#crankegos

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Visceral Valentines

(Disclaimer: six of the characters in this story belong to me. For more information on R.D., go here. For more information on Caliban, go here. For more information on Azalea, go here. For more information on K.O., go here. For more information on Phoenix, go here. For more information on Parker, go here. Murdock belongs to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe, but if you’d like to see my personal headcanons on him, go here.)

(While Howie is only mentioned here, he still deserves credit because he’s another one of my blorbos. So, go here for more information on him, as well as his buddy Miles.)

(Trigger Warnings: blood/gore, murder/death, knives/blades, slight mutilation, descriptions of illegal business, slight mentions of human experimentation, cannibalism, violence, kidnapping/abduction, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

The tunnels felt like veins. 

R.D. strolled along one of the raised walkways beside the tracks. The rails were too stagnant to pose a threat. It’d been years since that flood had swept through here and forced abandonment. Still, she liked having a vantage point.

Most subway systems were built with pretty simple layouts. Most maps made them look a lot smaller or shorter than you’d expect. Just a group of straight lines that didn’t even intersect all that much. 

This one sprawling beneath the Cove Port Inlets was different. There weren’t many maps of it (as far as most of the city knew, these tunnels barely even existed anymore) but the leader of Caliban’s crowd had managed to get her hands on one of the last old copies. 

Sometime in the past, R.D. had gotten a glimpse of said map. A quick one, but memory could be a perfect weapon depending on A. how you kept it, and B. what you did with it. 

Not only did the picture show just how far the tunnels reached in some places; it showed a network full of crossing and branching and curving. A lot like those circulatory diagrams in textbooks that would be kinda-sorta uncomfortable for someone to find in your house if you didn’t work for any nearby hospitals.

To a point where some parts felt a little less necessary than others. 

But there was some undeniable advantage to be taken with that.

Blood vessels collapsed almost immediately after death. Without circulation, the fluid inside them had to rely on gravity instead, forced to pool in lower spaces of the body. It was the first phase of the skin’s discoloration. Sometimes it could allow air bubbles to form in the arteries.  

She imagined that it felt like the last dregs of a phantom pulse. Low and drawn-out. Desperate, gurgling whispers that grew more quiet by the second until…

___

The days were still shorter, but the sunsets around here were stubborn. 

Right now, the sky remained somewhat bright. Clouds were gathering up to form a blanket at a slow, steady pace. 

Most of them were tinted a bluish-gray shade (perhaps there’d be a rainstorm sometime later), but thanks to the sinking sun, a section of them were outlined with a warm, orangish-pink glow. Like tangerines on fire.

It really resembled something out of an oil pastel painting. 

Even if R.D. didn’t mind the tunnels, it was still crucial to take in the sky before venturing down there. Otherwise you could end up getting whiplash similar to the type that radiated from casinos and barcades. 

“You’re sure this is the right place?” An oily baritone called from the driver’s seat. Murdock raised a leather-gloved hand to adjust the rearview-mirror, tilting it to focus first on his black-tinted shades, and then on the slightly younger man who sat beside R.D. in the back. 

“I’m sure,” K.O. replied, shifting in his seat and fidgeting with the tiny silver hoop adorning his left earlobe. The bruises on his knuckles appeared rather fresh. “This street is on the way to the chopshop, so Howie’s been scoping it out for a week now. And he said that Lookie-Loo just always takes his sweet time.” 

They’d been on the edge of the uptown area for a while now, parked by the side of a particular road. The buildings looming on either side of Murdock’s car weren’t after-hours joints, but that didn’t mean they lacked any secrets. 

If anyone knew anything about hiding stuff in plain sight, it was R.D. 

…And Caliban. 

And his peers, much like the ones who’d been nice enough to pick her up for the next phase of things.

“Thanks again for the help,” R.D. piped up, nodding to the fighter and hitman in turn. 

“No problem!” K.O. smiled, gray-blue eyes sparking as he glanced her way. “Stuff like this can be the best.” 

“Yeah,” Murdock chimed in, spinning the thin chain around his neck between his fingers, turning the circular brass pendant into a blur. “Not like we want to deal with this guy any longer. You’re doing as much of a favor for us here.”

Like any other couple, it wasn’t uncommon for R.D. and Caliban to take turns venting about things that happened in their respective work-spheres. 

From what she’d heard, in recent times The Pentas Family had been dealing with a pest. 

One who had been spotted trying to follow certain members on their way to certain jobs. 

One who just managed to sneak away after he was noticed lingering outside Pentas-owned businesses at odd hours a few times too many. 

One who was slippery in that special, teeth-grindingly aggravating way.  

And yet, despite Pentas reputation with the underground grapevines, neither Caliban nor any of his buddies had been able to learn his name.

So, they called him Lookie-Loo. 

“I still have no idea how you’re keeping Cal off the trail,” Murdock continued as he glanced through the windows. “He’ll pick the smallest details apart to get somewhere. I’ve only ever seen him drop something once, and that was literally just because he almost gave himself an aneurysm in the middle of a job.” 

R.D. paused, thinking back to all the times Caliban had come home late in varying conditions, leaving her to react with concern, or exasperation, or fondness that was hidden behind either of the other two, or, or, or. “Was that due to stress, laughter, or Diet Coke?”

Murdock pursed his lips in consideration. “...A combination of the three, I think? That night was a huge one for the history books, so my memory’s foggy.” 

R.D. hummed and nodded, making a note to try asking Caliban about it sometime later. 

“Seriously, though,” K.O. added, tilting his head to the side. “What’s the secret? Even Aza has trouble hiding stuff from OH SHIT THERE HE IS!” 

All at once the fighter was bouncing in place, clutching at the headrest of Murdock’s seat and pointing through the back window. 

Murdock responded with a squawk, which transitioned into a quick string of more colorful things as he shrugged K.O.’s hand away before his own grasp flew onto the steering wheel. 

R.D. peered through the glass and, sure enough, a stranger was traipsing along the sidewalk, a phone in his hand and buds in his ears. He was a bit on the scruffy side, looking somewhere in between K.O. and Murdock’s ages. He tossed a glance over his shoulder every few seconds—clearly there was some well-earned twitchiness as well. 

Despite the new adrenaline thrumming through the air, R.D. couldn’t help but think about that latest question. 

She remembered leading Caliban back downstairs after finding what he’d set up in her office. She’d given him a few hints; she’d seen that infamous spark of curious, determined energy flare through his eyes, seen his mouth stretch into an eager smile. 

She’d watched as he raced out of the house to follow her directions. 

All that…and he hadn’t given her too much trouble at all.

Sure, he’d had a few joking questions, which she’d been quick to deflect, but he hadn’t launched a search around the house. (...Unless, of course, he’d circled back to do so after she’d left. She really hoped that wasn’t the case, because that would throw at least one wrench into the surprise.)

R.D. would’ve given this more thought, but then things started happening. 

It was hard to look away when K.O. threw his door open, lunged out to hug Lookie-Loo’s waist and drag him inside. 

It was hard to focus on anything other than sliding over to make room for the poor bastard, to stay out of the way when K.O. hauled off with a punch brutal enough to make the guy’s head slam back against the car’s window.

It was hard to hear much aside from the blood rushing through her ears and tires screeching against asphalt as Murdock sped off.

___

Although R.D. made sure to shift her weight as she moved, her footsteps still bounced off the concrete walls and ceiling. 

Old, condemned places like this had a way of just not caring whether you were a raccoon or a refrigerator—if you wandered in areas that most people instinctively knew to avoid, then some noise was gonna follow you. 

Where each of the platforms had an old panel light hanging overhead, the tunnels themselves offered industrial caged lights, protruding from the concrete every ten feet or so.

Many of them never produced any illumination at all, but a handful of them managed. Much like the platforms, the glow was persistent, yet always dim, always flickering and sputtering.

(According to Caliban, The Boss had managed to somehow siphon electricity back into the tunnels. Just enough for her colleagues to not have to feel their way around with their hands while leaving the rails safely dormant, as well as not tip off any of the local companies.)

When you really thought about it, however, that dysfunction came with a few advantages. 

The varying stretches of darkness here and there could be great hiding spots, so long as you held still and stayed quiet. 

They could help make sure an intruder lost their way, whether you had to leave them behind or were luring them into something even worse than whatever they were chasing you for.

And on the other side of the coin…

Those old workhorses on the walls could distort your shadow, make you seem either closer or farther away than you actually were. The blinking could help you practically vanish and pop right up again (providing your reflexes were fast enough).

Tricks like that could be tough to pull off, but if you managed…ooh, that just upped the ante in such an awesome way. 

That was how Caliban saw it. He’d had told R.D. about times like that.

Jobs that had seen him racing along the pavement down here, able to feel his eyes spinning in their sockets due to how the dull flare mixed with the shadows. 

Blood looked pretty much like oil in the darkness, but even the weakest, oldest lights could make it beam.

No matter how much red was there, whether spraying or dripping or leaking, it would still look so deep, so warm, so RICH…

“Hello?”

R.D. halted in her tracks, pressing herself against the wall. 

The voice echoed across old, dead cement and rusted metal. Despite how unfamiliar it was, she still knew the source.

Hell, she’d been expecting to hear it call out at some point, been wondering how close she could potentially get to it. 

___

It could be shockingly easy to smuggle a body into certain places. It just depended on how you handled things. 

Of course, sometimes you just couldn’t afford to divide said body into multiple pieces and then stuff said pieces into luggage or garbage bags or anything else that you’d have to be a special kind of desperate to try keeping after the fact, no matter how thorough you were with scrubbing the stains out. 

Sometimes you couldn’t even afford to have the body qualify as such right then and there. Because, for whatever deranged reason, you needed your victim to keep moving and breathing. For just a little while longer, at least. 

In that case, a crematorium would probably be your best bet. 

And even then, that was a colossal “probably”…unless the crematorium’s manager knew the same things you did. 

Having a weird little friendship with an in-the-know manager didn’t hurt, either. 

“Oh, wow.” Phoenix had been pacing the floor for the past few minutes, but now she hovered by one edge of the table. “Is this what he got for you?”

R.D. paused, looking up from her project. Following the arsonist’s gaze, she discovered a rose lying just a few inches away from the unconscious man’s side. Its white petals were adorned by streaks of violet so dark that they almost looked black. Then again, they grew a bit lighter toward the center.

“Yeah, it is.” She offered a small smile, nodding. “I think they’re called dragon roses.”

There were eleven more of them back home, still in a shiny vase that two boxes had been propped up against. The first was filled with various uncommon types of tea—Jasmine Pearls, Uji Gyokuro, the works. The second held a set of carefully-arranged beakers, flasks, test tubes, and other basic necessities for a chemistry lab.

(“Since you said one guy broke a lot of your old stuff…” Caliban had cheekily explained when he’d found her looking over the presents in her office.)

(Granted, the guy responsible for the breaking had plenty of reasons to put up a fight, considering what R.D. and her team had put him through, as well as what they’d had planned for him next. But hey, he was dead by the time she’d griped to her husband about the encounter, and now she had some fresh replacements, so, yay!)

“Very pretty. Can’t blame you for wanting to keep it close,” Phoenix nodded back. “Y’know, drying techniques are nice and easy. If you really want to make flowers last long, I mean.” 

R.D. hummed. “Maybe.”

How had she taken this one without even realizing? 

She should’ve felt the flower’s stem in her hands, should’ve caught the delicate scent wafting up from its petals—

Scratch that, how had she even held onto it during that car-ride? How did it manage to even make it through the drive in one piece? 

She’d had to help tie some nylon strips around Lookie-Loo’s wrists while he slumped down to the floorpan, eyes glazed-over and drifting shut just as K.O. had tugged a burlap sack over his head.

Well, that nylon had been removed shortly after she’d dragged him down here with Phoenix’s help. He was still out cold, and R.D. needed access to his arms.

(Aforementioned sack was still in place, though, adorned by strips of duct tape that formed a frowny-face with Xs for eyes.)

She readjusted her grip on the scalpel, holding it between her fingers like you would a pencil. 

Crimson beads were coaxed out of his skin as she traced the blade along, mindful to not let it sink too deep. That was the only reason she had to avoid the veins in his wrists. 

He needed to stay alive for a while longer, otherwise this plan was shot.

(Sure, she could still make do, but it wouldn’t work out nearly as nice.)

“Not gonna lie,” Phoenix piped back up, “I was kinda worried he’d wake up right when you started on that.” She resumed her pacing, raising a hand to brush the long, straight black hair over her shoulder.

R.D. shrugged, not taking her focus off of the carving this time. “Well, the back of the head is pretty sensitive. Get hit there hard enough and you could have permanent problems. And he probably has a garbage sleep-schedule, based on the times you guys saw him snooping.” 

Despite how much strength K.O. had used, no blood had been drawn in the car. She couldn’t be sure if Lookie-Loo’s skull had even fractured. The skull was the strongest bone in the body, after all, no matter how vulnerable the brain could still be.

(R.D. made a little note to bring that up with Caliban when the time came. Yes, healthy organs often went for the highest prices on the Black Market, but some sickos out there wouldn’t say no to deformities, whether natural or added-on.)

His chest was still rising and falling, albeit with just enough effort to be concerning to anyone else.

Satisfied enough to give her wrist a break, R.D. stepped back from the table. She caught Phoenix peering at Lookie-Loo, her brow furrowed in the way that suggested you weren’t exactly disturbed by something. No, you just…didn’t really expect that something. 

It made sense; the building this den was hidden under was Scattered Wishes, after all. Dead bodies were typically the norm. Hence why the business was located a good distance away from the rest of the city. (And that was even without the fact that certain bodies were donated by contract killers for disposal rather than grieving families for a send-off.)

“I take it revenue is still steady enough?” R.D. asked with a grin.

“I mean, I’d be lying if I said I’ve never seen a twitching finger here and there,” Phoenix chuckled. “But hey, you can make severed frog legs do that with some salt. Nothing too special.”

“True.” R.D. nodded, then gestured to her handiwork. “What do you think?” 

Phoenix ventured beside her, tilting her head at all the thin, red lacerations forming little shapes that ever-so-slightly leaked onto pale flesh.

“It looks nice,” she answered, the smoke in her dark brown eyes seeming to curl in time with how her smile softened. Her elbow nudged against R.D.’s in a friendly way. “This was a sweet idea.”

R.D. hummed, using a small cloth to wipe the scalpel clean before returning it to the pocket-sized sheath she’d brought along. Much easier to conceal than the case full of her other dissection tools back at the lab. 

This particular idea of “sweet” could’ve been used as damning evidence in a court of law (ironic, considering what Phoenix did for the other half of her work), but it was still great to hear.

A pre-recorded swoosh chimed in, accentuated by the way R.D.’s phone buzzed against the table. She pulled it over to tap at the screen; a message from one Parker Thenope popped up. 

Hey, just sent him out a few minutes ago. Might be taking bets on how long it takes. See ya later! 

R.D. almost jolted in surprise, but she squashed it down. Yeah, she’d wanted the updates to be a bit more on-the-dot, since Caliban could cover a lot of ground with hungry adrenaline.

Then again, Ear Caffeine (as well as the den beneath it) wasn’t all that close to the crematorium above her and Phoenix’s heads.

It’d take some time for Lookie-Loo to get good and lost. 

Phoenix must’ve seen the look on R.D.’s face, because she dutifully crossed the subway-office-turned-den to pull a heavy metal door open.

R.D. took hold of the poor bastard’s wrists and started dragging him off the table. This wound up causing his lower-half to crash against the concrete floor with a dull thump. 

Which, in turn, elicited a low, muffled groan of pain to leak out from beneath the sack-mask.

Both her and her accomplice’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. 

So, in less than a second, R.D. hauled her victim across the threshold. Out on the platform, she let go of his arms, reducing him to a heap on the cold, stony floor. 

A heap that was now being wracked with those full-body twitches that everyone got in their sleep and no-one ever wanted to see on camera. 

“Good luck!” Phoenix whispered, offering a little wave before tugging the door shut again. 

“Thanks!” R.D. replied, barely able to hear herself as she pulled the sack-mask away from her victim’s head and took off down the adjacent tunnel.

___

“Hello?” The voice repeated, putting a little more force behind the word. This did nothing to hide the fact that it was quivering around the edges, which seemed to make it linger in the cold, still air. “Is anyone there?”

R.D. lowered her head, straining her ears. 

There—a faint pattern of light, uncertain thumps against pavement. 

Nervous footsteps. 

They sounded a bit closer than she would’ve liked, but not too close, in the grand scheme of things.

There seemed to be just enough distance to pull him along and leave him behind. 

Her eyes darted every which way, scanning her environment until she discovered a chunk of debris lying just a few feet away. It was half the size of a softball, but it offered a decent amount of weight as she picked it up. 

And then it was a blur, ever-so-slightly arching in the air as she chucked it, crashing down onto the decrepit railway. 

The ensuing chorus was short, but the metallic ClAnKs! felt almost deafening in a place like this.

A startled cry rattled along after it. Then, after a slight pause: “Who’s out there? Can you hear me?!”

