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Date & Time: forward dated to 07/31, night
Location: unit 201
Characters: Catsovi e Viciro (

scornful), the Nightcap (

theparasite)
Summary: THE MURDEROUS WORKING DYNAMIC SUDDENLY GOES DOWN THE DRAIN
Warnings: fingernail trauma

Catsovi had been plagued by sleeplessness ever since the bombings, and he wasn't entirely certain why. It vexed him. There was no reason for this to be happening. He hadn't been afraid of the bombs then, he hadn't been afraid of the attacks, he hadn't been afraid of anything then and he certainly wasn't afraid of them now. But insomnia plagued him all the same and he was spending too many nights now pacing the room, staring at the walls, thinking to himself: this is where Bariyan was... and realizing that this was not his place. He did not belong. He never would, he never would have.

He wanted to tear it to the ground. When he did sleep, he dreamed of fire. Of the bombings. Of the plague.

But he was not sleeping now and so when the door to the apartment creaked open, Cat ventured out into the main hall to look at it. It could only be one of two people, he knew, and at the moment he was not in the mood to confront either of them.

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Catsovi's mood was the furthest from the Nightcap's concerns; it had its own problems. Things were simply...too complex in Exsilium. Too many rules. Too many threats. Leeway had been abundant in Olvoski, where the distances setting it apart from its nearest opposition gave it room to flex, breathe, and learn. It didn't have to adapt so much as it had to stay one step ahead of the scarce few on its scent.

Here, though...

"Pretty boy."

Its arm remained thrust forward after giving the door a lazy push open, weight resting heavily on one side. It sniffed and blinked slowly, looking at the darkness ahead with blurry, fading vision. Yet it could still see the shape of Catsovi appearing from the gloom.

The smile it wore twitched on one side.

"Ah...how nice. You came to greet me."

Cat cocked his head to the side, listening to the creature, listening to it speak. Its tone of voice. He wrinkled his nose at 'pretty boy' -- which, while objectively and factually true, was not a sentiment he wanted to hear coming out of the Nightcap's mouth. Ugh.

He snapped at it. "Close the goddamn door."

He flicked the lights on. He crossed his arms.

"Oh, you look tired," he said. "Do you want a drink? Water? Wine? Rat poison?"

Door? The Nightcap's head turned just enough to give it glimpse of said door before it brushed its shoulder, closing with or without its consent. Ah. Whatever.

Its eyes flickered back to Catsovi, smiling a mockingly demure smile as it regarded him.

"Hoh. No...No, not that." It swayed to one side before stepping into motion, striding lazily across the room his way.

"You do know what I want, though. Mm. Yes."

"You haven't won our game yet," Catsovi said. He tapped his foot.

Of course, he set the rules for the game, and he was judge, jury, and executor. The Nightcap would never win the game. It never had a chance. Cat had only planned to string it along until something more interesting happened -- but, unfortunately for Cat, he didn't expect that to happen tonight.

The bag it had carried dropped with an unceremonious thunk on the floor, heavy and forgotten as the Nightcap's last step to getting very well up into Catsovi's personal space. Its breath was rank, hair slick and greasy and knotted, and face...well. Catsovi wasn't a bad-looking guy to start, but he was Adonis simply in the Nightcap's vicinity.

"I think you're a liar," it murmured, mouth quirked in a sideways smirk. The brim of the hat quivered. "I think you're lying. Cheater."

Ah, yes. The only good thing about being in the Nightcap's vicinity -- becoming acutely aware of how incredibly, flawlessly gorgeous Catsovi was. Practically blinding.

He narrowed his eyes at the Nightcap and side-stepped it, then kept moving, starting to circle.

"Bold accusations," Catsovi said. "Unfortunately, maybe you're right. I'm the only one here smart enough to lie."

He was curious now, not afraid. Resistance. Interesting.

It was almost choreographed, the way Catsovi moved and how the Nightcap stepped to match, refusing to yield ground as much as it refused to be brushed aside. The man was maddening, just looking at him (nevermind smelling him). Barely a scratch for all the Nightcap had suffered. Regina's jaw ached for how hard her teeth were clenched behind that thin-lipped smirk.

A decision was made, and the dance-like pacing was halted for a cutting, forward step that drew it well into Catsovi's space. The brim of the hat shivered and uncurled, stretching and fraying like loose threads wriggling to life in the open air. They reached and groped for skin and hair and all things tactile, for the openings to a new mind. The Nightcap's very being was pushed into a booming, consuming pulse of will:

SHOW ME. YOUR LIE.

