throws monster hat down in disgust

[theparasite]

Date & Time: 8/3-4, throughout the night
Location: VARIOUS
Characters: Artemis Ratcliff, Kate Kane, Collette, Koltira, the Nightcap, Regina Darkov?
Summary: Exterminating a hat
Warnings: Suffering and gross and all that monster hat jazz


Blind.

Am I...blind? Girl. Is this blind?

Girl.

It received no reply but resentment, and even in that there was no true answer to satisfy.

Blind, then.

Fumbling in what was there decided as a blind fashion, the Nightcap crawled out of a second-story window and clutched at the frames, fidgeting to perch securely and breathe in as deep as it could. No more flinching away from the pain the body shuddered with; sacrificing those sensory connections meant risking greater harm to the whole thing. It was learning a little too late, but better late than never seemed about right.

How still it had stayed for such a time! It felt like an eternity, that short span of days after the blazing sun and blazing fire. Its eyebrows were still singed, clothes tattered and tossed away in favor of stolen goods. The texture was hard to enjoy now that Regina Darkov's skin had hardened over with scabs and calluses from the conjuring scourge – it was all up her arms and neck and face. Ugly, ugly skin. If the fit wasn't quite right, the color too off, it wouldn't know. Blurry, not truly blind, her eyes wouldn't find details in much of anything, let alone that.

The Nightcap had to think very hard about its priorities. Life, above anything, mattered most. The pride it had in simply being was made bitter by the colossal threats it had collided with, each leaving it with less a capable host than before. Where would it leave the monster, should its little Darkov die? Ambling truly blind to find the nearest brain to latch to: That was hardly desirable. And if it were to simply abandon the girl for a healthy host, there went all hopes for access to the door and the world beyond.

Unless...that...yellow girl. Yellow hair.

She had called Skigaa, Regina's serpent. Impossible, but true. So, perhaps...

Key.

Took a key. Where is it?

Something so crucial had been so quickly forgotten in blazing sun, blazing heat, and oppressive nights in the dark. Now remembered, it grew frantic.

It leaped from its perch, scrambling up the wall opposite, and set to seeking it out. First thing's first.

Comments

[theparasite]

Words became senseless shrills and screams, arms windmilling as control of its feet was taken from the Nightcap. It clawed at its face, clawed at the thin ice creeping, trying to rip it away faster than it was growing, but for every small chunk ripped free, more came, and seemed to never stop.

Fear was not a foreign concept, but it was rawest then, completely undeniable and overpowering. What countermeasures could it possibly think of? The girl was reeling, useless, and hardly the world-traveled Darkov she needed to be to give the Nightcap all the knowledge it could possibly get to think its way through the situation.

[deadelfwalking]

The ice thickened with each passing second, layering itself several times over on top of Regina's face and clothing -- including, and most especially, her hat. Its production did not stop until nearly half of Regina's body was completely encased, and then shimmered, becoming translucent and diamond-hard.

Koltira took Regina by her free arm and set his other hand, palm open and flat, against the ice that coated her cheek. The right strike in the right place, and the entire thing would shatter.

"I am so sorry that I could not do more, Regina," he murmured. "I had wanted to free you, and I will, but I fear the consequences will be too much for your body to bear."

His fingers curled into a fist. With careful, precise force, he slammed his spiked gauntlet into the ice.

[theparasite]

Regina's head was filled with the rattle and roar of the monster, as all-encompassing and horrible as the very moment it first made contact. Ear-rattling – a sound so intense it made her eyes ache, her jaw clench tight...yet pain was so much of a part of every breath and blink that all that registered was the wild roar of a breaking beast.

It didn't want to die. It never wanted to die. All it wanted – ever truly desired – was life. Of all creatures, it was convinced it alone scraped and clawed its way into being; where others were born, it made itself. The girl was the means to its realization, pulling from her experiences to fill out the world around it, give it words and sense...but everything it wanted, everything it chose to do, was a choice it made for the thrill of making it, for the chance for more.

How dare any deny it, tell it no. Make it suppress its cravings and pursuits for the sake of others...what did it owe anyone? Aside from the girl, of course. And even she was ungrateful for how it tended to her needs...back before. There was no delight in compromise. No delight in policing itself for the sake of evading punishment.

And then Exsilium. Horrible monsters and powers far beyond its own. The lesson of crossing superior forces was learned so painfully, yet even still the Nightcap stubbornly believed itself right in its pursuits.