R.D. turned on her heel and started sprinting back the way she came. Her heartbeat was thundering in her ears, but her footsteps still put up some competition. They were much louder than before, and that very intentional. 

“Hey—hey!” The voice cried, its owner picking up his own pace. “Wait, hold on!”

R.D. raced around one corner, her lips quirking.

___

Shf-thump, shf-thump, shf-thump.

The noise was almost too quiet, but R.D. still froze.

A light, strange cadence against concrete. Too small to have been produced by a person, unless maybe they were barefoot and walking on their tippy-toes. 

Shf-thump, shf-thump, shf-thump.

A pale, cat-sized shape trotted out of the shadows up ahead. A Y-shaped nose twitched in an adorable manner as the creature paused to sniff at the ground. 

It was so odd, feeling relief at the same time as a spike in adrenaline. 

Snare had come along as a present to Caliban from his sister, sometime after he and R.D. had moved in together. He was a lot like his owner: weird, carnivorous, prone to shenanigans that were fun to watch and roll your eyes at.

Sure, the hare had technically never been R.D.’s pet, but she had her own little rat-pack for that, and he was still nice to have around. (It’d taken some time for said rats to adjust to him, but by now they liked playing around with him, so that helped.)

He was also a bit of an omen—good or bad, depending on who you were and what you were doing—since wherever he went, Caliban was seldom too far behind…

R.D. took a tiny step back. In that exact second, without her knowledge, her forefinger and thumb tugged at one of the rose’s petals, which broke away with a muted snap.

Not muted enough, considering how Snare’s head popped up, his long, oval-shaped ears twitching, almost standing at attention. He rose up ever-so-slightly, his paws hovering in the air, beady, dark-amber eyes staring over and up at his second most familiar human.  

R.D. stared back, offering a smile. 

“Snare?” A voice called from a distance in the shadows, set in a Midwestern accent with a bit of that edge you could expect to hear from some kind of announcer. R.D. recognized it in less than a heartbeat. “What’s up, buddy?”

Snare glanced over his shoulder at the yawning mouth of the next tunnel behind him, then refocused on R.D..

R.D. raised one hand, pushing a finger to her lips. Shhh…

Snare blinked, tilted his head.

Then he dropped back onto all fours, raising one of his hindlegs to kick at the wall beside him, creating a chorus of dull thuds.

Subsequent footsteps bounced along, growing a bit louder with every second.

R.D. felt her face drop, shaking her head and spreading her arms in a lame gesture at the white hare. Although his face was always hard to read, there wasn’t a single shadow of a doubt that he regretted his actions. 

She turned and started sprinting; the plucked petal fluttered to the ground in her wake.

Just as she reached the opposite end of the tunnel, just as she was vanishing into another batch of shade between lights, she tossed a glance over her shoulder. 

She was just in time to see Snare bound over to where she’d been standing, grab the rose petal between his buck-teeth, and carry it off as he scampered back the way he’d came. 

CRAFTY LITTLE BASTARD..! R.D. thought, equal parts impressed and infuriated as she ran.

Sure enough, not even thirty seconds into her jog, she heard Caliban’s voice again.

“Hey! I see you!” Confused giggles bubbled along his words. “Where do you think you’re going?”

R.D. would’ve liked to shoot back with some of her patented sarcasm, but she also wanted to keep the surprise on track, so she had to bite it down.

She lowered her head, putting on more speed. Her pulse was almost buzzing through her eardrums, so it was a wonder how she picked up on the sound of a similar, one-party stampede somewhere behind her. 

“I know you’re here!” Caliban called again, laughter rushing out of his lungs between each breath. “I’m gonna getcha!” 

If her jaw wasn’t already aching, R.D. would’ve appreciated the irony of how this could almost qualify as a Final Girl’s Circuit. 

Almost. Expect for the career she worked and the things she knew. 

She rounded a corner—another platform was waiting just a few feet away, complete with a steel door that stood a little off the center of the wall.

All the doors down here looked pretty much the same, but she was sure she knew whose den this one led to. 

She skidded to a halt, just barely remembering the code-pattern she’d learned so long ago as she rapped her knuckles against cold, smooth, tarnished metal.

The knob rattled, a compliment to the keening squeal on the part of the hinges as someone pulled it open from the other side.

There was maybe a few inches of space between the door and its frame, but R.D. didn’t hesitate to squeeze through the gap. 

The den was only so much warmer than the tunnels, but you could still feel the difference.

A wooden cabinet stood across the former office, its shelves full to bursting with boxes, jars and bottles that came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.

A smaller bookcase was positioned beside it, similarly stuffed with books on cooking, baking, toxic animals, hazardous chemicals and how they affected the human body, stuff like that.

Opposite of that stood a table, which was supporting a glass terrarium, a heat lamp casting an orange-tinted glow over the plants and rocks and driftwood perch inside

A thin passageway loomed off to the side of everything, concrete stairs ascending up into darkness.

R.D. caught movement in her peripheral vision, recognizing a cherry-red headband sitting atop a head of long, silky coffee-colored hair. 

Azalea Crawford raised an eyebrow at her. A knowing smirk etched its way across her face.

The door rattled with a familiar pattern of knocking. 

Azalea waved a hand toward one particular corner of her den. 

R.D. nodded, sidling over to stand right behind the door. One hand clasped over her mouth before her brain even sent the signal. 

“Yeeeees?” Her sister-in-law asked, tugging the door open once more, creating just enough of a gap to poke her head through. 

“I know she’s in here,” Caliban’s voice replied. It sounded like he was still catching his breath, but helpless chuckles were still leaking out. 

“Who?” Azalea wondered, tilting her head and putting on a mask of obvious over-exaggeration. 

“Aza, c’mon. You KNOW who.” There was some light shuffling from the other side.

“Here, look—” Azalea moved about a couple square-inches to the side, stretching one arm to gesture to the room behind her. “See? There’s nobody here but me.”

Right then, R.D. noticed a long, thin shape coiled around Azalea’s neck like a loose scarf. Scales glistened under the dim light; red, adorned by a pattern of small, bright yellow stripes, each bordered by a strip of black. 

The scarlet kingsnake—Cuddles, a helpful voice in R.D.’s brain clarified—angled her head toward the friend her owner was hiding. A tiny forked tongue flicked in and out of her mouth, her beady black eyes growing curious.

Caliban leaned forward, to the point that R.D. could see the edge of his face past the door, could see the way he squinted in a conspiratory, intentionally overplayed manner. 

But just before he had a chance to glance her way, his sister pressed her free hand against his forehead, making him squawk as she gently pushed him back.

“Seriously, what’s going on?”

Azalea shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I have no idea what you’re even talking about.”

“Yes you do!” Caliban argued, a chortle stretching out the statement. “I know you’re in on whatever this is! Parker said you might give me a hint.”

“Yeah, ‘might.’ That’s not a guarantee,” Azalea snorted.

“Pleeeeaaaase?” 

“Look, when’s the last time you got any hints on a job?”

Caliban sputtered a bit. “Literally every job relies on at least a few hints—” He cut himself off, staying quiet for a few long, merciless seconds. “...Why’d you bring up jobs?” 

“You tell me, Mr. Thrill-of-The-Hunt.” Azalea then gave a brisk shake of her head, along with a sigh that just dripped with false tragedy. “Oh, I’ve said too much already~”

“AAAH! No you haven’t! No you haven’t!” Caliban protested, his voice getting a smidge more high-pitched.

R.D. had to bite her tongue to keep her giggles trapped inside her chest.

“C’mon, Aza! What is it? Tell me, tell me!” More playful shuffling against the door. “Please just help me out with this! I need to know!” 

“I’ve already done my part,” Azalea replied with a smile that almost could’ve been innocent. “My hands are tied now.”

Another pause that felt slower than a tortoise getting drunk off molasses. 

“Yeah, Snare making doe-eyes isn’t gonna work on me,” Azalea announced, though her own eyes went soft and adoring for a second. 

Caliban was probably about to retort, but a different sound beat him to it.

Something more faint, more muffled. 

An echo from somewhere outside. Far off, but not too far when you thought about it. 

R.D. felt her eyes brighten. 

Of course the victim had heard all the noise she and Caliban had made. (Did that mean his blood would be on Snare’s paws?) He was probably more confused now, more scared than before. 

“...What was that?” Caliban asked, his voice tapering down to an excited whisper. 

Azalea shrugged again. “Go see for yourself.” 

More footsteps, cautiously trekking away from the door.

Then they grew faster, quickly fading into the distance. 

Azalea stayed where she was, watching. Once the relative silence had returned, she pushed the door shut, leaning against it. “All clear.” 

R.D. corrected her posture, letting her hand fall away and sighing as if she’d been holding her breath for an hour. “I owe you one.”

Azalea snickered, shaking her head. “No, don’t worry about it.”

“Did you see him while you were out?” R.D. wondered, not meaning her host's brother. “When you snuck the other half over there, I mean.”

“Almost. He tried to follow me, but I took the longer route to shake him.”

R.D. nodded, pacing about the room. She’d go back out in a minute; no way Caliban hadn’t covered some distance already.

“Glad you like the roses,” Azalea chirped, bouncing in place. “It took us a while to find the right seeds. He really wanted them to be fresh.”

R.D. glanced down. Of course the rose was still with her. 

Thank God the thorns had been snipped off. Otherwise, her palm would be a bloody mess right now. 

___

R.D. was back in one of the darker sections when she heard the scream.

Goosebumps prickled over the back of her neck.

Her heart skipped a beat. 

But unlike so many times before, she didn’t have to suppress her smile.

Other noises followed—rushing footsteps, of course. Wild and fast and desperate. Striking old, rusted metal.

Words, too. They blurred together, coming out a mile a minute, loud and ragged and growling around the edges. Laughter broke them up as well, growing more and more sadistic with each breath.

It was hard to make them out, but that didn’t really matter.

The second voice was familiar to R.D.. It’d never stop being familiar. She liked hearing it (even when it was used for making puns and then expressing just a little too much pride for said puns).

More screams tore through the air.

These ones were longer, louder. Echoing back onto themselves thanks to the concrete, filled with palpable pain and raw horror. 

“AUUGH! NO! NO, NO—NOOOOOO!”

Displaced air whooshed nearby—right beside R.D., actually. As if she’d been on the side of a highway and a car had sped past her.

Slightly below the walkway, to be precise. 

One of those caged lights was looming on the wall up ahead. 

It cast something of a halo over the two figures she could now see racing along the tracks.

She watched as one pounced, slamming into the other’s back, forcing him to the ground.

Shadows performed a distorted dance as they stretched over the walls and ceiling. 

One was pushing and squirming, trying and failing to escape from the other while it lunged, clawed, stabbed, BIT.

Despite all the erratic movement, the light still shone against crimson leather.  

R.D. strolled closer, fidgeting with the rose until she came to hover below that light.

She peered down—there was Caliban, working himself into a frenzy.

He pinned Lookie-Loo to the ground. Snapping his teeth, sending viscous little droplets flying as he buried his face into the other man’s shoulder, shaking his head the way a dog would when it ripped an old squeaky toy apart.

(Well. Dogs didn’t always do that to squeaky toys, but it’d probably be better for your mental health to stick with the former allegory, wouldn’t it?) 

A metallic gleam followed his movements. Damascus steel was splattered with red as he raked his favorite meat cleaver across his victim’s abdomen. (Just a few more strong swipes and he could’ve torn the poor bastard’s stomach open like a gutted fish.) 

R.D. lowered herself to sit on the edge of the walking, letting her legs sway a bit. 

Too bad Lookie-Loo was so distracted, kicking and shrieking and sobbing. 

He could’ve seen R.D. and tried to drag himself toward her.

He could’ve tried to shout for her to run, get away, save herself.

He could’ve noticed that she wasn’t at all afraid. 

He could’ve tried begging her for help (and if he was really quick on the uptake, maybe he could’ve realized that he had to beg her to call his attacker off, to please, PLEASE JUST LET HIM GO!).

Snare scampered around the two of them in tight, quick circles. Little stains were already marring the white shade of his fur. He seemed to notice R.D. out of the corner of his eyes, because he paused, glancing up at her.

After coming to the conclusion that his owner was more than a little busy at the moment, the hare hopped up onto the walkway. From there, he trotted over to R.D., nudging at her elbow. 

R.D. gave his long ears a gentle scratch. Sure, she was still feeling a little salty over the stunt he’d pulled earlier…but damn it, he was cute.

Meanwhile, Caliban pulled back. He hovered over his prey for a long, agonizing moment, chest heaving in and out as he panted for air. 

Lookie-Loo kept thrashing, trying to clutch at the fresh, gaping wound in his shoulder.

It looked like he was about to glance at Caliban. Maybe he wanted to try and shove him off, take advantage of the sudden stillness. Maybe he still thought he had a chance.

Caliban’s eyes were feral, just as wide as the sharp, hungry grin his bloody teeth formed as they gnashed at the air with his laughter.  It was a sight that would’ve made any self-respecting hyena proud.

Then he opened his jaws wide and dove back down.

After that, his victim finally stopped screaming.

Stopped screaming, and started gurgling.

There really wasn’t much else you could do when enamel was sinking into your throat.

Lookie-Loo’s eyes (which, in the grand scheme of things, were the real cause of all this) bulged, dangerously close to popping right out of their sockets, and he fell silent.

More blood came out, though it slowed down to oozing instead of spraying.

Caliban growled deep in his throat, tearing a chunk of flesh free. He was still chewing as he slowly got to his feet, looming over the fresh corpse on the rail…only to pause.

He tilted his head to the side, eyes going from ravenous to curious as he took in all the cuts littered about his meal’s arms. 

Took in how those cuts each formed the shape of a heart.

R.D.’s smile softened. Even if he wasn’t facing her yet, it was easy to see how the pieces were coming together in his head. “You’re welcome.”

Caliban’s eyes met hers in about a millisecond. Though she knew his irises were brown, right now they appeared to be an unhinged shade of yellow.

(In fact, they always seemed to flick to that at times like this; whenever he was running on adrenaline or hunger.)

Beneath them, something warm and grateful slipped into his grin. It could’ve powered the entire city for a few minutes. 

Caliban stepped away from the body, practically skipping his way over to the walkway. He stood before before R.D., resting his arms on the edge. 

“You did this?” He asked, his voice a strange mixture of softness and energy. “You set this whole thing up for me?” 

“I mean, I can’t take all the credit. Had some help along the way,” R.D. mused with both a nod and shrug at the same time. “But I know how much you enjoy stuff like scavenger hunts, so…yeah.”

Caliban’s silver canine-cap glinted as he let out another laugh, this one much softer and brighter than the peal she’d heard from him earlier. 

R.D. moved a bit too slow to escape the bear-hug he wrapped around her, but then again, she didn’t really mind. 

“Did you have fun?” She asked, tousling his hair.

“Of course I had fun!” He assured, eyes still shining. “That was one of the best rushes I’ve had in weeks!”

Sooner or later, R.D. stood back up as Caliban returned to the body, grabbing it by one of the ankles and dragging it up onto the walkway.

From there, the two of them walked side-by-side, chatting about how the day had gone on their respective sides. 

Snare made sure to trot in front, as though he was escorting them back to the den underneath their home. Not that the guidance was needed (but it was accepted because Snare was just a little guy and he wanted to help out). They both knew the route inside-out.

All conversations had to come to an end, one way or another. 

This one did so via Caliban cutting himself off with a squeal as he spotted something sitting right outside the door to his den. The very same thing Azalea had been nice enough to leave there while both he and R.D. were away earlier: a plushie modeled after a cartoonish venus fly trap, its material going from green and fluffy around the mouth to light brown and smooth around the pot. 

Dead weight thumped against concrete as Caliban released his hold on the corpse, running over to pick up the gift for further inspection. 

“Oh my God..!” He laughed breathlessly, tilting the stuffed plant, making its “head” wobble to and fro. “How did you find this?”

“Sorry, I signed a non-disclosure about that,” R.D. joked. “I know it doesn’t have a purple tongue or spikey leaves, but—”

“Are you kidding? It’s perfect!” Caliban declared, beaming as he hugged the plushie close. 

Both he and his wife were a bit too late to remember that there was still fresh blood on his clothes. Yeah, it blended in pretty well with the red leather of his jacket and the black fabric of his hoodie, but it was  still wet. Just like the splatters on his face and hands. 

“...and machine-washable, I hope?” Caliban asked, his features uncharacteristically sheepish as he pulled the gift back, revealing that there were, indeed, a few dark stains that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. 

“Yeah, you'd better hope,” R.D. remarked, smirking as she reached up to give him a light flick on the side of the head.

@sammys-magical-au @insane4fandoms @the-matpat-ever @im-a-weird0 @b-is-in-the-closet @lampsforsocks @lotusp0nd @yourannoyinglittlesistersteph @bloodyhound12345 @lisathecake @im-a-snakey

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

@sammys-magical-au ...😏🤣 (I know these aren' t the vibes I've set up for certain characters, but this would still be hilarious in that context.)

people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

[o-crud]

Just watched Jacksepticeye’s IRIS video, and Anti’s new design gave me some inspiration for a Blank design!