Catsovi was ready for the lunge but he wasn't ready for the separation, for that grotesque black mass reaching for him, allowing the Nightcap to extend itself farther than Cat could have ever anticipated. It damn near shocked him with surprise.

So it reached him, and Catsovi screamed. Not in terror, not in horror -- just in mindless, raging, all-consuming disgust.

Somewhere far off, deep in the outlands, the misery stirred from its stupor and whirred its wings. But Catsovi was already fighting, already striking back.

Cat only took one step back. He cut his scream off as he went rigid, as if it were some recording he could flip on or off at will, and he raised his hands to claw at the thing on his head, sinking his nails in, trying to tear at it. Then his hands went for Regina face. His nails were sharp, hard, merciless. They sought out soft parts, clawed viciously and frantically, as if looking for some vein or vessel to gleefully rip out.

And if the Nightcap was looking into Catsovi's mind, it would find a thousand red eyes staring right back at it.

NOT YOURS.

MINE.

Thousands of shapes and colors the Nightcap could barely perceive on its own: things Regina's eyes did not see. It needed to needle, to wrap itself around understanding that wasn't its own and soak into, t–

Regina screamed, filling in the silence Catsvoi left, awake and in pain as fingers bore against raw and tender flesh. Regina grappled blindly as the Nightcap's attentions were divided and weakened: Her fingers moved at her own will, fighting the impulse to pull them away. She choked on her own breath and tightened her grip, trying to press those hands closer.

That spark of desire caused the monster to shudder and relent, bubbling and sucking itself backward, sinking fast down to Regina's scalp. Catsovi's hands, still held fast, were pulled away as the Nightcap gritted its teeth to silence the outrage. That energy was redirected into a swift knee to Catsovi's abdomen, punctuated with a grunted growl.

Cat, still too enraged to react properly was caught square in the gut by the kick and staggered back, keeling over.

And on the ground, he burst into laughter.

"Oh!" Cat snapped his head up with the exclamation. The third eye on his forehead burned now, bright and angry red. "We're playing this game now, are we?"

He raised a hand as if to... do something, but another fit of laughter came over him and he doubled over with it, clutching his stomach.

The Nightcap wasted little time to scramble and grasp at those hands again, yanking his arm and tucking it under its own arm, momentarily pinning him rather close to itself. Close enough to probe its skull again, but ohhhh no, not that. It'd risk losing hold of the girl entirely, roused as she was.

"Ghames!" it spat, hunching forward to keep the arm between its chest and its knee, freeing up its own hand. A fresh needle. "Your games are dull!"

It rolled the needle over its knuckles to better grasp it in a fist, fishing for flesh and finding a secure point to stab: right under a fingernail. Each twist and pull was punctuated with a word.

"Your. Games. Are. DULL."

Catsovi kept laughing all the way through the first fingernail, and then he made an awful sound at the second, a strangled, enraged scream of agony, repeated through all the next stabs at higher and higher pitches until finally he was shrieking curses, his eyes wide, his face contorted hideously in equal parts pain and hatred.

"You BITCH!"

He spat in the Nightcap's face and wrenched his other arm back, only to snap it forwards again, elbow first, slamming it towards the Nightcap's face. This was no frantic, desperate flail -- this was a measured blow, and behind it was all the concentrated force that centuries of fighting had built up in Cat's body. This was not an attempt to push the Nightcap away. This was an attempt to break its face in half.

Not so much in half, but the blow was blinding, rattled teeth – smashed teeth out of their setting; the Nightcap could feel one rattle and shift around its mouth as it reeled backward. It staggered, clutching Catsvoi's wrists as it dropped to its knees, coughing and spitting the tooth and excess. All over those shoes.

Fingers slipped, tightened again, and yanked to help pull the Nightcap up to its feet, needle disintegrating where it was wedged.

It smiled, lip split and bleeding.

"Give it to me," it wheezed. "My. Door. My–"

The 'door' was currently still wrapped around Cat's wrist, though it had slipped below the Nightcap's grasp, links biting into the skin of his upper forearm. Cat gave a tiny tug on both arms and felt the chain shift.

But above that, he felt pain. And above pain, he felt rage.

"You were never going to get it," Cat hissed, through a ghastly parody of a grin. His fingers were twisted claws, the nails broken and bleeding and shooting agony all the way up his arm.

