hadn't told anyone he was dead, either, not even his boyfriend. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.

He'd thought, for years, that being able to have other people know what he was would make life easier. Now, standing feet from someone who seemed to know everything about him, all he wanted to do was wipe that expression off Kaz's face.

"Fuck you." His hands were shaking; he hated it. His hands never shook, not unless it'd been too long since he'd eaten or gotten high. They never shook from--what was this? Fear? Anger? "How do you-" he took a breath, clenched his hands. The waxy skin on his palms shifted under the force from his fingers. "You can say whatever you want, it doesn't mean you understand."

Kaz did not disagree, but while it might matter less in Temba, trying to avoid the piercing green eyes from Kaz only made him respond more. Something in Kaz sensed the fear in Felwinter and reveled in it the closer it came to the surface.

"You're still afraid. As much as you tell yourself this is not Earth, you are still afraid. So what is it you fear will happen?"

the green eyes still pinned Felwinter in place and now came closer to where Felwinter was casually. As if Kaz wasn't voicing Felwinter's thoughts as he had them.

It was a mixture of emotions coming off of Kavinsky like heat to form a mirage, but there was very definite fear. That brush of fear Kaz keyed onto like a hound picking up a scent.

"Understand what? If you mean reality-bending magic I've seen that many times before. What you're doing with the dreams is rerouting energy, and what you're making are...what? Cars and drugs it seems to be."

Kaz shook his head in disdain.

"Toys. Making more toys to distract yourself from another question."

And here Kaz leaned in as though they were sharing a great secret.

"Are you human, or something else?"

Perhaps it was irrational, but then often fear was. And too long had he held these things close. Even if he did relax a little, here, he could never truly let down his guard. Maybe no one cared, but he was openly accepted here as a comrade. He didn't want to be dismissed as a thing.

"Nothing," came Felwinter's reply, but there was no heart in it, a breath of a whisper. He realized Kaz's closer distance and staggered back against a tree with a start. "Leave me be."

The plague raddled hand fell to the ground with a meaty but somehow inconsequential thump. The Kyle thing stared for a moment before bringing the jetting stump to his chest, mewling.

At Kaz's words he flinched more than he did when his hand was severed, something in his rolling eyes looking genuinely stricken. "Shut up," he hissed. "Shut up, shut up, we'll make your fucking dick rot off if you come near us again."

Unsteadily, losing a great deal of blood, Kyle backed toward the exit where a chorus of buzzing was still singing. "You think you know," he said, mouth trying to smile. "You think you know so much, but do you want us to touch you? Or anyone to? We don't think so, Kaz."

He tottered in the natural doorway, white as snow and streaked in blood now as well as filth. "You take him, then," one horrible force said to the other. "Fucking voyeur. Have your fun. We'll still be here, you know. We're always here."

Kaz had a noticeable limp but he was still calmly walking toward Felwinter.

"You are afraid most that others will think of and treat you differently. Once they knew your secret there's always that danger."

Yes, Kaz knew perfectly well that with such a motley crew of captives already gathered, it was unlikely that there would be much objection to a robot. But Felwinter's fear was still a legitimate one and that fear rolling off of Felwinter in waves was delicious.

"You know that the longer you keep that secret, the greater the lie by omission you must tell."

That wasn't what he made things to distract himself from. Was it? He didn't care what he was. He'd thought himself a freak and a god at different points in his life. He was a freak whose earliest creations had been severely punished and he was a god who'd brought two people back to life. He'd saved a life and made sure his father would never hurt him again. And in between all of that he had the dreaming field full of Mitsubishis and his drugs and forgeries.

It was the crushing loneliness of being the only one of whatever he was that had driven him to create so many things. A distraction he hadn't needed to rely on as heavily after he'd found out about Ronan.

Though most insults rolled easily off his back, it didn't take much to make him unsteady when you got down to the core of things. He was well aware that people thought he was a monster, but not for this reason. Not because he was a dreamer. The idea, the implication, that the power that fueled him made him something not human-

"It doesn't fucking matter."

His hands shook when he reached for the gun in his waistband, but his aim was steady when he pointed the gun at Kaz. It was by far not the first time he'd aimed a gun at someone, but he could count on one hand the number of times he'd actually pulled the trigger. Every time he had, it'd been with the intention to kill. He didn't know if he intended to pull the trigger this time or not.

It was like Kaz was reading his thoughts, except it wasn't exactly. Somehow a part of him knew exactly what was happening, and the significance of those glowing eyes trained upon him. It made him even more painfully aware of the absence of his shotgun and his sidearm, and the Light was simply no longer there, no matter how much he strained to grasp the Void, or burning Solar flames.