[koficlouds]

Fandoms I plan on using for Angst of April 2022

Ego fandom(Jack, Mark, Ethan)

Sandersides(all sides)

Countryhumans

Hetalia

Planethumans

Apphumans

Yes, I am very weird ;-;

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Headcanons: Crankegos ⚙️

Aight, we’re doing this so buckle up, because I got a lot to share!

Note: I consider Memento one, but he’ll be in another post with Mori where I’ll go more into-depth about them both.

Mad Mike

Runs both an ice cream shop and an ice cream truck (he changes outfits depending on which he’s working at).

Once owned a highly successive business.

But it was shutdown after Silver Shepherd discovered that the ice cream was being laced with drugs.

Since then Mike tries to stop doing that..but once in a while he’ll put a tiny bit of cocaine in a scoop or two (claims it’s “extra sugar”).

Loves to bake on his days off.

Contrary to his song, he’s got a soft spot for kids and never drugs their desserts.

Struggles with his own addictions from time-to-time, but he’s getting better at dealing with the withdrawals.

Very flirtatious.

Also fluent in French, so that gives him extra brownie (pun intended) points.

Somehow, someway..he’s evaded police ever since the encounter with Silver.

Not very good at talking about his or other people’s problems...so he usually just whips up some ice cream as a temporary solution!

His eyes turn to pink and blue swirls whenever his sanity dips or if he wants to hypnotize someone who insulted his business practices.

Mike’s just a bubbly guy all around.

Blank

One of Ethan’s less malicious dark egos.

Embodies his anxiety and nightmares (though mainly the former)

Blank himself has severe anxiety issues that tend to make him panic over small things.

Corroded teases him for being a crybaby sometimes, but he can’t help he’s overly-emotional. 

Gets very self-conscious of his acne/black eyes/appearance in general, afraid of scaring people away.

Has bluish-pale gray skin.

Likes wearing baggy clothing, though it’s really only to hide the wilted vines and black veins that wrap around his arms and legs.

When he has a breakdown, black oily tears stream down his face, he shakes violently, the room get abruptly cold, and he mumbles unintelligible gibberish.

It can go on from a few seconds to almost 15 minutes straight. It's extremely hard to snap him out of it.

Has haptephobia (fear of physical contact), but he’ll let people he’s close with (like the other egos) make contact with him.

Hates being thrown in with the rest of the dark egos.

Corroded

The first of Ethan’s dark egos, albeit the more forgettable one.

He’s a rusted robot, with gray/brown skin that’s metallic in some areas (especially on his face and hands).

Completely hollow inside (physically) except for metal “bones” keeping himself together.

His eyes are also empty sockets instead of being purely black.

Like Anti he’s a glitching entity who induces paranoia in people with hushed whispers and clones of himself.

Bitter to Ethan about being used for the 5-year anniversary poster advertisement, despite that not being his intention at all.

Also resents Blank for becoming the more popular dark ego.

Regularly drinks oil.

If you call him an animatronic he can and will decimate you.

His biggest pet peeves are being taken for granted and being called a “dumb robot”.

A major weakness is his legs being so rusted they lock up and he can’t move for a long while.

Heapass

A punkish prisoner who’s best friends with Yancy.

He’s been arrested for smoking illegal drugs, dealing said drugs (with Mike, who managed to escape officers while ditching him in the process), and excessive speeding/reckless driving.

But he was sent to HTP for a fatal hit-and-run (while he was smoking grass behind the wheel).

Doesn’t talk a whole lot, but he likes to stand around and smugly grin like he’s got a trick up his sleeve.

Spoiler: He doesn’t, and if you were to ask Yancy about him he’d tell you Heap is one of the sweetest people he’s had the honor of meeting.

He did break his arm during a brawl (tho he told the warden he fell in the yard).

He’s good at keeping secrets. He has no reason to gossip unless you insult his family.

Also dyed his hair black. Just because.

Jake

Was among the many bright scientists trying to find a cure for the spontaneous zombie plague.

He was also Prof. Beauregard's assistant.

Though unfortunately he didn’t last long before he ended up turning.

Surprisingly he still retains much of his scientific knowledge.

But he can’t wrap his rotting brain around complex formulas.

So he’ll sometimes try to mix chemicals and write notes--both of which turn out to be huge messes.

With the other Crankegos, Jake has his own lab.

He gets agitated easily, so he’ll go there to calm down if he needs to.

Can still speak normally, though his voice is extremely scratchy and he hates repeating himself.

So Yahoo often translates for him.

Likes being with a group of zombies...humans not so much.

Though since the Crankegos aren’t exactly human, he doesn’t mind them at all.

Bernice

She’s the gothic mother hen of the Crankegos.

Though at the same time she’s a vicious mama bear if you dare cross her and/or her family.

She’s stern with Mike and Corroded, but very soft towards Heap, Jake, and Blank.

The prisoner often looks to her as a mother, since he didn’t have the best relationship with his own growing up.

Loved red, black, and silver makeup. Especially eyeshadow and mascara. She makes sure to visit the dye shop every so often to keep her hair a bright red.

No one knows how she pays for all those times. But she does it.

Very sassy and likes to show-off a lot, though she’s not a narcissist. 

She’s very generous, too, and can’t stand the thought of being completely obsessed with only her own happiness.

Don’t ask her if she feels weird being the only female Crankego. She’ll break your kneecaps.

Cries at animal rescue/adoption commercials all the time.

Likes wearing meme shirts to be “hashtag relatable”.

She says it exactly like that and Ethan, Heap, and Mike groan every time she does.

Saint

He’s a very holy man, of course, with much dedication to the church.

While Saint doesn’t say what church (or even what his name is for that matter) he’s from, he practices good teachings.

Scolds people if they constantly curse/take the Lord’s name in vain.

He tried integrating memes into his teachings so younger generations won’t be as bored during mass.

But when Jeremiah (Priestiplier) proofreads his writings..he just shakes his head in disapproval.

So those never see the light of day.

Thinks Blank, Corroded, and Jake are horribly cursed and regularly tries spraying them with holy water.

He just gets three annoyed inhuman beings glaring at him.

Heap and Mike confess their recent sins to him sometimes. It helps them get stuff off their chest.

Though Mike always starts out by saying “I’ve been very naughty-”

And Saint has to stop himself from slapping him with the book.

Beyond that, he’s just an all-around good dude.

Yahoo

Like Bing and Google, he’s a search engine-based android designed to answer people’s questions.

Often speaks in a soft and sincere tone of voice, though he can be firm when necessary.

One of his eyes is more cybernetic than humanlike, and it’s capable of many functions including infrared and x-ray scanners, as well as being able to instantly identify any individual he sees.

That’s how he got to know all of the Crankegos so easily.

He’s on good terms with all the Googles...except for Blue, of course, since he thinks he’s just another rival.

But Yahoo still tries to be kind regardless.

Unfortunately some take advantage of that, though Bernice and Mike usually come to his defense.

He’s terrified of water and viruses..so he tends to stay away from Blank and Corroded.

When he’s recharging, both his eyes glow purple under his eyelids.

He’s got a lot of service features, including Yahoo! Finance (to help with personal finances), Answers (a q&a), and Mail.

Kinda misses the funky logo the company had from 1996-2013

[dreamcatcher-faux]

Got inspired by @just-silly-liv-things 'Villain' animatic! Not too proud of this but I still wanted to post it

[vantruce]

crappy mad mike doodle because i have art block please help me

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

OKAY OKAY OKAY IT'S FINALLY HERE!

(Sorry about the long wait, friendo 😅 Don't worry, things should move along a little easier after this. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy!)

___

Abel Impulse [Part 1]

(Disclaimer: two of the characters in this story do not belong to me. Casey Clowes was created by my amazing friend, @insane4fandoms. MadPat was created by Random Encounters)

(Now, as for the fanegos who do belong to me: for more information on Azalea, go here. For more information on Phoenix, go here. For more information on Caliban, go here. For more information on K.O., go here.) 

(Trigger Warnings: murder/death, poison, blood/gore, violence, mentions of beating/fighting, mentions of allergic reaction, mentions of cannibalism, knives/blades, fire/smoke, mentions of arson, descriptions of illegal business, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

___

Azalea wasn’t quite sure why the knocking had startled her. 

Aforementioned knocks had been soft, just barely making the old door shake in its frame. They hadn’t even made her jump; just sent a quick, light flare of something both cold and hot up her spine.

It wasn’t like she’d been alone—no, she’d had company ever since sunset. 

First with her peers, during the long drive from the Cove Port Inlets to one of many small, decaying towns on the side of the roads across all those vacant fields…and then with her latest target. (Well, that was only technical. She hadn’t been hired to kill him. This was a bit more personal than most jobs. Then again, there was no denying how he’d painted a target on his own damn back, so…)

A sleazeball who went by the name Mr. Honey. Very ironic, considering what she’d done to him. 

It wasn’t like Azalea had been on-edge due to her current environment, which was, to put it frankly, decrepit as all getout. 

Wallpaper peeling in awkward curls, the smear-covered shards of a few broken windows here and there, a smell in the air that was like if a thrift shop had just given up…or a perfume made from the blended remains of bedbugs. Azalea was no stranger to rotting, run-down places. Hell, this wasn’t even the first time she’d found herself in an abandoned motel for a job. Sure, it wasn’t very glamorous, but it worked. You had to be flexible if you wanted to be successful in business like this. 

(This was Honey’s fault, really. According to a few underground grapevines, he’d made this forgotten inn a hideout for his goons—including the one she knew was currently taking more licks than even the average Tootsie Roll Pop—for almost a year now. No way this was the first time someone else had found it and snuck in while he was away…though it’d definitely be the last time. The last time for him, at least.)

It wasn’t like the room Azalea had chosen for this session had been very silent. Her victim’s voice had been tapping on her eardrums for about an hour or so.

The whistling that grew louder and louder as he’d drawn closer to her hiding spot. 

The shocked sputters when she was able to jump him, which had quickly evolved into threats and insults as she managed to hog-tie him and drag him away. 

The doubtful taunts that crumbled all too quickly, arrogance eaten up by dread as he watched her fill up the syringe.

The screams of horror and pain after she’d pushed the needle deep into his skin, on the spot where his neck met his chest. (Not too close to the carotid artery; that would’ve just made him bleed. Would’ve made things happen too fast.)

And now, a raspy chorus of wheezes and sobs and splutters, all unintelligible and creeping along similar to how mold would spread over something damp.

(Plus, that wasn’t mentioning the another room just down the hall. Even with all the walls in between, if Azalea concentrated, she could pick up a distant cacophony. Muffled cries of pain, thuds and thumps, laughter…Well, that’d been the case earlier. Now the noise had tapered down considerably.)

So, to hear such a light tapping at the door cut through all the downright delicious agony…

Maybe it was kinda like a spark creeping toward a powder-keg, just barely being snuffed out before it moved too far up the fuse.

That particular analogy turned out prophetic as the door opened with low creeaaak, and a familiar face peeked inside, fair skin framed by long, straight black hair. “How’s it going here?” 

Azalea nodded in greeting. “Good. I think my part of this whole thing is pretty much done.”

Phoenix tilted her head, leaning a little further inside. “Wait, really? What happened to those multiple doses needing a few hours to take effect?”

Azalea shrugged, then gestured for her friend to come closer. “See for yourself.” 

Phoenix slipped inside and shut the threshold behind her. She began traipsing across the little room, only to stop short once her focus settled on the old, rickety bed in the corner. 

Or, rather, the mound of lumpy flesh that used to qualify as a person weakly trembling on the musty mattress. 

Half of Honey’s body had swelled to nearly twice its original size. Not only that, but his skin was discolored and flushed, glistening with a thin layer of sweat. Clusters of shiny, angry-looking hives had sprouted up along his arms and neck and face; they could’ve been mistaken for scalds if you were watching from a distance. 

“Oh my God…” Phoenix murmured, her eyes growing wide with morbid fascination. “What did you give him?”

“Japanese giant hornet venom,” Azalea replied. 

“Okay, but how much?” Phoenix raised an eyebrow. “You’ve said before how expensive some toxins can get; you didn’t run out of anything, right?”

“No, I didn’t. Just had to use one syringe’s worth.”  The softness left Azalea’s grin in favor of something sly and acidic. She knew damn well that even if those hornets were far more aggressive than bees, it still would’ve taken a couple hundred stings for them to be deadly.

Phoenix blinked, then glanced back at the man who lay gasping and somehow barely managing to even squirm on the mattress. Her eyes were searching now.

“Oh, wait—he had an allergic reaction, didn’t he?” A smirk graced her features as she looked back at Azalea, who offered a nod. 

“Exactly! What a lucky coincidence, right?” Azalea directed that last part toward her victim, her voice tapering down a few octaves. She took a step closer, leaned down ever-so-slightly.

Even through all the torment, Honey still winced, trying and failing to edge away despite the fact that his torturer actually wasn’t even close enough to reach over and poke him. 

Of course, he wasn’t just wincing from the pain. 

He’d known a whole lot about allergies himself. 

Enough to somehow hear about K.O.’s nut allergy. 

Enough to sneak around The WormRoll on a recent fight-night. 

Enough to somehow find K.O.’s water bottle and spike it with nut-infused cooking oils. After all, the match would’ve had to be technically forfeit, and all the betted money would’ve gone to Honey’s own fighter (nicknamed Swerve, if she remembered correctly) if K.O. had a reaction before he even stepped into the ring…

Thank God that The Newcomer had managed to find out—hell, they’d been the one to rush in and smack the contaminated drink out of K.O.’s hand just before he could take a sip.

Still, impressive as it’d been, it hadn’t stopped Honey and his goon from running off before much else could happen. 

Azalea wasn’t sure why; fleeing after attempted sabotage never made things better. NEVER.

Especially not when you tried to pull that shit with The Pentas Family. 

“Did you check up on the guys?” Azalea wondered aloud. 

She turned her attention back to the syringe she’d used, now being both cleaned and fidgeted with. She shifted the base of it in her palm, allowing the needle to catch some light from the dim, flickering insect-morgue on the ceiling. (She wasn’t sure how long it’d been since this motel had been left to rot, but her instincts said it was a wonder there was any electricity left.) 

“Oh, yeah. They should be ready to wrap up soon. K.O’s gotten his own fill—last I saw, Cal was halfway through with the harvest,” Phoenix reported, leaning against the adjacent wall. 

She played with the buttons on her blazer, which was tinted a deep teal hue that no-one else would’ve been able to pull off. It’d been sewn in a perfect combination of fitted and draping. Apparently to keep up the personal trend, rather than a button-down and slacks, she wore a lovely jumpsuit underneath that was such a dark shade of indigo it nearly matched her raven hair; just a hint of violet-blue buried low in the fabric.

The news brought a smile to Azalea’s face. Sure, Caliban could’ve just waited to do his disposal stuff back at home (and aside from being potential extra backup, there was no doubt he’d come here for the adrenaline rush), but it was still nice to hear that her brother was going the extra mile to help out a friend. 

Through the corner of her eye, Azalea caught another metallic glint. 

Phoenix fished a small box-like shape from one of her pockets. It shone in a silvery way, despite being covered in thin streaks of black that all worked together to form a pattern like half-melted spirals. She’d had it since even before she’d first joined the mob. Azalea wasn’t sure where it’d come from, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Phoenix had made it herself. Just like the rough-around-the-edges band of silver that was almost always coiled around her index finger, topped with a small, raw piece of garnet.

With a clink, the lighter’s top half was hanging open by a hinge. And with a soft, almost whispering fwoosh! she brought a spark to life, quickly coaxing it to grow into a thin flame that lapped at the air. She didn’t produce a cigarette—she never had, and not just because smoker’s lungs made mob work even harder than it already was—nor did she hold it close enough to her face for the glow to reflect in her eyes.

But really, that didn’t make a difference. 

Plenty of people had dark, warm eyes. 

Phoenix’s eyes had never been just warm. More like burning from inside… 

“Good thing Cal keeps a hidden stockpile. Y’know, jars and chemicals for his Black Market clients. For the stuff he decides not to eat,” Azalea mentioned, an unconventional type of sugar seeping back into her voice. “I’m pretty sure he brought a little too much ethanol along tonight. Guess I can’t blame him, since it’s not too often he gets to do his work anywhere outside his den, but still…”

The way she trailed off was very intentional. 

After all, K.O.’s car had already been crammed almost as tight as a steel drum at the start of this job. She didn’t need to spell out how there’d only be so much trunk-space after everyone was ready to go back.

Certainly not enough for two dead bodies, even if one had been hollowed out like a pumpkin. And that wasn’t even mentioning how there wasn’t exactly a good spot outside the motel to hide them.

A new smile spread across Phoenix’s features, now with a clear pop of energy. Her knuckles twitched, grip visibly tightening around her lighter.

