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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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."

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."

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?"

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 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.

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.

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)

Normally he'd laugh about knives and guns and the whole 'you brought a knife to a gun fight' thing, but not now. Right now he swore, jerking his arm back and instinctively pressing his forearm to his chest. He would've clamped his other hand over the wound if that arm hadn't been broken. Blood seeped into the material of his shirt, spreading quickly for a moment before the waxy skin on his arm shifted and melted back together, sealing up the wound.

It still hurt. His hand felt weak. He couldn't tell how bad the damage was right now; he wasn't a doctor and people weren't supposed to have skin the way he did. Sweat prickled on the back of his neck, both from the fire and from stress. Fear, maybe. But it was anger that burned in his eyes even as he took a step back, out of reach. He wondered if he'd have a scar there, something to go with the other one on his wrist.

It wasn't often he was filled with boiling rage so complete that he wanted to commit murder. Even when he'd killed his father it hadn't been out of anger. He knew he was useless right now though, more of a liability than an asset, with one busted arm and a semi-out of commission hand. The pain, at least, reminded him he was still alive.

His lip curled in either a sneer or a snarl. "Fuck, man. I was just screwing with you."

Kaz replied with a short, sharp bark of laughter.

"No, you weren't. You're just mad that even pulling a gun on me didn't end with me dead, and you got a busted arm for your trouble."

Kaz deliberately wiped Kavinsky's blood off the blade of his knife onto his pants. Once he had, he turned it so the butt was against the inside of his wrist, then with an audible ratchet sound as the catch engaged, the knife vanished up his sleeve. This was exactly why Kaz didn't carry a gun on him and instead stuck to using knives. Inej had pointed out that guns could jam at a bad moment. Or, like now, guns could be taken away from you altogether. Knives were dependable and silent. Oh, sometimes Kaz would opt for a revolver, but finding ammo in Temba was a difficult prospect.

Kavinsky snorted. "If I'd wanted you dead, you'd be on the floor right now." He wasn't like his father; he didn't try to kill anyone. He succeeded. "It's not my fault you're a freaky fuck getting in my head. That shit just doesn't fly."

Carefully tilting his wrist away from his chest, he peered at the place where he'd been cut. His skin didn't look right but he couldn't tell if that was because of whatever the fuck was going on or because he'd been injured. He had adrenaline to thank for keeping him steady and sheer spite making him able to shove the pain to the back of his mind. His broken arm was already swelling, but the bones weren't poking out at least. He was grateful for the small things.

He eyed his gun on the floor, debating which hand to pick it up with. In the end, he settled on his dominant hand--the broken arm--and stooped, gingerly scooping it up and biting the inside of his cheek to fight back a grimace. Keeping an eye on Kaz to make sure he wasn't going to try some other sort of bullshit, Kavinsky flicked the safety on.

Kaz rolled his glowing green eyes.

"Yes, and a loaded gun was used just to tickle me."

This wasn't the first time Kaz had a gun aimed at him. It wasn't even the fifth time. But whatever Kavinsky told himself Kaz was very used to people trying to kill him. Kaz let Kavinsky take the gun back but was pretty confident it wouldn't get used again. And not just because Kaz had already taken it from Kavinsky once, more that Kavinsky didn't have a working hand to use for it.

"And I have no need to 'get inside your head'. The fact you held such a secret was glowing from you like a neon sign. That sort of secret isolates you, makes you feel like you're the only one like you. So now I'll let you in on a secret in return; you are far from the only one."

"You're the one who pulled the trigger." Not Kavinsky. Of course, he wasn't saying anything about not intending to wound Kaz. A shot to the leg or something probably wouldn't have killed him. Probably.

Now that he had his gun in hand again, he wasn't sure what to do with it. Both arms hurt. Both hands were fucked. Holding the gun hurt. The idea of trying to tuck it back into his waistband wasn't a pleasant one. He pretended he was fine though, that he wasn't in as much pain as he really was.

"Yeah, no shit." Everyone had secrets, some of them crushing and isolating, and he also knew he wasn't the only dreamer. It was just too bad that the knowledge had come a little too late. "How the fuck do you know, anyway?"

That little smirk curled Kaz's lips again.

"I know because we know. We watch many worlds and see many things in those worlds. In Temba there is only you and one other with the same secret. But elsewhere there are many more with that same secret."

Take a guess who 'we' means here. It might also help that The Fears exist within a multiverse.

"Who the fuck's 'we'?" He wasn't in the mood for any coy shit, even if he was sometimes prone to doing the same thing himself. He also didn't like the idea of anything watching him or anyone else in any world.

He also could've figured it was just him and Ronan in this place, as far as dreamers went, but it was almost a comfort to hear it out loud. No other dreamers meant there was no competition for Ronan's attention. "If you know what's good for you, you'll leave him alone." Just in case Kaz had any ideas.

Kaz rolled his glowing green eyes again.

"If you need it explained, it's not worth taking the time."

Kaz wasn't being that coy, he just wasn't laying information out all neat and tidy. Kavinsky could make an intuitive leap on his own. At Kavinsky's warning, Kaz gave a deadpan look.

"I have no need to search out the other one here that shares your same secret. You are the one that was at first looking to taunt me."

Kaz shrugged.

"By the same token warn him to stay away from me."

"Well, fuck you, too." He wasn't in the mood to put things together on his own right now, considering the amount of pain he was in. The gun in his hand felt like it was getting heavier and heavier, weighing down his broken arm. Gingerly, he shifted to tuck it into his pants, hissing through his teeth.

"Yeah, I'll warn him. He doesn't need to waste his time with you." He couldn't promise Ronan wouldn't do anything stupid though, but if anything happened to him, Kavinsky would be inclined to commit murder.

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Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

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cw: drug mention

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