He wanted to hide, to slip away but there were no others to blend with, nothing but woods and emptiness and him. It was almost laughable, this child who limped towards him filling him with such uncertainty, and he could not even steal away his face because of It. The one who Watched, who Knew.

Those doubts were like well-placed knives, slipping into the chinks of armor that had suddenly proven brittle, compromised. His rationality slipped through those cracks, and his words, the only thing he could possibly use to defend himself, just weren't there.

"...I do not need to say anything," he said, hating how weak he sounded.

It was not the first time Kaz had a gun aimed at him before. Strangely that action on Kavinsky's part got a smirk from Kaz and made the green glow of his eyes stronger. There was a beat where nothing happened, then as fast as a striking snake, one of Kaz's hands snapped out to grab Kavinky's wrist of the same hand holding the gun. He pulled the wrist forward so that the gun itself was pointed past Kaz. Whether Kavinsky meant to fire or not, Kaz added pressure to Kavinsky's grip on the gun and it fired harmlessly past Kaz. Now that Kavinsky's arm was fully extended, Kaz tossed his cane up before him and caught the bar. No one in Temba had seen Kaz ever use his cane as anything but a cane. But while it looked like a cane, Kaz had paid a Fabrikator to alter its composition to being like a lead pipe with a handle made of Grisha steel. And the only thing that could cut Grisha steel was diamond. The entire thing was perfectly weighted to break bone which is what Kaz intended to do now. With Kavinsky's arm extended, Kaz brought the cane down hard against it. There was the sickly 'pop' of bone breaking and Kaz's gloved hand easily took Kavinsky's gun away when his fingers went slack. Kaz held up the gun for a moment, then tossed it to the floor negligently.

Kaz was closer now, but he stopped in order to look Felwinter in the eye. Well in the helmet, rather.

"Then your plan is to...what? Keep lying by omission? Sooner or later others will find out, and if it is later, then any goodwill you have gained will be called into question by that fundamental lie."

Kaz, the person, probably would never use that secret as anything but blackmail, but the thing inside Kaz was motivated by what would cause the most fear.

"Would you rather that secret was no longer yours to tend? It would reduce the time you had to keep lying."

He struggled when Kaz grabbed his wrist, but Kavinsky wasn't exactly the strongest guy. He had the height but not the bulk, too skinny for his own good. Drugs tended to have that effect when they made food uninteresting, and he'd been an addict for a long enough time.

He didn't like not being in control of a situation, having someone else take over. His skin shifted and molded around Kaz's fingers, a perfect impression of his hand, and the feeling was fucking weird. Not as weird as the entire situation was, though. He'd thought Kaz was harmless, a thief, sure, but harmless otherwise. Now things felt surreal, fast and slow motion at the same time.

It wasn't the first time Kavinsky'd had something broken, but it'd been a while ago, back when he'd still been getting his footing at Aglionby, when he'd been picked on. Before he'd had Prokopenko and the others. The sound of his arm breaking was sickening. It wasn't like when he or his boys fucked someone else up. The tables had been turned and he hated it.

He let out a yell, swearing immediately after. "Mother fucker." He couldn't even stop Kaz from taking his gun from him; his hand seemed to have temporarily forgotten how to work. His other hand, though, he started to raise, intending to punch Kaz square on the jaw.

Felwinter fell silent, tension knotting between his shoulders, a hand pressed against the tree behind him as instinct compelled him to run. There wasn't anything keeping him from doing so, save for Kaz's words. His head jerked up at that last insinuation.

"No," he said, bark cracking under the tightening of his fingers as fear welled anew. "It is not yours to keep nor to divulge."

On the other hand, while Kaz was slim, he was corded with wiry muscle he'd gained from growing up as a street kid, to being jumped into one of the Ketterdam gangs and then making his way up the ranks of the Dregs to being second in command. Kaz was certainly a thief, but he had come by the nickname 'dirty hands' both for the gloves he always wore and for the level of his ferocity in it and the amount of violence he was capable of.

Kaz saw that Kavinsky intended to go hand-to-hand and mentally gave Kavinsky credit; he was at least showing some spine. Kaz turned aside at the last possible moment so that Kavinsky's first swing missed him. Out of sight he triggered the oyster knife he had up his sleeve and when the blade was in his hand he quickly used it to rake across nerves and tendons on the underside of Kavinsky's forearm. Normally that would render someone unable to use their hand, and they would bleed to death without a tourniquet quickly applied. Apparently, that wasn't the case for Kavinsky. Kaz had blood on his blade but Kavinsky wasn't bleeding nearly as much as Kaz was expecting.

Edited (html fail) 2021-10-25 00:28 (UTC)

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Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

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cw: mentions of death, murder, suicide, drugs

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I'm not happy with the Zalgo text so not gonna keep using it

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cw: drug mention

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