Ethanol was very common in the world of specimen preservation (the casualdejekyll to formaldehyde, as Caliban had once said with enough pride and knowing snark to make Murdock start a small fistfight with him). It was perfect for killing bacteria and slowing down the decay process, allowing dead tissues to still look fresh.

It was also well-known for being quite flammable, to the point where it could even be ignited just by being left too close to a hot surface.

“Huh,” Phoenix finally replied, tracing her fingertips along the lighter’s stripes. She glanced around the room, grinning at the peeling wallpaper that seemed to have a similar texture to old, dry newspapers. “You really think so?”

“Sure,” Azalea chuckled. “C’mon, you know Cal; he won’t mind. Besides, it’s not like anyone’s gonna miss this place.”

“True, true,” Phoenix hummed with a joking conspiratory edge. 

Azalea’s smile went soft and knowing.

Despite all the occasional squabbles here and there, Caliban got along well with the rest of his and Azalea’s peers. Family was part of this mob’s title, after all. (It was kind of a blessing, really; way back when, he and Azalea hadn’t exactly had the resources to make many genuine friends.) 

Addiction came in many different forms, so against all odds, it made a morbid type of sense that people could bond over it. 

Caliban craved flesh and blood, Phoenix craved flames and smoke. 

They both felt itches in the back of their minds, both had urges that needed to be hidden outside of work. 

Of course they’d wound up having a little kinship. (Hell, one time R.D. had even cracked a joke about basically having an extra sister-in-law.)

“By the way,” Phoenix cleared her throat, nodding over to Azalea’s victim. “When is he gonna give it up? I mean, no rush, really, but still…”

She trailed off, leaving Azalea to pause, chewing her lip.

“Yeah, good point,” she agreed, chewing her lip. “Well, anaphylactic shock works differently for everyone. Sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes less than fifteen minutes. I don’t know this guy’s history, but—oh!” 

She glanced back at Mr. Honey, only to cut herself off at the sight of his watery eyes, which had apparently rolled up into his head, hiding his irises from the world. 

The conversation must have distracted her from how his breathing had gotten more slow and shallow and resigned, bit-by-little-bit until it sank into the new silence. 

“...Well, I guess he’s gone now,” Azalea replied with a shrug. 

The syringe in her hand gleamed like it’d been fully polished; no more bloodstains or drops of deceptively clear-looking liquid remained. So, Azalea looked over at the dust-buried nightstand, reaching over to grab a small container—one of many that she’d brought from home, made from pink-stained wood.

She popped it open, revealing four syringes in the top half, kept in place by velcro strips, and five glass vials, each filled with a different toxin, nestled in slots on the bottom half. 

Ah, make that five syringes, now that she was returning the latest needle to be used. 

With that, she slid the box into a crossbody bag (one of her favorites, since it was fluffy and pastel; no way most people would look at it and guess that its contents were something lethal) and headed for the door, blissfully unaware that the universe had decided that she needed a callback from earlier. 

There wasn’t really any other way to explain how the door burst open, slamming against the wall with a heavy thud! as a much taller figure clad in crimson leather rushed across the threshold.

Azalea let out a short scream, which was a somewhat impressive feat, considering how her heart had all but leapt into her throat. 

Phoenix followed suite, shock forming an invisible trebuchet that launched her lighter into the air, all the way up to the ceiling. 

Did it count as a miracle how that forced it shut, snuffing the flame out before it could catch anything?

Scratch that, it was definitely some form of divine intervention. What goes up must come down, after all, and as the lighter plummeted, it managed to strike the intruder’s head with an almost cartoonish thunk! before bouncing again and finally hitting the floor.

Despite its small size, the lighter was still pretty much solid metal, so of course the intruder stopped in his tracks with a yelp, clutching at his temple and gritting a mouthful of teeth that seemed a bit too sharp the longer you looked at them.

“Oh my—Caliban!” Azalea half-shouted, relief and exasperation making a very interesting concoction as they slithered through her brain. “Don’t give me a heart-attack, I’m not ninety-two yet!” 

Instead of answering, Caliban resumed his hussle.

“Snare?!” He called, dropping to his knees to look under the bed, not paying any mind to the corpse nearby. “Snare..!”

Caliban’s voice gave Azalea pause. Despite the volume, it wasn’t sharp like usual. In fact, it seemed to almost be fraying around the edges. 

He nearly flipped the rickety old frame as he stood up and moved on to yank the closet door open. Once he’d apparently discovered what Azalea had when she’d checked it an hour or so ago (which was a big pile of nothing, unless you counted cobwebs and dust bunnies) he turned back to face her. 

She saw how her brother’s eyes bulged from their sockets, how some of the color had drained from his face, and she felt something cold and clammy trickle along her ribcage. 

“Cal, what’s going on?” She ventured closer to him, her voice a little softer than before. 

“I—I lost track of Snare,” Caliban answered. The panic in his eyes seemed to pulse; the struggle to keep his focus from dropping to the floor was clear as crystal. “The room K.O. chose—I could’ve sworn the door was closed and locked when he started on his half of the job. I was holding Snare during all that, but once it was my turn, I set him down. And by the time I was done…”

“He wandered off when you weren’t looking?” Azalea finished the report for him, making sure to be quiet and give off no trace of sarcasm. That was the last thing he needed right now.  

Putting on some kind of facade was a common underground tactic, one they’d both learned a long time ago. (Hell, Murdock did it all the time when he was in public.) But if anyone could tell when Caliban was being genuine with his emotions, it was her. 

Caliban nodded ruefully. “I realized I hadn’t taken any fingers for him, but once I did, he—he was just gone! I almost tore up the whole damn room, but I couldn’t find him anywhere!” He wrung his hands, glancing back and forth between his sister and Phoenix. “Have you guys seen him?” 

“...No, I haven’t. The door’s been closed since I started up on my half,” Azalea replied, her heart sinking as she saw how his eyes were glistening. 

Phoenix shook her head, a similar type of worry creeping across her features. 

“Did you check any of the other rooms? I saw some open doors while I was keeping watch,” she offered as she quietly stuffed her lighter back into her pocket. 

“Yeah, yeah. Up until this one, I mean…” Caliban chewed his lip. “There’s just a few left on this floor, but still no sign of him so far.”

“Okay, okay.” Azalea nodded, reaching up to put at hand on his arm. “No reason to stop looking, right?”

“Right!” Caliban echoed with an empathic nod, staying by his sister’s side as she led him through the door and back out to the hallway. 

Phoenix followed the duo, quick to push Room Twenty-Three’s door shut behind her, closing off the corpse before any eyes could’ve potentially peered through the hall’s windows at the wrong time.

Azalea caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and it only took a few seconds for her to recognize the figure exiting the last room down the hall. The jeans he wore had been tinted amaranth; the exact same red shade as the boxing trunks he wore to his fights. 

K.O. was resourceful like that—he didn’t want to represent The Pentas Family only half of the time. (The fact that they complimented his sleeveless, bleach-dyed shirt so nicely helped.) 

“Any luck?” Caliban asked, taking a couple steps toward the slightly younger man. 

“Not yet,” K.O. replied, his voice apologetic and a bit lower than usual. He winced as the cannibal stopped short, shoulders slumping. He closed the distance himself, pausing opposite of Azalea, his blue eyes as determined as they were sympathetic. 

 “Hey, it’s not like this is The MGM Grand. There’s just fifteen more rooms to go,” K.O. continued, gesturing past them to the alcove across the hall, where the matted carpet turned and stretched to cover a narrow staircase. He then reached over to clap Caliban on the back. “He couldn’t have gone too far. We’ll find him, I promise.”

Anyone else would’ve flinched, considering how K.O.’s hands were still adorned by a pair of brass knuckles (especially since they were both smeared with fresh blood). 

But Caliban only took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks. I owe you one after this—don’t let me forget.”

A brief smile flickered on K.O.’s face. “Don’t worry about it.”

And with that, he raced down the hall, his footsteps getting more and more faint as he descended the stairs.

“Maybe he went back to the room you guys used after you left?” Phoenix wondered, her eyes now thoughtful as she scanned the world around her. “He might think he’s just playing a game with you.” 

Although worry still had a strong grip on his eyes, Caliban perked up. “Good point…!” 

He turned on his heel, Azalea letting go of his jacket sleeve so she could jog alongside him past one door, then two, then five…

“I’ll go help look downstairs!” Phoenix called after them.

Azalea tossed a quick “Thanks!” over her shoulder as Caliban ducked into Room Thirty.

(Even if motels were meant to be smaller scale, there was no doubt he and K.O. had felt a little disappointed that there weren’t enough rooms here for digits to reach the sixties and then some.)

“Snare? If you’re here, then fine, haha, you got me,” Caliban called, his voice getting a little closer to breaking. “Y-you can come out now…”

The scent of iron—or maybe pennies? It was hard to tell sometimes—hung in the air, heavy like the heat of dryer exhaust.

Even as she helped her brother search, Azalea couldn’t help but examine his and K.O.’s work. Checking under the bed was the first thing she did, and just like Room Twenty-Three, there was a dead body lying on it, so…

Neither his arms nor legs were bound, but strips of nylon were strewn about a folding chair in one corner.

Granted, the pressure tattoos they’d left around the corpse’s wrists were a bit hard to see, what with all the angry splotches of pink tinged with yellow that bloomed over almost every square inch of visible skin. 

Azalea knew from experience that it’d take a day or two for those marks to turn black and purplish-blue…then again, the guy’s skin would adopt a sickly shade of gray by then.

The bruises on his face were complimented by streaks of dark red, oozing from a nose so broken that it could’ve been compared to a ball of clay squished by a toddler’s fist, as well as busted lips and some freshly-broken teeth.

Above it all, a pair of eyes that were both swollen shut from repeated strikes (kinda fitting, since this guy wasn’t in any condition to ever open them again).

And yet, all the obvious head-trauma hadn’t been what killed him. No, that honor went to his neck, which rested on the mattress at a very uncomfortable angle, forcing him to face the wall and nothing else.

 “K.O. must’ve taken his time with this, huh?” Azalea inquired. 

“Yeah, he did,” Caliban replied, glancing over to the beaten mess of a man. “It was kinda interesting to see, since he usually moves so fast in the ring.” 

Azalea tilted her head to the side. “It was nice of you to be so patient.”

(Well. Patient might’ve been a generous word if she was honest. Long, wide strips of skin were missing from the corpse’s arms; portions of muscle tissue underneath had been taken as well, leaving some of the gashes deep enough to reveal slivers of bone. Though most of the slicing had been done with a knife, there were messier bits here and there—curving scrapes that ended in small, shallow holes that could’ve only been left by teeth…)

Caliban shrugged. “Can’t really blame him for wanting to stretch the session. Considering what could’ve happened, I mean.”

He kept moving as he spoke, dropping to the floor every few seconds as he checked and re-checked every nook and cranny of the room. He even went so far as to stand on a chair and stick his head in the vent on one upper-corner of the wall.

The corpse’s chest was open wide in a classic Y-incision, flesh jagged around the edges. The ribcage had been spread like one of those stiff-jointed stim toys, the ends of each one snapped off. Other than that, the cavity looked truly hollow—unless you counted the intestines, that is. A few of them were dangling out, probably having been tugged this way and that while the kidneys were being taken.

The carnage was all topped off by the dead man’s hands. A total of ten bloody stumps at the base of each knuckle.

“I should’ve done it earlier,” Caliban murmured, gazing down at those stumps, shaky hands clutching at his hair as he headed over to the door. Snare clearly hadn’t come back here (and despite morbid instinct, whether it was being used as a weird game or survival, not even freshly-harvested human bodies made good hiding places. Huge animals were the only way to go if you had to be that desperate), so the search had to continue. “He would’ve stayed if I did...”

“Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Azalea protested as she followed him. “Snare wouldn’t just leave you for no reason. He’s never been to this place; he probably got curious and went off exploring.”

Caliban swallowed a lump in his throat, nodding. “Right, right. It’s just—I’d hate if he thought I forgot about him—”

For the third time tonight, something came along to make Azalea nearly jump out of her skin. At least she wasn’t alone for it, seeing how a violent shudder raced through her brother’s shoulders.

A chorus of barking and yipping tore through the air somewhere outside the building.

The two of them exchanged glances, both of their eyes growing even wider to accommodate the way panic was getting closer to becoming something physical. 

One part of Azalea’s mind went back to all the times her and Caliban’s peers had commented about stuff like Sibling ESP. It was an interesting concept to be sure, though she’d been on the fence about it for the most part. Skepticism had nothing to do with that; she and Caliban had just been through so damn much together. 

Right here, right now, however, she could tell  exactly what he was thinking. 

Snare was fast. Snare was crafty. Snare could hold his own, whether it was against humans or other animals. 

And yet, if there was ever a time for What Ifs to infest a person’s mind…

“Cal?!” K.O.’s voice rang up through the thin walls, almost bouncing off the corners. “Cal, Aza, get down here!”

Caliban was off like a shot, stampeding halfway down the stairs before the words were even fully in the air. 

Azalea stayed on his heels, to the point that it was astounding they didn’t trip each other up. 

Caliban jumped over the last step before disappearing around the corner. “...SNARE!”

Azalea practically ricocheted off the wall, skidding to a halt just in time to see a pale blur bounding up into her brother’s arms. 

“Oh my God, oh my God, buddy…!” Caliban almost squealed as he spun around in a tight circle, hugging a very familiar cat-sized, long-eared bundle of white fur to his face. 

He paused, looking his pet dead in the eye. “You scared me half to death! You raised my blood-pressure like you were gonna get paid for it!” A breathless laugh tumbled out of his mouth. 

Snare, of course, didn’t reply, unless you counted how he pressed his little Y-shaped nose against his owner’s cheek, wriggling excitedly in the embrace.

Azalea let out a little sigh; admittedly, there was still some whiplash in her mind, but it was always nice to see pets getting love. She made a mental note to give Cuddles extra attention once she got back home.

“So—so, where was he?” Caliban asked, still chuckling with relief as Snare tucked his head under his chin. “Where did you…” 

He trailed off, eyes widening and jaw dropping. 

Azalea followed his gaze, only to feel her own face fall.

K.O. stood just a few feet away, fidgeting in place, carefully bouncing another critter in his arms.

It was a dog—a relatively small one, only so much bigger than Snare, with floppy ears and a coat of short fur a mix of tan, black, and white. A low, anxious whine rumbled in its throat, though it grew quieter as K.O. scratched its belly. 

“Hey, don’t worry. It’s alright, it’s alright…” K.O. mumbled, his eyes darting back and forth between his accomplices and the canine. “I, uh—I think Snare must’ve smelled him, or something. I found them running around somewhere by the back entrance.” 

Caliban nodded, confusion and relief making for a very interesting cocktail on his face.

 Snare leaned forward, curiously tilting his head as he stared at his…chaser? Surprise playmate?

“...Well, he can’t be a stray. Look, he’s got a collar,” Azalea mused, stepping forward to get a better look at the red band around the dog’s neck. And as she gently prodded, she discovered that, rather than a metal tag, a small barrel was resting against the dog’s chest.

She froze; she recognized this collar. 

Hell, she remembered making remarks, both snide and genuinely curious, about how Saint Bernards were the only dogs that ever really wore barrels, and that practice in general wasn’t exactly common nowadays, so why would…detective-trained beagles need to…?

“Guys…” she blurted, glancing at K.O., glancing back at her brother. “Guys, this is—”

“Casey’s dog,” Caliban finished, a new type of anxiety flickering in his eyes. 

In almost perfect unison, the three of them hurried away from any nearby windows. 

“But we haven’t seen him snooping for weeks now!” K.O. proclaimed, ironically hugging Scout a bit closer. (Thankfully, said beagle didn’t seem to mind too much.) “This was a random job! We weren’t even expecting to come here! How the hell could he have tracked us?!”

Caliban’s furrowed his brow as he stared at the floor, mouth opening and closing with no words coming out. 

Azalea found herself in a sort of similar boat, struggling to see any potential answers.

K.O. was right, after all; there shouldn’t have been any way for Casey—for any investigator—to have figured out what was going on here.

The revenge-plan had been made so quickly; really, it was sheer luck that they found about about this motel being used as a hideout when they did—

That train of thought came crashing to a halt as Phoenix came into view, leaning around one corner by the dusty old check-in desk. Her face was a mask of concern, fiery eyes wide and uncertain. Without a word, she motioned for her peers to come closer. 

And so they did, following her lead down yet another hallway, passing by more rooms (as well as a pool that just had to be a biohazard by now) before reaching a glass door at the very end.

One that led out into the parking lot, which stretched all the way around to the back of the building.

Phoenix stopped just before the threshold. Not pushing the door open, not turning to the others. Instead, she simply pointed.

The old motel wasn’t the only thing in this area that had been left to rot a while ago. It truly seemed like the small town around it had become unsaturated as a whole. It was just one of those places that was meant to be avoided, yet stubbornly kept halfway-functioning. One of those places where cops didn’t bother to come around all that much…

A little neighborhood stood not too far at all from the motel. 

