That's Me in the Corner (Ch. 4 Ending) [Ace]

Greens · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:55 pm

Just like that, there was the longest, most uncomfortable, sudden stop to momentum in the air. All the gnarled anger on Ace's face slowly melted away, revealed as a mask to a wall of... some other kind of tension. The rest of his body stayed in its place, save for his chest, shrinking and expanding, up and down as he caught his breath for the first time in this little skirmish. His left hand still rested on his throat, and his right still held the blade to the boy's throat. His brows still arced, but more less harshly-- as if he were threatening his own neck with that knife.

"...It would," he finally, sparing a glance upward as if he felt shame in admitting it. But just as quickly, he made eye contact again, and his composure was regained. That was fast.

"Yeah, y'know? It would,” he explained, gently outlining Seven’s face with the edge of the knife. “ I spend all my time being so... docile. Just goin' with the flow, yeah? I take my medicine, and I don't really complain about it. But in all honesty, I'd love nothing more than a little punching bag... like you, to take out all my little demons on. I’d love nothing more than to slice you up with your own knife. Hold you down, and just… watch you bleed out." He nodded to himself, as if formulating a plan. " I could sit there and watch until you stopped breathing. And y’know what? It would be so. Easy."

He threw the knife aside, and heard it skid along the floor with its distinctive metal clanging. And then he stood up, looking down on the boy the way one might look at the mess on a carpet the pet left behind.

"And that's... why I'm not gonna do it.”

NPC · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:11 pm

Seven fed off of every dark little threat; through the pain that otherwise made him want to grimace and frown, the kicks he got out of Ace's turmoil pushed him to keep smiling. And when the cat threw away the knife, that smile burst into a full-on grin, with half-lidded eyes nearly slit-like.

"Yeah, because keeping your hands clean is so hard," said the boy with nearly-sobbing boo-hoo sarcasm. His voice turned snappy again quite quickly. "Get off me and go home now, pussycat."

Greens · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:48 pm

Ace's frown turned into something like a smirk. "I don't think so," he answered. "I'm not stupid."

He took two steps forward-- enough to make someone believe he was actually going to walk off just like that-- before leaning over and grabbing a fistful of Seven's collar. He didn't stop walking, though. He was just dragging Seven along with him. All the way towards the stairs...

"I know the reality, of people like you," he said, trudging along as he spoke. "I know you take mercy for granted. If I let you walk out now, you'll just come back to give us more Hell. With a new master plan. With a new army of likeminded cronies. With an even stupider #&*@ing costume to parade yourself around in."

Suddenly, there they were, at the peak of the giant staircase they all climbed. And suddenly, there was Seven, lifted off the ground by the scruff of his shirt, staring eye-to-eye at Ace's baby blues. "I don't have to kill you," said the alleycat. "...'Cause I got a friend who can do it for me."

psikeout · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:06 pm

"Frrriiieeennnd?"

That one, utterly incredulous syllable stretched, rasped, and curdled like sour milk across the tongue of the speaker, a very tired, worn, and unhappy soldier, who definitely had a bone to pick with his not-so-mutual "friend."

With his punch-red accompaniment at his side, the white monkey waited a few meters down the stairs. He smiled the sort of smile no one ever wants to receive — that kind of "how dare you" smile, caustic, with jaw slacked just so that his primate fangs, almost always hidden, glistened visibly.

"I didn't come up here to take out your trash," said Rock, voice low, scratchy and gappy as if from the throat of one who normally spent a lot of time yelling, "and you made it damn clear I ain't your friend, either." He looked out the tops of his jarring eyes, newly-lit malice concealed under the barest membrane of faux politeness.

Mie · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:55 pm

Perhaps contrasted to the way she'd spent much of the evening looking at Ace, Jam now spared the cat a stare that was both pitiless and quizzical; cold, but also lingeringly indignant.

"Yeah," concurred the slighter of the primates in a forcibly even tone. "I thought we were the ruthless, treacherous, power-hungry enemies, who couldn't be trusted..."

Jam's head fell to a cant, and gradually, the acidic spite that matched her sentiments corroded her feigned impassiveness away until every syllable of every word was sneered or spat with a razor-sharp vindictiveness. "Or did that change once you realized you still needed someone to dirty their hands for you? God knows you're too good for it."

NPC · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:58 pm

Seven grinned ear to ear as he dangled there by his shirt collar. "This is getting so good."

Greens · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:35 pm

His smile vanished in a flash, looking of all things, unimpressed as his gaze drifted from Seven to the dynamic duo below.

"I could say the same thing of you, Rock," he announced. "And it's not about me being too good. Or either of you being... 'bad'." He paused, and seemed to sigh inwardly. "...It's about us all being too selfish." His tone wasn't antagonizing, though. It was low, and harsh, and a little raspy from all the wear and tear both physical and emotional, but there was an almost misplaced evenness to it. As if he knew what he was saying to be an undeniable truth, even if it necessarily wasn't.

"For whatever reason, I'm not a member of your circle of trust. I dunno if Caz is. I don't even know if Jam is," he said with a preemptively apologetic nod in her direction. "I don't know what meets your standards."

"And me...," he started, pronounced with a deep breath. "I'm jus' too scared of my own damn self."

The sentence was punctuated with the jarringly heavy sounding thump of Seven's body, hurled from the top of the staircase, to the collective feet of Jam and Rock. Had the serval's eyes ever looked more drained?

"I don't need anyone to do anything for me. You're doing it for yourself."

psikeout · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:18 pm

As Seven tried to pick himself up and scurry, Rock seized him by the hair from behind, pulled him back, grabbed one of the kid's arms, and wrenched it up behind his back in a painful, bone-popping hold.