Still it believed. Still it was certain it was being wronged.

How dare they.

Connection to the eyes was gone, for all the good that was: Regina was practically blind. The absence of sight was the worst, for how unpleasant pain had become, intermingled with pain.

How dare they.

No more pain, then. It wasn't a relief, though; it was one less connection, made it terribly clear there would be no more touch. Soft fur, rough concrete...

HOW DARE THEY.

The girl was gone absolutely. No whimpering echoes of a girl trapped in the back of her mind, made spectator of her own body. The Nightcap's home.

HOW D–

Broken, ripped from each tendril of awareness, the core of the parasite list touch with will.

[deadelfwalking]

As the ice cracked apart, Koltira grasped what he could of the parasite in his hands. He tore away whatever solid pieces he could grasp of the hat and dashed them on the cement. But he could see, also, that Regina was falling. He kept his grip tight on her arm, keeping her upright, even as he brought his boot down on the parasite's remains.

"Regina," he said. "Can you still hear me?"

[theparasite]

Regina, like the monster, couldn't register the pain. It was as much to do with the cold as it was simply the body losing touch with her senses. How long had those warning signs blared with nothing done to alleviate the stress? It only became worse over time.

She sagged, knees buckling, and let out an involuntary wheeze.

[deadelfwalking]

Koltira cinched his arms around her waist and bent down, slowly, until he was kneeling with her on the pavement.

"Regina," he tried again. "Please."

He pressed his ear against her chest; listened for any semblance of a heartbeat.

[theparasite]

It was there and it was her own, as her breath was, and all the little twitches and uncoiling muscles in her body. All hers, for all the good it did.

But it was remarkable, opening and closing her own eyes, making the faint glimmer of Koltira's hair vanish and reappear at will. Anything else was too distant to see, and that was well enough; she still wondered on all the things said amid and above the screeching monster in her head.

Martin?

"Mar..."

[deadelfwalking]

Koltira cradled Regina's body, exhaling. She was alive, but only just.

"Martin," he supplied. "No, I am not he. But I knew him. He was well-loved here. Remains well-loved."

[crocodilesmiles]

Collette held her own peace, watching with reptilian eyes as ice did the impossible (but so believeably so!) under Koltira's direction. Freeze it out. They did the same thing with warts, she recalls: cold so intense it burns out the virus.

It's a freedom, bought at a price Collette doesn't think Regina can survive. She won't pretend to understand -- bodies weren't meant to handle cold like that, not if the ice had been doing what she suspected -- but what can a girl in the body of a crocodile do except believe and offer the words she did before?

Build on what Koltira's offered. Give Regina something before whatever else wins; wonder if the Initiative will bring her back, or if that will include the detestable thing that had taken such liberties with her, body, spirit, soul.

< He has good friends. He can be funny without trying, and he always means well. He's a good guy. Koltira's got it right, 'Gina. There's a lot of people here who love him, and make sure they do what they can so he's never alone. >

Though she can't say they've found him for the months since that thing had appeared; the various sly threats and lack of proper clues to track down his where-abouts, the Initiative's list still claiming him to belong.

She doesn't voice those misgivings. She just enfolds Regina's mind with warm regard, a fondness and happiness with an underlying touch of knowing sadness she can't entirely make disappear.

< Just like you're not alone even now. In the good sense, not the um, in your head sense, though that's where you're hearing me 'cause it's how I have to talk. >

[theparasite]

There it was again – that sweet and earnest voice. It had pulled Regina out of a deep well of darkness, drawing her up into a waking world of a continuous, but fading agony. It made the faint light bouncing off Koltira's hair an outline to a shape – a moving shape, looming over her. If it were something to fear, she had no sense to; it didn't match the kindnesses pressed to her ears and her mind. All about Martin.

Slowly, her face contorted into one ready to burst into tears, but she had none. She could feel the pull of her mouth in that grimace, realizing it was hers to move. Freedom, her brother...It was a lot of information to take in, to piece together coherently, and keep the horrible echoes of the Nightcap's whole being out of them, muddling them up.

Aside from small fidgets and whimpers, Regina was still and silent, listening and wondering. Was any of it real? She could almost believe the voice was Danielle's, and perhaps the armor her knuckles twitched against was something of home. Everything in her head was steering her that way already.

"Hh–ss..." He's safe, then? Was that real?

She breathed out one more time, and the strain in her features left with it.