It would’ve been impossible not to see movement in front of one house in particular, on the outer-edge of the block: a man dressed in some kind of light-brown suit, spattered with dark red stains that just barely shone in the light of a nearby streetlamp. (Sure, it could’ve been paint. But people like Azalea and her peers knew better. If anyone knew red, it was The Pentas Family.) Caliban sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. Azalea looked over just in time to see one of his eyes twitching.

Phoenix pursed her lips, nodding. “I thought you’d recognize him.” 

The group kept staring, kept watching as the same man Caliban had ranted about having a grudge against—for very valid reasons, mind you—pull someone else out of the backseat of a car. 

The other man was very tall, and very clearly unconscious, seeing how he didn’t even try to struggle as he was half-hoisted from under his arms and dragged along the grass. He boasted a head of black hair and dark brown skin…which somehow didn’t hide a couple bruises and cuts on his face. 

In fact, it seemed some blood had even managed to drip down onto a shiny gadget that hung from his neck…

“There he is,” K.O. blurted after a collective gasp broke the new silence. “It’s him.”

Casey.

Casey Frickin’ Clowes (the Frickin’ was silent, of course). 

The same private detective who’d been trying to disrupt underground business in the Cove Port Inlets. 

The same investigator who, despite all the taunting and tricks and near-misses he’d gone through, blatantly refused to give up on his work. 

The same guy who had, somehow, against all odds, turned out to be…oddly fun in the whole cat-and-mouse scheme of things. 

(More fun than the average cop, that is.)

And he was being dragged into a shady house by a scumbag who’d gained quite a bit of infamy for the amount of missing children’s incidents surrounding his own work…

“So.” Phoenix finally turned to her friends, her eyes cautious. “What do you guys think we should do?”

@sammys-magical-au @the-matpat-ever @lexusinsannus @im-a-weird0 @b-is-in-the-closet @lampsforsocks

I knew you,

In another life

Back at it again with another little comic of Casey Clowes and his brother runaway murder case. Not many are aware of how deeply rooted the hurt hatred the detective has to the child murderer, but most can make an obvious and reasonable guess. Though there is much more than what Casey leads on.

Despite all the horrors, pain, and hate they feel, they were and may always, despite one not wanting to, be brothers. Maybe Casey would like it, that in one lifetime, in all possibilities, life may not have been cruel to give someone to him only to tear them away.

@wouldntyou-liketoknow @crazy-obsessed-enby @iswmperson @lexusinsannus @sammys-magical-au

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Colorful Chaos

(Disclaimer: three of the characters in this story do not belong to me. Casey Clowes was created by my amazing friend, @insane4fandoms. Sam Ryder, meanwhile, is the OC of another one of my wonderful moots, @sammys-magical-au! And Nicolas Loughty is also an OC, this one belonging to the lovely @the-matpat-ever !)

(Now, as for the fanegos who do belong to me: for more information on Jay, go here. For more information on Val, go here. For more information on Caliban, go here. For more information on Azalea, go here. For more information on Parker, go here. For more information on K.O., go here. For more information on The Newcomer, go here. Murdock belongs to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe, and if you’d like to see my personal headcanons on him, go here. In a sort of similar boat, Two-Toes Johnny was created for a bit during that one episode of the Distractible podcast, but if you’d like to see my personal headcanons on him, go here. And if you’d like to learn more about the mob all these guys work for, go here.) 

(Trigger Warnings: implied past trauma, very slight mentions of homo/trans/queerphobia, descriptions of illegal business, violence, murder/death, blood/gore, knives/blades, guns/firearms, crowded spaces, eating/drinking, food/drink/alcohol, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

“By the way,” a voice that was now a technically familiar piped up from across the table, “your nails are super pretty.” 

“Well, thank you,” Jay replied, barely suppressing the instinct to pull his arm back toward him as he snapped out of his thoughts. “I just got ‘em touched up last week.”

The keratin on each of his fingertips was coated with a layer of shiny, cochineal-colored paint. His toes matched, of course, but they were currently hidden because it seemed all sandals in general had a grudge against him, if the amount of ankle-blisters he’d gotten through the years were anything to go by.

(Not only that, but nowadays the concept of paying just to see some toes was becoming suspiciously common. And with something like that in mind, what the hell was the point of letting anyone see your toes for free?)

Ever since he’d made it to the front of the line, when he’d finally gotten to sit down and look over the design portfolio to make his choice, the henna artist had only glanced away from her canvas a few times. (Jay knew it wasn’t out of rudeness, since body art kinda-sorta depended on concentration above all else.) This was one of them: she froze, the applying cone held between her fingers like a pencil hovering over Jay’s skin.

“‘Last week?’” She echoed with joking incredulousness, though her eyes were wide with legit surprise. “And they still look like this? I can barely keep my own polish from chipping or peeling just a few days in!”

Jay shrugged with a purse of the lips. “Hey, that’s just life.” He paused, then chuckled. “Besides, I never said I did this. If I did, they’d be a total mess. The technician I’ve been seeing is a genius with paint.” 

The artist nodded. “Looks like they really are. Which salon do you use?”

“Sorry, I signed a non-disclosure,” Jay warned, theatrically glancing from side-to-side, only to giggle at the artist’s conspiratory hum.

He was no stranger to lying, but this statement was an odd little case. 

He hadn’t actually signed anything, no, but he’d still been sworn to secrecy. Sure, for the most part, The Robe operated the way most people would expect a typical spa to. 

For the most part, since the clientele it catered to was made up of…less-than-legit characters rather than soccer-moms or Instagram models.

But hey, people on the shady side of things needed self-care too. 

Were some of Jay’s peers not supposed to book a massage after breaking certain parts of a target’s spine, if not the kneecaps or some other important bones?

Were they not supposed to seek out a hot pool or sensory deprivation tank after they finished up with an organ-harvesting or waterboarding session?

Was he not supposed to treat himself to a mani-pedi after luring some poor competitor to an isolated location and then watching as said competitor’s own fingernails got ripped off, courtesy of aforementioned peers?

Well, certain outsiders probably thought so, but Jay didn’t share that opinion.

Sooner or later, Jay’s henna tattoo was complete: an intricate peacock feather that gently curved along his hand from the base of his index finger, its eye having been drawn just past his wrist. A pattern of little dots had been added, bordering each of his cuticles. Simple, but it still tied the design together. 

“The stain should take about twenty minutes to dry,” the artist explained as Jay handed over her payment. “But if you really want it to last long, leave it alone for a couple hours. Either way, it’ll start fading after one or three weeks.”

“Gotcha. Thanks again,” Jay nodded. While he wasn’t sure if he could afford to let the tattoo last very long, he still planned on enjoying it.

(Then again, some of his peers—mainly K.O., Parker, Two-Toes Johnny and Howie—had actual tattoos, and none of them had been recognized and tied to something just yet. Okay, fine, technically they had been on some occasions, but those occasions had ended with the unfortunate recognizer left unable to recognize anything ever again…)

After popping a few extra bits in the tip jar, Jay made room for the next customer, stepping out of the booth’s comfortable shade and into the mild chaos lining the sidewalks. 

The Cove Port Inlets had its fair share of parks, and this one—the largest and closest to the city’s uptown half—was the perfect spot for a festival, though the local beach was also hosting another part of the celebration.

The crowd, the elaborate outfits, the vendors, the games, the random dance-sessions here and there…it all reminded Jay of the city’s Halloween carnivals (the ones he’d been available to see, that is). Although the decor for those obviously tended to be much darker, if it wasn’t already splattered with fake blood. That was why Spooky Season was almost the only time his peers could afford to somewhat mill about in pubic.

Camouflage was camouflage, even when it really shouldn’t have been. 

Almost. 

This time of year was a similar case. More ironic, too, since it involved a whole kaleidescope of paints or powders or all sorts of things that stood out and…could potentially form a target on someone’s back. 

Well, it wasn’t like Jay was a stranger to that. But that didn’t mean he cared about it anymore. Because his family—his new one, the one he’d found after years of running and scraping and surviving—didn’t care about it.

One of the biggest factors of Pentas work was to just not be an idiot, and there was almost nothing more idiotic than throwing tantrums about the damn color spectrum, so...

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, then felt something brush against his arm.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, then felt something brush against his arm.

One flinch later, he recognized a pair scarlet leather gloves and then tried very hard to play it off. 

“Having fun?” Jay asked, grinning at The Newcomer. 

“You could say that,” The Newcomer grinned back, subconsciously putting a little bend in the paint on their face. Five stripes—pink, white, purple, black and blue—stretched along the left side of their face, starting at their lower eyelid and ending at their chin.

___

There would never be such thing as a perfect shot, no matter how much training came beforehand. 

Still, Val usually only missed when they meant to. 

They’d let a couple extra buddies tag along for this rendezvous. Barry and Gretta; they traveled light and were a lot of fun to have around. Sure, Val could’ve just gone with the buddy in their thigh holster—after all, that one had been such an eloquent speaker for all the times a cocky loser let his hands fall a bit too close to their dress. 

But jobs like this weren’t so up-close. They didn’t offer quite as much time to aim, and absolutely no time for talking. Job like this just needed a little extra push. 

By that logic, Tommy would’ve been a better option, would’ve made things even faster, even louder…but Tommy was also in need of some repairs because of prior shenanigans. (Only seventy percent of which were Val’s fault. ONLY SIXTY-PERCENT, since MURDOCK just SUDDENLY decided to throw some power-drills into the mix! Okay, fine, sure, they might’ve egged him on to do that, but they hadn’t expected him to go THAT far with it!)

Every piece of Val’s personal collection had its merits, but Barry and Gretta were among the most reliable (most of the time). They held fifteen rounds each, but Val had set up two extra magazines to the side, for easy reloading. Just in case. 

And now, here they were, perched up on a stairwell that stood at just aobut the center of the old subway system, both arms raised and both hands full, laughing and shouting and generously giving out several samples of lead sleeping pills.

Well, that was a little inacurrate, for once. The sleeping would come later, but not as fast as you’d expect. So, maybe they’be be better qualified as…extra-strength confetti canons! Yeah, that’d work just fine.

At the moment, there were no head-shots to speak of. Not much in the way of grazing, either. 

Any area on the body could be either fatal or not; it just depended on circumstance, really. 

And if there was ever a time to be aware of that… 

___

“How’re things looking?” Jay wondered, lowering his voice as he and The Newcomer strolled along the path.

“No problems so far,” The Newcomer reported. “And I’ve already made about five laps around this whole place.” 

Jay nodded, relieved. “Good, good.”

The air was full of chatting voices and laughter, both of which easily got tangled up thanks to the music that was gliding its way around everything. 

It was a bit of a mixed bag to the ears: sharp, crispy thrumming of strings corralled by a deep, heavy drumbeat. Definitely alternative rock, though it was clearly being shared with some other genre that Jay couldn’t quite pinpoint. 

He still found something of an answer as he wandered near the park’s main pavilion, now with significantly more colored streamers coiled around its support beams and hanging from its octagonal roof than usual. 

A crowd-within-a-crowd had gathered around it; it was still growing right now, more and more people abandoning the walkway for a moment to watch and listen. 

It still couldn’t technically be compared to a stage, but it offered plenty of space for a band to set up. A number of musicians stood under the shade, at an ever-so-slight distance from their audience. Some of them stood off to the side, preparing their instruments as they waited for the current act to finish up. 

That current act included Parker, of course, swaying and nearly jumping along with the way he thumped his bass, fingers a blur as they plucked at the chords. The thin, green-and-gray-splotched zippered hoodie he always wore had slid off his shoulders, swinging along his arms and allowing the world a peek at the colorful designs on his skin.

As usual, his carmine-colored face mask covered everything below the nose, but the energy in his eyes was pretty much palpable. Not like this was the first time he’d given off those vibes, though Jay had learned to expect said vibes to be laced with manic rage. 

(Plus, the fact that he tended to end up drenched during his jobs helped that rage stand out. Kinda like an amazon river otter: hunched over in the water, holding down another body that was still struggling, heavy, ragged breathing broken up by gurgles and splashing. The only difference was that his eyes burned with saltwater just as much as homicidal intent.)

Still, it’d been a while since anyone could tell that Parker was so obviously hiding a smile with a couple extra steps.

And that was nice for Jay to see. 

Parker glanced at neither Jay nor The Newcomer, but that was to be expected. He had to stay concentrated on the music, to keep driving it as it needed.

He only took his focus away for a few seconds here and there, nodding at who must’ve been the next act to perform. A younger-looking man—probably just nineteen or so—nodded back to him, fidgeting with both the case slung over his shoulder and the small flag in his hands (five stripes: two light blue, two pink, and one white at the center).

Jay knew all of these musicians were here on behalf of Ear Caffiene. He hadn’t paid the studio a visit recently, but out of all of Parker’s employees, that one seemed the most vaguely familiar.

The Newcomer nodded along to the music for a good while. But sooner or later, the song started to slow down, which caused their eyes to start wandering. And then their feet followed suite.

Catching the way they fidgeted with their gloves, Jay kept pace with them.

___

Body-shot, body-shot, a little voice in Val’s head counted off and lined up, somehow making itself heard over all the screams and BANG-BANG-BANGs. Arm-shot, leg-shot, wrist-shot, knee-shot.

Little red droplets went flying to meet their end against the concrete walls and floor, along with plenty of enemy weapons.

One poor bastard even got a nice little tap to the spinal cord. A red dot bloomed just a couple inches beneath the center of his back. Oh well. It would’ve been worse if an actual bullseye had been screen-printed onto his shirt.

Just like many of the cronies in his gang, he went plummeting down onto the decrepit tracks—if Val’s calculations were correct, he was now completely paralyzed from the navel down.

Plenty other cronies could still move, though they did so in the opposite direction. Some were slowed down by a new limp. Others had to clutch at their arms or shoulders, either to try and slow the bleeding or out of the hope they could somehow just pluck the bullets out like they were in a movie. 

And even if they could, Val’s greeting was only the start of the gang’s problems.

Val was begrudging to pause the hail, but they were also aware that they needed at least a few seconds to breathe. Besides, there was plenty of adrenaline to go around, and they knew they had to share it. 

Once the thunder died down, another cacophony took its place. Val’s other buddies (the ones that didn’t always talk so loudly and couldn’t fit into any holsters) came storming out of the little sealed-off nook that once led up onto the city streets, racing past them and into the tunnel proper. 

Some stopped, hopping down to loom over the fallen enemies and offer their own greetings with the help of blades or blunt instruments or fists or the soles of their shoes.

Others chased after the ones who were trying to flee, spring along the raised cement walkways, more toys made from cold steel glinting in their hands.

___

“The Boss is gonna leave her and Murdock’s spot in half-an-hour,” The Newcomer announced after they and Jay had walked a few more minutes. “She wanted to know if you’ll be at the base on time.”

Jay was nodding before the all the words were fully in the air. “Yeah. Yeah, I will be.” He paused, then snickered. “As if I could actually forget about something like that—what do you take me for?”

“I might not want to say,” The Newcomer joked, mock-keeling-over as Jay elbowed them in the side. “Seriously, though. Have there been any changes with your plans? It’s a bit too late to try moving stuff around, but…”

“Oh, no. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to watch what’ll be going down at the theater, but there’ll be plenty of hands on deck. No-one will even bat an eyelid if I’m gone,” Jay explained, thinking back to all the calls and emails he’d been part of, all the time he and the rest of the crew at Bullskit had spent planning. 

The focus on those plans? An all-out, uncompromising drag show; one that would be taking place onstage later in the evening. That would give all the queens and kings alike plenty of time to recharge after the public brunch they were currently hosting and the storytime hour that would be next. (It was really very generous of them to have agreed to such a packed schedule, especially considering how far some of them had traveled to come to this festival.)

In fact, the very table was just about ten-or-so feet away. Peering through the crowd, Jay caught K.O. hovering by one corner of it, clearly deep in conversation with a women whose dress was adorned by filigree patterns, all coming in blues or whites or pinks, contrasted and complimented by the silky dark hair that streamed far past her shoulders.

As Jay watched, he remembered how K.O had said something about catching up with an old friend. He’d mentioned a name, of course—Penelope, if memory served. 

Judging by the look in K.O.’s eyes and the smile on his face, it must’ve been years and years since he’d been able to just sit and chat with her. And, from what Jay could tell from the queen nearly bouncing in her chair as she spoke, time had been dragging its damn feet on her end as well.

One of the downsides to mob-work was the fact that you’d have to keep certain people at a distance, just as a precaution. Having a friend walk into the wrong place at the wrong time and wind up being used as a bargaining chip hurt like the worst kind of bitch out there. 

Jay hoped that sort of anxiety wasn’t too high on the meter for K.O. right now. After today, it’d probably be yet another long time before he got to meet up with her again, so they both deserved to just have fun with it.

___

Part of Val wished this could’ve happened up on the surface—even better, somewhere in Reilpi Woods. It wouldn’t even have to go down close to their bungalow; any walk through the trees was welcome. Especially considering how it’d look from a target’s perspective. (Depending on how blurry said target’s vision was going, those trees just had to resemble bars of a cage, right?)