"NnnGAH." Seven thrashed briefly.

Rock seemed uninterested in what he was doing to Seven, though. Instead, he kind of irritably glanced left, then right, as if thinking of what to do with him, while simultaneously trying to tune him out and figure out what Ace meant.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he finally asked in a frustrated sigh, conceding to the question that had to be posed.

Greens · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:51 pm

"It means..." he began, but paused, as if unsure of what he was supposed to say himself. "It means I'm going for broke. I'm not the kinda guy who can just, kill somebody in cold blood, an'..." He shook his head. "You saw me there, didn't you? I'm afraid, that if I see fit to just off someone... I wouldn't be able to stop. It'd just be too easy, to take the 'kill 'em all' approach. And that scares the $%@& outta me, 'cause I don't know if I'd be strong enough to resist something like that."

Ace's head sunk, but rose up again, like he was coming to terms with an ugly truth. "But... you are, aren't you, Rock? Me, I'm just an alleycat. I got gutter mud on my shoes. ...But you're a trained soldier. You don't get attached to emotions. As you've demonstrated," he added with just a pinch of spite to complete the mix.

"...Truth is, right now, there's no one here I'd trust more with this ship."

He shrugged, and shook his head. "Before, I wanted answers," he said humbly. "Now I just wanna go home."

NPC · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:11 pm

"Wait, you can't just talk about me like I'm not even here," coughed Seven, his voice small and strained from how far his head was being forcibly craned back. He suddenly sounded less... amused. "You can't act like this about— this!"

He seemed to be looking to Ace, or trying to.

psikeout · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:38 pm

Rock eyed Ace very seriously, ignoring Seven's struggling and complaints. He still looked almost a little... skeptical, but at the same time, like he knew better than to doubt the serval.

He drew in a breath as if to say something, but then paused.

*Fzzzshhhaaannnngggg.*

A neon-glowing blade of white-hot, reddish plasma jutted out the front of Seven's abdomen, spewing from a fat, silvery, crude-looking knife-like device.

He looked down at it with his mouth agape, then back up at Ace.

It twisted, rotated, angled horizontally, then suddenly tore outward, exiting his right side. His face drained of color almost instantly and his eyes went blank; he fell limply, thudded to the stairs, then rolled off their un-banistered side, dropping to the deck many stories below.

*tump*

Rock didn't take his eyes off of Ace the entire time.

The power drained from the plasma knife. Rock calmly wiped it clean on his already-bloodied trouser leg, then sheathed it.

"You know, I actually do appreciate your vote of confidence, Ace, but... you gotta see, it really doesn't matter if you're the one who drops the gavel or the guillotine," he said plainly, unaffectedly, as if explaining the scientific reason the sky was blue. "We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because we know it's the only responsible thing to do. You already made the call yourself; everything else is just motion, physics... Uglier, but the same thing."

"Warning: Reactor core temperature is rising," interrupted the computer. "Reactor control rods must be replaced immediately to avoid a potential core melt accident."

"Still, this is more my line of work," he acknowledged casually, albeit with an apprehensive glance skyward, as he dug into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and produced a scrap of folded paper from inside, and stepped the rest of the way up the stairs to hold it out to Ace. "Just tell the computer to connect to the network,... open all ports,... and ping this address. And you'll be done here."

Mie · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:56 am

It was clear at more than a few points during Ace's little monologue that Jam disagreed on a few key points, evidenced by the way her lower eyelids continued to encroach more and more on her eyes, and her tensing, clenching jaw, which almost, almost opened too many times. But then, unexpectedly came the moment's saving grace: The slighter of the primates realized how little her difference of opinion mattered -- she wasn't the one the yellow cat was talking to, nor was she the one he was counting on to do the right thing for him; she was just a by-stander. Just a dog waiting to be let off her leash in defense of the one she loved...

It was that thought, and that thought alone that stilled her tongue. Jam said nothing, did nothing. She stood behind Rock (as she always did, and would always do), and waited for her part. In this particular instance, that was simply taking her leave when all was said and done. She did, however, look just a little ill as she wiped vainly at the blood spatters on her sweater.

Greens · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:09 pm

Ace... didn't seem entirely disgusted by the grisly scene, but rather passively aversive as his gaze drifted to a patch of stars on his left. The traces of shame on the sinking corners of his lips didn't paint any prettier of a picture, either. "Man, don't tell me s#^@ like that," he said finally, half jovial and half dead serious, and with only the broadest definition of the word. "I'd like to live in as blissful an ignorance as I'm allowed..."

Nevertheless, he took the paper from his hands without another word... or, almost did. After a brief examination, he felt the need to clarify, even in the middle of this 'potential core melt accident'. After all, it was more or less the fate of the planet still resting in his proverbial hands. "What's the address for?"

psikeout · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:18 am

Rock's eyebrows raised while his eyelids stayed half-shut in an unmistakable expression of impatience.

"It's to allow Tau to connect so he can figure out what's wrong and fix it," he said, bereft of good mood or humor, "before hydrogen accumulates in the core, explodes, and turns it into a mile-long hunk of uncontrolled space debris in a decaying orbit for future generations to deal with."

Rock's face could not have more clearly said "just do it" without having Nike slogans tattooed directly onto it.

Greens · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:00 pm

"Right," the serval answered plainly. 'I was just testing you' went sadly unsaid, but this wasn't the time or place for any wise-assery. So without further adieu, the paper was clenched in his fist, and Ace was high-tailing it back to the throne room proper.

"Hey, computer!" He slapped it like a broken vending machine. "Wake up!"

That's Me in the Corner (Ch. 4 Ending) [Ace]

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