Then he lurched forward to scream in the Nightcap's face. The sound was damn near ear-splitting. At the same time he thrust both arms forward. Magic rolled off him in intangible waves as he sought to seize control of Regina's body from the outside -- seeking the fingers of both of her hands in order to pry them off.

The Nightcap's cries were staggered, coming in sharp busts with each great pulse of pain as fingers were pushed in one way to the will of one monster and that of another's simultaneously. It yelled, drowned out by Catsovi and the indescribable rattle it had caused in its ears.

It recoiled, tumbling backward, heels scuffing the floor as it scooted as fast as it could.

"YOU CAN'T KEEP IT!" it shrieked, shrill and cracked, clutching its hands close to itself. "I'LL TEAR IT OFF AND TEAR YOU INTO PIECES!"

Catsovi staggered away as soon as he was free, back to the door, and immediately made to reach out to the Nightcap again; to rip its ribcage out of its mouth, perhaps, to break every bone in its body, to repay it for what it's done to Cat--

Then he stopped. The corner of his mouth twitched into a pained smile. He looked down at his own hand and winced.

"You'll have to try harder than that," he said, even as he fought back a whimper. Oh, god, his nails.

Then he flung both hands out, reaching for control of Regina's body again. Her legs. Stand. Walk.

"N–nearrHHH–!"

Nothing had ever been so incredibly enraging as the feeling of losing control of its own host – right then and there, right with it locked in as it was. The Nightcap scrambled to strain every muscle against the sensation, no matter the cost. It was more than a pretty penny, for how joints groaned and buckled, muscles burned and strained, and how lucid the girl became in the swirl of such torment. Lucid, then gone again, then aware once more and somehow searching for the sense to know to cheer.

Unacceptable.

I WON'T ALLOW IT.

It smacked its fist hard against the floor, trying to use the weight of its upper body against the lower, stuck in some obscene, writhing half-crouch as control over the legs was in jeopardy. Losing, it rocked itself forward so as to set its hand directly under its shoulder, elbow locked, and forced a conjure from the wrist. As Regina's forearm rippled against the activity, they both rose: the body and the lengthy, sharpened rod of bone and iron from her flesh.

"Yuuh–you," the Nightcap's jaw was set tight, mangling all words. "Lllllet. Gohhh..."

"You," Catsovi replied, through an equally tight jaw, fighting with all his might to maintain what little control he had -- fighting to turn the Nightcap away from him. "get out!"

But he released control as soon as he bit the last word off. Perhaps release wasn't quite the right word -- the Nightcap was fighting back too much for him to hold on any longer, its will too strong, too foreign, too alien. But release was the way Catsovi would like to think it. He would like to think that he'd chosen to let it go, of his own free will.

And immediately he cast his sight about in search of a weapon. There was a chair, but that wouldn't serve him long. Damn it. What he wanted was a sword.

Release or breakthrough, whatever the word happened to be didn't change how almost comically the Nightcap was flung, staggering with its own built-up force to be free of Catsovi's hold. It tripped over its own feet and fell, rolling and scrambling back upright without any thought or thought of a thought on the ordeal; it only wanted out and away as fast as possible.

It was frustrated in its disorientation, trying to find open air and windows and just seeing walls and furniture and all manner of things that ought to have been familiar enough, but...quite valueless in the face of its peril. Fortune let it feel its back press against the doorknob, give it cause to send hands fumbling around for it, to yelp and then shout an almost joyful note as the door opened at last – not very easy doing all of that facing the wrong way, but it'd be nuts to turn its back on Catsovi.

Giggling frantically, it backed out of the room, mouth twitching with the barest notion of a final word...but wit was one more useless thing in the moment.

It ran instead, hating the whole circumstance, hoping half the pain and offense it felt was but a quarter of Catsovi's. The nails weren't enough. It needed to...to hurt something else. Something more.

It was going to have to think hard about it. But now was no time for a good think.

Catsovi hissed a string of curses at the Nightcap's retreat, stepping towards it as if he meant to chase it out -- but as soon as it ran off, he went to his knees instead, biting his bottom lip against the pain. This wasn't right. This wasn't fair. This -- was not -- all right.

This needed to be amended.

The injury was, at least, easy enough to hide away. He grabbed his coat off the rack and flung it over his shoulders, pulling it over his injured hand. There was blood on his face, but he was only dimly aware of it, and in the dim light of evening surely no one would notice. And Adrasteius' room wasn't far from here.

And after that... after that he'd see about revenge.

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