A full-on storm would be make that setting even more appropriate, and not just because rain could help wash away a portion of the bloodsplatter. 

Of course, rain was also pretty cold most of the time, and dragging a body to whatever hiding and/or disposal site you’d chosen wouldn’t be as much as a cakewalk if it was filled with the squishing and squelching of soaked shoes.

Well, just some wind would work wonders for a job’s backdrop. Wind would make branches sway and creak. Wind would make leaves or petals—depending on the time of year—fluttering to the ground, potentially helping to fill in a last-minute grave (if not just briefly blind a target with some divine-level comedic timing)...

Val’s train of thought threw itself off its rail as their eyes finally settled on something in the massacre. 

While they obviously recognized all the figures of their family, one stood out, since A. she was the only person here who wasn’t wearing anything red (unless you counted the ends of her otherwise golden hair), B. she was the only person here who could look Two-Toes Johnny in the eye without craning her neck, and C. a sheath hung from her belt, currently empty due to how she’d whipped out a LEGIT GODDAMN SWORD.

Aformentioned GODDAMN SWORD was currently arcing through the air, the blade a gleaming blur as it swept toward the same guy whose injury, if not for the bullet, honestly could’ve been blamed on one of those amatuer chiropractors. 

And just like that, Val was moving again, just barely remembering to take their fingers away from the triggers (Barry and Greta’s barrels were both still hot, so they couldn’t just stuff them into their pockets. Which just SUCKED, because that would’ve been one of the COOLEST ways to make use of a dress with pockets). They lowered their head, putting as much weight as they could into their shoulder as they rammed it against Sam’s side Just barely remembering to 

Sam stumbled back with a slight yelp, eyes going wide. Like Val had expected, she acted on reflex, gearing up to swing her sword again. Val briefly jogged to the side, stopping once they could tell that Sam was recognizing them now. 

“...What was THAT for?!” Sam demanded, the sword’s tip now almost grazing the old concrete as she hesitantly lowered it. 

“Sorry.” Val fidgeted with  the bracelet of vermillion-tinted chainmail coiled around their wrist, shrugging, smiling, and aware that their voice only sounded half apologetic. With Greta’s help, they gestured down toward the man who was now struggling to just writhe. “That one just has to stay alive for now. For The Boss’ part of this whole thing.” 

While Val and their peers did a lot of the messy work, that didn’t mean The Boss was always content to just give them assignments. She was perfectly capable of getting her hands dirty—and whenever she did, a lot of the time it was with another head-honcho of an enemy posse. Thinking of community, it made sense. 

That was just one of many small traditions The Pentas Family had learned over the years.

Though, on occasion, she’d invited one of her associates to help with that part of a job. Especially if that associate had something to prove…

Somehow, out of all the noise and chaos, Val’s ears picked up on a quieter pattern. Tossing a glance over their shoulder, they saw Jay, who had been lingering on the stairs for most of the riot. Now, he was sauntering down onto the left walkway, the flickering caged lights on the wall casting a sort of halo over the bruises on his face and around his neck. He craned his neck to peer over the edge, eyes scanning the tracks down below. Once he found Mr. Nine-Millimeter-Back-Present, he halted for a few seconds. 

Then, he took a seat on the concrete, idly swinging his legs as a grim, cathartic smile etched its way across his features. 

This wasn’t much of a surprise.

If you didn’t have at least a little morbid curiosity, then you just weren’t going ot make it very far in underground work. And Jay had more than enough. His work was usually divided up into several portions: spying, and luring were the main ones. 

But once his side of a job was done, watching added another wedge to that pie.

___

Truffles, cookies, and popsicles, all apparently having been dipped in liquified rainbows, since the vibrant colors were clouded together rather than adhering to strict stripes. Like edible tie-dye.

Those were just a few examples of all the trays and platters arranged on one table in particular. Azalea was overseeing it, of course—Aftertaste’s catering could be found at any event, so long as it didn’t crash into another type of job.

Caliban was at her side, of course, following her lead to help out with replacements and such. 

…Then again, helping was a bit of a generous term right now, but that didn’t apply to just him. 

Right across the path stood a booth boasting Liquorty Splitz’s logo. Even more colors could be see there, all in glasses that came in various shapes and sizes (Jay even spotted a fishbowl or two), some garnished with cherries or mint leaves or salt. 

Even if Two-Toes Johnny was a stubborn bastard most of the time, it was a good thing he’d had the foresight to bring some of his own employees from the liquor store.

How else would he be able to stand off to the side at a more makeshift table, slamming down Rainbow Shooters, adding new, empty glasses to the growing, translucent pyramid that wobbled between him and his opponent. 

Though Sam looked more than a little buzzed, there was still clarity flickering in her determined eyes the same way sunlight was glinting off the dart frog pin attached to the loose, pink-and-yellow-and-blue-splotched tie around her neck

…Even if it was vastly outweighed by so much pure adrenaline that you’d think someone had slipped acid into at least three of the shots.

Johnny was pretty much in the same boat, his typical surliness replaced by something that would’ve been just as intimidating in the right circumstances.

So, it was truly hard to tell which person was more likely to win this little contest…

Hence why both Caliban and Azalea seemed to be calling out to make bets with the crowd depending on whoever seemed to be ahead at each moment. 

Jay tilted his head at the scene, humming with a conniving smile. 

“...I should probably go warn Garret,” The Newcomer murmured. 

“Why?” Jay asked, already knowing the answer, as well as how Garret likely hadn’t left the spot he’d last seen him in: camped in a folding chair under a tree that just so happened to offer a perfect line of sight at an amigurumi booth, knuckles white on instinct, crochet hooks a blur in his hands as a shape came together between them. (He should’ve been almost out of yarn by now, but the crochet bag he usually brought to family meetings just never seemed to follow spacial logic with its contents.)

The Newcomer turn their head toward him, their gray eyes now completely deadpan. “Two words: Domino. Effect.”

Jay chuckled. 

Sure, Garret’s paranoia sometimes died down when he focused on his little hobbies—the key word there being sometimes. And no matter how long he’d ran with The Pentas Family, no matter how much extremely-well-hidden trust he had for his peers, he wouldn’t be too understanding if a drunk peer and drunk ally came crashing into him. 

And, since the universe worked in truly mysterious ways, that would just be begging for Murdock to somehow notice and impulsively A. leave the flower booth he and The Boss were stationed at, and B. drop his anxiety-riddled mask and accidentally give out clues for that ONE DAMN RANDOM ONLOOKER WHO WAS JUST PAYING TOO MUCH ATTENTION to catch on to. 

Not to mention what would happen if Val got mixed up in that mess, what with the dart-throwing contest they were probably still focused on…

And, as the cherry on top (or, let’s be honest, even more powder to the keg): Casey was wandering around here somewhere. Jay had just barely spotted him in the crowd earlier, walking his beagle on a lax leash and snickering whenever passersby cooed over the tutu made of both rainbow and monochrome tulle around said beagle’s waist.

Things had been shockingly quiet between him and the family lately, and that was just concerning jobs. So, the last thing they needed was him thinking that they were responsible for such a public disaster 

...But then, who knew?

Perhaps, somehow, that potential chaos wouldn’t be so drastic. There were so, so, so many people attending the festival, and plenty of them were acting a bit raunchier than others (and no, they couldn’t be blamed for it). Maybe a scene like that really could just blend in, by some miracle. 

Jay took a deep, subtle breath, his eyes dropping to the ground for a few long seconds. 

It was so hard to believe that explosives had almost been planted somewhere in this park. 

Almost as hard to believe as the fact that the idiots who would’ve been behind those explosives had the fucking audacity to ask for Pentas support on their “little cleansing project.”

They’re dead now, a voice in Jay’s head piped up as he ground his jaw. Nothing like that is gonna happen. 

Even if he’d adjusted to hearing screams or sobs as part of his work…he never, never wanted to hear them at events like this. Never again.

And he wasn’t. Instead, he was hearing laughter and song.

___

Now, remember dear readers:

And that, of course, means that all sexual/romantic orientations and all gender identities matter too!

(In other words, just mind your own business and don't be a bigot. By the time you learn that you pushed someone too far, it might already be too late...)

(Tooooootally didn't included this just to make myself feel better for posting a Pride story in JULY 😅)

@sammys-magical-au @the-matpat-ever @flaming-dolph16 @illustep

[psychoticanti-blog]

Dark: The rules are clear, Anti: you can't make a kid an official ego.

Anti: *sends Dark a picture of Blank*

Dark: Okay I will make an exception because he looks polite.

[ratdadarts]

@kinglyqueenly!!! Its done!!! 9 hours worth of hard work for this masterpiece!!!!

@crankgameplays hhhhhh

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

(I wish I had something funnier to contribute, but this meme is all that's popping up right now 😅 I'm so sorry. Thank you, Sammy; this legit made my morning 💞)

Murdock: *folding his arms across his chest* Yeah, well...you s u c k.

K.O.: Oh—oh, shit!

Sam: *blinks a couple times* ...Your mom.

Caliban: *gasping in disbelief* Ohhhh?!

Murdock: *pauses, then narrows his eyes* YOUR DAD.

K.O.: ...*purses his lips, opening a bag of popcorn*

Caliban: OHHHHH?!?

Sam: *takes a few steps closer to Murdock* Your dad's DEAD.

K.O.: I—oh, OH—

Caliban: *starts cackling with laughter*

Murdock: ...He's not dead!

Sam: Then where is he?!

Murdock: *raises a finger to dictate his next words...only to shake his head and glare at Sam before storming off*

(Author's Context: I know I've only shaped out so much of my own personal lore/headcanons for Murdock in The Pentas Family/[The Future Mob Project], but just be aware that Murdock is acting all frustrated like that not because his dad is dead, but rather, because his dad ISN'T dead. Take that for what you will...😈)

Murdock: during a nuclear explosion, there’s a certain distance of the radius where all the frozen supermarket pizzas are cooked to perfection.

Caliban: there’s also a distance where the people are perfectly cooked!

K.O.: THE FLAVOUR ZONE!!

Sam: there is something horrifically wrong with every single one of you.

{@wouldntyou-liketoknow 💖}

[melasong]

Just an idea

Ok so I was thinking, those of you who watch or know what the show Supernatural is knows that every once in a while they do an episode or two that has nothing to do with the main story line and is basically a one off. Well I had the idea of Jack, Mark, and all the other guys being on a show at a convention when one of them is attacked by one of the egos, be it Jack’s, Mark’s or whomever and they have to call Sam and Dean in for help. Well let’s say that the brothers are no match for all the egos who are evil ( yes even our loveable Chase, JJ, and Jackieboy) because of being under the control of Anti and Dark, and it is left up to Jack and gang to fight them in one final battle royal. @septicart-appreciation @jacksoopticboop @scarletravens @punkygeefunk @therealjacksepticeye @markiplier @antisepticjack @antiknife @shadowstakeall

[blueberry-demon]

Blank's side says "Emotions aren't weaknesses" for those who can't get past the blurriness :3 @crankgameplays

[warfstachenby]

idk about you guys but EminemGamePlays is my favourite ego 🥰

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Yeah, another long wait 😅 But hey, at least it's here now!

How the plot thickens, and how the shenanigans, on a 1-10 scale, go from a 9 to an instant 30...

___

Abel Impulse [Part 2]

(Disclaimer: two of the characters in this story do not belong to me. Casey Clowes was created by my amazing friend, @insane4fandoms.)

(Now, as for the fanegos who do belong to me: for more information on Azalea, go here. For more information on Phoenix, go here. For more information on Caliban, go here. For more information on K.O., go here.) 

(Trigger Warnings: implied kidnapping, implied murder/death, mentions of gunshots, medical attention, knives/blades, violence, blood/gore, mentions of poisoning, mentions of cannibalism, mentions of fire/smoke, mentions of arson/burning/melting, descriptions of illegal business, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

___

At first, Casey couldn’t tell if he was awake. 

He’d experienced similar stuff in the past—drifting in and out of consciousness at odd hours of the night, dreams blurring and mumbling because apparently his brain just couldn’t make up its damn mind. 

Everything was shrouded in darkness. It was like his eyes had sunk all the way to the back of his skull. Like the end of each lid had gotten caught underneath, forcing the sockets to wrap themselves shut far too tight.

But as the seconds ticked by, he felt his brow furrowing, felt the sore muscles in his neck protest as he tried to shift. 

And the pain wasn’t far behind at all.

Some kind of drumbeat that wracked his abdomen. It started out with pinches, like a hand topped with sharp, ragged, dirty nails groping around at his guts. And then those nails melted and started seeping deeper and deeper into his flesh.

Burning and stinging with a shaky flare, like mosquitos drunk on the ashes that flew off of a crackling firepit.

If noises could be captured and distilled into physical feelings, then this would qualify as the reincarnation of a scream.

A deranged, hopeless scream that went on far longer than it should’ve been able to, perhaps until it forced vocal cords to snap like guitar strings.

“You there, Casey?”

The voice called from what had to be just a few feet away. It was low but not deep, thoughtful but not quite focused, and almost a bit raspy around the edges. Not pointing to cigarettes, though smoke was definitely responsible in some other way.

Worst of all, it was familiar. 

Familiar enough to send a chill down Casey’s spine, which mixed with the burning in an awful way. 

It really shouldn’t have been familiar. 

It’d been years upon years since he’d heard that voice…then again, that was just a technicality. He’d heard it a few times after that one branch of his life. 

Those few times had been set in fear and hate, filtered with the stench of metal and oil, full of verbal arsenic (as in, insults and threats and the hollow horror that came along when ear-splitting, sadistic laughter mixed itself into enraged shrieks…)

Spots danced in Casey’s vision, bright little sparks that faded away in a millisecond. He had to blink a couple times with a bit more force than strictly necessary. At least the new light around him was dim.

The pain in his stomach didn’t stop—if anything, it ate up his awareness like fire to dry newspapers—but a different type of ache thrummed on one side of his head. Dull, lukewarm, almost sweaty. 

The left half of his view remained stubbornly blurred, as though he was peering through a glass fishbowl full of cloudy water, while he took in the walls. 

Each one was covered in a fine layer of dust (which was just ridiculous. Walls were vertical! Why couldn’t they act like it?!) that didn’t do much to hide a dull yellow tint. 

He tried to sit up, only to hiss through gritted teeth as another flare raced through his guts and up to his ribs.

His elbow brushed against brown leather that had taken on that weird scratchy-yet-velvety feel that could only come from years of less-than-gentle use.

The couch it covered looked like it’d once belonged to an animal shelter, having been set up for playful kittens (read: the ones that you’d think somehow got a few drops of Red Bull in their kibble) to tire themselves out.

A coffee table stood before the sofa. It was low to the matted carpet and coated in white paint, though as Casey’s aching eyes wandered over it, he discovered awkward little cracks and bumps, making the material uneven. Like the table had been flipped or thrown on at least three separate occasio—

A shape lay discarded on top; the dim light flickered, coaxing out a familiar, metallic glint that practically slapped Casey across the face.

His half-respirator!

Alertness crashed over him like a wave.

It’d taken so long for him to find that thing, for him to find one that could give extra protection without slowing him down. He couldn’t afford to just lose it!

The pain seemed to blink, not quite fading but still being pushed aside as he reached out. 

The floor creaked, fabric shuffled, and then another hand was there, wrapping around his wrist in a firm, cold grasp.  

“Hey!” The cry was guttural, instinctive. Casey tugged his arm back, but his hand wasn’t released. He craned his neck to glance over, only for a shuddering flare to drag its way down his heart before moving onto his lungs. 

“Oh, finally!” That same voice announced, with a joking edge that did not belong here.  “For a second there, I was worried I’d have to get an ice bucket.”

The man looming beside him had clearly been put through the ringer. (More than one, if Casey was honest.) 

His face was horribly scarred—almost the entire left side was splotched with an angry shade of pinkish-red. The texture might’ve looked wrinkled from a distance, but this close, it nearly gave the impression that he’d taken one of those loop tools used in sculpting and just raked it along his forehead, his cheek, his chin over and over again.

Maybe that analogy wasn’t so far off, considering how some of his fair skin had been spared. The burns stretched over, but only a bit, leaving patches on his face’s right side that were big enough to not render him completely disfigured. The wound almost seemed like it’d been placed by an artist. Granted, there’d have to be some sick, macabre thoughts involved to make it work, but still.

Especially for his eyes. 

One of them really should’ve been fused shut and hidden under the blistered tissue, but nope. The socket was crooked, like it’d been ever-so-slightly pinched. But as Casey watched, it blinked, which meant that it could still move and…he couldn’t be certain that seeing was an option, since it was dull gray and boasted a texture that reminded him of a withered grape. 

But its counterpart…well, it didn’t look healthy, what with the way a bag had long-since formed underneath it, or just how bloodshot it was. But it was still functioning, still alert, still alive. 

Alive enough for its pupil to shrink down to a pinprick.

Alive enough to showcase how the brown iris had a peculiar orange sheen about it.

