Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5999656-20190205035159/@comment-26571677-20190902124058

His first thought was to check her pulse; placing his fingers under her chin to try and feel for a heartbeat.

When he encountered only cold smoothness, his heart plummeted; and then he realized that the mask had been sealed tight around her head; it must have activated a dampening effect at the moment of impact, and thank god that it did, otherwise she may have ended up with a skull that resembled a pancake.

Pressing his fingers against the top, he tore the shattered thing away; revealing a mess of tangled brown hair wetly strewn over an unconscious face; a small trickle of blood coming from a cut on the forehead, where the mask had failed to prevent a shrapnel of bone from slicing through. Thankfully, her pulse was still there; if slightly weakened by sudden shock of aura loss.

In any other time, he may have marveled at how much she’d grown; hell, how much they both had since that fateful day 9 years ago. But now was not the place, nor the desired time.

They were surrounded by attacks from all ends, and the boat was taking more punishment than it may have been able to stand.

He looked back down to Hazel; situation wasn’t good, he had barely enough aura reserves for himself, and yet…here she lay, mortalised through sacrifice.

There wasn’t even a question to be asked.

Closing his eyes, he focused, and his aura pulsed weakly; losing its luster as Hazel’s grew in great strength. His chest felt weak; his knees slightly wobbly; vision swimming like a bad case of seasickness.

So this is how weak her aura is, huh…?

But before he had even a moment to rest; Hazel coughed; eyes opening slowly, and then bringing rapidly as she was reintroduced to the world of the living.

What a shame that her first sight and sound was the crunch of smushed skull and the looming of a tentacle reaching over the side; lunging towards her now powerless brother.

“Hey there Hazel, awake from nap time are we?”

Yet her eyes told a different story; widened and reaching towards his waist.

There was a crunch.

---

The last thing she remembered clearly was the mind-numbing pain in her side; like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer; followed by the piercing heat emanating from the singular finger touching the slimy, black appendage that held Jett hostage.

Then, an inward shatter, and inky darkness below; consuming her like the tentacles enclosed the boat.

She drifted alone in that darkness; her only companion the dulled intermittence of her voice.

Everything…everything is so cold…

She opened her mouth to breath, but no air came in; and her chest felt like it was weighted down by a large stone; constantly at the precipice of suffocating, but never truly passing out.

So this is death…I hope he made it out.

She could live with this; drifting, alone, on a sea of freezing water, for the rest of her consciousness, so long as it meant that her efforts to save were not in vain.

Call it karmic justice, call it redemption, call it whatever one liked.

But she could rest easy with her efforts.

And then, the strangest thing; her fingertip became warm.

In the blistering cold, such a foreign feeling struck out all the more, and it spread; up from her fingers, to her hand, to her arm and then her shoulder.

And then, her whole body was enveloped in heat; not the burning kind, nor the lustful, but rather that gentle warmth akin to a close hug, or the crackle of a warm fire.

Yet she could still not move her body, no matter how much she tried; she still continued to drift on the water.

And once more, something strange happened, there was a hand extended from a portal of pure light. It was gloved and raggled; worn down on the trigger finger and tip of the thumb, telltale signs of a gunslinger.

And it grasped her hand, and pulled hard; so that it dragged her out of the water, and gasping and choking into a world just as dark, and just as wet.

Her eyes opened and she spluttered out the taste of salty rain; polluted by the ocean wind. Her body felt warm, and as she raised a hand up to see what was happening, she was graced by a vision of replenished aura, pulsing strong and in beat with her heart.

And then, what was behind that hand; the figure of Dust, sitting down with a weary grin; and she took the moment of lucidity to look at his face; to really, really examine it and all that it entailed. There were countless little nicks; and the wrinkles betrayed youthful age with the vision of countless burdens on his shoulders.

And for the first time, she noticed just how tired he seemed; and her mind wondered how he could yet smile.

And then, a dart of black behind him, and her eyes widened at the sight, reaching towards his belt and grabbing the hilt of his pistol.

And when she fired to sever the damned Grimm, it was already too late.

It had grabbed ahold of his left arm, and twisted it like a toy.

And he had no aura to prevent the crunch of splintering bone, and the splatter of blood on deck.

And when the corpse of a former black tentacle slid back underwater, she scrambled to his side. Thankfully though, the damage wasn’t too severe; at the very least, not life threatening.

True, she could see the grim sight of an arm that would never function quite the same, and she could see that his sharpshooting days were over, but at the very least he was alive, and her breathing dropped in irregularity at the relief of that knowledge.

“So…how bad is it? Will I play piano again?”

How?

“How are you still…nevermind that, we need to leave. Now.”

And his expression changed right then; as she turned to leave, he reached out with his good arm, and grasped her coattails.

“We can’t leave. The guy with the tentacle arms and the police girl are in the water.”

“They’re done for, we need to leave; save those we can.”

“Goddamnit Hazel we don’t know that! I’m not going to leave them!”

Her face contorted into true anger then; a far departure from her usual emotionless form.

“They were planning to kill you! You know that!? Why do you give a shit about them!?”

And he paused; his expression softening, as his voice quietened, even among the pounding of rain and the sounds of battle.

“Because they waited for us, too. I’m not leaving them.”

And her throat developed a lump.

“Fine. But I’m going to try and restart the engine, we need to leave as soon as possible.”

She turned to leave, and found her progress once against impeded by a hand at her side.

“What no-“

The seriousness in his expression.

“Swear to me you won’t leave them.”

“I swear.”

He nodded, and let her go.

Reaching the control room; she pushed aside the corpse and the debris; treating the body as unceremoniously as it deserved.

The floor was slick with pink matter, and pools of rainwater were already being tainted red by the trickle of blood; like red dye seeping into clear water; the air heavy with scent of iron.

The controls weren’t yet damaged.

She started the engine, and to the two down beneath, it must have looked like they were about to abandon them entirely.

A flash of lightning illuminated her face; grim and bloodied.