Alive enough to drill an invisible hole into Casey’s head.

Casey shuffled, grinding his jaw as he leaned back. 

Mad took that as an invitation to move himself, now leaning over his captive, still holding onto his wrist. “Here, let me get a look at you.” 

He then tilted his head, his free hand moving to nudge a navy-blue blanket aside.

Casey made to snap again, to keep struggling. As his eyes followed along, however, he stopped short.

His jaw dropped at the sight of bandages wrapped around the lower-half of his bare chest in a tight layer.

The white gauze was stark against his brown skin, but a dull, dark red stain just underneath one section was the thing to really set it off.

And as he tried to regain focus, he saw how his right forearm had been dressed in a similar way. The burning and stinging felt muffled, but not by much. 

“Hmm…” A few long seconds ago, Mad’s mouth had stretched into a grim, uncertain smile with a corner of his mouth twitching. But now, he was pursing his lips in a frown. “Well, patching things up never was my forte, but—”

“Stop! Get away! Let go!” Casey interjected, nearly screaming with another attempt to free his wrist. “What did you do to me?!”

An interesting mixture of anger and confusion (as well as…wait, was that actual, genuine concern?) stirred around in Mad’s eyes. “I didn’t do this!”

His grip tightened as he jostled by the couch, trying to shift his weight against his captive. “Hey, hold still! You’re gonna mess up the wraps! It took me forever to stop the bleeding; we can’t give it a chance to start again!”

“Don’t give me that BS!” Casey spat, trying to twist his arm and having to wrench his eyes shut as another bolt of pain flared under the gauze. “You don’t clean up messes! You just cause ‘em! That’s all you EVER do!”

“Not this time! It wasn’t me!” Mad protested. “Come on, Casey! These are bullet-wounds, and since when have I ever used guns?”

Casey froze in place, the upcoming retort dying on his tongue. Loathe as he was to admit it, that defense was an accurate one. 

It was common for serial killers to develop signatures—personal quirks, things to make their grisly work unique to them and them alone. Sure, a lot of them knew the merits of keeping a varied inventory, but sometimes they still wound up getting attached to a particular tool or weapon or process.

Sentimentality could be a strange, horrifying thing. 

Mad was a prime example of that, even when improvisation ended up not working out so well for him. But at the end of the day, he had his own handmade Ol’ Reliable. Casey had only seen it in action once or twice, but there was no doubt that it was devastating…

Watching the realization cross Casey’s features, Mad offered a smug nod. 

“I didn’t see the whole thing,” he proclaimed, his gaze wandering about the room. “I was out and about, working on some of my own stuff—” Mad pointedly pretended not to see the way Casey snarled at that phrasing, “—but then I heard shots from just around the corner. I got curious, and when I snuck over to see what was going on…”

Slowly, his eyes went back to boring into Casey’s again.

For the first time in recent years, there was no rage, no ulterior motive, no sadism to be seen. In all honesty, Casey didn’t know what he was looking at, but he couldn’t take any chances in guessing. 

Mad heaved a disappointed sigh. “I couldn’t make out what the guy looked like. He was halfway down the street by the the time I realized it was you lying on the ground.”

“An extortion racket,” Casey murmured without quite meaning to, putting the pieces together as the memories finally started filtering back through his head. “My latest client works at one of the stores around here…said that someone was threatening their boss in order to get free goods…using a mask and everything…”

Mad continued on, either because he hadn’t heard him or didn’t care for details right now. “You were out like a light. And you were just bleeding so much. Too much for me to waste time on a chase and then come back to you—”

He didn't trail off, but his words grew blurry, as if echoing from somewhere far away, while Casey racked his brain.

Getting shot out in the open was bad enough. Even if he’d made relative peace with all the danger he exposed himself to for his cases, it was still a nightmare scenario. 

Part of his mind flashed to all the powerpoints and books he’d had to study for training. Some examples had been much more shocking than others, of course. If there was one part of that he knew for certain he would never, NEVER forget, it was the Bystander Effect.

Such a simple yet awful phenomenon.

He’d read so many reports about the targets of mugging (or something even worse) being left to bleed in a ditch or alleyway, wailing for help so loud and for so long that it’d be a miracle for their poor throats to not go raw. 

And yet, no matter how loud those victims were, any other people who happened to be near were likely to just. Not. Answer. 

Casey couldn’t wrap his head around something like that.

The most common excuse was that most bystanders believed plenty of other people were around to help. (Funny how that logic apparently applied to those other people too, hmm?)

Perhaps those bystanders had a reason to think it was some kind of elaborate trap. Maybe they had a reason to fear that if they helped, then unfair blame for what happened would be cast onto them. 

But why was something like that so universal? 

Why was it just accepted that people would go out of their way to avoid taking responsibility for bad things out in public?  

It truly felt like some kind of Yin to the Milgram Experiment’s Yang…

Mad was the absolute last person Casey would expect to help him. 

If anything, Mad was the type of person to take advantage of the Bystander Effect, whether he was hiding his victim or aiming to snatch one up and drag them into the night, sealing their fate himself just because he was in a bad mood.

“—Aaaaaaannd that’s how we got here!” Mad concluded with an awkward, sweeping gesture of the room. With his free hand, mind you. Since he still hadn’t let go of Casey. 

The staring contest resumed (then again, had it ever really paused?) for another long, uncomfortable moment.

Casey took a quiet deep breath. “...What’s your game, then?” 

“What do you mean by that?” Mad asked, his brow furrowing. 

“You know what I mean. I’m not playing around with this,” Casey replied in a terse tone. “You’ve obviously brought me here because you want something. So, you might as well just tell me and get it over with already.”

Mad scoffed and pouted at the same time, which would’ve looked kind of funny if it weren’t for all his burn-scars. “I wanted to make sure you were alright. You took one bullet to your stomach and another to your arm! You’re pretty damn lucky that I managed to get them both out and dress the wounds.”

He paused, a small chuckle crawling up from his lungs. “Besides, that was only half the struggle. You’re not exactly a pocket-watch anymore.” He glanced over Casey again, and even lying down, it was obvious to anyone how he was much taller than his captor. “Makes me glad I got all that teasing out back when I was still able. Because I just knew the tables would turn someday.”

“Don’t.” Casey growled, deep in his throat. “Don’t you dare talk about old kid stuff.” He chewed his lip, then heaved a sigh. “Like it even matters anymore.”

“What?” Mad’s lips peeled back in a sneer, his much more typical anger flaring back to life in his narrowed eyes. His grip tightened around Casey’s wrist as he leaned a couple inches closer.

“Give me one good reason why I can’t,” he demanded through clenched teeth. 

The challenge hit Casey like a .44 slug. He stared at his captor for a long few seconds, blinking as his own anger set his mind to a rolling boil.

“...One?” He asked, spitting the word out like it was a rancid piece of meat. “ONE reason?! You really think there’s just ONE?” 

The pain didn’t even give him much trouble as he propped himself up against the couch’s armrest, returning the favor via almost getting in Mad’s face. 

“Susie, Gabriel, Jeremy, Fritz,” he listed off, his heart aching at the memories of each Missing Child report. “Not to mention how many came AFTER them! Or the ones that came BEFORE them! I can only think of one time when the person you went after was an adult!”

He let out a mirthless, infuriated chuckle that came dangerously close to a sob. “But hey, I’m sure you’ve already updated that part of the list. The bodies just haven’t been found yet, huh?”

Invisible needles dragged along his brain as older memories played.

Glass shards slathered in red, glistening in the darkness.

The stench of iron swallowing up the typical smell of wood-polish. 

A huge grandfather clock laying on the floor, broken beyond repair.

The horrific, pulpy mess crushed beneath all that weight.

Bits of brain and skull sticking to the once-glossy finish on the sides. 

Red, red, so much RED…

Mad’s eyes flickered; Casey could see those exact images reflected—only from a much different angle of things. Almost as if his memories had been spinning through a film projector. 

But that was just it.

Vague recollection was the only thing Mad’s eyes had to offer right now. 

No guilt.

No sadness.

No shame.

No remorse—one of the most important ingredients to a person. 

Mad wasn’t feeling sorry about the fact that he’d done any of those things. 

Only sorry that he’d ever gotten caught.

“Oh, wait, did I catch you off-guard with that?” Casey wondered, his voice dripping with false apology. “Did you forget all those times; those names?”

Mad’s mouth opened and closed with no words coming out.

Part of the emotions on his face looked proud, looked disgustingly nostalgic.

Another part was seething, in a way so dark and rotten that it could've been infested with maggots. 

“I guess that makes sense,” Casey continued, rolling his eyes quite pointedly. “Because you don’t care to remember. You just can’t be bothered to! That’s why you think you can just make a hobby out of hurting others! YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYONE OR ANYTHING BUT YOURSELF.”

Without warning, Casey felt the pressure ease around his wrist; Mad’s grip had finally slackened. It was obviously a subconscious, accidental gesture, but it was better than nothing. 

Not intending to waste any chance he could get here, he tugged his arm back once again. 

Mad noticed, of course, but he was too slow to retain his hold. 

Casey peeled the offending hand away, then shoved it toward the lunatic in front of him…only to freeze in place. 

Way back when, Mad’s palms were rough and bumpy, pretty much always boasting a few callouses. One time Casey had caught him tearing the little clumps of dead skin off with his fingernails. He remembered his worry taking on a gross, itchy feeling that churned around in his stomach at the sight. 

He didn’t feel any callouses now. Didn’t feel any nails, didn’t feel any skin. 

All he felt was something hard, smooth, and cold. 

Time seemed to slow down as his eyes wandered over the prosthetic.

A clutch of five digits sculpted from some kind of plastic.

A tangle of thin, tiny wires wove out from the base of each “knuckle,” simulating the tendons that were supposed to reach all the way up to the elbow and give fine motor-control. 

They all connected to a metal band, which encircled Mad’s wrist, just barely jutting out from whatever scarred skin remained. 

Casey’s focus darted over, confirming that the hand’s counterpart was in the exact same condition. 

It seemed the shock on Casey’s face was the key to finally convince Mad on the importance of personal space. He snatched his hardware away and stumbled back, blindly groping at the armchair positioned by the couch.

After a painfully awkward moment passed by, he produced a pair of thick black gloves. He shoved them on, one after the other, as if that would somehow magically turn his hands back to flesh and blood and bone. The way they should’ve been.

Casey had to hold onto his anger—his needed to. 

He couldn’t let himself get caught up in anything. He couldn’t let himself get distracted. That was exactly what Mad wanted. 

But even as all those horrible, monstrous things kept echoing through his head, he couldn’t help it when his voice tapered down to a whisper: “Did…did you do that?” 

Mad stared at him, his expression now unreadable. The seconds felt like hours as he offered a hesitant nod. 

Casey’s eyes bulged from their sockets. A tidal wave of screaming questions crashed over his head, but he could only drag one out into the air. “Why?”

Mad’s features twisted in a scowl that was made even worse by how it stretched the scarred, burned tissue around his lips. 

“Because I had to,” Mad replied, his tone dripping with ice. “Business had taken more than enough hits. People were asking too many questions. I needed to get away. To start over.”

And just like that, Casey’s fury resumed its festering path around both his brain and his heart. 

The statement rang through his skull like a rusty, broken church bell. 

“The disaster at that one Freddy’s…They said two bodies were found. The owner and an employee,” Casey murmured, remembering the news story he just so happened to find while flicking through TV channels one morning. “That was you. You’d left some evidence around the place that couldn’t be covered up or cleaned off. So you decided to just send it to high-heaven.” 

Mad folded his arms across his chest, sighing through his nose and rolling his eyes like a stereotypical teenager. Despite this, you could still catch his eyes twinkling with sick, arrogant pride. 

“Afton,” Casey continued, putting piece after piece together. “That was the guy’s name. That was the latest fake identity you were using!”

Mad looked like he’d been about to say something, but a small, hitching gasp seeped through his teeth instead. His eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. 

“You killed someone else before it happened, didn’t you? You cut off their hands, got rid of them, and then you—you left yours behind with the body.” Casey felt his chest tightening, felt the new gash in his torso burn and sting so bright it almost felt fresh.

“That way, if anyone came sniffing through the wreckage…they’d have no choice but to connect your fingerprints to the victim. Your records, too. They’d think you died in that explosion.”

Casey had seen his fair share of criminals going out of their way to make things…elaborate. Sometimes that just made them easier to catch, but other times it left him feeling cold, scared, almost helpless depending on what exactly he was looking for. 

The scheme Mad had apparently cooked up was a very labored one.

It was a long-con, a true gamble.

And, worst of all: it was infuriatingly, horrifically clever.

Now it was Mad’s turn to whisper, his voice dangerously close to shaking. 

“H-how…how did you do that?!”

“It’s really not that hard with you, Mad!” Casey fumed, throwing his hands up in the air and wincing as the muscles in his bandaged arm screamed. “Keeping track of everything you’ve done? That’s painful for sure. But you always have your damn tells!”

Mad gripped the arm of his chair, his hand shaking as his digits sank into the leather. 

“Shut up.” The warning came out as a hiss. 

It fell on deaf ears.

“Why else would you keep running around with fake names, ruining different people’s lives, causing wanton destruction?!” Casey shouted. It felt like a section of his brain was about to bash its way out of his skull. One hand subconsciously reached for his head, soon touching down to rake across his black hair, almost digging his nails into his own scalp. 

“Shut. UP,” Mad repeated, his breathing now ragged.

Casey wasn’t deterred. “It’s not just because you get a kick out of it! It’s because you can’t even take responsibility for crimes, of all things! You really think you’re some kind of mastermind, but if it wasn’t for all the high numbers and missing cases and flash you’re so obsessed with, then you’d just be another low-level, dime-a-dozen scumbag!”

“SHUT UP!” Mad shrieked, practically jumping out of his chair. 

In a swift, blurry movement, he grabbed one of the coffee table’s legs, raised it up, and hurled it across the room. 

It hit the opposite wall with a dull, deafening WHAM! before falling to the floor.

(Oddly enough, it stayed in one piece, though there were some brand-spankin’-new cracks in the white paint. Not to mention a fresh dent in the wall.)

Casey stared at the display, only for a violent flinch to sear through him as the shifting continued in his peripheral vision. He braced himself, clenching his jaw, gripping at the couch cushions.

Mad stormed further away, approaching a door that waited right on the living room’s border. He ripped it open, using so much force that it was a miracle he didn’t rip it off its hinges.

Then he ducked into the next room and slammed it shut, making the wall shake for a long few seconds. His angry movements grew muffled, fainter (not by very much of course), but didn’t stop altogether.

Somehow, this new, relative silence felt worse than the screaming. 

Casey swallowed a lump in his throat. He chewed his lip, glancing all around the space—there. 

A hollow threshold on the other end of the living room, almost perfectly opposite of wherever Mad had retreated into. 

He had no idea how much time Mad would take to sulk, to get his aggression out, to be unable to watch him. 

He had to move quickly. 

Casey sat upright, feeling his shoes touch down on the carpet. 

Even after steadying himself, he still had to screw his eyes shut and suck a sharp breath in through his teeth as he stood up.

The room swayed, and the pain drank that right up. 

Agony raced up and down his legs as he began to walk, but he couldn’t let that stop him. He shifted his weight with each step, making as little noise as possible. 

Once he was close enough, Casey reached out and pushed his hand onto the wall, half-leaning against it to keep his balance.

He had to get out of here, but he couldn’t just leave. 

After all, where exactly would he go? He didn’t even know how close this house was to the area he’d been attacked at.

Wandering would be useless; Mad could track him down and re-capture him easily 

If Casey truly wanted to escape, he’d have to be smart about it…

___

Azalea dug around in her bag and fished out a familiar, pink-stained wooden container. She popped it open and gazed inside, silently reading the labels on the little glass vials she’d taken samples from a few minutes ago.

She’d used up the Japanese Giant Hornet venom for the job—so, that left four types of hype for her to work with, each ready to go, filled with clear, oh-so innocent-looking liquids. 

She settled on potentially incriminating a Gila monster, grabbing the appropriate syringe and spinning it between her gloved fingers. 

Those lizards were considered to have one of the most painful bites in the United States, though lethal cases were almost unheard of.

The same went for the other toxins she’d brought. 

Arizona bark scorpion, platypus, bullet ant…oh, they offered side-effects that were agonizing, but not technically fatal. 

Just enough juice to incapacitate someone for a while.

Though, they couldn’t exactly knock someone unconscious. Sure, the shock and pain could potentially make the unlucky victim pass out, but it was still a gamble. 

A gamble that Azalea wouldn’t have to worry about with certain other substances in her collection.

The same ones that she’d somehow forgotten to bring along. 

Hell, she’d even neglected to bring a trusty dart gun! It wasn’t impossible to pull off stealth-based work without one, but still...

Caliban pushed off from the top of the fence, landing beside her with a light thump on the grass. He dusted himself off and began stalking forward…only to stop short, seeing the self-aimed disappointment on her face. 

“Hey, c’mon, don’t beat yourself up about it,” he assured, giving her a light pat on the shoulder. “We’ve improvised before, so we can do it again.”

“I know, I know,” Azalea replied, offering a gesture that was half-nod-half-shrug as the two of them crept through a very unkempt backyard.

She was grateful for the morbid optimism; he’d already heard her slight panic-rant back at the motel, and yet he wasn’t getting snappy.  “It’s just…you’ve got more history with this guy than the rest of us. I don’t want to make things any more stressful.” 

“Well, yeah.” Caliban admitted, chewing his lip with a nod of his own. “But since when does random stuff like this not have any stress?”

A wide grin then spread over his features, showcasing the way his teeth looked a bit too sharp. “Besides, most jobs tend to get more fun sooner or later.”

Azalea chuckled, the syringe already feeling lighter in her grasp.

It was very late in the night. The sky had been completely swallowed up by clouds; the moon’s glow just barely managed to peek out through a few of them, but that only made so much of a dent in the darkness. 

This wasn’t a problem, really. More than enough time had passed for them to adjust to nocturnal schedules, to learn how to make their way with limited vision.

Maybe that was why Azalea could see her brother’s eyes glinting almost as much as his teeth.

Much like the ones on her face, Caliban’s eyes were brown. And yet, right now, they almost seemed to take on a shade of yellow that would’ve been creepy to most other people. 

(His eyes always did that when he had a lot of adrenaline. Even more so when he was hungry.) 

Though there was a decent amount of space, the house didn’t have much in the way of a back-patio. 

The siblings ducked as they passed a couple windows, soon approaching a door. It seemed a hole had been cut out, since there was a wide plastic panel adorning the lower-half. A typical doggy-door. 

“Does he have any pets?” Azalea asked, eyeing it cautiously. “Have you ever seen him with one?”

Caliban shook his head. “Doubt it. He doesn’t seem to like most animals, if the faces he's made at Snare are anything to go by. This probably just came with the house.”

He fished through his jacket’s pockets and brought out a couple lockpicks. It took a moment of shifting them about in the keyhole, but a small click rang through the air soon enough. 

He twisted the knob and started to push, only for the door to stop less than halfway.

After flinching in near-perfect unison with Azalea, he carefully wormed his fingers through the crevice between the door and its panel. 

“What the—?!” Caliban whisper-shouted, moving his wrist up and down. “...There’s latches!”

Azalea furrowed her brow. “Plural?”

“Yeah! I can feel four or five of ‘em!” The cannibal gave an aggravated growl. “This has to be the one thing he’s actually thorough about.”

Azalea pursed her lips, tossing an anxious glance over her shoulder. 

Pre-planned jobs already came with their own time-crunches. Stuff like this only tightened that leash even more. 

K.O. had agreed to create a distraction after waiting two minutes; the siblings couldn’t afford to waste even a few seconds if they wanted this to work. 

She glanced down at the doggy door, raising her foot to give it a little kick. The plastic flap yielded easily. There was nothing behind it. 

After that, Azalea let out a sigh. “Alright, hold these.”

She pushed her bag and the syringe-container into Caliban’s hands without waiting for an answer, then dropped down to her knees to push the flap up and out of the way. 

Her shoulders made entry a little awkward, but she was petite enough to make it through just fine. She picked herself up, glancing around at an empty garage. 

Or, mostly empty, since the car Caliban’s rival apparently used was parked outside. A desk had been set up in the far-corner, cluttered with sheets of paper and various tools. A few strange, glinting shapes hung on the wall nearby; either weapons or more pieces of equipment—or both. 

The smell of metal and motor oil hung heavy in the musty air.

Azalea turned back to the door, making short work of the comedic amount of latches that had been installed onto it. 

The threshold was shut as quickly as it’d been opened, Caliban scurrying through to join her. 

“You didn’t see anything,” Azalea stated, squinting up at him as he handed her stuff back.

Caliban raised one hand in a small salute…though that didn’t stop one corner of his mouth from twitching in that way you just knew meant a giggle was being pushed down.

Another door stood at attention just a few feet away. 

The two of them crept toward it, only briefly jumping out of their skins at the sudden cacophony of shattering glass, followed by the unmistakable wailing of a car alarm. 

“There!” Caliban proclaimed, struggling to keep his voice low. “There’s the distraction!”

Azalea nodded, racing up a short set of concrete stairs. She pressed her ear against the door, listening carefully. She managed to catch frantic footsteps stampeding somewhere inside, though they were quick to disappear.

She was silent while turning the knob, swift as she pushed the entrance open. “C’mon, c’mon..!”

Her brother followed her lead into a laundry room, then into a small kitchen.

With the overall dingy vibes and the aged light buzzing and flickering above, you’d think there would be dishes piled up in the sink. But no; there were only knives.

“Where do you think he put him?” Azalea whispered as she sidled past the dining room table. “There’s a chance this place has a basement.”

“Maybe, but this floor can’t be that big—” Caliban started, then cut himself off. He turned his head, craning his neck in a sharp, sudden way. “Wait..!”

He took in a brisk breath, his nostrils flaring in a way that was almost similar to the near-constant twitching of Snare's nose. “I smell blood. Think it’s fresh.”

Azalea was right behind him as he trekked forward.

They came upon a much wider space—a living room, complete with a sofa here, an armchair there, and a small white table to seemed to have had a brief exchange of principles with one of the walls.

 A metallic gleam caught Azalea’s eye; Casey’s half-respirator, lying vacant right by the crash site. She tip-toed over and plucked it off the floor, winding the head strap around her free wrist. 

There was another door across the room, but the short corridor stretching out to the right seemed a bit more interesting.

The siblings kept going, turning a corner just in time to discover a closet; one that had been installed on a track, not touching the floor or ceiling by less than a single inch. 

That itself wouldn’t have been much to look at.

No, what really got their attention was how the door was sliding open.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

A dark eye shone through the crack, widening as it stared at them.

Neither Azalea nor Caliban had much of a chance to stare back. 

As if on cue, hollow space grew wider, allowing an arm to lash out. It wrapped around Azalea first, just touching along her back, then stretched to grab a handful of Caliban’s shoulder. 

The two of them let out twin yelps of panic as they were drawn forward, soon colliding with a number of hanging coats and miscellaneous clutter as the door slid shut behind them.

And now Azalea could smell blood too. Caliban had learned to track certain scents almost like a shark, but it was stronger in here

The figure responsible for this was taller than both of them. 

Even in the darkness, it didn’t take much time at all for both of them to recognize his face from so many near-misses in the past. 

But if anything sealed the deal, it was his voice. 

“I knew it!” Casey proclaimed, clearly struggling to whisper. His tone was strained by something more physical, though; like he was biting back an acidic tinge somewhere. “You guys have connections with him!”

The investigator raised his arms again, attempting to pin Caliban to one of the narrow walls. “Mad couldn’t get what he wanted from me, so called you in to take care of the rest!”

Even through the new chaos, the siblings still had a chance to exchanged confused glances.

“That’s not true at all!” Azalea snapped right back, tugging at one of Casey’s arms. “It’d be a clear break of the family’s rules!”

“The hell are you talking about?!” Caliban hissed, struggling against the other man’s grip like a bag of angry cats. “That guy’s a total parasite! I wouldn’t even put his cuts on my table, let alone work with him!”

“Likely story,” Casey growled. “Why else would you have come here?!”

“Because we’re trying to help you!” Azalea shoved her way in-between Casey and Caliban, forcing the former to release his grip. Caliban staggered back, catching himself against the opposite corner of the cramped space.

Casey gawked at the two of them, slowly shaking his head. “...No. No, you aren’t—”

“Yeah, we are!” Caliban protested. “There’s no time to explain! Just go with something..!” His eyes passed over something behind all the hanging stuff, only to freeze in a neck-snapping doubletake. His voice suddenly wavered, hitching. “...for once…”

Azalea felt a wave of something cold and prickly slide over her shoulders. 

“Cal?” She called, trying to keep her voice soft. “Cal, what is it?”  

Her brother didn’t answer. He just kept on staring. 

Azalea shuffled closer, pushing everything aside to see for herself. 

She automatically wished that she hadn’t. 

The closet’s back-wall was, to be frank, falling apart. A large hole marred the paint, revealing crumbling drywall and even a bit of a support beam. 

Caliban audibly gulped, his already-wide eyes growing even wider to accommodate the rotten memories now circulating through his head.

Azalea knew, because those same memories were doing that exact thing to her. 

Caliban stepped away, pressing his back against one of the closet’s doors.

“Cal,” Azalea repeated, finding it even hard to keep her tone even. “Cal, it’s okay—” She reached up to grasp his shoulder. “Look at me, not at that.”

Caliban swiveled his head to face her. His eyes were still full of that strange, yellow-looking gleam, but his energy wasn’t excited anymore. Now, it resembled that of an animal caught in a trap, just about desperate enough to chew off one of its legs to escape. 

“This isn’t the same as that was,” Azalea told him. “We’re not—” She had to take a shallow breath, had to stop herself from shaking. “We’re not back there.”

“I-I know,” Caliban replied, nodding frantically. “I know, I know…”

“We’ll get out of here soon enou—”

“Shh!” Casey (who had apparently just been polite enough to stand by for this little scene), jolted in place, his focus darting back over to the doors.

The three of them fell silent.

Somewhere else in the house, a door let out a long, low squeal. 

Floorboards creaked softly. 

That might be K.O., part of Azalea’s mind whispered. He could’ve ditched Mad and circled back here to help us.

But that couldn’t be the case.

K.O. wouldn’t have been walking so quietly, so carefully. Not if he’d led a threat far enough away, at least.

Closer…and closer…

“Casey,” an unfamiliar voice called, dripping with bitterness and dread. “Casey, come on—you shouldn’t be hiding from me.”

Casey edged away from that spot where the door met the wall. 

Caliban slid closer to Azalea, eyes still wide, fear draining away. His features would’ve been completely unreadable to almost anyone else. 

“You said what you said,” the voice continued, even closer than before. “And I said what I said…”

In her peripheral vision, she saw him reach into his jacket, saw something shiny with a wooden handle appear in his grasp.

She brushed her arm against his, shifting the syringe to her opposite hand. 

“I know you’re around here somewhere!” The voice was full-on shouting now, desperation hanging in thick tangles around the words. “Doing this won’t prove anything!”

Azalea peered over at the detective, just in time to see him lower his head, shivering and clenching his jaw.

The closet door was flung aside with a grating whoosh!

A new figure loomed in the hall outside, dressed in an unmistakable bear-suit, the tan fabric smeared with red stains. His eyes were narrowed at first, only to almost pop right out of his head as he noticed the new guests in his house. 

But that only lasted a split-second. 

Caliban leapt out with an ear-piercing war-cry, his favorite cleaver a blur as he raked it against the other man, who shouted with unintelligible rage and hatred as he lashed right back. 

In a matter of seconds, they both disappeared back around the corner.

Azalea didn’t hesitate. She surged out and down the other side. Casey struggled, trying to move on his own terms, but she kept a death grip around his wrist. She could still hear her brother, hear his shouts of fury and pain mixing with that other voice, hear the subsequent thudding and shuffling of limbs against the walls and floor…

Coolness seeped over her, making goosebumps sprout all over her arms.

At the end of the hall, she discovered another door, wide open, letting the fresh, nighttime air filter on through. 

K.O. raced across the threshold, skidding to a halt upon seeing one of his accomplices. 

“I tried to draw him away, but he just went running back here before we could get far enough,” he reported in-between gasping breaths, panic heavy in his voice. “What’s going on?!”

“Change of plans,” Azalea replied, somehow just as breathless.

She pushed Casey toward K.O.—yes, the latter was shorter than the former, but he was also one of the strongest members of The Pentas Family. He was their very own underground fighter, after all.

“Take him back over there!” She instructed, pointing past his shoulder at the abandoned motel, her heart sinking as the background noises grew fainter for a millisecond. “I need to help Cal!”

“Don’t I get a say in this?!” Casey demanded, still jostling unsteadily as K.O. took hold of his arms. 

Before either of his technical captors could respond, a new sound sliced through the air.

Azalea couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard something like it, but her instincts were already shrieking and clawing at the interior of her skull. Judging by K.O and Casey’s expressions, they knew to recognize it, too. 

A chorus of rapid, buzzing, mechanical revving, almost like a car’s engine.

Almost.

Except for the fact that most cars didn’t come with a long, spinning line of teeth.

“GO! HURRY!” Azalea shouted, feeling the blood rush through her ears as she retraced her steps, sprinting past the closet, back to the entrance of that kitchen from what felt like hours ago.

Mad had his back to her, holding that same shape she’d seen in the garage. The noise it made now felt like nails being drilled into her ears. 

And in front of Mad, lying on the floor—Caliban. 

The screaming suddenly felt muffled, except for a slight ringing along the edges.

Azalea could practically feel her blood start to boil in her veins. 

Her brother had been backed into a corner…and now, some filthy bottom-feeding child murderer was AIMING A CHAINSAW AT HIS FACE.

Caliban was holding up a chair, using it as a shield. The chainsaw’s teeth sputtered and jumped at the obstacle, but that would only last so long. 

Before she even realized it, Azalea was running, leaping onto Mad’s back.

Mad let out a guttural yelp, swinging his weapon up and away from Caliban. 

He tried to sway from side-to-side, tried to thrash his new attacker off. 

But he didn’t move fast enough. 

In a hazy, fluid movement, Azalea’s arm lashed out, then came arching back toward him. 

The needle glinted hungrily as it sank into his shoulder. She pressed down on the plunger, her white knuckles cracking from sheer force. Part of her almost expected the syringe to break apart in her hand.

Mad froze in place, lowering the chainsaw in a subconscious, almost mechanical way. He started trembling, his breathing growing even more ragged. 

She jumped away from him just as he dropped his toy (which apparently landed right on its OFF switch, Thank God). 

Then, he crumpled to his knees, and started screaming. 

A confused, raspy, keening distress-call.

He writhed in place, clawing at his shoulder as tears streamed down his face. 

Caliban was back on his feet in an instant. He raised the ruined chair over his head, then swung it down onto the chainsaw’s engine about half-a-dozen times. That didn't seem to inflict too much damage, but it was better than nothing. 

Once he was satisfied, the cannibal turned his sights back to Mad. 

Lowering his head and squaring his shoulders, he charged with another bloodthirsty scream, holding his former shield like a battering ram.

Mad’s neck was caught between the two front legs, and though he reached up to grab at them, he couldn’t stop the new momentum. 

Caliban shoved him forward, making him skid across the floor. He didn’t stop until the chair’s legs dug into the adjacent wall, causing little wisps of dust and drywall-crumbs to come flying out. 

And just like that, Mad was pinned. 

For a few long seconds, Caliban didn't let go of the chair's back-post. Instead, he loomed over his opponent, panting like a dog, his eyes feral as they rolled around in his head.

"You look like a tuna melt," the cannibal declared.

Though this didn't stop Mad from all his kicking and squirming, a flare in his eyes made it clear that comment had struck some kind of nerve.

"...I HATE tuna melts," Caliban added, his snarl quickly shifting into a grin so wide it almost seemed to split his face. He pulled away, throwing his head back to let out a loud, ragged high-pitched cackle, his teeth practically gnashing at the air. "I HATE 'EM!"

While Azalea was normally happy to see her peers getting some well-earned stress relief, she still knew very well that this impromptu timeout-trap wouldn't hold Mad forever.

Sure, the pain from the Gila venom would slow him down, but even that could only last so long. The side-effects varied from person to person; sometimes they'd linger on for hours. Other times, however, they might start wearing off in forty-five minutes...

With that in mind, she felt her free hand tug at her brother's jacket, then heard the speed of the world whistling past the two of them.

She finally, finally managed to blink, and she was outside again.

She didn't have to guide Caliban along. He readily ran beside her, unhinged chortles still leaking out in-between breaths.

Her lungs were threatening to burst open and tangle themselves all over her ribcage, but she couldn't think about that right now.

Azalea just had to focus on running, had to focus on how Caliban was still breathing, had to focus on the two other, very familiar figures up ahead.

Casey, who was being half-carried-half-dragged, and K.O., who was halfway through the entrance of that decrepit motel...

@sammys-magical-au @the-matpat-ever @lexusinsannus @b-is-in-the-closet @im-a-weird0 @lampsforsocks

You changed,

You haven’t

A follow up to our lovely collab with @wouldntyou-liketoknow, this is more of a flashback to kinda get into the relationship between Casey and Mad through Mad’s eyes. It may never erase what he’s done, but it may show a glimpse as to why he can’t seem to let Casey go.

Has always been, and always will be known as a monster, yet one soul decided to take a chance, to hold his hand and make him feel something more than just a monster. He was more in that person’s eyes, and he never wanted to let go of that feeling. The simple single touch of another who never views him as nothing more than a…

Shame he no longer can feel the touch.

@crazy-obsessed-enby @iswmperson @lexusinsannus @sammys-magical-au @wouldntyou-liketoknow @the-matpat-ever

He can only dream.